Warhammer 40K Fluff Discussion XV: You Must Be THIS Tall To Witness The Grimdark

[The Glyphstone]

Oh excellent, another Cheesegear Snarks Reads!

[Wraith]

• Straight up we open with "Vigilus was always famed as a linchpin of the Segmentum Obscurus." 'Always', huh? I've never heard of it until now.
  [.....]
• Spoiler alert, Marneus Calgar himself, probably wont show up 'til the end.

Would you please clarify, when is this story taking place? It kind of sounds as though the Great Rift has just hit and that this campaign is the immediate clean-up/consolidation of the ruins, but if this Gauntlet as "always" been there and Calgar is about to show up (probably as a Primaris if I had to guess) that would suggest that it's all happening after the Indomitus Crusade 100 years later.
That would make some sense to explain the terms being used... except that it doesn't take 100 years for Genestealer Cults and Xenos warbands to get their collective asses in gear and screw up one measly planet....

[Cheesegear]

Would you please clarify, when is this story taking place?

So far, the story hasn't specified.

It kind of sounds as though the Great Rift has just hit and that this campaign is the immediate clean-up/consolidation of the ruins

Correct. Refugees and Regiments from the Cadian Gate wouldn't be there that long.
...If they were there for 100 years, they wouldn't be called refugees...At some point they'd become part of the population.

(Oooh...As an Australian I want to say a real world thing so bad...)

and Calgar is about to show up (probably as a Primaris if I had to guess) that would suggest that it's all happening after the Indomitus Crusade 100 years later.

They've stated openly on the first page that Calgar eventually shows up.
We also know from the cool (IMO) model released, that Calgar has become Primarised.
So I'm sure it will be addressed.

But, just so we're clear;

Can anyone confirm or deny Calgar's presence in Dark Imperium and/or Plague War? ...I can't.

That would make some sense to explain the terms being used... except that it doesn't take 100 years for Genestealer Cults and Xenos warbands...

It might. And I'll call stupidity then.

[9mm]

the details of the primarising of Calgar is on page 77 of Vigilus Definant, and is some of the most wonderfully meta writing I've ever read.

well trolled GW, well trolled.

[Wraith]

Can anyone confirm or deny Calgar's presence in Dark Imperium and/or Plague War? ...I can't.

I've gone through a few synopsis and spoiler threads....

Spoiler

Show

....Marneus Calgar isn't mentioned in either of those books. Like, at all. If he's there, he literally plays no part in any of the events whatsoever, they're both exclusively Guilliman versus Typhus plots.

Except for a brief part where Guilliman needs to be told something important.... so Cato Sicarius does it. It's almost comical how little the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines is mentioned during an invasion of Ultramar.

[EDIT] I just double-checked; the amount of wiki diving I had to do to get a straight answer is pretty ridiculous. The War of Beasts takes place between 1.192.VCM and ~15.VCM. That is, it started about 1 and a half years after the Great Rift occurred and ends in what we would think of as approximately 020.M42, give or take. For reference, the 13th Black Crusade - when Cadia exploded and Guilliman woke up - was set in 999.M41.

So if Calgar does get Primarised in this campaign, it happens WAY earlier than I ever thought it did - the Indomitus Crusade (and thus the events of Plague War) don't end until around 100.M42, after all.

[9mm]

I've gone through a few synopsis and spoiler threads....

Spoiler

Show

....Marneus Calgar isn't mentioned in either of those books. Like, at all. If he's there, he literally plays no part in any of the events whatsoever, they're both exclusively Guilliman versus Typhus plots.

Except for a brief part where Guilliman needs to be told something important.... so Cato Sicarius does it. It's almost comical how little the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines is mentioned during an invasion of Ultramar.

[EDIT] I just double-checked; the amount of wiki diving I had to do to get a straight answer is pretty ridiculous. The War of Beasts takes place between 1.192.VCM and ~15.VCM. That is, it started about 1 and a half years after the Great Rift occurred and ends in what we would think of as approximately 020.M42, give or take. For reference, the 13th Black Crusade - when Cadia exploded and Guilliman woke up - was set in 999.M41.

So if Calgar does get Primarised in this campaign, it happens WAY earlier than I ever thought it did - the Indomitus Crusade (and thus the events of Plague War) don't end until around 100.M42, after all.

as follow up, Calgar is still recovering from the process when he goes to Vigilus. So it happens very early to be sure if you got your dates right.

[Cheesegear]

the details of the primarising of Calgar is on page 77 of Vigilus Definant...

Like I said, I'm not reading any further than I have to, until I have to.

I've gone through a few synopsis and spoiler threads...

Yeah. That's what I thought. I did a search for 'Marneus' and 'Calgar' on my Kindle, and found nothing in the entirety of either book.

The War of Beasts takes place between 1.192.VCM and ~15.VCM.

So it is detailed somewhere. I'll see it when I get to it.

So if Calgar does get Primarised in this campaign, it happens WAY earlier than I ever thought it did

Basically if Calgar wasn't mentioned at any time during Dark Imperium or Plague War (which he isn't), then he can be Primarised at any time.

[Wraith]

So to recap...

GW released a splat book about how the 13th Black Crusade broke Cadia and woke up Guilliman...

...Then another splat book about Guilliman spending 100 years on campaign fixing the stuff broke while he was gone....

...Then the a campaign book about what happened right after the 13th Black Crusade....

...Then two novels about what happened AFTER the Indomitus Crusade....

...and NOW they're about to release a model that was 'born' right at the START of the Indomitus Crusade?

Scheduling products is hard.

[Artanis]

Okay, so the reason that Vigilus is important, is because it's at the entry point of the Nachmund Gauntlet. That is, one of the safe passages through the Great Rift between Imperium Sanctus, and Imperium Nihilus. Ignoring the bit about how planets have orbits and they move...We can establish that Vigilus only became important after the Great Rift was formed...Otherwise what even was the Nachmund Gauntlet before then? Wait...Hang on. The book said that Vigilus was always famed? Like...From the start. It was the opening sentence of the entire story. But it's only mattered since The Great Rift opened? ...Oh...This is a really bad sign.

AKA, "Oh s***, we only know how to write about Cadia, but we just blew that up"?

[9mm]

AKA, "Oh s***, we only know how to write about Cadia, but we just blew that up"?

pretty much; though Vigilus was Cadia's next door neighbor even before the great rift. So while the Cadian Gate was the only real way out of the eye, Vigilus was part of the surrounding "battlements".

[LansXero]

So this happened:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/...mepage-post-1/

or rather will happen. While its not bad to see a new story, I think what most people would prefer are animations from important moments in the existing lore.

[Aliess]

Reading about vigilance here has now got me thinking and confused. Has there ever been any mention of a weapon/means of pulling ships out of the warp? If not then it seems chaos had no reason to want to destroy Cadia, and vigilance holds no strategic value in guarding the gauntlet, since ships in the warp would just drift past either of them.
If chaos were using the Cadian gate as a safe way in and out of the eye, shouldn't the imperium have been the ones trying to destroy it? Now chaos have gotten rid of a fortress that they could have flown around/through, but have to navigate the far more unpredictable/dangerous warp storms to do it.

[LeSwordfish]

You cant be in the warp too close to a star, and certain warp routes are much more navigable than others - especially if you're moving a fleet of ships and you want them all to arrive together. Where the two intersect you get things like the Cadian Gate or the Nachmund Gauntlet, where a planetary system can provide a military barrier to ship movements in the warp.

[Voidhawk]

Reading about vigilance here has now got me thinking and confused. Has there ever been any mention of a weapon/means of pulling ships out of the warp? If not then it seems chaos had no reason to want to destroy Cadia, and vigilance holds no strategic value in guarding the gauntlet, since ships in the warp would just drift past either of them.
If chaos were using the Cadian gate as a safe way in and out of the eye, shouldn't the imperium have been the ones trying to destroy it? Now chaos have gotten rid of a fortress that they could have flown around/through, but have to navigate the far more unpredictable/dangerous warp storms to do it.

Warp Jumps are just that: a jump. You aim where you want to end up, throw yourself toward it, and hope you come out in one piece. There's precious little a ship can really do once it's dropped into warp-space other than hold on and pray.

The more foggy the target, the more likely you are to get lost or come out inside a star. The further the jump, the foggier the target is. The dimmer the astronomicon, the harder it is to aim in a straight line. Jumping through a Warp Storm is nearly impossible. The larger a ship/fleet, the more dangerous a jump can be. Plotted Warp Routes are basically formulas that say "do exactly this and you have a better than 90% chance of not vanishing without a trace". Chaos ships get some slight bonuses to all this, because they often have Daemonic Pacts to help guide them.

Then you have the fact that a system's Mandeville Points generally only point at a couple of other systems each. This means that each system is effectively a node in a map. A ship/fleet will take a short hop to the next system, then orbit around till they reach a Mandeville point for the next hop. While slow, this is generally preferable rather than risk a long jump. It's also why communication ships are useful: they're small with large engines, so they can dash between Mandeville points quickly.

So: Cadia. The Cadian Gate sat as the sole stable Mandeville Point into the center of the Eye. Getting to Cadia from anywhere in the Eye is far easier than getting out through the Eye's tempestuous edge. You can take a fleet to Cadia and not have it scattered to the winds, or devoured enroute, or all arrive in different decades. And once at Cadia, you can jump in any number of other directions. Most importantly for military operations the route is permanent: there are other routes out that sometimes appear at the whim of the warp, but you can plan to go to Cadia next year and not have to call off your assault because the bridge disappeared.

Originally Abbadon didn't want to destroy Cadia: he wanted to seize it, turn the guns outward, and use it as a staging post to support the conquest of the rest of the Imperium. The whole Pylon-smashing is a very late addition to the fluff. From the Imperial side, until the Gathering Storm they had precious little idea that the Pylons were holding the Eye open/closed/in-check, how they worked, or what would happen if you F'd around with them. Only the desperation of Abbadon knocking on their door with a Blackstone Fortress (and Cawl getting help from Trayzn) let them tinker with them at all successfully.

[Cheesegear]

Has there ever been any mention of a weapon/means of pulling ships out of the warp?

Disabling the Warp Drive seems to work. However, naval combat inside the Warp is definitely not recommended.
Also, the limitation of the Warp Drive is that it isn't permanent. You make a constant series of jumps. One of the jumping points that's pretty safe is the Cadian Gate.

If chaos were using the Cadian gate as a safe way in and out of the eye, shouldn't the imperium have been the ones trying to destroy it?

What? The Cadian Gate is a ring of planets in the immediate vicinity of the entry/exit point of the only safe way in/out of the Eye.
It's serves a blockade to anyone trying to enter realspace out of the Eye, and serves as the 'Go No Further' line for the Imperium friendlies.

Destroying the Gate lets Chaos do whatever they want surrounding the Eye of Terror, and lets people go in as they like.
There is no strategic advantage to destroying the Gate, for the Imperium.

Now chaos have gotten rid of a fortress that they could have flown around/through

No they couldn't. That was the point. The Warp currents surrounding the Eye itself are far more dangerous than anywhere else in the Galaxy.

If the Cadian Gate could've just been flown around - Space is 3D ya idiots - then there would be no narrative purpose for it.
However, the narrative is set up so that the Cadian Gate is very difficult to avoid if you want to enter/exit the Eye, safely.

but have to navigate the far more unpredictable/dangerous warp storms to do it.

Sure. Why bother trying to take the safe route for yourself - on a permanent basis - when you can just take the unsafe and unpredictable way indefinitely.

I like walking down streets that have street lamps. I can see where I'm going, and, if someone is looking pretty shady, I can see them and cross the street.
But why would I risk walking down main street, where I know a gang hangs out...When I can go seven blocks over, where I can't see anything and I'm constantly tripping over and hurting myself, and people who are going to attack me there, I can't see.

Instead of taking the dangerous street every time...Wouldn't it be better if we just cleaned out the undesirable element on the good street?

...I think the main thing you need to understand is that nobody - except Daemons - can stay in the Warp indefinitely. Even with a Gellar Field on.

[LansXero]

...I think the main thing you need to understand is that nobody - except Daemons - can stay in the Warp indefinitely. Even with a Gellar Field on.

People tend to get confused with the time between emergences from the Eye and correlating them with time SPENT inside the Eye; time just works differently in the warp, its not been 10 000 years for the heretics inside, otherwise they'd all probably be spawn at this point.

Also, remember that both imperial and chaos ships cant actually navigate the warp worth a damn on their own. They depend on navigators or sorcerers for it, both which can burn out, die, explode in daemons or simply fail and its more likely the longer the jump and the more often you jump.

[Aliess]

Cheers.
I think the point, click and hope was the bit I was forgetting. If you figure you need to get close enough to a system to orient yourselves that local forces could intercept you before you can jump again then that makes a lot of sense.
My problem with Cadian gate Cheesegear was that I've always seen the eye in 3d, with a ball of storms around it and the Cadian gate as one route to the centre. If you're a chaos fleet emerging from it and you can locate Cadia, why not just overshoot? That all depends on whether you can work out your emergence point on the come you'd appear in. Getting back in could be trickier though so that'd make sense to want to get close to Cadia.

[DataNinja]

If you're a chaos fleet emerging from it and you can locate Cadia, why not just overshoot?

Because, IIRC, the Warp doesn't work in the same way as realspace. You keep flying "straight" from system A to System B, if you keep flying "straight" from B, you might end up at system C that's a "right-turn" away in realspace, and 30 years before you left.

[Grim Portent]

If you try to overshoot through Cadia you might also get crushed by gravitational forces/smack into a solid warp object. Planets and stars have warp echoes that can mess up ships during Warp Travel in addition to the normal problems with translating between realspace and warpspace near a gravity well as I recall.

It's theoretically possible to just dive past Cadia without leaving the Warp, but that's so dangerous it's considered more practical to skirt a small fleet round the edges of the fortified systems as fast as possible or launch a major assault to tie up Cadia and have enough forces left over to flow past it and attack the Imperium beyond.

Given how 40k space travel is comparable to age of sail naval travel in how it functions in universe it could be compared to sailing through a patch of rough waters with unfavourable currents around concealed rocks and icebergs far from shore or skirting through safe waters near a coastal fort. The fort might manage to hit you and damage you, but the rocks will almost definitely sink you.

[Cheesegear]

If you're a chaos fleet emerging from it and you can locate Cadia, why not just overshoot?

What you're essentially asking is, "What is a Mandeville Point, and why do they exist?"
The Cadian Gate is the only Mandeville Point in and out of the Eye of Terror. Hence why it's so heavily fortified.

Grim Portent's Age of Sail reference is dead-on, and that's exactly what the Warp is. That's way The Great Rift is so bad, that's why tunnels through it are so important.

[deuterio12]

Given how 40k space travel is comparable to age of sail naval travel in how it functions in universe it could be compared to sailing through a patch of rough waters with unfavourable currents around concealed rocks and icebergs far from shore or skirting through safe waters near a coastal fort. The fort might manage to hit you and damage you, but the rocks will almost definitely sink you.

That's why we started making boats with multi-layer metal hulls and sonars and whatnot (or just planes/chopters).

That in 10 000 years nobody found a more reliable method is yet another of 40k's sylliness, doubly so when cadian guardsmen are still using the same pattern of flashlight all along. "This is one of the most critical points in the galaxy, let's arm the local defenders with the cheapest obsolete mass-produced stuff we can, that should work wonders against the daemons and chaos marines that come knocking all the time."

[YossarianLives]

Lasguns aren't flashlights. Yes, they are cheap and easy to mass-produce. But they are also well-established as being very effective against non-power armoured targets (which is 90% or more of what the guard fight) and can be used for months in the field without breaking or running out of ammunition.

The Guard doesn't need to give all of its soldiers bolters because hundreds of guardsmen wielding lasguns is much more valuable in a conventional battlefield than one space marine with top-notch equipment.

[LansXero]

That's why we started making boats with multi-layer metal hulls and sonars and whatnot (or just planes/chopters).

That in 10 000 years nobody found a more reliable method is yet another of 40k's sylliness, doubly so when cadian guardsmen are still using the same pattern of flashlight all along. "This is one of the most critical points in the galaxy, let's arm the local defenders with the cheapest obsolete mass-produced stuff we can, that should work wonders against the daemons and chaos marines that come knocking all the time."

a better flashlight wont make a Cadian live that much longer though. Lasguns are supposed to be logistical wonders, and in a battlefield where attrition is in the millions you want that cheap mass production and reliability over everything else.

[Gauntlet]

That's why we started making boats with multi-layer metal hulls and sonars and whatnot (or just planes/chopters).

That in 10 000 years nobody found a more reliable method is yet another of 40k's sylliness, doubly so when cadian guardsmen are still using the same pattern of flashlight all along. "This is one of the most critical points in the galaxy, let's arm the local defenders with the cheapest obsolete mass-produced stuff we can, that should work wonders against the daemons and chaos marines that come knocking all the time."

And yet even after planes / helicopters / sonar appeared, cargo ships are still heavily used and still need to avoid the shallow / dangerous areas of the sea to make sure they don't run aground.

The weapon you arm the Guardsmen with doesn't matter much. Their ability to actually kill the enemy is pretty much nil, but any weapon you can produce in sufficient quantities to arm Guardsmen with is going to have the same problem, so you might as well give them something reliable and cheap. Guardsmen are there to buy time for the artillery and other heavy weaponry, and in that scenario their primary job is to be cheap and numerous and get in the way, so putting better weapons in their hands would be counterproductive.

[Wraith]

Reading about vigilance here has now got me thinking and confused. Has there ever been any mention of a weapon/means of pulling ships out of the warp?.

It was the opening plot point of the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine video game. Not a weapon, but a bunch of Ork Weirdboys were ordered to get together and drag an Imperial vessel out of the warp, out of orbit and force it to crash-land where it could then be looted.

The effort of doing it literally made all of their heads explode, but that was fine by Warboss Grimskull, whose idea it was. There's always more Weirdboys if you know where to look.

I don't think that the Imperium has ever done it, as A) they don't have the technology to do so and B) even they aren't quite so flippant with the lives of their Psykers.

That's why we started making boats with multi-layer metal hulls and sonars and whatnot (or just planes/chopters).

That worked out really well for the Titanic and Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, after all.

That in 10 000 years nobody found a more reliable method is yet another of 40k's silliness, doubly so when Cadian guardsmen are still using the same pattern of flashlight all along. "This is one of the most critical points in the galaxy, let's arm the local defenders with the cheapest obsolete mass-produced stuff we can, that should work wonders against the daemons and chaos marines that come knocking all the time."

There are literally 30 different patterns of Lasgun listed on Lexicanum, not including Hot-Shot Lasers, Lascarbines and Long-las Rifles, and all of them are capable of removing limbs from armoured humans at a distance of hundreds of metres. Obsolete? <img=that_word_you_keep_using_princess_bride.gif >

[Cheesegear]

"This is one of the most critical points in the galaxy, let's arm the local defenders with the cheapest [...] mass-produced stuff we can

Welcome to the real world, son.

The Segmentum Obscurus is also home to the Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Iron Hands, and all of the Adeptus Praeses (~20, with losses). A permanent Crusade Fleet of Black Templars dating all the way back to Sigismund. A number of Sororitas garrisons (most of which have migrated to Vigilus, confirmed), and both Forge Worlds Lucius and Agripnaa.

If two dozen Space Marine Chapters can't hold the line, with Mechanicus and Sororitas support, can't hold the Gate...Then what are a dozen Guard garrisons gonna do?

that should work wonders against the daemons and chaos marines that come knocking all the time."

See the above. The Cadian Gate isn't held by just Cadians. The first person at the Cadian Gate, who made it a Thing in the first place, was Sigismund. Sigismund held the Gate, since the Second Founding, right up until he was a thousand years old. He's not a Cadian. Gee, I wonder where he came from.

[LeSwordfish]

It was the opening plot point of the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine video game. Not a weapon, but a bunch of Ork Weirdboys were ordered to get together and drag an Imperial vessel out of the warp, out of orbit and force it to crash-land where it could then be looted.

The effort of doing it literally made all of their heads explode, but that was fine by Warboss Grimskull, whose idea it was. There's always more Weirdboys if you know where to look.

They did the same in one of the Ciaphas Cain books as well - hid their battlefleet in the Halo, and then dragged the imperial fleet out of warp in the middle of it, ripe for smashing.

<img=that_word_you_keep_using_princess_bride.gif >

Ah, the deuterio experience.

[Cikomyr]

Welcome to the real world, son.

The Segmentum Obscurus is also home to the Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Iron Hands, and all of the Adeptus Praeses (~20, with losses). A permanent Crusade Fleet of Black Templars dating all the way back to Sigismund. A number of Sororitas garrisons (most of which have migrated to Vigilus, confirmed), and both Forge Worlds Lucius and Agripnaa.

If two dozen Space Marine Chapters can't hold the line, with Mechanicus and Sororitas support, can't hold the Gate...Then what are a dozen Guard garrisons gonna do?

I think i misunderstood something. Is the choice between 2 dozen chapters vs 12 garrison, or its the garriaon on top of the chapters?

AFAIK, its not like the Garrison are detrimental.

[Voidhawk]

That's why we started making boats with multi-layer metal hulls and sonars and whatnot (or just planes/chopters).

That in 10 000 years nobody found a more reliable method is yet another of 40k's sylliness...

They did find a better method. Everyone knows what it is: The Webway. Which was built by the Old Ones, back when the Warp was a stable happy collective-unconscious-dreamscape and not the horrible infinite-daemon-hellscape we know in the 41st millennium.

The basic timeline of 40k goes:
0 - The Old Ones arise and populate the galaxy, building the webway and seeding life everywhere.
1 - The Necron'tyr arise, discover the C'Tan, and the War In Heaven ruins everything for everyone forever.
2 - The Eldar are the controlling force in a galaxy filled with various different species for 65 million years.

3 - Humans arise and spread out over the galaxy, contacting many aliens in peace. The Eldar turn inwards, ceasing to care about the wider galaxy.
4 - The Long Night: the Men of Iron happen, and the Human empires collapse. Warp storms cut Terra off, and isolate much of the galaxy from each other.
5 - The various aliens shrug, and pillage the vulnerable human populations. The Orks are now the second strongest race after the Eldar.
6 - Slaanesh is born, and the Eldar implode as she devourers 90% of their population in a single night. The warp calms.

7 - The Emperor zerg-rushes the galaxy with space marines, heading off a huge number of threats before they become an issue, including the huge Ork empires.
8 - The Emperor returns to Terra to build humans a Webway.
9 - Horus Erebus ruins everything forever.
10 - 10,000 years of war.

Before the Long Night the warp was much more stable, the human empires didn't really need anything else to travel, and the Emperor-to-be was wandering around the galaxy sight-seeing.
During the Long Night, the Emperor was cut off from Terra, and to build a webway he needed access to the super-secret gate there.
After the Long Night, he decided to prioritise unification rather than sit on Terra and tech-rush. Which was probably a good idea, since otherwise Chaos Cults would have had all the time to build their empires up.

[Gauntlet]

Are there ever any details on what caused the Long Night warp storms? It's interesting that the Men of Iron happened at approximately the same point in time as this warp disturbance, but isn't obviously connected to it.

I thought that 6 came before 3, and the Long Night was caused by Slaanesh's appearance, but I might have my timelines mixed up.