Lore vs Situation in Atoma

[Sin]

Hi guys, not a rage thread, just curious:
We are seeing Demons of Nurgle, Plague Ogryns, what appears to be at least a decently sized Chaos-Cult, Demon Hosts.. The Infrastructure of the hive itself is infested by at least 1 Demon, a Plague Tree is sprouting about somewhere, repeated attempts of infesting the water supply have been made, plagues are beeing cooked up on site, pathogens may or may not be airborn in some parts of the hive.

My question is this:
Lore wise (not game, actual 40k lore), how likely is this system to recover vs beeing Ripleyed from Orbit? I have never read of an infested hive so I just can't judge how F*ed Atoma is.

[Mr.Zombie]

From a lore perspective the inquisition wouldn't hesitate to send in space marines since Atoma Prime is a very important asset for the imperium, exterminatus is an extreme measure and the inquisition would likely try every option they have before destroying the planet.

But since Fatshark said they don't want space marine in the game it's very unlikely that we will see any lore friendly evolution of the story.
Sending in a load of penal regiments or even inquisition troops wouldn't change anything.

In vermintide 2 we had the classic group of heroes formula:

A group of Heroes have to deal with a disastrous situation and save what remains of helmgart, then they kill the evil enemy rasknitt.
This formula had nothing revolutionary but it was simple and it worked.

In darktide we have:

You are bad, now go and die, you are nothing, now go and die, you are no one, now go and die, good job you are now a soldier of the inquisition.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Sin:

Lore wise (not game, actual 40k lore), how likely is this system to recover vs beeing Ripleyed from Orbit? I have never read of an infested hive so I just can't judge how F*ed Atoma is.

We know from the one mission that Atoma is vital to the war situation and they need the production facilities. IIRC Hadron says something about the loss of the facility (with the smelter) would result in a 1% drop of Leman Russ production output.

So, provided the Imperium wins, then the System will continue to exist. Deathworlds, ravaged by plagues or even an exterminatus, aren't that uncommon for the Imperium.

Krieg is probably the most prominent example of a Planet utterly inhabitable and still having something of value to contribute.

We also know from Kryptman's liberal use of Exterminatus against the Tyranids that singular Inquisitors can't just make liberal use of exterminatus and can end up in deep, deep doodoo if they do it.

I don't think there is any chance of exterminatus on the planet, unless the planet would be entirely lost.

If you want to take novels as "lore" then you even have situations as the Tanith's excoursion into a Demonworld, a planet so long in the hands of chaos that it was basically a Demon Infested hellhole, and the Imperium still hasn't given up on the planet.

A lot has to happen for the Imperium to squander a resource like that. Most likely would it only be done if the loss to the Imperium is deemed "okay" and the gain by the Chaos forces "unbearable". Otherwise it's more likely that the Imperium would just reroute more Imperial Guard to the planet.

But for the moment it sounds the situation hasn't deemed to be grave just yet, as they just send a few penal people and a single Inquisitor on a small ship. If anything we haven't gone beyond "Scouting" force... and the PDF seems to still hold up the defenses (if you assume some of the missions where PDF troops seem to have emplacements)... so in short.. best we can tell right now.. only a single hive has fallen. That is bad news... but really nothing system threatening just yet.

[Arkady]

Originally posted by Sin:

But for the moment it sounds the situation hasn't deemed to be grave just yet, as they just send a few penal people and a single Inquisitor on a small ship. If anything we haven't gone beyond "Scouting" force... and the PDF seems to still hold up the defenses (if you assume some of the missions where PDF troops seem to have emplacements)... so in short.. best we can tell right now.. only a single hive has fallen. That is bad news... but really nothing system threatening just yet.

Mostly this, the defense forces still have emplacements inside the hive so it's not like the chaos cultist are under control of the city, neither the planet or the system so things like sending the space marines or an exterminatus are not even pondered

[Pain Weasel]

Originally posted by Sin:

My question is this:
Lore wise (not game, actual 40k lore), how likely is this system to recover vs beeing Ripleyed from Orbit? I have never read of an infested hive so I just can't judge how F*ed Atoma is.

Keep in mind how absolutely huge Hive Cities are, some are continent spanning mega structures that reach into space housing billions. Since the characters mention the Indomitus Crusade I'm assuming the timeline places current events somewhere around the Plague Wars. At this time much of the Imperium is under attack by some sort of Nugle force, some small some full blown. On Atoma is an infestation in a relatively small portion of a single hive city (Tertium), contained to the Under Hive rather than the Upper Hive, probably not a full blown invasion. With the newest map we are starting to move higher into the hive city, but it is still a small portion of the overall hive. Maybe 3 districts out of 1000. Additionally the enemies we are seeing are low level basic threats, no greater daemons, no heretic astartes, no plague bearers, no chaos fleet in orbit etc. We have a cult, some daemonic trees and a beast of nurgle way down in the under hive. The Inquisition is there to make sure it doesn't become a full blown chaos incursion if possible. The Space Marines are busy dealing with bigger threats and there just aren't enough of them to be everywhere.

As far as going Ripley and ordering an Exterminatus, I don't think that is an option. Atoma is an important factory world producing Leman Russ tanks and weapons. The Imperium won't just nuke the world unless there is absolutely no other option.

[Sin]

Thanks alot, I was suspecting something like your answers, but as usual with 40k: Imagining the scale is rather difficult.

[ASadMango]

In lore hive cities acually only number around 30k or so. And with a empire spanning a little over a million worlds( I feel like GW is trying to make this fact a more hard canon now days then suggestion) It gives a plausable lore on why the inquistion is here on atoma so quickly, and why they won't just use the big ol virus bomb on it. Hive cities despite their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ are valuable for manpower/raw industral output, so the imperium has a vested interest in the keeping it alive for as long as it's humanly possible. While it seems they REALLY don't want to add space marines arriving atm, do hint at other reniforcements like the sisters of battle and whole regiments of troops which makes sense. In game it seems that what were fighting is the very START of a chaos insurgency so it makes sense, why no one "important" is here yet despite Grendyl being here.

[Bovril Brigadier]

40k lore honestly is an inconsistent heap of Grimderp at best, though considering the current state of the in game infestation honestly a single Imperial Guard Regiment would be more than sufficient to do a clean sweep of the Hive.

[Tam]

Even taking every single mission into consideration, we never see more than a tiny fraction of Tertium, which is a gigantic place. So it's open to interpretation as to what extent Chaos has taken hold. All we see in game is that there are some no-go areas which have been taken over by cultists and traitor guardsmen.

If this Live Service game were in a better state and had been better received by players, Fatshark would likely be able to depict an escalating Chaos infestation for dramatic effect, but I don't think we're likely to see that any time soon.

[Nihil]

Originally posted by Mr.Zombie:

From a lore perspective the inquisition wouldn't hesitate to send in space marines since Atoma Prime is a very important asset for the imperium, exterminatus is an extreme measure and the inquisition would likely try every option they have before destroying the planet.

But since Fatshark said they don't want space marine in the game it's very unlikely that we will see any lore friendly evolution of the story.
Sending in a load of penal regiments or even inquisition troops wouldn't change anything.

In vermintide 2 we had the classic group of heroes formula:

A group of Heroes have to deal with a disastrous situation and save what remains of helmgart, then they kill the evil enemy rasknitt.
This formula had nothing revolutionary but it was simple and it worked.

In darktide we have:

You are bad, now go and die, you are nothing, now go and die, you are no one, now go and die, good job you are now a soldier of the inquisition.

But....that isn't even what OP asked. :D

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Tam:

If this Live Service game were in a better state and had been better received by players, Fatshark would likely be able to depict an escalating Chaos infestation for dramatic effect, but I don't think we're likely to see that any time soon.

Nor would you have, even if it was overwhelmingly positively received and everyone was over the moon. The open letter makes it quite clear that they never had planned anything other than a few cosmetics and hotfix patches while they work on the console port.

[Tam]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

Nor would you have, even if it was overwhelmingly positively received and everyone was over the moon. The open letter makes it quite clear that they never had planned anything other than a few cosmetics and hotfix patches while they work on the console port.

If you say so.

[DLCI]

there is a voiceline (by one of the male zealots iirc) stating that atoma has a population of 50 billion

whatever part of the city we get deployed to is such a tiny fraction of the entire hive that most of the inhabitants probably aren't even aware they live in an active warzone

the best explanation for the lack of space marines is that the inquisition wants to keep things quiet, because as soon as more than 1 or 2 astartes chapter fleetships start orbiting the planet they can no longer conceal how deep the rot goes

[Arkady]

Originally posted by DLCI:

there is a voiceline (by one of the male zealots iirc) stating that atoma has a population of 50 billion

whatever part of the city we get deployed to is such a tiny fraction of the entire hive that most of the inhabitants probably aren't even aware they live in an active warzone

the best explanation for the lack of space marines is that the inquisition wants to keep things quiet, because as soon as more than 1 or 2 astartes chapter fleetships start orbiting the planet they can no longer conceal how deep the rot goes

Also the sm are only deployed as last resort when the IG is totally unable to control de situation and the Empire is desperate to win that fight.

[Hieronymous]

Also note that in the Imperium, it would be rare for there to be an official risk assessment by the sector authorities resulting in a well calibrated response. It's more contingent on -

Who can communicate with who? Remember, long distance comms are done, basically, through magic

Who is local enough to respond in a timely fashion?

What is the planetary governor's social network?

It's like a feudal kingdom responding to a crisis, not an organized empire.

[Cipher Esteria]

Originally posted by Arkady:

Also the sm are only deployed as last resort when the IG is totally unable to control de situation and the Empire is desperate to win that fight.

If they would even agree to help.
not like Vraks where the entire thing could have been avoided if the SMs wouldn't have been such huge scardy cats