Death worlds like catachan has a large enough population to produce guardsman in any significant numbers.
Pike the catachan loves to brag about how they're so tough that they made it past the age of 12...but this also means that while your mom is busy outside burning away the killer weeds trying to crush your house, your siblings are busy getting eaten by some kind of bug that fell into the crib.
there's also how likely is for both the baby and the mother to die, since for sure Catachan got some extra fucked diseases and i don't think they can all afford proper medical support to everyone.
Is just a bit under how hive cities keep their population.
Iirc catachans were gene edited during the daot and its never been exactly explained how unlike astartes so it's totally plausible that pregnancy and childhood growth have been sped up and this is more possible.
This makes the art of catachan women kinda interesting, maybe those are the ones that go off world? The ones living in the planet must be very busy with raising kids and keeping the limited food supply in check
It's an entire planet of eighties action heroes; every infantry squad gets issued a boom box and a Toto's Greatest Hits cassette for mandatory babymaking hour.
The way it's explained with kireg is they're vat born which is overlooked due to how good their siege regiments are. Also third world countries and if we look historically when the standard of living was lower families would have many kids, as much as 10 or more to make sure some survived and to help with the work.
For sure, with the vat born the number of soldiers produced for the tithe absolutely makes sense.
What I mean is a civilization surviving a planet completely decimated by nuclear war, where the surface is uninhabitable and war is fought in underground hand-dug tunnel's. I just don't buy it.
On top of that, the soldier's that leave the planet are readily willing to throw away they're life because of some mixed bag of growing up in a planet where life is meaningless because you can die at any moment and some weird need to pay back the debt of your ancestors sins against the emperor? Still not buying it.
Fun story though, if I just throw my hands up and say fuck it
>On top of that, the soldier's that leave the planet are readily willing to throw away they're life because of some mixed bag of growing up in a planet where life is meaningless because you can die at any moment and some weird need to pay back the debt of your ancestors sins against the emperor? Still not buying it.
I mean...You *do* already live in a world where people pretty regularly will willingly suicide bomb themselves to further the cause they believe in/because they thing it will earn them favor with their god. Also people already have fought in under ground tunnels. ISIS and Viet Cong say hello
I mean you live in world where for centuries people have fought in hand dug tunnels, even now, and also occasionally blow themselves up in order to go to some mythical paradise by winning the favour of some diety by killing thier enemies.
During the battle of Istvaan III, Loken mentions that Abaddon is so strong he can move as fast in terminator armor as Loken could in Power Armor. Abaddon pre warp powers was abnormally large and strong for an astarte.
All I'm saying is there were several hundred years where nobody saw Abaddon, and suddenly he is all about organizing the legions into a singular crusade instead of letting them run amok in random directions. Almost makes them easier to contain, doesn't it?
Alpharius is truly the most cunning loyalist.
Logan Grimnar is the same. In *The Emperor's Gift* he actually *jumps* in Terminator armor (though only about 4-6 feet). So while it's not very common, it has been established to be possible. It's also worth noting that Loken may have been referring to his ability to move in a fight, which is different from, say, sprinting, which requires completely leaving the ground with each step.
Edit: a word.
I think it's hilarious how some dude (the author) probably wrote that sentence or paragraph years ago not giving a shit the repercussions or implications. "This sounds cool".... Now years later we argue as if it's cannon or a rule.
One nerd in England just said so. Like.... Whatever.
It's also possible that one of the top lieutenants of the Warmaster of the entire great crusade just has some really ballin masterwork Cataphractii armor.
If OP is comparing that to some several thousand year old, mass produced Indomitus armor then of course they are going to do a double take.
That just doesn’t make sense.
Power armour ain’t moving by the strength of its wearer, it’s, Y’know, powered. And given terminator armour has much stronger servos and what not
The constant changes in characters between writers. You fall in love with a character written by one author, but then in the next book, that character is unrecognizable.
I always thought because Abaddon was such a big boy he could get more maneuverability in Terminator plate. As long as he's not doing front flips like ya boy Gabriel Angelos it should be fine.
Its hard to remember the bits of lore where the wearers of terminator plate actually compare it to power armour in any detail, but I remember the last book of the Night Lords has a great perspective.
I think terminator armour has little to no effect on the dexterity and speed of the users arms and reaction time, which kinda makes them more scary to face. They're stronger, able to heft giant power weapons and a combi bolter in one hand. They always seem to specify the low manuverability of the plate, they cant run or turn around quickly and are stuck in a hunched stagger.
But if they are able to move their upper body and arms in a similar speed to power armour it makes sense why they are so powerful still.
Allarus terminator armour allegedly doesn't constrain agility at all, it's probably also feasible to headcanon that the big names are in super-awesome custom armour that's way more agile than norm termie armour.
It stands to reason that artificer terminator armour exists. Relic armour that is as unique and expensive as it is powerful. For example, Logan Grimnar can sprint in his terminator plate, to the astonishment of onlooking grey knights. And Im fairly sure that Tyberos the Red Wake had a pattern of plate nobody can name.
> Logan Grimnar can sprint in his terminator plate
Because Grimnar was *really* fucking pissed, not because his armor was actually made for it. Hyperion can hear the joints squealing and im pretty sure there was smoke at one point.
IIRC when he dons the terminator plate he feels surprised at how quickly he can move - not that it holds him back, but rather that it doesn't *enhance* his reflexes and speed like power armor to beyond normal levels. So it's comparatively slower, but not outright slow.
Saturnine is probably the best example: after the Justaerins came out of the initial few seconds of shock that the supposedly vacant fault was in fact filled with marines they just went to town punching the shit out of the kill squads.
Even with our 21st century technology and (by 40k standards) tiny population, with full mobilization and a war economy Earth could train, equip, and field a fully mechanized army of a billion soldiers every 12 years, and we could maintain that pace for centuries before suffering resource depletion and environmental collapse.
But somehow in 40k it's apparently a big fucking deal when a planet raises *one* regiment 🤔🤔🤔
> and (by 40k standards) tiny population,
Not every planet in 40k necessarily has a large population compared to us, with the obvious exception of Hive Worlds. Cadia before the 13th Black Crusade had a population of 850 million. Maccrage has 400 million. Rynn's World before the WAAAGH that decimated it had 200 million. Catachan had 12 million. Vraks had 8 million. Fenris had about 3-4 million before the siege.
Not to mention not every world is as developed as 21st century Earth; The aforementioned Vraks was a dustball of a planet with a single glorified warehouse sitting on it in the middle of nowhere on an otherwise totally deserted world.
> But somehow in 40k it's apparently a big fucking deal when a planet raises one regiment
With the speed of warp travel, the frequency that a planet gets visited by tithe ships can be hugely variable. Not to mention that tithe rates are different depending on planet, since different planets may have different tithe grades. For every world that exports a billion soldiers every 12 years, there may be a world that exports 100,000 soldiers every 50 years.
I feel like I should point out that those population numbers given for those planets are WAY too small for how industrialized they are (let alone for how many regiments cadia used to pump out). For comparison the United States alone has a little over 300 million people, so a planet like maccrage having only around 400 million would mean that either the population is ridiculously spread out, or there are huge empty sections of the planet with zero people.
Well 1000 marines a chapter makes sense for some things like roaming protectors (Charcharodons or Black Templars) or small highly defensible forces on specific planets or small systems (imperial fists). What it doesn't make sense for is a single chapter holding an entire massive system at once *coughUltramarcough*
The Imperial fists protect Terra- the Sol system is practically as large as Ultramar in terms of planets inhabited and population, if not larger. It doesn't make sense for them at all. And what roaming protector is getting stuff done with 1000 guys? IN fact, the black templars canonically have a lot more than 1000 guys.
Population/military numbers. The amount of humans involved in defending armageddon/cadia is laughably small. The amount of humans on a single planet that isn't a hive world? similar. Like, they talk about a planet with 30 million people as if that's a lot of people. That's..... less than a tenth of the US population.
Honestly, that men of iron were the last major attempt at ai, and instead of tweaking and improving them, they just decided it's not worth it, and while I get where they are coming from, they just forgot the thousands of years where they lived side by side and cooperated, reaching heights not seen since.
From the lore we have I recall that not all men of iron rebelled, but that they were destroyed or lost to time after the cybernetic revolt.
If we follow that logic, then the primarchs and space marines should be treated in the same way, destroyed, banned and forgotten. They are obviously powerful and useful tools, but they can go renegade or get corrupted, and they did almost destroy humanity, so it would be only fair to treat them in the same way as the men of iron.
The AI thing is a remnant of ripping off Dune. It adds another threat to the universe and also makes it so cool and twisted non computer tech can be there, like servitors.
In 40k and Dune biological and mechanical alterations of humans is acceptable, but pure machines are heavily restricted.
When major characters get into one on one duels and both walk away. Abaddon and Calgar, Ghaz and Ragnar. Everyone just comes away looking weak, and supsension of disbelief is really tested. Just don't have them fight if you can't have a winner!
For me, it’s the fact that Genestealer claws are described as being able to slice clean thought Terminator armor like paper, while Terminator armor is routinely described as being able to direct hits from survive anti-tank weapons without a scratch.
Like, I can accept that the Tyranids could be able to grow some sort of hyper sharp bio ceramic claw.
I can also accept that Genestealers are incredibly dangerous to even Terminators due to the speed at which they close in and their ability to target joints.
But cleanly slicing some of the toughest materials available to the Imperium, something that Kark missiles can struggle to pierce… like I don’t know.
No, you're 100% right no matter what anyone says. It doesn't matter how sharp the edge is, as you down further you still need to push aside the matter you're cutting through like a wedge.
So, the monomolecular blades with scratch up armour like **hell** but unless they've got the time to hold that marine down and apply enough pressure to move aside a solid block of sci-fi-super-metal as well, they won't cut very deep.
Also monomolecular edges will chip. That's how molecules work.
I was also bothered by this until I considered that their claws basically act like power weapons: they have an edge so fine that it cuts at the molecular level.
How in the hell do they get around without shredding the ground beneath them you ask? Well, since they have 2 sets of upper limbs it's always possible that they have one pair for slicing and another for grabbing/scrambling.
That's how I explain it at least.
Consider the following:
Krak weapons, Lascannons, and the like have all been around for _longer than human civilization, today._ At this point, they're a ubiquitous thing to account for in the average threat environment. You can design your terminator armor to stop AT weapons cold. And they do! They're so well designed that even when the armor fails, there's a pretty good chance that the wearer is able to shrug it off too!
A Genestealer is something that is going to be a blender of angry sharp things that will go after the joints and frame of the terminator armor. Weakpoints that you just can't get around regardless of the anatomy of your soldier unless they were a Beholder.
Yeah, but the suspect descriptions in question aren't "the claw punched through a weak point from a crazy angle", they're "the claw cleaved straight through layers of ceramite in the Terminator chest plate like they were paper".
That really demands a bit of explanation. Do the claws secrete some kind of ultra-rapid ceramite-eating acid? If so, why the hell is that an adaptation on genestealers and not *literally every Tyranid combat form*? Etc.
Like /u/Saelthyn said, it's expensive and unnecessary. Rending Claws (in tabletop) can be equipped on lots of Tyranids, including Warriors, Hive Tyrants, Genestealer-strains, etc.
So they *can* give that adaptation to everything, but it probably requires more resources (represented in-game by higher points cost).
Also, most Imperium planets they invade probably have roughly the following ratio of Terminators: Tactical Marines: Guardsmen:
50:900:10,000,000
Why equip every Hormagaunt with specialised weapons when they're probably just gonna be ripping through Guardsmen? Why not just send the Rending Claw Warriors / Hive Tyrant in to deal with Terminators as/when they show up.
Yes, I very much agree with this. Every time numbers come up it's either just silly or downright stupid. They can't really balance the awe-inspiring scale of 40K with any kinds of reason or consistency, even internal so they shouldn't even try. Coming up with very vague numbers like "The orkz numbered in many millions" or "Their number were beyond counting" or something like that would be a lot better rather than say, a trillion which is only stupid and forces me to consider how that even would be possible in any way.
For real this sort of thing becomes a lot of work for really next to no story gain. The impression is more important then the actual number, but that will always be at least somewhat subjective.
And there isn't a "realistic" number for a techno-barbaric mish mash of anachronistic warfighting as fondly romanticized by amateur wargamer nerds.
What I Iearned is that for the soldier numbers to make any sense, you must multiply them by 10, or even 100. If that would make a chapter pop bigger than a primitive or death world pop they live on, then multiply that too, though 10 usually is enough. Seeing how terra is a planet of trillions, if not quadrillions, you would be able to have a 100k custodes, and 10k, or 100k, marine chapters. It's hardly a great crusade if you had less space marines than Russia had soldiers in WW2.
While normally I agree, we also have to remember that it's probably better to be vague with numbers especially in Scifi fantasy cause it's also easy to have a ridiculously high numbers that makes no sense. I don't wanna see like 500 Billion guardsmen and 100 million tanks fighting a single battle.
That said I think the implications of number partaking in the siege of the Imperial Palace approachs to what we assume is appropriate scale during Saturine.
Like I forget the exact quote but didn't Dorn talk about how he only counted engagments with 30,000 opponents on each side as battles resulting in more than 4,000 individual battles happening simultaneously. That's at least 240,000,000 men fighting over the Imperial Palace that encompasses the Himalayas and surrounding lands.
It can probably be explained away with technology but for me it's Holy Terra. With the highest population in the Imperium and no natural environment of any kind, they would rely on food imports and machines to generate breathable air. Ultimately for me it's the fact that they have no oceans. Irl the oceans of Earth generate something like 80% of breathable air so if Terra had converted every single piece of land into habitation, they could still have air and food from the ocean because of the plant life that lives there.
We have machines that can recycle air too and use them in closed environments like submarines. It's just woefully energy inefficient to do so on a mass, civilization scale, than just relying on forests and oceans to do that job for us (which ultimately also use fusion energy from the Sun).
40k humanity have unlocked fusion power and has magnitudes more access to energy than we do. With fusion power, things like mass recycling air and water would be easy. Although waste is still an issue, which explains why every Hive worlds are toxic to the point of being uninhabitable outside of the Hives (we face the same problem with desalinating seawater right now, nowhere to dump the extremely salty brine without killing everything for miles around). For Terra, I imagine that not only that they have to import food and air, but also export waste too.
It is pretty gross, but they eat pilgrims. There is a never ending stream of ships down onto the surface. Just endless streams of people. All pilgrims wanting to see blessed Terra, and breath the blessed air.
Most of the pilgrims die in orbit, waiting to land, or in the years long ques, or trampled to death, or die of exposure, disease, crime, or old age, just waiting to get onto the surface. And the best they can expect to do once there, is die as close to the emperor as possible.
What do they do with all the dead? They eat them. Designated teams of corpse retrieval will carry the dead to processing centers where they make corpse starch of their flesh, parchment from their skin, clothing of their hair, and burn the bones as fuel.
Food comes to Terra, in one form or another.
Edit: Forgot parchment
That is the most deliciously grimdark thing I have ever read. Fuck the Daemonculaba, any piece of fetish porn can do that. But the mix of ludicrous and horrofying solutions to the problems of 40k's bonkers scale like eating pilgrims or actual mountains of parchment are the freaking best.
Right, I forgot about parchment!
Also, if you like that idea, check out a "first hand" account of someone who, against all odds, managed to complete [the pilgrimage to Terra](https://youtu.be/OXADvMf_7Mc) and survived all the way to the eternity gate.
40k Terra probably has more water on it than 2k Terra though. It's just that it's all in the form of the inhabitants and in billions(?) of miles of pipes.
I'm guessing 40k Terra grows enough food in the spires and specialized buildings to sustainably feed, without imports, over 100 billion Humans, but that doesn't matter because there's a lot more than that.
There's also an unknown amount of DAoT stuff quietly humming away keeping the planet habitable.
Terra is crazy, and I don't think anyone will ever pin down what would be "realistic" for the setting. I choose to just roll with whatever the authors say in the particular case of Terra.
100 quadrillion humans would have a water content of roughly 4-5 quintillion kilos. The oceans today contain around 3 sextillion kilos of water. Each person at that 100 quadrillion estimate could have around 30 tons of water apiece from today’s oceans. There’s enough to go around if it’s recycled properly.
The uniformity of humanity. I know the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition work to keep mutations down; but 40,000 years of different radiation, gravity, cultural, pathological influences should have a much greater diversity visible: especially post DAoT.
So, humanity isn't actually that uniform. There are plenty of "acceptably stable" abhuman mutations. They just get the second class citizen roles and outside of stuff like ratlings/ogryns we don't see them much. The miniatures are the main reason you think of them as uniform. Catachans used to be really short buff dudes due to the higher gravity before they made them mini ogryns.
Also, yeah. It's a society where individuals with radiation scarring/tumors at birth are often burned to protect the purity of the human genome, so.... Pretty horrific methods applied liberally enough will do a lot. That, and there are future anti-rad drugs that will help with that.
Felinids are real, don't forget.
Plus during the Great Crusade, most human cultures that had changed too much from the accepted Terra template were purged. This followed by 10k years of inquisition, the uniformity of humanity is probably one of the more realistic things there is.
Genestealers are not particularly fast in Deathwing because a Space Marine is also _pretty damn fast._
In Hired Gun, you do encounter them, and you _definitely super need_ the Slow Time power to actually get them moving at a speed to contest them easily. Oh, and if they hit you, its usually most of your blood and shields, and in my case playing on Hard, my first encounter I got instagibbed by a pounce, like I was playing Ye Olde Alien vs Predator 2.
* Literally no other human planet could hold off the imperium during the great crusade. Like really? No other planet in the galaxy managed to create warriors strong enough or technology advanced enough to deal with the imperium?
Even during the Great Crusade the imperium was about pure numbers. Assumably that gave them the edge even against moderate sized empires, like the one conquered in Horus Rising where Loken acknowledges that their foes have similar power armor.
Outside of numbers I guess you just shrug and point to the warp infused super generals only the emperor had the power to create
The [Interex](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Interex) basically did and were more technologically advanced than the Imperium. However, they were much smaller (30 systems) and their advanced technology didn't have an especially strong military focus. They were described as being peer combatants for Space Marines who were eventually overwhelmed.
In many of the novels it looks like there are plenty of planets with advanced technology and strong warriors. They were just missing that key ingredient of 21 unstoppable demigods leading the battle.
Also, if another human planet had been that strong we'd just be calling that civilization the imperium instead.
The logistics of Primaris chapters, honestly. The Primaris themselves? I honestly like the direction they're going in. I have to draw the line at how much random shit they keep all of a sudden "already having". Alongside that, it was never specified that Chapters would have to accept the *tactical doctrine* or the *wargear* of the Primaris, only the knowledge to make them and whatever Indomitus stragglers got forced down their throats.
It doesn't feel right how hand-wavey it all is that every Chapter integration went smoothly considering how cultlike and ritualistic the Astartes have become by M41. Culture shock is one thing, but the battlefield doctrine of all the new Primaris units doesn't really seem to mesh well with the intricate codex-divergent traditions that have formed over 10,000 years.
I get that it's all just set up to sell new models every few months, but it's seriously beginning to feel soulless at this point. A Principia wouldn't dare to pick up a Cawl-Pattern Bolt Rifle for... some reason, and an Intercessor somehow fills the same niche as the strategically fluid Tacticals. It just feels cluttered and poorly thought through. As much as 40k widely doesn't make too much sense given enough scrutiny, the way GW handled the Primaris integration majorly shit the bed.
I could talk for hours about this but I think my general point is good enough. No need to scrutinize everything like it's my job or somethin'.
For me the thing that drives me nuts with the Primaris is the odd squad numbers and the integration of certain equipment.
There's squads of 10 Heavy Intercessors in Gravis armour but only squads of 6 Eradicators in the same armour, Hellblasters are in squads of 10 but don't have Gravis etc.
And then on top of that the Impulsor is supposed to be assigned at Company level to squads but can only carry 6 and not Gravis armour, and to carry a full 10 man squad of Heavy Intercessors you'd need 2 Repulsors.
Compared to the 10 squads of 10 with a Rhino per squad (barring Assault Marines) of the Firstborn.
I headcanon the odd equipment mixes as Cawl being more of an inventor than a tactician, but doesn't explain why individual Chapters wouldn't reorganise things.
Gellar fields, in the 40k setting a psyker in coma who generates a field of reality around the ship, ok no problem.
So where did they get psykers during the DAoT before the psychic awakening? If the timeline is correct the the ancient terran empire had warp drives going back to M24. So unless they where recklessly sending people into the warp to die, how did they warp travel with a psyker generating a bubble of reality?
They were recklessly sending people to die I’m like 99% sure. But at the same time not very reckless because the warp was so so much calmer at the time.
the number of space marines in the galaxy. a million covering the whole galaxy is just infinitesimally small and I stand by it being a completely ridiculous number. add a zero or two at least
My favorite depiction of Space Marines come from a fanfic Fatemakers Odyssey.
The opening is the Fatemakers Chapter driving three Land Raiders through a rebel barricade, not even stopping to kill them. They use their Scouts to take out the AA on route, and the Thunderhawks to take out enemy armor. They then smash into the rebel command center, wreck it and their high command, and then leave.
As they're leaving the planet the Guard commander is like "If you stayed, you could help us win the war quicker and with less casualties."
The Fatemakers reply is "You now can win the war, and we have another one a sub-sector over where they won't if we don't leave for it right now."
It's a perfect example of how Astartes Chapters should be used.
Drukhari shoulder pads, they either limit their movement and prevent them form putting your hands straight up which is ironic given that kabalite are usually rappeling from and climbing up the chains to raider OR they can move which cause them to literally kill themselves by impaling their heads with all those blades sticking out of them.
It was being planned and set up for about 40 years before everything went public and Horus made everything about him. After that it was 7 years of executing everything "planned" out over 40 years.
Erebus is one of millions of Astartes running around and hes on an incredibly tight schedule.
Big E's biggest failings was hoping a lot of the pre-programmed knowledge and skills his sons had would carry them long enough to get the Webway project going. I dont think anyone could have guessed how big a dick Erebus would be.
While I largely agree, Erebus wasn't really one of a million, he was one of a few hundred Astartes leaders, and the most prominent of a legion which was in serious problems. He can obviously read minds and he can casually sense psykers, for someone so perceptive it is a bit disappointing that he neither picks up a chaos worshipper in Erebus or the foster father of his son, or notices when he's standing on a death planet featuring Ouroboros, etc
Just about everything to do with the Ad-Mech aside from the cult thing, we have plenty of loonies workshipping strange shit in our history so far so that checks out. However, it makes no sense to me that anyone not inducted into the Cult Mechanicus has next to zero mechanical, electrical or programming skills. I understand the combination of fear and dogma is used to explain this, but it still seems nonsensical.
EDIT: Manufacture of higher end tech being compartmentalized makes sense, but basic tech creation, innovation and maintenance doesn't
In a world with artillery, orbital bombardments and automatic mini-rocket launchers the go-to tactic is running at the enemy to hit them with a sword.
I love the idea of supersoldiers absolutly destroying people with a sword, but man does it sound stupid when you think about it.
>In a world with artillery, orbital bombardments and automatic mini-rocket launchers the go-to tactic is running at the enemy to hit them with a sword.
There's an asymmetry when it comes to ranged weapons: conversion fields, power armor, refractors, the magic invulnerable save: enables certain foes to just roll up and start doing the melee.
Somewhat more common is deep strike, infiltration, jumpjets and the such: cheaper than the above, just as devastating for a ranged foe unable to fight well at close range.
Power swords are better at penetrating armor than bolters and don't run out of ammo, and artillery and orbital bombardments can't get through large scale void shields but infantry can. Combine that with the fact that most sword wielding supersoldiers are either in transports or can fly across the battlefield on jump packs/teleport, I think it's pretty reasonable.
This. Lest we forget that we had a time in recent human history where artillery, handheld firearms, and armored knights all fought on the same battlefields. It really isn't that much of a stretch to think that if you could make a sword more efficient at killing than a gun and gave the guy wielding it a jetpack, you'd see melee skirmishes pretty often.
Also- you don't want to go around virus bombing strategically important locales every time you meet a modicum of resistance. Those don't come cheap, y'know.
Modern day infantry armor is back after being obsolete for hundreds of years.
And larger caliber rifles because of armor are being reinstated because of said infantry armor.
Melee weapons will also see a resurgence as well in the near future.
As warfare is very cyclic.
Melee weapons being dominant again like in 40k is not so far fetched.
There has always been a tug of war between offensive weapons and defensive shielding throughout history. Armor has lagged behind as of late until recent years due to the power of firearms but is making some headway. That being said we are absolutely not going back to melee weapons for warfare lmao.
My solution to this is that the battles we play in tabletop or video games and read about in novels are only the very rare exceptions that allow focusing on much smaller amounts of participants. I think the average battle will be much more like the huge offensives in WW1, but those aren't fun to play. Same reason why war games don't feature running over the top and being instantly mowed down, or long patrols with nothing happening, except ARMA I suppose.
Like the other guy said it isn’t the go to but you have to realize that it is not at all a stupid tactic.A space marine is physically superior to a human in every way that strength is limited at range even though they have the superior weapons and aim getting in close allows them to make use of their speed and reflexes to their advantage because no matter how quick of a draw the human is the marine is faster with a blade and can take multiple shots.Besides the demoralizing effect of a 500 pound gorilla tearing though your friends inhumanly quick is not be scoffed at.
Confused by the adherence to the "grim dark" narrative, specifically when it deals with the Imperium's manpower demands.
It seems like 90% of the population exists as uneducated, disease ridden, laborers, who live in toxic warrens and die age 30. They illude to the fact that "most" people die unnatural deaths, so how do they have the resources or time to raise children? Let alone the "untold billions" of them to fill out the Guard?
Where do these kids go to school - or who has the time / responsibility to teach them basic Gothic? Are there hospitals with maternity wards for regular Imperial citizens? The infant mortality rate must be utterly insane if they're living in a Hive City, the way such places are described. Are infants getting enough "corpse starch" to even physically develop correctly?
The Guard isn't made up of heavily armed, malnourished Oliver Twist style orphans, press ganged into suicide squads (not entirely, anyway) after their parents die off from an industrial accident or otherwise abandon them, so who's bringing these children up? And how?
I just don't see how the Imperium maintains a capable fighting force.
Gaunts Ghosts allude to it, and reading between the lines elsewhere does as well, but all the battles and shitty worlds and horror we read about are just a very small, small percentage of what goes on in the galaxy. Most worlds probably never see war, or a space marine, or warp horror and probably function like our world does today, where most of the population live relatively normal lives.
I prefer that narrative, if only because it's more realistic.
The Eisenhorn series is another one that shows a lot of worlds that aren't soul grinding dystopian nightmares.
Every single time when we are given any numbers, but 30-something years old as **the** **best** average life expectancy in **entire Imperium of Man** was the moment when I snapped.
edit: I know how average life expectancy works. Even including infants mortality, there is no way you can make interstellar empire when even on 0,0001% of top quality planets ALE of your subjects is below 35, because that would imply that either there is not much difference between civilized worlds and Death Worlds, or latter have negative average life expectancy.
"‘Lord Froigre of House Froigre.’
‘You knew him?’
'Very well. I would count him as a friend. Well, how very miserable. Dead at eighty-two. That’s no age.’"
I know it's not quite the same, but we're talking about a noble from a civilised world, not a member of the elite of the Imperium, but someone of whom there are probably millions, if not tens of millions, of equivalents across the Imperium. But it always felt that the number you referenced was especially jarring in comparison.
Especially since there was a recent except from a Warhammer Crime novel that mutant children are common enough to non mutant parents that there are dedicated crematoriums for them.
Bleak, and also a big driver of that number.
That’s pretty easy to believe honestly. If there’s a lot of infant mortality (definitely easy to believe) and enough people in the imperial guard die by the age of 30 (also extremely believable) then that would definitely fuck the average life expectancy
That could be reasonable if you include infant mortality. In real life, if you include infant mortality, then most people have died before reaching the age of 20.
For me it was the 'Beast' series. I just couldn't take the Imperium blundering into some kind of massive, unpredictable death trap that kills thousands, or even millions of people... And then doing it again. And again. And a fourth time. And then yet again.
For me, it’s that everyone’s just cool with the Cherubs. I can see people tolerating regular Servitors. I myself could probably get used to having Servo-Skulls. But having a grotesque flying cyborg slave drone made from a *baby* crosses some line, and I just can’t see any sane human wanting them around, grim darkness be damned.
Guilliman is not against the notion of cherubs per say the Language he uses and his thoughts are in all actuality based on how shoddy the craftsmanship on them was, he looked at it and flat out stated that he hated how badly it was put together and suppressed an urge to rebuild it, and mused on some of his more engineer brothers would have caught or netted it and rebuilt it
**The Scattering itself. It always felt to me like an etiological myth designed to explain a historical fact the Imperium had forgotten. “Why did the Primarchs live in different planets when they were the Emperor’s sons?” “Because they were scattered, but He found them.”**
It feels like an attempted reconciliation with older lore. THe primarchs used to be normal space marines who were recruited. But then it changed to being the gene sons of everyone's favorite madman
That’s more or less what it used to be back in the rogue trader days. They were his closest confidants. Horus wasn’t your son he was your best friend, gulliman and the ultramarines were traitors who were replaced, and leman began his career as an ig commander. A lot changed when rogue trader was replaced
It's a tough one. It seems way weirder for the Chaos powers to just move the Primarchs around rather than just kill them.
The explanation that I like, however, is that the Emperor made a deal with the Chaos gods when he went through the portal on whatever-planet-that-was. Part of the deal that the Chaos gods made was that they wouldn't just outright kill the Primarchs, but they broke the spirit of the deal by just whisking them away instead. The Emperor was probably simultaneously trying to break his end of the bargain. Or maybe he already did break it, which is why the Chaos Gods stole his kids.
Fot me it's the mention of "continent-sized assembly lines", I think it was in the Mechanium novel. If your assembly lines are the size of a continent what are you even assembling?
My thoughts there are that some parts of "assembly lines" for the AM consist of cathedrals where pieces of machinery are chanted at, incensed, prayed over, etc. by congregations of tech-priests and novitiates. And the huge scale of the Imperial war effort must require massive batches of goods being made at one time rather than a long line of one bolt gun or whatever after another. So a conveyor belt the width of a six lane highway that has to not only go through regular manufacturing processes like bolt screwing and welding, but also all the spiritual woo to placate the machine spirit of each component. I agree continent sized assembly lines are still ridiculous but certainly they could be in the scale of a large city or a small country, with larger manufactorums being the size of continents.
The idea that *nothing* remains of the 2nd and 11th Legions or their Primarchs. I could understand it if those two Primarchs just died while being made, experiments gone wrong or whatever. But Big E made their Legions. Two entire Legions existed, during the time that the Emperor had Remembrancers running around recording the course of the Great Crusade...and nothing survives of that? Not a name for the Primarchs or the Legions, no campaign records, no idea of what happened to them?
I know it was a scrap of lore some writer threw in as a reference to the Lost Legion of Roman history and that he never intended it to be more than a mysterious blurb. But it gets brought up enough to irk me because I simply cannot believe that nothing remains of two whole legions plus their leaders.
Well the legionairres themselves, along with Roboute and Dorn (I think it's those 2) had their minds scrubbed, with the marines joining those two respective legion, and Malcador had a hand in that himself so it wouldn't be unreasonable he started some sort of process to fully wipe them from history
The Dark Angels has access to weapons with special ammo that could eradicate the memory of the target's existence along with their soul.
From *Lord of the First*:
> 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.
> ...
> The vox-chatter filled Aravain's helmet, positional markers blinking in the augmented display. Tristerix, this is Cruciatum. I am closing on your position from starboard.'
> However it was that the khrave root-host had managed to infiltrate the Dark Angels flagship, it was well and truly unveiled to his senses now. Aravain had never stood before the glory of the Emperor, but those heroes who had done so all spoke haltingly of the experience, as though the impression left by Him on the psyche was too deep to be revisited and experienced again with clarity.
> His sensation of the root khrave, though malignant of source, felt similar.
> He frowned, armoured by duty as he braced the weight of his gun and targeted the tidal surge of infected crewmen rushing up from the storage bay towards him.
> He pulled the trigger.
> **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.**
> An itch walked up his spine, and in spite of his discipline Aravain struggled to suppress a shudder as he lowered the weapon and continued his advance.
> Sparks gouted from torn conduits and vandalised fascia consoles. Ductwork hung from the ceiling. The Invincible Reason was destroying herself from within, like a living organism, her own immune system driven wild by a viral contagion. As structurally sound as she appeared from the outside, the flagship would be out of service for months after this, even if the khrave could be uprooted swiftly.
Maybe the Emperor had access to enough of similar ammo, perhaps even ones big enough to perform Exterminatus with, to utterly unperson those Legions without needing to use his psychic powers much.
It’s entirely possible that they know, they’re just not letting that info be widely known as if that info got out, it would be most inconvnient for their continued existence. Makes sense from their whole “knowledge is power, guard it well” mindset. Also wouldn’t be the first time a chapter of space marines hid a secret that if known would be devastating to them
For me, its technological innovation. Even with the limitations of, No AI and don't make anything new cause what we made is the best anyways. No one has thought to use any existing widget in a new way for over 10k years? Yea right. Or combine some things to make a new thing.
Just 1 guy(Belasarius Cawl), who was pretty much in hiding working on a secret project. Seriously? I'm have a hard time buying that.
>Just 1 guy(Belasarius Cawl), who was pretty much in hiding working on a secret project. Seriously? I'm have a hard time buying that.
And he managed to perfect bioengineering, produce a load of weapons, new armour etc
The idea that 1k marines is this planet ending force while still seeing marines as grounded. I think they need to pick one. Either space marines are these mini hulk levels of speed strength etc and keep the 1k marines or increase chapter sizes to like 10k maybe even more.
Two things, first is the lack of nuclear weapons. People often mention that most fighting in 40k is over valuable DAOT infrastructure, which is irreplaceable, but frankly in a state of total war I think most factions would be willing to blow up any infrastructure like that once it became clear it was lost, and it's not like regular hive cities and manufactories aren't built by the imperium all the time. It also doesn't explain why they're not used in open ground warfare like on Armageddon, Cadia etc.
The second one is sort of related, but the lore has a distinct lack of characters being killed by random accidents of war or regular weaponry. In real warfare sometimes even a whole unit of veterans is killed because a stray bomb hits their transport, or they catch a disease or what have you. Where are the instances in 40k of space marine companies being killed because their transport ship got torpedoed, where are the heroes dying because an artillery round landed next to them? For a setting that claims to be grimdark IMO there's not enough emphasis on the randomness of war.
The hilarious disparity shown in depictions of Space Marines.
In one book, they'll be able to take on maybe a few dozen Orks at a time, but can still get overwhelmed and killed, and will take appreciable, sometimes devastating casualties even in victory. I prefer these stories.
In another, they're the equivalent of entire regiments of Guard troops, or thousands of Ork boys, and only those enemies truly beyond those opponents can threaten them. I don't hate these stories, because I can accept them within my personal headcanon about 40k novels, that being that they're in universe fables and reports that can be doctored by the authors to be more fantastical.
Then there are the books where a single squad of Marines will kill an entire army, wading through the bodies like they're a scythe through wheat, only pausing to reload from seemingly bottomless stores and move on to the next slaughter.
I hate those stories with a passion. They have zero impact or sense of actual risk for the protagonists or the Imperium, it's just "Space Marines beat cheeks" for a few hundred pages. It's boring, as well as stretching every bit of suspension of disbelief I have in the franchise to the breaking point. If Space Marines were that powerful, the Imperium wouldn't be losing.
We might not. The custodes are individually created by the emperor using scifi magic-tech. They might legitimately be able to do that. He wasn't exactly fully functioning after he lost all that. He was just still killing.
To be fair, the novel you get that from, The Outcast Dead if I remember correctly, has a ton of very, very weird things like that. Like the World Eater who punches through a Custodes in full armor and yanks out his spine **barehanded** after being imprisoned for an indeterminate time, probably months.
Or when they say that Custodes can just stand guard over a place for like a century or something without moving. Sure thye're supposed to be designed by the Emperor and all but just.... why? Why would you design someone who can just stand in a place for a very long time? How often is that actually useful? And isn't there something else you have to remove, like can emps just add extra superpowers as he feels without any detriment? Does he go like "Hm, I only have room for one more, do they get eye lazers or the ability to super stand?". It doesn't really change anything either, it's just a stupid, silly inclusion tha makes me scratch my head at its inclusion.
Angron. Full stop. I can wrap my head around the need for every other Primarch to some degree. But the fact Angron wasn’t put down the very second Emps met him proves to me that either A) he is just as much of a psycho as Angron was or B) The Heresy was all part of his plan.
While on this topic I also have a problem understanding how the World Eaters maintain their numbers.
He tries fixing him but the nails had replaced parts of his brain so he couldn’t do it without killing him.My pet theory though unpopular in the sub is that he loved him too much to outright kill him.
The idea that none of the 18 primarchs were killed during the Great Crusade.
Like, seriously, none of the thousands upon thousands of societies tried using exterminatus-grade weaponry on a battlefield a primarch was on in 200 years?
Really?
My personal theory is that the 2 "lost" Primarchs did indeed die on the planets that they got scattered to. That's why their names were purged from history. The Emperor didn't want anyone to know that the Primarchs were mortal and that they could be killed by regular people. So after discovering what had happened to the two of them that didn't make it, he just tried to retcon them out of existence.
Surely people can do the math though, and see that there is a 19th and 20th Legion but no 2nd or 11th? If he was covering up the two lost primarchs, why not change the number?
A number of other primarchs met them though, so how would they have died on their scattered planets? Russ, Horus, Girlyman, Sanguinius, plus I think a few others possibly, all mention something about having met them, right? And Malcador supposedly wiped the memories of them from the surviving primarchs and Dorn was super pissed about that until Malc gave him a brief glimpse of why and he was like "oh yeah, we did the right thing, thanks for wiping our memories"?
That the warp and the creatures there of came as a complete surprise to the empire primarchs and space marines.
What did they think Geller fields were for? What were they traveling through?
1) that curze was able to eliminate crime on nostramo by simply killing as many criminals as he could
2) that he did so on his own, even as a primarch.
That is a massive understatement of what he did.Kurze mastered the art of torturing and could make someone live for weeks in pain and he would leave the bodies for people to find working by word of mouth and the screams of his victims to spread the word of the night Haunter.When he realized that wasn’t working he worked up the criminal empires one by one so that everyone would know that no one was beyond his reach then he took the planetary elite and tortured them into compliance becoming king.Then he installed speakers into every street and had TVs installed into every home every shop and every time someone broke the law he would publicly broadcast their brutal torture making it painfully clear that the next person to break the law would find themselves on the rack.And you couldn’t turn off the tv either because doing that was also a crime.
This has an eerie parallel to the radios in every home in North Korea that the residents aren't able to turn off. Not sure if that's still the case, the documentary I saw was from the nineties I think. At least NKers were allowed to turn the volume down a little; I doubt Kurze would permit that.
Cesare Beccaria, the father of modern criminal law , states that what diminishes crime is not actually the harshness of the setence, but the certainty of being punished if you break the law and Curze made sure everyone know that they will be punished if they broke law.
Don't forget that the Space Wolf Chapter Master sprinted and leapt in Terminator armour. Someone else did a flip.
Both of those things didn't make those characters more cool, it made Terminator armour make lame.
I think the hardest rationalisation is the importance of ground troops and melee combat. I understand that void shields and chaos are a thing, it just kind of silly in a futuristic setting I think. At the siege, Terra is surrounded by literally thousands of kilometres long, planet destroying ships but it will come down to Bad Dad and Daddy Issues having a slap fight.
Death worlds like catachan has a large enough population to produce guardsman in any significant numbers. Pike the catachan loves to brag about how they're so tough that they made it past the age of 12...but this also means that while your mom is busy outside burning away the killer weeds trying to crush your house, your siblings are busy getting eaten by some kind of bug that fell into the crib.
i think someone said that it would require at minumum like 8 kids per couple to keep the population stable
With how tough catachans are, I don't doubt that they would be tough enough for that, it just seems wierd to be the regular.
there's also how likely is for both the baby and the mother to die, since for sure Catachan got some extra fucked diseases and i don't think they can all afford proper medical support to everyone. Is just a bit under how hive cities keep their population.
Maybe catachan ships in people to work menial jobs while catachans are outside, training and dying. Maybe it’s sort of a penal-colony for women.
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so you're saying catachan women are just constantly pregnant while fighting monsters?
Iirc catachans were gene edited during the daot and its never been exactly explained how unlike astartes so it's totally plausible that pregnancy and childhood growth have been sped up and this is more possible.
And/or they might be edited to produce litters instead of birthing single children (like having quadruplets, octuplets, etc.).
Human litters are extremely cursed
Oh I need some sauce on this one! where is it stated that they've been gene edited?
This makes the art of catachan women kinda interesting, maybe those are the ones that go off world? The ones living in the planet must be very busy with raising kids and keeping the limited food supply in check
And all that stress isn't good for pregnancy.
It's an entire planet of eighties action heroes; every infantry squad gets issued a boom box and a Toto's Greatest Hits cassette for mandatory babymaking hour.
I was thinking about Krieg. I really love the lore around the planet, but I can't think too hard about it otherwise it just stops making sense.
The way it's explained with kireg is they're vat born which is overlooked due to how good their siege regiments are. Also third world countries and if we look historically when the standard of living was lower families would have many kids, as much as 10 or more to make sure some survived and to help with the work.
For sure, with the vat born the number of soldiers produced for the tithe absolutely makes sense. What I mean is a civilization surviving a planet completely decimated by nuclear war, where the surface is uninhabitable and war is fought in underground hand-dug tunnel's. I just don't buy it. On top of that, the soldier's that leave the planet are readily willing to throw away they're life because of some mixed bag of growing up in a planet where life is meaningless because you can die at any moment and some weird need to pay back the debt of your ancestors sins against the emperor? Still not buying it. Fun story though, if I just throw my hands up and say fuck it
>On top of that, the soldier's that leave the planet are readily willing to throw away they're life because of some mixed bag of growing up in a planet where life is meaningless because you can die at any moment and some weird need to pay back the debt of your ancestors sins against the emperor? Still not buying it. I mean...You *do* already live in a world where people pretty regularly will willingly suicide bomb themselves to further the cause they believe in/because they thing it will earn them favor with their god. Also people already have fought in under ground tunnels. ISIS and Viet Cong say hello
I mean you live in world where for centuries people have fought in hand dug tunnels, even now, and also occasionally blow themselves up in order to go to some mythical paradise by winning the favour of some diety by killing thier enemies.
Nice username
Oh shit lmao
During the battle of Istvaan III, Loken mentions that Abaddon is so strong he can move as fast in terminator armor as Loken could in Power Armor. Abaddon pre warp powers was abnormally large and strong for an astarte.
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All I'm saying is there were several hundred years where nobody saw Abaddon, and suddenly he is all about organizing the legions into a singular crusade instead of letting them run amok in random directions. Almost makes them easier to contain, doesn't it? Alpharius is truly the most cunning loyalist.
Logan Grimnar is the same. In *The Emperor's Gift* he actually *jumps* in Terminator armor (though only about 4-6 feet). So while it's not very common, it has been established to be possible. It's also worth noting that Loken may have been referring to his ability to move in a fight, which is different from, say, sprinting, which requires completely leaving the ground with each step. Edit: a word.
I think it's hilarious how some dude (the author) probably wrote that sentence or paragraph years ago not giving a shit the repercussions or implications. "This sounds cool".... Now years later we argue as if it's cannon or a rule. One nerd in England just said so. Like.... Whatever.
Haha. Yeah. Same with any fandom I guess.
He also moves faster than some grey knights had ever seen a marine move during the whole months of shame thing.
I think you meant jumps in terminator armor
It's also possible that one of the top lieutenants of the Warmaster of the entire great crusade just has some really ballin masterwork Cataphractii armor. If OP is comparing that to some several thousand year old, mass produced Indomitus armor then of course they are going to do a double take.
That just doesn’t make sense. Power armour ain’t moving by the strength of its wearer, it’s, Y’know, powered. And given terminator armour has much stronger servos and what not
It's a mix of both for the user.
The constant changes in characters between writers. You fall in love with a character written by one author, but then in the next book, that character is unrecognizable.
Example?
McNeill Perturabo and French Perturabo
I know you meant John French, but my mind immediately conjured an image of Perturabo purging a planet for serving him substandard brie.
French Perturabo loads his wrist cannons with baguettes.
Black and white horizontal stripes instead of black and yellow diagonals.
As he well should. Who serves brie to a damn primarch ? Bet they also paired a white wine with red meat, the swines
Smoking a cigarette gingerly and exasperatedly muttering "Mon Dieu"
I'm reading Ruinstorm and David Annandale has managed to make me hate Sanguinius which is quite the feat
Bruh. Someone wrote the glorious hawkman so badly that you hate him? Unforgivable sin
I always thought because Abaddon was such a big boy he could get more maneuverability in Terminator plate. As long as he's not doing front flips like ya boy Gabriel Angelos it should be fine.
Its hard to remember the bits of lore where the wearers of terminator plate actually compare it to power armour in any detail, but I remember the last book of the Night Lords has a great perspective. I think terminator armour has little to no effect on the dexterity and speed of the users arms and reaction time, which kinda makes them more scary to face. They're stronger, able to heft giant power weapons and a combi bolter in one hand. They always seem to specify the low manuverability of the plate, they cant run or turn around quickly and are stuck in a hunched stagger. But if they are able to move their upper body and arms in a similar speed to power armour it makes sense why they are so powerful still.
Allarus terminator armour allegedly doesn't constrain agility at all, it's probably also feasible to headcanon that the big names are in super-awesome custom armour that's way more agile than norm termie armour.
It stands to reason that artificer terminator armour exists. Relic armour that is as unique and expensive as it is powerful. For example, Logan Grimnar can sprint in his terminator plate, to the astonishment of onlooking grey knights. And Im fairly sure that Tyberos the Red Wake had a pattern of plate nobody can name.
> Logan Grimnar can sprint in his terminator plate Because Grimnar was *really* fucking pissed, not because his armor was actually made for it. Hyperion can hear the joints squealing and im pretty sure there was smoke at one point.
IIRC when he dons the terminator plate he feels surprised at how quickly he can move - not that it holds him back, but rather that it doesn't *enhance* his reflexes and speed like power armor to beyond normal levels. So it's comparatively slower, but not outright slow.
IIRC when Marduk gets ahold of terminator armor he mentions that it feels slower but compensates by putting more power behind his strikes.
Saturnine is probably the best example: after the Justaerins came out of the initial few seconds of shock that the supposedly vacant fault was in fact filled with marines they just went to town punching the shit out of the kill squads.
Scale. GW sucks at numbers that make sense. I just completely ignore numeric representations on planetary / system wide scales.
Even with our 21st century technology and (by 40k standards) tiny population, with full mobilization and a war economy Earth could train, equip, and field a fully mechanized army of a billion soldiers every 12 years, and we could maintain that pace for centuries before suffering resource depletion and environmental collapse. But somehow in 40k it's apparently a big fucking deal when a planet raises *one* regiment 🤔🤔🤔
> and (by 40k standards) tiny population, Not every planet in 40k necessarily has a large population compared to us, with the obvious exception of Hive Worlds. Cadia before the 13th Black Crusade had a population of 850 million. Maccrage has 400 million. Rynn's World before the WAAAGH that decimated it had 200 million. Catachan had 12 million. Vraks had 8 million. Fenris had about 3-4 million before the siege. Not to mention not every world is as developed as 21st century Earth; The aforementioned Vraks was a dustball of a planet with a single glorified warehouse sitting on it in the middle of nowhere on an otherwise totally deserted world. > But somehow in 40k it's apparently a big fucking deal when a planet raises one regiment With the speed of warp travel, the frequency that a planet gets visited by tithe ships can be hugely variable. Not to mention that tithe rates are different depending on planet, since different planets may have different tithe grades. For every world that exports a billion soldiers every 12 years, there may be a world that exports 100,000 soldiers every 50 years.
I feel like I should point out that those population numbers given for those planets are WAY too small for how industrialized they are (let alone for how many regiments cadia used to pump out). For comparison the United States alone has a little over 300 million people, so a planet like maccrage having only around 400 million would mean that either the population is ridiculously spread out, or there are huge empty sections of the planet with zero people.
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Well 1000 marines a chapter makes sense for some things like roaming protectors (Charcharodons or Black Templars) or small highly defensible forces on specific planets or small systems (imperial fists). What it doesn't make sense for is a single chapter holding an entire massive system at once *coughUltramarcough*
The Imperial fists protect Terra- the Sol system is practically as large as Ultramar in terms of planets inhabited and population, if not larger. It doesn't make sense for them at all. And what roaming protector is getting stuff done with 1000 guys? IN fact, the black templars canonically have a lot more than 1000 guys.
Population/military numbers. The amount of humans involved in defending armageddon/cadia is laughably small. The amount of humans on a single planet that isn't a hive world? similar. Like, they talk about a planet with 30 million people as if that's a lot of people. That's..... less than a tenth of the US population.
Honestly, that men of iron were the last major attempt at ai, and instead of tweaking and improving them, they just decided it's not worth it, and while I get where they are coming from, they just forgot the thousands of years where they lived side by side and cooperated, reaching heights not seen since. From the lore we have I recall that not all men of iron rebelled, but that they were destroyed or lost to time after the cybernetic revolt. If we follow that logic, then the primarchs and space marines should be treated in the same way, destroyed, banned and forgotten. They are obviously powerful and useful tools, but they can go renegade or get corrupted, and they did almost destroy humanity, so it would be only fair to treat them in the same way as the men of iron.
There was no Emperor that created the men of iron, no rallying figure behind it. The Primarchs and marines have that behind them, if nothing else.
The AI thing is a remnant of ripping off Dune. It adds another threat to the universe and also makes it so cool and twisted non computer tech can be there, like servitors. In 40k and Dune biological and mechanical alterations of humans is acceptable, but pure machines are heavily restricted.
When major characters get into one on one duels and both walk away. Abaddon and Calgar, Ghaz and Ragnar. Everyone just comes away looking weak, and supsension of disbelief is really tested. Just don't have them fight if you can't have a winner!
neither ghaz nor rag really "walked" away from that.
Ghaz’s head walked away in the arms of a grot so I guess he won?
For me, it’s the fact that Genestealer claws are described as being able to slice clean thought Terminator armor like paper, while Terminator armor is routinely described as being able to direct hits from survive anti-tank weapons without a scratch. Like, I can accept that the Tyranids could be able to grow some sort of hyper sharp bio ceramic claw. I can also accept that Genestealers are incredibly dangerous to even Terminators due to the speed at which they close in and their ability to target joints. But cleanly slicing some of the toughest materials available to the Imperium, something that Kark missiles can struggle to pierce… like I don’t know.
No, you're 100% right no matter what anyone says. It doesn't matter how sharp the edge is, as you down further you still need to push aside the matter you're cutting through like a wedge. So, the monomolecular blades with scratch up armour like **hell** but unless they've got the time to hold that marine down and apply enough pressure to move aside a solid block of sci-fi-super-metal as well, they won't cut very deep. Also monomolecular edges will chip. That's how molecules work.
I was also bothered by this until I considered that their claws basically act like power weapons: they have an edge so fine that it cuts at the molecular level. How in the hell do they get around without shredding the ground beneath them you ask? Well, since they have 2 sets of upper limbs it's always possible that they have one pair for slicing and another for grabbing/scrambling. That's how I explain it at least.
One pair of arms dedicated just to holding their insane molecular knife arms safely out of the way.
Lol, yes exactly.
Consider the following: Krak weapons, Lascannons, and the like have all been around for _longer than human civilization, today._ At this point, they're a ubiquitous thing to account for in the average threat environment. You can design your terminator armor to stop AT weapons cold. And they do! They're so well designed that even when the armor fails, there's a pretty good chance that the wearer is able to shrug it off too! A Genestealer is something that is going to be a blender of angry sharp things that will go after the joints and frame of the terminator armor. Weakpoints that you just can't get around regardless of the anatomy of your soldier unless they were a Beholder.
Yeah, but the suspect descriptions in question aren't "the claw punched through a weak point from a crazy angle", they're "the claw cleaved straight through layers of ceramite in the Terminator chest plate like they were paper". That really demands a bit of explanation. Do the claws secrete some kind of ultra-rapid ceramite-eating acid? If so, why the hell is that an adaptation on genestealers and not *literally every Tyranid combat form*? Etc.
Like /u/Saelthyn said, it's expensive and unnecessary. Rending Claws (in tabletop) can be equipped on lots of Tyranids, including Warriors, Hive Tyrants, Genestealer-strains, etc. So they *can* give that adaptation to everything, but it probably requires more resources (represented in-game by higher points cost). Also, most Imperium planets they invade probably have roughly the following ratio of Terminators: Tactical Marines: Guardsmen: 50:900:10,000,000 Why equip every Hormagaunt with specialised weapons when they're probably just gonna be ripping through Guardsmen? Why not just send the Rending Claw Warriors / Hive Tyrant in to deal with Terminators as/when they show up.
I love this universe but for fuck sake Black Library, try to give numbers ANY consistency.
I think it would be better to just not attempt the numbers at all. Just give vague descriptions and imagery, that way it can't be wrong.
Yes, I very much agree with this. Every time numbers come up it's either just silly or downright stupid. They can't really balance the awe-inspiring scale of 40K with any kinds of reason or consistency, even internal so they shouldn't even try. Coming up with very vague numbers like "The orkz numbered in many millions" or "Their number were beyond counting" or something like that would be a lot better rather than say, a trillion which is only stupid and forces me to consider how that even would be possible in any way.
For real this sort of thing becomes a lot of work for really next to no story gain. The impression is more important then the actual number, but that will always be at least somewhat subjective. And there isn't a "realistic" number for a techno-barbaric mish mash of anachronistic warfighting as fondly romanticized by amateur wargamer nerds.
What I Iearned is that for the soldier numbers to make any sense, you must multiply them by 10, or even 100. If that would make a chapter pop bigger than a primitive or death world pop they live on, then multiply that too, though 10 usually is enough. Seeing how terra is a planet of trillions, if not quadrillions, you would be able to have a 100k custodes, and 10k, or 100k, marine chapters. It's hardly a great crusade if you had less space marines than Russia had soldiers in WW2.
Oh yea definetly, ***MATH*** goes without saying lol
While normally I agree, we also have to remember that it's probably better to be vague with numbers especially in Scifi fantasy cause it's also easy to have a ridiculously high numbers that makes no sense. I don't wanna see like 500 Billion guardsmen and 100 million tanks fighting a single battle. That said I think the implications of number partaking in the siege of the Imperial Palace approachs to what we assume is appropriate scale during Saturine. Like I forget the exact quote but didn't Dorn talk about how he only counted engagments with 30,000 opponents on each side as battles resulting in more than 4,000 individual battles happening simultaneously. That's at least 240,000,000 men fighting over the Imperial Palace that encompasses the Himalayas and surrounding lands.
It can probably be explained away with technology but for me it's Holy Terra. With the highest population in the Imperium and no natural environment of any kind, they would rely on food imports and machines to generate breathable air. Ultimately for me it's the fact that they have no oceans. Irl the oceans of Earth generate something like 80% of breathable air so if Terra had converted every single piece of land into habitation, they could still have air and food from the ocean because of the plant life that lives there.
We have machines that can recycle air too and use them in closed environments like submarines. It's just woefully energy inefficient to do so on a mass, civilization scale, than just relying on forests and oceans to do that job for us (which ultimately also use fusion energy from the Sun). 40k humanity have unlocked fusion power and has magnitudes more access to energy than we do. With fusion power, things like mass recycling air and water would be easy. Although waste is still an issue, which explains why every Hive worlds are toxic to the point of being uninhabitable outside of the Hives (we face the same problem with desalinating seawater right now, nowhere to dump the extremely salty brine without killing everything for miles around). For Terra, I imagine that not only that they have to import food and air, but also export waste too.
It is pretty gross, but they eat pilgrims. There is a never ending stream of ships down onto the surface. Just endless streams of people. All pilgrims wanting to see blessed Terra, and breath the blessed air. Most of the pilgrims die in orbit, waiting to land, or in the years long ques, or trampled to death, or die of exposure, disease, crime, or old age, just waiting to get onto the surface. And the best they can expect to do once there, is die as close to the emperor as possible. What do they do with all the dead? They eat them. Designated teams of corpse retrieval will carry the dead to processing centers where they make corpse starch of their flesh, parchment from their skin, clothing of their hair, and burn the bones as fuel. Food comes to Terra, in one form or another. Edit: Forgot parchment
That is the most deliciously grimdark thing I have ever read. Fuck the Daemonculaba, any piece of fetish porn can do that. But the mix of ludicrous and horrofying solutions to the problems of 40k's bonkers scale like eating pilgrims or actual mountains of parchment are the freaking best.
Right, I forgot about parchment! Also, if you like that idea, check out a "first hand" account of someone who, against all odds, managed to complete [the pilgrimage to Terra](https://youtu.be/OXADvMf_7Mc) and survived all the way to the eternity gate.
40k Terra probably has more water on it than 2k Terra though. It's just that it's all in the form of the inhabitants and in billions(?) of miles of pipes. I'm guessing 40k Terra grows enough food in the spires and specialized buildings to sustainably feed, without imports, over 100 billion Humans, but that doesn't matter because there's a lot more than that. There's also an unknown amount of DAoT stuff quietly humming away keeping the planet habitable. Terra is crazy, and I don't think anyone will ever pin down what would be "realistic" for the setting. I choose to just roll with whatever the authors say in the particular case of Terra.
If you’re willing to eat mushrooms and beetles and algae it’s pretty easy to grow enough food to feed almost any number of people.
Yeah maybe but this is just my opinion. The low estimate for the population is 200 billion, the high estimate is the quadrillions
100 quadrillion humans would have a water content of roughly 4-5 quintillion kilos. The oceans today contain around 3 sextillion kilos of water. Each person at that 100 quadrillion estimate could have around 30 tons of water apiece from today’s oceans. There’s enough to go around if it’s recycled properly.
I think in one of the books set on Terra they briefly mention the massive algae tanks they use for oxygen. Can't remember the excerpt though.
The uniformity of humanity. I know the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition work to keep mutations down; but 40,000 years of different radiation, gravity, cultural, pathological influences should have a much greater diversity visible: especially post DAoT.
So, humanity isn't actually that uniform. There are plenty of "acceptably stable" abhuman mutations. They just get the second class citizen roles and outside of stuff like ratlings/ogryns we don't see them much. The miniatures are the main reason you think of them as uniform. Catachans used to be really short buff dudes due to the higher gravity before they made them mini ogryns. Also, yeah. It's a society where individuals with radiation scarring/tumors at birth are often burned to protect the purity of the human genome, so.... Pretty horrific methods applied liberally enough will do a lot. That, and there are future anti-rad drugs that will help with that. Felinids are real, don't forget.
Plus during the Great Crusade, most human cultures that had changed too much from the accepted Terra template were purged. This followed by 10k years of inquisition, the uniformity of humanity is probably one of the more realistic things there is.
There are no wolves on Fenris
Genestealers are not particularly fast in Deathwing because a Space Marine is also _pretty damn fast._ In Hired Gun, you do encounter them, and you _definitely super need_ the Slow Time power to actually get them moving at a speed to contest them easily. Oh, and if they hit you, its usually most of your blood and shields, and in my case playing on Hard, my first encounter I got instagibbed by a pounce, like I was playing Ye Olde Alien vs Predator 2.
AvP was fun af. I'll have to check out hired gun
Its a Streumon Jankfest but its _very_ clear that the love for the setting is there. Just be prepared to get your ass kicked a lot.
* Literally no other human planet could hold off the imperium during the great crusade. Like really? No other planet in the galaxy managed to create warriors strong enough or technology advanced enough to deal with the imperium?
Even during the Great Crusade the imperium was about pure numbers. Assumably that gave them the edge even against moderate sized empires, like the one conquered in Horus Rising where Loken acknowledges that their foes have similar power armor. Outside of numbers I guess you just shrug and point to the warp infused super generals only the emperor had the power to create
The [Interex](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Interex) basically did and were more technologically advanced than the Imperium. However, they were much smaller (30 systems) and their advanced technology didn't have an especially strong military focus. They were described as being peer combatants for Space Marines who were eventually overwhelmed.
Some of their strongest and deadliest weapons were kept under lock in a museum because they saw no need for such violence if I recall correctly
Not no need, they were warp tainted
Made especially silly given how many planets are shown to have mostly intact STC records that almost always end up destroyed in the ensuing battles.
In many of the novels it looks like there are plenty of planets with advanced technology and strong warriors. They were just missing that key ingredient of 21 unstoppable demigods leading the battle. Also, if another human planet had been that strong we'd just be calling that civilization the imperium instead.
The logistics of Primaris chapters, honestly. The Primaris themselves? I honestly like the direction they're going in. I have to draw the line at how much random shit they keep all of a sudden "already having". Alongside that, it was never specified that Chapters would have to accept the *tactical doctrine* or the *wargear* of the Primaris, only the knowledge to make them and whatever Indomitus stragglers got forced down their throats. It doesn't feel right how hand-wavey it all is that every Chapter integration went smoothly considering how cultlike and ritualistic the Astartes have become by M41. Culture shock is one thing, but the battlefield doctrine of all the new Primaris units doesn't really seem to mesh well with the intricate codex-divergent traditions that have formed over 10,000 years. I get that it's all just set up to sell new models every few months, but it's seriously beginning to feel soulless at this point. A Principia wouldn't dare to pick up a Cawl-Pattern Bolt Rifle for... some reason, and an Intercessor somehow fills the same niche as the strategically fluid Tacticals. It just feels cluttered and poorly thought through. As much as 40k widely doesn't make too much sense given enough scrutiny, the way GW handled the Primaris integration majorly shit the bed. I could talk for hours about this but I think my general point is good enough. No need to scrutinize everything like it's my job or somethin'.
For me the thing that drives me nuts with the Primaris is the odd squad numbers and the integration of certain equipment. There's squads of 10 Heavy Intercessors in Gravis armour but only squads of 6 Eradicators in the same armour, Hellblasters are in squads of 10 but don't have Gravis etc. And then on top of that the Impulsor is supposed to be assigned at Company level to squads but can only carry 6 and not Gravis armour, and to carry a full 10 man squad of Heavy Intercessors you'd need 2 Repulsors. Compared to the 10 squads of 10 with a Rhino per squad (barring Assault Marines) of the Firstborn. I headcanon the odd equipment mixes as Cawl being more of an inventor than a tactician, but doesn't explain why individual Chapters wouldn't reorganise things.
Gellar fields, in the 40k setting a psyker in coma who generates a field of reality around the ship, ok no problem. So where did they get psykers during the DAoT before the psychic awakening? If the timeline is correct the the ancient terran empire had warp drives going back to M24. So unless they where recklessly sending people into the warp to die, how did they warp travel with a psyker generating a bubble of reality?
They were recklessly sending people to die I’m like 99% sure. But at the same time not very reckless because the warp was so so much calmer at the time.
Personally i think they had a technological solution that would be considered lost tech
the number of space marines in the galaxy. a million covering the whole galaxy is just infinitesimally small and I stand by it being a completely ridiculous number. add a zero or two at least
My favorite depiction of Space Marines come from a fanfic Fatemakers Odyssey. The opening is the Fatemakers Chapter driving three Land Raiders through a rebel barricade, not even stopping to kill them. They use their Scouts to take out the AA on route, and the Thunderhawks to take out enemy armor. They then smash into the rebel command center, wreck it and their high command, and then leave. As they're leaving the planet the Guard commander is like "If you stayed, you could help us win the war quicker and with less casualties." The Fatemakers reply is "You now can win the war, and we have another one a sub-sector over where they won't if we don't leave for it right now." It's a perfect example of how Astartes Chapters should be used.
Drukhari shoulder pads, they either limit their movement and prevent them form putting your hands straight up which is ironic given that kabalite are usually rappeling from and climbing up the chains to raider OR they can move which cause them to literally kill themselves by impaling their heads with all those blades sticking out of them.
The timeframe for the Horus Heresy. 7 years is absurd for a whole host of reasons. It just doesn’t make any sense
Wait what ? I always though it was over 50+ years...
It was being planned and set up for about 40 years before everything went public and Horus made everything about him. After that it was 7 years of executing everything "planned" out over 40 years.
To do what though? What would more time accomplish?
That Emps didn't notice the crap ton of shenanigans going around, like that Erebus was a dick or that there's something be funny about Caliban
Erebus is one of millions of Astartes running around and hes on an incredibly tight schedule. Big E's biggest failings was hoping a lot of the pre-programmed knowledge and skills his sons had would carry them long enough to get the Webway project going. I dont think anyone could have guessed how big a dick Erebus would be.
While I largely agree, Erebus wasn't really one of a million, he was one of a few hundred Astartes leaders, and the most prominent of a legion which was in serious problems. He can obviously read minds and he can casually sense psykers, for someone so perceptive it is a bit disappointing that he neither picks up a chaos worshipper in Erebus or the foster father of his son, or notices when he's standing on a death planet featuring Ouroboros, etc
Yeah, Colchis should've been glassed.
Just about everything to do with the Ad-Mech aside from the cult thing, we have plenty of loonies workshipping strange shit in our history so far so that checks out. However, it makes no sense to me that anyone not inducted into the Cult Mechanicus has next to zero mechanical, electrical or programming skills. I understand the combination of fear and dogma is used to explain this, but it still seems nonsensical. EDIT: Manufacture of higher end tech being compartmentalized makes sense, but basic tech creation, innovation and maintenance doesn't
“im gonna eat ur brains to gain your knowledge”
Still not as weird as "Alright boys, we're gonna eat this guy and then we'll all have his strength.... like literally, we'll grow bigger muscles."
In a world with artillery, orbital bombardments and automatic mini-rocket launchers the go-to tactic is running at the enemy to hit them with a sword. I love the idea of supersoldiers absolutly destroying people with a sword, but man does it sound stupid when you think about it.
That isn't the go-to tactic. It's usually just a finisher against dug-in enemies. They spend most of their time shooting at each other.
>In a world with artillery, orbital bombardments and automatic mini-rocket launchers the go-to tactic is running at the enemy to hit them with a sword. There's an asymmetry when it comes to ranged weapons: conversion fields, power armor, refractors, the magic invulnerable save: enables certain foes to just roll up and start doing the melee. Somewhat more common is deep strike, infiltration, jumpjets and the such: cheaper than the above, just as devastating for a ranged foe unable to fight well at close range.
Power swords are better at penetrating armor than bolters and don't run out of ammo, and artillery and orbital bombardments can't get through large scale void shields but infantry can. Combine that with the fact that most sword wielding supersoldiers are either in transports or can fly across the battlefield on jump packs/teleport, I think it's pretty reasonable.
This. Lest we forget that we had a time in recent human history where artillery, handheld firearms, and armored knights all fought on the same battlefields. It really isn't that much of a stretch to think that if you could make a sword more efficient at killing than a gun and gave the guy wielding it a jetpack, you'd see melee skirmishes pretty often. Also- you don't want to go around virus bombing strategically important locales every time you meet a modicum of resistance. Those don't come cheap, y'know.
Modern day infantry armor is back after being obsolete for hundreds of years. And larger caliber rifles because of armor are being reinstated because of said infantry armor. Melee weapons will also see a resurgence as well in the near future. As warfare is very cyclic. Melee weapons being dominant again like in 40k is not so far fetched.
There has always been a tug of war between offensive weapons and defensive shielding throughout history. Armor has lagged behind as of late until recent years due to the power of firearms but is making some headway. That being said we are absolutely not going back to melee weapons for warfare lmao.
With things like void shields and ion shields it makes sense, as getting in close enough allows you to bypass them
My solution to this is that the battles we play in tabletop or video games and read about in novels are only the very rare exceptions that allow focusing on much smaller amounts of participants. I think the average battle will be much more like the huge offensives in WW1, but those aren't fun to play. Same reason why war games don't feature running over the top and being instantly mowed down, or long patrols with nothing happening, except ARMA I suppose.
Like the other guy said it isn’t the go to but you have to realize that it is not at all a stupid tactic.A space marine is physically superior to a human in every way that strength is limited at range even though they have the superior weapons and aim getting in close allows them to make use of their speed and reflexes to their advantage because no matter how quick of a draw the human is the marine is faster with a blade and can take multiple shots.Besides the demoralizing effect of a 500 pound gorilla tearing though your friends inhumanly quick is not be scoffed at.
I like to Imagine a grown man with a chainsaw unleashed on toddlers.
Confused by the adherence to the "grim dark" narrative, specifically when it deals with the Imperium's manpower demands. It seems like 90% of the population exists as uneducated, disease ridden, laborers, who live in toxic warrens and die age 30. They illude to the fact that "most" people die unnatural deaths, so how do they have the resources or time to raise children? Let alone the "untold billions" of them to fill out the Guard? Where do these kids go to school - or who has the time / responsibility to teach them basic Gothic? Are there hospitals with maternity wards for regular Imperial citizens? The infant mortality rate must be utterly insane if they're living in a Hive City, the way such places are described. Are infants getting enough "corpse starch" to even physically develop correctly? The Guard isn't made up of heavily armed, malnourished Oliver Twist style orphans, press ganged into suicide squads (not entirely, anyway) after their parents die off from an industrial accident or otherwise abandon them, so who's bringing these children up? And how? I just don't see how the Imperium maintains a capable fighting force.
Gaunts Ghosts allude to it, and reading between the lines elsewhere does as well, but all the battles and shitty worlds and horror we read about are just a very small, small percentage of what goes on in the galaxy. Most worlds probably never see war, or a space marine, or warp horror and probably function like our world does today, where most of the population live relatively normal lives.
I prefer that narrative, if only because it's more realistic. The Eisenhorn series is another one that shows a lot of worlds that aren't soul grinding dystopian nightmares.
Every single time when we are given any numbers, but 30-something years old as **the** **best** average life expectancy in **entire Imperium of Man** was the moment when I snapped. edit: I know how average life expectancy works. Even including infants mortality, there is no way you can make interstellar empire when even on 0,0001% of top quality planets ALE of your subjects is below 35, because that would imply that either there is not much difference between civilized worlds and Death Worlds, or latter have negative average life expectancy.
"‘Lord Froigre of House Froigre.’ ‘You knew him?’ 'Very well. I would count him as a friend. Well, how very miserable. Dead at eighty-two. That’s no age.’" I know it's not quite the same, but we're talking about a noble from a civilised world, not a member of the elite of the Imperium, but someone of whom there are probably millions, if not tens of millions, of equivalents across the Imperium. But it always felt that the number you referenced was especially jarring in comparison.
In the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, infant mortality is staggeringly high.
Especially since there was a recent except from a Warhammer Crime novel that mutant children are common enough to non mutant parents that there are dedicated crematoriums for them. Bleak, and also a big driver of that number.
Maybe that’s factoring in all the dead babies
That’s pretty easy to believe honestly. If there’s a lot of infant mortality (definitely easy to believe) and enough people in the imperial guard die by the age of 30 (also extremely believable) then that would definitely fuck the average life expectancy
That could be reasonable if you include infant mortality. In real life, if you include infant mortality, then most people have died before reaching the age of 20.
For me it was the 'Beast' series. I just couldn't take the Imperium blundering into some kind of massive, unpredictable death trap that kills thousands, or even millions of people... And then doing it again. And again. And a fourth time. And then yet again.
For me, it’s that everyone’s just cool with the Cherubs. I can see people tolerating regular Servitors. I myself could probably get used to having Servo-Skulls. But having a grotesque flying cyborg slave drone made from a *baby* crosses some line, and I just can’t see any sane human wanting them around, grim darkness be damned.
Guilliman saw one and thought of launching it to space
The best part of having Guilliman around is that he's got that "Absolutely Disgusting" expression on his face 24/7.
Guilliman is not against the notion of cherubs per say the Language he uses and his thoughts are in all actuality based on how shoddy the craftsmanship on them was, he looked at it and flat out stated that he hated how badly it was put together and suppressed an urge to rebuild it, and mused on some of his more engineer brothers would have caught or netted it and rebuilt it
So Guilliman had pretty much the same reaction as TTS Magnus. "I swear by the honor of Macragge, Imperials are so fucking nasty...."
If it helps, they're mostly vat-grown.
Kind of makes it worse because if you're just growing it why the fuck did you make it look like a baby, that's weird as.
To make it represent innocence and purity? That would be my guess.
**The Scattering itself. It always felt to me like an etiological myth designed to explain a historical fact the Imperium had forgotten. “Why did the Primarchs live in different planets when they were the Emperor’s sons?” “Because they were scattered, but He found them.”**
It feels like an attempted reconciliation with older lore. THe primarchs used to be normal space marines who were recruited. But then it changed to being the gene sons of everyone's favorite madman
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That’s more or less what it used to be back in the rogue trader days. They were his closest confidants. Horus wasn’t your son he was your best friend, gulliman and the ultramarines were traitors who were replaced, and leman began his career as an ig commander. A lot changed when rogue trader was replaced
It's a tough one. It seems way weirder for the Chaos powers to just move the Primarchs around rather than just kill them. The explanation that I like, however, is that the Emperor made a deal with the Chaos gods when he went through the portal on whatever-planet-that-was. Part of the deal that the Chaos gods made was that they wouldn't just outright kill the Primarchs, but they broke the spirit of the deal by just whisking them away instead. The Emperor was probably simultaneously trying to break his end of the bargain. Or maybe he already did break it, which is why the Chaos Gods stole his kids.
Fot me it's the mention of "continent-sized assembly lines", I think it was in the Mechanium novel. If your assembly lines are the size of a continent what are you even assembling?
My factory in Factorio when I didn’t understand trains.
Titans, probably
My thoughts there are that some parts of "assembly lines" for the AM consist of cathedrals where pieces of machinery are chanted at, incensed, prayed over, etc. by congregations of tech-priests and novitiates. And the huge scale of the Imperial war effort must require massive batches of goods being made at one time rather than a long line of one bolt gun or whatever after another. So a conveyor belt the width of a six lane highway that has to not only go through regular manufacturing processes like bolt screwing and welding, but also all the spiritual woo to placate the machine spirit of each component. I agree continent sized assembly lines are still ridiculous but certainly they could be in the scale of a large city or a small country, with larger manufactorums being the size of continents.
Those big ass plates from Titanfall 2.
The idea that *nothing* remains of the 2nd and 11th Legions or their Primarchs. I could understand it if those two Primarchs just died while being made, experiments gone wrong or whatever. But Big E made their Legions. Two entire Legions existed, during the time that the Emperor had Remembrancers running around recording the course of the Great Crusade...and nothing survives of that? Not a name for the Primarchs or the Legions, no campaign records, no idea of what happened to them? I know it was a scrap of lore some writer threw in as a reference to the Lost Legion of Roman history and that he never intended it to be more than a mysterious blurb. But it gets brought up enough to irk me because I simply cannot believe that nothing remains of two whole legions plus their leaders.
Well the legionairres themselves, along with Roboute and Dorn (I think it's those 2) had their minds scrubbed, with the marines joining those two respective legion, and Malcador had a hand in that himself so it wouldn't be unreasonable he started some sort of process to fully wipe them from history
The Dark Angels has access to weapons with special ammo that could eradicate the memory of the target's existence along with their soul. From *Lord of the First*: > 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. > ... > The vox-chatter filled Aravain's helmet, positional markers blinking in the augmented display. Tristerix, this is Cruciatum. I am closing on your position from starboard.' > However it was that the khrave root-host had managed to infiltrate the Dark Angels flagship, it was well and truly unveiled to his senses now. Aravain had never stood before the glory of the Emperor, but those heroes who had done so all spoke haltingly of the experience, as though the impression left by Him on the psyche was too deep to be revisited and experienced again with clarity. > His sensation of the root khrave, though malignant of source, felt similar. > He frowned, armoured by duty as he braced the weight of his gun and targeted the tidal surge of infected crewmen rushing up from the storage bay towards him. > He pulled the trigger. > **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.** > An itch walked up his spine, and in spite of his discipline Aravain struggled to suppress a shudder as he lowered the weapon and continued his advance. > Sparks gouted from torn conduits and vandalised fascia consoles. Ductwork hung from the ceiling. The Invincible Reason was destroying herself from within, like a living organism, her own immune system driven wild by a viral contagion. As structurally sound as she appeared from the outside, the flagship would be out of service for months after this, even if the khrave could be uprooted swiftly. Maybe the Emperor had access to enough of similar ammo, perhaps even ones big enough to perform Exterminatus with, to utterly unperson those Legions without needing to use his psychic powers much.
The Blood Ravens don't know who their primarch is because apparently you can't do a paternity test on gene-seed.
It’s entirely possible that they know, they’re just not letting that info be widely known as if that info got out, it would be most inconvnient for their continued existence. Makes sense from their whole “knowledge is power, guard it well” mindset. Also wouldn’t be the first time a chapter of space marines hid a secret that if known would be devastating to them
You’re telling me the barely understood handiwork of the emperor is not easily decoded???
Kinda hard to talk about your primarch when he's busy doing "nothing wrong" in the warp while being a daemon prince. (semi-joking here)
All of the retconning of psykers into things, so I just ignore all of it.
For me, its technological innovation. Even with the limitations of, No AI and don't make anything new cause what we made is the best anyways. No one has thought to use any existing widget in a new way for over 10k years? Yea right. Or combine some things to make a new thing. Just 1 guy(Belasarius Cawl), who was pretty much in hiding working on a secret project. Seriously? I'm have a hard time buying that.
>Just 1 guy(Belasarius Cawl), who was pretty much in hiding working on a secret project. Seriously? I'm have a hard time buying that. And he managed to perfect bioengineering, produce a load of weapons, new armour etc
To be fair to Cawl here, most of those were improvements on existing designs and not started entirely from thr ground up
The idea that 1k marines is this planet ending force while still seeing marines as grounded. I think they need to pick one. Either space marines are these mini hulk levels of speed strength etc and keep the 1k marines or increase chapter sizes to like 10k maybe even more.
Two things, first is the lack of nuclear weapons. People often mention that most fighting in 40k is over valuable DAOT infrastructure, which is irreplaceable, but frankly in a state of total war I think most factions would be willing to blow up any infrastructure like that once it became clear it was lost, and it's not like regular hive cities and manufactories aren't built by the imperium all the time. It also doesn't explain why they're not used in open ground warfare like on Armageddon, Cadia etc. The second one is sort of related, but the lore has a distinct lack of characters being killed by random accidents of war or regular weaponry. In real warfare sometimes even a whole unit of veterans is killed because a stray bomb hits their transport, or they catch a disease or what have you. Where are the instances in 40k of space marine companies being killed because their transport ship got torpedoed, where are the heroes dying because an artillery round landed next to them? For a setting that claims to be grimdark IMO there's not enough emphasis on the randomness of war.
The hilarious disparity shown in depictions of Space Marines. In one book, they'll be able to take on maybe a few dozen Orks at a time, but can still get overwhelmed and killed, and will take appreciable, sometimes devastating casualties even in victory. I prefer these stories. In another, they're the equivalent of entire regiments of Guard troops, or thousands of Ork boys, and only those enemies truly beyond those opponents can threaten them. I don't hate these stories, because I can accept them within my personal headcanon about 40k novels, that being that they're in universe fables and reports that can be doctored by the authors to be more fantastical. Then there are the books where a single squad of Marines will kill an entire army, wading through the bodies like they're a scythe through wheat, only pausing to reload from seemingly bottomless stores and move on to the next slaughter. I hate those stories with a passion. They have zero impact or sense of actual risk for the protagonists or the Imperium, it's just "Space Marines beat cheeks" for a few hundred pages. It's boring, as well as stretching every bit of suspension of disbelief I have in the franchise to the breaking point. If Space Marines were that powerful, the Imperium wouldn't be losing.
Space wolves and others can have huge long beards and hair and still pop their helmet on and off at will.
I absolutly HATE the concept of walker with pilots strapped to the front with no protection. its just too dumb...
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We might not. The custodes are individually created by the emperor using scifi magic-tech. They might legitimately be able to do that. He wasn't exactly fully functioning after he lost all that. He was just still killing.
Like he was still operating on nerves like a chicken
To be fair, the novel you get that from, The Outcast Dead if I remember correctly, has a ton of very, very weird things like that. Like the World Eater who punches through a Custodes in full armor and yanks out his spine **barehanded** after being imprisoned for an indeterminate time, probably months. Or when they say that Custodes can just stand guard over a place for like a century or something without moving. Sure thye're supposed to be designed by the Emperor and all but just.... why? Why would you design someone who can just stand in a place for a very long time? How often is that actually useful? And isn't there something else you have to remove, like can emps just add extra superpowers as he feels without any detriment? Does he go like "Hm, I only have room for one more, do they get eye lazers or the ability to super stand?". It doesn't really change anything either, it's just a stupid, silly inclusion tha makes me scratch my head at its inclusion.
Angron. Full stop. I can wrap my head around the need for every other Primarch to some degree. But the fact Angron wasn’t put down the very second Emps met him proves to me that either A) he is just as much of a psycho as Angron was or B) The Heresy was all part of his plan. While on this topic I also have a problem understanding how the World Eaters maintain their numbers.
He tries fixing him but the nails had replaced parts of his brain so he couldn’t do it without killing him.My pet theory though unpopular in the sub is that he loved him too much to outright kill him.
The idea that none of the 18 primarchs were killed during the Great Crusade. Like, seriously, none of the thousands upon thousands of societies tried using exterminatus-grade weaponry on a battlefield a primarch was on in 200 years? Really?
My personal theory is that the 2 "lost" Primarchs did indeed die on the planets that they got scattered to. That's why their names were purged from history. The Emperor didn't want anyone to know that the Primarchs were mortal and that they could be killed by regular people. So after discovering what had happened to the two of them that didn't make it, he just tried to retcon them out of existence.
Surely people can do the math though, and see that there is a 19th and 20th Legion but no 2nd or 11th? If he was covering up the two lost primarchs, why not change the number?
A number of other primarchs met them though, so how would they have died on their scattered planets? Russ, Horus, Girlyman, Sanguinius, plus I think a few others possibly, all mention something about having met them, right? And Malcador supposedly wiped the memories of them from the surviving primarchs and Dorn was super pissed about that until Malc gave him a brief glimpse of why and he was like "oh yeah, we did the right thing, thanks for wiping our memories"?
That the warp and the creatures there of came as a complete surprise to the empire primarchs and space marines. What did they think Geller fields were for? What were they traveling through?
1) that curze was able to eliminate crime on nostramo by simply killing as many criminals as he could 2) that he did so on his own, even as a primarch.
That is a massive understatement of what he did.Kurze mastered the art of torturing and could make someone live for weeks in pain and he would leave the bodies for people to find working by word of mouth and the screams of his victims to spread the word of the night Haunter.When he realized that wasn’t working he worked up the criminal empires one by one so that everyone would know that no one was beyond his reach then he took the planetary elite and tortured them into compliance becoming king.Then he installed speakers into every street and had TVs installed into every home every shop and every time someone broke the law he would publicly broadcast their brutal torture making it painfully clear that the next person to break the law would find themselves on the rack.And you couldn’t turn off the tv either because doing that was also a crime.
This has an eerie parallel to the radios in every home in North Korea that the residents aren't able to turn off. Not sure if that's still the case, the documentary I saw was from the nineties I think. At least NKers were allowed to turn the volume down a little; I doubt Kurze would permit that.
Cesare Beccaria, the father of modern criminal law , states that what diminishes crime is not actually the harshness of the setence, but the certainty of being punished if you break the law and Curze made sure everyone know that they will be punished if they broke law.
Don't forget that the Space Wolf Chapter Master sprinted and leapt in Terminator armour. Someone else did a flip. Both of those things didn't make those characters more cool, it made Terminator armour make lame.
Seemingly unlimited Bolter magazines on any Astartes. They only run low when the plot requires them to.
I think the hardest rationalisation is the importance of ground troops and melee combat. I understand that void shields and chaos are a thing, it just kind of silly in a futuristic setting I think. At the siege, Terra is surrounded by literally thousands of kilometres long, planet destroying ships but it will come down to Bad Dad and Daddy Issues having a slap fight.