Lovedagger

Lovedagger is an alternate universe version of the Warhammer franchise that was aimed at the stereotypical female geek instead of the male kind.

Lovedagger is Warhammer, classical romance, and women's literature meeting midway, with the focus on big battles featuring heavy metal riffs replaced by backstabbing intrigue where elegantly-dressed hunks stare contemptuously at each other as they vie for the affections of a demure lady of quality, while a soft orchestral score plays in the background.

In a theoretical, alternate universe a British company called "Games Kitchen", makers of expensive dolls and girls' boardsgames, originally created the Lovedagger Fantasy universe as a setting for novels and roleplaying games in an attempt to market and appeal to fantasy loving women (designing it based on the themes and aesthetic of fantasy literature and other works of art popular with them). Proving wildly successful, the setting quickly spawned a more popular offshoot in the gothic science fiction universe of Lovedagger 40K, as well as numerous additional roleplaying games, book series', a relatively unpopular miniature wargame ("Lovedagger Tactics") and a vast amount of expensive merchandise. As the years passed, the setting evolved with young women's tastes and now caters equally to fans of romantic fantasy, anime, vampire love stories and video games. While the Lovedagger settings are torn by war and strife, these are not directly at the focus of the experience. Rather, war serves as a background for the personal dramas and tragedies involving exceptional individuals.

The main difference between Warhammer and Lovedagger isn't in atmosphere or aesthetic, but in focus. Lovedagger isn't a wargame, and it isn't about the physical act of war. It is a subtler, more aesthetic, more elegant universe which focuses on personal and interpersonal drama, especially of a tragic and/or romantic type. Its main imperial heroes aren't beefy alien smashers or tactically brill won't commissars - they are ambitious yet flawed nobles entangled in forbidden trysts and tempted into ruin by the seductive, beautifully terrible Dark Powers.

Lovedagger Fantasy

Empire

With less of an aesthetic emphasis on war and death and more on courtly intrigue and romance, the gritty-dirtiness of medieval Germany gives place to the grandeur and extravagance of Imperial Austria. The Empire is an anachronism anyway - there's no reason its architecture and fashions shouldn't be based on 18th or even 19th century central Europe, even if its military technology remains unchanged (or even without it. The effectiveness of weapons on the tabletop has always been pretty arbitrary, and steam tanks don't make sense anyway. They might make even more sense in a society that might've feasibly invented the hot air balloon (can you say airships? Because I think airships fit in).

That isn't to say that in Lovedagger Fantasy the Empire doesn't have its share of blood and gunpowder soaked battlefields, rat-infested sewers or filthy back alleys, it's just that the drama focuses on the fabulous palaces. If anyone does fighting "on-camera", it's less likely to be in ranks of muskets and more likely to be a handsome, swashbuckling prince swinging off the chandelier with a rapier in hand and a belt of (ornate) pistols.

The Empire was founded by a woman known as Sigrun Liebendolch. Sigrun was the beautiful barbarian maiden wedded as a young teen to one of the region's warlords. He was a brave, honorable men, and she truly loved him, but she also knew that his obsession with honor and glory made him too violent. Like the other warlords who ruled humanity back then, he couldn't make allies or unite tribes because everyone was always busy going to Valhalla. The Lovedagger was a wedding gift from the elves, a beautiful little blade that promised to fulfill one's heart's desires, but at the cost of that which is most dear to them. Understanding the meaning of this, Sigrun killed her beloved husband and, with her own wisdom and compassion, managed to unite the warring tribes into one powerful empire, which she ruled for a time before sorrow overcame her and she killed herself using the very same Lovedagger.

Bretonnia

Bretonnia, meanwhile, to balance out on the Empire becoming more outwardly elegant and "sophisticated" (you know, the nobles all wear beautiful masks while they stab each other in the back, and they use poisoned knives instead of swords), goes full hard Mists of Avalon/Arthurian Paganism. The Lady of the Lake and her Damsels become even more central to the drama (if not necessarily the culture), and the land takes on a less "shit-covered middle ages" and more "French Fairy Tale" feeling. The knights are actually handsome and chivalrous, but tend to fall prey to their own passions (Pendragon style) and get themselves killed off on fits of romantic madness. The peasants are still probably generally fucked up, but aren't all to the last one a bunch of illiterate, hopeless, inbred mutants. Hope and perseverance against impossible odds (especially socially) are key elements of the genre. In Lovedagger, it's hard but not impossible for a peasant who is brave and true and virtuous to achieve great things, and possibility earn a knighthood. It's also not impossible for a knight to remove "his" helmet and reveal they were a woman the whole time, of course. A Joan D'Arc equivalent figure is an absolute must. In terms of religion, maybe go as far with the pagan elements as to make the Lady of the Lake a tripartite goddess

Kislev

Is controlled from behind the scenes by a Baba-Yaga stand-in. It's also got a Tzarina, all-female spellcasters, and gorgeous fur coats.

Stuff

Sigrun of the Lovedagger, the first Empress, was the archetypal Maiden: young, passionate, merciful, but ultimately driven to ruin because of love and sorrow - dying and (thus, in a way) remaining eternally young. The Lady of the Lake is the Mother of Brettonia: overbearing and terrible, but also nurturing and protective. The health and fertility of Brettonia literally flows from her. Kislev should have a central character standing in for Baba Yaga as the Crone - cruel and incomprehensible, but also wise. This Baba Yaga figure is probably an ultimate death monster on the tabletop, but more often appears in the (far more popular) RPG and novels as a mentor/adviser/trickster, as in Slavic myth.

Lovedagger 40000

In the cold darkness of the 41st millennium, there is only sorrow. Her Exalted Majesty the Empress has lain in deathless sleep for 10,000 years, frozen in a coffin of gold and crystal provided by Horus' final act of love, surrounded by blood-red roses and vigilant knights. In her slumber, the Imperia has fallen into chaos: treachery, sorrow, and forbidden desire are the rule if the day, and the Space Marines, brave men and women, pure of heart and shaped by the Empress' mercy into living weapons barely hold back the forces of darkness - from without, as well as from within their tortured hearts. The proud but indomitable orks carve a trail of destruction through space, and the servants of chaos - shaped by dark powers into terrible and beautiful forms spread pain wherever they go. - The OP Post

Imperia

The aesthetic of the Imperium changes. Warhammer is visually inspired a great deal by heavy metal culture, which appeals to male geeks, but it less popular with the female ones. Catholic/Gothic elements absolutely remain, but industrial ones become a lot more subdued. Imperial architecture, technology and cybernetics look a lot more organic, possibly Giger-esque (inspired by the visuals of the manga BLAME!). Skull imagery is replaced with rose imagery (to fit with the Empress' story).

Imperial technology is heavily based on nanotech, but it is poorly understood and regarded with spiritual reverence. The nanomechanical fluid is symbolic of the blood and water which are central to female-centric spirituality. As such, the Mechanicus now focus their worship on the black liquid "Sang Mechanica", which drives a lot of their machines. STC's are now womb-like in function, literally "growing" objects within the Sang Mechanica. Rather than becoming hideously deformed with obvious robot parts, the Mechanicus inject themselves with the Sang to attain longevity oneoness with technology. This makes them look like implant-less Borg, with pale, darkly veined skin and glowing eyes. Since they view themselves as "hideous" (in best trashy teengirl romance tradition) they hide their deformity under beatific porcelain masks and elaborate hoods. Also fitting with the themes of Lovedagger, they are no longer as machine-like in behavior - rather than replacing parts of their brain with computer, they merely augment it to Mentat-like ability while retaining emotional capacity. They do STRUGGLE to be wholly logical and passionless, but their struggle is spiritual, not neurological. They occasionally falter, and suffer from great internal anguish as a result.

The Empress

The Empress is less of a warrior king and more of a universal mother figure, wise, loving and all-nurturing. Her story focuses on the tragic aspects of her work: despite her love for all humanity, she was forced to commit terrible deeds and it burdened her soul. She was in love with Horus and when he betrayed her (because she chose duty to humanity as a species rather than her love for him personally), it was the grief that broke her, not the rage. Yet, after striking her down, filled with remorse, Horus decided to give her parting gift before leaving for the Eye of Terror: a final, gentle kiss, and a gold-and-crystal coffin which preserved her body (and her beauty - rotting corpses on thrones aren't romantic), but left her hanging between life and death for ten thousand years. Her "throne room" in the Imperial Palace is actually more of an impossibly grandiose tomb, and she is surrounded at all times by millions of frozen, blood-red roses, each representing the sacrifice of a soul to the Astronomican. Her guards watch over her body in an image taken from symbolic depiction of the tales of Snow White and the Sleeping Beauty.

Space Marines

You have Space Marines of both genders so you have the Chapters Sororitas and the Chapters Fraternitas. Among the Space Marines themselves, the Sororitas are known as the Blessed and the Fraternitas are the Tarnished. The Fraternitas call themselves the Unforgiven as every male Space Marine hails from a Legion that fell to Chaos.

Primarchs are Champions of humanity who were infused with the Empress's Love and raised to positions of power in the Imperium

Space Wolves get special nano-augs that allow them to literally turn into giant biomechanical wolves, complete with their armor. While they still serve in frontline combat, their primary purpose is to serve as trackers and hunters for the Deathwatch (their biomechanical wolf forms have supreme sensor arrays - "they sniff Xenos", basically). They are selected for the job by female Valkyries who wander the tundras of Fenris.

Names of minor Loyalist chapters in Lovedagger 40K:

• Rosen Guard
• Resplendent Lilies
• Blooded Violets
• Thornwives
• Screaming Nightingales
• Vestal Doves
• Swan Maidens
• Tenders (of the Garden)
• Mournful Criers (at the death of the Empress, symbolically)
• Cradle Guard
• Medusae

New names of the Loyal Fraternitas:

• Space Wolves: Wolfhearts
• White Scars: Pale Riders
• Iron Warriors: Her Steel Shields
• Luna Wolves: Penitent Sons
• World Eaters: Warhounds
• Death Guard: Knights Vigilant

Imperial Guard

Lovedagger isn't genderbent Warhammer, it's a differently focused setting. The imperial guard has the same male-female ratio it has in Warhammer, it's just that more women are shown since the important scenes are about character development and interaction, not battles.

That said, the IG might very well be the least represented army in the Lovedagger universe. Faceless, expandable, and with few purposes outside open warfare, they are the very definition of the "war as a background" mentality described above. Stories of heroic death and anguish of INDIVIDUAL guardsmen would exist, but the IG as an ARMY would mostly appear in the form of references by other characters.

— Say, Lady Valeria, didn't two billion guardsmen die to secure the garden we're currently partying in?
— But what a beautiful garden it is.

Dark Powers

Dark Powers are the analogue to Chaos Gods. They are:

• Tzeentch
  is no longer "The Lord of Change". Sure, he retains all of his old aspects (change, magic, all those things), but his aspect is that of the Lord of Treachery, and his focus is on lies, illusion and deception.

• Slaanesh
  goes from the Lord of Excess into a more broadly defined "Lord of Desire". He's the guy behind the physical, loveless relationship that you know is terrible for you and your heart and brain tell you to stop, but your body can't help but want.

• Nurgle's
  (aside from his diseases becoming less disfiguring and more of a Victorian "cough blood, be pale") aspect as the Lord of Entropy turns him, in the Lovedagger setting, into the Lord of Despair. As the ruler of emotional stagnation, he governs dark romances whose passion has died out, and both parties know it, but neither has the courage to kill so they all linger in unhappiness.

• Khorne
  goes from the Lord of Bloodshed into the Lord of Fury. Fury is visceral, but it's also more broadly defined. It's possible to be furious on the battlefield, but also in personal life. Also in society. A politician, a lover or a scientist can be ruled by Fury. Champions of Khorne are probably less "steroid munching lump of steel and muscle", and more like those creepy anime bad guys with the long bishie hair who lick blood off their swords and jizz their pants at the thought of meeting a "worthy enemy", because battle to them is a release.

Other races

Tau

While many "evil" races become more morally ambiguous in Lovedagger, the Tau ironically become a lot more evil and grimdark. Their rigid, caste-bound society is presented as spiritually and emotionally stifling, and the Tau themselves as nearly robotic overlords who wish to impose their passionless existence on all life. (of course, fitting with the themes of the game there are still good, passionate, rebellious Tau - but theirs are tragic, dramatic personal stories)

Orks

Orks are either noble savages, glorious warriors or (now that the new Mad Max film came out) basically War Boys. They are a lot less ridiculous and are shown in a more positive light, even if they're still the enemy. The matter of their reproduction always causes arguments since spores make more sense but it's hard to make romantic characters out of a race that has no sex drive. One option is to make them not romantic, but IMPASSIONED - they have a human being's emotional depth, but it is focused on the glory and joy of combat. They can only see "love" through the lens of battle. "Die historic on fury road" IS, to the orks, true love.

Necrons

Necrons in are like a beautiful and unstoppable horror, majority of them not really people. They aren't hunched Skeletons anymore. Now, they're massive faceless, Deathsteel, statues with the various Lords and Nobles having faces and decorations.

Lovedagger is about individuals. It doesn't matter if 99.99999% of the race is made up of terminators so long as the nobility are sentient space pharaohs. Especially if you focus on the brooding, self-hating "I have lived for a billion years and saw everything that I love either, yet this cold necrodermis heart does not beat" shenanigans. There should be space for diverse motivations. Some are ancient kings, loathing their current state and longing for love, some are content with their life and try to make their territory a decent place, that just happens to be controlled by an army of terminators (which is a source of conflict for them), some are operatic villains out to satisfy their avarice, etc.

Tyranids

Keep Tyranids pretty much as-is, but maybe give a bit more individual personality to their leaders. Humans (especially astropaths) are uniquely suited to becoming living CPUs for the Hivemind, as thanks or for convenience those "queens" who have joined willingly or have been outright kidnapped are allowed to keep some of their personality and gain a little influence over their hivefleet.

All are still very much subordinate to the Hivemind as a whole though, So the typical backstabbing and politicking is not present among Tyranid "nobility". They go about it in different ways but they all serve the will of the Great Devourer in the end.

Genestealers probably become more dramatically prevalent. Maybe there could be a genestealer empire somewhere in the fringes that's slowing sinking its fangs into Empire territory, and serves as a foothold for extra-galactic hive fleets to come into the galaxy

Eldar

Eldar are a tragic race. Dying and doomed but always struggling.

"Tall", "strong", "fast", "graceful" - these are all words that describe Eldar but there is one other crucial trait they possess. This is the trait that led them to greatness and it is also the trait that led them to their doom: they never do things half-way.

Driven to perfection by their very nature, they once had a mighty civilization built on passion. Great works were created, farthest reaches explored, a mere description of their romance would make a human's heart stop. But passion is ruinous. Great Love led them to Anger, it led them to Despair, it led them to Treachery, and most of all it led them to Desire... and that's how the youngest of Dark Powers was born, in burning hearts of Eldar.

Now, they're but a shadow of their former empire, utterly diminished. True to their nature, their hearts are still burning but they don't love anymore. Eldar have forbidden love, for love leads to Anger, to Despair, to Treachery, to Desire, to Ruin.