Warhammer 40,000 |OT| In the Grim Darkness of the 40K Era There Is Only War

[Serule]

I just finished the Night Lords omnibus and didn't love it? It started pretty strong and had some good characterization but:

Spoiler: End spoiler

By the end of the trilogy they waste not one but two strike cruisers, and also manage to get almost every Night Lord killed for basically no gain. ADB certainly plays up the idea that they are tragically self-destructive, but this just seemed pointlessly dumb?

Epilogue hints that maybe they would have success in future, but none of the NL characters seemed to know that (even Talos who could see the future).

Some of this is a general 40K gripe I have where space marines can simultaneously be veterans of hundreds of years of combat and also have incredibly high casualty rates

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Come on, remember how many years it took them to update the Tau lore so it didn't read like they still were purely good? Lol

You do raise a good point, the lore from novels is the weak link, it mostly doesn't exist not until a codex/campaing talks about it.

Click to shrink...

I was talking about the lore videos on YouTube than anything else still being terrible. But I agree with the lore and background in general being improved.

 

[Poodlestrike]

On the lifespan thing, apparently in the new Marneus Calgar comic, the realm of Ultramar is stated to have one of the best standards of living in the Imperium, and the average lifespan is around 35. So probably a huge infant mortality problem, or failing that, a comically outsized share of the population is getting killed in combat. Which is technically feasible but not while maintaining a functioning society.

 

[Redcrayon]

On the lifespan thing, apparently in the new Marneus Calgar comic, the realm of Ultramar is stated to have one of the best standards of living in the Imperium, and the average lifespan is around 35. So probably a huge infant mortality problem, or failing that, a comically outsized share of the population is getting killed in combat. Which is technically feasible but not while maintaining a functioning society.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I thought this on Life Expectancy at Birth (LEB) was quite interesting:

Life expectancy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

In the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, human LEB was 26 years; the 2010 world LEB was 67.2 years. For recent years, LEB in Eswatini (Swaziland) is about 49, while LEB in Japan is about 83. The combination of high infant mortality and deaths in young adulthood from accidents, epidemics, plagues, wars, and childbirth, particularly before modern medicine was widely available, significantly lowers LEB. For example, a society with a LEB of 40 may have few people dying at precisely 40: most will die before 30 or after 55. In populations with high infant mortality rates, LEB is highly sensitive to the rate of death in the first few years of life. Because of this sensitivity to infant mortality, LEB can be subjected to gross misinterpretation, leading one to believe that a population with a low LEB will necessarily have a small proportion of older people.[SUP][6][/SUP] Another measure, such as life expectancy at age 5 (e[SUB]5[/SUB]), can be used to exclude the effect of infant mortality to provide a simple measure of overall mortality rates other than in early childhood; in the hypothetical population above, life expectancy at 5 would be another 65.

Click to shrink...

At a rough guess I think they've based the average lifespan of baseline humanity on Macragge on the Middle Ages, and considering Macragge is what counts as a 'good' standard of living for your average Imperial human, that's terrifying for the rest. A lot of hive cities and Terra itself would presumably push the average lifespan way down through plague, over-population, lack of vitamin D, lack of available adults with time to be looking out for children, poor nutrition, pollution, radiation and just exhaustion from ludicrous shift work even before you introduce 'death by aliens/demons/your own society fucking you over' etc etc.

Deathworlds like Catachan I imagine to be something else- if you survive childhood you grow up with such a well-honed sense of self-preservation and survival skills that your life expectancy probably jumps way up, right until they ship you off to join the Imperial Guard :D

I've enjoyed the recent books with Guilliman's viewpoint on the sheer inhumanity of the Imperium. On Baal's tortured hellscape, cherubs, the church, the stupidity and entropy of the whole system. And he's a guy that was a leading general in the bloodbath of the great crusade. It's like, he's an angel of death who's had a one-to-one chat with the big kahuna and came saying 'we should improve society somewhat'. Meanwhile the Imperium is all 'nah we like being a death cult bureaucracy from hell'.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Yeah, I thought this on Life Expectancy at Birth (LEB) was quite interesting:

Life expectancy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

At a rough guess I think they've based the average lifespan of baseline humanity on Macragge on the Middle Ages, and considering Macragge is what counts as a 'good' standard of living for your average Imperial human, that's terrifying for the rest. A lot of hive cities and Terra itself would presumably push the average lifespan way down through plague, over-population, lack of vitamin D, lack of available adults with time to be looking out for children, poor nutrition, pollution, radiation and just exhaustion from ludicrous shift work even before you introduce 'death by aliens/demons/your own society fucking you over' etc etc.

Deathworlds like Catachan I imagine to be something else- if you survive childhood you grow up with such a well-honed sense of self-preservation and survival skills that your life expectancy probably jumps way up, right until they ship you off to join the Imperial Guard :D

I've enjoyed the recent books with Guilliman's viewpoint on the sheer inhumanity of the Imperium. On Baal's tortured hellscape, cherubs, the stupidity and entropy of the whole system. And he's a guy that was a leading general in the bloodbath of the great crusade. It's like, he's an angel of death saying 'we should improve society somewhat', and the Imperium is all 'nah we like being a death cult bureaucracy from hell'.

Click to shrink...

What's nutso is that it's stated to be the best in the Imperium. There's always sort of been this idea floating around that amongst the million-odd worlds that make it up, while most are indescribably awful, there must be a few that at least match our current standard of living. This puts paid to that. The very best anybody in the Imperium can hope for is to make it to full adulthood. Everything after that makes you luckier than average.

 

[Redcrayon]

What's nutso is that it's stated to be the best in the Imperium. There's always sort of been this idea floating around that amongst the million-odd worlds that make it up, while most are indescribably awful, there must be a few that at least match our current standard of living. This puts paid to that. The very best anybody in the Imperium can hope for is to make it to full adulthood. Everything after that makes you luckier than average.

Click to shrink...

"Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods. But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed"

I think this was part of what got me into 40K in the late 80s. Just the bleakness of it all, it went along with so much other counterculture stuff at the time. To be fair this was at the same point I was convinced the world was about to disappear in a mushroom cloud on three minutes warning too.

 

[Poodlestrike]

"Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods. But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed"

Click to shrink...

Indeed, indeed.

 

[Redcrayon]

Indeed, indeed.

Click to shrink...

It's fascinating that they managed to find a way forward for both a micron of progress under Guilliman and also showing what the galaxy would look like under a chaos victory in Imperium Nihilus, half a million planets screaming for help into a comms channel that no longer works, all at the same time. Best thing they've done with the setting in a long time as it opens so many more doors for things to get so much worse and a tiny bit better both at the same time.

 

[Poodlestrike]

It's fascinating that they managed to find a way forward for both a micron of progress under Guilliman and also showing what the galaxy would look like under a chaos victory in Imperium Nihilus, half a million planets screaming for help into a comms channel that no longer works, all at the same time. Best thing they've done with the setting in a long time as it opens so many more doors for things to get so much worse and a tiny bit better both at the same time.

Click to shrink...

I feel like they've given the Imperium a few too many good guy points, tbh. Guilliman is struggling against the weight of the bureaucracy, sure, but they've increasingly focused on parts of the Imperium where any faults that exist are less their doing and more due to factors beyond their control. Makes it easy for the fanboys (and fashy parts of the fanbase) to make excuses.

 

[Redcrayon]

I feel like they've given the Imperium a few too many good guy points, tbh. Guilliman is struggling against the weight of the bureaucracy, sure, but they've increasingly focused on parts of the Imperium where any faults that exist are less their doing and more due to factors beyond their control. Makes it easy for the fanboys (and fashy parts of the fanbase) to make excuses.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that is always something they need to watch out for. One thing I didn't like with the new art on the rulebook is the art where he is depicted as this bright holy angel in comparison to Abaddon. It's like, in the setting the Emperor's light is bright to contrast to the darkness. But the primarchs are still artificial killing machines responsible for billions dead, they are symbolism of the lost might of a failing dystopian empire, seeing one drawn in symbolism of a sort of holy moral superiority just misses the point. I always felt the same when they do that to Sanguinius too- he might be a symbol of virtue to the populace as a saint, but his own arc is one of the struggle not to just be a monster, which is far more interesting, and I'm not a fan of works that lean on the former at the expense of the latter.

That was one bit of Avenging Son that was really good. Chris Wraight makes Terra seem hellish in his books but the journey of the scribe in Guy Haley's book is so grim. Literally the mundane awfulness of the Administratum writ large, making it clear things are rotten to the core way down deep beyond Guilliman's superficial changes, turned into a quest.

It was still pretty good when they applied the 'you will not be missed' to asshole hobby community members that whinged about them being more inclusive too.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Yeah, that is always something they need to watch out for. One thing I didn't like with the new art on the rulebook is the art where he is depicted as this bright holy angel in comparison to Abaddon. It's like, in the setting the Emperor's light is bright to contrast to the darkness. But the primarch's are still killing machines responsible for billions dead, they are symbolism of the might of a dystopian empire, seeing one drawn as symbolism of a moral superiority just misses the point. I always felt the same when they do that to Sanguinius too- he might be a symbol of virtue to the populace as a saint, but his own arc is one of the struggle not to just be a monster, and I'm not a fan of works that lean on the former at the expense of the latter.

That was one bit of Avenging Son that was really good. Chris Wraight makes Terra seem hellish in his books but the journey of the scribe in Guy Haley's book is so grim. Literally the mundane awfulness of the Administratum writ large, making it clear things are rotten way down deep beyond Guilliman's superficial changes, turned into a quest.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. Like, I like Vulkan and the Salamanders, but it's important to remember - any given Primarch would measure up favorably (or unfavorably, however you want to align the axis) to history's greatest monsters in terms of body count and oppression meted out. They're all warlords working for history's most ambitious fascist.

 

[Greigor the FellHand]

finished my wolf priest

 

[Redcrayon]

finished my wolf priest

Click to shrink...

Magnificent! Nice work on the detail on his arm readout monitor. The base is cool, I like the ice-blue permafrost and the snow on top of the shrubs.

 

[Deleted member 29682]

Looking very snazzy there. How many of those details are free-handed?

 

[Matttimeo]

That's some magnificent work. I especially like the glacier blade to his axe.

 

[Greigor the FellHand]

Looking very snazzy there. How many of those details are free-handed?

Click to shrink...

uhhh.. yes. all free hand. besides the zig zag on the apothecary gun holster
and the wolf priest shoulder pad, is a wolf shoulder pad with the wolf head and inset runes

 

[Bizazedo]

uhhh.. yes. all free hand. besides the zig zag on the apothecary gun holster
and the wolf priest shoulder pad, is a wolf shoulder pad with the wolf head and inset runes

Click to shrink...

Envy rising.

Awesome job :).

 

[Deleted member 29682]

uhhh.. yes. all free hand. besides the zig zag on the apothecary gun holster
and the wolf priest shoulder pad, is a wolf shoulder pad with the wolf head and inset runes

Click to shrink...

Oh damn, if I only had hands as steady as yours. Great work.

 

[Greigor the FellHand]

Oh damn, if I only had hands as steady as yours. Great work.

Click to shrink...

some advice I got recently and works.

slightly push your wrists together when painting

 

[Keasar]

Marines are very long-lived unless killed in action, of which most of them are. The oldest is Dante, chapter master of the Blood Angels at 1500, who is obviously reaching the end of his life. Blood does restore him though as a son of Sanguinus, so I'd probably say they live to 1,000 or so but it's irrelevant for 99.9% of them.

Click to shrink...

Though what state of "dead" or "alive" he might be in, I do wanna point out that there is someone much older than Dante:

Bjorn the Fell-Handed, old enough to have fought with the Emperor Himself 10.000 years ago.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Though what state of "dead" or "alive" he might be in, I do wanna point out that there is someone much older than Dante:

Bjorn the Fell-Handed, old enough to have fought with the Emperor Himself 10.000 years ago.

Click to shrink...

Dreadnaughts themselves will tell you they're dead.

EVEN IN DEATH I STILL SERVE

 

[OhSatan]

finished my wolf priest

Click to shrink...

Bold going with green highlight for the bird.

Not bad at all.

 

[megabyte]

Hey all - I'm completely new to the franchise but over the past weeks I've become really interested in trying it out beyond lore videos and Tabletop Simulator. I know there are more or less two recommended ways to try it out through the starter boxes and Kill Team. Would there be a substantial difference (outside of price) between getting a Recruit box vs a Kill Team box in deciding whether this is something my partner and I would like to continue with? Would the quality of the game out of the box be poorer with the former over the latter? My partner is less enthused than me, but he's open to trying it and I want to make sure the first time we do this together that it's a positive first experience/impression.

 

[Serule]

Kill Team is a complete game. The 40K starter boxes are just that - starters; you can certainly play and have fun with the contents but they are on-ramps to building larger armies.

to expand on this:
Kill Team is a separate game with a separate ruleset, designed for smaller scale combat. The minis from Kill Team can be used in 40K proper so it can be a decent onramp to 40K.
The most expensive 40K starter sets come with the full 40K rulebook while the cheaper ones come with simplified rules covering the basics.

 

[Kwigo]

Kill Team is a complete game. The 40K starter boxes are just that - starters; you can certainly play and have fun with the contents but they are on-ramps to building larger armies.

to expand on this:
Kill Team is a separate game with a separate ruleset, designed for smaller scale combat. The minis from Kill Team can be used in 40K proper so it can be a decent onramp to 40K.
The most expensive 40K starter sets come with the full 40K rulebook while the cheaper ones come with simplified rules covering the basics.

Click to shrink...

That's not quite true, the most expensive starter set still only has a starter version of the rules and no codex.
It's enough to play your first few games, but you'll need the core rulebook and the codex of the army you want to play.

 

[Orgun]

Finished my chaplain on bike.

It ended up getting shown on the Warhammer TV hobby roundup stream which made me wish i'd taken more time with the highlights lol. I got lazy

 

[Keasar]

Dreadnaughts themselves will tell you they're dead.

EVEN IN DEATH I STILL SERVE

Click to shrink...

I think it's a philosophical interpretation of their predicament. They fell in combat, therefore "died" as a Space Marine and then got ressurected as a Dreadnought to continue serving. However, since they still exist, that's Bjorn for example inside the walking teapot, they never really died. They are being life preserved as mostly machine, but still who they were. Ergo, Bjorn is still 10.000 years "alive".

 

[Serule]

That's not quite true, the most expensive starter set still only has a starter version of the rules and no codex.

Click to shrink...

My apologies; I just assumed as my Indomitus set came with the rulebook and on the AoS side Soul Wars comes with their hardcover rulebook. Also fair point on the codexes.

 

[Kwigo]

My apologies; I just assumed as my Indomitus set came with the rulebook and on the AoS side, Soul Wars comes with their hardcover rulebook.

Click to shrink...

Unfortunately you still need to get the true rulebook if you buy the 120€ starter set :D


Now I got a question as well: I'm really interested in painting and playing orks.
As I've understood, there are multiple Ork Clans to play, kinda like there are thousand SM Chapters. Are there any models that can only be played with a specific clan? Can I mix and match different clans or am I supposed to play this like SM where I would have a single chapter for a single detachment?
Anything else I would need to know before buying any Ork model? (Either way I'm gonna wait for the v9 codex and hope for some newer models)

 

[Coyote Starrk]

I can take a stab at some of them.

Astartes can live a lot longer than that. I think Dante of the Blood Angels is over 1000 years old. Their job is a bit violent, though, so...:)

The Imperium has what are called rejuvenat treatments, so this answer is tricky. Human lifespan appears normal / perhaps a bit shorter than what we have now due the Imperium just not giving a shit about most of its citizens. They're replaceable. Don't get me wrong, not all worlds are shitholes. The Imperium is so big that it's mentioned some worlds exist where people live great lives (the overall goal of the setting, aside from making fun of stuff, is that, for "your dudes or dudettes" or "your RP", basically any world you can think of is possible as the Galaxy is a BIG place). Normal lifespan is like ours and can be affected like ours.

They have a process that can make people live longer, though, called rejuvenat that is basically used for VIPs / powerful people / rich people. It can extend your life / "rejuvenate" the body etc. So some humans can live a very long time.

That Primarch was Roboute Guilliman. You'll find tons of videos, but basically, he was nearly killed and bleeding out. They put him in a stasis field moments before he'd die. The stasis field kept him moments from death for 10,000 years. Then they figured out how to heal him (via Aeldari assistance).

Click to shrink...

So the Imperium can just STOP someone from dying? Or was that was because he was a Primarch?

The reason it varies here is that there's a lot of stories where Inquisitors are basically merciless versions of police detectives. They don't need full armor when they're sleuthing around the cities and worlds to detect heresy (The Eisenhorn book series, which may actually make it to Netflix believe it or not, are a great read). That's why you see such a huge range of what they can look like.


Some are extremely powerful psykers, yes. Eisenhorn, mentioned above, is not super powerful....but one of his proteges is. His name is Ravenor, he has his own book series (which is excellent) that spun off from Eisenhorn....and as someone in a wheelchair in real life, I love Ravenor because he's in a much better chair than I have :).

Most aren't, though, because the Imperium still does look down on them and they're used / abused for other things the Imperium needs as well (like sacrificing thousands of them to keep the Golden Throne active....per day).

That and psykers seem to have specialties. Some are telekinetic, some pyrokinetic, some telepathy etc....it doesn't seem that a psyker can do everything.

Click to shrink...

Yeah the Psyker thing might be my favorite overall piece of lore. They remind me of the Jedi/Sith of the Old Republic. Just badass space wizards going around fucking shit up. And the different abilities are amazing. I even caught myself playing "which would I choose" game and I think Biomancy would be my choice. Its so OP lol

Not to the same extent. Abaddon the Despoiler is the "Everchosen" of 40k at the moment, but it's not a prophecy in 40k or something like that. He's just the strongest of the big bads of Chaos who is smart and gets shit done (now). He's not even a super fan of the Chaos Gods, which makes it a bit fun in that regard.

I've read the massive book Omnibus for "Everchosen" and while Abaddon is not that, he has his own background starting in the Horus Heresy and isn't a terrible character. Archaon is probably a better character from Warhammer Fantasy as the Everchosen, but not by a huge amount.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I read up on Abaddon and the Heresy more. I am gonna make a separate post on that. I have A FUCKING LOT of questions on that subject. Like holy shit. That entire story is just.....yeah.

The Emperor has a ton of stories. One thing GW loves is "everything is canon, nothing is canon", so you'll see a ton of stories about him that has changed over the years. Essentially, though, he's existed since the early days of Mankind and was around when the first murder was committed in human history (he didn't do it, but he was around). He's tried to guide humanity from the background over history, but eventually he (obviously) stepped forward and took over. He was an immensely powerful Psyker (some stories say 1000 shamans killed themselves and pooled their powers into one person, Big E, but again..stories change).

He, apparently, found a way to physically enter the Warp. Time works differently there, though, so even though a lot of time passed while he was in there, only days passed on the Material plane. The rumor is he made a deal with the Chaos Gods (or didn't and stole power)....but either way, when he re-emerged he was even more powerful than before. He also pissed off the Chaos Gods at the same time.

He also has a way of appearing however the person viewing him needs to see him. To a scientist who meets him, he'll appear as a fellow scientist. To the Primarchs, they viewed him as their father, so he'd appear as their father. He didn't actually give a shit about them (mostly), but he did create them in the lab and the father / son dynamic was useful to keep them attached to him.

He is currently in a state of quasi-death and there's a ton of theories about what happens if he dies. Some think he'll be reborn (Perpetuals, people who are literally immortal, exist and some say the Emperor is one of these beings). Some think that when he dies, the power of the Imperium's belief will make him a Chaos God and that people like the Sanguinor or the Legion of the Damned are already examples of "Imperial Daemons". No one really knows, though, as it hasn't happened and this kind of theorycrafting is an intentional part of the fun.

Click to shrink...

Yeah everything around the Emperor just fucks my brain. The guy is a godlike being who knows all and can see the future in like 90% of his lore and yet his mistakes are GALACTICALLY terrible. The Magnus the Red story in particular actually made me mad. That was just fucking stupid. His whole character just baffles me. That bleeds into my heresy post though so I will save that for later.


I'll try to put that particular list of questions together either here in a bit if I have time or when I get on again later tonight.

 

[Serule]

Now I got a question as well: I'm really interested in painting and playing orks.
As I've understood, there are multiple Ork Clans to play, kinda like there are thousand SM Chapters. Are there any models that can only be played with a specific clan? Can I mix and match different clans or am I supposed to play this like SM where I would have a single chapter for a single detachment?
Anything else I would need to know before buying any Ork model? (Either way I'm gonna wait for the v9 codex and hope for some newer models)

Click to shrink...

Lorewise, a Waaagh! would be made up from orks of all different clans.
Rulewise, it works more like Space Marines where you need to seperate different clans into different detachments if you want to use their special rules.
There are no clan-specific models (except for some special characters), although some clans make more or less use out of some units.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

Okay so about the Primarchs and the Horus Heresy....oh boy here we go.


1) Did the Emperor ever actually care about his "sons" other than Horus?

I spent all day listening to various lore videos and read the various wiki entries for the Primarchs at lunch and in between. Every single story was the Primarch being tossed into the shit ass of nowhere and then they save the world. Its awesome. I loved it. Then the Emperor shows up and "tests" them or whatever. In every story the Emperor is shown to have some kind of pride or care in his "son" and what they have accomplished. Yet when the Heresy begins he starts throwing his sons at each other without a second thought. He outright tried to murder Magnus for trying to warn him and sent his brother to do the deed. And once he saw that Magnus was actually right I saw literally nothing to suggest that the Emperor even regretted what he had done to Magnus. So did the Emperor ever actually care? Or was it more about the things he could accomplish with them rather than caring about the Primarchs themselves?


2) Is Magnus The Red the most fucked over character in the series from an objective standpoint? Or have I just not gotten deep enough?

The guy is a devout follower of his "father" and trains his own legion as best he can in order to serve him. He follows every order to the letter (aside from the whole psyker thing) and serves with distinction. He is the only one of the Primarchs to be there when Horus falls to Chaos and desperately tries to stop his brother from becoming a monster. And then when he fails his first instinct is to warn his "father" and the imperium as quickly as possible. And yes in his haste he fucked all kinds of shit up, but he was doing what he thought was right. There was no malice in his actions. He meant no harm. And what happens? His "father" basically calls him a liar and then sends his brother to imprison him and ultimately to try and kill him thanks to Horus and his goons. Then with seemingly no other options he turns to the powers of chaos after feeling betrayed and abandoned. Its just such a SHIT outcome for such a cool and loyal character.


3) Why did the Writers immediately decide to get rid of all the coolest characters in the story after the Heresy was over?

I read all about these badass Primarchs, their abilities, creeds, and personalities leading to the Heresy and then.....*POOF*...... they are all fucking gone within a few hundred years it feels like. They either become daemon princes and piss off to the Warp or they just die in the lamest and simple ways. Or even worse a few of them just walk into the Eye of Terror like abunch of lemmings running off a cliff and now they are just "missing". As a writer why in gods name would you spend so much time and so much energy building up these amazing characters, have them grow, have them face all levels of horror and challenges only to have them either die a pointless death or just fuck off to nowhere almost immediately? It makes no sense to me! All of the best Primarchs are now just dead (Sanguinus is the GOAT btw imho) or missing. Leman Russ is coolest one still "alive" and he is nowhere to be seen. Its just so depressing. It feels like wasted material and I hate that in a good story. The story of the Imperium would have been so much better in my opinion had the Primarchs been aroudn for the rebuilding. Or at the very least just one or two of them. Instead we got a bunch of no-namers doing this and that.


4) Is the Emperor a moron?

Because the way he is written during the Heresy makes him seem like the biggest idiot in the Imperium. I read countless stories and watched about a dozen videos about the guy biding his time and planning out his every move over the course of millennia only to watch him piss it all away in about 7 years.

- He was blind to the obvious grudges or flaws that some of his "sons" possessed. (Mortarion and Fulgrim come to mind)

- He outright ignored the warning from Magnus about Horus

- He somehow missed the fact that over half the legions he sent to Istvaan to stop Horus were traitors and that led to the Dropsite massacre despite being the most powerful Psychic in all the galaxy

- And then....the dumbest part of all. He allowed a Chaos infused Horus to beat the ever-living shit out of him and literally DISMEMBER HIM before he finally got the clue that his "son" was no longer in that noggin of his. Because somehow him murdering billions of humans, murdering his "brothers", swearing allegiance to the powers of Chaos, and laying siege to Terra were somehow not enough evidence to prove that fact up until then.


And yet this is the guy who was there with humanity from the start. The god of mankind. The leader of humanity. The most powerful and intelligent etc etc etc. It just boggles my mind. That entire section of the story had me just shaking my head. Don't get me wrong I still loved the story overall, but the level of stupidity on the part of the Emperor is just mind-numbing. I just do not understand what happened at all.




Sorry for the rant, but that whole Heresy story was a god damn trip. So many highs with so many lows. It was a rollercoaster of emotion lol

 

[Serule]

For your #3 question:
The lore wasn't built in the order you might think. The modern 40,000 setting was built first, and over time little bits of the ancient HH stuff started showing up in the background.
Warhammer 40,000 debuted in 1987.
The first Horus Heresy book, Horus Rising, released in 2006.
The Horus Heresy has some parallels with the Star Wars Prequels (except better received).
The success of HH has impacted the modern 40K setting. They are trying to revamp 40K some by drawing on HH. It's no mistake they brought back Roboute Guilliman. The new Dawn of Fire series is intended to have a much grander scope than most 40K, mirroring the HH.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

For your #3 question:
The lore wasn't built in the order you might think. The modern 40,000 setting was built first, and over time little bits of the ancient HH stuff started showing up in the background.
Warhammer 40,000 debuted in 1987.
The first Horus Heresy book, Horus Rising, released in 2006.

Click to shrink...

Are you saying they were already gone in the original lore and the writers had to come up with a way to explain them missing?

 

[LTWheels]

As a general point, the background and history of 40k (ie 30k), started originally as just a single line to explain in the old Adeptus Titanicus style game as to why in the box the two identical titans were fighting each other (the project didn't have the budget for two different models). There was a small bit of backstory to explain it as a civil war caused by a character called Horus (who then was a general, not a son)

The setting of 40k was established first, rather than coming up with the story of 30k from the beginning. They have then had to work back to make everything fit. Which is why things can sometimes feel clunky.

 

[Serule]

Are you saying they were already gone in the original lore and the writers had to come up with a way to explain them missing?

Click to shrink...

Basically? Remember this all started with a miniatures game. In the original release there was no mention of primarchs. Then over a few years little blurbs of lore showed up in various rulebook releases and in White Dwarf magazine. Novels didn't start showing up until much later. Those little blurbs kept adding up (and got rearranged and rewritten a few times). The HH stuff was supposed to be ancient history; all the primarchs were long gone by the year 40K.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

Basically? Remember this all started with a miniatures game. In the original release there was no mention of primarchs. Then over a few years little blurbs of lore showed up in various rulebook releases and in White Dwarf magazine. Novels didn't start showing up until much later. Those little blurbs kept adding up (and got rearranged and rewritten a few times). The HH stuff was supposed to be ancient history; all the primarchs were long gone by the year 40K.

Click to shrink...

Okay then I can see how this got so flubbed up. Keep in mind I am coming at this from the perspective of someone who has all the lore available in one go rather than someone who has seen it grow over time lol


So from my perspective its uh....yeah. Its all over the place.

 

[Redcrayon]

Are you saying they were already gone in the original lore and the writers had to come up with a way to explain them missing?

Click to shrink...

In the original Rogue Trader lore (1987) the primarchs weren't much different from normal marine commanders, the game existed more as a skirmish/RPG setting. The Heresy only exists because of the 6mm tabletop game Adeptus Titanicus/Epic (1988), allowing them to have two sides fighting with one plastic sprue of titans and one of marines. This was all gradually rounded out through the 90s in 2nd Edition 40k, which encourages people to move to larger armies, dropping more and more chunks of lore into the codices and main book. The game moved on into 3rd edition in 1998 and beyond with another increase in army size and more lore. It's only really since the HH novels started coming out in 2006 that much of it, and the characterisation of the primarchs themselves, has become locked in stone outside the core beats of the dropsite massacre, which legions were largely held away from the traitor push towards earth, who made it to Terra for the endgame, and the final results of the siege.

 

[OhSatan]

1) Did the Emperor ever actually care about his "sons" other than Horus?

Click to shrink...

Nop, not one bit we have canon book evidence that they are no more than a experiment for him.

 

[Serule]

In the original Rogue Trader lore (1987) the primarchs weren't much different from normal marine commanders, the game existed more as a skirmish/RPG setting. The Heresy only exists because of the 6mm tabletop game Adeptus Titanicus/Epic in the late (1988), allowing them to have two sides fighting with one plastic sprue of titans and one of marines. This was all gradually rounded out through the 90s in 2nd Edition 40k, which encourages people to move to larger armies, dropping more and more chunks of lore into the codices and main book. The game moved on into 3rd edition in 1998 and beyond with another increase in army size and more lore. It's only really since the HH novels started coming out in 2006 that much of it, and the characterisation of the primarchs themselves, has become locked in stone outside the core beats of the dropsite massacre, which legions were largely held away from the traitor push towards earth, who made it to Terra for the endgame, and the final results of the siege.

Click to shrink...

also worth noting the weirdly large impact the Horus Heresy trading card game (the physical game by Sabertooth that predated the HH novels) ended up having on the lore.
I don't think the game was all that successful or fondly remembered, but it was an early attempt to set up a timeline for the HH and some of that content ended up being used when they wrote the books.

 

[megabyte]

Kill Team is a complete game. The 40K starter boxes are just that - starters; you can certainly play and have fun with the contents but they are on-ramps to building larger armies.

to expand on this:
Kill Team is a separate game with a separate ruleset, designed for smaller scale combat. The minis from Kill Team can be used in 40K proper so it can be a decent onramp to 40K.
The most expensive 40K starter sets come with the full 40K rulebook while the cheaper ones come with simplified rules covering the basics.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the primer. Then Kill Team it is.

 

[LTWheels]

It's just been announced that Kill Team is getting what looks like an update to bring it more in line with 9th edition, early next year.

I would hold off buying the rule books for Kill Team for now. There is a very good chance a new updated rule book will be released early next year.

GW have a history of releasing a 2.0 version of their boxed games with a new rule book that implements all the updates and supplements - this happened with Necromunda, and is now happening with Blood Bowl and Warcry.

 

[Little Old Man]

I hope the Rogue Trader kill team miniatures return soon- I wanted to buy them next year for more painting fodder!

 

[Redcrayon]

4) Is the Emperor a moron?

Because the way he is written during the Heresy makes him seem like the biggest idiot in the Imperium. I read countless stories and watched about a dozen videos about the guy biding his time and planning out his every move over the course of millennia only to watch him piss it all away in about 7 years.

- He was blind to the obvious grudges or flaws that some of his "sons" possessed. (Mortarion and Fulgrim come to mind)

- He outright ignored the warning from Magnus about Horus

- He somehow missed the fact that over half the legions he sent to Istvaan to stop Horus were traitors and that led to the Dropsite massacre despite being the most powerful Psychic in all the galaxy

Click to shrink...

Just on this one, the Emperor and Malcador have gamed out the Heresy many times. (see short story, 'the board is set'). They seem sure that half the primarchs will turn to chaos, they just don't know which ones, although both suspect various ones will stay or go. Malcador suspects the Lion may turn due to his independence (as his piece in their game is the Double-Edged Sword), but the Emperor is absolutely sure he won't due to his loyalty (and is proven correct). Ultimately the Emperor knew the heresy was coming following his earlier victory over the chaos powers to steal some of their warp-strength for his gene-project, he just didn't know exactly when or in what form it would take.

——-
My head-canon, and take this with a pinch of salt, is that the Emperor is a dictator and focused on top-down power and command due to the Primarchs having an innate, supernatural level of influence on their troops. The warrior lodges within the legions, however, was heresy spreading like wildfire, sideways and up and down through the legions regardless of rank and power structure. How each Primarch was introduced to it, allowed or denied it (again, as a control freak the Lion was not a fan) varies, and that's perhaps something neither the Emperor or Malcador foresaw as they focused on gods and monsters.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Emps isn't a moron, he's an asshole. He basically gave up on things getting better without his direct intervention, and decided to take the by-force approach to everything. The Primarchs were the direct consequence of that - the ultimate warlords. But creating beings like the Primarchs creates risks of its own. The ultimate tools of control, but too powerful and volatile to really be controlled themselves. And it's a mess he created himself by not wanting to take the softer, kinder approach. He needed weapons capable of conquering the galaxy in his name, on a tight schedule, for his plans to succeed. If he'd set different goals, and accepted different methods, he might not have found himself dealing with so many unstable superpowered manchildren. If he wasn't, he might've been able to trust his agents enough to warn them against Chaos, and the whole thing might not have happened.

It's not about intelligence, it's about goals, mindset, and moral failings.

In a way, it mimics the dynamic in 40k. The Imperium demands absolute loyalty from its citizens, and it extracts every ounce of value it can from them in crushing fashion. This creates the circumstances Chaos needs to grow in the first place. After all, if you're already living in hell, why not sell your soul for a little comfort? The Imperium's own inhumanity creates the circumstances that bleed them so badly that they feel the need to act inhumanly.

 

[Bizazedo]

So the Imperium can just STOP someone from dying? Or was that was because he was a Primarch?

Click to shrink...

They used a stasis field. It wasn't so much as stopping him from dying as essentially freezing him.

Okay so about the Primarchs and the Horus Heresy....oh boy here we go.


1) Did the Emperor ever actually care about his "sons" other than Horus?

I spent all day listening to various lore videos and read the various wiki entries for the Primarchs at lunch and in between. Every single story was the Primarch being tossed into the shit ass of nowhere and then they save the world. Its awesome. I loved it. Then the Emperor shows up and "tests" them or whatever. In every story the Emperor is shown to have some kind of pride or care in his "son" and what they have accomplished. Yet when the Heresy begins he starts throwing his sons at each other without a second thought. He outright tried to murder Magnus for trying to warn him and sent his brother to do the deed. And once he saw that Magnus was actually right I saw literally nothing to suggest that the Emperor even regretted what he had done to Magnus. So did the Emperor ever actually care? Or was it more about the things he could accomplish with them rather than caring about the Primarchs themselves?

Click to shrink...

He cares for them as much as you might care for a really nice toolbox you bought yourself or a nice painting you made. You might be proud of it. You might love to use or look at it....
....in the end, though, they're tools or objects to be used by you.

2) Is Magnus The Red the most fucked over character in the series from an objective standpoint? Or have I just not gotten deep enough?

The guy is a devout follower of his "father" and trains his own legion as best he can in order to serve him. He follows every order to the letter (aside from the whole psyker thing) and serves with distinction. He is the only one of the Primarchs to be there when Horus falls to Chaos and desperately tries to stop his brother from becoming a monster. And then when he fails his first instinct is to warn his "father" and the imperium as quickly as possible. And yes in his haste he fucked all kinds of shit up, but he was doing what he thought was right. There was no malice in his actions. He meant no harm. And what happens? His "father" basically calls him a liar and then sends his brother to imprison him and ultimately to try and kill him thanks to Horus and his goons. Then with seemingly no other options he turns to the powers of chaos after feeling betrayed and abandoned. Its just such a SHIT outcome for such a cool and loyal character.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, there's probably people who have been fucked over more, but Magnus is interesting. There's a section of fandom that loves the "Magnus did nothing Wrong!" meme, similar to the Magneto was Right from X-men.

I also find it hilarious and will meme it with friends, but in all seriousness, he fucked up a bit.

Magnus was (and is) an immensely powerful psyker and the Emperor was probably going to use him as a battery for the Golden Throne (see, another example of Big E viewing them as tools and not sons). That being said, he made mistakes with the Warp. He thought he knew a lot more than he did and didn't really seem to be aware of Chaos or the full risks of the Warp. He thought he did and was arrogant enough to act on that assumption.

So, Magnus did nothing wrong!
....he did.....
But he didn't! :).

3) Why did the Writers immediately decide to get rid of all the coolest characters in the story after the Heresy was over?

I read all about these badass Primarchs, their abilities, creeds, and personalities leading to the Heresy and then.....*POOF*...... they are all fucking gone within a few hundred years it feels like. They either become daemon princes and piss off to the Warp or they just die in the lamest and simple ways. Or even worse a few of them just walk into the Eye of Terror like abunch of lemmings running off a cliff and now they are just "missing". As a writer why in gods name would you spend so much time and so much energy building up these amazing characters, have them grow, have them face all levels of horror and challenges only to have them either die a pointless death or just fuck off to nowhere almost immediately? It makes no sense to me! All of the best Primarchs are now just dead (Sanguinus is the GOAT btw imho) or missing. Leman Russ is coolest one still "alive" and he is nowhere to be seen. Its just so depressing. It feels like wasted material and I hate that in a good story. The story of the Imperium would have been so much better in my opinion had the Primarchs been aroudn for the rebuilding. Or at the very least just one or two of them. Instead we got a bunch of no-namers doing this and that.

Click to shrink...

The others answered this pretty well, but I'll throw out an additional viewpoint. I like that the super powerful Primarchs are mostly dead or indisposed. Granted, the Daemon Primarchs are still around (Lorgar, Mortarion, Angron, Magnus, Perturabo etc) and Guilliman's back (and the Lion is technically asleep, etc)., but until recently even the Daemon Primarchs were inactive. That let things happen without insanely powerful "demi-gods" interfering.

The Primarchs are a lot of fun and the Horus Heresy series has done very well in utilizing them, but I still want them to be somewhat careful with their usage. Personal opinion, obviously.

Except Perturabo. I kind of like him, let's do more with him.

4) Is the Emperor a moron?

Because the way he is written during the Heresy makes him seem like the biggest idiot in the Imperium. I read countless stories and watched about a dozen videos about the guy biding his time and planning out his every move over the course of millennia only to watch him piss it all away in about 7 years.

- He was blind to the obvious grudges or flaws that some of his "sons" possessed. (Mortarion and Fulgrim come to mind)

- He outright ignored the warning from Magnus about Horus

- He somehow missed the fact that over half the legions he sent to Istvaan to stop Horus were traitors and that led to the Dropsite massacre despite being the most powerful Psychic in all the galaxy

- And then....the dumbest part of all. He allowed a Chaos infused Horus to beat the ever-living shit out of him and literally DISMEMBER HIM before he finally got the clue that his "son" was no longer in that noggin of his. Because somehow him murdering billions of humans, murdering his "brothers", swearing allegiance to the powers of Chaos, and laying siege to Terra were somehow not enough evidence to prove that fact up until then.


And yet this is the guy who was there with humanity from the start. The god of mankind. The leader of humanity. The most powerful and intelligent etc etc etc. It just boggles my mind. That entire section of the story had me just shaking my head. Don't get me wrong I still loved the story overall, but the level of stupidity on the part of the Emperor is just mind-numbing. I just do not understand what happened at all.




Sorry for the rant, but that whole Heresy story was a god damn trip. So many highs with so many lows. It was a rollercoaster of emotion lol

Click to shrink...

I'll be interested in how the Horus Heresy retells the scene with the Emperor versus Horus and the death of Sanguinius.

It's just another version of a story about hubris. The thing to remember about the Emperor, and this might help with some of the above, is that he can't see the future. He's an immensely powerful psyker, yes, but he doesn't seem to have prognostication powers. He's just very smart and VERY arrogant. As mentioned above, he and Malcador suspected the Heresy might happen, but didn't know all of the details of it (obviously, in retrospect).

That means he has blind spots (Malcador chides him several times about this). He will make mistakes because he is sure he's right.

That and Magnus forced him to mostly have to sit on the Golden Throne when he warned him....otherwise Terra would've been swarmed by daemons. That definitely caused him not to be able to 100% focus on the Heresy. It was mostly Dorn and Malcador handling it.

*****

We've mentioned a lot of books here, but there's an excellent short story I'm going to suggest now because of your focus on the Emperor. It's called The Last Church. There's no battle scenes in it and all it is is a dialogue between the Emperor and the last priest on Earth (catholic ish).

The premise is that the Emperor is wrapping up the Unification of Terra. The last church is there and his army is ready to destroy it because the Emperor's whole thing is The Imperial Truth and secularism. The priest inside is refusing to leave. He goes in to debate the priest and it goes from there.

 

[Greigor the FellHand]

Finished my chaplain on bike.

It ended up getting shown on the Warhammer TV hobby roundup stream which made me wish i'd taken more time with the highlights lol. I got lazy

Click to shrink...

rad. i want the new torso on that chap. its design is excellent

 

[Redcrayon]

I really like the chaplain on bike model. Even if I don't use him I'll likely paint one

 

[Griselbrand]

How are Custodes on the tabletop? Been looking to start a small elite force that I can work on between projects and these guys have caught my eye lately.

 

[Deleted member 29682]

How are Custodes on the tabletop? Been looking to start a small elite force that I can work on between projects and these guys have caught my eye lately.

Click to shrink...

Very good melee, decent ranged, obviously a small elite force but with somewhat limited mobility options. You might be spread thin when trying to seize objectives but every model you bring to the table is a force to be reckoned with. The flipside is that every single model who dies is going to sting. If you've got a surplus of gold paint they're a no-brainer.

If you're in the market for a small elite force you might also want to consider Harlequins, but they're much trickier to paint.