Warhammer 40k fluff thread VI: They see me Ward'en, they haten

[iyaerP]

So on advice from this thread a few pages back, I have skipped over Fulgrim and instead read Descent of Angels.

It was pretty bloody awesome. It did have very little to do with the horus heresy itself, spent almost all of its time setting things up for heresy, but I quite thouroughly enjoy it as no other book at this point had gone into that deep of an investigation into how pre-imperial-contact worlds were, and did an awesome job showcasing the societal impacts of compliance, the Astartes, and the arrival of the Emperor.

I had fun with it.

[Platinius]

Fresh topic to get the thread going again

Are there any tech-priests/marines that also are pyskers?

[Borgh]

Originally Posted by Platinius

Fresh topic to get the thread going again

Are there any tech-priests/marines that also are pyskers?

nope. If you are a psyker you get shuffled off to the Library and don't become a techmarine.
I suppose its not impossible, maybe a latent psyker that blooms later in life could be a possibility but the stringent testing every marine faces makes that somewhat unlikely.

[blueblade]

Yay for more fluff talk..

Never heard of anything connected to the Mechanicum having warp-influenced powers. Aren't Mechanicum particularly anti-mutant, after all?

Having said that though, they might have servitors with specific psyker powers?

[DaedalusMkV]

Actually, Servitors are all lobotomized which would prevent them from having the mental capacity and force of will to use psychic powers at all. If you could have psyker-Servitors, I can assure you that the Imperium would have no other kind of psyker.

Also, the only profession allowed to psykers in the Imperium is full-time Psykana trained psyker. Anyone found at a reasonable age by the Black Ships gets carted off to Terra to either be fed to the Astronomican or maybe, if they're really good and really lucky, getting trained. If they find someone who's been hiding their powers? Dead. A latent psyker demonstrates gaining the ability without the benefit of an extremely powerful patron (say, and Inquisitor) to get them sent to train and be sanctioned? Also dead. Since you literally can't join the Mechanicus without being checked up on by the Black Ships, you can't have a Mechanicus Psyker. You could, perhaps, have a Psyker who was a Mechanicus Acolyte for a while under very specific circumstances, but never someone who is both at the same time, and a high-ranking Adept would pretty much certainly be killed for tainting the perfection of the Machine-god's followers.

Edit: Space Marines tend to view spontaneous development of psychic powers as evidence of Warp corruption and put down the unfortunate, but there's a lot more room for deviation and variance here. Grey Knight Techmarines proves that it's not entirely outside of the realm of possibility for other Chapters to have psychic Techmarines as well, but expect it to be vanishingly rare at best, because both Librarians and Techmarines require years to train and a great deal of special attention.

[Tome]

There are, to my knowledge, only two places to find folks with both technical training and psyker ability. Those are Grey Knight Techmarines and certain Inquisitors.

[Brother Oni]

I've heard of normal Space Marines being Warp sensitive and not being a Librarian, but I guess they don't count as being a psyker.

[blueblade]

meta-fluff conversation:

• Favorite novel series (and why)? Heresy for me by a long shot, probably because it feels like they're about the only thing that seem to be significantly progressing the universe (slightly ironic given that it's 30k material, I know), other than the rulebooks.
• Second favourite series probably the Word bearers trilogy (Are the other Chaos aligned series as good)?
• Novels v Shorts. Heresy Novels sure do have a lot of short story anthologies among them... I've enjoyed a few, but on the whole I prefer the long formats that stick to POV of a handful of characters (but preferably not a primarch). Thoughts?

[iyaerP]

Series? The Cain Archives. Easily. One of the few book runs that has the necrons be consistantly scary, is entertaining and fun throughout, and does a good job of showcasing "normal" Imperial life in between all the GRIMDARK^TM


It does suffer from recurringness of plot device, but is overall well worth it.

The Heresy books I have found by contrast to suffer greatly from having too many different authors. The transition between books can be quite jarring, and the differences in writing quality is quite stark in some cases.

[Borgh]

I really enjoyed the Heresy series, yes there are some jarring writer transitions but to me those just showcase the different Legions. The Cain archives are pretty good too but to me the best are the Eisenhorn and Ravenor books. Love em.

As for the rulebook, I did not notice too many changes in the fluff (emperor is still dieing, deamon-poo keeps hitting the intergalactic fan) apart from some seriously creepy new artwork for the dark eldar.

One thing stood out though: Squats are back! Go read appendix I, the bit about abhumans.

[Cheesegear]

Favourite Novel Series;
Enforcer: Instead of being about amazing heroics and absolute badarsery, the series actually showcases in a few areas about how much it sucks to be an average human in 40K. Don't get me wrong, I love heroics and badarsery, but it's a nice change of pace.

The Word Bearers: Chaos are not idiots. It helps that Anthony Reynolds also knows how to write battles and how to change perspectives amazingly well.

Ventris: Aside from the fact that he's an Ultramarine, it's actually incredibly good. Especially because he's not really an Ultramarine. If you read it you'd know what I'm talking about.

Grey Knights: An exceptionally well-written series. However, it was written before Matt Ward ruined them and as such, the GKs are actually quite...Human. With a whole heap of flaws whilst still being the pinnacle of humanity. The scene where the Holocaust Power is activated is quite epic.

Soul Drinkers by the same author as Grey Knights is also very well written and Phalanx delivers a solid ending and closure for the series.

Standalones:
Space Marine: You can't go past it.
Atlas Infernal: My favourite Black Library book, bar none. The main reason I don't rate it as high as Word Bearers or Enforcer is simply because there isn't any more to like.

Least favourites:
Cain: It stopped being good after the third novel. All the books are the same, Cain never changes, his 'schtick' was old news even when Cain was new (if you want Rincewind, then read Discworld) and he's not that funny, again, simply because all his 'jokes' are all the same.

Salamanders: Awful. The first one was incredibly bad. The next few are better, but that's only saying that 4/10 is better than 1/10.

And then there's just my general reading list which I think everyone should check out.

[Eldan]

A general question to people who already have the new core rulebook:

Are there any interesting fluff developments in there?

[iyaerP]

Phalanx also has the nice benefit of closing up some plot holes that people kept whining about.

Spoiler

Just as Planned

[Priest33]

Highly recommend the Night lord trilogy by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, shows a side of the Chaos marines that I dont believe has been explored yet, that of a dying tribe

[Borgh]

Originally Posted by Eldan

A general question to people who already have the new core rulebook:

Are there any interesting fluff developments in there?

not that I can find, the Ecclasiarchy got a bit more spotlight and the Appendix I gives some neat extras but the main idea and tone seems to be pretty much the same as it was.

[hamishspence]

The date of Macharius's crusade is pushed way up- from late M39/early M41, to 392.M41.

This raises certain continuity issues- like the ship Solar Macharius from the Gothic War books Execution Hour and Shadow Point- with the new dates, the Gothic War was before Macharius's crusade- so who's the ship named after?

[bluntpencil]

Originally Posted by hamishspence

The date of Macharius's crusade is pushed way up- from late M39/early M41, to 392.M41.

This raises certain continuity issues- like the ship Solar Macharius from the Gothic War books Execution Hour and Shadow Point- with the new dates, the Gothic War was before Macharius's crusade- so who's the ship named after?

Two possibilities:

1) Time travel. Send a ship through the warp, and sometimes you end up going back in time.

2) He's named after the ship. Or the ship got renamed later.

[Squark]

Also, squats were briefly mentioned in the appendix on the list of surviving abhumans. This will probably never be referenced again, but who knows.

[thereaper]

Isn't there supposed to be something about the Imperium and the Tau becoming BFFs?

[Borgh]

Originally Posted by thereaper

Isn't there supposed to be something about the Imperium and the Tau becoming BFFs?

No, thats just the allies matrix, and that can hardly be called canon.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Rogue Traders kind of soften the relationship between the Tau and Man's Empires. Being Imperial Sanctioned merchants and explorers with the ability to requisition Imperial Troops while completely ignoring any orders from the Imperium's government means that while there isn't any war on its actually in the Tau and human interest to be neighbors.

[Kris Strife]

Originally Posted by Borgh

No, thats just the allies matrix, and that can hardly be called canon.

Allies matrix?

[GolemsVoice]

That table that shows who can ally with whom for purposes of campaign play. Most are pretty self-explanatory, like SM and IG = no problem, while SM and CSM = HERESY!, but there is a certain uncertain cooperation, like IG and eldar.

[Kris Strife]

Originally Posted by GolemsVoice

That table that shows who can ally with whom for purposes of campaign play. Most are pretty self-explanatory, like SM and IG = no problem, while SM and CSM = HERESY!, but there is a certain uncertain cooperation, like IG and eldar.

Thanks.

[Voidhawk]

The main fluff change I found was in the Galactic Map at the end of Appendix 1. A whole series of places have been moved around, some quite extremely.

I was never that up on Galactic geography, but I swear the Tau Empire was south of Macragge, not north. And wasn't the Storm of The Emperor's Wrath in Ultima Segmentum? Now it's just east of the Gothic Sector. Badab is also much closer to the Maelstrom than I remember.

The position of the Necron Crownworld of Mandragor (home of Imhotek) has been placed... and it's slap-bang in the middle of Hive Fleet Kraken. How they survived that and left enough 'Nids to threaten the Imperium I don't know.

They've also put a massive (wider than the maelstrom, and longer than the galactic core!) "Astro Telepathic Duct" over the North East, without any explanation of what it is, why it's there, or how it was built. Anyone have any ideas as to what I'm looking at?

[Kris Strife]

Originally Posted by Voidhawk

The position of the Necron Crownworld of Mandragor (home of Imhotek) has been placed... and it's slap-bang in the middle of Hive Fleet Kraken. How they survived that and left enough 'Nids to threaten the Imperium I don't know.

Nids tend to instinctively avoid Necron Tomb worlds, even ones that aren't active.

[LeSwordfish]

Favourite novels: Ravenor, early Cain, later Gaunt's Ghosts.

I could barely get in to anything else. I tried the horus heresy, i tried plenty of Gav Thorpe's stuff, i tried any number of books about space marines, and nothing.

I think its because i find it really, really hard to see space marines as anything but big dull men in armour. Can anyone reccomend a cure for that?

I will also try the enforcer books, and i need to pick up Eisenhorn. Also waiting for Salvation's Reach.

[The Glyphstone]

Have you tried the Ragnar saga? Space Wolves, despite being big men in armor, are pretty much the antithesis of 'dull'.

[Squark]

So How is the Space Wolves novel series, by the way? I've thought about getting the first omnibus before, but given a choice between that and the first Ultramarines omnibus, I went with what I'd already heard good reviews about instead of something I didn't know much about.

[DaedalusMkV]

I'd also suggest the Night Lords trilogy. The 'protagonists' are all very different from the Space Marine archetype, being sneaky backstabbing Night Lords, and it deals very intimately with their psychology and the struggle for a Traitor Legion without a homeworld just to survive. I think this is the only series I've ever read where the Space Marines go into battle with cobbled-together mismatched armour and looted weapons and routinely run out of ammunition.