Lovehammer: Sailor Moon 40k

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Lovehammer: Sailor Moon 40K is exactly what it sounds like, a Sailor Moon / Warhammer 40,000 crossover. This page focuses more upon Arkado's story and everything else will be marked as such, however its universe, such that it is, can be divided into two basic catagories:

  • The serious stories, most notably the story written by Arkado which first appeared on the Spacebattles Creative Writing forum in early September 2010. There is also another story with a similar premise being written by Charles Bhepin, author of Shinji and Warhammer 40 K, under the title Lovehammer: The Scattering of Serenity, which went live on FF.net around the end of September 2010. Bhepin cites Arkado’s version as his inspiration.

However, in general Lovehammer begins during the Great Crusades just after the God-Emperor has finished vanquishing the warlords of Terra and united the planet under his rule. Several universes over, the Silver Millennium comes crashing down around Queen Serenity’s ears, and her attempts to reincarnate Princess Serenity and the Senshi are sabotaged by Chaos, which redirects the Senshi’s souls outside of time and space. Unfortunately for the Ruinous Powers, however, the infant Serenity lands practically in the Emperor’s lap; sensing a power to rival his own, the Emperor promptly adopts the girl and raises her as his daughter. As the Emperor and the Princess search the galaxy for the lost Primarchs however, they discover that the Senshi have come along as well.

Now flash forward to the 41st Millennium. Princess Serenity is worshiped as the first child of the Emperor and the Senshi -- called Anima by the citizens of the Imperium -- are revered to the same degree as the Primarchs, but the galaxy is still much the same Grimdark battlefield that it is in canon, though there are numerous changes which make themselves apparent as the story goes on.

Our story begins when COMMISSAR Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! and the Valhallan 597th find themselves abruptly dispatched to the Death World Hades VI, where an ork space hulk has crash-landed and its contents have begun harassing the locals. The Valhallans have barely made landfall when the orks mount a major offensive, setting off a chain of events that leads Cain to stumble onto the lost resting place of Sailor Saturn, who went missing shortly before the Horus Heresy. In typical Cain fashion, the situation proceeds to escalate very quickly and very badly when the Ruinous Powers arrive in orbit intent on claiming the planet and snuffing out Saturn's life before she can adjust to her new surroundings. At the same time, other factions across the galaxy begin to react to Saturn's return, and none of them have her best interests in mind, not even the Imperium she serves...

Tropes used in Lovehammer: Sailor Moon 40k include:

(2) I hasten to add that all rumors of the Iron Warriors involvement in Moer’s untimely and unfortunate end are nothing but rumors, as there has been no evidence that the First Chaplain of the Iron Warriors had her blood on his crozius after Moer’s brutalized body had been discovered. For Further reading, I recommend perusing Horatio Grissom’s Scelere, Poena et Literature Vol. V, which discusses the case in detail.

  • Crossover: Warhammer 40,000 and Sailor Moon, with elements of Star Wars, of all things.
  • Deader Than Dead: Hotaru's command of the Silence allows her to do this to daemons, killing them permanently instead of just banishing them back to the Warp.
  • Defector From Decadence: What Operation Keep Messiah Alive is likely turning into.
  • Did Not Do the Research: In-universe example: the Hades VI PDF prepared a very competent trap, creating apparent weak points that were actually killing zones, and masked their weak points (like their command center) with decoys that created the illusion of overwhelming strenght... Against the Orks. Three guesses for why this was a colossal error and Kasteen asked “Electronic warfare? Against Orks? Colonel… with all due respect, have you ever fought against Orks before?”.
  • Emotion Bomb: Hotaru, of the Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul variety. Not that anyone's complaining.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: What Cain gets to explain to Hotaru, regarding her family.
  • Fish Out of Temporal Water: Hotaru’s biggest issue; she’s exceptionally compassionate, idealistic, and she dislikes killing, which would be fine if she were still living before the Horus Heresy, but in the Grimdark 41st Millennium, those three traits are not conductive to a long life expectancy.
  • Hammerspace: Cain thinks Hotaru keeps dropping her weapon someplace.
  • Healing Hands: Hotaru's nicer power.
  • Heroic BSOD: Hotaru goes through one of these after Cain breaks the news to her that the Imperium has gone to hell in a handbasket since she went to sleep.
  • Hulk Speak: Cain and Hotaru speak Low and High Gothic respectively and have only a passing familiarity with each others’ native dialect. Attempts to communicate between them (or attempts by Hotaru to communicate with just about anyone) inevitably result in this trope.
    • Silently commented on by Amberley, later.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: Just about everyone. Except for Hotaru, of course.
  • Irony": The Messiah is met with much Oh Crap from her own subjects. An Inquisitor calls in a Battle Barge of Space Marines to Exterminatus the planet with said Messiah on it. Another Inquisitor ends up leading the above mentioned Operation Keep Messiah Alive, which will be seen by many as Heresy against the Imperial Creed. This point of contention will likely trigger a Civil War. Isn't The Messiah supposed to be a good thing?
  • It Got Worse: Every chapter. Nothing new there, of course.
  • Knight Templar: Par for the course in 40K, naturally. But a shining example comes in the form of a Space Marine force commander who refuses to believe that anyone on the planet is anything other than a Chaos-worshiping Heretic. Not even when Hotaru shows up, and despite his own Chaplain's efforts to beat some sense into him.
  • Let's Get Dangerous: Cain is briefly overcome by a very uncharacteristic zealous fervor when he realizes he’s standing between a sleeping Senshi and a group of hostile orks.
  • Meaningful Name: The names of pretty much every Original Character introduced by the author are anagrams. Radev and Soudisi for instance.
  • The Messiah: Sailor Saturn, Anima of the Imperium, heir to the Imperial throne. Plenty of factions will not be amused.
  • More Dakka: Subverted. It’s been noted on Spacebattles that Hotaru is just about the only person in the 40K verse who needs less dakka.
    • Also played straight when the Hades PDF, originally thought as a joke by the Valhallans, reveal their first ace in the hole. A customized Baneblade variant with Plasma Cannons. When that proves to not be effective enough, they reveal their second. An Imperator Class Titan backed up by a dozen Baneblades.
  • My Greatest Failure: Hotaru was originally put to sleep by the G Eo M because she screwed up a routine mission and had to Silence a planet to eliminate a Chaos insurgency.
  • Naughty Tentacles: Narrowly averted.
  • Noodle Incident: Apparently Cain knows what it feels like to be hit over the head with a wet grox.
  • Oh Crap: The general reaction to Hotaru's existence in a world where, literally, Status Quo Is God.
  • Power Creep, Power Seep: Averted. Readers who are only familiar with the Sailor Moon anime might cry foul at the massive power-up the Senshi appear to have been given or scoff at the idea of Serenity being the Emperor's equal, but Arkado has explicitly based this story off of the manga continuity, which is both Darker and Edgier than the anime adaptation and significantly more hardcore insofar as Power Levels are concerned.
  • Puppy Dog Eyes: Used to great effect by Hotaru, especially on Cain.
  • Running Gag: Whenever the Parent Thread that spawned this fic ends up reviewing 'literature' of debatable at best quality there will be a Suspiciously Specific Denial regarding the sudden, violent deaths of the author once the Primarchs involved and their Space Marines find out about them.
  • Reluctant Warrior: Hotaru tries to talk an ork out of fighting her at one point.
  • She's All Grown Up: Hotaru is a bit older than she appears in Sailor Moon canon; Cain notes that she looks about sixteen-ish in a few places and judging from his description, she’s apparently filled out in all the right places.
  • Shoulder Cannon: Saturn's new fuku has a pair of twin-linked Hellguns mounted on each shoulder.
  • Shout-Out: All over the place. They are as followed in no particular order.
  • The Starscream: Depends on who you are and who's telling the story.
  • Status Quo Is God: A driving in-universe conflict, given all of the factions who do not need an Anima of the Imperium suddenly showing up.
  • Took a Level in Badass: All the Senshi, as mentioned above, are spoken of with the same reverence as the primarchs, though compared to their brothers they were apparently more spiritual leaders than they were great warriors and they don't have an equivalent force to the Space Marines. That's not to say they couldn't kick ass, though; Jupiter is apparently the patron saint of the Imperial Guard, and Hotaru -- despite being fresh out of 10,000 years of cold sleep -- is virtually a One-Man Army against orkish and Chaos forces.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Almost everyone, given the setting, but the most spectacular examples so far include the Saturnian Royal Guard ( who will follow the Anima, even if it means fighting the Imperium), a bulk of the SpaceMarines ( who remain convinced that everyone from Hades VI, Hotaru included, are lying heretic scum like the Chaplain who realizes the truth), and Amberley (who is so used to having to manipulate everyone that she goes behind Hotaru and even Ciaphas' backs to protect them all).