[@agentmanatee] With regards to plasma stuff specifically, keep in mind that A. he could easily have been working on that for a couple hundred years or more, and only got to resolve it as a project once he had greater AdMech resources to hand, and B. the AdMech in general is heavily inclined to not solve problems with Imperial technology, since their philosophy basically dictates that once they've discovered everything there is to discover, they'll be out of a job. As far as I see it, the fact that Valius is so heavily inclined to research and build at the rate he does is extremely abnormal within the Imperium, and it's not really looked to as a sign of following the Omnissian creed like a good Mechanicus should, never mind his more recent madness and loss of interactivity with others.

[@Sarpedon] True enough. To be fair, the larger proportion of Valius' R&D would have been done with the Raven Guard and Deathwatch, which [i]have[/i] been around for fuck-off centuries. In-story, at least so far as I'm aware, the Warp Skulls are only fifty years old, so pretty much every veteran and upward should be an ex-Raven Guard, unless I've gotten that disgustingly wrong somehow.