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Mikojan posted:Just bought [/b]the primarchs[b] and I was wondering what stories are worth reading. Basically none of them. Well, The Lion is readable, but some of the others just keep dragging the gently caress on. The first one is definitely terrible, though.
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Jul 10, 2012 11:42
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Arquinsiel posted:Two of them at the same time because Luckily, GW has designed it so that continuity being an absolute shambles is completely in line with the fluff.
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Jul 11, 2012 03:39
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Baron Bifford posted:So they're very serious about protecting information. It's still just a matter of information. 10,000 years is plenty of time for the Inquisition or the Mechanicum to crack the Eldar's veil of secrecy (then again, this is hardly the only absurdity in W40K, so maybe I'm nitpicky). Neither party even know that the webway exists, for the most part. The Emperor's final project is one of his deepest secrets, and basically nobody's ever heard of it except for maybe Magnus himself.
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Jul 21, 2012 23:59
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Every race gets a couple "I win" buttons in the fluff, and mastering the webway is one of them for the Imperium, I believe, since it would remove their dependence on the astronomican as well as the vagaries of warp travel. Which is why the Horus Heresy happened when it did. The new retcon about the necrons also using the webway is dumb as poo poo, though. Seroiusly, screw you Mat Ward.
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Jul 22, 2012 00:41
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Fried Chicken posted:Primarch Khan entered and got lost in the Webway, so clearly humans know something about it and how to enter it. Primarchs are legendary demigods from 10,000 years ago, not regular people.
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Jul 22, 2012 18:09
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Baron Bifford posted:I don't get why the writers copied the AI ban. Why would AIs be incompatible with the Imperium of Man's themes? Because then the Imperium of Man uses cyborgized lobotomized dissidents instead of robots, which is way more grimdark.
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Jul 24, 2012 19:53
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dongsbot 9000 posted:As a generalization, the Imperium and its citizens hate psykers. Though another theme in the fluff is just how enormous and varied the Imperium truly is. The only real requirements for being a part of the Imperium is to revere the Emperor (in any form, be it sun god or ancestor spirit or whatever), round up all psykers for the Black Ships, hate all mutants and aliens, and pay your taxes. That's it. The rest, you can basically do whatever you want and can get away with in front of the local branches of the Inquisition. It's possible that there are indeed planets that are socially more friendly to psykers, so long as they still gather them up for screening. The Librarians in some Space Marine Chapters, for instance, are definitely considered to be of high-status and given leadership roles.
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Jul 25, 2012 20:41
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Dodoman posted:What if it just replicates houses I think it was the same Abnett book where they mention a case where two scouts found an ancient STC print-out for a better way to make a combat knife. In the end, they were rewarded with a planet each for their discovery.
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Jul 25, 2012 22:26
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bunnyofdoom posted:What about the Omnissiah The Omnissiah is only the physical incarnation of the Machine God.
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Jul 27, 2012 00:37
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Evil_Urna posted:I am reading the Shira Calpurnia books right now and I am really digging the space Judge Dredd-ish story going on it. And I think she is one of the most positive female leads in a Warhammer book that I have seen thus far. There's other Warhammer books with female leads?
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Jul 27, 2012 07:16
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Evil_Urna posted:Jokaeros are not part of cannon anymore are they? I would imagine if one could control them (which would be neigh impossible) they would be the most powerful person in the galaxy. Jokaero are still canon, since they're in a current codex and you can still buy models and everything. They are also pretty awesome.
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Jul 28, 2012 15:13
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Evil_Urna posted:Black Library has come a long way since this: Why? You don't like Pacino Marine?
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Jul 29, 2012 00:38
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bunnyofdoom posted:Wait, what? Maybe the Kryptmann Gambit?
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Jul 29, 2012 01:13
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Baron Bifford posted:The Imperium is said to be a very oppressive regime, but the fluff says that the Imperium often exerts very little control over the internal politics of its worlds. As long as a planet worships the Emperor, shuns xenos, and pays its tithes, the Imperium lets it handle its affairs as it pleases. By this alone, there is no reason a vibrant democracy couldn't develop on one of its worlds. If all the Imperium is grimdark and that plenty of planets want to rebel, then there must be more to it. What does the Imperium do to planets to keeps them stagnant and oppressive? Because they're not as interesting to write about and not gothic grimdark enough. That opening blurb in every bit of fluff is basically a mission statement. Also, there are such things as unions in 40k. Stuff like the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Navigator Houses as well as various guilds are pretty common. They're just the giant, corrupt, dickheaded type of unions instead of small, worker-led organizations. Why? Because everything is giant and corrupt in 40k. That's kind of the point. Keep in mind here that 40k is space fantasy, not science fiction, and, at least before the Mat Ward crew got their hands on it, it was more accurately satirical space fantasy. Reason and logic do not really apply. Part of the joke is that there is nothing stopping the Imperium from being a lot nicer or at least less totally wasteful except for sheer bloody-mindedness. If you noticed this, then, congratulations, you've just gotten the joke. If it helps, most of the real world is also stagnant and oppressive for no good reason.
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Aug 1, 2012 16:32
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Nephilm posted:It stopped being that way since 3rd and you shouldn't continue trying to view it as such. Well, that's why I qualified it as "before the Mat Ward crew." Reason and logic still doesn't apply, though.
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Aug 1, 2012 22:04
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berzerkmonkey posted:Evolution? Not kidding, evolution is defined as: Those people are more likely to be either mutants or else genetically normal people where something went wrong during the development process (between genes and actual body stuff). Or else it really is hereditary. Or it's a set of genes that makes the developmental process more prone to error. Or any number of other things. It's relatively easy to remove a single variant of a single gene from a gene pool. You just remove every single individual who carries the gene in the form you're interested in removing. Of course, most complex traits entail many, many genes, so it's much harder then. Genetics in the real world is very complicated since genes interact with each other in very complex ways, but at the same time the incidence of actual genes is pretty simple. It's usually just a straight probability distribution, assuming they're not linked in some way. Complex multi-genetic traits are quite susceptible to being disrupted since losing any of a handful of key genes for some different set of genes will change whether the trait itself is expressed or not, depending entirely on what each gene does in each of the different forms that might exit. This, again, has nothing really to do with 40k. Navigator houses are like that because that's how they were in Dune, and also because giant clans of horribly inbred mutants is analogous to the situation of various hereditary houses, guilds, and royal lines often found in other long-standing, corrupt, decadent imperial civilizations like Imperial China, Medici's Italy, or 19th century Europe. Which ties into the gothic far future fantasy thing. Stop applying real-world science to 40k. 40k is not science-fiction.
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Aug 2, 2012 16:38
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handbanana125 posted:Also, was Priests of Mars any good? I don't recall there being much of a splash about it. In my opinion, no. It is a book with literally no ending at all. Nothing happens or is resolved. I feel like someone at the printers hosed up and only send me 2/3 of a book.
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Aug 3, 2012 03:57
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Baron Bifford posted:Because the backfluff is probably going to be more of the same. Chaos, Chaos, Chaos! WAAAGHH!, WAAAGH!, WAAAGH!. FOR THE EMPRAH! Burn those heretics! Bolter porn. Corrupt Inquisitors. Dickhead commissars. I don't think you "get" 40k. I base this on every question you've asked here so far.
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Aug 4, 2012 00:24
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Mowglis Haircut posted:Not sure how you missed that it was obviously the first part in a series? I could tell. But being the first book in a series doesn't excuse something as basic as not having an ending. There's a difference between a cliffhanger ending and not actually wrapping anything up at all and just sort of going *plop* in the middle. It's terrible and I can't believe they published it like that. The fact that it's the first in a series just makes it worse, since it's possible that they're not lazy but in fact intentionally compromised the book to try to get you to buy the rest of them. It doesn't exactly inspire faith or motivate me to keep buying more. Many of the characters introduced don't actually do anything or develop or even receive anything more than a cursory description, and every single plot thread is left dangling. That's not just "setting up" for a series - it's cheating the reader. All that time spent on build-up for as yet unwritten books is basically wasted space since it adds nothing to the book. It's lazy writing and annoys the hell out of me. And basically every other decent book series manages to have each book be at least satisfying and readable on its own, even outside the setups and context from later/previous installments.
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Aug 6, 2012 14:29
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Mechafunkzilla posted:McNeill does this all the time, half of the Ultramarines books end with the protagonist in a hopeless situation on a Daemon world or whatever. Next time don't read any of his books until there's some consensus as to their quality or until the entire series has been released, lesson learned I guess. Yes and no. I read some of those Ultramarine books and, while they end in cliffhangers, they also at least actually have endings that wrap up plot threads, have some level of progression, and give a general sense of closure. The Ultramarines books are pretty bad, too, but even bearing that general level of quality in mind, and not having personally paid money for the book, I was still disappointed.
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Aug 7, 2012 01:54
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Trast posted:Isn't the story behind this cover that it was some sort of stock WH40k image that Abnett saw and a character started forming in his mind right away? It's got a lot of visual elements that are important in the book. Yeah, Abnett tells that story in one of the introductions. The image on that cover itself started out as concept art for the at the time upcoming Inquisitor game and miniatures line. You can see that Eisenhorn was conceived of as a tie-in book. For instance, phsycial descriptions for a number of major and incidental characters match up to the first release of miniatures for the game, and the first book's info-dump on Inquisitorial philosophies is basically lifted from the rulebook. There's also elements of "gaminess" where specific game abstractions and terms are used in cases where they aren't quite necessary. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Aug 10, 2012 |
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Aug 10, 2012 16:31
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Wesley Walker posted:I just started Know No Fear and I have a question. Interstellar communication is always slow and unreliable in 40k. It's a part of the setting. Especially since most of it has to travel through the warp, which is the home realm of the Heresy's sponsors, the dark gods of the warp. I believe one or two of the other Heresy books describe the narrow escape of Corax with the survivors of the Raven Guard, who then goes to the Emperor to tell him what happened. So word did get out. The Emperor actually was quite positive on psykers, since he was in fact the greatest human psyker. The hatred and fear of psykers really comes later as humanity backslides into fear and ignorance, the Emperor on his Golden Throne is less able to guide the development of psykers or protect humanity from the horrors of the warp, and the as the dark gods gain strength. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Aug 18, 2012 |
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Aug 18, 2012 17:33
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I think, also, that it's weakly implied that the difference between using regular psyker powers and sorcery is that one uses individual psychic potential channeled through certain specific paths, while the other involves bargaining with or otherwise harnessing the power of minor warp entities to amplify that power. Or maybe it's just a subtler line.rocket_Magnet posted:Why can't I remember useful stuff, rather than being full of this rubbish. You're not the only one who wonders this.
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Aug 22, 2012 03:43
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Also, he was immediately suspicious because Magnus shouldn't be powerful enough to breach the webway unaided. The "massive and powerful warp presence" made Magnus look like he was the one who had been corrupted by daemons, not Horus. Also, warp travel is extremely slow and unreliable.
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Aug 25, 2012 18:31
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Graham McNeill is all you need to know. He is not a good writer. Better than the absolutely unreadable ones like CS Goto, but just barely.
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Aug 26, 2012 20:23
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I'll admit that A Thousand Sons is readable and not terrible. It is pretty decent, and near the top tier if we're talking only Black Library books.
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Aug 26, 2012 20:28
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Baron Bifford posted:It's a wonder that the Imperium has survived so long. The gods of war severely punish those who do not innovate in their strategies. Innovation doesn't mean poo poo if you can throw entire planetary populations into the meat grinder. The Imperium is all about taking punishment and then ignoring it.
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Aug 27, 2012 16:31
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Thewittyname posted:In general the Tau have a weak presence in the warp. It's the same reason their empire expands so slowly - they have no equivalent of Navigators and can only take short hops through the warp. I'm pretty sure the goonsay is implied in every single post in this thread, so don't worry about adding it.
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Aug 27, 2012 17:12
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Arquinsiel posted:A large part of the tragic appeal of the primarchs is how they are later venerated by the Imperium at large and, despite protests to the contrary, by the Space Marines themselves when they knew themselves to be just men like any other. Dunno, they are pretty clearly larger-than-life demigods in the Herculean vein. It's just that they had human flaws to go with their inhuman power and ability, which ended up being kind of a bad mix. The real tragic part, and I mean this in the ancient Greek sense, is how misfortune and bad judgments by the Emperor leads to the downfall of such paragons despite their immense personal power and intellects.
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Aug 27, 2012 20:30
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Olanphonia posted:There was a great bit in the Night Lords series where Talos talks about how they were attacked by Astartes who were utilizing the Codex and he basically said that there was pretty much nothing they could have done to prevent getting their poo poo ruined. Yeah, I think it's built up as a sort of The Art of War / Book of Five Rings meets the Army Ranger Handbook / military field manual sort of thing. Lots of philosophical stuff mixed in with general frameworks for force organization, procedures, response drills, etc. Or, in more general terms, it's a sort of good version of the necronomicon, only instead of driving you insane, it makes you an amazing general. It's a plot device. Basically the Space Marine Bible. Too bad, much like the Necronomicon, it's a very convenient plot device that often gets used poorly by lazy writers.
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Aug 27, 2012 20:38
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There's already at least 5 chaos gods. Possibly more.
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Aug 27, 2012 22:05
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TheStampede posted:Where is the fifth mentioned? I've seen it mentioned a couple times now, but have never heard of it. The fifth chaos god is one who must not be named (due to legal action). The fifth god is a sort of holdover from the earlier years of the game (both Warhammer Fantasy and later 40k), and was named Malal, the Renegeade God of Chaos. Malal is the god of anarchy, terror, and self-destruction, and is the chaos god who fights against chaos. Then GW lost the rights to the name due to issues with its original creators. Eventually it was mostly phased out due to these legal issues, though always hinted at as a sort of in-joke in various codexes and bits of fluff, just like the other oblique references to other mostly phased out stuff like squats, etc.
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Aug 27, 2012 22:29
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Arquinsiel posted:There are a few more Chaos gods floating around too, like Hashut, the Horned Rat, Furnex, Necoho (best god) etc.... My favorites are Ans'l, Mo'rcck, and Phraz-Etar.
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Aug 28, 2012 00:41
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I believe champions of Malal are usually depicted as turning albino, too 
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Aug 28, 2012 01:29
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Thulsa Doom posted:This probably does represent the thinking of GW, since they hate money for some reason. Yeah, I don't think you understand just how much those models cost. The margin and volume on books is nothing compared to that on tiny plastic space men.
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Aug 28, 2012 19:45
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Thulsa Doom posted:I know how much the models cost, trust me. I was referring more to their weird licensing practices for the intellectual property and such. You mean like for video games and stuff? I think they're rightly afraid that video games will cut into sales of models. Very few people like 40k just to play the game apart from the excellent fluff, especially since the rules are kind of outdated and clunky compared to other competing miniatures games. License fees are rarely going to be enormous. They'd rather do stuff in-house so they can control the quality, especially since the fluff is the biggest asset they have now. I know this sounds ridiculous, considering the middling-to-poor editorial standards at GW, but at the same time, quality standards for licensed IPs are often even worse for licensed derivative works.
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Aug 28, 2012 19:52
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Baron Bifford posted:What is your favorite miniatures wargame out there? Space Hulk is pretty drat awesome, though it's questionable whether it's a wargame per se. I haven't actually personally played a full game of 40k since I was 13, but I've had plenty of incidental exposure to them since then. I played a little Warmachine once when my uber-nerd friend (who I borrow all my 40k books from because he gets like every single one as a review copy) tried it out. It seemed like a pretty good system. Battletech also had a wonky system, but personally I enjoyed it when I had the time for stuff like that. People have also said very good things about Infinity. The rules look pretty interesting to me, too.
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Aug 28, 2012 22:24
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Nephilm posted:Holy Terra is a horrible place to live. You can safely assume that most of the atmosphere isn't safe for unmodified or unprotected humans, that the parts that are breathable are kept that way using technomagic, and that the rich or well-off-enough live in altogether sealed habs. Also, the bulk of the oceans had been boiled off long before the Great Crusade, to the point that the blue planet was already a distant memory. How it happened is anyone's guess, but considering the technology available to humanity at the time it isn't very far-fetched to think it possible. Where did the water go? Perhaps stripped off the upper atmosphere by solar wind, don't know. Maybe they developed a super fusion generator that creates power from nothing but ordinary water, then proceeded to use up all the water.
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Aug 29, 2012 01:58
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Arquinsiel posted:I checked, because I have nothing better to do. Apparently it's the Red Thirst which sometimes is literally the marine going nuts because he remember's Sanguinius' death. The Black Rage was a throwaway title for a special rule in 3rd ed. The Red Thirst is the one where they crave the taste of blood and have to constantly fight their bloodlust, and is the result of a flaw in their gene-seed. The Black Rage is when on the eve of battle, they start reliving the final battles of Sanguinius, usually believing that they are themselves in fact Sanguinius, and that one is caused by some sort of psychic imprint left by the death of Sanguinius (who in addition to everything else had enormous psychic power).
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Sep 1, 2012 18:11
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Supposedly they're two souls in one body. I also subscribe to the idea that the Emperor actually instilled each Primarch with a fraction of his own soul as part of the techno-sorcery part of their creation, and each reflects a portion of his ancient personality. This is also why he couldn't just start over with a new batch after the originals were lost.
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Sep 2, 2012 16:05
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