#hence why them being the final two would’ve been interesting bc all the tension makes a comeback

[noahtally-famous]

tda featuring duntrent, gwourtney, a proper characterization for trent and his ocd, exes gwent and duncney (plus initial awkward tension to sincere friendship and solidarity), and a final two duncan and courtney would’ve slayed so hard

[50shadesofmittens]

Eqippable Ally AU

SO during my recent conversation with coaxionunlimited I got a lot of my vague AU’s fleshed out. As in, I finally put down to words some of the insane ideas I’ve had bouncing around my head for ages now.

Here’s the Equippable Ally AU, the first one we talked about and one of the longest

More under the cut, ‘cause this gonna be LONG

So to start, ideas of each Primarch in this AU

Like Corvus winding up Equippable Ally with Sly Marbo bc why not and also Marbo equipped with a Primarch-powered weapon is SCARY

ALSO Ferrus Manus still alive kinda equipping Kitten during a moment of High Tension when Magnus for whatever reason can’t be the equippable ally- cue Magnus jealousy even given full understanding of the intense circumstances

And possibly the first thing Fulgrim does once somebody gets his soul free of the paining and his body back from the daemon inhabiting it is become an Equippable Ally to one of the Space Marines in the area- proving that he’s on the good guys side for real but also that’s he’s willing to let someone else take control of it means getting better results, and maybe also that he’s traumatized to the point where he can’t make very good decisions for himself but he recognizes this flaw and is willing to take measures to work around/through it

Also Mittens makes a powerful pair because the two can work together directly in combat- Kitten taking over the physical aspects while Magnus handles all the magical ones working in the battle- and as the two learn to work together they combine their strengths into more powerful combos

Btw I like to imagine all the Primarchs have In Love With Your Carnage literally hardwired into their DNA to some degree, which affects the crack pairings I had for the Equippable Ally AU

Like apart from Mittens, you have:

Corvus and Sly Marbo (which the Void Dragon approves heavily of as an example of Rescue Romance)

Russ and Ygrainne (ie the badass Eldar who cannon thinks is Guilliman’s girlfriend- in this AU they met in Commoragh’s fighting pits and now have UST from both considering the other inferior while also being able to hold their own against each other)

Dorn has Karstodes (and that one is explicitly They Won’t because it’s based on Dorn being unable to deny that Karstodes is a very good fighter and he finds his technique and strength in battle arousing while hating his personality, and Karstodes being an Abhorrent Admirer)

Then comes the mechanics behind the Equippable Ally bit, ie How It Works

The Primarch literally turns into a sword of some kind

Like all swords are based on the Emperors flaming sword, but some minor details causing differences between them

As for the power, there’s three ways this could work

One; swords have energy blasts, a la Zelda or Bleach. The power behind these blasts is roughly 3-12 times the amount of power a Primarch would put into the same kind of swing if it was used by his own hands

Two: if the sword can be incorporated into any other battle style, the sword will glow, possibly cause the person wielding it to glow, and then the attack will have the same power as though the Primarch performed it but with 1.5-8 times the power the Primarch would’ve had

Three- Primarch can use his Psyker powers within the sword by using the weirder as a conduit. This has a bonus of 2-10 times its usual power, but the caveat is that the weirder cannot be mind-controlled and has the ability to drop the sword at any time, meaning that the Primarch can’t force someone to be a conduit for a spell they don’t want to be part of

A Primarch-as-weapon weapon is FAR more powerful than the Primarchs-as-people are

IE the weapon they turn into can do more damage than a Primarchs alone can

That’s why any Primarchs would agree to it- the end result is more powerful than what they could create alone

Biggest downside is that using that power is hard- using it effectively is double hard

See, the power modifier the wielder gets is tied to the Primarchs ability to do that any specific move. Throw a knife while holding Konrad-sword is much more powerful than throwing a knife while holding say Sanguinius sword, because the former can throw knives much better than the latter. Of course being Primarchs they’re pretty good at anything- this is more of a way to note that some Primarchs will supply bigger bonuses than others

The other thing- and this is the big one- is that the Primarch cannot guide or directly control the movements of the weirder, and the overall strength of an attack is reflected by if the WIELDER’s exact actions were taken by a Primarch- so if someone swings a Primarch sword with horrific form, it’ll have a lot of force but if they would’ve dropped a normal sword with a move like that, they’ll drop the Primarch sword. What’s more the power output increase adds even more destabilization because people really arent naturally good at handling more power than they’re used to- kickback is still a thing, and even with the defenses of a Primarch being added, Primarchs also have enhanced pain tolerance, so what a Primarch might consider mild soreness will be shocking and difficult to handle for a normal person experiencing the same thing

TLDR; it takes a lot of skill to handle Primarch Weapons well. Hence why it’s pretty useless unless the Primarch has someone he trusts who understands him very well and can fight on or close to his level

It’s like handing a civilian an automatic gun- they theoretically have the ability to use it just fine, they know how to press the trigger and point away from themselves, but they still aren’t fully qualified to use it

Then there’s a really stupid scene with Magnus and Russ throwing a limitless supply of soft silk shoes at each other at 400km/hr, Thanks to magic arbitrary rules and/or the bs of a powerful Mars dragon or a god

So I figure this might be a good time to explain where my own Equippable Ally AU was going- it was largely based on fairy-tales and the parody and exploitation thereof

Like the basic idea was that the Void Dragon A) is alive B) has a grudge against Emps and C) is still/also very much into medieval fairytales like the one of Saint George, largely because Emps was obsessed with them when he fought it

Only the dragon doesn’t really ‘get’ gender so it decides that the traditional fairytale setting where a prince or a princess is trapped and must be freed/rescued by their One True Love is a good narratively-sound way to seek Revenge- it casts the Primarchs as the “princesses” of the tale

Mainly Ferrus Manus, who has been trapped with the dragon for 10,000 years while they both waited for someone to try to rescue him, not knowing that almost all of the Galaxy thinks he’s dead. This has given the dragon much time to play dress up with Ferrus

So when the dragon learns of the Equippable Ally thing, it decides “Ah HA! This is how I identify the One True Love who is to try to rescue the children of my enemy! My greatest threat (according to all the tropes I know)!”

Only there’s more than one Equippable Ally bond, so the dragon doesn’t know which one is, narratively speaking, the Hero/Heroine.

So it decides to make all the people bonded to a Primarch in this manner fight to the death, and the winner will obviously be the Protagonist that the dragon seeks

(I realize I failed to mention this, but the dragon has cast Emps in the role of Good King whose Kingdom is threatened and who must rely on the Hero/Heroine to save the day. This is in fact the way the Dragon seeks revenge- it believes the narrative will not LET the Emperor face it, so when it defeats the new protagonist it will have won)

(The void dragon is kinda insane and believes fairy tale logic is an actual force of nature)

Anyways, the dragon decides the best way to force the Potential Protagonists to fight is to hold their True Loves hostage- good thing it’s got millennia of practice keeping Ferrus from running away

And both Russ and Magnus wind up kidnapped for this tournament.

And the dragon doesn’t just believe in fairy tales, no it wants these battles to LOOK heroic and fairy tale like.

So it dresses all the Primarchs in medieval dresses (it’s other reason for doing this is that it enjoyed playing dress up with Ferrus and would like to try with his brothers now)

When the “tournament” goes down all the Primarchs are put on display so their “true loves” can be reminded what’s at stake

Which just means Magnus and Russ see each other and try to kill each other. The Void Dragon has them separated and magic blocked to avoid this.

The Void Dragon doesn’t want Magnus and Russ killing each other in the Equippable Ally AU bc it’s all like “No no no, you two are Princesses, your heroic knights are the ones meant to be proving themselves and fighting to the death, your role is to be the pretty trophy they win, this is not how the story goes. The HERO is the one who proves their strength, the love interest can’t die in a fratricidal duel while the Hero is fighting for his life- that would be an awful story! Here just- just stay separate, you two, at least until the tournament is over”

Thing is, at least one of the kidnapped Primarchs wanted to get out of the dress he’s in, and discovered that the dresses are self-repairing, and any pieces of the outfit lost or thrown away will be replaced instantly

Magnus and Russ take this to mean “we have infinite ammo to throw at each other”

They start with jewelry bc it’s hard and might theoretically do a tiny scratch of damage if thrown fast enough, but that gets taken away. Then they find that the shoes, which are fabric and soft, cannot do damage and do not get taken away when thrown

So Magnus and Russ ignore the entire death match going on around them to throw shoes at each other at 500 km/hr, in the futile hope that it will do some damage to the other

The entire thing has been me getting the idea for like a 30-sec scene animation, but as you can see it has WAY too much backstory behind it

I can’t remember if I started with Fairy Tale parodies combining with Equippable Ally trope, or if I just wanted Magnus and Russ to throw shoes at each other and the rest built itself around that

(Also Also, Russ and Magnus eventually do get tired of not getting anywhere, and Corvus celebrates their seeing reason and stopping their pointless (albeit commendable on Russ’ part) attempts at homicide with weapons that clearly cannot kill the other

Then Dorn points out the shoes could theoretically be used to kill a Primarch if you literally smothered a Primarch in shoes so that he had no access to air and then kept him there for the full three standard years it would take for him to suffocate.

Russ and Magnus immediately begin throwing shoes again)

(Corvus Facepalms)