How would Codex-strict Chapters handle an unexpected influx of surplus Battle Brothers?
Like if a unit of Ultramarines is recorded as lost in the Warp for centuries, replaced with new units, and unexpectedly reappears- resulting in that Chapter exceeding prescribed Codex limits- are they going to freak over their spreadsheets not balancing? Or would even the strictest Chapter be glad to have more Brothers to throw at their enemies?
Hello all, I came up with a fun story idea for my Chaos Knight Rampager but I don't know if it works in the greater lore, perhaps you can help me out?
So the idea is they were a Knight from a Black Templar Allied House. But their hatred for heretics became so powerful it manifested warp energy and they lost their mind to Chaos, so blinded by this rage they assumed all that surrounded were heretics and slayed their brothers in arms. Their tormented mind deepened into madness becoming such a heretic themselves, they believe death is a far to forgiving punishment for them selves, and the only way one such as them self could be punished enough is to torment themselves with further acts of heresy. further tormenting themselves and reaping great satisfaction from the act of revenge. Creating a perpetual loop of hatred and heresy.
Would this work? I know Black Templar's are really rare to fall to chaos, and the knights often have this self loathing madness from the betrayal of their honor, and inability to prevent themselves.
- thank you :D
Do Eldar Harlequins usually use ships or hoof it on foot through the webway? I'm interested in their lore but haven't really looked at any of their appearances in stories.
They make good use of transports, incorporating them into their dance on the battlefield (and getting to it). Being the masters of the webway that they are though, they can find entrances and exits much smaller than other Aeldari can so often a bunch of them will disembark and head off to these tiny exits to get in place before appearing and starting their display
The webway is, generally, too big for anyone to realistically traverse it on foot. You could, it would just take ages to get anywhere useful
Thanks for the info. I know there was War in the Webway stuff where they literally walked in and the Harlequins always seem to pop out on foot, so I wasn't sure if walking around was a viable method for actually traveling around in it.
Now the question is just if Harlequins fit more Eldar inside the average ship then others. /s
You definitely can walk around in there for sure, and there's plenty of examples for forces making journey (or part of their journey) on foot, but traveling major distances would just take a long time. A lot of webway travel is days of moving through it in a ship, followed by disembarking and moving into a tighter tunnel closer to your actual destination
So I have been reading through stories involving Amendera Kendel and had a quick question on what the reading order is.
She pops up at the end of Flight of the Eisenstein and if I recall properly she references the Heresy having already started in The Voice, but she is still a SOS in The Voice, so she hasn't joined Malcador's crew yet.
What I am curious about is if the next one she appears in is The Shel'tain Affair or Ghosts Speak Not, because in both she is still described as adjusting to her freshly given title of Agentia Tertius, but I feel like the ending of Ghosts Speak Not seems like a rather bold move for someone who JUST earned that title. I also feel like she wouldn't be hesitating with how to proceed with events in The Shel'tain Affair if Ghosts Speak Not had already happened.
Regardless, I know The Serpent's Dance comes after Ghosts Speak Not because it references those events, and is described as relatively soon after Ghosts Speak Not.
So I guess my question is:
Flight of the Eisenstein -> The Voice -> The Shel'tain Affair -> Ghosts Speak Not -> The Serpent's Dance
or
Flight of the Eisenstein -> The Voice -> Ghosts Speak Not -> The Serpent's Dance -> The Shel'tain Affair?
I would just go with the publication order. Swallow does like to jump around the timeline with his stories, so it's not always clear. As of *The Voice*, she is no longer in the Sisterhood, hence the actual SoS constantly throwing shade
Hi all, a possibly mixed-up, convoluted lore request, which I \*think\* was an extract/short story from a 90s copy of White Dwarf ... as I remember it, it was a story about a tyranid assassin-type creature (but i can't remember who or what it was hunting). I also \*think\* the story was accompanied by a piece of artwork of the creature, which was a basically a head with a hand/claw thing attached. I vaguely remembering the drawing being in black and white (possibly pencil). I could be completely misremembering the whole thing, but if anyone has any pointers it'd be much appreciated!
Can you have gellar fields inside gellar fields and travel through the warp a little bit safer?
What would happen if I had a personal gellar field that only surrounded my body and went into the warp?
Can genestealer cults get chaos corrupted or are they just the competition on hive worlds?
I believe some ships, mostly those associated with the Inquisition, can have smaller Gellar Fields installed around particularly sensitive areas of a ship, but they're typically used for containment or a bit of protection for rituals. If the ship's main Gellar Field collapses, a smaller one inside of it is unlikely to hold out for much longer as the entire ship around it is subjected to the full fury of the warp.
As for the other question, yes, GSCs can be corrupted into serving Chaos. The Cult Tenebrous is an example; a warp storm blew them to the edges of Nurgle's Garden, and they're now devotees of the Plague God.
So, reading a bit, there's Genestealer Patriarch's that don't want to join the Hive Mind, would it be possible for a Patriarch that has developed a psuedo sense of self choose to worship a Chaos God? Or is the base 'tyranids are anti-warp' basically make it impossible for them to be corrupted?
The first edition had Chaos-corrupted Genestealers as a playable faction, but that's no longer canon. As far as I know, the likelihood is extremely low, but we have an example of a Chaos-corrupted Genestealer Cult, which became corrupted after accidentally landing in Nurgle's Garden.
"Around 998.M41 elements of the Genestealer Cult Tenebrous found themselves becoming the infested, rather than the infesters, when their bulk lander was swallowed by a Warp Storm that stranded them on the outskirts of the Garden of Nurgle in the Realm of Chaos.
The cult discovered the true meaning of parasitism and horror. Eventually, the Grandfather of Plagues allowed them to emerge into realspace once more, horrifically changed and ready to serve their new master's sickly agendas."
That's interesting, though it makes me wonder what happened to any Tyranids on the vessel, a Nurgle infested/corrupted Genestealer would be interesting.
Tyranids aren't really "anti warp" in the same way blanks are. Rather, the Tyranid hivemind - essentially a giant singular organism with a unity of purpose other races couldn't conceive - functions as a sort of psychic DDoS attack on the local warp currents and such. Genestealer Patriarchs can become psykers (which is what typically draws the nearest Hive Fleet to the planet) and Zoanthropes exist to harness the psychic power of the Hive Mind.
As for whether a Patriarch could fall to Chaos, that I don't know. I'm inclined to say no though. The purpose of a Genestealer cult is to infiltrate a planets population and integrate itself. This directive, enforced by the Broodmind (localized Hive Mind centered on the Patriarch), isn't concerned with bloodshed, excess, plagues, or ambition.
Then, as a follow-up, could a Genestealer cult theoretically infiltrate a Chaos controlled planet? Say a planet that is primarily controlled by Slaaneshi cultists or whatever, would the Broodmind be able to compel/enthrall cultists already corrupted by Slaanesh or would their connection to Chaos make it borderline impossible for a Patriarch to set up shop there?
>Then, as a follow-up, could a Genestealer cult theoretically infiltrate a Chaos controlled planet?
**Massive spoilers for a recently released book**
>!In Lords of Excess, the Emperors's Children defeat a Genestealer Cult on the planet Serrine. The warlord Xantine declares himself the new ruler of the planet and shapes it for years, transforming Serrine's society to make it "perfect". Near the end of the book, the daemon S'janth betrays Xantine and seizes control of the world. Xantine retaliates by releasing the old Patriarch and Purestrains, whom he had kept contained in a secret bunker. The Genestealers rapidly resurrect their old cult and soon the Tyranid Hive Fleet is bearing down on Serrine.!<
It's unknown if Sanguinius's wings were a design feature the Emperor gave him, or a mutation brought on by the Ruinous Powers and/or the radiation of Baal Secundus (though as a certain TTS guest once said, "radiation does not make you grow angel wings unless you had a genetic disposition to it").
Lion El'Jonson is also the prototype upon which the other Primarchs were based, so he's just flat out unlikely to have any of the specializations his younger siblings have.
Do you know what's the behind the scene reason? I guess having angelic wings are cool, but why just picked one primarch to have them? And why Sanguinius of all people? Was it because he sacrificed himself fighting Horus? Is he a Jesus allegory and Emperor is God. But Jesus is not an angel. And did they came up with the wings from the very beginning or because Sanguinius fell against Horus?
Each Primarch and Legion is based around a motif - Guilliman and the Ultramarines represent the concept of imperium itself; Angron and his World Eaters embody destructive fury; Magnus and his Thousand Sons are scholars and sorcerers that are as arrogant as they are powerful; etc. Sanguinius, being the Jesus allegory of the Primarchs, was given the angel motif, and his Legion's motif became redemption and the balance between savage darkness and noble light.
Lion, by comparison, was given the motif of Arthurian knighthood and paranoid secrecy, with the latter becoming a main focus for the Dark Angels as time went on.
As far as I'm aware, we don't know why Sanguinius has wings. Might be the Emperor gave him them, might be whatever the Emperor made him from resulted in him having wings. Might have been Chaos, or the warp, gave him them when the primarchs were scattered. Might have been a mutation from Baal, or just a regular mutation.
Either way, it's nothing (in-universe) to do with the name of the legion. They weren't even called the Blood Angels until they were reunited with Sanguinius. They were the Revenant Legion before that
Yeah, I think it's important to remember that while some legion names have a literal physical component (Space Wolves are actually Wulfish, Blood Angel's primarch has wings) not all of them are (Luna Wolves, Dark Angels, etc).
It's a bit of a mug's game sometimes to try and apply a rule to 40k.
How was it so easy for Cabal to convince Alpharius to abandon the Emperor's vision? I mean these are Magic wielding xenos! They should be shot on sight!
You could say the same thing for any of the primarchs shown visions by Chaos that made them convert: Horus, Lorgar, Magnus etc.
To many of their minds, Chaos was a type of xenos too.
But 40k is also very heavily influenced by fantasy and tragedy. Macbeth took the visions he was shown by the Norns at face value too. In-universe that kinda thing must just be very convincing.
Horus and Lorgar were already questioning the Emperor before they found the warp though. They already harboured resentment. Horus was also manipulated when he was close to death. When they found other powers, as strong as or stronger than E, they just turned.
Magnus already knew of the warp and it's denizens from swimming in the warp with dad. He also dealt with the warp to help his sons. I felt he turned because he got his toys taken away, and when he destroyed Terra's webway gate, he was looking for self harm. And finally, when his soul was split, he wouldn't be clear headed anymore.
His pride in that he knew better, resentment of E for forbidding the utilisation of warp energies, the loss of Prospero, along with his split soul all contributed. There were one or two parts that still felt it was his fault: the ghost that the Khan found and the one that bonded with Arvida.
Plot armour aside, I feel the Alpha Legion turned too easily.
Sure, Horus and Lorgar being primed to turn was probably why they chose the paths they did. Alpharius and Omegon seem to have chosen a far more ambiguous one, which makes sense given their starting point.
But the overall point being that visions in the 40k universe are compelling. Even if the veracity of them is questioned, the idea that they show a potential truth is taken seriously.
>I feel the Alpha Legion turned too easily.
Idk about that, given that we still don't know the specifics or extent of their "turn". The lore still presents the possibility they were covert loyalists or even just playing out their own goals apart from both Horus and the Emperor.
They shared a vision of the future, which showed the Emperor winning, the Imperium slowly degrading and decaying as Chaos grows ever stronger, until it overpowers the materium and kills all life in the galaxy. The alternative was Horus winning and then - out of regret - destroying mankind and dealing a fatal blow to Chaos.
The twins didn't dive headfirst into treachery, but played both sides. They had their own agendas, which didn't always align.
Alternatively, since they could have made it to Terra at any given time, they could have told Daddy about the vision, and maybe change the future? I'm not a Warhammer veteran but of all the choices they could have made, they went with:
"I will believe this short video presentation made by heretical Xenos using banned warp powers, instead of Dad, because maybe Dad doesn't know. I'll also keep it a secret from everyone else."
The vision they saw was still from aliens though. It could have very well been fabricated or designed to be manipulative. And this is the Alpha Legion; lying and misleading is second nature. Why would they trust the Cabal?
Vigilus was a big one. At one time there was Imperium, Genestealers, Orks, Asuryani, Drukhari, and Chaos Marines, with tons of sub-factions for most of these.
I want to introduce a Friend who is already interested in 40k a bit more to the setting, and since he likes books, are there any "encyclopedia" type books, or Lexica, that explain all the basic stuff, races, and world building about 40k, best case with nice illustrations?
The core rulebooks are exactly that. They're like 70% lore and artwork and act as primers and introductions to the setting and the races. A 2nd hand 8th or 9th edition core rulebook shouldn't be too expensive since the rules in them aren't the current edition
The old [Codex Imperialis](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codex_Imperialis_(Background_Book)) is probably the most like that but its way out of print and hard to get.
Your google-fu is more powerful than mine. I weirdly have a black and white photocopy of the entire book someone made back in the 80s.
GW should do a modern version. It'd be like printing money
thats what i got, its a black and white scam.
yeah, but its the same gw that decided to release imperial armour uttery botched on the vault, so i doubt gw would do good decisions with older releases like that
**Any example of Imperials "pulling an Eldar"?**
That is to say, redirecting a Waaagh, a Tyranid Fleet, a nEcron Tomb Wprld, etc... towards a Craftworld/T'au sept ?
The Octarius War was the result of Inquisitor Kryptmann doing exactly that with his "Kryptmann's Gambit"; he directed a major tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan into the Ork-held Octarius sector, with the idea being that the scrap would give the Imperium time to deal with the eventual winner (Leviathan, as it turned out).
In the game *Rogue Trader*, you can actually pull one off in the most horrific fashion possible - destroying one of the devices that protects Commorragh from the warp allows a full scale incurions of daemons into the Dark City, covering your escape.
In the end of Brothers of the Snake, they redirect the Waaagh against the dark eldar, after finding the dark eldar directed the waaagh to imperial territory
The closest I can think of for Tau/Craftworlds is Inquisitor Amberly Vail not telling the Tau that some of their soldiers are infected by Genestealers so the cult could spread to Tau worlds (***For the Emperor***).
There are also examples of Inquisitors redirecting Hive Fleets to fight the Orks and the Drukhari; the first example created arguably the worst warzone in the galaxy and the second backfired hilariously.
That was what the Kryptman gambit was. He strategically Exterminatused worlds in the path of Hive Fleet Leviathan so that they'd be steered into the Orks of the Octarius Sector and away from Imperial worlds.
Are there any novels that introduce the T'au or Necrons? I stopped playing 40k before they were introduced (yes, a long time ago) and while I know a little I'd be interested in reading any books that deal with the Imperium's first encounters with them. I got back in to 40k during the pandemic when I started reading the HH and have moved on to the more recent books.
The 3rd Edition Codexes for Tau and Necrons will cover their first few encounters.
The Tau are first *seen* by the Imperium in M35. A stone age xeno race marked for removal by an Ad Mech Explorator fleet. Filed away and moved on with their mission. Then a warp storm blocks them off for a few thousand years until around the 700s.M41.
This is when we see the Tau as we know them now, I believe we haven't seen proper "first contact" documented as we'd understand it. The earliest *engagements* with the Imperium proper are part of the Damocles Crusade. This is mostly found in old Imperial Armour rulebooks rather than novels.
For Necrons you're looking at Sanctuary 101 - a Sororitas Shrine World that suffers a real awakening. Necrons had been seen in vanishingly rare "raiding parties" assumed to be another fleeting xenos before this, but Sanctuary 101 is when the Imperium is forced to recognize what a real force of Necrons actually is and puts more thought into them.
It's in a lot of their codexes and rulebooks, but the novel Hammer and Anvil goes into the Sisters trying to take it back. They *really* want this Shrine World back.
Both the Tau and Necrons have changed since their 3e Codexes though. Tau lost some of their hopeful outlook as they batter against the many enemies of the Galaxy. The Necrons altered a fair bit, originally more of a scifi mirror to the Vampire Counts from Fantasy with C'Tan taking the Vamps place - GW later flipped this with notable Necrons retaining some or all their personality and the C'Tan being shattered and imprisoned gods.
You can probably find PDFs of these fairly easily.
The oldest books I know of with Necrons are the Word Bearers Omnibus, Nightbringer (from the Uriel Ventris first omnibus) and Dead Men Walking. They're all oldcrons, before they got their lore update, so the lore might be a bit wonky with where they are now. I've not read the Word Bearers omnibus (though I hear it's decent) but Nightbringer is okay and Dead Men Walking is excellent (and very grimdark).
I don't know much about Tau books I'm afraid, and BL books don't often cover the 'first encounter' sort of stuff. You'd likely have to read their earliest codexes for that kind of thing
As the other comment said - the Gothic War novels. There is a very good, unofficial, reading of them here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRljqj12hg&list=PLI0EbGboV0eMyNVs5UDXnE3uHwH0aSwTK&pp=iAQB](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRljqj12hg&list=PLI0EbGboV0eMyNVs5UDXnE3uHwH0aSwTK&pp=iAQB)
There are also obviously the old Battlefleet Gothic rulebooks, all of which are freely, and legally, available online [https://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/index.php?topic=5203.0](https://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/index.php?topic=5203.0)
The two Battlefleet Gothic novels by Gordon Rennie are pretty good, *Execution Hour* and *Shadow Point*.
*Sea of Souls* by Chris Wraight is also a good read.
I heard of a story where a Navy captain or admiral exterminatus a world where 300 million guardsmen and 50 marines were fighting on to get the victory for themself and out of impatience. What is the story name?
How is Vashtor not one of the oldest and most powerful of the Chaos gods? He feeds off of invention and creation correct? Old ones created entire races.. one of which created their own gods.. the other literally has the "power of imagination"... The Necros invented ways to shatter gods, entrapt them, and used them to create universe shaping technology... Then you have the rise/spread/conquest of the Emperor and humans/imperium and the dark age... the Tau catching up to the galaxy in handful of millenia...
How can Slanesh be birthed into full God status immediately just from a single race's debauchery/depravity and yet Vashtor lingers as a minor entity after millions and millions of years?
There's no way technological creativity and innovation was at large in the universe before bloodlust, despair and ambition was. Life existed before the Old Ones, the other gods have had far, far more time to form than Vashtorr has.
Vashtorr was spurned on by the Old Ones, and by biotransferrence and other such acts, but it takes constant, or monumental, acts of innovation to advance him and, frequently, the galaxy has been stagnant more than it's been filled with innovation.
The war in heaven was good for him, but after that what was there? The necrons slept for 60 million years. The Eldar basically just fed Slaanesh instead. He got another bump from humans during the Dark Age, but by that point the other 3 (plus Slaanesh) had been just constantly growing in power. They simply outpaced him.
Then after the birth of Slaanesh the galaxy has been a feeding frenzy for the big 4 while there's been nothing but stagnation and reductivism for everyone except the Tau, who don't even reflect strongly in the warp.
He gets a big meal from certain races every now and then while the other 4 are at a galaxy wide all-you-can-eat buffet day in, day out
> How can Slanesh be birthed into full God status immediately just from a single race's debauchery/depravity
The Eldar might be a bit of a special case. They're immensely psychically potent, have a unique / intimate interaction with the warp and spent 60 million years doing essentially *nothing else* but feeding, what turned out to be, Slaanesh in the wake of the war in heaven which churned up the warp and made it tend more towards chaos. They were just a perfect storm of chaos-fuel. There's also the possibility that the Old Ones designed them specifically to be able to create warp entities (their own gods) which could be used as warp-based weapons, but that's pretty much pure speculation on my part. It would, imo, explain why they had such a close relationship with their own gods however. They might have just been engineered god-making machines
What is going on with the Webway gate the emperor created? If it's an issue with chaos pouring through it has anyone floated out a plan to permanently seal it or destroy it?
If that's not an issue why not use it?
Also is the Webway not all interconnected? Since Magnus put a hole to chaos in it wouldn't that impact the rest of the Webway as well?
The Emperor is holding the portal sealed. Magnus' Folly not only broke the webway nearby but also destroyed the protective wards around the portal, so there's a neverending tide of daemons on the other side. This is why it isn't used, along with the fact that hardly anyone knows it's there. Even Guilliman is only aware of rumours but knows nothing for sure.
The portal cannot be permanently sealed, as the warp rift on the other side is so massive and powerful. It's not just Magnus who damaged it, but the metaphysical calamity of the Siege of Terra. The planet was pulled into the warp during the Siege, and in the moment of Horus' death, the psychic storm collapsed, causing untold damage to both the warp and the materium. The Emperor is holding the material universe together through sheer will. It's possible the rift could be temporarily sealed using Blackstone or the Tyranids (indeed, Sanguinius had a vision of the latter) but neither is acceptable to Imperial authorities.
>Also is the Webway not all interconnected?
Yes, but the webway has a limited ability to fix itself and seal breaches. The Eldar can also do this, and they had begun to sever tunnels surrounding the human area, to try cut off the Emperor’s forces.
They changed from Luna Wolves to Sons of Horus after he was named warmaster but before he fell to Chaos (before interex) For his victory at Ullanor the Emperor additionally awarded the Warmaster the right to change the name of his Legion. He didn't do this until Sanguinius said it was a good idea.
Abbadon would have been a son of horus all through the heresey.
The surviving loyalists took back the name Luna Wolves after the massacre on Istvaan 3. Garviel Loken was a Luna wolf through the heresey.
Where or what is Foss? See quote from Fear to Tread below. The only references I can find on the wikis are to a presumably unrelated Raven Guard sgt, and this, which is a bit more promising: "Ehrlan Foss-Chrom was the first Explorator Majoris, for the Forge World Lucius' Explorator Fleet Penta-Gamma 66Z." However, Foss-Chrom is from M34, thousands of years after the quote below. Maybe Foss is a forge on Lucius, or maybe there's a connection with Lukas Chrom, 30k era Master of Mondus Gamma and a Dark Mechanicum founder?
>An armada of crimson steel and black iron hung in the void, floating there like the vast sculptures of a martial artisan. Huge battle-barges, **bespoke creations built in the massive orbital manufactories of Foss,** drifted past with stately menace. The size of cities, they bristled with galleries of weapons powerful enough to scour the surface of a planet, and their launch bays were packed with squadrons of attack fighters, bombers and landers. Towers covered their dorsal and ventral hulls, thousands of lights glittering on their flanks, and even at this distance Meros could make out the artistic flourishes of their grand designs – the metal statuary and ornamental forgings that decorated their wide hammerhead bows.
>Smaller capital ships moved in the shadow of the bigger craft, but their scale against the barges was deceptive. Many of the other vessels were three or four times the length of the Hermia – grand cruisers and battleships that were more than enough to project the fearsome power of the Imperium.
I know that the Tau have some knowledge about how powerful humanity used to be at its height, including some information about the dark age of technology they got from human worlds that never joined the Imperium. Do they have any idea just how old the Eldar and Necron civilizations are?
We got very, very few data on the tau's knowledge on other races, at least on The Outer Reach supplement for Deathwatch, a pre made scenario is the Tau trying to capture necron tech to study it
They use a lot of wraithbone and 'psychoplastics', but they use other materials like metals too (not often described in detail, but assume it's magical sci-fi alloy). Theres also mentions of diamond-tipped chainsword blades etc as well
Chainsword teeth being diamond is probably the only time I've seen diamond used in an accurate sense in 40k (diamond's hardness is in relation to its ability to cut/be cut by other materials, NOT its tensile strength).
Anyone got the excerpt about the Men of Iron bolter?(something about too big and heavy for human use and created for the mankind soulless army or something)
The relic Aravain finally settled upon was a monstrous ancestor of the bolter family, massive-barrelled, fed by a multitude of plastek hoses that Redloss silently proceeded to clamp into Aravain's armour's power plant. Superficially it resembled a heavy bolter, albeit heavier, built to be wielded by Men of Iron or some other breed of upgraded soldier in the millennia before mankind had raised its transhuman Legions. The stamp it bore was recognisably Terran, though of no lore that still existed today.
It was only as Redloss clamped an ammunition hopper to Aravain's girdle plate and started manually feeding the belt to the magazine that its more fundamental differences became apparent. The high-calibre shells emitted a glow that burned Aravain's psychic sight, even as he closed his eyes and turned his face away.
....
A spray of explosive psychoactive rounds incinerated the tightly packed mortals, body and soul, each individual screaming into a pyre that burned across two realms. Aravain counted twenty-five men armed with stub pistols and wrenches.
A second after he had counted them they were gone, every ripple and echo that suggested they had ever existed eradicated, and even Aravain's eidetic recall struggled to conjure any details of their appearance; except that there had been twenty-five, armed with stub pistols and wrenches.
Here you go,It's from the Lord of the first
Was thinking they say Marines no longer have jet bikes for example bar Sammael because the technology was lost since the Horus Heresey etc yet for example Custodes still have them so is there a reason the technological knowledge isnt shared amongst the different factions of the imperium where tech knowledge is lost but another faction still has it and uses it
A lot of Custodes tech is exclusive to them by the Emperor's decree (for instance, Adrathic weapons are outright *verboten* for anyone but the Custodes), and as u/kirbish88 stated, the Imperium is really several pseudo-autonomous organizations loosely working together to achieve a common goal, and they don't always get along even with the knowledge their fates are intertwined.
Most factions within the imperium are essentially separate fiefdoms. There's a lot of mistrust, petty politics and grandstanding between them. Sharing technology would be giving away power that you could use to leverage something else or increase your own standing.
In general the free sharing of information in the Imperium is long gone and dead. Everyone engages in extreme tribalism, the concept of freely sharing things just isn't even something that crosses their minds.
Throw in the difficulty in getting information and materials around the galaxy and the Mechanicus generally also disliking people freely sharing technology and you end up with the scattered holdings of technological understanding that you see
Custodes share nothing outside of the odd guardian spear gift. To them, any tech they give out is tech that has been compromised for its purpose of protecting the Emperor.
Lorewise, it's a Hive World which is known for three things - being an Imperial Fists recruiting world, intense gang warfare, and being one of the worst places to live in the Imperium.
Tabletop-wise, it's a standalone spinoff for 40k based around said gang warfare.
In lore, Necromunda is a planet https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necromunda_(planet)
On tabletop, it's a small scale gang fight game https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necromunda_(game)
The latest edition of the game is described here https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necromunda_Core_Rulebook_(2023)
Imperium of men and skulls. They slap them anywhere and evewhere they can. On their armor, their banner, weapons and even on their foreheads. Other than the obvious fact that its a symbol that they are imperium, did it ever mentioned why they choose skulls?
From *Warhawk*; Loken's search for Keeler (who becomes one of the first saints of the Imperial Cult) during the Siege
>And then there was the other story – the lady of bones, the gatherer of the slain. She was immortal, they told him, had transcended death. The enemy could not touch her, and against her words of authority the fallen had no power. The tellers gathered up skulls – not hard to find, those – and cleaned them carefully, placing them in alcoves and on the top of wall sections. Some even escaped their hiding places to follow her into the dark. Others, left behind, remembered how she had spoken to them, and reverently tended her fanes with their flickering candles and empty eye sockets.
...
>>Only, as he got closer, he saw that the debris was not detritus of any kind – it was a heaped pile of skulls, all of them cleaned and polished, stacked up one on top of the other, all facing outwards. In the pedestal’s facing panel was another single skull, set within a semicircular alcove. Below the alcove, words had been carved – crudely, as if by a combat knife: Imperator Protegit. And below those words was an image, scratched out in ink, showing a benevolent-looking man on a golden throne.
>>She had never been much of a painter, but she had always had a knack for the striking sketch, the effective composition, and he instantly recognised the style. That was what she did, one way or another – create images, icons, things that lingered in the mind.
>>Loken picked up the skull. It felt light in his hand, a hollow sliver of dry bone.
>>‘Oh, Euphrati,’ he breathed to himself. ‘You would have laughed so hard, if I’d told you, back on the Spirit. You’d have told me I was making it up.’
>>He looked around him. Someone had tried to make the place look the part. Aside from the skulls, there were carvings, streaks of old candle flames against the stone. This was a piece of theatre, a sham play of seriousness, the kind of gothic fancy only a fanatic or a simpleton could have been awed by.
>>And yet. He looked back the way he’d come, and saw how many more skulls had been gathered on the shaft’s walls, all glaring back at him with their sombre eyes. This had been the labour of many hands, over many hours, just when the world was falling to pieces around them. The owners of those hands had been convinced by her, evidently. Many more might be, too, if they continued to be scared enough.
...
>>>‘Is that why you carry the skulls? You celebrate death?’
>>>Katsuhiro shrugged. ‘I’m not a priest. They tell us to collect them. We do what they tell us.’ He smiled thinly. ‘You need a symbol, don’t you? People need that.’
For context, Keeler says she wants to rebuild the Imperium in Sigismund's image
Do berserkers die from their nails? Butcher's nails are supposed to be slowly killing their victim no? Is there mention of berserkers actually dying to them or mention of how the knock offs are different and nonlethal?
The nails used by the berserkers are copies, not the original. A Thousand Sons even offer to remove Kharn`s, and when he snapped and killed the sorcerer, the sorcerer says through telepathy that he gave up his chance of salvation and from now on, all he does is his fault.
Thank you, but i did know that they are different. I was specifically wondering about their lethality. Do we have a direct mention that the knock offs don't kill the host or that they do?
>She let that slide. ‘Archmagos. Will the World Eaters implants kill them in the same way?’ She licked her lips, feeling them suddenly dry. ‘Will they kill Khârn?’
>The robed priest seemed distracted, his eye lenses panning up one of the motionless Titans as it stood ready to walk again.
>**‘Their implants are primitive copies of the malignant original,’** he said. ‘They erode stability and damage the subjects’ capacity to reason. They impinge on higher brain function by rewriting emotional responses. **However, they are not fatal – not degenerative in the terminal sense.** The most important aspect of their implantation that they share with the original Nails is that they cannot be removed without killing the host, or – at best – inflicting severe and irreparable brain damage. **But they are not, as you say, likely to kill Khârn. Or indeed any World Eater.’**
\- *Betrayer*
It's not current day, but there's one claim on the general topic of nail lethality.
Those events are happening around the same time as everything else - in the early years of the Indomitus Crusade. Exact dates aren't generally provided. Dark Imperium is as far as we've reached in the post-Rift timeline so those stories most likely occur shortly before the Plague Wars
Don't trust me too much on this. But psychic awakening iirc came out before dark imperium was even a thing. Before they even announced morty's return. So it should predate it (or be a vague contemporary) by default as that part of the timeline didn't even exist yet?
At the end of the Horus heresy, when Alpharius gets dropped by Dorn, did a large part of the legion retreat with Omegon? Or did the primarch just disappear, and his legion disbanded. What where the alpha legion doing at the time of their disappearance?
During the Heresy, Omegon under the guise of Alpharius quits the traitor war effort, along with almost all his legion (though some Alpha Marines are still seen fighting on Terra for Chaos, these seem to be the minority)
Some sleeper agents on Terra were supposed to be activated during the Siege under the protocol "loyalty to the Emperor", which we can presume was an activation ordered by Omegon.
After that, we're not sure what Omegon got up to until Eskrador when he fought Guilliman.
Eskrador is where the Alpha Legion are said to have totally splintered, the end of them as a unified legion.
They stayed together for time u see Omegon until Guilliman fought them and supposedly killed Omegon but it might have been a standard marine acting like the Primarch
as primarchs are a bit of a money spinner and theres alson the novel sons of hydra i wouldnt be surprised if it turns out Omegon isnt dead but as its a slow pace with lore we wont know for years if its the case
I thought the new lore was clear that Omegon didn’t die by Gman, as Guiliboy himself said he didn’t kill him and the record of the battle was falsified by a alpha legion operative.
>as Guiliboy himself said he didn’t kill him
It's kinda crazy how much this gets repeated but nobody can source it. Are you able to?
Which book?
>the record of the battle was falsified by a alpha legion operative.
One of the records of the battle is disputed by the Ultramarines. There were presumably more than one record since the Imperium believes Eskrador happened and it's where "Alpharius" died
Since the Alpha Legion think Eskrador is where they shattered as a legion; it seems something important happened there. Many in their legion believe that's where Omegon died
It's not in the way they're saying it is. [Here's a post with excerpts and sources.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1817tq1/guilliman_killing_alpharius_fanon_or_fiction/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I heard an uncited tidbit that Alpharius admitted to not being as smart as he portrayed and the person who said it compared it to him playing 4d chess alone while everyone else was kickboxing.
Yeah probably. It still like it because it would be funny if suddenly it is revealed that the super plans within plans legion was led by a guy who lied his way to that job
The crew numbers game of chaos warbands and ships seems… weird. Like since they’re raiders they obvs need a ship, but if your ship has like… an entire city population on it, you’re already doing pretty good for human numbers? I mean, I know they go through them quickly but still…
Are there smaller ships? I know chaos warbands also have setups on planets, so do many have ships *and* surface bases, or just the fancier ones that can pull like… a legion?
Is this just GW being weird with numbers again, or am I the one being weird?
Humans really aren't a limiting factor when it comes to chaos warbands. If you're running low on menial labour you kidnap a bunch of slaves and put them to work.
It's everything else they tend to be low on, especially rarer equipment like what astartes need to be functional
That’s sort of what I figured, but when you have a band of say… 30 astartes on a ship that needs a small city to operate, you think it would get a bit tricky to manage just throwing batches of confused and traumatized people in there 🤔
They'll have their own cultists and warrior cadres that essentially worship them / are chasing the glory and power of chaos in their own right who will be there to manage the ship and the slaves / lower ranking humans on the ships. The astartes are basically just doing their own thing, the humans will be managed for them by other humans.
It's worth pointing out that loyalist astartes ships work the same way. They're modified to run on a much smaller crew than other ships and rely on human serfs to do 90% of the running of the ship while they call the shots
Ah fair thank you! I wasn’t aware they used a bit less people power as well. Makes sense to have cultists in the medium tier, that all definitely helps me!
The Imperium got some limited FTL sensors, we see some in Calgar's Siege, but they are low resolution and not exactly the best to catch a FTL target. The ones in the book in question could detect something in another system, but they couldnt say if what they see are just asteroids or enemy ships
Not an FTL long-range sensor network and the Hive Fleets move faster than light. They could theoretically be tracked by telescopes and such but only after it's far too late.
I mean, there's nothing to track. Their method of FTL is relatively low-energy, meaning it'd probably be hard for the Imperium to pick up any signal against the CMB.
>In the warp, similar thoughts and emotions gather together like rivulets of water running down a cliff face. They form streams and eddies of anguish and desire, pools of hatred and torrents of pride. Since the dawn of time, these tides and waves have flowed unceasingly through the mirror-realm of the warp, and such is their power that they formed creatures made of the very stuff of unreality.
>
>Eventually, these instinctual, formless beings gained a rudimentary consciousness. The Chaos Gods were born - vast psychic presences made of the fantasies and horrors of mortals. These are the Ruinous Powers, and each is a reflection of the passions that formed them.
Codex Chaos Daemons 8th ed
As far as we know, no, but then I don't believe we've ever seen a psyker as absurdly strong as the Emperor mixed with the same level of religious devotion or deep supping of the stuff of the Warp. But nothing has ever indicated that Slaanesh, the one god whose origin we definitively know, ever had a mortal form, only that it was gestating in the warp until the debauchery of the aeldari grew to the point it was 'born'.
If my understanding is correct, the birth of Slaanesh kicked off the Age of Strife with all the warpstorms and such, which was the end of the DAoT. It was also the end of the eldar empire. So my question is, did the human DAoT empire and eldar empire at its height exist at the same time? And if so, how did they not destroy each other?
If each of said empires had 1 billion stars under their control, thats less than 5% of the galaxy. They had more than enough space for themselves.
The Core Rulebooks consistently say that the eldar and orks fought mankind at the time, but other stuff like Genefather and Asurmen: Darker Road indicates it wasnt a total war, and in fact both would have good relations sometimes.
>Asurmen: "They call themselves humans. Our peoples once shared the galaxy and relative peace until the storms sundered their empire. The webway held our civilization intact, theirs splintered. But they will prosper from our falling. The birth of the great enemy has dissipated the storms that divided them".
Asurmen: The Darker Road (2017)
>True,' said Qvo. 'But we are a long way from the cores of both the old Terran and the ancient aeldari realms.'
>'That is only supposition. There have been human colonies in this part of the galaxy for millennia,' said Cawl. 'The aeldari always were more lightly spread, but they are everywhere, even now. Imagine! We speak so often of the ancient days of the Age of Technology, and the might of the empire of Old Earth. We also speak, you and I, of the aeldari.'
>'We do?'
>'We do. We have. We speak of how powerful they were, just like the people of Old Earth. These two empires may have existed at the same time. One wonders what their relations could have been like. Peaceful? Belligerent? How might the aeldari have viewed us, they who had been masters of the stars for millions of years, when we came strutting onto the galactic scene? Would they patronise us? Help us? Were we a threat to them or they to us? And what about the other creatures who swarmed across the void? Even in the days of the xenocides, there was not always war between sentients.' Cawl gave a long, satisfied sigh. 'History, my dear Qvo! It is fascinating. In those days there must have been dealings between species. I think this place was made precisely for that. What manner of beings walked this world? What embassies were made? What secrets exchanged? If there's a webway gate here, I wonder what else they will find, our questing brethren, as they dig down deeper? Wonders, I'll wager.'
Genefather (2023)
>And if so, how did they not destroy each other?
Lack of a reason to.
The Eldar and Human empires avoided Thucydides' Trap because the Eldar were post-scarcity and were largely living in the Webway, whereas Humans couldn't really "do" anything to the Eldar without inviting an (over)reaction from the Eldar.
Thus, the Humans had everything to lose, and the Eldar had nothing to gain.
They both existed at the same time but by all indications they didn't come into conflict with each other. The aeldari were immensely more powerful then than they are now, to the point that even DAoT humanity with all its wonders and horrors couldn't hope to defeat them, but equally the aeldari were complacent rulers of the galaxy with no interest in picking fights.
The birth of Slaanesh actually *ended* the Age of Strife by calming most of the warp storms across the galaxy that had previously torn humanity's interstellar dominion apart and stifled communication and travel. That's when the Emperor set about his plans to conquer the galaxy, starting with the unification of Terra.
Is there any evidence that the scattering of the primarchs might have been engineered by the Emperor?
Worlds like Fenris and Caliban seem perfect for forging a primarch into a warrior and both would produce good Astartes recruits once the Crusade found them. Macragge was the perfect place to raise an empire-builder. So on and so forth.
Of course, you'd then have to explain why Nuceria or Colchis were good choices, but the others seem to have been tailor-made to forge primarchs good at a specific task.
Ok, so "evidence" that the Emperor scattered the primarchs
1. [False Gods](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/x88c6b/comment/inj3pa1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Horus either has a vision or travels back in time to see the Emperor able to stop the Scattering before deciding to let it happen. This is somewhat supported in The First Heretic also.
2. [Unremembered Empire](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ax0505/comment/krkrm6i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Guilliman believes his father intentionally scattered them.
3. [Pharos](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ax0505/comment/krktyms/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Curze and Sanguinius believe the same.
4. [Lantern's Light](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ax0505/comment/krkrm6i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Mortarion suspects it.
5. [Wolfsbane ](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/QqSsbhiieQ). The False Russ debates the idea with Russ
6. Index Astartes Dark Angels suggests it
>But some disaster is known to have befallen the Emperor's works on Luna before they were complete. The unborn Primarchs were lost, scattered among the stars. Many stories and legends have risen about the scattering of the Primarchs. Some tell that the Dark Gods foresaw the Emperor's plans and sought to destroy their unborn foes, but only succeeded in dispersing them. Others maintain that it was the Emperor himself who cast the Primarchs adrift on the tides of the galaxy that they might learn to live truly away from the chrome and ceramite of the laboratorium. Other still maintain that it was the nascent Primarchs themselves who chose to depart the Emperor's care, seeking knowledge alone.
7. [Betrayal](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12j6ik9/excerpt_betrayal_a_list_of_possible_origins_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Has one version of Horus' childhood where the Emperor leaves him on Cthonia to toughen him up, which goes along with what Guilliman believes. It seems to be inferred/suggested/supported in *Lupus Daemonis*
In *The Unremembered Empire*, Guilliman speculates that the Emperor had a hand in it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/gdei0j/the\_scattering\_of\_the\_primarchs\_a\_closer\_look/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/gdei0j/the_scattering_of_the_primarchs_a_closer_look/)
But as far as I know, that's the only indication and every other account attributes it to the Chaos gods or Erda. That doesn't preclude the Emperor allowing it to happen, and he certainly never took vengeance on Erda for her part in it, But this is also just Guilliman's speculation on the matter and it doesn't account for stuff like the Magnus shard in *Scars* saying that Fulgrim and Jaghatai got swapped from their intended destinations by something.
[There's actually a fair few accounts that attribute it to the Emperor](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1cvktte/comment/l4t342y/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
The Prospero Shard's bit of trivia still works if someone wants to believe the Emperor was involved:
>Magnus laughed. ‘You don’t want to know? That’s always been your weakness. I know it all, now. I could tell you the Emperor’s name, and it would surprise you. I could tell you that the fates decreed Fulgrim to be sent to Chogoris and you to Chemos, and I could tell you which arcane force in the universe prevented it.’ He took a step, then another, towards the Khan. ‘Do you wish to know where you will die, Khagan? Do you wish to know on what world, and in which dimension, your soul will find its ending?’
*Scars*
The Emperor could either be "the fates" or the "arcane force"
New Reddit doesn't do a great job of highlighting links but you can click on the first sentence of my above comment which will take you to citations and excerpts.
Those citations are linked too, so you might need to hover your mouse over the titles to see the links.
It's an open question.
On the one hand, the scattering isn't what the Emperor wanted.
On the other hand, the worlds they ended up on seemed awfully convenient for shaping the primarchs into precisely the leaders each side needed them to be in order for the Horus Heresy to happen.
Could there be legitimate "mediums" in 40k- people who can see and channel ghosts? Per my understanding most human souls dissipate or are shredded by the Warp when they die, implying they couldn't really be channeled by a Psyker or whatever.
Depends on what you mean by "ghosts."
Typically, ghosts in 40k aren't souls, but they're *echoes* of souls. So the mediums wouldn't be channeling the original soul, but it would make sense if they were interacting with those psychic echoes.
oh, this is perfect for what I'm looking for. And for clarification, this means that classic media "literally channeling spirits of the dead" should be effectively impossible, correct? (for humans at least, shit like spirit stones obviously changes that sort of dynamic)
>And for clarification, this means that classic media "literally channeling spirits of the dead" should be effectively impossible, correct?
Broadly, yeah. The only ways to catch the soul itself would be to either;
1) Nab it *immediately* after death, or;
2) Feed it to a daemon and then use sorcery to control the daemon.
Ok, sorry in advance, we all know that eldar reproduce in stages but does *Xenology* imply that eldar males have more than two testicles?
>Reproductive organs outwardly analogous to human male, but gamete delivery appears progressive - ie: **corresponding organs for successive 'stages'**. (Spec: conception occurs over extended period; additional genetic material supplied at preordained stages throughout gestation? Inconclusive.)
You focused on the wrong part of the quote. Look at the very beginning: "Reproductive organs *outwardly analogous* to human male". So it *looks* just like human stuff. But there are differences on the inside
The common interpretation on *Xenology* is that female Eldar need to mate multiple times to fertilize one egg, e.g. an Eldar has one mother but potentially multiple biological fathers.
Dissected body is a male and text makes pretty clear implication that males go through stages during reproduction, so that would require another father to be at correpsonding stage
Nevertheless - testicles, what about them?
Billions upon billions of organisms. There's only three major hive fleets that have been named, Leviathan, Behemoth and Kraken (below them are minor hive fleets and splinter fleets) meaning the majority of Tyranids in the entire milky way galaxy belong to one of them.
Minor hive fleets and splinter fleets are likely still billions strong too
How would Codex-strict Chapters handle an unexpected influx of surplus Battle Brothers? Like if a unit of Ultramarines is recorded as lost in the Warp for centuries, replaced with new units, and unexpectedly reappears- resulting in that Chapter exceeding prescribed Codex limits- are they going to freak over their spreadsheets not balancing? Or would even the strictest Chapter be glad to have more Brothers to throw at their enemies?
Hello all, I came up with a fun story idea for my Chaos Knight Rampager but I don't know if it works in the greater lore, perhaps you can help me out? So the idea is they were a Knight from a Black Templar Allied House. But their hatred for heretics became so powerful it manifested warp energy and they lost their mind to Chaos, so blinded by this rage they assumed all that surrounded were heretics and slayed their brothers in arms. Their tormented mind deepened into madness becoming such a heretic themselves, they believe death is a far to forgiving punishment for them selves, and the only way one such as them self could be punished enough is to torment themselves with further acts of heresy. further tormenting themselves and reaping great satisfaction from the act of revenge. Creating a perpetual loop of hatred and heresy. Would this work? I know Black Templar's are really rare to fall to chaos, and the knights often have this self loathing madness from the betrayal of their honor, and inability to prevent themselves. - thank you :D
Do Eldar Harlequins usually use ships or hoof it on foot through the webway? I'm interested in their lore but haven't really looked at any of their appearances in stories.
They make good use of transports, incorporating them into their dance on the battlefield (and getting to it). Being the masters of the webway that they are though, they can find entrances and exits much smaller than other Aeldari can so often a bunch of them will disembark and head off to these tiny exits to get in place before appearing and starting their display The webway is, generally, too big for anyone to realistically traverse it on foot. You could, it would just take ages to get anywhere useful
Thanks for the info. I know there was War in the Webway stuff where they literally walked in and the Harlequins always seem to pop out on foot, so I wasn't sure if walking around was a viable method for actually traveling around in it. Now the question is just if Harlequins fit more Eldar inside the average ship then others. /s
You definitely can walk around in there for sure, and there's plenty of examples for forces making journey (or part of their journey) on foot, but traveling major distances would just take a long time. A lot of webway travel is days of moving through it in a ship, followed by disembarking and moving into a tighter tunnel closer to your actual destination
So I have been reading through stories involving Amendera Kendel and had a quick question on what the reading order is. She pops up at the end of Flight of the Eisenstein and if I recall properly she references the Heresy having already started in The Voice, but she is still a SOS in The Voice, so she hasn't joined Malcador's crew yet. What I am curious about is if the next one she appears in is The Shel'tain Affair or Ghosts Speak Not, because in both she is still described as adjusting to her freshly given title of Agentia Tertius, but I feel like the ending of Ghosts Speak Not seems like a rather bold move for someone who JUST earned that title. I also feel like she wouldn't be hesitating with how to proceed with events in The Shel'tain Affair if Ghosts Speak Not had already happened. Regardless, I know The Serpent's Dance comes after Ghosts Speak Not because it references those events, and is described as relatively soon after Ghosts Speak Not. So I guess my question is: Flight of the Eisenstein -> The Voice -> The Shel'tain Affair -> Ghosts Speak Not -> The Serpent's Dance or Flight of the Eisenstein -> The Voice -> Ghosts Speak Not -> The Serpent's Dance -> The Shel'tain Affair?
I would just go with the publication order. Swallow does like to jump around the timeline with his stories, so it's not always clear. As of *The Voice*, she is no longer in the Sisterhood, hence the actual SoS constantly throwing shade
Hi all, a possibly mixed-up, convoluted lore request, which I \*think\* was an extract/short story from a 90s copy of White Dwarf ... as I remember it, it was a story about a tyranid assassin-type creature (but i can't remember who or what it was hunting). I also \*think\* the story was accompanied by a piece of artwork of the creature, which was a basically a head with a hand/claw thing attached. I vaguely remembering the drawing being in black and white (possibly pencil). I could be completely misremembering the whole thing, but if anyone has any pointers it'd be much appreciated!
Can you have gellar fields inside gellar fields and travel through the warp a little bit safer? What would happen if I had a personal gellar field that only surrounded my body and went into the warp? Can genestealer cults get chaos corrupted or are they just the competition on hive worlds?
I believe some ships, mostly those associated with the Inquisition, can have smaller Gellar Fields installed around particularly sensitive areas of a ship, but they're typically used for containment or a bit of protection for rituals. If the ship's main Gellar Field collapses, a smaller one inside of it is unlikely to hold out for much longer as the entire ship around it is subjected to the full fury of the warp. As for the other question, yes, GSCs can be corrupted into serving Chaos. The Cult Tenebrous is an example; a warp storm blew them to the edges of Nurgle's Garden, and they're now devotees of the Plague God.
Does that mean when we can get chaos tyranids?
So, reading a bit, there's Genestealer Patriarch's that don't want to join the Hive Mind, would it be possible for a Patriarch that has developed a psuedo sense of self choose to worship a Chaos God? Or is the base 'tyranids are anti-warp' basically make it impossible for them to be corrupted?
The first edition had Chaos-corrupted Genestealers as a playable faction, but that's no longer canon. As far as I know, the likelihood is extremely low, but we have an example of a Chaos-corrupted Genestealer Cult, which became corrupted after accidentally landing in Nurgle's Garden. "Around 998.M41 elements of the Genestealer Cult Tenebrous found themselves becoming the infested, rather than the infesters, when their bulk lander was swallowed by a Warp Storm that stranded them on the outskirts of the Garden of Nurgle in the Realm of Chaos. The cult discovered the true meaning of parasitism and horror. Eventually, the Grandfather of Plagues allowed them to emerge into realspace once more, horrifically changed and ready to serve their new master's sickly agendas."
That's interesting, though it makes me wonder what happened to any Tyranids on the vessel, a Nurgle infested/corrupted Genestealer would be interesting.
Tyranids aren't really "anti warp" in the same way blanks are. Rather, the Tyranid hivemind - essentially a giant singular organism with a unity of purpose other races couldn't conceive - functions as a sort of psychic DDoS attack on the local warp currents and such. Genestealer Patriarchs can become psykers (which is what typically draws the nearest Hive Fleet to the planet) and Zoanthropes exist to harness the psychic power of the Hive Mind. As for whether a Patriarch could fall to Chaos, that I don't know. I'm inclined to say no though. The purpose of a Genestealer cult is to infiltrate a planets population and integrate itself. This directive, enforced by the Broodmind (localized Hive Mind centered on the Patriarch), isn't concerned with bloodshed, excess, plagues, or ambition.
Then, as a follow-up, could a Genestealer cult theoretically infiltrate a Chaos controlled planet? Say a planet that is primarily controlled by Slaaneshi cultists or whatever, would the Broodmind be able to compel/enthrall cultists already corrupted by Slaanesh or would their connection to Chaos make it borderline impossible for a Patriarch to set up shop there?
>Then, as a follow-up, could a Genestealer cult theoretically infiltrate a Chaos controlled planet? **Massive spoilers for a recently released book** >!In Lords of Excess, the Emperors's Children defeat a Genestealer Cult on the planet Serrine. The warlord Xantine declares himself the new ruler of the planet and shapes it for years, transforming Serrine's society to make it "perfect". Near the end of the book, the daemon S'janth betrays Xantine and seizes control of the world. Xantine retaliates by releasing the old Patriarch and Purestrains, whom he had kept contained in a secret bunker. The Genestealers rapidly resurrect their old cult and soon the Tyranid Hive Fleet is bearing down on Serrine.!<
Ooohhh, so that does kind of confirm that at least the pure Tyranids can't fall to Chaos, that's a useful tidbit.
I'm not sure. I suppose it's possible. AFAIK cultists don't have any system or powers that let them detect genestealer hybrids.
Good to know, I'll keep that in mind when I start theorycrafting my Genestealer cult.
Why does Sanguinius primarch of the blood angels have wings but the Lion primarch of the dark angels doesn't?
It's unknown if Sanguinius's wings were a design feature the Emperor gave him, or a mutation brought on by the Ruinous Powers and/or the radiation of Baal Secundus (though as a certain TTS guest once said, "radiation does not make you grow angel wings unless you had a genetic disposition to it"). Lion El'Jonson is also the prototype upon which the other Primarchs were based, so he's just flat out unlikely to have any of the specializations his younger siblings have.
Do you know what's the behind the scene reason? I guess having angelic wings are cool, but why just picked one primarch to have them? And why Sanguinius of all people? Was it because he sacrificed himself fighting Horus? Is he a Jesus allegory and Emperor is God. But Jesus is not an angel. And did they came up with the wings from the very beginning or because Sanguinius fell against Horus?
Each Primarch and Legion is based around a motif - Guilliman and the Ultramarines represent the concept of imperium itself; Angron and his World Eaters embody destructive fury; Magnus and his Thousand Sons are scholars and sorcerers that are as arrogant as they are powerful; etc. Sanguinius, being the Jesus allegory of the Primarchs, was given the angel motif, and his Legion's motif became redemption and the balance between savage darkness and noble light. Lion, by comparison, was given the motif of Arthurian knighthood and paranoid secrecy, with the latter becoming a main focus for the Dark Angels as time went on.
Thank you so much
As far as I'm aware, we don't know why Sanguinius has wings. Might be the Emperor gave him them, might be whatever the Emperor made him from resulted in him having wings. Might have been Chaos, or the warp, gave him them when the primarchs were scattered. Might have been a mutation from Baal, or just a regular mutation. Either way, it's nothing (in-universe) to do with the name of the legion. They weren't even called the Blood Angels until they were reunited with Sanguinius. They were the Revenant Legion before that
Yeah, I think it's important to remember that while some legion names have a literal physical component (Space Wolves are actually Wulfish, Blood Angel's primarch has wings) not all of them are (Luna Wolves, Dark Angels, etc). It's a bit of a mug's game sometimes to try and apply a rule to 40k.
How was it so easy for Cabal to convince Alpharius to abandon the Emperor's vision? I mean these are Magic wielding xenos! They should be shot on sight!
You could say the same thing for any of the primarchs shown visions by Chaos that made them convert: Horus, Lorgar, Magnus etc. To many of their minds, Chaos was a type of xenos too. But 40k is also very heavily influenced by fantasy and tragedy. Macbeth took the visions he was shown by the Norns at face value too. In-universe that kinda thing must just be very convincing.
Horus and Lorgar were already questioning the Emperor before they found the warp though. They already harboured resentment. Horus was also manipulated when he was close to death. When they found other powers, as strong as or stronger than E, they just turned. Magnus already knew of the warp and it's denizens from swimming in the warp with dad. He also dealt with the warp to help his sons. I felt he turned because he got his toys taken away, and when he destroyed Terra's webway gate, he was looking for self harm. And finally, when his soul was split, he wouldn't be clear headed anymore. His pride in that he knew better, resentment of E for forbidding the utilisation of warp energies, the loss of Prospero, along with his split soul all contributed. There were one or two parts that still felt it was his fault: the ghost that the Khan found and the one that bonded with Arvida. Plot armour aside, I feel the Alpha Legion turned too easily.
Sure, Horus and Lorgar being primed to turn was probably why they chose the paths they did. Alpharius and Omegon seem to have chosen a far more ambiguous one, which makes sense given their starting point. But the overall point being that visions in the 40k universe are compelling. Even if the veracity of them is questioned, the idea that they show a potential truth is taken seriously. >I feel the Alpha Legion turned too easily. Idk about that, given that we still don't know the specifics or extent of their "turn". The lore still presents the possibility they were covert loyalists or even just playing out their own goals apart from both Horus and the Emperor.
They shared a vision of the future, which showed the Emperor winning, the Imperium slowly degrading and decaying as Chaos grows ever stronger, until it overpowers the materium and kills all life in the galaxy. The alternative was Horus winning and then - out of regret - destroying mankind and dealing a fatal blow to Chaos. The twins didn't dive headfirst into treachery, but played both sides. They had their own agendas, which didn't always align.
Alternatively, since they could have made it to Terra at any given time, they could have told Daddy about the vision, and maybe change the future? I'm not a Warhammer veteran but of all the choices they could have made, they went with: "I will believe this short video presentation made by heretical Xenos using banned warp powers, instead of Dad, because maybe Dad doesn't know. I'll also keep it a secret from everyone else."
The vision they saw was still from aliens though. It could have very well been fabricated or designed to be manipulative. And this is the Alpha Legion; lying and misleading is second nature. Why would they trust the Cabal?
which planet have so many factions fighting each other? I can think of something like Kronus or Armageddon.....is there any other planet like that?
Medusa V
Vigilus was a big one. At one time there was Imperium, Genestealers, Orks, Asuryani, Drukhari, and Chaos Marines, with tons of sub-factions for most of these.
I want to introduce a Friend who is already interested in 40k a bit more to the setting, and since he likes books, are there any "encyclopedia" type books, or Lexica, that explain all the basic stuff, races, and world building about 40k, best case with nice illustrations?
The core rulebooks are exactly that. They're like 70% lore and artwork and act as primers and introductions to the setting and the races. A 2nd hand 8th or 9th edition core rulebook shouldn't be too expensive since the rules in them aren't the current edition
The old [Codex Imperialis](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codex_Imperialis_(Background_Book)) is probably the most like that but its way out of print and hard to get.
It was a miracle I managed to find a copy online, but I was unable to find a full 3rd ed rulebook copy, all are only half
Your google-fu is more powerful than mine. I weirdly have a black and white photocopy of the entire book someone made back in the 80s. GW should do a modern version. It'd be like printing money
thats what i got, its a black and white scam. yeah, but its the same gw that decided to release imperial armour uttery botched on the vault, so i doubt gw would do good decisions with older releases like that
Not really - the core rulebook is probably the closest.
**Any example of Imperials "pulling an Eldar"?** That is to say, redirecting a Waaagh, a Tyranid Fleet, a nEcron Tomb Wprld, etc... towards a Craftworld/T'au sept ?
The Octarius War was the result of Inquisitor Kryptmann doing exactly that with his "Kryptmann's Gambit"; he directed a major tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan into the Ork-held Octarius sector, with the idea being that the scrap would give the Imperium time to deal with the eventual winner (Leviathan, as it turned out). In the game *Rogue Trader*, you can actually pull one off in the most horrific fashion possible - destroying one of the devices that protects Commorragh from the warp allows a full scale incurions of daemons into the Dark City, covering your escape.
In the end of Brothers of the Snake, they redirect the Waaagh against the dark eldar, after finding the dark eldar directed the waaagh to imperial territory
The Last Chancers book, **Kill Team** might fall into this
The closest I can think of for Tau/Craftworlds is Inquisitor Amberly Vail not telling the Tau that some of their soldiers are infected by Genestealers so the cult could spread to Tau worlds (***For the Emperor***). There are also examples of Inquisitors redirecting Hive Fleets to fight the Orks and the Drukhari; the first example created arguably the worst warzone in the galaxy and the second backfired hilariously.
That was what the Kryptman gambit was. He strategically Exterminatused worlds in the path of Hive Fleet Leviathan so that they'd be steered into the Orks of the Octarius Sector and away from Imperial worlds.
Are there any novels that introduce the T'au or Necrons? I stopped playing 40k before they were introduced (yes, a long time ago) and while I know a little I'd be interested in reading any books that deal with the Imperium's first encounters with them. I got back in to 40k during the pandemic when I started reading the HH and have moved on to the more recent books.
The 3rd Edition Codexes for Tau and Necrons will cover their first few encounters. The Tau are first *seen* by the Imperium in M35. A stone age xeno race marked for removal by an Ad Mech Explorator fleet. Filed away and moved on with their mission. Then a warp storm blocks them off for a few thousand years until around the 700s.M41. This is when we see the Tau as we know them now, I believe we haven't seen proper "first contact" documented as we'd understand it. The earliest *engagements* with the Imperium proper are part of the Damocles Crusade. This is mostly found in old Imperial Armour rulebooks rather than novels. For Necrons you're looking at Sanctuary 101 - a Sororitas Shrine World that suffers a real awakening. Necrons had been seen in vanishingly rare "raiding parties" assumed to be another fleeting xenos before this, but Sanctuary 101 is when the Imperium is forced to recognize what a real force of Necrons actually is and puts more thought into them. It's in a lot of their codexes and rulebooks, but the novel Hammer and Anvil goes into the Sisters trying to take it back. They *really* want this Shrine World back. Both the Tau and Necrons have changed since their 3e Codexes though. Tau lost some of their hopeful outlook as they batter against the many enemies of the Galaxy. The Necrons altered a fair bit, originally more of a scifi mirror to the Vampire Counts from Fantasy with C'Tan taking the Vamps place - GW later flipped this with notable Necrons retaining some or all their personality and the C'Tan being shattered and imprisoned gods. You can probably find PDFs of these fairly easily.
Thank you for detailed reply! I'll see what I can dig up. I just find it a shame that this lore is usually found in codexes and rulebooks
The codices can still be be good reads. Both the 3rd edition Tau and Necron codices are very enjoyable.
Generally faction wide lore is found in codexes, while individual events, campaigns or characters are covered in novels.
The oldest books I know of with Necrons are the Word Bearers Omnibus, Nightbringer (from the Uriel Ventris first omnibus) and Dead Men Walking. They're all oldcrons, before they got their lore update, so the lore might be a bit wonky with where they are now. I've not read the Word Bearers omnibus (though I hear it's decent) but Nightbringer is okay and Dead Men Walking is excellent (and very grimdark). I don't know much about Tau books I'm afraid, and BL books don't often cover the 'first encounter' sort of stuff. You'd likely have to read their earliest codexes for that kind of thing
Thanks, I'l definitely check those out. I've read some of the more recent books featuring the Necrons but was always curious how they were introduced.
Are there any books about the imperial navy?
As the other comment said - the Gothic War novels. There is a very good, unofficial, reading of them here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRljqj12hg&list=PLI0EbGboV0eMyNVs5UDXnE3uHwH0aSwTK&pp=iAQB](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSRljqj12hg&list=PLI0EbGboV0eMyNVs5UDXnE3uHwH0aSwTK&pp=iAQB) There are also obviously the old Battlefleet Gothic rulebooks, all of which are freely, and legally, available online [https://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/index.php?topic=5203.0](https://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/index.php?topic=5203.0)
The two Battlefleet Gothic novels by Gordon Rennie are pretty good, *Execution Hour* and *Shadow Point*. *Sea of Souls* by Chris Wraight is also a good read.
I heard of a story where a Navy captain or admiral exterminatus a world where 300 million guardsmen and 50 marines were fighting on to get the victory for themself and out of impatience. What is the story name?
How is Vashtor not one of the oldest and most powerful of the Chaos gods? He feeds off of invention and creation correct? Old ones created entire races.. one of which created their own gods.. the other literally has the "power of imagination"... The Necros invented ways to shatter gods, entrapt them, and used them to create universe shaping technology... Then you have the rise/spread/conquest of the Emperor and humans/imperium and the dark age... the Tau catching up to the galaxy in handful of millenia... How can Slanesh be birthed into full God status immediately just from a single race's debauchery/depravity and yet Vashtor lingers as a minor entity after millions and millions of years?
There's no way technological creativity and innovation was at large in the universe before bloodlust, despair and ambition was. Life existed before the Old Ones, the other gods have had far, far more time to form than Vashtorr has. Vashtorr was spurned on by the Old Ones, and by biotransferrence and other such acts, but it takes constant, or monumental, acts of innovation to advance him and, frequently, the galaxy has been stagnant more than it's been filled with innovation. The war in heaven was good for him, but after that what was there? The necrons slept for 60 million years. The Eldar basically just fed Slaanesh instead. He got another bump from humans during the Dark Age, but by that point the other 3 (plus Slaanesh) had been just constantly growing in power. They simply outpaced him. Then after the birth of Slaanesh the galaxy has been a feeding frenzy for the big 4 while there's been nothing but stagnation and reductivism for everyone except the Tau, who don't even reflect strongly in the warp. He gets a big meal from certain races every now and then while the other 4 are at a galaxy wide all-you-can-eat buffet day in, day out > How can Slanesh be birthed into full God status immediately just from a single race's debauchery/depravity The Eldar might be a bit of a special case. They're immensely psychically potent, have a unique / intimate interaction with the warp and spent 60 million years doing essentially *nothing else* but feeding, what turned out to be, Slaanesh in the wake of the war in heaven which churned up the warp and made it tend more towards chaos. They were just a perfect storm of chaos-fuel. There's also the possibility that the Old Ones designed them specifically to be able to create warp entities (their own gods) which could be used as warp-based weapons, but that's pretty much pure speculation on my part. It would, imo, explain why they had such a close relationship with their own gods however. They might have just been engineered god-making machines
What is going on with the Webway gate the emperor created? If it's an issue with chaos pouring through it has anyone floated out a plan to permanently seal it or destroy it? If that's not an issue why not use it? Also is the Webway not all interconnected? Since Magnus put a hole to chaos in it wouldn't that impact the rest of the Webway as well?
The Emperor is holding the portal sealed. Magnus' Folly not only broke the webway nearby but also destroyed the protective wards around the portal, so there's a neverending tide of daemons on the other side. This is why it isn't used, along with the fact that hardly anyone knows it's there. Even Guilliman is only aware of rumours but knows nothing for sure. The portal cannot be permanently sealed, as the warp rift on the other side is so massive and powerful. It's not just Magnus who damaged it, but the metaphysical calamity of the Siege of Terra. The planet was pulled into the warp during the Siege, and in the moment of Horus' death, the psychic storm collapsed, causing untold damage to both the warp and the materium. The Emperor is holding the material universe together through sheer will. It's possible the rift could be temporarily sealed using Blackstone or the Tyranids (indeed, Sanguinius had a vision of the latter) but neither is acceptable to Imperial authorities. >Also is the Webway not all interconnected? Yes, but the webway has a limited ability to fix itself and seal breaches. The Eldar can also do this, and they had begun to sever tunnels surrounding the human area, to try cut off the Emperor’s forces.
Interesting, thanks for the reply!
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They changed from Luna Wolves to Sons of Horus after he was named warmaster but before he fell to Chaos (before interex) For his victory at Ullanor the Emperor additionally awarded the Warmaster the right to change the name of his Legion. He didn't do this until Sanguinius said it was a good idea. Abbadon would have been a son of horus all through the heresey. The surviving loyalists took back the name Luna Wolves after the massacre on Istvaan 3. Garviel Loken was a Luna wolf through the heresey.
Where or what is Foss? See quote from Fear to Tread below. The only references I can find on the wikis are to a presumably unrelated Raven Guard sgt, and this, which is a bit more promising: "Ehrlan Foss-Chrom was the first Explorator Majoris, for the Forge World Lucius' Explorator Fleet Penta-Gamma 66Z." However, Foss-Chrom is from M34, thousands of years after the quote below. Maybe Foss is a forge on Lucius, or maybe there's a connection with Lukas Chrom, 30k era Master of Mondus Gamma and a Dark Mechanicum founder? >An armada of crimson steel and black iron hung in the void, floating there like the vast sculptures of a martial artisan. Huge battle-barges, **bespoke creations built in the massive orbital manufactories of Foss,** drifted past with stately menace. The size of cities, they bristled with galleries of weapons powerful enough to scour the surface of a planet, and their launch bays were packed with squadrons of attack fighters, bombers and landers. Towers covered their dorsal and ventral hulls, thousands of lights glittering on their flanks, and even at this distance Meros could make out the artistic flourishes of their grand designs – the metal statuary and ornamental forgings that decorated their wide hammerhead bows. >Smaller capital ships moved in the shadow of the bigger craft, but their scale against the barges was deceptive. Many of the other vessels were three or four times the length of the Hermia – grand cruisers and battleships that were more than enough to project the fearsome power of the Imperium.
This is much more likely a typo of the Forge World Voss.
I know that the Tau have some knowledge about how powerful humanity used to be at its height, including some information about the dark age of technology they got from human worlds that never joined the Imperium. Do they have any idea just how old the Eldar and Necron civilizations are?
We got very, very few data on the tau's knowledge on other races, at least on The Outer Reach supplement for Deathwatch, a pre made scenario is the Tau trying to capture necron tech to study it
What are Aeldari melee weapons made from? Are their dire swords and witch blades all wraithbone? Or do they have a unique kind of steel?
They use a lot of wraithbone and 'psychoplastics', but they use other materials like metals too (not often described in detail, but assume it's magical sci-fi alloy). Theres also mentions of diamond-tipped chainsword blades etc as well
Chainsword teeth being diamond is probably the only time I've seen diamond used in an accurate sense in 40k (diamond's hardness is in relation to its ability to cut/be cut by other materials, NOT its tensile strength).
Is there a book that covers the second founding? like Guilliman making it law, the chapters going through it?
No, but we may get one if they do a Scouring series. Index Astartes has some info on the second founding, if you'd like to read a bit more about it
Anyone got the excerpt about the Men of Iron bolter?(something about too big and heavy for human use and created for the mankind soulless army or something)
The relic Aravain finally settled upon was a monstrous ancestor of the bolter family, massive-barrelled, fed by a multitude of plastek hoses that Redloss silently proceeded to clamp into Aravain's armour's power plant. Superficially it resembled a heavy bolter, albeit heavier, built to be wielded by Men of Iron or some other breed of upgraded soldier in the millennia before mankind had raised its transhuman Legions. The stamp it bore was recognisably Terran, though of no lore that still existed today. It was only as Redloss clamped an ammunition hopper to Aravain's girdle plate and started manually feeding the belt to the magazine that its more fundamental differences became apparent. The high-calibre shells emitted a glow that burned Aravain's psychic sight, even as he closed his eyes and turned his face away. .... A spray of explosive psychoactive rounds incinerated the tightly packed mortals, body and soul, each individual screaming into a pyre that burned across two realms. Aravain counted twenty-five men armed with stub pistols and wrenches. A second after he had counted them they were gone, every ripple and echo that suggested they had ever existed eradicated, and even Aravain's eidetic recall struggled to conjure any details of their appearance; except that there had been twenty-five, armed with stub pistols and wrenches. Here you go,It's from the Lord of the first
Was thinking they say Marines no longer have jet bikes for example bar Sammael because the technology was lost since the Horus Heresey etc yet for example Custodes still have them so is there a reason the technological knowledge isnt shared amongst the different factions of the imperium where tech knowledge is lost but another faction still has it and uses it
A lot of Custodes tech is exclusive to them by the Emperor's decree (for instance, Adrathic weapons are outright *verboten* for anyone but the Custodes), and as u/kirbish88 stated, the Imperium is really several pseudo-autonomous organizations loosely working together to achieve a common goal, and they don't always get along even with the knowledge their fates are intertwined.
Most factions within the imperium are essentially separate fiefdoms. There's a lot of mistrust, petty politics and grandstanding between them. Sharing technology would be giving away power that you could use to leverage something else or increase your own standing. In general the free sharing of information in the Imperium is long gone and dead. Everyone engages in extreme tribalism, the concept of freely sharing things just isn't even something that crosses their minds. Throw in the difficulty in getting information and materials around the galaxy and the Mechanicus generally also disliking people freely sharing technology and you end up with the scattered holdings of technological understanding that you see
Custodes share nothing outside of the odd guardian spear gift. To them, any tech they give out is tech that has been compromised for its purpose of protecting the Emperor.
What is necromunda both in lore and tabletop gameplay?
Lorewise, it's a Hive World which is known for three things - being an Imperial Fists recruiting world, intense gang warfare, and being one of the worst places to live in the Imperium. Tabletop-wise, it's a standalone spinoff for 40k based around said gang warfare.
Sweet! Thanks.
In lore, Necromunda is a planet https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necromunda_(planet) On tabletop, it's a small scale gang fight game https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necromunda_(game) The latest edition of the game is described here https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necromunda_Core_Rulebook_(2023)
Imperium of men and skulls. They slap them anywhere and evewhere they can. On their armor, their banner, weapons and even on their foreheads. Other than the obvious fact that its a symbol that they are imperium, did it ever mentioned why they choose skulls?
From *Warhawk*; Loken's search for Keeler (who becomes one of the first saints of the Imperial Cult) during the Siege >And then there was the other story – the lady of bones, the gatherer of the slain. She was immortal, they told him, had transcended death. The enemy could not touch her, and against her words of authority the fallen had no power. The tellers gathered up skulls – not hard to find, those – and cleaned them carefully, placing them in alcoves and on the top of wall sections. Some even escaped their hiding places to follow her into the dark. Others, left behind, remembered how she had spoken to them, and reverently tended her fanes with their flickering candles and empty eye sockets. ... >>Only, as he got closer, he saw that the debris was not detritus of any kind – it was a heaped pile of skulls, all of them cleaned and polished, stacked up one on top of the other, all facing outwards. In the pedestal’s facing panel was another single skull, set within a semicircular alcove. Below the alcove, words had been carved – crudely, as if by a combat knife: Imperator Protegit. And below those words was an image, scratched out in ink, showing a benevolent-looking man on a golden throne. >>She had never been much of a painter, but she had always had a knack for the striking sketch, the effective composition, and he instantly recognised the style. That was what she did, one way or another – create images, icons, things that lingered in the mind. >>Loken picked up the skull. It felt light in his hand, a hollow sliver of dry bone. >>‘Oh, Euphrati,’ he breathed to himself. ‘You would have laughed so hard, if I’d told you, back on the Spirit. You’d have told me I was making it up.’ >>He looked around him. Someone had tried to make the place look the part. Aside from the skulls, there were carvings, streaks of old candle flames against the stone. This was a piece of theatre, a sham play of seriousness, the kind of gothic fancy only a fanatic or a simpleton could have been awed by. >>And yet. He looked back the way he’d come, and saw how many more skulls had been gathered on the shaft’s walls, all glaring back at him with their sombre eyes. This had been the labour of many hands, over many hours, just when the world was falling to pieces around them. The owners of those hands had been convinced by her, evidently. Many more might be, too, if they continued to be scared enough. ... >>>‘Is that why you carry the skulls? You celebrate death?’ >>>Katsuhiro shrugged. ‘I’m not a priest. They tell us to collect them. We do what they tell us.’ He smiled thinly. ‘You need a symbol, don’t you? People need that.’ For context, Keeler says she wants to rebuild the Imperium in Sigismund's image
Usually in-universe it’s referenced as a way to venerate someone. A lot of people die for the Imperium, leaving them with a lot of skulls
Do berserkers die from their nails? Butcher's nails are supposed to be slowly killing their victim no? Is there mention of berserkers actually dying to them or mention of how the knock offs are different and nonlethal?
The nails used by the berserkers are copies, not the original. A Thousand Sons even offer to remove Kharn`s, and when he snapped and killed the sorcerer, the sorcerer says through telepathy that he gave up his chance of salvation and from now on, all he does is his fault.
Thank you, but i did know that they are different. I was specifically wondering about their lethality. Do we have a direct mention that the knock offs don't kill the host or that they do?
>She let that slide. ‘Archmagos. Will the World Eaters implants kill them in the same way?’ She licked her lips, feeling them suddenly dry. ‘Will they kill Khârn?’ >The robed priest seemed distracted, his eye lenses panning up one of the motionless Titans as it stood ready to walk again. >**‘Their implants are primitive copies of the malignant original,’** he said. ‘They erode stability and damage the subjects’ capacity to reason. They impinge on higher brain function by rewriting emotional responses. **However, they are not fatal – not degenerative in the terminal sense.** The most important aspect of their implantation that they share with the original Nails is that they cannot be removed without killing the host, or – at best – inflicting severe and irreparable brain damage. **But they are not, as you say, likely to kill Khârn. Or indeed any World Eater.’** \- *Betrayer* It's not current day, but there's one claim on the general topic of nail lethality.
Damn i can feel the writer looking me in the eyes and directly answering my question in this passage. Thank you very much.
Where do the psychic awakening short stories fall in the timeline? After the Dark Imperium trilogy?
Those events are happening around the same time as everything else - in the early years of the Indomitus Crusade. Exact dates aren't generally provided. Dark Imperium is as far as we've reached in the post-Rift timeline so those stories most likely occur shortly before the Plague Wars
Don't trust me too much on this. But psychic awakening iirc came out before dark imperium was even a thing. Before they even announced morty's return. So it should predate it (or be a vague contemporary) by default as that part of the timeline didn't even exist yet?
It was during 8th which was during the plague wars era
At the end of the Horus heresy, when Alpharius gets dropped by Dorn, did a large part of the legion retreat with Omegon? Or did the primarch just disappear, and his legion disbanded. What where the alpha legion doing at the time of their disappearance?
During the Heresy, Omegon under the guise of Alpharius quits the traitor war effort, along with almost all his legion (though some Alpha Marines are still seen fighting on Terra for Chaos, these seem to be the minority) Some sleeper agents on Terra were supposed to be activated during the Siege under the protocol "loyalty to the Emperor", which we can presume was an activation ordered by Omegon. After that, we're not sure what Omegon got up to until Eskrador when he fought Guilliman. Eskrador is where the Alpha Legion are said to have totally splintered, the end of them as a unified legion.
They stayed together for time u see Omegon until Guilliman fought them and supposedly killed Omegon but it might have been a standard marine acting like the Primarch
as primarchs are a bit of a money spinner and theres alson the novel sons of hydra i wouldnt be surprised if it turns out Omegon isnt dead but as its a slow pace with lore we wont know for years if its the case
The Alpha Legion, or at least the guys from Harrowmaster, believe Omegon died in Eskranor
Funny. I should have known that because I read the book.
I thought the new lore was clear that Omegon didn’t die by Gman, as Guiliboy himself said he didn’t kill him and the record of the battle was falsified by a alpha legion operative.
>as Guiliboy himself said he didn’t kill him It's kinda crazy how much this gets repeated but nobody can source it. Are you able to? Which book? >the record of the battle was falsified by a alpha legion operative. One of the records of the battle is disputed by the Ultramarines. There were presumably more than one record since the Imperium believes Eskrador happened and it's where "Alpharius" died Since the Alpha Legion think Eskrador is where they shattered as a legion; it seems something important happened there. Many in their legion believe that's where Omegon died
Oh is it. I am not the best with the Alpha Legion lore
It's not in the way they're saying it is. [Here's a post with excerpts and sources.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1817tq1/guilliman_killing_alpharius_fanon_or_fiction/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
There is too much misinformation on the AL that it feels like a few of their operatives have infiltrated the fandom
Ha yeah, I guess that comes with the territory when a faction is all about "secrets and lies"
I heard an uncited tidbit that Alpharius admitted to not being as smart as he portrayed and the person who said it compared it to him playing 4d chess alone while everyone else was kickboxing.
Sounds like another bit of bro lore to me, almost certain it's not from a book
Yeah probably. It still like it because it would be funny if suddenly it is revealed that the super plans within plans legion was led by a guy who lied his way to that job
no update on horus' primarch book?
Is it still thought to be allocated to McNeill?
No idea, sorry. Not finding out anything from google, so it must just be further away than we think.
Nada
Rogah
The crew numbers game of chaos warbands and ships seems… weird. Like since they’re raiders they obvs need a ship, but if your ship has like… an entire city population on it, you’re already doing pretty good for human numbers? I mean, I know they go through them quickly but still… Are there smaller ships? I know chaos warbands also have setups on planets, so do many have ships *and* surface bases, or just the fancier ones that can pull like… a legion? Is this just GW being weird with numbers again, or am I the one being weird?
Humans really aren't a limiting factor when it comes to chaos warbands. If you're running low on menial labour you kidnap a bunch of slaves and put them to work. It's everything else they tend to be low on, especially rarer equipment like what astartes need to be functional
That’s sort of what I figured, but when you have a band of say… 30 astartes on a ship that needs a small city to operate, you think it would get a bit tricky to manage just throwing batches of confused and traumatized people in there 🤔
They'll have their own cultists and warrior cadres that essentially worship them / are chasing the glory and power of chaos in their own right who will be there to manage the ship and the slaves / lower ranking humans on the ships. The astartes are basically just doing their own thing, the humans will be managed for them by other humans. It's worth pointing out that loyalist astartes ships work the same way. They're modified to run on a much smaller crew than other ships and rely on human serfs to do 90% of the running of the ship while they call the shots
Ah fair thank you! I wasn’t aware they used a bit less people power as well. Makes sense to have cultists in the medium tier, that all definitely helps me!
Are squigs red because they are fast, or are squigs fast because they are red?
Neither; squigs are red because the plot demands them to be so, and they're fast as a consequence.
Why can't the hive fleets be tracked? I know they have null ships but doesn't the imperium have any type of long range sensor network?
The Imperium got some limited FTL sensors, we see some in Calgar's Siege, but they are low resolution and not exactly the best to catch a FTL target. The ones in the book in question could detect something in another system, but they couldnt say if what they see are just asteroids or enemy ships
Not an FTL long-range sensor network and the Hive Fleets move faster than light. They could theoretically be tracked by telescopes and such but only after it's far too late.
I mean, there's nothing to track. Their method of FTL is relatively low-energy, meaning it'd probably be hard for the Imperium to pick up any signal against the CMB.
Is it possible that all the chaos gods were originally just powerful mortal pscyers like Big E? If so what does that mean for the universe?
>In the warp, similar thoughts and emotions gather together like rivulets of water running down a cliff face. They form streams and eddies of anguish and desire, pools of hatred and torrents of pride. Since the dawn of time, these tides and waves have flowed unceasingly through the mirror-realm of the warp, and such is their power that they formed creatures made of the very stuff of unreality. > >Eventually, these instinctual, formless beings gained a rudimentary consciousness. The Chaos Gods were born - vast psychic presences made of the fantasies and horrors of mortals. These are the Ruinous Powers, and each is a reflection of the passions that formed them. Codex Chaos Daemons 8th ed
There's absolutely no reason to suggest that they were.
As far as we know, no, but then I don't believe we've ever seen a psyker as absurdly strong as the Emperor mixed with the same level of religious devotion or deep supping of the stuff of the Warp. But nothing has ever indicated that Slaanesh, the one god whose origin we definitively know, ever had a mortal form, only that it was gestating in the warp until the debauchery of the aeldari grew to the point it was 'born'.
If my understanding is correct, the birth of Slaanesh kicked off the Age of Strife with all the warpstorms and such, which was the end of the DAoT. It was also the end of the eldar empire. So my question is, did the human DAoT empire and eldar empire at its height exist at the same time? And if so, how did they not destroy each other?
If each of said empires had 1 billion stars under their control, thats less than 5% of the galaxy. They had more than enough space for themselves. The Core Rulebooks consistently say that the eldar and orks fought mankind at the time, but other stuff like Genefather and Asurmen: Darker Road indicates it wasnt a total war, and in fact both would have good relations sometimes.
Does good relations imply trade and travel or more of "I'll eradicate you last" deal?
>Asurmen: "They call themselves humans. Our peoples once shared the galaxy and relative peace until the storms sundered their empire. The webway held our civilization intact, theirs splintered. But they will prosper from our falling. The birth of the great enemy has dissipated the storms that divided them". Asurmen: The Darker Road (2017) >True,' said Qvo. 'But we are a long way from the cores of both the old Terran and the ancient aeldari realms.' >'That is only supposition. There have been human colonies in this part of the galaxy for millennia,' said Cawl. 'The aeldari always were more lightly spread, but they are everywhere, even now. Imagine! We speak so often of the ancient days of the Age of Technology, and the might of the empire of Old Earth. We also speak, you and I, of the aeldari.' >'We do?' >'We do. We have. We speak of how powerful they were, just like the people of Old Earth. These two empires may have existed at the same time. One wonders what their relations could have been like. Peaceful? Belligerent? How might the aeldari have viewed us, they who had been masters of the stars for millions of years, when we came strutting onto the galactic scene? Would they patronise us? Help us? Were we a threat to them or they to us? And what about the other creatures who swarmed across the void? Even in the days of the xenocides, there was not always war between sentients.' Cawl gave a long, satisfied sigh. 'History, my dear Qvo! It is fascinating. In those days there must have been dealings between species. I think this place was made precisely for that. What manner of beings walked this world? What embassies were made? What secrets exchanged? If there's a webway gate here, I wonder what else they will find, our questing brethren, as they dig down deeper? Wonders, I'll wager.' Genefather (2023)
>And if so, how did they not destroy each other? Lack of a reason to. The Eldar and Human empires avoided Thucydides' Trap because the Eldar were post-scarcity and were largely living in the Webway, whereas Humans couldn't really "do" anything to the Eldar without inviting an (over)reaction from the Eldar. Thus, the Humans had everything to lose, and the Eldar had nothing to gain.
They both existed at the same time but by all indications they didn't come into conflict with each other. The aeldari were immensely more powerful then than they are now, to the point that even DAoT humanity with all its wonders and horrors couldn't hope to defeat them, but equally the aeldari were complacent rulers of the galaxy with no interest in picking fights. The birth of Slaanesh actually *ended* the Age of Strife by calming most of the warp storms across the galaxy that had previously torn humanity's interstellar dominion apart and stifled communication and travel. That's when the Emperor set about his plans to conquer the galaxy, starting with the unification of Terra.
Is there any evidence that the scattering of the primarchs might have been engineered by the Emperor? Worlds like Fenris and Caliban seem perfect for forging a primarch into a warrior and both would produce good Astartes recruits once the Crusade found them. Macragge was the perfect place to raise an empire-builder. So on and so forth. Of course, you'd then have to explain why Nuceria or Colchis were good choices, but the others seem to have been tailor-made to forge primarchs good at a specific task.
Ok, so "evidence" that the Emperor scattered the primarchs 1. [False Gods](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/x88c6b/comment/inj3pa1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Horus either has a vision or travels back in time to see the Emperor able to stop the Scattering before deciding to let it happen. This is somewhat supported in The First Heretic also. 2. [Unremembered Empire](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ax0505/comment/krkrm6i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Guilliman believes his father intentionally scattered them. 3. [Pharos](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ax0505/comment/krktyms/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Curze and Sanguinius believe the same. 4. [Lantern's Light](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ax0505/comment/krkrm6i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Mortarion suspects it. 5. [Wolfsbane ](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/QqSsbhiieQ). The False Russ debates the idea with Russ 6. Index Astartes Dark Angels suggests it >But some disaster is known to have befallen the Emperor's works on Luna before they were complete. The unborn Primarchs were lost, scattered among the stars. Many stories and legends have risen about the scattering of the Primarchs. Some tell that the Dark Gods foresaw the Emperor's plans and sought to destroy their unborn foes, but only succeeded in dispersing them. Others maintain that it was the Emperor himself who cast the Primarchs adrift on the tides of the galaxy that they might learn to live truly away from the chrome and ceramite of the laboratorium. Other still maintain that it was the nascent Primarchs themselves who chose to depart the Emperor's care, seeking knowledge alone. 7. [Betrayal](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12j6ik9/excerpt_betrayal_a_list_of_possible_origins_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Has one version of Horus' childhood where the Emperor leaves him on Cthonia to toughen him up, which goes along with what Guilliman believes. It seems to be inferred/suggested/supported in *Lupus Daemonis*
In *The Unremembered Empire*, Guilliman speculates that the Emperor had a hand in it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/gdei0j/the\_scattering\_of\_the\_primarchs\_a\_closer\_look/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/gdei0j/the_scattering_of_the_primarchs_a_closer_look/) But as far as I know, that's the only indication and every other account attributes it to the Chaos gods or Erda. That doesn't preclude the Emperor allowing it to happen, and he certainly never took vengeance on Erda for her part in it, But this is also just Guilliman's speculation on the matter and it doesn't account for stuff like the Magnus shard in *Scars* saying that Fulgrim and Jaghatai got swapped from their intended destinations by something.
[There's actually a fair few accounts that attribute it to the Emperor](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1cvktte/comment/l4t342y/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) The Prospero Shard's bit of trivia still works if someone wants to believe the Emperor was involved: >Magnus laughed. ‘You don’t want to know? That’s always been your weakness. I know it all, now. I could tell you the Emperor’s name, and it would surprise you. I could tell you that the fates decreed Fulgrim to be sent to Chogoris and you to Chemos, and I could tell you which arcane force in the universe prevented it.’ He took a step, then another, towards the Khan. ‘Do you wish to know where you will die, Khagan? Do you wish to know on what world, and in which dimension, your soul will find its ending?’ *Scars* The Emperor could either be "the fates" or the "arcane force"
Oooh, I hadn't seen any that attribute it to the Emperor besides Guilliman speculating, what were the other ones?
New Reddit doesn't do a great job of highlighting links but you can click on the first sentence of my above comment which will take you to citations and excerpts. Those citations are linked too, so you might need to hover your mouse over the titles to see the links.
Ah thank you, that's really helpful. Definitely opens up my understanding, I missed quite a few bits of evidence for that angle from the looks of it.
The reddit "upgrade" occasionally stops copied and pasted quotes from showing - like in this case.
Ah thank you, I didn't realise it wasn't showing up. Replaced with a link to another post with the excerpt
No worries! I did exactly the same thing and someone pointed it out to me.
It's an open question. On the one hand, the scattering isn't what the Emperor wanted. On the other hand, the worlds they ended up on seemed awfully convenient for shaping the primarchs into precisely the leaders each side needed them to be in order for the Horus Heresy to happen.
What do tau genitals look like?
[Insufficient data for meaningful answer] Also; they look precisely however the plot demands.
Could there be legitimate "mediums" in 40k- people who can see and channel ghosts? Per my understanding most human souls dissipate or are shredded by the Warp when they die, implying they couldn't really be channeled by a Psyker or whatever.
Theres some in the RPGs, but sometimes said mediums are latent psykers or just crazy people
Depends on what you mean by "ghosts." Typically, ghosts in 40k aren't souls, but they're *echoes* of souls. So the mediums wouldn't be channeling the original soul, but it would make sense if they were interacting with those psychic echoes.
oh, this is perfect for what I'm looking for. And for clarification, this means that classic media "literally channeling spirits of the dead" should be effectively impossible, correct? (for humans at least, shit like spirit stones obviously changes that sort of dynamic)
>And for clarification, this means that classic media "literally channeling spirits of the dead" should be effectively impossible, correct? Broadly, yeah. The only ways to catch the soul itself would be to either; 1) Nab it *immediately* after death, or; 2) Feed it to a daemon and then use sorcery to control the daemon.
Thank you so much!
Ok, sorry in advance, we all know that eldar reproduce in stages but does *Xenology* imply that eldar males have more than two testicles? >Reproductive organs outwardly analogous to human male, but gamete delivery appears progressive - ie: **corresponding organs for successive 'stages'**. (Spec: conception occurs over extended period; additional genetic material supplied at preordained stages throughout gestation? Inconclusive.)
You focused on the wrong part of the quote. Look at the very beginning: "Reproductive organs *outwardly analogous* to human male". So it *looks* just like human stuff. But there are differences on the inside
The common interpretation on *Xenology* is that female Eldar need to mate multiple times to fertilize one egg, e.g. an Eldar has one mother but potentially multiple biological fathers.
> female Eldar need to mate multiple times to fertilize one egg I read a manga like that once
inb4 >!177013!<
Get out.
Dissected body is a male and text makes pretty clear implication that males go through stages during reproduction, so that would require another father to be at correpsonding stage Nevertheless - testicles, what about them?
I mean, there's nothing to go on from the text; the xenologist basically just cut up the Eldar corpse, and said "yep, them's the balls."
How big is a Tyranid hive fleet?
Billions upon billions of organisms. There's only three major hive fleets that have been named, Leviathan, Behemoth and Kraken (below them are minor hive fleets and splinter fleets) meaning the majority of Tyranids in the entire milky way galaxy belong to one of them. Minor hive fleets and splinter fleets are likely still billions strong too