| 1 | [[index]] |
| 2 | * Headscratchers/Warhammer40kImperium |
| 3 | * Headscratchers/Warhammer40kXenos |
| 4 | * Headscratchers/Warhammer40kChaos |
| 5 | [[/index]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
| 10 | [[folder:The purpose of frag grenades]] |
| 11 | * What bother me about the game's (current, as far as I know it might have been different earlier) rules is that, apparently, frag grenades are used to make enemy defenders in cover ''duck'' and stop their fire ''before'' charging them into melee combat. They have no capability to harm anyone directly in the game, unless they are 'frag rounds' deployed from a launcher of sorts. It makes no sense to me at all that Imperium troops are essentially described as throwing frag grenades right outside the enemy's cover, so they can charge them. Throwing them ''into'' their enemy's cover would definitely interrupt their fire as everyone struggles to deal with the impending doom of a nearby frag grenade. Plus, I'm sure a frag grenade's explosive radius which sufficiently scares enemies to duck down would have to force the thrower to be at a rather far distance - probably enough for the defenders to just get up and continue firing again after the grenade goes off, which makes the whole process pointless. Why couldn't flashbangs just be standard issue and used for assaulting into melee and have frag grenades used as some sort of one-use, short-range blast weapon? |
| 12 | ** Do you really think they can get [[RedshirtArmy guardsmen]] to manage to throw into cover every time? Pitiful frag grenades are of no use against even flak armor which can stop bullets from a typical hiver slugthrower with every single part of it and any shrapnel from a frag would be travelling slower and thus hit with less force than a bullet because frag grenades are made for spread, not penetration like guns. Heavier explosives to make the shrapnel go faster would destroy any shrapnel unless the grenade was built out of stronger materials which would probably be heavier (thus harder to throw) and more expensive. Flashbangs may cost more to make than simply frags which are only good for distractions against enemies wearing or made of things as tough or tougher than flak armor which is most every enemy army. |
| 13 | ** Um... all else being equal, the more brisant the explosive--the more sudden its energy release, and this is strongly correlated with the total energy yield of the explosive for obvious thermodynamic reasons--the more efficiently it will create lethal fragments and the further it will throw them. RDX > PETN > Pentolite > Comp B > TNT > amatol > dynamite > blackpowder. |
| 14 | ** The average slugthrower 'autogun' is pretty much a modern rifle, right? While top-of-the-line modern armour can be capable of stopping rifle rounds, it still generally is useless against shrapnel. I don't really know why myself. Of course, in the game, while the strength stat of frag rounds (which are probably more powerful then grenades) varies, their armour-piercing value is insufficient against flak armour. But really, that just makes using flashbangs for the game's purpose even more sensible since frag grenades can be less-then threatening. My annoyance is more with Games Workshop just deciding to use frag grenades for the purpose of stopping enemies from firing at you while you charge them is oversimplifying it and causes the FridgeLogic like I said. While the Imperium may be too cheap to use flashbangs for that purpose instead makes sense for them, I think Games Workshop should of thought of something else. |
| 15 | ** It's the other way around. Late 20th Century/modern day soft body armor is pretty good at stopping shrapnel, but is only "bullet resistant," especially when we're talking about something more powerful than a handgun. But yeah, real-world, post-1900, artillery is the God of War and shrapnel wounds caused between 90% and 98% of battlefield deaths and injuries. Someone at GW gave grenades a heavy whack with the Nerf Bat, by the looks of it. And yes, an "autogun" is a generic late-20th-Century military rifle, anything from an AK to an FAL. |
| 16 | ** Someone got frag grenades completely wrong. Go pick up a copy of ''House To House: A Soldier's Memoir'', which details tight urban warfare by a modern military, and note how frags are commonly used: they're deployed mostly to suppress, not to flush targets out of cover. In fact, one of the best moments in the entire book where they ''could'' use a frag grenade on enemies in cover, there are extremely good reasons they don't, among them the danger of the grenades being rolled back at them. Also, frag grenades are ''heavy''. They're hard to chuck very far, which is why they're used at fairly close range, and chucking a grenade into a tiny gun hole while under fire by the enemy within is a ''lot'' harder than it sounds. |
| 17 | ** I probably did jump the gun by saying frags are just made for killing, but no soldier would be throwing frag grenades right in front of his enemies' cover before he and his squad charges them. It'd be a waste of grenades. Maybe one or two on their flank(s) to limit their ability to fire on them while charging, or throwing them to help a flanking squad succeed in assaulting, but throwing one or a bunch and expecting them to suppress before ''you'' charge in is just a waste of frags as you'd have to wait till' they all blow up before you charge to make sure they don't kill anyone. Which presumedly happens, considering how the game makes it sound as if the entire enemy squad is unable to return fire from those frags of the assaulting squad thereby allowing the charge to be unhindered. |
| 18 | ** Speaking as someone who's played 40K for fifteen years, the rules were changed so that battles could be completed in less than a day. In the original rules you could throw grenades at enemies, and it meant you had to roll for scatter, bicker about which models were under the blast template and then roll for wounds for every grenade. It gets worse if you threw a Rad Grenade which required you to then roll for both it's diametre and strength and ''then'' go through the whole scatter/bicker/wound process. |
| 19 | ** I will now file it under BellisariosMaxim. |
| 20 | ** Doesn't really fit BellisariosMaxim because the [=WH40K=] rules make more sense than most depictions of grenades. |
| 21 | ** Any prepared cover would have a grenade sump. This is basically just a hole you put grenades into that prevents them from doing any damage. Considering this can be made solely by digging a hole in dirt, odds are there are far, far more effective grenade sumps available in the [=WH40K=] universe. This means throwing a grenade into enemy cover is probably going to be a wasted effort that simply causes one soldier to pick it up and throw it into the sump. |
| 22 | ** Flashbangs are not usually deployed against military targets. They are unreliable and actually pretty easy to defend against if you don't panic upon seeing a grenade (unlike most civilian or paramilitary personnal who tend to be the main ones hit with flashbangs). Unlike frag grenades, you basically would have to throw these in cover and grenade sumps work even better on these than frag grenades. |
| 23 | ** Defenders aren't going to instantly pop back up after the grenade goes off because they have no way of knowing if the attackers didn't throw a couple delayed grenades. This means you end up with quite a few seconds to close the distance before anyone gets up. |
| 24 | ** They wouldn't pop back up instantly out of fear there are still grenades waiting to go off, but when you're close enough to actually get in hand-to-hand range, they'll likely be able to hear you moving closer and thus shoot at you...unless they are also suppressed by other methods, like standard rifle fire. That could be the additional thing I was wondering about, it just wasn't mentioned within the text. When I think about it, what really bothers me is how frag grenades can be used to suppress enemies, but ''only'' with the intention to charge them. If they are mentioned to be used for pinning in other manners when you aren't going to run at them bayonets fixed, it would make a lot more sense. |
| 25 | ** The [=WH40K=] actually compress certain aspects together to speed up the game. Some of the casualties from the assault phase when the grenades were thrown are actually probably due to the grenades, but Games Workshop decided that actually rolling for grenade casualties was not worth the time. |
| 26 | ** This troper forgets where, but somewhere the rules explicitly say "Close combat includes not just attacking with melee weapons, but also casualties from grenades, close range firing with both primary weapons and sidearms, throwing rocks, punching, kicking, biting, hair pulling, all forms of Suplex, environmental kills, etc;" or words to that effect. |
| 27 | [[/folder]] |
| 28 | |
| 29 | |
| 30 | |
| 31 | [[folder:Where do they get all those wonderful toys?]] |
| 32 | * How the hell do all the factions get the resources required for such massive, large scale, neverending conflict? |
| 33 | ** Let's see: The Imperium of Mankind has over a million worlds including thousands of Forge Worlds, Chaos has stuff they've stolen from them as well as literal OffscreenVillainDarkMatter, the Tau, Eldar, and Dark Eldar have relatively low populations to begin with and the Eldar factions do a lot of raiding anyways, the Tyranids have the weaponized biomass of several galaxies, the Necrons have had eons to procure their resources before they converted to Necrodermis, and even more eons afterwards, and the Orks have hundreds or even thousands of mini-Ork Empires that raid when necessary or for fun. |
| 34 | ** The Imperium is also, when talking about the bigger, more powerful and advanced weapons/machines, using things that are thousands of years old. The Imperium really sucks at making the more advanced stuff (like titans and dreadnoughts) because they've lost most of the technology used to do so, and the technology they ''do'' have, they don't really understand. In some cases, they literally can't make any more of something; they just repair and maintain the items they already have So when a particularly important piece of machinery goes down in battle, the Imperium will do anything to get it back. Entire companies/chapters of Space Marines will fight to get back the remains of a fallen dreadnought, for example. |
| 35 | ** Nitpicking: Dreadnoughts are alive. The tech is one thing and it's certainly valuable, but the fanatically devotion Space Marines have for Dreadnoughts is more over the person entombed inside the Dreadnought than the rest of the machine. |
| 36 | ** Regarding the Imperium: for every model in the game there are literally millions (or, in the case of the IG, billions) of people living comparably boring (neverminding the hellish nature of life in the grimdark future) lives mining, farming or otherwise accruing resources. The Imperium has strip-mined whole solar systems. |
| 37 | [[/folder]] |
| 38 | |
| 39 | [[folder:Expectations vs. Reality]] |
| 40 | * Something I don't get: In all the fluff, the Space Marines are nigh unstoppable. Quotes like "Give me a hundred Space Marines. Or failing that give me a thousand other troops" and "For every one of us that falls in battle one hundred enemies will die" are cool and all... but why doesn't that kind of thing ever hold up in game? I've seen space marine players (myself included) get slaughtered by orks and heretic traitor guardsmen, and even by the Eldar. From the games I've seen, it just doesn't seem like these marines - who have supposedly lived hundreds of years in almost constant combat - should get killed as easily as they do. |
| 41 | ** Apparently you have fallen for the [[UnreliableNarrator Imperial Propaganda]]. |
| 42 | ** It's in the interests of Games Workshop not to do so. It would make smurfs even ''more'' overpowered than they already are. And if it were to be balanced by making individual marines more expensive, space marine armies would have fewer models. And then GW wouldn't sell as many, and earn less money. And the cheapness of having a smurf army, in addition to the coolness factor of having an army of four people in it who are all invincible, would drive even ''more'' newbies into playing smurfs than already is the case. And that means less models sold. Which means less money for GW. |
| 43 | ** This Troper can't imagine why anyone would want to play against movie marines more than once. Imagine crafting a large Ork or Tau force by hand, assembling 50-150 models and delicately painting them all. Then imagine some jerk setting six spray-painted marines on the table across from them and trouncing you. Oh boy, that sounds incredibly fun! For the marines to have anyone else to face in table-top, the balance can't match the fluff. |
| 44 | ** Keep in mind, movie Necrons, movie Ork Nobs, movie Tau, and movie Eldar would all be able to beat a large amount of space marines with few models of their own. Simply because marine fans are the youngest and most vocal does not mean their puffed up idea of space marines (or Black Library's) is more relevant than the other faction's codices. |
| 45 | ** Aside from all the balance reasons, the 40K fluff really is not comparable to the models actual capabilities. Even the humble Lasgun supposedly has the power to blow the arm off of an unarmored man. The Space marines where specifically addressed with a ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' supplement detailing "Movie Marines", supposedly actually closer to a fluffy space marine's capabilities, basically by making every member of a tactical squad into a Hive Tyrant. |
| 46 | ** VERY not valid for tourney play list. It asked the question about "How's come Marines aren't as good as they are in the books" So they made the marine profile, and pointed them out. You HQ was the Vet Sgt. at 250 points. Elietes were the "Grisled old vets." that allways pop up in those stories at about 200 points a piece. Troops were rank and file Space Marines, at about 150-200 points a piece. Fast Attack...well you get like one guy with a jump pack or something. And the Heavy Support was the guy carrying the [=LasCannon=] which wound up being heavy 4 or something like that...mabe rapid fire, i can't remember. But as I said...you wound up with about 6-10 modles giving you a 1500-2000 point army. It was a very funny read. |
| 47 | ** The lascannon was better than that. 1 shot with the best statline available for an anti-tank weapon, but to fire it you just laid out a line and hit the first thing it touched, then lost a point of strength and hit the next thing and so on till it didn't wound something. Then there's the flamer that hits everything within 12" and the assault 6 bolters and the small blast krak missiles that are frag grenades and so on. |
| 48 | ** Here is an example: [[http://dawnofwar.filefront.com/file/Movie_Marines;72407]] Basically doing that would make them obscenely unbalanced- and they also have to convert the forces of Chaos... as it is, they strive more for balance than accuracy. And don't even think of bringing in the laws of physics! |
| 49 | ** However, being as tough as a Hive Tyrant/tank isn't so impressive when there's only 1,000 of you, while your opponents have many, many thousands of soldiers with tanks and anti-tank weapons of their own. |
| 50 | ** I've always been under the assumption that each model on the board represents a differing number of actual units that combine to form the model's given stats. A model representing, say, an Imperial Guardsman, would, in one's imagination, represent maybe 500 soldiers (or whatever number is appropriate for the scale of battle you're waging). Elite units, like Space Marines, would represent maybe 20 or 30 men on the field, while still having stats comparable to the Guardmen. I've always thought of a tabletop game of 40K like a scene from any number of World War II or Vietnam films, with a group of generals standing around a large battle board, moving unit markers around with shuffleboard sticks. |
| 51 | ** Let's put that another way: it's like the ''Meet the Team'' videos for ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2''. Everyone gets a turn in the spotlight indiscriminately slaughtering their enemies. |
| 52 | ** Personally, I think it's more the fact that the basic foot soldier of the Ork army is ten feet tall, has a gigantic knife that can cut a man in half, and a gun that fires golf ball-sized slugs that will never jam because the Boy using it believes it should always work. One of those guys can take on a dozen fully armed, outfitted, and trained guardsmen by himself. It's not that the Space Marines are that badass, it's that the universe is so ridiculously dangerous. |
| 53 | ** Movie marines are somewhat over the top representation of space marine cababilities. They are, however, significantly stronger than normal men. Difference between s/t3 and s/t4 may not seem much but that's just because the limitatiosn of the system. In Inquisitor, which uses a more detailed values, a marine can kill you by throwing a combat knife at your face through a brick wall. |
| 54 | ** On the other hand, I have seen some amazing space marine victories. I once watched a tabletop game where Blood Angels were placing defensive against Eldar in the meat grinder scenario. The amount of carnage was incredible. The Eldar kept coming back since they had without number, and the marines would mow them down fast enough for the unit to return next turn (or MAYBE the turn after that). I myself played a space marine army for years, and only ever lost one game with it (first time I played against orks, I had no idea what they were capable of, and accidentally started with the Tac squad with the missile launcher in reserve instead of the tac squad with a flamer). |
| 55 | ** Look, most of the factions are underpowered. A single Necron Warrior would easily kill any Special character nigh unto instantly. Eldar can matrix dodge bullets. Dark Eldar fly bikes well enough to cut specific arteries. Spess Mehreens are invulnerable killling machines. Abbadon isn't a retard, much as it may surprise some. And DO NOT get me started the others. Really, it's for balance, because otherwise everyone would play the Necrons. |
| 56 | ** You forgot "a single Ork can wipe out a small hive city by himself" and "a Tau pulse rifle can punch a significant hole in a tank". |
| 57 | ** A point could be made that the armies players use are tougher than average (since who wants to play mundane conflicts), meaning the Space Marines have a harder time. |
| 58 | ** Remember, being ''disabled'' on the battlefield isn't necessarily ''death'', unless your side loses. The Marines who go down to small arms fire might well stand up again after decent medical care. |
| 59 | ** Or the most likely reason. One SpaceMarine vs one squad of about 10 [[RedShirt Guardsman]]. The Space Marine takes at most a couple shots of las-fire but kills them all before they can do any real damage. Lather, rinse, repeat 10 times. You get a busted up but alive marine who has killed 100 men. |
| 60 | ** Sorry, but that's fluff. 10 Guardsmen will destroy a lone Space Marine. Let's crunch the numbers. Base 10-man guardsman squad with lasguns versus a base Tactical Marine with his boltgun. Ranged combat within 12". No cover and Marine goes first, just to make things as fair as possible (you can't take both a cover save and an armor save, and no cover save is likely to be as good as the marine's armor save). Marine gets 2 shots. BS of 4, 67% chance to hit, average of 1.34 hits. Boltgun has a strength of 4 against the guardsman's toughness of 3, 67% chance to wound. Average of 0.89 wounds. AP of 5, so no armor saves for the guardsmen. We'll go ahead and round that up. The marine has taken out one guardsman. This isn't even enough to force a morale check. Guardsman's turn. 17 shots (the sergeant only has a laspistol). BS of 3, 50% chance to hit, average of 8.5 hits. Lasgun has a strength of 3 against the marine's toughness of 4, 33% chance to wound. Average wounds: 2.82. Marine has an armor save of 3+ and the lasgun has no AP, so 67% of the wounds are saved. Average final wounds: 0.94. Marine is most likely dead. Melee actually works ''better'' for the guardsman, as the figures are nearly identical except the guardsman gets his 1-in-3 armor save there, and the sergeant gets three attacks when everyone else is getting one. The marine could get lucky (especially in melee, where he might force the squad to fall back and then have an excellent chance to kill them all in a sweeping advance) but so could the guardsmen. This is about what you'd expect, given that under [=WH40K's=] point-buy system, the marine costs 14 points while the guardsman squad costs 50. |
| 61 | ** I have a theory, the kill to death ratio of the navy seals during the vietnam war was 200 to 1 (200 viet cong killed by the seals for every soldier the navy seals lost) and these are just normal humans with special forces training. I can pretty much guarentee that most navy seals could not engage ten viet cong at once unsupported and win, but because they were always supported (to my knowledge) and didn't end up horribly outnumbered they pulled it off. The Astartes having a 100 to 1 kill to casualty rate does not seem unreasonable especially since standard (codex) Astartes tactics dictate that they not let the enemy take advantage of their superior numbers. |
| 62 | ** I hate to be a party pooper, but this is just an example of GameplayAndStorySegregation. Space Marines are canonically god-like super soldiers, but that makes for a crazily unbalanced game. |
| 63 | [[/folder]] |
| 64 | |
| 65 | [[folder:Where are you, Chaos IG?]] |
| 66 | * Why are there no Chaos Imperial Guard? If the Emperor's own sons and their entire Chapters can be corrupted, why do we never see the occasional legion turn to Chaos? |
| 67 | ** They exist but they are functionally the exact same as the normal Guard but with spikes. |
| 68 | ** Where to start....Well, there ARE traitor guard. In fact there are infinite numbers of traitor guard and they are a fixture of the lore and world. There are many times more traitor guard than Chaos Space Marines for example, by a long shot. Literally countless regiments, units, and armies have gone over to Chaos - they are called Cultists (Blood Pact being ONE such cultist force), Traitor Guard, Lost and the Damned, etc. Actually until the last few years the Lost and Damned was an official 40k army that was playable in tournaments - so its removal pretty much invalidated whole armies. |
| 69 | ** In fact, in the current era its pretty rare for Marines to go traitor, and much, much more common for guard units. |
| 70 | ** Generally speaking, I believe they are called "Chaos cultists". Seriously though, they're called the Blood Pact. |
| 71 | ** The Blood Pact are a specific sect that worships Khorne, and seem to only exist in the Sabbat Worlds. There are plenty of other cults though. |
| 72 | ** IG have the same profile as a standard humans, just different weapons and organization. Other than that the only difference, in game, between a cultist and a Guardsman is a paint scheme. |
| 73 | ** Don't forget the Lost and the Damned. |
| 74 | ** There's a lot of traitor guardmen, some like Blood Pact and the Darksworn even retain their organisation more or elss similar to loyalists. |
| 75 | ** Traitor Regiments have been mentioned in fluff a few times, it's just that Chaos Marines are much more interesting, so GW devote more attention to them. |
| 76 | ** Plus you can just convert some IG into Chaos Gaurd and used the IG rules. |
| 77 | ** Also, most traitor guard are two parts cannon fodder to one part sacrificial victim. Which is so much like life in the regular Guard that entire regiments have "turned" when their commanders went rogue, without the majority of the grunts even noticing. Until it was far too late, of course. |
| 78 | ** In any case, Chaos traitors vastly outnumber Chaos Space Marines, but [=CSMs=] are more popular so GW writes about them more. See Imperial Armour V: the Siege of Vraks for an excellent example of non-Space Marine Chaos armies, as well as the Lost and the Damned army list (as mentioned before) from the time of the Eye of Terror campaign. |
| 79 | ** In terms of the game, a regiment of Guard who turned to Chaos wouldn't be substantially different to a loyalist Guard regiment, so they don't warrant their own Codex, variant list or special rules. Chaos Space Marines, on the other hand, are - or were, until the most recent Codex changed the focus - the original marines from the Heresy, so they've got archaic equipment and more advanced mutations, meaning they'd look and perform differently to their loyalist counterparts. |
| 80 | ** Indeed, this troper had a Traitor Guard army for some years. No difference from ''Imperial'' Guard except in terms of aesthetics. |
| 81 | ** The Ogryns at least used to be even more devoted to the Imperial cult than the Guardsmen, fluff-wise. One wonders though, if Ratling snipers and Ogryns aren't considered to dumb to succumb to taint? Also, I always wondered why Chaos never had access to Guardsmen only technology (eg, mortar squads and Sentinels). |
| 82 | ** Forge World has Renegades and Plague Ogryns, so they can. There's also the fact that Ogryns could be misled by their superiors who turn and serve Choas, [[DumbIsGood since Ogryns are unintelligent and indoctrinated with the view that all orders from a superior officer originally came from the Emperor himself]]. Also, apparently older edition Iron Warriors had more access to IG weapons like Basilisks. |
| 83 | ** Well, they do now, welcome to 6th edition. Chaos can use any and all superheavy Guard vehicles. |
| 84 | [[/folder]] |
| 85 | [[folder:Evil Tau?]] |
| 86 | * Just how evil ARE the Tau, anyway? I know they're not the "nicest" people out there, but depending on who you ask, the Tau are either well-intentioned and idealistic, though they have a few skeletons in their closet, or they're not much better than Nazis, sending any alien races to concentration camps and castrating them for no good reason, with the cynical Ethereals brainwashing the lower castes via pheromones. The truth likely falls somewhere in the middle, but I wish Games Workshop would just come out and say it instead of having them be intentionally ambiguous. |
| 87 | ** By the standards of Warhammer 40k, they're practically saints. By the standards of any other universe, they're the most despicable bastards that ever lived. |
| 88 | ** Seriously. They're the 'good guys' because they give you the choice of 'join us or die'. The Imperium on the other hand is 'Be Human (DEATH TO THE ALIEN), worship the Emperor, pay taxes or be BURNED ALIVE AT STAKE AS A HERETIC. |
| 89 | ** Heh, I do love the fact that the Tau are undeniably the "good guys" of the 40K universe, just because you COULD make an argument that they're not pure evil. |
| 90 | ** Keeping the Tau's relative morality ambiguous is kinda-sorta the whole ''point''. |
| 91 | ** Look, when the Tau first came out back in 2001 (yes it really was that long ago) there was NOTHING in their background that implicated them as evil - thoroughly naive about the universe, yes, but not evil. Of course, then the Imperium had to go on that Damocles Gulf Crusade and invade their brains out. They've been made more "morally ambiguous" largely because people complained they were "too nice" for the setting! And so we come full circle... |
| 92 | ** Not disputing this, but is there evidence that 'people' complained. I remember the Tau being, at least at first, received as a breath of fresh air for a lot of players at the time (myself included). The Tau came out when 40k had gone from being really dark cyberpunk to really dark gothpunk to ultra dark batshit crazy nonsense. I always thought that GW started to add in the 'moral ambiguity' (IIRC, this started shortly after WD put out rules about Imperial defectors and the fan reaction (that I saw) was 'makes far more sense than staying with the Imperium) to move players back to the games intended focus. I always assumed that it was just a matter of CreatorBacklash, but considering the BrokenBase, maybe I just saw the one side of things... |
| 93 | ** From the fluff I would say that the average Tau in the street has a fairly enlightened outlook on life and many of the commanders/leaders are relatively benevolent, if a little cynical. But the higher-ups and the Etherials are more aware of how generally shit the universe is and act as ruthless as everyone else. The difference between them and Imperial authorities is that the humans don't bother to lie about being tyrants any more. |
| 94 | [[/folder]] |
| 95 | |
| 96 | [[folder:The OP factions and Hollywood]] |
| 97 | * My question may sound highly ignorant: But why the hell, if both the Tyranids and the Necrons have enough strength to decimate everything that stands in their way (Except each other due to their lack of interest) why haven't they dominated the entire galaxy? Also: Why the hell hasn't anyone thought of doing a movie based on this? It's got enough popularity and the amount of stuff they could do without violating the fluff is immense! Again, sorry if I sound ignorant. |
| 98 | ** For the decimating everyone in their way bit fluff is taking it to the endgame now, the Golden Throne is failing, Chaos is breaching the Cadian Gate, the Tyranid main fleet is almost here, the Necrons are all waking up, the Orks are well Orks, the Eldar are making a new god to kill Slaanesh, pretty much TheEndoftheWorldasWeKnowIt. |
| 99 | ** The Necrons already did that once... and the boredom after made them sleep for millions of years (along with the Enslaver and C'tan fighting thing). And the 'nids are only still scouting parties, with the main force taking a while to get here, if they're headed to this galaxy at all. But I think that the Orkz would challenge the assertion that either force is unstoppable (they already lived through the 1st Necron purge), if they unite that is. |
| 100 | ** Actually, later fluff mentions that different hive fleets are basically at war with each other. It is rather strange behavior for the scouts, but it could just be a way to remove weakness from the Tyranid race as the winner would absorb the strengths of the loser. On the bright side, Leviathan has more than enough power to curb stomp Solar Segmentum defenses and it is already at the doors. |
| 101 | ** You don't seriously think the Space Marines, Imperium or no, are ever going to completely be destroyed do you? As a popular race, they have a little thing called PlotArmor. No matter how bad things get, there'll always be some around. |
| 102 | ** To put it simply, merchandising rights. Any movie studio worth its salt is going to want a cut of that, and GW won't do anything to jeopardise their grip on their IP. So it will only happen if GW gets big enough to own their own movie studio. |
| 103 | ** Thus Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie was made. |
| 104 | ** The Necrons aren't all awake yet, and the majority of the Tyranid hive fleets haven't arrived yet. The Necrons also don't ''want'' to blow up the galaxy (''yet''), and 5th Edition implies that they aren't as monolithic as we previously thought. As for a movie... my god, nobody would sponsor it. It's too crazy. |
| 105 | ** Also, look up ''Damnatus: Der Feind Im Innern'' ("The Enemy Within"). Fan made 40k movie focused on IG vs Chaos Cultists, got finished with the tacit approval of GW. Then German IP laws prevented it from ever being released (it would evidently require GW to make all of 40k public property due to idiotic German law). |
| 106 | ** German copyright does not work that way. Maybe someone should have consulted a lawyer actually experienced enough with this "idiotic law" but Games Workshop basically overreacted and stalwarted any solution in this matter. |
| 107 | ** Any weakening of their copyright is probably seen as a bad thing by GW, and the whole "make everything public property" thing is obviously a FanDumb take on the situation. Furthermore, their main HQ is in Nottingham, England, not Germany. |
| 108 | ** Another reason for backing out of media deals is that GW is very, very protective of teh integrity of its [=IPs=], and any liscensing will result in ExecutiveMeddling. One example: back in the late 90s or so, there were plans to do a CGI cartoon series. GW backed out when the studio insisted on adding female Space Marines. |
| 109 | ** Why did they need to add female Space Marines? The Space Marines already have a female equivalent in the Sisters of Battle -- at least, one close enough for the purposes of whatever they were probably trying to pull off. |
| 110 | ** There is a concern about a [[EpicMovie big]] 40K movie... If such a thing were successful, the theatres would be [[FollowTheLeader drenched with movies about big muscly men with giant pauldrons calling those they disagree with "heretics"]]. The filth of big business in Hollywood is like that. |
| 111 | ** It is the timeline. The story stops at M41 999. And all the good stuff, like Leviathan and massive Necron awakening start happening just before the story stops. The whole point of Time of Ending is that Imperium is totally screwed from all sides. The fact that franchise keeps going does not equals Imperium successfully defending itself. The story simply does not advance. |
| 112 | ** Speaking of Damnatus' legality, why didn't Games Workshop lift the C&D after issuing it? After all, in North America, the defend-it-or-lose-it clause of trademark law only says [[Main/ExactWords something]] must be done, probably to prove the IP holder cares about it- nothing about the action taken having to stick. I can't imagine German copyright law [[Main/ObstructiveBureaucrat actually going out of it's way to say]] "You can never call backsies on a C&D in Germany, or else." |
| 113 | [[/folder]] |
| 114 | |
| 115 | [[folder:Designated Not-bad guys]] |
| 116 | * I've been wondering about this one for a while. How are the Tau more of the good guys than the Eldar? ([[BlackAndGreyMorality Well, so to speak]]) |
| 117 | ** They didn't create a god of squick. |
| 118 | ** Who said the Tau are any better than the Eldar? |
| 119 | ** Aun'va. Of course the leader of the Tau would say that Tau are better than the Eldar. |
| 120 | ** The Eldar are perfectly willing to manipulate other races into sacrificing large numbers of themselves to protect even a single Eldar life. For example, the Eldar may divert, say, a Tyranid Hive Fleet or Ork Waaagh! into attacking Imperial space to protect a Maiden World or Craftworld. The Eldar have done and do ally with Imperial forces on occasion - but ''only'' when it suits them, and they'll probably find a way to screw over the Imperials during or after whatever battle they're fighting. The Eldar are in fact polar opposites to the Tau - they see everyone else as mere tools to be used and discarded, whereas the Tau just want everybody to join their club. |
| 121 | ** [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation That depends on how you look at it]]. The Tau would probably do the same things as the Eldar given the chance, and Tau aren't going extinct like the Eldar are [[DependingOnTheWriter at some points in their fluff]]. |
| 122 | ** The Tau are far too naive and still too idealistic, even given their moral ambiguity. The Eldar have no real ideals any more beyond surviving. And, in any case, the Eldar are far, ''far'' and away the best manipulators in 40K, barring Tzeentch. That Czevak quote comes to mind - "Ask an Eldar a question, and they will give you three answers, [[GoMadFromTheRevelation all true and all terrible to comprehend."]] That's somewhat paraphrased, but it's along those lines. This troper thinks the Eldar have survived this long due to their sheer manipulative cunning in maneouvering other races against each other. Tzeentch is the god of Manipulative Bastardy, but no mortal can match the Eldar. |
| 123 | ** That reminds me. Do the Orks ''really'' have a twisted sense of honor about them that makes them worthier opponents than the Eldar? |
| 124 | ** Well, Ghazkull let Yarrick go on the grounds that a good enemy was worth keeping alive. Orks will kill indiscriminately, but they'd much prefer a good scrap. Which means they won't attack noncombatants when there's actual combatants to fight. Eldar, on the other hand, are far more pragmatic -- they'd probably virus-bomb your planet rather than risk their lives in combat, then come back 10 years later and move into the ruins. |
| 125 | ** Orks do have a sense of honor, it's just fairly different from that of most races. Most races would considering having your head cut off and put on a stick a barbaric desecration. To an Ork, however, it's not an insult at all. Having your head on a warlord's point stick is the highest honor for a non-Ork. |
| 126 | ** Eldar rarely negotiate and almost never openly cooperate. Tau are usually ok to discuss the terms of united operations against tyranids. And they tend to stick to their side of agreement. Although it doesn't mean they won't use you for their own agendas. |
| 127 | ** All the examples above show well why these three races, (and indeed the Imperium) are the "good guys" of the setting. None are openly antagonistic, but they all follow their own goals, which, as it happens, clash with the goals of the other "good" factions. Even the Orks, while a disorder faction, are not actively evil. Welcome to GrimDark. |
| 128 | [[/folder]] |
| 129 | |
| 130 | |
| 131 | [[folder:The squatted Squats]] |
| 132 | * Why does everyone hate the Squats, anyway? Is it because they weren't GRIMDARK enough? |
| 133 | ** They didn't sell. GW simply decided to purge their existence from history afterwards. |
| 134 | ** Also, they were pretty badly written. I've read the Rogue Trader rulebook, and they don't come across well at all. [[WordOfGod Jervis Johnson has stated that Games Workshop weren't able to write the Squats to their satisfaction]]. |
| 135 | ** Most importantly is that they weren't asymmetrical enough. All of the races in 40k in some way have to fill some sort of style of play, and Squats simply couldn't be made different enough than other races. Far too similar to imperial units and tactics to be new and exciting. |
| 136 | ** Back when they were reorganizing things in 2nd edition and writing the first codexes for people to field armies like they do today, they kept putting off the Squat codex until they realized: nobody wanted to write the Squat codex because they were ''goddamned boring.'' So they killed them off instead. |
| 137 | [[/folder]] |
| 138 | |
| 139 | [[folder:Who's worse employer?]] |
| 140 | * So, which worker unit has it worse? The Heretics who serve Chaos or the Slaves who serve the Dark Eldar? |
| 141 | ** The Dark Eldar slaves, I'd say. Chaos may mess you up pretty bad, but it also makes you think that's what you want, so the heretics are actually pretty happy, unlike the poor insane slaves. |
| 142 | ** Don't expect Chaos to pay its heretics any mind. They're not getting any mutations unless they prove themselves worth the effort. The Heretics may want to be in Chaos but they're still pretty heavily abused slaves, and once they're in I don't think there's a retirement plan. |
| 143 | ** While the Heretics are far from happy, at least they have a chance of elevation, while the DE slaves will always end up as soul food to stave off She Who Thirsts. Would you rather have AIDS (slow, torturous guaranteed death) or Ebola (painful, degrading and you have a 1 in 9 chance to live)? |
| 144 | ** I'd have to agree. The Heretics only sound happy when they say "Thank you...thank you, master!" |
| 145 | ** Yes, but Dark Eldar slaves never even ''sound'' happy... |
| 146 | [[/folder]] |
| 147 | |
| 148 | [[folder:Why do we fight, anyway?]] |
| 149 | * What motivations would certain races like say... The Tau and Eldar have for fighting one-another? Or Tyranids and Necrons, or Orks and Dark Eldar? (considering the Dark Eldar could whisk away from them) |
| 150 | ** It depends on who each faction is. The setting is a DarkerAndEdgier CrapsackWorld [[EverythingTryingToKillYou where everyone has to be canonically able to fight everyone]]. Some motivations for factions fighting (taken from canon lore) are as follows: |
| 151 | ** Imperial Guard: One Imperial Guard army has defected to serve the Tau and their Greater Good, so the others have to deal with the so-called "race traitors". There's also if some Imperial Guard fall to Chaos. Otherwise they fight wherever their superiors order them to fight, which given the Imperium hates heretics, mutants and aliens could be anywhere. |
| 152 | ** Space Marines: Similar to the above except there are no cases of Space Marines submitting to Tau rule. Chapters may fight among themselves over serious disagreements of war policy (such as the Space Wolves fighting against the Grey Knights over the forced culling/sterilization of humans who faced the Daemons of Chaos on Armageddon or Salamanders fighting another Space Marine chapter who are willing to kill citizens as collateral damage). |
| 153 | ** Adeptus Soroitas: Same as the above except they are most often meant to be called in to deal with deviations from Imperial doctrine that have led to rebellion. |
| 154 | ** Eldar: Usually conflicts over Farseer predictions, fighting one of the worse threats in the galaxy (any faction that is not the Imperium or the Tau) or being willing to kill many non-Eldar (which can sometimes include Dark Eldar) to save a handful of their own as per their status as a race wavering on being endangered. The Harlequins fight at the whim of Ceogorach. |
| 155 | ** Dark Eldar: They have to take live captives for substance. Also, given their evil (referring to egotistical, selfish and sadistic) nature, they could do so to avenge a real or perceived slight (even something as simple as [[EvilIsPetty "an envoy for the government mispronounced my name so everyone on the planet must die"]]). Some Dark Eldar also do so for sport. |
| 156 | ** Orks vs. '''anyone''': Because they were ''there''. Its a defining trait of the Orks that they have nothing better to do than constantly pick fights -- with each other, if there's no other fun-looking targets around (one ork warboss attacked ''his past self'' just so he could have two of his favorite gun). Likewise, Anyone vs. Orks: the Orks are going to take a swing at you anyway as soon as they notice you're there, you might as well use the surprise advantage and hit them first. |
| 157 | ** Tyranids: Because they are driven by a Hive Mind that compels them to kill and assimilate via consumption all life in their path, even each other if it offers a biological advantage. |
| 158 | ** Necrons: The Silent King has deemed tyranids the single biggest threat to life in the Galaxy which kind of puts a damper on his intention for Necrons to reclaim organic bodies by taking over the flesh of the various races in the galaxy; hence, as far as he's concerned, the nids are priority number one to put down, even before the forces of Chaos. Worth noting that not every Overlord shares this opinion, either because they're too crazy to care, they're still in "kill all organics mode", they have no particular desire to return to flesh at all, or because they see the Nids as the best option when it comes to organic bodies to transplant themselves into. |
| 159 | ** Chaos: [[AlwaysChaoticEvil This is self-explanatory]]. |
| 160 | ** Anybody vs. Anybody: Faction A really likes peanut butter but only has chocolate. Faction B really likes chocolate but only has peanut butter. Faction A attacks faction B to get their peanut butter/ Faction B attacks faction A to get their chocolate. Logically this works well for teaming up incompatible factions too for team tournaments (I i.e. Dark Eldar and Eldar, Orks and Space Marines, tyranids/Necrons and anybody). |
| 161 | [[/folder]] |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[folder:Power fields ''everywhere!'']] |
| 164 | * The power fists have fields which disrupt solid matter right? So why not stick the fields on power armour and render yourself impervious to all ballistic and melee attacks? |
| 165 | ** The ground falls apart when you take a step, gouging out craters at best and dropping you multiple stories inside buildings at worst. You bolter blows apart in your hands. You sit down on the Land Raider, and your rip it to shreds. You brush up against your buddy, he blows up, and so do you. And so on, and so forth. Also, though the power fist dirsupts matter, it doesn't stop kinetic energy; the impact behind a bolter round or a chainsword swing will still affect you. |
| 166 | ** There's an off switch, power fields cancel each other out, and if our hypothetical marine put it on his armour, he'd make sure he didn't put it on his hands and soles (Hmm... Do marines have common sense?). Also, if the disruption field works the way I think it does, it should turn the incoming item in question into fluid. That means a larger surface area to impart the force on, and since the bolter round turned to fluid or some other equivalent state, the explosive in it wouldn't detonate. Oh, and inertia dictates that a bunch of molecules moving at bolter round speed is going to hurt a lot less than a bolter round at that speed. Hey, come to think of it, you'd make the marine himself a very effective anti-armour system. |
| 167 | ** All very well as far as it goes, but when does the guy turn his thing on and off? That's another layer of complexity in an already complex suit of armour. Plus the brushing up against your buddy and mutaully killing each other is still and issue. |
| 168 | ** Honor, reason, good engineering sense, and practicality all have have ''nothing'' to do with it. Once more, for the benefit of those sitting in the back: '''there is no such thing as inventing in the universe of 40k'''. Heretical or not, mankind simply does not have the knowledge to create anything new. What they DO have is maintained through religious rote and superstition. That power fist? It was made in a manufactorum by a Techpriest Engiseer who applied all the sacred oils, recited the proper litanies in the proper cants, and pressed the button marked with the mystical "ON" rune. They don't know even know the fist generates the field it does, let alone how to reproduce its effect in a very precise and controlled manner. |
| 169 | ** Actually, there ''is'' evidence that innovation does take place within the Imperium. Its just that the Mechanicus surrounds all its research and study with the trappings of their religion, slowing it down significantly. The Mechanicus higher-ups know and understand the science and engineering behind a lot of the technology they use, but the lay tech-priests don't. |
| 170 | ** Yes there is some inventing, since the power armor has gotten better since the Horus Heresy, and some other things I forget right now. The Adeptus Mechanicus are just loathe to implement new technology( except in their Skittari and personal warriors), mostly because a new technology needs new factories, new shipping lines, new orders for distribution, and new training to actually use the item all of which costs a lot of money and resources which the Administratum isn't usually willing to pay for. Also because they want to keep the best technology to themselves. There ''are'' Mechanicus factions which demand no new tech at all, but the opinion on the matter varies wildly between groups. A too-lenient attitude towards new inventions could also result in the accidental rebirth of the Iron Men, and we all know [[RobotWar what happens then]]. Don't forget about Chaos and how it often corrupts minds open to new ideas as well. |
| 171 | ** Although some upgrades in power armour and bolters may be due to finding pieces of a Standard Template Construct system instead of actual research. Even the research they ''do'' do is more like back-engineering than actual science - the klepto Archmagos in ''Soul Drinker'' wanted to find out how the Soulspear worked by having someone take it apart, rather than taking existing vortex technology and trying to figure out how to make it better. |
| 172 | ** The way I remember it (and honestly, asking for consistency in 40k lore is laughable), The [=AdMech=] generally dislike inventing stuff because it interferes with the Quest for Knowledge. In short - you shouldn't be wasting your time thinking about how to make something new. Your time should be spent on searching for the [=STCs=] and finding the pattern the Ancients already made for whatever it is you were thinking of inventing. That and the [=AdMech=] believe that the technology the humans held in ancient times is perfect (and really, if that star ship was made several thousand years ago and still works, can you disagree with them?) and thus trying to invent something is like saying you are better than the Ancients. And you're not. [[AndThatsTerrible And that's heresy.]] |
| 173 | ** It boils down to their philosophy that "Knowledge is sacred," being literally a part of their Machine God. They ''also'' tend to believe that all knowledge already exists in the galaxy, just waiting to be found. It essentially becomes a case of "[[HonorBeforeReason Better to not know, than to be wrong]]". |
| 174 | ** On a related Adeptus Mechanicus note- what's stopping a Magos from doing some research, throwing in a few random references from previous research, telling the Mechanicus Tenure Board "yeah I totally found this in, my, pocket, yeah," and having it accepted as a found piece of knowledge? Not to mention- what is the functional difference between a piece of knowledge that has been refound versus a piece of knowledge that has been found anew? I can't for the life of me work it out. |
| 175 | ** Couple of things that I hope will help. First and foremost, the AdMech seem to mostly fall under the RuleOfFunny (for a particular, rather twisted sense of humor). Secondly, at least initially, most manufacturing was handled by machines themselves, not humans. Slightly modified (ie repaired) STCs were being put into factory machines that would then build whatever you wanted to get built, so in that case the difference between 'refound' tech and 'invented' tech is that one worked in the machines, and the other didn't. The other thing, is that AdMech is modeled on the so-called Dark Ages. They do have brothers that experiment but even then, they don't really have the scientific method. From the point of view of a given Tech-Priest, everything is always new to them... it's extremely difficult to both make genuinely new findings, but also to communicate them (in a useful way) to anybody if you did come up with something. Most of the research that they do (seems to me, at least) to be less about building/testing prototypes and more trying to learn the language that the Ancients were using (ie, they have some partial blueprints but don't know how to use them, down to the level of not knowing what... say... a resistor is, much less how to read the technical shorthand for it). |
| 176 | ** Another answer is that your magos is likely to believe in the tenets of his own religion, at least to a fair extent. He would likely think that doing what you are suggesting would be tech-heresy, since he would be passing off the product of his own mind as the sacred work of the perfect and infallible ancients. Remember that, in the medieval Church, "innovation," meaning theological innovation, was a bad thing. Asking why an AdMech magos doesn't just innovate and pass it off as something he found in an ancient text is like asking why medieval clerics didn't just write their own ideas and pass them off as found work of some ancient authority, which, now that I think of it, some did, so probably some tech-priests are doing exactly what you are suggesting. It's just that you never hear about it because it just gets passed off as rediscovered old knowledge. |
| 177 | ** On the proposed "disruption armor": Where are you going to get a portable power source small enough not to weigh the Space Marine armor down too much more, and run the suit's normal functions AND the disruption field? I'm assuming the reason the Power Fist is so big is that it needs a large power source just to make that smaller disrupting field(than what you're proposing) which already makes it unwieldy for the marine using it. Unless it makes the wearer invincible to incoming lasweapons as well as projectiles it would most likely weigh down the marine too much and make them get hit '''more''' instead of less. Also if they have a problem with the cost of making new Terminator parts how would they justify these? Any attempt to make such armor would have to overcome those issues first, if they even thought of it in the first place. |
| 178 | ** Cost and weight are definitely major issues here, considering how heavy a single powerfist is. Equipping an entire suit of armor with that kind of technology would result in something even larger than a Terminator suit but about a tenth as fast, and would have all the agility in close combat of a drunken hobo. Not to mentiont he power issue, as Marine armor already requires those fuckall huge backpacks to power their normal suits, let alone Terminator armor. Cramming the power generators for the rough equivilant of about fifteen to twenty powerfists onto the suit is just ridiculous, especially when Marines are supposed to be a speedy, fast-reaction force dependant on mobility. |
| 179 | ** Marines ''do'' use this technology for defense: It's called a conversion field, and the device that generates it is small enough to hang from your neck (a Chaplain's Rosarius) or stick on top of your backpack (An Iron Halo). They don't issue them to everybody for the same reasons that they don't issue every Marine with Terminator armor, plasma cannons, and vortex grenades. |
| 180 | [[/folder]] |
| 181 | |
| 182 | [[folder:Bolters, be awesome!]] |
| 183 | * Bolters are rapid-fire rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, yes? Then why do video games always portray them as being little more than large-caliber machine guns? Their visual effects are particularly unimpressive in ''Dawn of War 2'', but I note with dismay that even in ''Space Marine,'' which is supposed to give you the sense of being a gargantuan super-soldier, your bolter just produces a wimpy muzzle flash. I want rippling explosions, damn it! Don't say the next-gen systems can't handle it! |
| 184 | ** I always imagine bolt weapons as going "Phut...Pow!", where most of the sound is the shell exploding in the target's face. Look up the Youtube video of the Gyrojet firing for an example. |
| 185 | ** ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' doesn't quite fit with 40K Canon. Remember, Tau guns are described in fluff as producing a high-pitched whine, but in ''Dark Crusade'' they go "pew pew pew". ([[FanonDiscontinuity We're disregarding ''Soulstorm'']]). |
| 186 | ** Well I dont think the failure to portray them was intentional, just a limitation of the engine and graphics. There is a clear distinction between the regular machine-guns like the Orks have that have a muzzle flash and realistic effects, and bolters that shoot big thick orange tracer rounds. Knowing nothing of [=WH40K=] fluff when I first bought Dawn of War, even I knew the bolters were some sort of ultra-caliber weapon just by how much more powerful they looked compared to Ork weapons. Although the bolt PISTOLS seem to be the problem, shooting regular dakka out |
| 187 | ** I wasn't implying it was a failure to do the research - there's, to the best of my knowledge, maybe two pieces of fluff that discuss the noise Tau guns make at all. |
| 188 | ** Actually Dawn of War is for the most part really accurate to the fluff with only a few minor failings. |
| 189 | ** Please note that in ''Space Marine'', during the Main Menu screen (where our good Captain is showing off his skillz against an unending wave of Orkz), you'll notice him shoot in slow motion... and a flash where the bullet hits just a slight moment later. If that is not the Bolter's bullet exploding on its victim, I don't know what that is. |
| 190 | [[/folder]] |
| 191 | |
| 192 | [[folder:Chainsword logic]] |
| 193 | * Which way do the blades spin on a Chainsword? If the teeth grind towards you, then the sword pulls itself into the target and out of your hand, and you get blood and goo all over your greatcoat. If it's reversed, then you keep cleaner, but wouldn't it be harder to push into somebody and wouldn't entrails get sucked into the mechanism? |
| 194 | ** The teeth on the models are pointed towards the hand on the cutting edge, and some (like the Space Marine commander kit) have special hilts to ensure they don't inadvertently avert ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks. |
| 195 | ** All of the movies from ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' indicate that the teeth rotate downwards. That being said, most of the fluff indicates that the teeth spin so fast and are so sharp that very little gore actually splashes on the wielder; the ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' books indicate that it is possible to pull of a CleanCut with one. |
| 196 | ** I seem to recall Gaunt noting in one of the novels (first one?) that chain swords can spin either way - knowing when to reverse the spin is an integral part of chainsword dueling. |
| 197 | [[/folder]] |
| 198 | |
| 199 | |
| 200 | |
| 201 | [[folder:Overkill pre- and post-Heresy]] |
| 202 | * I'm confused. If the 40K Universe is practically ''made'' of [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill overkill]], then why were the pre-Heresy World Eaters always reprimanded for their constant use of overkill? |
| 203 | ** Pre-Heresy times were nicer than post-heresy times. The Emperor wanted to reunite humanity under his banner and lead them all to a glorious new future, not smash their planets into wastelands and rule over the shattered remains like a carrion crow. |
| 204 | ** Also, the World Eaters are ''just that ferocious.'' How murderous were they, you ask? So murderous they almost got kicked out of the Space Marines for unnecessary roughness. |
| 205 | ** Consider that when Angron attacked the betrayed Space Marines on Isstvan III -- thus preventing Horus from just bombing them again -- Horus blamed himself for not seeing that coming. Of course Angron would do something that stupid. |
| 206 | ** Also consider this: many worlds re-conquered in the Great Crusade were lost human colonies that the Emperor wanted to re-unite, not destroy. The idea was to bring them into the Imperium with a minimum of strife. Unfortunately, the World Eaters' modus operadi leaned towards "butcher everything in sight". |
| 207 | ** To put even more context into this, Kharn, famous for [[strike:being a pretty fun guy]] shattering two Legions in one night because they dared to take shelter during a deadly blizzard, was considered to be a calming influence and a counter to Angron's rages. ''That's how nucking futs the World Eaters were''. |
| 208 | ** Do note that Kharn is considered psychotic by the [[strike: War Hounds]] World Eaters as well, perhaps even more psychotic than pre-[[AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Daemonization]] Angron. (Though this seems to be that he was [[FallenHero loyal by nature]] and threw himself--mind, body and soul--at whoever's feet Angron told him to, thus he gave himself more completely to Khorne's ways-- that's why he's a Champion and borderline Avatar of The Brass Lord Of Battle.) |
| 209 | [[/folder]] |
| 210 | |
| 211 | |
| 212 | [[folder:The psyker's age]] |
| 213 | * In ''[[VideoGame/DawnOfWar Winter Assault]]'', is the Sanctioned Psyker supposed to be a crazy old man or a young man who sounds like a crazy old man because his psychic powers made him crazy? |
| 214 | ** Most psykers come back from their Sanctioning on Terra somewhere in their thirties. After that... well, few psykers reach an old age ''naturally''. |
| 215 | ** In addition, travelling through the Warp can slow down or accelerate the aging process. |
| 216 | [[/folder]] |
| 217 | |
| 218 | [[folder:Necrons vs. Eldar weaponry]] |
| 219 | * What happens to Necron troops when they get hit by those Eldar weapons that chuck people into the Warp? Does the Necron resurrect, have a sufficiently fast warp out effect that they can come back, or are they actually effectively perma-killed because they are no longer in the same dimension that their repair device is and therefore cannot do anything? |
| 220 | ** Hasn't come up as far as I know, but I'd think they're permanently stuck in the Warp, unless they somehow manage to grab onto something travelling by, like a space hulk without shielding. |
| 221 | ** That's probably one of the few reliable ways to perma-kill Necrons (they're not as GodModeSue as the complainers would have you think, a melta will vaporise them good). They're weak against pure Chaos, and a Daemon on its home turf could probably tear em apart without thinking. |
| 222 | ** In the game rules, IIRC, if they're hit by a weapon that causes Instant Death! they can't resurrect. For example, being hit with a lascannon. |
| 223 | ** This represents the Necron's self-repair processes being overwhelmed. The technology used after a phase out is more sophisticated, and capable of putting the Necrons whose bodies are reduced to puddles back into a new Necrodermis body most of the time. |
| 224 | ** There's also the fact that some Necrons are too damaged to repair, but they have a built-in self destruct mechanism that disintegrates them. The disintegration looks almost indistinguishable from their teleportation. |
| 225 | [[/folder]] |
| 226 | |
| 227 | [[folder:How did we make it so far?]] |
| 228 | * How did humanity evolve ''before'' they went into space and got drawn in all this malarkey? We kinda had a lot of wars in our history long before space travel, yet you don't see Khorne running around eating people's souls. |
| 229 | ** You didn't see Champions and other magical Chaos stuff on Earth because A: The Psykers didn't appear en mass in humanity until Slaanesh started to be born during the Fall of the Eldar, around 30,000 AD. No Psykers means little chance of bargining with the Chaos Gods, unless you go to a place where they rule (which would be hard to do without knowing how to enter The Warp) B: Most of the greater Chaos stuff requires specific rituals and all that, we might kill a ton of people but if we don't set up the proper stuff for using that death to tear into the Warp it's not gonna give us magical power. C: They probably are eating the souls of the people that appeal to them ''after'' they die. However they have no psykers to talk to their food/followers through and the birth of Slaanesh helped rip apart the barrier between the Materium and Immaterium, allowing Chaos to become as good at corrupting as it is, which is alot more than pre-2000 AD times. |
| 230 | ** Psykers appeared en masse somewhere between M18 and M22. The same time warp drive was invented actually. |
| 231 | ** Also, the Emperor was out and about early in human history keeping everything under control, and the Eldar were in full force across the galaxy maintaining order until they squicked a god into existence. Then, as they say, the HilarityEnsues. |
| 232 | ** Furthermore, religion tends to suppress the power of the Chaos gods, since it redirects man's spiritual energies toward Order instead. Historically, most people have been religious, so that would tend to have lessened the influence of Chaos. It was probably the Imperial Truth, that is, the Emperor's suppression of religion, that allowed the Chaos gods to break out the way they did at the time of the Horus Heresy. |
| 233 | ** Religion leads to Order and repels Chaos? That's the funniest thing I read at this page. And here are several quotes from Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, mind you. |
| 234 | ** Of course religion leads to order and suppresses chaos, but, more to the point, it suppresses Chaos and promotes Order, cosmic forces in the Warhammer 40K story-universe that are not exactly the same thing as order and chaos in the sense of orderly planning of say, the operations of a business enterprise versus chaotic management of same. If the writers of 40K say that religion suppresses Chaos by redirecting man's spiritual and emotional energies, then, within the 40K story-universe, it does. But on your point, just because you don't like religion, don't kid yourself about its role in promoting social order. Order, not necessarily harmony or comity. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero When the Emperor abolished organized religion, that unintentionally helped the Chaos Gods]]. |
| 235 | [[/folder]] |
| 236 | |
| 237 | |
| 238 | [[folder:Someone wins -- then what?]] |
| 239 | * I understand that the war is supposed to be [[ForeverWar eternal]] (and from the sound of it, only getting worse from here on in). But what if, and at this point, [[CrapsackWorld it's a pretty big "if"]], one of the sides ''won''? Not just Armageddon, not just Lorn V, not just Kronus, not just Kaurava ([[FanonDiscontinuity if you count Kaurava, that is]]), but the ''entire galaxy?'' What would happen then? |
| 240 | ** They'll then get eaten by the Tyranids, consumed/obliterated by the Necrons, or sucked into the Warp. One of the above '''will''' win eventually. |
| 241 | ** If that's the worst case scenario, what would happen if one of the [[DesignatedHero alleged]] [[KnightTemplar good guys]] won? (Imperium, Eldar, or Tau) |
| 242 | ** Tau: either we end up with a repeat of the Imperium, or Chaos wins as daemons turn up on all the subverted human worlds. Imperium: everyone suffers under the heel of a totalitarian theocracy until the end of the galaxy (not gonna happen, read ''Legion''). Eldar: the Eldar have pretty much given up on winning and are concentrating on just killing Slaanesh by getting slowly wiped out and creating their own pet god of death; if that happens, Chaos will be set back and the Eldar will probably try to rebuild their old empire but remember the lessons of the Fall; Chaos would try again and may win eventually. (If the Orks win, the entire galaxy becomes a giant repeat of ''Deff Skwadron''. GO ORKS!) |
| 243 | ** Ah great. That's all we need. A Tau version of Horus. |
| 244 | ** O'Shovah possibly? |
| 245 | ** Not ''strictly'' necessary. It's just that the Tau don't have any real anti-daemon measures (what with the lack of warp presence), and no Emperor, so either the Gue'vesa populations give rise to swarms of rogue psykers and thus a daemonic incursion large enough to block out the stars, or they get wise and end up rather similar to the Imperium (so we go from Catholic Space Nazis to, presumably, Mormon Space Commies). |
| 246 | ** The Blue Scribes reform Tzeentch's Staff, the Gods go on a rampage of galactic proportions. Each doing their own things. Nurgle's diseases infecting everyone, Khorne murdering them all before the diseases take hold, Slaanash, you know, and Tzeentch chassmastering it all and raining arcane destruction on all. |
| 247 | ** The thing is, if Chaos wins - which might not happen if either the Tyranids, who don't have emotions to feed on, or the Necrons, who will cut the Gods off from the materium, manage to overrun the galaxy, but even then there's more than one galaxy in the universe, and Chaos can just move on - ''Nurgle'' wins. When all sapient life dies, Slaanesh and Khorne starve into nothingness. No war, no excess, no gods. Then, trillions of years afterwards, as the heat death of the universe kicks in, Tzeentch freezes to death in the changeless void. And all that's left is decaying particles and a laughing Nurgle. |
| 248 | ** Nurgle would die in that scenario as well, The Chaos Gods are born of and feed off of EMOTIONS, Death and Decay aren't emotions, he doesn't feed on those, he feeds on the emotions brought about by them primarily Despair, but also Acceptance, also, in some fashion, Determination, if everyone is dead, if the universe dies, Chaos loses, unanimously. |
| 249 | ** Yes, Nurgle does feeds from decay of unanimate objects. All Decay and all Death feeds him and recent fluff states that he is as old as Galaxy itself. Although, apparently, virus bombing of the planet gives him much more energy so in newer fluff the Imperium stopped using Virus Bombs after realizing this. |
| 250 | ** A Chaos victory result is an enslaved galaxy populated by Humans who are still very numerous, constantly being abused and tortured, but also maintained, by their gods, and trapped in a vicious circle of breeding and petty wars amongst themselves, while on the macro level, the Great Game is played out. Slaanesh ensures that sufficient breeding takes place, Khorne ensures that the wars control the population, Nurgle ensures that humanity remains strong enough to survive under the abuse of himself and the other gods, as well as being primarily responsible for stamping out any attempts by humanity to throw off the yoke and Tzeentch ensures that nothing happens to throw the vicious circle out of its unstable balance. The Chaos Space Marines, Daemons and Chaos Undivided factions keep the galaxy against external treats, such as additional Tyranids, and if it becomes possible, will spearhead invasions into other galaxies. |
| 251 | ** I'm no expert in [=W40K=], but I can perfectly see a way for the good guys to win (or at least for the galaxy not to be destroyed/consumed/ corrupted). What if the Emperor is successfully reborn/revived (see Star Child and sensei)? I know we're not gonna see it happen because the war must continue forever for the game to exist, but it's still a possibility (in-universe). With the Emperor around and no treacherous Primarchs to oppose him, Chaos would pretty much be put back in control over time. With the galaxy unified under the Emperor's rule, winning over the Necrons is only a matter of pinpointing their bases and destroying them so they can't repair themselves, and with all other threats eliminated I'm pretty sure the Imperium could stand it's ground against the Nids when they come (since the Emperor is supposed to be nigh unstoppable and they would start researching technology again since superstition would be banned). |
| 252 | ** You forget that we haven't seen the greatest of the Necrons army, what we've seen is but a harvesting force. Also the sensei were declared a Tzeentchian cult by the Inquisition, so it's unlikely that even if they aren't chaos worshippers that they will be able to do their thing. The Emperor might be able to take command but a good amount people may believe it to be false and splinter off, resulting in a new crusade to bring them to heel. Also when the Orks hear the Biggest Baddest Warboss of the humans is up and walking around they will ''all'' make a beeline towards Terra in order to fight '''the most powerful humie of all'''! |
| 253 | ** When the Emperor was up and about the first time around the Orks didn't do that. It follows that they will not do it now. He would take back control of the Imperium and give it a significant morale and tech boost, as well as cleaning up the leadership, but this would be balanced out by the inevitable splintering caused by such an upheaval, as mentioned. He would probably take Roboute Guiliman out of stasis and heal him. The daemon primarchs would be forced out of retirement to contain this threat against Chaos, but the main thing would be the Emperor and the Imperial Cult, especially the Ecclesiarchy, coming face to face. It would be hilarious whichever way it went. The Emperor might not however want a repeat of the Word Bearers with the entire Empire's population. |
| 254 | ** The idea that the Emperor will revive if he dies and lay the smackdown on the Chaos Gods is just one theory on what might happen. Ignoring for a moment that it's a tough sell for that being a victory for "the good guys" as that view of "the good guys" is very human-centric, their are other possibilities that don't bode quite so well. The Eldar are pretty sure that if the Emperor dies and the Astronomican fails, it'll rip open a new Eye of Terror right in the heart of the Imperium and Chaos will effectively win. Another theory is that the Emperor won't revive and there won't be a major warp rift, but the failing of the Astronomican will mean that the Imperium will collapse in a matter of days, if not hours, anyway, leading to a new dark age for humanity. There's also a theory that the Emperor will revive, but by the time his body regenerates, the damage of the Astronomican failing will have been done and he'll just have to start at square one again, except now he's facing a far more dangerous galaxy than he was the first time around. Given the setting, which one of these is true probably depends on which is the most grimdark. Personally if I had to guess, it would either be the "Emperor dies, nothing happens except the Astronomican failing" or the "Emperor dies, revives, Astronomican fails and the Imperium fractures anyway, back to square one" options. |
| 255 | [[/folder]] |
| 256 | |
| 257 | [[folder:Who's in charge?]] |
| 258 | * Space Marine command structure. You have a Chapter Master in charge of ten companies? Fine. Under him are his ten Captains, each in charge of ten squads. Wait a minute... ''What happens if a conflict doesn't need a whole company?'' I know the Librarians, Master of the Forge and Chaplains can lead an in-game army, but they're outside the command structure- they wouldn't usually be in charge of a campaign, not being trained tactically. So who takes over if a company needs to split in two? |
| 259 | ** It would vary from chapter to chapter but I'd think the most experienced or trusted squad leader would lead his and a couple other squads while the Captain splits off with the rest. |
| 260 | ** That does make sense, it just irks me that there isn't an intermediate rank along the lines of Space Marine Lieutenant for such a dude. |
| 261 | *** HA! This conversation aged well for Space Marine Lieutenants didn't it? Go Primaris! |
| 262 | ** There is, or rather there was. The original ranks during Rogue Trader were Commander (Chapter CO), Lt. Commander (Chapter XO), Captain (Company CO), Lt. (Company XO), Sergeant (Squad leader), Corporal (squad XO/section leader). Abbadon, for example, was originally Lt. Commander of Horus's Legion. It's possible these ranks still exist, for example, the Captain of the First Company also acts as 2inC of the Chapter, and the senior sergeant of a Company might have the honorary rank of Lieutenant. Besides that, however, there are plenty of other leaders around, particularly Chaplains which are assigned one-to-a-company, have plenty of authority, and are definitely not noncombatants. Beyond that, it simply goes by seniority. There are few enough marines in a chapter for that to work easily. |
| 263 | ** Space Marines could quite easily take care of themselves. Fluff wise, there are records of one side of an entire civil war on a feudal world being coordinated by 4 Ultramarines. |
| 264 | ** There's a difference between 4 Marines coordinating a whole defence and four squads of Marines- it's a lot easier to organise four individuals and avoid cock-ups in the chain of command. |
| 265 | ** I think he meant the 4 marines were leading an army of PDF or guardsmen across the planet in place of any generals, not that they were the only ones fighting the other army or were defending one city. Remember these men train for war 18 hours a day when not in combat and normally live for hundreds of years, they each probably have more than enough time to take the futuristic version of officer training. |
| 266 | ** I agree that they're all capable, it's just who they put in charge- you'd think they'd've noticed they need someone... I thought it was 4 marines coordinating, but that's my point- much simpler command structure, you just bung those 4 on top of the existing PDF or Guard one. |
| 267 | ** They send a Librarian or Chaplain to lead the army. |
| 268 | ** That's work, but they're non-military ranks- I know all the Marines are soldiers first, but their focus isn't on leadership, it's keeping the Marines sane, untainted and properly recorded. |
| 269 | *** Librarians and Chaplains represent centuries or more of service to the Chapter in battle. They aren't just desk jockeys; they go out and fight and lead command squads of their own. Most had careers in their Chapter before being elevated to the position of Librarian or Chaplain, anyways, such as Grimaldus of the Black Templars who was a Sword Brother before studying to be a Chaplain. Each is probably trained in leadership and tactics and even if not they have more than enough experience to lead a fight small enough that only a portion of the company has to fight and even if they didn't they have plenty of experienced Marines and sergeants serving under them to fill in the gap. |
| 270 | ** That doesn't mean they're not capable of leadership. The special character Chaplains and Librarians are both noted as being smart and charismatic enough to lead troops in battle, while Captains tend to have additional duties (Master of the Fleet, etc) beyond leading the Company. |
| 271 | ** There are also mentions in various places of Force Commanders or just Commanders (Dawn of War II being the most recent). I imagine that this is some sort of brevet rank, and the Marine in question remains part of the command squad or chapter Honour Guard on detached duty. |
| 272 | ** Each squad is led by a Sergeant, so presumably the most senior Sergeant is placed in command of a force greater than one squad but smaller than a company, when the need arises. |
| 273 | ** Both points above me are correct. When a non-standard sized group of Marines (so multiple squads from the same company or elements of multiple companies of the same chapter, or elements of multiple chapters) are working together, one marine is chosen for the brevet rank of 'Force Commander', and is given overall authority over all Marine operations for the duration of the conflict. |
| 274 | [[/folder]] |
| 275 | |
| 276 | [[folder:Eldar in ''Dawn of War'']] |
| 277 | * Eldar agenda and general mindset in ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar 2''. I can understand stirring up the Orks to fight the Tyranids but what's the point of blowing up the Angel Forge and, apparently, the whole Meridian? How exactly was that supposed to help against the 'Nids? Besides, even being the unbelivable bastards they are, certainly the Eldar couldn't fail noticing that the [[PunyEarthlings humans]] were trashing everything the Orks, the Eldar AND the 'Nids had thrown at them so far? So wouldn't it be reasonable to think at some moment: "Hey, you know what? Fuck the Orks, let's use the humans to stall the 'Nids! They seem to be quite well versed in this trades, and with a little help/manipulation they would do even better!" Personally, my jaw dropped in exasperation after a dying Eldar Ranger boss wheezed out: "And all that time you could have been killing Tyranids..." Oh, really? Why yes, I could and I would have if you, scumbags, DIDN'T DISTRACT ME BY RAIDING MY SUPPLIES AND STRATEGIC ASSETS!!! The fucking Eldar are so erratic I get an impression that somewhere in the screenwritng department some pages with Eldar and Ork parts got mixed up! |
| 278 | ** The Eldar probably were running another ploy alongside that ploy. Eldar Farseers have a well-earned reputation for being manipulative bastards who play chess games 20 moves ahead of the current situation. Odds are they saw another secondary reason to screw with the Imperium on that planet that was a nice bonus to the Orks doing it. I'm also betting the Eldar saw the Imperium as a more useful tool better applied elsewhere while Orks, on the other hand, would not stop fighting the 'Nids once they land. There's one example in fluff of where an Ork world was hit by 'Nids and that world is a constant warzone because neither side will stop or run out of soldiers. I'm willing to bet the Eldar had that exact effect in mind for using the Orks to do the job and hold the 'Nids instead of letting the Imperium do it and possibly fail. |
| 279 | ** I think the implication they couldn't quite make out was that the Eldar could disrupt the hive fleet be destroying it's resources, or divert the hive fleet to another direction once the 'nids saw that these worlds, just a few minutes ago were ripe for the feast, were now reduced to charred shit. They could have said something like "buy the craftworld enough time to escape by holding up the Tyranids with Orks and fire," but they decided not to go that route apparently. It's also an important note that in the ''Dawn of War'' series the [[{{Chessmaster}} Eldar]] have an [[BadassDecay unusually bad streak]] of failed attempts at pulling strings. |
| 280 | ** Also the Eldar did continue operations against the Blood Ravens in ''Chaos Rising'' after the Black Legion arrived to lay down the hurt. [[FridgeLogic In retrospect]], the Eldar might have been trying to destroy the Blood Ravens' worlds to prevent that from happening, since the Black Legion could present a very real threat to their Craftworld, but they might have also not seen that possibility until they were a likely possibility after the events of ''[=DoW2=]''. |
| 281 | ** Games Workshop hate Eldar, and that has obviously transfered to Relic as well. If they can't even win ''in their own Codex'' it is improbable that anyone else will portray them as intelligent or successful. |
| 282 | ** Just take it as a granted, due to extreme reliance on foreseeing[[note]]That fails often[[/note]] and massive arrogance, they are incapable of making decisions based on actual strategy [[note]]Autarchs are, but all major and fluff worthy battles are led by Farseers. [[/note]] and normal communication and cooperation with fellow races. |
| 283 | [[/folder]] |
| 284 | |
| 285 | [[folder:Inquisitors admitting an error]] |
| 286 | * I'm curious. In one of the cinematics in the original ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' campaign, when Mordecai Toth admits that he was wrong about Captain Angelos's suspected heresy, is that the only time an Inquisitor ever apologized for his accusation, even if he didn't quite word it that way? Because come on, these are the guys who suspect their own mothers of heresy. |
| 287 | ** Not if you look at the background. Inquisitors are one giant RagtagBunchOfMisfits, they come in every flavour...see Literature/{{Ravenor}} and {{Literature/Eisenhorn}}. |
| 288 | [[/folder]] |
| 289 | |
| 290 | [[folder:University life in M40]] |
| 291 | * Why do I get the feeling there aren't a whole lot of fraternities and sororities in the Imperium of Man? |
| 292 | ** There are [[http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Adepta_Sororitas Sororitas]] and the Orks seem to fill the role of frat boy for the entire galaxy. |
| 293 | ** Universities exist within the setting, as does alcohol. therefore, fraternities and sororities exist. |
| 294 | ** They just don't have them on the galactic scale. I don't think the Fraternity Kappa Beta Epsilon For The Emperor would have influence beyond a subprovince of generic developed planet 8'659. |
| 295 | ** Not quite what I meant. Stop me if it's just a Hollywood cliche, but fraternities and sororities seem to have a bizarre obsession with forming equally bizarre cults. And in the Imperium of Man, that's '''''BIG''''' no-no, [[FateWorseThanDeath to say the least]]. |
| 296 | ** Because ''Warhammer 40,000'' is a British IP, and Britain doesn't have fraternities or sororities. :p |
| 297 | ** Proper university societies and other educational-institution-related cliques do exist, though. [[strike: Some of which]] All of which are little more than excuses to get drunk. |
| 298 | ** We already have frat boys. They're called Space Marines. |
| 299 | [[/folder]] |
| 300 | |
| 301 | [[folder:And that's why Kroot don't eat daemons...]] |
| 302 | * So, what exactly happened when the Kroot ate the creatures of Chaos that one time? Or is it one of those NoodleIncident things that shouldn't really be brought up? |
| 303 | ** There was a fiction piece in WD about it, which I think started the whole thing- basically, they went all multicoloured and mutated and turned on the Tau. |
| 304 | ** Not surprising that they would [[spoiler:become Chaos tainted, mutate, go insane and then renegade]]. It is surprising that they would eat flesh from Chaos creatures if they were smart enough not to eat the flesh of Genestealer cultists. Though to be fair, the ones that hadn't eaten the genestealer brood had a shaper with them that could tell that they were infected. |
| 305 | ** Could be that since Chaos taint is metaphysical, rather than the physical/genetic taint of genestealer infestation, the Kroot just didn't have the necessary sensory equipment to detect it - in the same way that you can taste poison but not radiation. |
| 306 | [[/folder]] |
| 307 | |
| 308 | [[folder:Super-lasguns]] |
| 309 | * Where'd this idea that lasguns could blow off limbs come from? In all the years I've been involved with 40K, I never came across anything that said that. |
| 310 | ** It's been stated repeatedly within the setting. Lasguns have variable power settings, and at full power they can tear limbs off and shoot through two meters of concrete. I don't remember the exact soucebook (I think 2nd Ed. Imperial Guard Codex?) explicitly mentioned that power level, and both the ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' and ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' books are consistent with this interpretation. |
| 311 | ** On that same note, several times in the ''Ciaphas Cain'' novels, someone's been shot, but the medic wasn't too worried about short-term death because the lasgun shot punched through the body and cauterized the wound, so there was no worry about death from bloodloss or infection. |
| 312 | ** Because flak armor is actually good at stopping lasbolts. And Cain himself wears carapace armor, which is superior. |
| 313 | [[/folder]] |
| 314 | |
| 315 | [[folder:Orky physics, again]] |
| 316 | * If Ork tech works as long as they believe it does, why aren't they invincible? Surely one Ork has looted a Rosarius at on point, and having seen what it does, is now bulletproof? |
| 317 | ** ''Orks do not work that way''. It's their ''only'' subtle characteristic. If they believe a gun to be able to fire quickly, it will fire slightly faster; if they believe their vehicles will go faster if painted red, their vehicles will go slightly faster; it's a question of slightly increased efficiency. Emphasis on the word "slightly". And in any case it requires something of a collective belief - ''an'' Ork who believes himself to be invincible because he has a Rosarius and then charges towards a hurricane of lasgun fire isn't going to live very long regardless. |
| 318 | ** Also, Ork Meks are the only unit that do operate a force field, and it's likely that it works in the same way most Ork tech does, although Meks tend to have a certain, if perhaps limited, understanding of equipment that do have a certain technological aspect, also like the Shokk Attakk gun. It's probable that Ork meks are the only ones with the knowledge to keep a force field in proper enough order to keep it working on Ork faith and to give the mek, and perhaps only the mek who understands it, the confidence to believe he can operate while other Orks won't have that confidence that comes with the technological mind. Or perhaps this is [[BellisariosMaxim an overanalyisis]] of one aspect of the original question. How 'bout them cubs? |
| 319 | ** "Invincible" is a relative term. Orks' belief systems may warp reality, but it can't warp reality that much. Even if you get an entire WAAAAUGH! believing that the Boss is invincible, a big enough weapon ''will'' kill him. That itself will be pretty difficult, as convincing enough Orks to belief that a given Ork is "invincible" will be pretty difficult (since it leaves no possibility of taking the Big Bosses post by [[KlingonPromotion killing him]]). That being said, Ork belief in the strength of a given Ork warrior actually ''does'' benefit that warrior; Orks that do well and appear proper 'ard grow bigger, stronger, and tougher. If the Orks believe a given warrior is "invincible", he ''will'' be tougher, but he won't be unkillable. Ironically, the most noticeable example of this is Lord Commissar Yarrick. |
| 320 | [[/folder]] |
| 321 | |
| 322 | [[folder:Nuclear weaponry and the Imperium]] |
| 323 | * Does Humanity still have nuclear weapons? The only reference I've seen is how the Krieg corps was formed, but if they do, why aren't they used more often? |
| 324 | ** Possibly because of all the far more insanely powerful ways to commit genocide that already exist elsewhere in the universe? That said, a Space Marine with a Fat Boy-alike would probably be very handy, especially with power armour's radiation shielding; though that still leaves the intense heat the detonation of a nuclear weapon causes and even power armour has its limits. |
| 325 | ** Nukes are mentioned in the background of the Death Korps of Krieg, and are considered ancient but (like many other weapons in 40K) still viable in a pinch. |
| 326 | ** Yeah, nukes exist. Deathstrike missiles are implied to be nuclear weapons of the tactical variety. |
| 327 | ** Nuclear warhead is possible, but actual tabletop model uses more cheap and reliable Plasma warhead. |
| 328 | ** Why waste money, reasources, and time on building nuclear weapons when you have bio-engineered viruses that can be deployed much cheaper and much more effectively. Plus, using nukes ineffectively could leave many things (albeit mutants, but still) crawling around in the sands, as opposed to the other forms of Exterminatus, which are more effective. Basicaly, what I'm saying is that 40,000+ years into the future, I kind of assumed they have much better ways of killing many things at once than nuclear weapons. |
| 329 | ** Yeah, there are things that are better in some situations, but a virus only kills living things. There's not much that can beat a hydrogen bomb for massive EM-spectrum explosions with a side order of kinetic. |
| 330 | ** Their virus doesn't just kill living things, it breaks down all organic material to an organic, goopy, volatile material. (We know, an actual virus wouldn't work that way.) The material would then turn a planet's surface to an organic bog and then be used to create a firestorm. In the fluff, several sources say that this leaves the world hot enough that the surface would glow for about a month. Also, the planet-killing protonic torpedoes are implied to be to nukes (we know, nukes are fissioning masses of protons), as nukes are to high-grade firecrackers. Or to the very least, as nukes are to conventional bombs. |
| 331 | ** Yes, nukes have their side effects, but isn't it implied that virus bombs are rendered obsolete because ''they feed Nurgle''? |
| 332 | ** Your average Imperial general isn't likely to get too concerend about the universal/"supernatural" consequences of virus bombing when he has a world of Xenos in front of him that he needs turned into soup post-haste. Also that information about Virus Bombs strengthening Nurgle could be classified and only the high ranking know it. |
| 333 | ** Nukes have been mentioned in fluff a few times, they're often held in reserve by PDFs or Naval craft, as well as certain IG heavy artillery and the 3 largest classes of Titans. You're all also forgetting serveral key points: a) The Imperium is an expansionist entity, you can't grow crops on irradiated soil very well, b) Using them on planets you own is bad if you want to have healthy populations to feed the warmachine, c) More Muties, and let me remind you that being a Mutie is like being Black in the pre-civil rights era, Deep South, only much more worse, d) |
| 334 | ** Dead Men Walking has a recruited mining clerk who states, that they used nuclear charges for mining. They later attached one of them to the clerk as a suicide mission to blow up a necron lord. |
| 335 | ** They do still have them - Corvus Corax apparently used them when he staged an uprising on his homeworld, the Chaos Space Marines used them in the 13th Black Crusade, and the Blood Angels themselves used them on the Tyranids when they attacked Baal. The Iron Warriors used them in the Drop Site Massacre, apparently that's how they misplaced Vulkan in the first place. They have uses, it's just with so many other kinds of firepower available they aren't a first-round choice. |
| 336 | [[/folder]] |
| 337 | |
| 338 | [[folder:Flat earth atheists and cathedral design]] |
| 339 | * Wait a second, If the Emperor tried to suppress religion in general and the worship of himself in particular, than why are all the 10,000 year old, pre-heresy, irreplaceable machines of war like Imperator Titans and Battleships have all the Gothic-Cathedral aesthetics like stained-glass and gargoyles and [[BlingOfWar Baroque-style ornate bling]] on it? Surely skipping those decorative flairs would allow for more resources to be used conquering the Galaxy. Having all those frills was just begging for them to become objects of worship. Maybe use all that metal saved by designing efficiently to make radios for ''everyone'' in the Empire, so the Emperor could have Fireside Chats with his people, and that way they would know not to worship him! |
| 340 | ** Three words; RuleOfCool. In addition, even without the symbolism, those architectural elements were chosen as they evoke certain response in people in-universe and in real-life, so the Emperor probably wanted his empire to look as impressive as possible. |
| 341 | ** The various races and factions of the 40K Universe don't put a whole lot of stock in practicality. That's why you get things like Titans that can overshadow the Sears Tower and Sisters of Battle using flamethrowers in deserts. |
| 342 | ** The Cult Mechanicus also predates the rise of the Emperor (though not his existence), and whilst He may have been working to diminish the ritualism, it was fairly low down the list of priorities. Also remember that in 40K the various decorative flourishes and extraneous bits sometimes do have an effect, creating geometries that either repel or invoke the Warp. |
| 343 | ** You're looking at ''ten thousand'' years of embellishments. They likely started out looking more utilitarian. Plus, factor in constant maintenence, and it's highly unlikely these machines have a single original part left in the first place. |
| 344 | ** 1) Imperium targeted for peaceful annexation during Great Crusade. 2) Handicap principle. |
| 345 | [[/folder]] |
| 346 | |
| 347 | [[folder:Religious terminology and the Emperor]] |
| 348 | * Why was so much terminology directly referencing [[ChurchMilitant the most unsavory aspects of Christianity and religion in general]], e.g. Heresy, Crusade, Inquisition, used before the rise of the Imperial Cult and, indeed, by the [[NayTheist fanatically anti-religious]] Emperor himself? |
| 349 | ** Might be a TranslationConvention, the Gothic words not yet having these religious connotations in the Emperor's time (basically HaveAGayOldTime with religion rather sex). |
| 350 | [[/folder]] |
| 351 | |
| 352 | [[folder:Questionable strategy]] |
| 353 | * In Forgeworld's ''Siege of Vraks'' series, the stated problem is that the planet of Vraks, essentially a massive munitions depot, has been taken by Chaos, and Cadia will need said munitions. The stated solution is to lay seige to Vraks, outlasting the enemy ''and his stores of equipment and ammo.'' In other words, take the planet back by forcing the enemy to ''run down the stores that are the actual objective of the war''! How does this make sense? You win the siege, but then you have an empty planet with no useful equipment to supply the Imperium because all that equipment has been either destroyed by you or expended on the bodies of your dead soldiers! Can somebody explain this? |
| 354 | ** It's 40K - monumental administrative stupidity is the name of the game! (Actually, I don't think anyone'd play Monumental Administrative Stupidity 40,000, but the point stands.) |
| 355 | ** Maybe they need the planet as a munitions store close to Cadia. So once they take it back, they can fill it up relatively quickly and use it as a forward ammo dump, but not while Chaos are on the planet. Or maybe there are certain munitions that are desperately needed on Cadia but the troops on either side of the conflict have nothing that can use them, like Super Heavy Artillery shells or Anti Orbital Weapon Platform ammo. |
| 356 | ** The deep vaults were still active as the primary source of equipment and materials over a decade past the initial projection of time for victory. If the forces on Vraks were purely, as was initially assumed, renegades with tainted leadership the expenditure of men and material would have been worthwhile given what would be recovered and the usefulness of the position. Declaring the world a lost cause would also damage the credibility of the Munitorium as a political entity within the Imperium, which none of their masters was willing to be responsible for. By the time the Inquisition became involved the war had become both an act of honour and a denial of resources to the enemy, along with being propelled by pure momentum and unwillingness to cut losses after so much had been expended. |
| 357 | ** Its not so much that they need to have the material, as they need Chaos to not have the material. "If I can't have it, no one can!" |
| 358 | * It is stated that the most plan to take Vraks would take 100 years. The more ambitious undertaking would take only 12. The munitions on Vraks were not for fending off a siege- well, they WERE- but there was so much on the planet that it was meant to supply several armies for years with enough left over for such a siege on Vraks. Even a 12 year war's worth of supplies and casualties used by the rebels and the Imperium would make the capture of Vraks a net gain. Of course, if the Inquisition hadn't tried blowing the Cardinal's head off (or at least sent an assassin who could do his damn job correctly) which started the whole mess in the first place, then the whole siege would have never needed to happen. That or at least send an army that would be willing to negotiate a surrender instead of the frakking Death Corps. |
| 359 | [[/folder]] |
| 360 | |
| 361 | [[folder:Why care about the Tyranids?]] |
| 362 | * The Tyranid infestation level in ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar 2''. Does it bear any in-game significance at all? I keep finding advices on how to lower it, yet I can't find one single word about why I should even care. |
| 363 | ** If Tyranid infestation gets to high, you automatically lose the campaign. |
| 364 | ** Really? I thought you just lost a tonne of points (preventing you from getting the Epic Victory ending in the end, potentially). |
| 365 | [[/folder]] |
| 366 | |
| 367 | [[folder:Tau blood color]] |
| 368 | * Minor ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' nitpick: Tau blood is cyan. Not red. |
| 369 | ** I'm guessing it's [[GameplayAndStorySegregation engine limitations]]. |
| 370 | ** Also possible: it's a choice by the developers to make it more obvious to those not familiar with the setting. Or they just forgot to look it up. |
| 371 | [[/folder]] |
| 372 | |
| 373 | [[folder:Scott [=McNeil=]'s voice acting]] |
| 374 | * When and where in the ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' series did Creator/ScottMcNeil talk like [[WesternAnimation/BeastWars Silverbolt]]? |
| 375 | ** One of the Squad Sergeants in the first game, and the Chaplain in ''Winter Crusade''. |
| 376 | [[/folder]] |
| 377 | |
| 378 | [[folder:The unpleasable fanbase]] |
| 379 | * Why is it whenever GW changes the rules or makes edits or... pretty much does anything, that the players always say "It's to sell more models!" It doesn't even make sense! The play-testing and game design division has little to nothing to do with the marketing department! What is this I don't even- |
| 380 | ** Chalk it up to TheyChangedItNowItSucks. |
| 381 | ** If it were just complaining due to change I'd understand, but this is complaining as well as giving a ridiculous reason! Some people like the changes being made and still say it's to sell more! |
| 382 | ** The perception that they change underpowered units to powerful ones and vice versa, thus creating demand for a different type of army. One that you'll have to buy new models at stupidly inflated prices to fill out and keep your army as uber as you can isn't valid? I don't play the game so I can't say if this is true or not, but just like Magic the Gathering it seems to be the case. |
| 383 | ** Chalk it up to skimping on research, as company GW has some very strange business practices, especially recently, in the 90s they were a little more sensible. |
| 384 | [[/folder]] |
| 385 | |
| 386 | [[folder:Tau public executions]] |
| 387 | * Do the Tau have public executions, thus further subverting the idea that they're the nice guys of the game? Or is crime comfortably scarce in Tau society thanks to the Greater Good? |
| 388 | ** .....why do they either need to have public executions or low crime? Why can't they have private ones, like happens in real life? |
| 389 | ** Do we know whether the Tau even ''have'' executions? |
| 390 | ** The Tau consider prisons to be counter-productive and prefer to focus on rehabilitating individuals into society. That statement can be as innocent or as sinister as you like, although personally I am getting ''sick'' of the Tau being more and more grimdarkified. |
| 391 | ** However, being practical people they are, they aren't likely to waste perfectly normal human resources. So its either rehabilitation or work camps. |
| 392 | [[/folder]] |
| 393 | |
| 394 | [[folder:Clone-o-palooza]] |
| 395 | * Where did "Death Korps of Krieg as clones" come from?! |
| 396 | ** According to the lexicanum, Imperial Armor Vol. V uses something called the "Vitae Womb" as an explanation for the extreme amounts of manpower Krieg produces despite the nuclear devastation. Also, making armies of clone-conscripts to feed the enemy cannons seems like the Imperium's style. |
| 397 | ** Cloning is tech heresy and thus is only allowed in very specific scenarios after showing fanatical devotion and having the living shit kicked out of you. Imagine if a clone using planet rebelled, they would have infinite troops to fight against the Imperium. |
| 398 | ** It's implied that the Imperium and the Mechanicus look the other way when it comes to Krieg. Probably due to their soldiers being really good and the entire planet being even more loyal than usual for an Imperial World out of atonement for the earlier rebellion. |
| 399 | ** While the cloning stations are located on Krieg, they can only work with constant supplies from other star systems. They still need biomass, chemicals, spare parts, energy resources and so on. |
| 400 | [[/folder]] |
| 401 | |
| 402 | [[folder:Time to lose some weight]] |
| 403 | * This may sound silly, but work with me here. Now, apparently each space marine has armour that would put some tanks to shame. This would easily make an average marine weigh about 1-3 tonnes at ''least'' (not counting those with heavy weaponry). So, how could an average Space Marine be able to move around in a multiple-floored building, or hell, ''stairs'', without falling through? How would they move through muddy terrain without automatically sinking like a stone? ''WHAT THE HELL HAPPENS IF ONE OF THEM TRIPS OVER!?''. |
| 404 | ** Space Marines don't weigh multiple tons, and they have big boots to spread their weight around. They can move through mud just fine. If mud is loose or wet enough to hinder a Marine, it would hinder Guard troops as well. Upper levels of modern buildings are generally designed to handle tons of weights, let alone Imperial architecture. If they trip, they stand back up; they're not bloody turtles. |
| 405 | ** But they would weigh about a tonne, and this leads to another question; how do they even ''walk'' up the stairs with their huge feet? |
| 406 | ** Marines are pretty nimble for their size, and Imperial stairs are generally not particularly narrow. If they're having trouble moving up the stairs, can simply gouge out footholds for themselves, use Assault Marines (which is really the troop type of choice for assaulting tall buildings anyways) or send scouts/Guardsmen up the stairs. |
| 407 | ** You're falling into an old trap; Space Marines aren't clumsy, they're more graceful than baseline humans ever could be. |
| 408 | ** Serious answer: when the Imperium makes something, they make it to ''withstand'' that kind of weight, apparently. As for the mud thing, they have increased strength to get out of it and/or wade through it with little impediment, and they don't care about appearances overly much. |
| 409 | ** But what about buildings made by ''other'' races, such as Orks or the Eldar? Or ruins of older buildings? |
| 410 | ** Eldar structures are built out of wraithbone, which is incredibly durable. It can easily handle the Marines going up and down it. Ork structures are built to accommodate Orks, which are also pretty heavy themselves - particularly Warbosses and Nobs. Marines would have no trouble moving up and down them. |
| 411 | ** If the Marines can't go up the stairs, they blow up the building. Alternately, they call in either scouts, Guard Stormtroopers, or Imperial Navy assault troops to take care of it. |
| 412 | ** If a building in the 40k universe can't survive a Space Marine walking around in it, it's not going to survive period. |
| 413 | ** Marines would weigh, probably, not quite half a metric ton. They're so well protected because they have PowerArmor. While this does give them considerable protection, the armor is not as guaranteed to block a hit from conventional weapons as a tank's armor would. Also, a tank could conceivably stand up to a hit that would pulp or vaporize a marine if their armor didn't stop it. |
| 414 | ** Serious answer phrased a bit sarcastically: (a) Space Marine armor is made out of some sort of ceramic-metal hybrid that doesn't exist. It's unrealistic light and unrealistically sturdy. Where are these weights coming from? (b) Space Marines [[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum have an organ]] [[ArtisticLicenseBiology that allows them to gain memories by eating meat]]. Why do you think their muscles and nerves make real world sense? (c) In the Rogue Trader book: "The natural weight and cumbersomeness of the [power] armor is overcome by a system of electrically motivated fibrebundles which replicate in ever way the muscular movements of the wearer..." Hence no move penalty for power armor. This, is really more of an explanation than GW [[HandWave usually gives]]... |
| 415 | ** Not to mention those backpacks aren't there just for looks. They are mini versions of the Assault Marines jump packs and reduce a marines armor to near weightlessness. |
| 416 | [[/folder]] |
| 417 | |
| 418 | [[folder:The meta-origin of Chaos Gods]] |
| 419 | * The Chaos Gods are said to be [[EldritchAbomination Lovecraftian]] in nature, but at the same time, the four of them neatly divide up the duties and attributes of {{Satan}}: a fierce and terrifying warrior (Khorne), offering pleasures beyond imagination and (Slaanesh), being nice and friendly to effectively lure people to the dark side (Nurgle), and coming up with clever plans to gain as many souls as possible and undermine God (Tzeentch) (although Satan is more likely to angrily shout "YouHaveFailedMe!" in contrast with Tzeentch's cool and confident "YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness"). So which is the true source and inspiration for the Dark Gods? |
| 420 | ** All of the above. 40K's Chaos Gods are a mixture of both Lovecraftian horror/abomination/gods and a more Christian/Abrahamic-style Satan figure. Or rather, they're Satan fused with Cthulhu, for the extra unstoppable evil. It's worth noting that some interpretations and fluff surrounding the Chaos Gods posits them as not a wholly evil force, but rather as a neutral force made up of both good and evil elements; i.e. Khorne is a god of violence and murder but also honor and bravery. Slaanesh is a god of excess but also a god of love and creativity. Nurgle is a god of despair and waste but also a god of endurance and determination, and Tzeentch is a god of scheming and manipulation but also learning and hope. |
| 421 | ** [=WH40k=] being British, the Chaos Gods are based on the Lords of Chaos from Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series (this is especially true with early Warhammer Fantasy which had Gods of Law as a counterbalance). Moorcock's Lords of Chaos were whimsical being made from thoughts and emotions of living beings so they can be cruel or kind depending on their own mood and the thoughts of people at the time (Chaos behaves at its worse when humans and other races are Conan-type barbarians). Moorcock's influence doesn't just extend to the Chaos gods, the fluff you see about Demon worlds or worlds caught in the Eye of Terror, could almost be taken straight out of Corum or Elric novels and Moorcock had an immortal Emperor living on a Golden Throne long before GW did. |
| 422 | ** More specifically, they really are pure evil, but embody some positive traits, and also the logical next step these traits can take when corrupted and evil. They just wouldn't be Chaos if they didn't embody how the feelings of mortals can be taken to extremes. |
| 423 | ** Who are the C'Tan gods based on? Now those guys are ''really'' Lovecraft-style incomprehensible, especially the Outsider and the Deceiver. |
| 424 | [[/folder]] |
| 425 | |
| 426 | [[folder:The (in)famy of Comissars]] |
| 427 | * Why is that [[BadBoss Commissars]] are more (in)famous for [[YouHaveFailedMe shooting their own soldiers]] than, say, the Dark Eldar or the World Eaters or especially da Orks? |
| 428 | ** Because if I'm not mistaken, the Commissars are somewhat unique in that they're supposed to be doing it for the sake of maintaining discipline, as opposed to business as usual. A cat grooms by licking itself, but if you saw a human doing that you'd think he's weird. |
| 429 | ** Commissars A) have hats, B) have {{Badass Longcoat}}s, and C) are the only units that routinely execute their men on the tabletop as a game mechanic (excepting Kharn). Thusly, MemeticMutation. |
| 430 | ** There are other units where the leader would attack other units {including Ork Nobz and bosses with a bosspole and Kharne} but Commissars are slightly more unique in that they automatically kill outright. And it's probably that they're more infamed because they're kiling the members of the Imperial Guard, who are appreciated more for their memetically massive balls and their [[TookALevelInBadass revised codex]], and that they really do look cooler than their non-Imperial counterparts. |
| 431 | ** Also if you read the fluff, Orks and Dark Eldar are very good at working with each other when attacking other races. They wait until after the battle is over before turning on each other again. |
| 432 | ** Also notable that Dark Eldar are willing to work for anybody and do anything if they get paid, and as soon as the job is done, betray their clients. |
| 433 | ** Commissars kill their own men to prevent them from fleeing, Orks kill their own boyz because of any reason, often for laughs, the Dark Eldar kill their own people because they need to get-off and 7 hour torture sessions are a little too time consuming... |
| 434 | ** You answered the question yourself. It's ''because'' they shoot their own soldiers. When you're in the Guard, no one's going to bat an eye at you shooting orks, everyone's shooting orks, it's your job to shoot orks. But the guy who's job it is to shoot ''you''? He's gonna be known as the guy who's job it is to shoot you. |
| 435 | [[/folder]] |
| 436 | |
| 437 | [[folder:Catachan trees vs. Catachan toads]] |
| 438 | * At the risk of seeming obvious, I would like to ask how Catachan is still a jungle world when it's full of toads that explode and render miles around a desolate wasteland for millenia if you so much as give them a particularly mean look. |
| 439 | ** Because the rest of Catachan evolved to give those toads a wide berth, and the rest of Catachan evolved to replace the ecological damage very, ''very'' quickly. |
| 440 | ** It is being said that it is necessary to burn the jungles with a flamethrower everyday to keep them away from the villages. |
| 441 | ** It's also implied that several species of creatures in the galaxy, like ambulls, are primitive tyranids. It's suggested several hive fleets made it into our galaxy and eventually were defeated and fell apart with the different forms becoming their own species. Granted, these species usually transform the planet into a death world and are highly adaptive compared to "natural species". I mention this because at least one species on Catachan was actually found to have genetic similarity to the tyranids. Obviously, this connection wasn't made by scientists until the new round of tyranids showed up. Anyone who did notice would have found the mystery of why twobspecies on opposite sides of the galaxy were similar unsolvable. That or they assumed the Eldar or the Old Ones (if they somehow knew what those are) or even humans or orks just cross planted a species sometime in the distance past. Anyways, the best explanation I have is that the tyranids-like lifeforms on Catachan are just able to adapt to the toad much faster than native life and that the "millenia of wasteland" thing is an exaggeration or the definition of "wasteland" on a jungle planet where everything wants you dead or turned into a plant looks like a grass field. To a Catachan, a grass field probably looks like a horrifyingly dead patch if land with nothing to hide or take cover in. |
| 442 | [[/folder]] |
| 443 | |
| 444 | [[folder:Rebel Alliance is always Chaotic...]] |
| 445 | * Why does it seem like every rebellion against the Imperium is Chaos backed? It seems there aren't any rebellions in the background that exist for any other reason other than for the evulz. |
| 446 | ** A popular revolt in Tactica Imperialis was caused by general uprising, two genestealer rebellions in the ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' books - along with Cain mentioning that popular rebellions in the Imperium occurred regularly - and two more popular rebellions are mentioned in the Gaunt's Ghosts books. |
| 447 | ** The Imperium doesn't terribly ''care'' about the type of government on a world in question so long as that world pays its Guard tithes, supplies materials for the Imperium, and venerates the Emperor. If the government is democratically elected, they don't care. If the government is a feudal kingship, they don't care. If the new government has just finished murdering the last government and says "Yep, we'll keep sending you men, material, and whatever else you'd like" to the administratum, everyone is happy. Except for the previous government. |
| 448 | ** A few sources also mention Tauist rebellions, inspired by propaganda sources which have have fallen into human hands. |
| 449 | ** Because The Emperor (glory be His name) is the one true bulwark against Chaos; a rebellion against His Imperium is as unto a pact with the Ruinous Powers themselves. Whether you personally summon a horde of daemons into the world, or simply facilitate another doing it when seeking out your own glory, it's all the same. At least, that's what [[UnreliableNarrator we get told]] by [[ChurchMilitant The Ecclesiarchy]]. |
| 450 | ** To be fair, to rebel against the Imperium also means to rebel against the Emperor. Losing his light actually does open you up to corruption as belief becomes literal reality in this universe. The Emperor had clear anti-chaotic power and belief in him actually gives you some of that power because people thinks it should therefore the warp make it so that is true. When a people get rid of the Imperial Truth (non-belief in chaos) and the Imperial Faith (belief in the Emperor as an anti-chaotic force) you are essentially opening yourself up for mind rape. Plus Chaos is opportunist. Many rebellions start as populous uprisings and then Chaos gets involved when the people get desparate and changes the people from William Wallace expies to Charles Manson impersonators. Vraks, for example, only turned truly chaotic because the Alpha Legion decided to be pricks again. The Deacon and Cardinal scribing chaos runes on everything had no idea what the hell they were doing and the Cardinal kept preaching about the Emperor up until he lost his faith. Chaos' influence on Vraks didn't actually start for real until the Cardinal started performing rituals that the Alpha Legion taught him. Before that, the people of Vraks were convinced that the Imperium was corrupted and that they needed to purify it in the name of the Emperor. |
| 451 | ** There are many non-Chaos rebellions that happen all the time in the Imperium, as mentioned above, as long as the planet keeps paying their taxes and tithes, the Imperium see’s no reason why it should expend energy crushing it, it’s usually when the Ruinous Powers get involved that they take a revolt seriously. That being said there were some major non-Chaos backed rebellions that the Imperium quashed; the Rophanon Rebellion, which was technically crushed by the Imperium, but they let the Tyranids do most of the work and then did Exterminatus on the planet, the Fourth Quadrant Rebellion also hardly involved Chaos, and the Badab War was against Renegade Space Marine Chapters rather than Chaos Space Marines (though Lufgt Huron turned to Chaos after the war ended and he escaped). |
| 452 | [[/folder]] |
| 453 | |
| 454 | |
| 455 | [[folder:Possessed Inquisitor?]] |
| 456 | * Rephrasing this question: Where does it say that Inquisitor Toth was daemon possessed or anything similar? |
| 457 | ** Macha implies it. |
| 458 | ** Also, there was a book. It was completely terrible and full of fluff rape, but some of the plot points were more or less acknowledged. |
| 459 | [[/folder]] |
| 460 | |
| 461 | [[folder:How do you put down something invincible?]] |
| 462 | * This is probably easily answered, so I apologize in advance, but there's something I'm confused about. It's said on numerous places on this wiki that if the Emperor ever woke up, he could probably stomp all of the chaos gods into oblivion. If he's that powerful, how was Chaos able to lay him low in the first place? |
| 463 | ** The Emperor is more powerful in the Warp than he was in the flesh. In his current state, he's reduced to ineffectiveness, but if he were to die, one of the prevalent theories among one of the Inquisitorial schools of thought is that the Emperor can fully enter the Warp where he can release his full power. |
| 464 | ** The Emperor was crippled by Horus because he didn't really want to fight his favorite son. Even after Horus cut his throat, old Empy didn't want to kill him until Horus obliterated a newcomer and laughed about it. Upon realizing Horus had completed his FaceHeelTurn, the Emperor immediately curbstomped Horus with a psychic blast that '''obliterated his soul'''. This the Emperor managed ''as he lay dying''. |
| 465 | ** It may be that it was that psychic blast that laid him low, not the body damage. TakingYouWithMe / CastFromHP attack. |
| 466 | [[/folder]] |
| 467 | |
| 468 | [[folder:Psykers and/or(?) sorcerers]] |
| 469 | * Is there a difference between psykers and sorcerors? From what I've read it seems like there isn't, but sometimes I see something that makes me wonder. Like, arcane runes are mentioned every now and then, and runes generally aren't associated with psychic powers. |
| 470 | ** There's no difference. "Magic"/"psionics" are the same thing and come from the Warp in this setting. The idea of magic and psionics being seperate is a brain bug brought about by certain RPG settings that specify that they are seperate. In [=WH40K=], they are one and the same. |
| 471 | ** Actually, the difference ''seems'' to be that sorcery in the 'verse requires the intercession of the Chaos Gods, daemons, or other beings of Chaos. A Psyker, by contrast, wields tremendous power on his or her own. |
| 472 | ** My understanding of it is pretty similar to the previous comment, but I feel it's worth expanding a little- if you're a psyker, you're a psyker, and you can control the Warp (a bit) with your mind. If you're not a psyker, or you are but you want to be better, you can learn Sorcery- arcane gestures, chants, runes and stuff that will give you powers much like being a psyker. [[TheCorruption And eat your soul.]] Psykers run the risk of being attacked by demons and tainted with Chaos; Sorcery is inherently Chaotic. |
| 473 | ** Early fluff states that Sorcerers are those who wield power of the warp with psyker abilities, technology or arcane rituals. That being said, vast majority of the Chaos Sorcerers are psykers. New fluff states that Sorcerer is Chaos equivalent of Space Marines Librarian. |
| 474 | [[/folder]] |
| 475 | |
| 476 | [[folder:Dark Eldar Hammerspace]] |
| 477 | * Lelith Hesperax in the 2010 Dark Eldar Codex has plasma grenades as part of her standard wargear. Where does she keep them in that outfit of hers? |
| 478 | ** Hard to say. She may have a [[HyperspaceArsenal pocket dimension in her pocket]], [[VictoriasSecretCompartment stuffed them in her top]], [[StomachOfHolding swallowed them to spit them back up]], [[HammerspaceHair braided them into her hair]], [[TrouserSpace kept them in her trousers]], or perhaps even kept "in" her [[AssShove trousers]]. Although she's understood to have these, the core rules mention that the model should be modelled with them, if only particularly for the formal games. Creative or lawful players will likely go to the trouble to model a few on her or something that she could carry them in. |
| 479 | ** They're probably tiny flash-bangs tucked into her wristbands or thigh-high boots. Or maybe it's a side effect of her super-hair, the same ponytail that counts as a shardnet and impailer/power weapon. We are talking about a woman so badass and skilled that she keeps up with power-armored supersoldiers and robots while wearing only a bra and thong. |
| 480 | ** it could just be a way of showing her skills ingame. Her prowess in combat means that its hard to get the upper hand. |
| 481 | [[/folder]] |
| 482 | |
| 483 | [[folder:Who's who: Magnificent Bastards edition]] |
| 484 | * Is Cegorach, God of the Harlequins and the Webway, the Deceiver, or is the Deceiver, least powerful of the C'tan but [[MagnificentBastard manipulation incarnate]], posing as Cegorach? Or are they both running a GambitRoulette on each other? |
| 485 | ** They're both Tzeentch. |
| 486 | ** They're both trickster gods. They're quite separate, but they do share a degree of professional respect. |
| 487 | ** This is actually stated in the fluff in one of the codices -- Cegorach and The Deceiver maintain a certain respect for each other, even while scheming for the other's demise. |
| 488 | ** They dated in college. |
| 489 | [[/folder]] |
| 490 | |
| 491 | [[folder:Imperial education on Eldar]] |
| 492 | * Are the average citizens of the Imperium (or even the Space Marines) aware of the difference between Craftworld Eldar and Dark Eldar? |
| 493 | ** No, they look almost identical and your average imperial citizen doesn't even know the Eldar exist. |
| 494 | ** Imperial military authorities in general ''are'' aware of the differences. Marines certainly will be. Whether or not your average citizen does depends on his/her education, security clearance and the world he/she is from. |
| 495 | ** For the average citizen of the Imperium, the only difference between a Craftworld Eldar and Dark Eldar is the Craftworld Eldar won't ''try'' to make it hurt--but he still won't care if it does. |
| 496 | ** One of the reasons humans and Eldar don't get along is precisely because many humans can't tell the difference between Craftworld and Dark Eldar. |
| 497 | ** A footnote in one of the Ciaphas Cain books mentioned that even though Cain is experienced enough to know the difference between Craftworld and Dark Eldar, he still uses them interchangeably. The implication is that even if humans knew those were two different types of Eldar, they wouldn't care because they deal with humans the same way as far as anyone can tell. |
| 498 | ** Many Inquisitors don't know the difference either because it isn't their field of study or because they hate xenos so much that they think learning about them is pointless. That being said they are FIVE types of Eldar: Craftworld, Dark, Exodite, Corsair/Outcast, and Chaos. (Six if you want to count the Harlequins.) And yes there are Eldar stupid/weak enough to fall to chaos. That being said, you can tell the difference based on how they act, but most people don't know how they act since they are so spooky and mysterious. They also like to use mirage/holographic/illusionary tech magic to confuse their enemies. One book had an uneasy alliance between the Craftworld Eldar and the Imperium only for them to start shooting at each other because some Dark Eldar used cloaking/illusion tech to sneak kill both sides' scout frigates. The Craftworld Eldar and Imperium saw Imperium and Craftworld ships attack them respectively. That's how good their illusionary tech is. They can make Dark Eldar ships look like Imperial ones. The Dark Eldar probably get off to making the Imperium think Biel-tan attacked them, for example, and watching the ensuing cat fight. |
| 499 | [[/folder]] |
| 500 | |
| 501 | [[folder:Let them fight, or make them fight]] |
| 502 | * One of the huge things that I don't get when the Imperium is fighting the Tyranids is, they know that Genestealers summon the Hive Fleet, so why don't they just transplant a few planets worth of them to a bunch of Necron tomb worlds and let the Necrons take care of the 'Nids? |
| 503 | ** Tyranids avoid Necron tomb worlds. There's nothing to gain from attacking a dead world, so the hive fleets would simply avoid them, sacrificing the relocated genestealers. |
| 504 | ** Transplanting genestealers to a Necron Tomb World requires several things: First, capturing genestealers. Second, finding a Necron Tomb World. Third, getting them down to the Necron Tomb World. Succeeding at ''any'' of these three tasks is exceedingly difficult. Achieving all of them is impossible. That also doesn't factor in that genestealers only summon Hive Fleets when they've established a major colony of infected indigenous lifeforms, which will require hundreds or thousands of hybrids. Also, the genestealers are smart enough to recognize that the world they're on is a Tomb World and won't call the Hive Fleet, and the Hive Fleet is smart enough to know that the tomb world is dead. Finally, even if by some miracle you managed to transplant hundreds to thousands of violent hybrids and genestealers onto a Tomb World's surface, they'll be wiped out by the Necrons in short order and the Hive Fleet will never come. In short, this plan is a fail plan. |
| 505 | ** Also, is preventing just ONE planet from becoming Tyranid lunch really worth the risk of awakening an entire Necron Tomb World, with all the horrors that lie within? It is far easier to purge a 'nid infested planet than it is to destroy a Tomb world. |
| 506 | [[/folder]] |
| 507 | |
| 508 | [[folder:Poor Eldar...]] |
| 509 | * ...Anybody else find that Games Workshop really really likes making the Eldar the whipping boys of 40k these days? Honestly, they're a dying race and older fluff material makes a great impression that they're dwindling but still highly badass, but now GW seems content to have them get their [[CurbStompBattle butts spanked in every fight]] or win a VERY Pyrrhic victory as of 4th-5th edition. Examples. Examples everywhere. |
| 510 | ** The newer Imperial codices have wraithlords getting killed by mere sergeants and an Avatar of Khaine (this is, perhaps barring Phoenix Lords the most potent Eldar close combat fighter in their arsenal) getting punched in the chest by Marneus Calgar and exploding. |
| 511 | ** Another Avatar of Khaine being killed by the Blood Angels' Sanguinor and a subsequent rout of Eldar forces. |
| 512 | ** YET ANOTHER Avatar from Iyanden getting killed because twelve Carnifexes decided to stampede it since the synapse beast leading the attack had no concept of honour or duels after the Avatar challenged it to a one-on-one fight. Older fluff states that the Avatar survived the fight and was one of the major factors in pushing back the Tyranids alongside Yriel; now they're adding another Avatar destroyed to their list. |
| 513 | ** Even the books have similar occurences; Fulgrim in the Horus Heresy books kills the Avatar of Ulthwe by strangling it or something. Sorta understandable because he's a Primarch, but come on, the Avatar's a molten incarnation of a god. How you strangle something like that to me seems incredibly ridiculous. |
| 514 | ** But disregarding all of that, the thing that bugs me the most is how Angron, the Primarch of the World Eaters was supposedly ambushed by warriors from Biel-Tan, the most militant of all the Craftworlds, but butchers them effortlessly and their corpses strewn about him (granted, he was wounded), yet a bunch of human slavers just capture him and he can't break free of them despite dispatching far deadlier warriors earlier? |
| 515 | ** "Are they Space Marines? No? Then fuck their fluff." - Games Workshop. It's probably because SOMEONE has to be the whipping boy of the universe. The factions rely on being SO GRIMDARK BADASS that they have to win all the time...but that just can't happen. So the Eldar get hit because they're the tragic dwindling races, and loses for them won't raise that many complaints for that reason. And because their players are smaller in number and tend to be a bit older and less loud. So the Eldar are the new Imperial Guard. (And The Dark Eldar get it even worse. In the new Codex, the entire city of Commorragh couldn't wipe out a couple hundred space marines.) |
| 516 | ** Well, ''somebody'' has to do it. It used to be the Imperial Guard was the ButtMonkey of the 'verse, but after they got their new codex it had to be somebody else (presumably the Guard rolled their Leman Russes into GW HQ and demanded it be so). Give it a while and it'll be somebody else, probably the Tau. |
| 517 | ** Also, if a Space Marine character killing an Avatar looks suspicious, ask yourself "Did Matt Ward write this codex?" If the answer is "yes" then that is why. |
| 518 | ** There's also the fact that Avatars of Khaine aren't all that strong. Yes, they are by normal standards especially in Dawn of War, but they are essentially greater demons of Khaine. Great demons are just small pieces of the gods. Sanguinius used to one shot certain greater demons when he was bored. For stat purposes, each Avatar is the same strength, but just like greater demons in the fluff, Avatars have varying levels of power and intelligence. Khorne and Slaanash didn't go out of their way to shatter Khaine into perfectly equal shards of power and if the Khaine shards could share power or recombine, they would have done so already. Calgar is definitely not a normal space Marine so him power fisting one to death isn't all that far fetched. Fulgrim choking a lava god to death is kind of a derp, but even demons and shards are weakened by the idea that physical damage should their connection to the real world. If choking a demon wasn't effective, why would stabbing it be effective? For the demon to exist in the real world, it has to follow the rules that life, emotion, and belief set down for it. Choking hurts, therefore you can kill a demon via choking. Same with the avatars and, again, primarchs could eat greater demons for breakfast and Commissar Cain could beat Astartes in chainsword duels under the right circumstances. |
| 519 | [[/folder]] |
| 520 | |
| 521 | [[folder:Why are there no Necrons on Earth?]] |
| 522 | * While I definitely agree that ''40K'' is the ultimate CrapsackWorld, [[ThrowTheDogABone there are some bits of good luck here and there]]. For example, what was it that prevented the Earth from becoming a Necron tomb world? |
| 523 | ** No sentient life on the planet when they were active? The dinosaurs had "only" been wiped out by a giant asteroid 5 million years ago. They probably set up shop on the planets that had people to kill (even if by ork infestation), and left the planets that had none (at the time) alone. |
| 524 | ** Is it still good luck that there were no Necrons on Earth if it turns out they're actually on Mars? Primitive cultures can't open tombs unaided, but even with thirty five thousand years of Martian colonisation they haven't woken the Necrons there yet. |
| 525 | ** It is actually said in codex that primitive cultures destroyed more tombworlds than Eldar raid parties. |
| 526 | ** There are so few tomb worlds that its more unlucky that they ended up on Mars. |
| 527 | [[/folder]] |
| 528 | |
| 529 | [[folder:Awesome, but impractical ammo]] |
| 530 | * [[http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/9/93/MkII_bolter.jpg Here]] are some [[http://fc04.deviantart.com/fs12/i/2006/323/e/4/Storm_Bolter_by_Orgun246.jpg pictures]] of bolters and their ammunition. Doesn't look like you can fit a lot of rounds into one of them. How can bolters be practical with so little ammunition? |
| 531 | ** The fluff and the models/pictures simply disagree on this. Fluff says the magazines hold 20-50 rounds of ammunition, while that doesn't seem true in the pictures. You have three choices - Choose to believe that bolter rounds are just much smaller then barrel size would seem to indicate, forever be perplexed, or accept that Space Marines run on the ''RuleofCool''. |
| 532 | [[/folder]] |
| 533 | |
| 534 | [[folder:Sisters of Battle vs. evil mirrors]] |
| 535 | * Having read about those super-nasty magic mirrors the Dark Eldar now have, do those work on the Sisters of Battle? Those ladies can use their faith to stop bullets [[Film/TheMatrix Matrix-style]]; does their faith keep those mirrors from working too? |
| 536 | ** In game terms, the Shattershard is a template weapon that forces those hit (reflected in the mirror) to take a toughness test or be removed from play, no saves of ANY kind allowed. In the fluff, it's not even a psychic weapon...it just ''works''. I think it's beyond the protection of faith, but make of it what you will. |
| 537 | ** So the Dark Eldar found a way to circumvent the Imperium's ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve / ReligionIsMagic tropes? That's a scary thought. |
| 538 | --> '''Battle Sister''': The Emperor's light will protect us from your vile tricks!\ |
| 539 | '''Kabalite Warrior''': Wanna bet? ''smashes a Shattershard mirror''\ |
| 540 | '''Battle Sister''': OhCrap. ''(falls over dead)'' |
| 541 | ** The Dark Eldar's raids are designed to capture slaves, torture victims, and play things, the more spiritually powerful, the better. [[FridgeHorror So why wouldn't they design a mirror that can capture the Light of the Emperor?]] |
| 542 | ** They would have to get to him first. |
| 543 | [[/folder]] |
| 544 | |
| 545 | [[folder:Necrons and "scorched earth" tactics]] |
| 546 | * How exactly do the Necrons harvest things if they kill every lifeform on the planet? Does everything killed by a Gauss flayer automatically go to the C'Tan? |
| 547 | ** Yes. Remember, the C'tan are after delicious souls. Gauss Flayers help harvest that. However, the Necrons also appear to gather up survivors from an assault and load them onto their ships, probably to be harvested or experimented on in a more efficient manner. |
| 548 | ** No longer true with the new edition codexes. Now the Harvest is collecting DNA samples that might be relevant to restoring organic bodies. The exact mechanics are not known (except for one mad Cryptec that experiments on living subject), but phrasing implies that samples might not be need to be alive when collected. |
| 549 | [[/folder]] |
| 550 | |
| 551 | [[folder:The absence of xeno POV novels]] |
| 552 | * I know it's far easier for readers to follow human characters and for writers to write them, but why aren't there more novels looking at the setting from the point of view of the Eldar, the Tau, or, heck, the Orks? It would be very interesting to have an epic saga told from their perspective. |
| 553 | ** They do have a few stories told from other viewpoints, but these have either failed horribly or just come off as arguably human with just another cultural view. There are not many books from the Tau viewpoint, and virtually none from the Orks. Many writers could be reasonably reluctant since Orks are simple, and would be rather flat, or restricted to comedy (you know, like they are in the fluff); Eldar are supposed to be an enigmatic and complex species, and an effective story from their view would likely not explore their thoughts or make them seem a lot like the humans they hold in disdain. |
| 554 | ** The Eldar Path novels are giving an insight into the lives of Eldar, and a new Dark Eldar trilogy is starting in 2012. |
| 555 | ** Orks are simple and there isn't much variety in their personalities and motivations. Where orks would excel is as protagonists of a comic or graphic novel series, where the visual medium could highlight their CrazyIsCool qualities. |
| 556 | [[/folder]] |
| 557 | |
| 558 | [[folder:Physicality of non-physical beings]] |
| 559 | * Why does the fluff give physical attributes to the Chaos Gods and their realms if the Warp is a non-physical dimension? |
| 560 | ** It's probably the shape they actually take. Most Khornate Daemons look like devils, and Nurglites are filthy abominations. Although they are technically energy beings, they have a definite shape. As for their realms, it's likely a region of the warp that has a faux-physical representation that suits the Gods' needs for a proper realm. Likely pure energy, just illusion or the way the God's presence shapes the warp around him. |
| 561 | [[/folder]] |
| 562 | |
| 563 | [[folder:Team-killing Lucius]] |
| 564 | * What happens if two people kill Lucius the Eternal at the same time? Or if he gets killed by a natural calamity? Or if he kills himself? |
| 565 | ** Probably the one who takes the first, or the greater joy from the kill, or Slaanesh flips a coin. Otherwise they'll likely say that the killing blow was just by one of them. The more interesting one , and therefore the more fun, is that they will probably meld together in a parody of a Salvador Dahli painting as they turn into him. If he did die in either other manner, he would logically cease to exist. On the same note, he probably spends most of his time in a starship, cruising and marauding the Imperium, so he would probably not be on a planet long enough to die that way. And that's a boring way to go. Also he would likely never kill himself, since being evil, especially Slaaneshi, feels good. |
| 566 | ** What would happen if he got killed by someone who either has no emotions or takes no pleasure from killing, like Johan from ''Anime/{{Monster}}''? |
| 567 | ** It's not who takes joy, it's who feels pride or triumpt and killing him. However if he was killed by someone who didn't do either (let's say for instance they never realised they did kill him, or died after inflicting a mortal wound), he would logically stay dead. He likely avoids Necrons like the plague, and to date nobody detached enough to not feel pride at slaying him has had the chance. |
| 568 | ** Lucius once had a duel with a hardcore Blood Angel. Slaanesh had to personally intervene to get Lucius out of the fight, since his death was inevitable. Apparently, when you hold back Black Rage with sheer force of will for a hundred years straight, you can't feel any pride and triumph over impaling yet another chaoslord anymore. |
| 569 | * At one point Lucius was killed by a Thousand Sons Rubric Marines swordsman, who is basically just a magic robot without any emotions or impulses of its own. Another time Lucius was killed by a Necron Lord, a creature without a soul who would be immune to Slaanesh's magics. Both times the Dark Prince just brought Lucius back. It seems like that s/he isn't willing to let her/his champion go that easily. |
| 570 | [[/folder]] |
| 571 | |
| 572 | [[folder:Lubricating energy weapons]] |
| 573 | * The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer states that part of lasgun maintenance includes lubrication. But modern lasers don't use moving parts. |
| 574 | ** Presumably, it has some sort of coolant system that includes moving parts to allow it to be fired for any great length of time without melting. |
| 575 | ** Also, if nothing else there are probably some moving parts such as the magazine catch and trigger mechanism. Those could require the occasional lubing to ensure they work correctly. |
| 576 | ** It's entirely possible that energy weapons ''don't'' need to be lubricated, but an ancient weapon maintenance manual said "guns must be lubricated", and its holy wisdom was faithfully transcribed into every subsequent manual without any regard for the difference between energy-based and propellant-based firearms. Questioning the necessity of any part of the ritual is heresy. |
| 577 | [[/folder]] |
| 578 | |
| 579 | [[folder:Hello? Star Vampires?]] |
| 580 | * Whatever happened to the Star Vampires? |
| 581 | ** I think they eventually developed into the C'tan, called Star Vampires in the Necron codex. |
| 582 | [[/folder]] |
| 583 | |
| 584 | [[folder:Unpersoning of the missing Legions]] |
| 585 | * Alright so based on the HH series, especially The First Heretic, it seems the two missing legions/primarchs were in the Space Marine's consciousness even a few years before the heresy itself. They must have played somewhat of a role in the Great Crusade, and thus conquered at least a dozen or so planets. At least. The Imperium was not nearly as repressive back then, so it follows that there ought to be some worlds whose history includes their subjugation/liberation/annexation by the missing legions. How can two legions, each with perhaps fifty-thousand marines (and hundreds of thousands comprising the support forces and civilians attached to them), making their way across vast swaths of space, be completely forgotten? |
| 586 | ** Largely, because the Emperor told them to. It's been verified that the two legions were expunged by the Emperor himself, and told to forget all of them. The worlds conquered by the Legions could have seen them as merely another part of the military force that subjugated them. Not likely but it's possible that these worlds were largely ignorant about these space marines. Other worlds that had been freshly subjugated had probably been ignorant of them, and when the records became available of other Legions, they had already been expunged. Beyond that, the army of civilian, support, and attached allied personnel...they could possibly be following the same thing, but then again, we don't even know if they even lived to remember them. |
| 587 | ** The forgotten primarchs were long gone by the time of the heresy. Lorgar was afraid he would get a similar treatment before the Emperor "chastised" him at Monarchia, so that means they were gone at least 43 years before the Heresy. |
| 588 | ** All the records were purged and 10 thousands years passed. What could you possibly expect to remain of them? |
| 589 | ** Fun Fact: Back in 1st Edition, the two missing Legions were the Rainbow Warriors and the Valedictors - until GW retconned them to be chapters created during later Foundings. |
| 590 | ** Parts of their removal seemed to be a prohibition on discussing them - the literature series has even the Primarchs wary of talking about those two brothers too much, and Rogal Dorn apparently had Malcador mind-wipe him. As for all the people who knew the details, well, the Crusade was bloody. Even right after they were removed, whatever support units were attached would have been rotated out and presumably chewed up in the next compliance actions, if they weren't destroyed alongside them. Whatever records ''might'' have remained on planets they brought into compliance are long gone after ten thousand years of ordered cover-ups that not only don't acknowledge them, but the other nine Legions and their Primarchs. |
| 591 | [[/folder]] |
| 592 | |
| 593 | [[folder:Magnus, why?]] |
| 594 | * Why did Magnus join Horus' Rebellion? He sacrifices his utopian world, legion and place within the imperium, because "the emperor will have need of the Space wolves in the coming conflict" and also to show his father that he acknowledged his mistakes and wants to atone. hell, he outright refuses tzeentch's offer to destroy the wolves before they reach prospero. This is probably as loyal as one can ever hope to be, so why did his legion join Horus after all that? |
| 595 | ** Because Magnus and the Thousand Sons get trapped in the Warp and were subverted by Chaos. Being utterly loyal probably made it easier for Tzeentch; the strongest emotions fuel the biggest falls. |
| 596 | ** Magnus accepted Tzeentch's offer to rescue the Thousand Sons as the battle was lost and as Prospero was burning, before they became trapped in the Warp. The answer is probably that Magnus' loyalty was ultimately pushed beyond the breaking point. He thought that he could allow the Space Wolves to destroy his planet and his legion without resistance as a show of repentance, but in the end he went out to fight because he could not bear to witness the destruction of his life's work. When Prospero was destroyed anyway, he decided that he wanted revenge. |
| 597 | ** Even after Magnus sided with Horus, he still avoided giving himself over to Chaos completely at first. It's only until the Siege of Terra where he's told he can be redeemed at the cost of condemning the entire XV Legion that he fully gives himself over to Chaos. |
| 598 | [[/folder]] |
| 599 | |
| 600 | [[folder:Since when are we allying?]] |
| 601 | * I've seen some fluff about a Necron Lord known as the Silent King forming an ''[[CharacterDerailment alliance]]'' with the Blood Angels to repel a Tyranid attack. |
| 602 | ** Ignore that. It was written by Matt Ward. There's nothing good about who he is or what he does. |
| 603 | ** That bit is blown out of proportion on the internet. The fluff bit (which is from the Blood Angels codex) states that the Blood Angels and Necrons were fighting on a planet when the Tyranids showed up. Both sides stopped focusing on each other in favor of not being eaten and manage to beat back the 'Nid invasion. Afterwards, both sides are too depleted and weakened from fighting the Tyranids to pursue further engagements so they just mutually leave the planet. The implication is that it was a temporary truce in the face of a greater threat, not a cultural exchange and pledge of friendship. |
| 604 | ** Except the Blood Angels were there to fight the Necrons in the first place, and Dante [[HonorBeforeReason didn't want to fight somebody he was an ally with]]. |
| 605 | ** I've finally found an explanation with the massive {{Retcon}} in the 5th edition Necron codex, in which they are no longer mindless OmnicidalManiac automatons whose only goal is to harvest all life in the galaxy. Now, they're rather a rather generic ancient race that simply wants to conquer, and the higher ups retain their personalities and emotions. It's much more likely for these new Necrons to join forces with other races. |
| 606 | ** The Silent King, the last true ruler of the Necron people as of 5th edition, has as his main goal getting the Necrons back into flesh and blood bodies (in the hopes of regaining their souls). They can't do this if they don't have any organics to experiment on. Therefore, the Tyranids need to be stopped. It's stated that the arrival of the Tyranids was what actually pulled him back out of a self imposed exile after he cost his entire species their souls. |
| 607 | [[/folder]] |
| 608 | |
| 609 | [[folder:Tau == Blanks?]] |
| 610 | * Are the Tau similar to Blanks in that they are heavily resistant to psykers and the Warp? |
| 611 | ** No. |
| 612 | ** I've seen some articles on the old Games-Workshop page about daemon possessed Tau Battlesuits. Also, it's been stated that the Tau have a minimal Warp presence. Minimal, sure, but they still have one. |
| 613 | ** Their warp presence is small enough to keep them sentient beings, pretty much - they're vulnerable to Daemons and psykers, but they're not able to be psykers themselves (the Ethereal Mind Mojo is pheromonal, if it even exists) and Chaos isn't really interested in them because humans and Eldar are just so much brighter in the Warp. It was part of a trend in 3rd edition to de-emphasize psykers - none of the races introduced in 3rd Ed had psychic powers (Dark Eldar, Necrons, and Tau), and two of them hated them. |
| 614 | ** They actually do have slight warp resistance, but nowhere near actual blanks. |
| 615 | ** Also, Blanks are strange and may not actually be soulless. Blanks aren't just undetectable in the warp, they actively eliminate any warp presence around them. This is why they are unsettling. At all times, people with souls are connected to the warp as their thoughts and emotions effect and shape the warp. Blocking that natural connection is what makes people so uneasy around blanks. In the Ravenor series, a mirror psyker was actually able to undo a blank's, well, blankness after several months of adapting to the anti-warp aura. Mind you, this a quadrillion to one chance of happening because mirror psykers are almost as rare as blanks. Mirror psykers copy and "reflect" other pskyer's powers and blanks may technically actually be psykers, just very, very strange ones. It's been hinted that blanks may be a result of Necron experiments to destroy chaos and separate life from the warp, thus the Necron pariahs are the final step of this experiment. The reason why Tau are resistent to psychic powers is because they have very small souls to target, not because they eliminate psychic powers. If you want a good analogy, think of it like this: hitting someone with psychic powers is like shooting them. To hurt them, you have to hit them. If you shoot a person, they may die. If you shot a fly, it will definitely die. A person is a much, much easier target to hit though because it is bigger. Tau souls are like trying to hit a fly. Yes, if you hit it, it's dead, but you have to be able to hit it in the first place. |
| 616 | [[/folder]] |
| 617 | |
| 618 | |
| 619 | |
| 620 | [[folder:Zerg and Tyranids]] |
| 621 | * Are the [[VideoGame/StarCraft Zerg]] really [[{{Expy}} expies]] of the Tyranids? I've heard somewhere that the 'nids only became a fully fledged HordeOfAlienLocusts after ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' was released. I've also seen some photos of second edition models, and they looked nothing like the modern Tyranids or the Zerg. |
| 622 | ** Genestealers first appeared as enemies in 1989's ''Space Hulk''. Here, they were plagiarized xenomorphs from ''Alien''. Though they appeared all the way back in 1987's ''Rogue Trader'', "Tyranids" as we know them today first appeared in ''Advanced Space Crusade'' in 1990, with biotech and the insectoid-dinosaur appearance instead of their original technological armaments. 1993 brought Warhammer 40K's Second Edition, featuring the first Tyranid codex and complete model range, with the Hive Tyrant, Carnifex, Zoanthropes, Lictors, Biovores, Genestealers, Gargoyles, Warriors, Termagants, and Hormagaunts. They were now an all devouring swarm. 1998 brought 3rd edition, in which Tyranids looked like [[http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/f/f0/Codex_Tyranids.jpg/220px-Codex_Tyranids.jpg this]]. Starcraft was also released in 1998. |
| 623 | [[/folder]] |
| 624 | |
| 625 | [[folder:Power Creep, Power Sweep]] |
| 626 | * If the chaos gods are as powerful as generally assumed, why don't they destroy loyalist ships once they enter the warp? Or are we to expect that they cannot overcome some artificial "bubble of real space" in their very own dimension? "Ruinous powers" indeed... |
| 627 | ** Mostly because the Chaos Gods don't ''care'' enough to bother with Imperium ships. For the most part, they ignore them because they don't much care whether Chaos wins against the Imperium. They just care that their particular agendas are being pursued. The guys who are generally hostile toward the Imperium and perate under the "Chaos" namesake are mostly mortals who've earned favor of a warp entity of one sort or another. |
| 628 | ** There's also the Gellar Fields that keep daemons out. |
| 629 | ** They can fail or even be overwhelmed in certain circumstances. There are bits in the fluff where a Night Lords' ship had to make and emergency translation out of the warp to avoid being gobbed up by an uberdaemon. |
| 630 | ** The warp is a pretty big place, too. In ''[[Literature/CiaphasCain Death Or Glory]]'' it's mentioned that an ork psyker attack (launched from a ship in the warp, at other Imperial ships in the warp) would be fatal to its crew because the energy would attract the attention of daemons who otherwise wouldn't have noticed the ship. |
| 631 | ** Most of the Warp is described as a "No Mans Land" of sorts, where a bunch of lesser Warp entities reside away from the domains of the Ruinous Powers, given that the Gods don't care about this "void" and so ships can go by unnoticed. |
| 632 | ** Also, don't forget that the Chaos gods do not control the entire Immaterium. It is mentioned in several sources that the Emperor fights them for control. Of course, that may just be Ecclesiarchical propaganda. |
| 633 | [[/folder]] |
| 634 | |
| 635 | [[folder:Nice stuff, why don't we use it?]] |
| 636 | * I've always wondered, the fluff mentions in great detail on how a Space Marine is made in great detail especially the various new organ implants. However, are there any moments in the games or novels where a marine actually uses some of these abilities? Examples like the organ which lets them gain a creatures memories by eating it's flesh, or the marines acid spit, or the ability to track down a target by taste etc. Are many of these merely [[InformedAbility Informed Abilities]]? Though I must admit I've not read that much Warhammer 40k novels so it's probably quite common in them and I don't know about it. |
| 637 | ** Yes, they do. Hell, during the Medusa V campaign, there was an entry on one of the despatches for the Dark Eldar where a group of Space Marines had been captured at great cost but ended up escaping due to their acid spit and wreaking havoc inside the entire encampment before escaping. |
| 638 | ** Combat also tends to render these things moot. According to the fluff loss of the throat is a very common fate of melee fighters meaning the flesh eating and acid spitting are lost because of the implants. |
| 639 | ** The brain-eating memory thing is used in ''Literature/SoulDrinkers''. There's also a scene where a severed Soul Drinker head sprays acid, and it's a sign of how degraded their gene-seed is since that organ doesn't work for Dorn's descendants. |
| 640 | ** Ian Watson's ''Space Marine'' novel has a group of marines operating a rebel Titan after eating the brains of its crew. |
| 641 | ** A couple of short stories have Space Marines eating dead people's brains to figure out how they were killed. One set during the Horus Heresy has Traitor Marines captured by loyalists; one of them spits a hole in his cell wall. He doesn't escape because it isn't quite big enough by the time a guard comes to check on him, so instead he says [[DeadPanSnarker it must have been made by giant rats]]. |
| 642 | [[/folder]] |
| 643 | |
| 644 | [[folder:Motion-sick Sentinel pilots]] |
| 645 | * Do Sentinel pilots ever get you know... motion sickness? |
| 646 | ** If they did they wouldn't be Sentinel pilots. Anybody who regularly vomits in the cockpit wouldn't be permitted to keep driving. |
| 647 | [[/folder]] |
| 648 | |
| 649 | [[folder:I move and shoot, or, Necron tactics]] |
| 650 | * As somebody who's never played the tabletop game, what are Necron tactics like? And based on ''Dark Crusade'', it doesn't seem like they have a particularly fast walking speed. Do they use cover in combat? The fact that they are always depicted firing their gauss flayers from the hip doesn't seem too sound, either. Can somebody explain? |
| 651 | ** They can use cover but they actually do move at normal speed, their tactics are pretty simple if a little weak by the modern standards. The whole firing from the hip makes more sense when you realize they are robots using impossibly advanced technology that aiming may not be necessary. |
| 652 | ** Firing from the hip is easily explained: We lift our weapons to bring them in line with out POW to aim. A Necron is a machine and might simply have an electronic eye installed just above or over the actual muzzle. Why would you fire from anything BUT the hip when your eye is on the actual weapon? |
| 653 | [[/folder]] |
| 654 | |
| 655 | [[folder:Young cultist's first pronounciation guide]] |
| 656 | * How do you pronounce the names of the four Chaos gods? I've never played the game but I know about it through cultural osmosis (and tvtropes!). |
| 657 | ** Nurgle- Seems straightforward. Rhymes with "burgle?" |
| 658 | ** Khorne- "Corn?" |
| 659 | ** Slaanesh- "[=SLAHnesh=]" or "sl'NESH?" |
| 660 | ** Tzeentch- "Tseench?" |
| 661 | ** If ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' is anything to go by, it's Nur-gal, Corn, [=SLAHnesh=] and Zeench. |
| 662 | [[/folder]] |
| 663 | |
| 664 | [[folder:The crapsack Terra]] |
| 665 | * During the history of the Imperium, was the Earth always a barren and desolate and yet supremely valuable desert world, or did the terrors of the Horus Heresy wreck it beyond recovery? |
| 666 | ** Its one of the largest Hive Worlds in the Imperium, its definately not a dessert but it is probably barren. |
| 667 | ** Barren Terra may be, but as a dessert, it is quite delicious. But you'll need a hell of a knife to cut it. |
| 668 | ** Apparently Terra was pretty okay (and more or less like today's Earth, give or take a few billion people) up until things went sideways around the time Slaanesh was gestating. The Warp storms cut everyone off from one another, and as a result the people on Terra tore each other apart with usage of every sort of WMD. The result was the barren, scarred world that Terra is from then on. Apparently the Heresy just made things ''worse''. |
| 669 | [[/folder]] |
| 670 | |
| 671 | [[folder:Eldar and Mankind before the Fall]] |
| 672 | * Did the Eldar Empire have any contact with humanity before their fall? Seeing how as they were at their height during humanity's Dark Age of Technology, it seems pretty feasible. |
| 673 | ** Yes. |
| 674 | [[/folder]] |
| 675 | [[folder:Strangers waltz in? Close the door!]] |
| 676 | * The Emperor sits on his throne so that the gate he created to connect Man to the webway remains closed, and the demons that corrupted the man-made webway cannot enter reality. Why not destroy/close the gate permanently? If he would be free to die or reborn or something, mankind would be free to reverse engineer necron FTL so wouldnt need the warp. |
| 677 | ** It's only a theory that the Emperor would be reborn if he died. Also, Imperial officials don't believe that the Emperor would be reincarnated, and so they will take every precaution to keep him alive. Plus, in order to reverse-engineer Necron technology, one would have to get their hands on it, which isn't such an easy task since damaged or captured Necron tech will always teleport to some unknown tomb world. |
| 678 | ** Ok, but thats not the point. The point is, keeping the Emperor alive is pointless, if you would shut that gate than he wouldnt have to suffer anymore. And you could TRY if the theory is true. Well, it would suck without the Astronomicon, but whatever. Even is you dont let him die, the fact that he wont have to maintain the blockade would free up much energy. |
| 679 | ** You seem to be drastically understating the consequences of allowing the Emperor to die. Say that the theory turns out to be false and the Emperor just stays dead. Now the Imperium has just lost its one and only method of FTL travel, effectively cutting all their sectors in space off from one another and leaving them in the dark to be picked off one by one by the Imperium's numerous enemies. Yes, they could try, but they simply have far too much to lose should the plan fail. |
| 680 | ** The bit about shutting down the FTL is especially important. FTL is the only thing keeping the Imperium together. Cut that, and there's no Imperium, just individual worlds that will die off one by one without Guard/Space marine support and interstellar trade. Hive worlds starve, agriworlds have no support to defend themselves, and the enemies of mankind have a field day. They won't risk it for possible zero return. |
| 681 | ** Respectfully, the problem is that you do not understand the problem. It isn't some actual physical gate with a door and a lock you can just close. Magnus ''ripped a hole through reality'' in the Palace, and now it is all the Emperor, the most powerful psyker to ever live, can do to keep the damned thing from getting any bigger. There is no closing the rift. |
| 682 | [[/folder]] |
| 683 | |
| 684 | [[folder:The "genius" behind Astronomicon]] |
| 685 | * In related news, why is the Astronomican made as retarded as possible? 1. It's a beacon, but still needs the Emperor's will to direct its power. Is that so. He's obviously not contributing any power, because he's trapped between life and death and can't do shit. 2. If the Empire's FTL travel uses beacon-based navigation, they are also using coordinates. Now everything in the Milky Way shifts around constantly, but on a cosmic time scale where even 40,000 years is about as significant as a second's fart. And updating the Galactic map would provide a nice bread-winning avenue for that many extra Imperial citizens. 3. It is a [[CardCarryingVillain pointlessly evil]] solution. Why have just the one huge beacon that stretched even the height of the Empire's technological progress, and kills every one of its crew within months, instead of building smaller beacons on each world, creating a much more useful signal map in the Warp? 4. Why doesn't it use a lot more psykers, so they don't wear themselves out? If the Astronomican crew would live their full lives, that's two orders of magnitude AT LEAST shaved off the needed number in the long term. Moreover if these people live long enough they can reproduce. Way more Psykers = way more Tyranids etc. rendered extra crispy. The same % would fall to Chaos, so that's not an issue. I know common sense takes a back seat to horror in [=WH40K=], but the Astronomican [[Film/FullMetalJacket took a giant shit on]] my willing suspension of dispelief when I read about it. |
| 686 | ** Yes the Emperor does do stuff, he essentially acts as the power source and light of the Astronomican he is such a strong psychic presence that people can use it to track where they are in relation to Tera at all times meaning they don't get lost. Warp travel is impossible to reliably track a course for that will work twice on too because it is constantly shifting thus necessitating a relatively constant beacon for people to be able to track their movements. On the "why have one huge beacon" question, they would if they could but they cant the Astronomican is a technology that they have no chance of ever recreating, it was built and designed by the Emperor himself who has no way of telling them how to make one and they arent gonna try and reverse engineer it for fear of breaking the one thing that keeps the Imperium alive. They also are using as many Psykers as is physically possibly, they need the navigators to actually pilot the ships in warp so there is no way they could do that, the Inquisition uses a few Psykers and would cause hell if someone started using Grey Knights as fuel for the Astronomicon, and the Space Marines need their Librarians for combat support and much needed psychic protection. Psykers are rare and they already use a lot, it doesnt help that the Imperium |
| 687 | ** ''1. It's a beacon, but still needs the Emperor's will to direct its power. Is that so. He's obviously not contributing any power, because he's trapped between life and death and can't do shit.'' Incorrect. You contribute nothing to the power of a car, computer, or other piece of machinery but you still direct it. |
| 688 | ** ''2. If the Empire's FTL travel uses beacon-based navigation, they are also using coordinates. Now everything in the Milky Way shifts around constantly, but on a cosmic time scale where even 40,000 years is about as significant as a second's fart. And updating the Galactic map would provide a nice bread-winning avenue for that many extra Imperial citizens.'' Misunderstanding of the Astronomicon's purpose. It serves as a beacon within the Warp that Navigators use to keep them from getting lost within the Warp, which is unmappable and ever-changing. They have no trouble navigating in the Materium, but they have no FTL ability in the Materium. |
| 689 | ** ''3. It is a [[CardCarryingVillain pointlessly evil]] solution. Why have just the one huge beacon that stretched even the height of the Empire's technological progress, and kills every one of its crew within months, instead of building smaller beacons on each world, creating a much more useful signal map in the Warp?'' The technology itself cannot be reproduced currently, and prior to the Heresy it worked without constantly feeding psykers into it. It was only after the Heresy that the psykers were needed because the Emperor went down. |
| 690 | ** ''4. Why doesn't it use a lot more psykers, so they don't wear themselves out? If the Astronomican crew would live their full lives, that's two orders of magnitude AT LEAST shaved off the needed number in the long term. Moreover if these people live long enough they can reproduce.'' The Astronomicon is a one-way trip, and you can only feed so many people into the chorus to sustain it at one time. |
| 691 | ** On top of all the other points raised above, there's the fact that the Astronomican was built by the Emperor as a stop-gap. It facilitated FTL travel until he finished his ''real'' ambition, which was permanent and stable access to the Webway. If that had been completed without a hitch, the Imperium would barely have need of Warp-ready ships any more, and if they did then the Emperor could have powered the Astronomican for what was needed without an issue. Part of the reason the Astronomican began to fade was the fact that he was having to push more and more power into holding up the nascent Webway gate, of which the Golden Throne is the proverbial keystone. Now, he's being kept on such a thin strand of life that Dreadnaught "pilots" seem at the peak of health in comparison; the fact that he's still both keeping the broken Webway sealed off, AND providing the main fuel for the "Warp Lighthouse", while barely even ''existing'' any more merely goes to show what kind of [[PhysicalGod unbelievable power]] he has/had. |
| 692 | [[/folder]] |
| 693 | |
| 694 | [[folder:Cultural degradation among immortals]] |
| 695 | * The degeneration of the Empire's culture and technology from the Emperor's last days to the 41st Milennium would be more than understandable over 10,000 years... as measured against a normal human lifespan. Most if not all of the leadership of the Imperium is a lot longer lived than that, and there are people alive (for various stretches of the term "alive") who are over 10,000 years old and have served under the Emperor before Horus screwed up at shaving him. So a small number of the generation that saw the Emperor's unification wars and the Horus Heresy are still alive, most in high rank because of seniority... and they let the new blood turn the craziness up to such a degree? |
| 696 | ** Where does it say that there are people still alive from the days of the Horus Heresy? |
| 697 | ** No. The only ones still "alive" from before the Emperor was sealed in the Golden Throne are daemon Primarchs and some Space Marines in Dreadnoughts who are so old and senile they're pretty much useless. High-ranking noble humans live a few hundred years at best, longer if they're Adeptus Mechanicus, but they eventually go crazy or die of old age too. |
| 698 | ** The guys at the top of the Imperium are also the targets of routine assassination attempts. Hell ''two'' Masters of Assassins have launched coup attempts, with one of them suceeding in wiping out every other High Lord of Terra. The only normal humans who have survived for thousands of years were explicitedly pointed out as being incredibly rare and owing to some form of supernatural power. |
| 699 | [[/folder]] |
| 700 | |
| 701 | |
| 702 | [[folder:Let's not wear any protection!]] |
| 703 | * Penitent Engines and Dreadknights have pilots that are exposed. The point of of a Penitent Engine is that the pilot can find absolution by getting killed in battle, but it still wouldn't make a very practical weapon of war if the pilot can easily be killed. As for the Dreadknights, there is a HandWave stating that the pilot is protected by DeflectorShields, but it wouldn't it not hurt to place some physical armor in front just in case? |
| 704 | ** You must be new to 40k. This is a setting where the factions that field these units go into battle with giant pipe organs and hundred meter-tall walking churches with nuclear cannons strapped to them. By comparison, Dreadknights and Penitent Engines are not terribly strange at all. |
| 705 | ** It's also worth keeping in mind that the Imperium is not a society where rational thinking and innovation are values. It's considered outright heretical in some circles to modify technology. This is in addition to the fact that humanity has lost most of its most advanced technology. Much of the Imperium's contemporary tech is based on scavenged remnants from its so-called Dark Age of Technology. There's a very good chance that the Penitent Engine and Dreadknight designs aren't from military templates but civilian ones, such as power lifters or construction units. |
| 706 | ** Penitent Engines won't stop functioning even when you tear the pilot's body to shreds. Has something to do with downloading consciousness, I guess. Dreadknight are simply incredibly retarded. |
| 707 | ** I can at least clarify that in the case of Penitent Engines, the pilots are so drugged up on combat drugs that their bodies won't go into shock no matter how atrocious the wounds, so they'll keep going until they've actually achieved brain death. |
| 708 | [[/folder]] |
| 709 | |
| 710 | |
| 711 | [[folder:Try and hide something from an omniscient being]] |
| 712 | * If the Alpha Legion really are undercover Loyalists, how are they keeping their true intentions from the Chaos Gods, who are you know, '''GODS'''? |
| 713 | ** They aren't omnipotent or all knowing. Being a god does not necessarily mean you know everything. |
| 714 | ** One, yes they fucking are. In their own realms anyway, and damn near close to it outside of it. Second, ''some'' Alpha Legionnaires ''may'' be closet loyalists, there's nothing ever saying the Gods ''don't'' know they are so, the idea that the Alpha Legion/elements of the Alpha Legion are loyalist is nothing but FANON based on a throwaway reference in the background. So, in conclusion; there may be elements of loyalist Alpha Legionnaires, if there are they are likely insignificant, the Gods probably ''do'' know (or at the very least do not care). |
| 715 | ** ''In their own realms.'' The Alpha Legion deliberately stays the hell away from the Eye of Terror and spends the least amount of time in the Warp as possible. |
| 716 | ** And outside of those realms, their still the most powerful entities in the canon. They don't bother with the Alpha Legion because they have better things to do (ie: beating each other up in the Great Game) or would prefer to look on the slow decay of the material universe and laugh. Also, the Alpha Legion is fragmented so a high proportion of them are likely standard Chaos worshipers anyway. |
| 717 | ** "God" is just a term for a sufficiently powerful interstellar or interdimentional Xenos. They are nowhere near omnipotence. And the information about Alpha Legion is incredibly scarce and unreliable. |
| 718 | ** The simplest explanation is that they do know and just don't care. Khorne doesn't care because he supports and cares for all those who show courage in the face of danger, which the Alpha Legion does. Tzeentch supports all those who have hope and plan for the future; again, the Alpha Legion certainly does that. Nurgle loves all life, certainly including the Alpha Legion. Slaanesh supports all those who are passionate, which, given how self-controlled they tend to be, may not include the Alpha Legion, but he has no particular reason to oppose them. |
| 719 | ** One thing you have to remember about the Chaos Gods is that they don't actually want to win. They're fully aware about the VictoryIsBoring trope. They much prefer the current status quo of the galaxy that lends itself better to feeding them than a galaxy under which they won would. With that in mind, they'd tolerate if not outright encourage the Alpha Legion's closet-loyalist tendencies to ensure that their forces never quite succeed. |
| 720 | [[/folder]] |
| 721 | |
| 722 | [[folder:The purpose of the ThanatosGambit]] |
| 723 | * Maybe I'm being overly sentimental, especially since it's the game that coined the word "grimdark", but I can't help but feel a little sad about the Eldar's master plan. What's the point of destroying Slaanesh if there are no longer going to be any Eldar around to enjoy the new freedom? On the other hand, it would at least mean no more Dark Eldar. |
| 724 | ** They won't be alive, but at least their souls would be free. |
| 725 | ** Vengeance. And it frees their souls from being eaten on death. |
| 726 | ** For another potential bright side: what would become of the Emperor's Children when Slaanesh is no longer around? |
| 727 | ** Some versions of the Eldar endgame actually have the resulting god resurrecting a reunified Eldar race and restarting the old Empire, so there's that. |
| 728 | ** One book also hinted that humanity is on course to evolve in the same way as the Eldar did. Some tech evolved/mutated some humans and they ended up more Eldar-like. Some of the Farseers who are horrific racists actually like the idea that humanity will be the eldar's replacements. Yynead, the god of the dead, also has the power to revive dead Eldar in 8th edition too, so they could survive long enough to see humanity become their kin. |
| 729 | [[/folder]] |
| 730 | |
| 731 | [[folder:Could BadassNormal kill a PhysicalGod?]] |
| 732 | * Just for the sake of asking,is there anyway that Ollanious Pious could have killed or harmed Horus? |
| 733 | ** No. |
| 734 | ** Why not? |
| 735 | ** Horus was basically a walking demigod whose psychic power was so strong simply looking at him for too long caused Pious to explode into a red paste. Even if he could resist that much and manage to get a shot off at Horus, at the best of times your average lasgun shot will mildly annoy a basic Space Marine. Let alone a Primarch. |
| 736 | ** Which makes his stand all the more awesome. |
| 737 | ** On the other hand, Konrad Curze ''was'' killed by a "regular" callidus assassin, proving that a human is physically capable of killing a Primarch if the Primarch in question pretty much roles over and allows it. Pious probably wouldn't have been able to kill Horus with the equipment he had on hand, but if he had a bigger gun and tried after Horus' HeelRealization / DespairEventHorizon, then it's possible. Presumably wouldn't have been able to utterly destroy Horus' soul the way Emps did, though, so we'd probably still be dealing with him. |
| 738 | ** While Curze was killed by a "regular" human assassin, it was pretty much a SuicideByCop scenario and the assassin was presumably armed for the task. Pious, presumably being an average Guardsman with an average Guardsman's kit, might have been able to give Horus (then at the absolute peak of his strength and chock-full of Warp power) a sunburn with a las-gun if Horus stood still for him, but even if he'd had whatever appropriate weaponry he needed to destroy Horus's physical form, the Chaos gods still had a claim on his soul. That's why the Emperor had to straight-up [[DeaderThanDead obliterate Horus's soul]] to stop him from being resurrected (or tortured for eternity by the Chaos gods for failing). |
| 739 | [[/folder]] |
| 740 | |
| 741 | [[folder:Retcon hits the novels badly. How badly?]] |
| 742 | * So the necron backstory has been retconned. Does that mean that necron and c'tan-centered novels, like ''Nightbringer'' are now obsolete? |
| 743 | ** That's not necessarily the case; perhaps it would be related more to one of the C'tan shards rather than the C'tan itself, and thus fit neatly into current canon. |
| 744 | ** Confirmed by canon, Nightbringer from Pavonis is a Transcendent C'Tan Shard. Basically, it is like hundred of shards merged together. And now he is sentient again and will seek for other shards to absorb them growing in power until he resurrects the original Star God. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Thanks for waking it, Uriel!]] |
| 745 | [[/folder]] |
| 746 | |
| 747 | [[folder:Why is there light in this grimdark universe?]] |
| 748 | * If the 41st millennium is the ultimate CrapsackWorld, then why did the writers create the [[HopeSpot Starchild theory]]? |
| 749 | ** Either they were trying to decrapsackify it, or they were intentionally setting up hope so they could dash it against the rocks. |
| 750 | ** Well, too much darkness leads to TooBleakStoppedCaring and to prevent that, they put at least some hope into the 40k universe. If there wouldn't be any hope, at some point 40k would just be boring and at least some people would ask "Why are they fighting anyway?" But if there is still light, people have a reason to move on and it depends on the author anyway how dark 40k is. The ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' novels for example are quite a bit less crapsack then other material. |
| 751 | [[/folder]] |
| 752 | |
| 753 | [[folder:Galaxy's Most Badass]] |
| 754 | * Who is the most badass human in the Warhammer universe? |
| 755 | ** Well the Emperor has powers rivaling that of an actual ''god'', even when in a coma. The fact that he even is in a coma shows how badass the galaxy in general is. |
| 756 | ** That human priest in the Last Church who stands on equal footing with the Emperor in a theological debate. |
| 757 | ** Limiting the answer to humans that are alive currently in the fluff and not strapped to a continent-sized life support system, my money would be on the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorium, whoever that happens to be at the moment. |
| 758 | [[/folder]] |
| 759 | |
| 760 | [[folder:Abaddon, why can't you...]] |
| 761 | * Why doesn't Abaddon simply enter real space beyond the Cadian Gate? I know that it's been established that the only stable route from the eye of terror lies here, and Cadia is in the way. I'm just wondering, what keeps Abaddon, or for that matter, any Chaos ship from entering the warp, and just navigating until they reach Terra or whatever other vital system they want to conquer, and return to real space basically on the doormat? |
| 762 | ** Especially since after taking Cadia, the Chaos fleet would have to jump right back into the Warp anyway since it's their only means of FTL travel. It would be a much better idea to just skip Cadia entirely. |
| 763 | ** Even with the help of the Astronomican it's good practise to drop out of the Warp on occasion to get your bearings. Being in the warp for too long completely distorts your perception of time and space, so while you may think that you've been travelling for six weeks and crossing 100,000ly in a strait line, you may reappear four years later and 30,000ly off course (and that would be a mild case). |
| 764 | ** For what it's worth, Chaos ships do regularly show up in random parts of Imperial space. The key, as the above post explains, being random. In fluff these are most frequently ships that got lost in the Warp some time ago, and just happen to pop out. Point is, it does happen. Other than Terra/Mars there aren't really "vital" systems, just more and less high value targets, and most of Chaos is too insane/half dead/all dead for the logistical planning necessary to make it anywhere near Terra (which would not go unnoticed by the Imperium anyway). Worth noting though that Cypher and (some of) the Fallen Angels do seem to be making a path towards Earth as you suggest. Furthermore, this tends to be taken as a big hint that he's not tainted. In short, your plan makes far too much sense to work. |
| 765 | ** He actually did this TEN FREAKING TIMES. But all fandom base seems to think that every Black Crusade is an exact copy of the 13th one. However, since 13th Black Crusade is The Last Black Crusade Ever, he'll need stable supply lines. And therefore he needs to ultimately capture Cadia or at least destroy Necron Pylons. |
| 766 | ** It was actually his big mistake from the first Black Crusade. While he ravaged what the codex calls "thousands of worlds", Abbaddon allowed the Imperium to capture Cadia and cut off his forces from supplies and reinforcements and later wear them off due superior numbers. |
| 767 | [[/folder]] |
| 768 | |
| 769 | [[folder:Why can't Terminators have all the nice toys?]] |
| 770 | * Why aren't there plasma/melta/laser weapons for Terminators? |
| 771 | ** Plasma weapons have a bad habit of exploding when you don't want them to, so it's not likely that any Space Marine chapter would risk their valuable Terminator armors by installing them on. Lasguns are among the weakest weapons in the setting, so it's not worth giving them to Terminators. As for meltas... you've actually got me there. |
| 772 | ** Dark Angels Deathwing sees no problems with plasma cannon Terminators. |
| 773 | ** Laser weapons are only the least powerful if you don't include multilasers or lascannons. Or autoguns for that matter. |
| 774 | ** Blood Angel Terminators can take combi-meltas or combi-plasmas. I suspect codex terminators will too when the 7th edition Space Marine codex comes out. |
| 775 | [[/folder]] |
| 776 | |
| 777 | [[folder:Grimdark heaven?]] |
| 778 | * Is there an afterlife in the 41st millennium? Well, I know that people whose souls are taken by daemons [[AndIMustScream do in fact have an afterlife]], and that the Eldar store their souls in spirit stones, but what about humans who die with their souls intact? I've read references to Space Marines "joining the Emperor" when they die, but there's no explanation as to whether this is what actually happens or whether it is simply what the Marines believe will happen. |
| 779 | ** Human souls do go to the warp but, unlike the Eldar, don't remain conscious or aware of it as their souls do not burn as brightly due to having a weaker physic presence. Those without souls, such as physic blanks, would simply cease to exist. |
| 780 | ** Humans believe that their souls are drawn to and protected by the Emperor, and the fluff sometimes support this. However, in 2nd Edition, ALL human souls were consumed by the Chaos Gods; now it seems that this fate only befalls those who don't follow the Emperor. Things get even murkier with the other races - Tyranids and Necrons don't have souls, Orks believe that they reincarnate, and this may be true due to their weird little psychic gestalt field, and Tau have such a small warp presence and no metaphysical religion, so they may not even have souls. Eldar are contrarily said to be tormented forever and "devoured" by Slaanesh at various times, while the Dark Eldar are somehow able to prevent their souls from being eaten by having their body resurrected by Haemonculi and rejuvenated by the suffering of others. |
| 781 | ** Ork gods protect the souls of their followers. |
| 782 | ** If they ''believe'' their souls go to the Emperor, [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve then that's what happens]]. |
| 783 | [[/folder]] |
| 784 | |
| 785 | |
| 786 | [[folder:The (im)practicality of volley tactics]] |
| 787 | * How do the Mordians fare so well? The reason why we stopped using volley tactics in RealLife is that soldiers in formation tend to get utterly slaughtered by machine guns and automatic weapons (and not to mention aerial attacks). |
| 788 | ** They are both incredibly well disciplined and are better armed and equipped than most of their enemies. Think about it their most common opponents are the Orks and Rebellious humans, the latter are usually PDF troops (commonly equipped with poor equipment and poorly trained because the guard snaps up the most promising soldiers and officers) and the former is using tactics even more outdated then the Mordians. They basically lack competetion. |
| 789 | ** They actually don't. |
| 790 | [[/folder]] |
| 791 | |
| 792 | [[folder:Eye of Terror and Warp travel]] |
| 793 | * If the Eye of Terror is the only way to go in and out of the Warp, how are Warp travels from other planets possible? |
| 794 | ** It isn't the only way in or out of the Warp. A ship with a Warp engine can enter and exit the Warp at any time. The Eye of Terror is simply a spot where the Warp intersects with real space, and it isn't even the only one. It's simply that largest. |
| 795 | ** How in all of the Imperium would anyone even ''get'' the idea that the Eye of Terror was the only way to enter the Warp? Every single 40k work that involves Warp travel makes it clear that one can enter the Warp anywhere as long as one has the right equipment on their ship. And a Gellar Field generator to prevent getting eaten by a trillion daemons. |
| 796 | [[/folder]] |
| 797 | |
| 798 | [[folder:Bolter design 101]] |
| 799 | * Why don't bolters have buttstocks? Sure, they have minimal recoil, but there are other forms of stability a gun would need other than controlling recoil that a stock would be useful for. Case in point: Lasguns, which shouldn't have ''any'' recoil at all, still have stocks. |
| 800 | ** A couple of possible reasons. So much of the Imperium's technology, even during the Great Crusade, is based upon rediscovered (and frequently incomplete) old templates and blueprints. It's possible their designs for boltguns were damaged and incomplete and didn't have stocks incorporated, which translated over to the manufacturing process. Bear in mind that technology and manufacture is controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus which treats technology as religion and dogma. Thinking about making modifications to stuff is frequently considered heresy. An additional explanation could be that the standard boltgun of the 41st millennium is actually based upon a model designed deliberately without a stock to facilitate use and transport in cramped situations, much like how many modern assault rifles and carbines have folding or collapsible stocks to make it easier for troops to carry them around in APCs and dense urban zones. It could be that the STC pattern for the full sized variant was never rediscovered. Wouldn't that be a delicious (and fitting) irony? The iconic BFG of the setting was actually originally just a personal defense variant of the REAL thing. |
| 801 | ** Also, why do the mighty Space Marines really need the buttstocks? They are muscles on top of muscles all within a suit of power armor of badassness. They can handle the recoil just as well as a regular human can handle the recoil of a pistol without the buttstock. |
| 802 | ** Answer: They don't need them. According to fluff, Bolters are designed with special cameras that link to the HUD in a Space Marine's helmet. Much like Master Chief in Halo. Plus, the Space Marines bulky shoulder guards make it difficult to actually fit a stock there, so they all just said 'fuck it, moar dakka'. The reason lasguns have a stock is because while they have no recoil, a lasgun is still heavier in the arms of a human than a bolter is in the hands of a Space Marine, so it's a lot easier to bring it up to eye level and aim down the sights when you can rest it against your shoulder. |
| 803 | [[/folder]] |
| 804 | |
| 805 | |
| 806 | |
| 807 | [[folder:Just ignore it]] |
| 808 | * With all the complaints about the later codexes ruining everything (I don't doubt that they do, the ones I've read are awful), and Warhammer being a universe that is practically RUN by its fans as I understand it (As in that most tabletop games and even campaigns are run privately by fans for fans using the models and books supplied by GW) why not simply [[FanonDiscontinuity ignore]] the crappy codexes and games that don't allow you to play in the manner you wish? If a codex says you can't play Squats or Traitor Guardsmen, or that you have to allow the Plasma Siphon, why would you follow this if most tabletop games are arranged between players? And even if most games/tournaments are hosted by GW, what prevents you from simply ignoring whatever GW officials are there (Seeing as they enforce a stupid system) and ranking your own system? We already know that the GW system is utterly flawed and unfair and shouldn't carry any recognition whatsoever because of it. Or why acknowledge the Grey Knight and new necron codex AT ALL when noone likes it? Why not do like GW does with squats and pretend you don't know what they're talking about whenever it's brought up? |
| 809 | ** In short, when the entire thing relies on recognition from the players, why give it to stuff you dislike? (I'm not a player, so I really don't know much about the actual crunch, just love the fluff.) |
| 810 | ** I believe there's a rule about that. It basically says, "If you and your opponent agree, modify the rules however you like". The only challenge is convincing your opponent to agree. Tournaments and official events are another matter entirely, given that they have additional rules enfroced by the organisers to ensure a level playing field. Also, moderate yourself, you're coming across as TheyChangedItNowItSucks. |
| 811 | [[/folder]] |
| 812 | |
| 813 | |
| 814 | [[folder:Why would World Eaters do something "cowardly"?]] |
| 815 | * Somebody on the YMMV page said that some World Eater warbands do use long range weapons like predator tanks and havocs, and things that keep valkyrie and thunderhawk gunships from blasting them to pieces I assume. Aren't Kornate worshipers supposed to view that as cowardice since they also hate the use of pyskers in battle for the same reason? |
| 816 | ** The bit about psykers is because it's more "Look at them, think, they explode"; the use of ranged weaponry is still honorable because it takes either takes great martial skill to wield effectively, or makes a whole lot of blood flow for the Blood God. Defensive anti-air weaponry is simply a prudent measure (even the most bloodthirsty Berzerker isn't jumping 800 feet in the air to chainaxe a skimmer) and against armored targets or large groups can just be a way to soften them up before the real fun begins. |
| 817 | ** It should be noted that not every World Eater warband thinks the same, some such as the Bloodstalkers (who started as scouts and avoided the Battle of Skalathrax) prefer patience and ranged weapons and avoid being completely taken over by the Butcher's Nails (though they avoid shooting the heads to preserve the skulls). They're reasoning is that if you live longer, you can take more skulls. |
| 818 | [[/folder]] |
| 819 | |
| 820 | [[folder:Rescue your Emperor if you believe]] |
| 821 | * If [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve believing something in the 40K galaxy can make real, or more likely to be]], then why doesn't the Imperium believing that the Emperor is not a corpse make him not a corpse? That doesn't seem like much compared to all the other stuff we see belief do. |
| 822 | ** Believe and it happens only works for the Orks. And very slightly; that's why. |
| 823 | ** But I have heard stuff that belief does make stuff happen for the Imperium with Sisters of Battle, the Grey Knights in the older fluff being able to use faith as a weapon, and beliefs that the Adeptus Mechanicus have about machines becoming real, or does the fluff go back and forth on that one? |
| 824 | ** Grey Knights are psykers, so basically their emotions affect their combat abilities. All the implications about Mechanicus are most likely false. Although the effect seems true about the Sisters. |
| 825 | ** Belief only has limited effects on reality. It can make gods real, but it can't return someone to life. |
| 826 | ** But we are talking about immaterium here. The Eldar empire managed to squick the god into existence. Imperium may be capable to pray enough to create another god. But he will be, you know, evil. |
| 827 | ** Because the Imperial Cult teaches the God-Emperor is in a coma and will remain that way for the foreseeable future, so humanity ''doesn't'' believe he can come back to life. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Nice job breaking it, Ecclesiarchy.]] |
| 828 | ** It's implied in the Dark Imperium trilogy, the Emperor actually is beginning to stir and that he is becoming more powerful due to the sheer number of people worshipping him. In Godblight, he straight incinerates a portion of the Garden of Nurgle and wounds the Plague God himself. |
| 829 | [[/folder]] |
| 830 | |
| 831 | [[folder:Stylistic choices of GW]] |
| 832 | * Why does GW have such a fetish with modeling everything in the Imperial Guard after pre-Cold War vehicles? |
| 833 | ** RuleOfCool. |
| 834 | ** Why do they think that is cool? |
| 835 | ** [[BellisariosMaxim Because it is.]] |
| 836 | [[/folder]] |
| 837 | |
| 838 | [[folder:Why would Eldar and Tau fight?]] |
| 839 | * Why are the Eldar fighting the Tau in "Dark Crusade"? Every other ending hints at the winner becoming a potentially dangerous enemy, and fighting the Space Marines seems like it's coordinating with the plans in DOWII where having fewer Blood Ravens would be preferable when running around their recruiting worlds. But fighting the Tau doesn't seem to make any sense given that the Eldar didn't seem to care that they were in control of Kronus before, and the Tau don't seem to pose any danger to the Eldar anyways. Wouldn't allying with them make more sense since the Eldar don't care about the planet anyways? |
| 840 | ** They don't pose any danger to the Eldar at that particular moment. However Eldar are always thinking in the long run. Just because the Tau didn't pose a threat to them then and there doesn't mean that in the future the Tau ruling Kronus would be benificial to the Eldar. The Eldar ending made it clear that the Eldar's goal was not to take Kronus but to ensure nobody else did. |
| 841 | ** In a wider sense, the Tau only work with people if they at least pay lip service to the Greater Good. The Eldar have philosophers who are literally older than the Tau species; I doubt they'd make that concession. |
| 842 | ** It would. But Eldar are xenophobic, arrogant and overconfident. |
| 843 | ** A related question: in ''Soulstorm'', the Craftworld Eldar came to Kaurava to fight the Necrons. Why don't they leave again after the Necrons are beaten? |
| 844 | ** The Warpstorm is stopping them from leaving. |
| 845 | ** Because Mon Kei would have stumbled across Necron Tomb site and could do some digging and could awaken Necrons again, some auto repair mechanism or sos signal for other tomb world that may have awaken them. Not to mention that there were forces of Chaos and Dark Eldar on the planet. That they hate big time. And once they defeated half of the forces on the planet, they felt they could capture it altogether as well. |
| 846 | ** There's the Battle of Ka'Mais where the Elder retaliate for the destruction of one of their Maiden Worlds which was destroyed in response to a raid on one of the Tau's Sept Worlds. In the end, it is revealed that the Dark Elder actually raided the Sept World. |
| 847 | [[/folder]] |
| 848 | |
| 849 | [[folder:Are they really so great? 'Cause they don't seem so.]] |
| 850 | * Why Chaos Space Marines keep boasting about how great the powers of Chaos are when they're already superhuman and are still relying on the same weapons they used when they served the Emperor, it makes those boasts seem pretty weak since Chaos worshipers that aren't former Space Marines, unless they're daemon princes that pre-date the Horus Heresy, don't get depicted as much beyond cannon-fodder. |
| 851 | ** Because by itself most of the Imperial gear that CSM use is crap and outdated and is only good because of Chaos enchantments and Chaos Space Marines are explicitly stated in the canon to be individually superior to loyalist marines due to a ''combination'' of Chaos blessings and their engineered physiology? Also, lots of Chaos cultists are pretty badassed. The Blood Pact most prominently and there's a piece of fluff of a Slaanesh worshiping renegade Sister of Battle who achieves a modest amount of success against the Imperium. |
| 852 | ** Okay, but their boasting still seems a bit weak since they can't win alone Chaos powers alone like their Fantasy counterparts do, and the fact there's stuff that's stronger than them even with Chaos (Nids come to mind), not that they run into all of it, and some that might just be GameplayAndStorySegregation (otherwise I think it hurts the rep of Khorne Berserkers if genestealers are better fighters than them). |
| 853 | ** Genestealers being stronger than Berzerkers in tabletop is GameplayAndStorySegregation (as they should be, Genestealers cost far more to be on TT). They're stronger in tabletop (though not anymore, Berzerkers are now back to being the OP kill-bots of 3.5 editions) and on average Tyranids are individually much weaker than Chaos. You seem to fail to understand that as Space Marines are de-powered in tabletop compared to their fluff, it works the same way for Chaos. And for the record, the Warriors have no more success in fighting the Empire than Marines do with the Imperium. Else, Morkar the Uniter the would have killed Sigmar (a normal human man with a magic hammer, I would like to stress) and Haargroth the Blooded wouldn't have been killed by an old man. Fluffwise, Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Warriors make everything else in Warhammer look like pussies, but if they won any meaningful engagement, the setting would be destroyed. That's why they seem to be less than they actually are. |
| 854 | [[/folder]] |
| 855 | |
| 856 | |
| 857 | [[folder:Chaos' hair care]] |
| 858 | * Can Chaos Space Marines grow beards? |
| 859 | ** ...yes? |
| 860 | ** How do you know? |
| 861 | ** There's lot of art with them having beards and even normal Space Marines can grow them. |
| 862 | ** Ah, thanks for that then. Could I have a link to one of these pictures, please? |
| 863 | ** [[http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1800071a_99800101002_LoganGrimnar_873x627.jpg Space Wolf with a beard.]] |
| 864 | ** I was asking after CHAOS Space Marines. |
| 865 | ** If a loyalist Space Marine can grow a beard, then presumably nothing aside from mutation could prevent a Chaos Space Marine from doing the same. |
| 866 | ** Typhon of the Death Guard was depicted in the HH series as being bearded, both before and after the fall. I don't know think this is reflected in the miniature, but HH is canon. |
| 867 | ** [[http://images.wikia.com/warhammer40k/images/f/f8/Bearded_Lorgar2.jpg here you go]] |
| 868 | ** They probably did that as a LeVay reference, but my curiosity is sated nonetheless. Time to put all those Space Wolf heads on my World Eaters. |
| 869 | [[/folder]] |
| 870 | |
| 871 | [[folder:How do you not destroy yourself with such power?]] |
| 872 | * If melta guns can melt tank armor, how do they not melt themselves or the guy firing them? |
| 873 | ** Directed blast. |
| 874 | [[/folder]] |
| 875 | |
| 876 | [[folder:Do they even die?]] |
| 877 | * There's mention that Chaos Space Marines can't die of old age, but do loyalists ever die from anything besides getting killed in a fight? |
| 878 | ** Extremely powerful poisons can theoretically do so, but otherwise no. I'm not sure if they can die of old age, either. And they don't get sick from anything other than warp diseases. |
| 879 | ** Can't Chaos Space Marines be killed by poisons or warp diseases if they aren't aligned with Nurgle? |
| 880 | ** Yes, but they can take more of it before going down. |
| 881 | ** I haven't seen any mention of loyalist (or any) Space Marines dying from natural causes, although if it happens, I doubt it would be brought up in the fiction since it's all focused on combat. I personally don't think anything save for direct enemy action (and I'm counting poison and Warp disease as these) can kill a Space Marine. And there are some really old Space Marines. [[http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Dante#.ULFWeYVlkgI Dante]], chapter master of the Blood Angels is at least 1,100 (and that just how long he's been chapter master), and [[http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Bjorn#.ULFXvIVlkgI Bjorn the Fell Handed]] is a Dreadnought who is old enough to have known Leman Russ personally. |
| 882 | ** In the Horus Heresy, it is mentioned several times that Space Marines cannot die of natural causes. |
| 883 | ** In the 6th edition, there is a mention of Space Marines being able to live two to three times as long as a normal human. I guess this means that they do have finite natural lifespans. |
| 884 | ** Alternative theory is that they become slower and weaker with age (HH confirms it). Given that they have to fight in most ferocious battles pretty much constantly, the consequences of the old age are likely to be fatal. |
| 885 | ** ''Literature/BlackLegion'' shows Sigismund (at over a thousand years old) still alive and combat-fit, but [[FeelingTheirAge no longer in his prime.]] Theoretically, a Space Marine could live forever, if he didn't see combat and used that suspended animation organ, but the Space Marines don't die in their beds. |
| 886 | [[/folder]] |
| 887 | |
| 888 | [[folder:Any reason for those rules?]] |
| 889 | * Beyond balancing purposes, is there as a reason why the force organization chart actually results in players being able to field fewer assault marines, due to them being fast attack, than they can tactical marines who are older and more experienced which would make one think they'd be less numerous, or that just GameplayAndStorySegregation? |
| 890 | ** Some chapters, in some editions, rigidly keep to Codex Astartes, which theoretically dictates something very similar to the in game force organization charts. Also, Assault Squads have Jump Packs which, like all tech, are far from infinite. Finally, 'Tac squads are (as a general rule) more common than Assault Squads in a given chapter, because chapters don't usually replace individual members. Instead (depending entirely on the chapter's rituals) will add new members/rotate squads en masse. General point, 'Tac squads are general purpose squads made out of ordinary full brothers so they form the bulk of a given Marine army. |
| 891 | ** For obvious reasons, lethality among Tactical marines is much lower than among Assault marines. On the other hand, when new Marine have to pass through each specialization (scout, devastator, assault, etc.), the Assault part takes the least amount of time to complete and get a promotion. |
| 892 | ** Just because the tactical marines are more experienced doesn't mean there's fewer of them, because there's not a set amount of time you're an assault marine. Marines are transferred into tactical squads as needed. A Codex chapter at full strength, not counting the veterans in the 1st company, will have 180 assault marines (20 each in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th companies, plus all 100 of the 8th company, while it will have 440 tactical marines (60 each in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th companies, plus all 200 of the 6th and 7th companies). |
| 893 | [[/folder]] |
| 894 | |
| 895 | [[folder:You want to kill it with ''that'' thing?]] |
| 896 | * So how are infantry carried close-combat weapons supposed destroy vehicles anyways? Looking at the size of the vehicles, power and chainfists, and similar weapons, look too small to anything beyond breaking treads, and how Space Marine transports, apart from land raiders (them I get with their armor), get close their passengers close enough to avoid getting shot to pieces without getting shot to pieces themselves? Orks I get since there's supposed to be a hundred of them for each enemy tank, but Space Marines don't have that excuse (unless they're fighting [[ATeamFiring Orks]]). |
| 897 | ** Because they're wreathed in matter disrupting energy fields? And it's the same principle as using a warhammer (with a small head, I'd like to emphasize) against someone in a relatively large suit of plate armour. There's a small point of impact, but a massive amount of force that deals a great deal of damage. And as for the rhinos and other metal boxes, well, they're tough too. But most importantly, they're fast. And the people driving them are competent. |
| 898 | ** But how does a rhino's speed a competent driver let it dodge fire from dozen tanks? I doubt they're that fast. |
| 899 | ** By some standard they are, but when you're faced with a dozen tanks as you put it, the answer is not to use a relatively flimsy Rhino transport, but a Land Raider or a Thunder Hawk when faced with those types of situations. |
| 900 | ** But wouldn't that render Rhinos fairly useless since most apart from against Chaos Space Marines or Eldar, the Space Marine's enemies will have a dozen times as many tanks than they ground vehicles? |
| 901 | ** No. And that's because there's no absolutes or fixes in war. And also because rhinos as transports would still have great utilities to a company even if they weren't going to be used directly in war -- for instance, actually driving marines to the war zones. |
| 902 | [[/folder]] |
| 903 | |
| 904 | [[folder:The supposed comedy of 1st edition]] |
| 905 | * So, I read on 1d4chan wiki that [=WH40k=] was actually a very comedic setting in its early years, how exactly was it designed to be humorous? I heard a lot of the StupidEvil was added in the 3rd edition, though the Orks were pretty much always the same. |
| 906 | ** About 75% of it was BlackComedy and raw irony; things like the Space Marines, the shining saviors of the Imperium, being largely recruited from the ranks of death-row inmates and street gangs, and the only real defining difference in traits and characteristics between them and the Chaos Marines being who they worshiped and how [[SpikesOfVillainy spikey]] their armor was. There were also a lot more "zany" things (especially in regards to the Orks), more "lesser races" and generally taking concepts that were already up to eleven and then breaking the knob so you could dial it up more. In that respect it suffered much the same as ComicBook/JudgeDredd; starting as a complete over the top parody of action tropes, only to end up having to balance the parody with becoming halfway like that which it was making fun of just in order to remain sustainable. |
| 907 | ** Mostly due to people [[MisaimedFandom eating it up and believing it was meant to be serious in the first place]]. I have read somewhere it was supposed to be a TakeThat against people who were milking the DarkerAndEdgier thing and Warhammer Fantasy in general. Now, 40k's a straight up dramatic and serious setting. |
| 908 | ** So essentially, is 40k's StupidEvil a StealthParody? |
| 909 | ** Whenever it uses StupidEvil it's basically doing a parody. When you read serious stories in its setting, it's thrown out the window. How was this not obvious? Rogue Trader in essence was satire. |
| 910 | [[/folder]] |
| 911 | |
| 912 | [[folder:So, what did Matt Ward do, exactly?]] |
| 913 | * So this page mentions Matt Ward suffers a ton of CreatorBacklash. Exactly involved with the books is he anyways? |
| 914 | ** Codex: Space Marines 5th Edition, Codex: Grey Knights 5th edition, Codex: Blood Angels 5th edition. The latter two are regarded as horribly overpowered while the first is regarded as being unduly biased to the Ultramarines. |
| 915 | ** I know why those books are hated, I was questioning the CreatorBacklash because that implied he wasn't involved with them as he haters think. Also, while I suppose might be just because the stuff is older, the old Imperial Guard armor company list and the 3rd edition Chaos Marine codex sound more broken than most stuff Ward was involved in (I say most because I know about the flyer spam in Grey Knights), did those get backlash to? This is a bit off topic, but why was there hate direct towards the Dreadknigh in the early days of the Grey Knight's 5th edition book, apart from it looking dumb. Most stuff I've heard Grey Knight lists say that thing isn't even all that good and it's upgrades are horribly overpriced. |
| 916 | ** Matt Ward's disliked primarily because of his tenuous grasp of fluff, terrible writing skills, liberal application of Mary Sues, retconning other writers who disagree with him, and labeling every army that doesn't play exactly like his as flawed. He's also made three incredibly broken army lists. |
| 917 | [[/folder]] |
| 918 | |
| 919 | [[folder:How much do you need to kill them?]] |
| 920 | * How durable are Space Marines anyways, it seems like they swing back and forth between what it takes to kill them depending on whether they're being used for the WorfEffect, or whatever it is they're fighting. |
| 921 | ** [[DependingOnTheWriter Depends on the Writer]]. |
| 922 | ** Whether or not they're the protagonists of the given story is also a factor. |
| 923 | ** So basically it's never consistant? |
| 924 | ** Yes. The most annoying piece of inconsistency I find about Marines durability is the way different situations show the Marine that took (almost) mortal wound. Depending on the situation he might either keep fighting ignoring it untill he dies (TakingYouWithMe design) or fall in comatose, being unable to die because he is just that durable. Both concepts make some sense, but can we please stick with one? At least during the same book. |
| 925 | [[/folder]] |
| 926 | |
| 927 | [[folder:Say, I want to repent]] |
| 928 | * I'm assuming followers of Chaos would not be taken back into the Imperial fold even if they repented. But if one did repent, would their souls at least be free from the Chaos gods? Is it even possible to repent? |
| 929 | ** Not likely. If you took any powers from a Warp demon, they are very good at collecting on that debt if you denounce them. Chaos also drives you insane 99 times out of 100, so most are to insane/mutating in horrible ways to repent. |
| 930 | [[/folder]] |
| 931 | |
| 932 | [[folder:Pronounciation guide? Please?]] |
| 933 | * Does Games Workshop have an official stance on how to pronounce certain words? Like for the C'Tan: See-Tan or Kuh-Tan? Or lasguns: Lazz-Gun (phonetically) or Lase-Gun (laser prefix)? How about daemons? Dee-Mon (according to the video games) or Day-Mon (the ''Ultramarine'' film, IIRC)? Tyranids? Tie-ranid (ala ''tyrant'' or ''tyrannosaurus'') or Teer-ranid (''VideoGame/DawnOfWar II'')? |
| 934 | ** To add to that, a quick Google search shows that the fans, at least, can't seem to agree on these things. |
| 935 | ** Pronunciation of Gothic varies ''wildly'' throughout the million-odd worlds of the Imperium. There is no one correct pronunciation. |
| 936 | [[/folder]] |
| 937 | |
| 938 | [[folder:Warp travel without Astronomicon]] |
| 939 | * How did humans travel through the Warp ''before'' the Astronomicon was created? |
| 940 | ** The canonical answer is that no one knows for certain; the truth may have been lost to history. The answer is ''not'' that the Warp was calmer before the birth of Slaanesh. Just the opposite is true: the birth of Slaanesh ''calmed'' the Warp; before that, his/her gestation was what caused the Warpstorms that brought about the Age of Strife. Even before that, there is no particular reason to think that the Warp was calmer than in the 41st millennium. The most likely answer is that they did it the same way the Tau do in the 41st millennium: they take only short, shallow dips into the Warp, which is much safer and more reliable, but has the disadvantage of also being much slower. |
| 941 | ** Dark Age of Technology humanity was said to rival Necron (or at least be better than Eldar) technology. What Imperium had during Great Crusade is supposed to be mere shadow of that. Who says they needed Astronomicon at all? |
| 942 | ** Up to M18, Humanity used conventional non FTL engines, with stasis and generation ships. Then, somewhere between M18 and M22, Navigator and Psyker genes manifested and warp drive and Geller Field were invented. The Warp was much calmer and there was no need for the Astronomicon. Humanity colonised the galaxy. Then due to the growing amounts of humanity's psy emanations, the warp became more turbulent and dangerous, ships got lost in it. The Age of Strife began. It goes for 3 millenia, humanity's numbers fall steadily due to lack of trade with the nearby systems, there are attacks of xenos and rebellions by the Men of Iron. Then came the Fall of the Eldar and the Birth of Slaanesh. The psychic scream of the newborn God killed most of the Eldar Empire population, but also cleared the warp of warp storms. And for a hundred years vessels of the newly founded Imperium of Man have navigated with little difficulty. However, at some point the numbers of humans rose once again and once again the Warp got turbulent. It was at that point that the Emperor retreated back to his palace and activated Astronomicon. And it works ever since. |
| 943 | [[/folder]] |
| 944 | |
| 945 | |
| 946 | [[folder:Warp distances]] |
| 947 | * If distance in the Warp doesn't correlate with distance in physical reality, why does it matter that the Astronomicon's range ends at the edges of the galaxy. Shouldn't it be possible for one ship to travel to another galaxy and still be in range of the Astronomicon, while a different ship can lose sight of it and still come out right next to Terra? |
| 948 | ** Most likely the Warp either doesn't exist or is much weaker outside of the galaxy because the Warp is powered by sentient beings. Besides the Tryanids (and whatever is chasing them) there is NO life in the void between galaxies for hundreds of BILLIONS of light years. There is ''nothing'' out there to make the Warp "exist." |
| 949 | ** Hundreds of billions? What? Whole known universe is about dozen billion light years wide, and there are at least 30 galaxies in the direct vicinity of Milky Way. It's 'Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale' but taken way too far in the other direction. |
| 950 | ** Actually, recent fluff tend to portray "weaker warp" as a good thing for space faring. |
| 951 | ** Imagine if you will sailing out into the ocean, and then once you go past a certain point you can no longer see any star, any landmark, anything at all that could tell you where you were. You cross that point and you can no longer be sure what direction you're even heading in. The Halo Stars are a good example; there is nothing stopping ships from travelling through that region of space, but screws flat out refuse to go there because they can't tell where anything is. But seeing as though the warp is generated by sentient beings it would eventually end long before you could reach another galaxy. So it's not possible to leave the galaxy and still be in range of the Astronomicon. |
| 952 | [[/folder]] |
| 953 | |
| 954 | |
| 955 | [[folder:Life expectancy in [=M40=]]] |
| 956 | * How long does a typical human live in the 40k universe? I mean, Space Marines live for hundreds of years, but I've read that Ciaphas Cain is two hundred years old. Do some people get some kind of regenerative treatment? |
| 957 | ** It varies ''greatly''. As a '''HERO OF THE IMPERIUM''', Ciaphas Cain would have access to the best medical technology available, which is why he can live to be up to 200. The same applies to nobles and other important and privileged people. Really, it depends. The average citizen on forge worlds and hive worlds live a life of endless, back-breaking labor, and probably have shorter lifespans than most people living in reasonably developed modern day countries. And other worlds that are more comfortable to live with probably have average lifespans comparable to the lifespan of say, an average American. Feral worlds and Feudal worlds have shorter lifespans. And on your average DeathWorld, living long enough to reach puberty is considered an exceptional feat. |
| 958 | ** Inquisitors and High Lords and other high-end nobles can live for several hundred years using juvenat tech. |
| 959 | ** Cain is confirmed, in ''Cain's Last Stand'' as I recall, to have gotten juvenat treatments. Amberley also arranged for Jurgen to get under-the-counter juvenat (since telling the medicae why she wanted him to get the treatments would have blown his secret sky-high). |
| 960 | [[/folder]] |
| 961 | |
| 962 | [[folder:CrackIsCheaper, but why?]] |
| 963 | * Why is this game [[CrackisCheaper so expensive?]] Even the most bare bones "recommended starter" sets cost $100, and that isn't even with rulebook or a codex. The largest Titans cost well over a ''grand''. A single piece of plastic costs more than most high end gaming rigs, and being able to use it depends on finding people who have spent several other thousands of dollars. |
| 964 | ** I hate to be trite, but the truth is that they charge that much because that's how much people will pay. [=WH40k=] continues to sell despite the price, so GW figures that's the right amount to charge. |
| 965 | [[/folder]] |
| 966 | |
| 967 | [[folder:Shady physics of ''Ravenor'']] |
| 968 | * Literature/{{Ravenor}} doesn't have a {{Headscratchers/Headscratchers}} page so I'm just putting this here for now. What's the deal with limiters? How do you suppress not having a soul? I'm guessing they project some kind of small warp field around the wearer that allows for psyker abilities to work and masks the icky feeling people get around blanks. |
| 969 | ** The limiter probably is pumping out just enough pyshic energy to counteract the field that extends from the Pariah/Blank. Pariah's not having souls has also been jossed as evidenced by the fact that Pariahs can have their Pariah genes burned out by powerful enough pyskers, at which point they are no different than anyone else. |
| 970 | [[/folder]] |
| 971 | |
| 972 | [[folder:Isha, Y U so weak?]] |
| 973 | * Nurgle keeps Isha, the Eldar goddess of life, imprisoned in his realm. Since the universe is brimming with life and many of the Chaos gods' activities either create life or spring from it, shouldn't Isha be extremely powerful? Shouldn't she be able to tear Nurgle a new one and escape from her imprisonment, if she's drawing from the vast power of life in the galaxy? |
| 974 | ** Eldar gods are not the same as Chaos Gods. |
| 975 | ** To expand on this, the Eldar gods are just the gods and goddesses of the Eldar race. The Chaos Gods are the gods of everything that can think. Even if it worked the same way, Isha could only draw off the life of the Eldar race (which is a shadow of what it once was) while Nurgle draws his power from any sentient life including the Eldar. |
| 976 | ** Another, bleaker reason - the galaxy sucks. Yes there are jungle planets and teeming trillions of humans but there far more desolate rocks and strip-mined deserts. Most worlds rarely have a hint of greenery anywhere outside of private collections and anything that does survive naturally is probably a horrid genetic monstrosity, fouled by Chaos, unabashedly carnivorous or all three. Not really the sort that fuels life in the 'good' aspect Isha represents. |
| 977 | [[/folder]] |
| 978 | |
| 979 | |
| 980 | [[folder:TV Tropes, why would they eat souls?]] |
| 981 | * Why does this wiki seem to constantly state that C'tan eat souls? From the first codex in which they appeared, it's made quite blatant that C'tan eat ''life force'', aka the bio-electricity of living beings, and not souls: there's even a fluff side-bar featuring a daemon talking to a Chaos Marine Sorcerer about how its kind have recently received a bounty of souls by stalking the killing fields of the Necrons. Heck, it's even elaborated in the same codex that the biggest difference between the C'tan and the Dark Gods is that the former are comprised of ''material energy'', while the latter are comprised of Warp energy, with the two energy types reacting like matter and anti-matter (hence why psychic-based attacks are the only way, in-fluff, to truly kill a C'tan). So where did the confusion come from? Why do people seem to think of the C'tan as soul eaters, when that's the daemon's schtick? |
| 982 | ** a) It's very unclear how souls and life-force work in 40K, and what the difference is, with the Daemon codex, the Necron codex, and the Dark Eldar codex all giving very different ideas as how soul- and life-force-eating operate; b) so? The C'tan's biggest problem is that they're basically rebranded, material versions of the Chaos gods, so it makes sense that they'd step on their schtick. |
| 983 | [[/folder]] |
| 984 | |
| 985 | [[folder:Where do they all come from?]] |
| 986 | * How can there be so many Tyranids in the Hive Fleets? They apparently can't go all that much faster than lightspeed, so it would take them centuries, if not millennia, to move between galaxies. Centuries or millennia during which ''they've still got to eat''. And in intergalactic space, there wouldn't be anything for them to eat other than metabolizing surplus members of their fleets. How is it that they haven't had to kill of 90% of their numbers to feed the rest? |
| 987 | ** Either they can suspend themselves for the journey so they don't have to eat, or they are just so damn efficient that they get 100% of the energy they consume to turn into other Tyranids. So even if 90% of the numbers got fed to the rest, that created enough energy to replenish that 90% back up again. Alternatively, they did eat 90% of their number and what we see is the remaining 10%. They have been picking entire galaxies clean of life and planets, there numbers would be beyond mortal comprehension when they start their journey to the next galaxy. |
| 988 | ** Tyranids mostly spawn critters as required for planetary invasion, keeping a "reserve guard" active within the ships to fight off any intruders that happen upon them. At the end of an invasion, most of the Tyranids simply gobble up as much as they can, then head for a final bath in the digestion pools which, in turn, are slurped up by the hive ships. Thus, most Tyranids get to spend their down-time as a slurry of nutrients ready to be formed into the swarm when they reach the next planet. |
| 989 | ** Given that Warhammer [[{{Understatement}} tends to play fast and loose with the concept of physics]], it's unclear exactly how much of a role relativism would play, but given that the Tyranids spend most of their travel time travelling at faster-than-light speed, I would surmise that also slows down their aging (and need for food). Really, it should stop them from aging altogether, but there's numerous mentions of Hive Fleets starving to death when they don't reach new planets fast enough, so clearly that's not happening. |
| 990 | ** I don't think that Nids really need biomass to get energy. They are incredibly adaptable, so they should be able to use photosynthesis to get energy and only use biomass as a source of matter. |
| 991 | [[/folder]] |
| 992 | |
| 993 | |
| 994 | [[folder:The Emperor's lack of foresight]] |
| 995 | * Well, it might not be quite clear whether the Emperor was indeed born around 8,000 BC, but some events, like the Dragon of Mars, certainly imply he existed before the Age of Strife. Why didn't he stash away an [=STC=] or two when the civilization started collapsing? |
| 996 | ** He probably did, making also print-outs of most of it just in case. [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption And then the STCs and most printed pages got destroyed in the Age of Strife]]. |
| 997 | ** Also remember that the Emperor now cannot communicate with anybody. If any of the [=STCs=] he stashed survived, he can't tell anybody where they are. |
| 998 | ** The Emperor had stayed in the background until the Age of Strife made it clear he needed to step up to save the species. Presumably by the time he intended to directly guide humanity it was too late for preventive measures. |
| 999 | [[/folder]] |
| 1000 | |
| 1001 | [[folder:The laughable artillery]] |
| 1002 | * According to [[http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Earthshaker_Cannon this page]], the standard Earthshaker Cannon is a 132mm gun with a maximum range of over 15 km (more with additional powder bags). While we don't know why the Imperium favors bagged propellant instead of cased munition, why a piece mostly inferior to our current weapons? The UsefulNotes/WorldWarII-era [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M114_155_mm_howitzer M114]] had similar range (and much superior with the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M549 M549 rocket-assisted round]]) and a larger caliber (inherited by ''UsefulNotes/WorldWarI''-era pieces), and current guns have the same 155mm caliber ''and'' superior range (around 19 km ''without rocket-assisted rounds''. Rocket-assisted rounds would have longer ranges)... |
| 1003 | ** Whatever the reason, it's a chronic issue in 40K. In ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'', the longest ranged personal weapon is the MP Lascannon with a range of 300 meters, which means its absolute maximum effective range is 1200 meters, and that's really a crew-operated weapon. The best sniper rifle is the Exitus, which has a maximum range of 800 meters. By contrast, the real-life [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_M82#Specifications Barrett M82A1 .50 sniper rifle]] has a maximum range of 6,812 meters. For that matter, the [[http://www.colt.com/Catalog/Military/Products/ColtM16A4Rifle.aspx#102660-technical-specifications M16 assault rifle]] has a maximum effective range against point targets of 600 meters. So the best sniper rifle the Imperium of the 41st millennium has is nowhere near as long-ranged as the best sniper rifle of the 21st century, and only a little longer than one of the best assault rifles. So, in general, weapons in 40K have nowhere near the range they realistically should have. There are two ways of looking at this. One is just that SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale; this would also fit with how 40K writers seem to imagine wars for whole planets being fought by armies of thousands of men. If you want to be more charitable, you can say that the writers are going for game balance and fun, not realism. They don't want the game to just degenerate into two armies pounding each other with artillery from way off the board. Likewise, in Dark Heresy, they have to worry about the psychic power Divine Shot; give a psyker a rifle with a range of several miles, and there's no game anymore. If you want a Watsonian explanation, well, maybe it's because all the better designs have been lost; these are the designs they have from tradition. |
| 1004 | ** That I know. My trouble is exactly with the Watsonian explanation: military weapons tend to inherit calibers, and 132mm has ''never'' been used (closest thing are 130mm, a naval caliber of Soviet origin with a single British dual-purpose naval gun, and a pair of 135mm field guns from Imperial Germany) while 152mm and 155mm are not only traditional calibers but carry an heavier shell. |
| 1005 | ** This is 38,000 years in the future. A lot can change in that amount of time. 132mm might become a standard caliber by then. |
| 1006 | ** Because it's cheap. Cheap and plentiful is Imperial Guard 101. There are better artillery pieces that exist, but the earthshaker is the most plentiful. |
| 1007 | [[/folder]] |
| 1008 | |
| 1009 | [[folder:Why can't Kharn level up?]] |
| 1010 | * If Khornne holds Kharn in such high regard as he apparently does, why isn't the dude a daemon-prince? |
| 1011 | ** 'Cause if he did Kharn would have to leave the slaughter to take part in the Great Game, and Kharn loves slaughter too much. |
| 1012 | ** Kharn is in the unusual circumstance of being a more effective killer as a mortal than a daemon prince. Princes are powerful, but they are also suffer the age-old daemonic weakness: being dependant on the warp for their power. As things are, Kharn can murder every day of every year in any place without fear of dissipating into nothing for no good reason. |
| 1013 | [[/folder]] |
| 1014 | |
| 1015 | [[folder:Why can't [=DEldar=] go for a simple solution?]] |
| 1016 | * If every Eldar Craftworld has Webway gates in it, and the Dark Eldar actually ''live'' in the Webway, and the Dark Eldar and Craftworld Eldar hate each other, then why don't the DE use those gates to invade the Craftworlds? Oodles of tech and resources perfectly suited for their use are right there, plus the CE would make superb pain-slaves (since they have such powerful souls) or even be suitable for breeding more Dark Eldar. |
| 1017 | ** Why are you assuming that the Craftworlds' webway gates are unguarded? The short answer is probably because it would be suicide. |
| 1018 | ** For the same reason they don't attack Space Marine Chapter Fleets. The Dark Eldar strike at undefended outposts and trading lanes, not fortress worlds. Craftworld Biel-Tan alone was able to take on two Imperial sector fleets and ten Astartes Chapters and win; for a nation of raiders, no matter how skilled, to take on that sort of concentrated firepower would be really foolhardy. Even worse, the Eldar actually use the webway, so a quick egress back to Commoragh, like the Dark Eldar usually enjoy, would be much more difficult to pull off. |
| 1019 | ** If the Dark Eldar tried to invade a Craftworld directly through the Webway, that invasion would be terribly short-lived... and then the Craftworld's Eldar would come to pay Commoragh a visit and return the favor. And trust me, the Dark Eldar are hell on wheels when it comes to surprise attacks, but they're not quite so adept when it comes to defending themselves. A Craftworld's Eldar rolling up and kicking in the door to Commoragh would cause all manner of lengthy and often quite terminal problems for the Dark Eldar. They'd likely repel the attack, but the damage they'd take doing so would be rather catastrophic. Attacking a Craftworld is akin to headbutting a hornet's nest, except these hornets fly at Mach 5, are precognitive, and literally shoot lasers from their faces. |
| 1020 | ** Partly because they wouldn't really want to. Attitudes towards their craftworld cousins could range from begrudging respect, to being fellow Eldar and hence ''less'' inferior than other denizens of the galaxy. that's not to say they don't prey on other Eldar when the opportunity comes up, by all means they do raid Exodite worlds and steal soulstones and other materiel when the opportunity arises. [=DEldar=] just prefer to fight other species rather than their own. Another part is that it's a terrible decision in all other practical respects. While the potential payout is phenomenal, it's realistically a catastophically high risk, low reward scenario for any Archon worth his Kabal. Craftworlds are hard targets, even from strikes from within their own webway gates, and Craftworlders can negate their cousins' advantages over other species simply by having easy access to the webway. Also striking at Craftworlds in such naked aggression is suicide by diplomacy; any Archon would be hard pressed to ride out the backlash of not only the survivors of that Craftworld coming back, but any forces they could wrangle from other Craftworlds, the Harlequins, and even rival Kabals looking to profit from their enemies falling, not to mention the wrath of Vect himself, who would be quick to punish anybody foolish enough to invite a whole Craftworld's wrath into Commoragh. |
| 1021 | [[/folder]] |
| 1022 | |
| 1023 | [[folder:Secrety secret of secrets... but why?]] |
| 1024 | * Why is there such importance attached to keeping the existence of the Grey Knights a secret? Why kill anyone who even sees them? It seems as though most people, upon seeing the Grey Knights, would probably just assume that they are another chapter of Space Marines. So why kill them? |
| 1025 | ** There are some novels in which Grey Knights show up and fight alongside others without killing them afterwards. Their secrecy is probably just the result of being so rarely called upon - since they only deal with the really nasty stuff - that they simply don't get as much exposure as other chapters. |
| 1026 | ** It's less about keeping the Grey Knights themselves secret, and more about the fact that when the Grey Knights get called in, it's often for something that has to be absolutely 100% kept secret. Keeping the Knights' presence secret goes hand in hand with keeping whatever Warp fuckery happened a secret as well. |
| 1027 | [[/folder]] |
| 1028 | |
| 1029 | [[folder:But how do you ''know'' he's evil?]] |
| 1030 | * How is it possible to identify radical members of Ordo Haereticus and Ordo Xenos? Radicals who belong to Ordo Malleus often suffer mutations. But xenos artifacts usually don't leave visible traces on the users. |
| 1031 | ** No, but they are often identifiable as xenos artifacts. If you see a fellow Inquisitor using a weapon of, say, Eldar design, it is a safe bet that that Inquisitor has radical leanings at the very least. Alternatively, if you hear another Inquisitor advocating toleration of or cooperation with certain xenos races, or advocating heretical beliefs, it's a safe bet that that Inquisitor is a radical. In short, Inquisitors identify radicalism among the Inquisition the same way they identify heretics or xenophiles among the general population: through observation, investigation, and inquiry. That last one is right there in the name. |
| 1032 | [[/folder]] |
| 1033 | |
| 1034 | |
| 1035 | [[folder:Warring atheist vs religious zealots]] |
| 1036 | * The Emperor wanted to base his Imperium on rationalism and science. So why did he tolerate the Cult Mechanicus, a religion that completely obscured science and prevented the spread of scientific, technological, and engineering knowledge to humanity at large? Of all the religions to tolerate, why that one, which was most diametrically opposed to what the Emperor was supposedly trying to accomplish? After all, at the time the Great Crusade began, the Cult Mechanicus was only influential on Mars? Why not just suppress it and establish a system of scientific education throughout his dominions? |
| 1037 | ** Maybe he thought that the worship of the machine would cut down even further on the energies going to the Dark Gods? Chaos is fueled by emotion, and the Mechanicus abhors emotion of any kind. |
| 1038 | ** Or, more simply, the Cult Mechanicus was so interwined with the ''Adeptus'' Mechanicus he couldn't afford to take steps against it ''yet'': my idea is that his plan called to first solidify the Imperium, then build an industrial base comparable to the Forge Worlds under the Adeptus Mechanicus' nose (and possibly hide some Forge Worlds from them, if he managed), and then, once he could win the conflict with the Adeptus, find an excuse to take down the Cult and bring the Adeptus under his full control. |
| 1039 | ** The Emperor has no problem using people then disposing of them later. He did that to the Thunder Warriors and replaced them with the Space Marines and Primarchs and part of the motivation for the Horus Heresy was the fear he would turn around and do the same to them. The AdMech were useful, and so he made use of them. Later, who knows? |
| 1040 | ** The Mechanicum of the Great Crusade Era ''were'' much more scientifically grounded than their successors in the Adeptus Mechanicus. He tolerated their religious leanings because they were useful and based in scientific understanding, even with spiritual overtones; and possibly because even though they didn't fit completely into the Imperial Truth, their technology-based faith wasn't entirely imcompatible with it. The Mechanicum knew that humanity had lost technology, and tried to replicate it through science as well as recovery. The [=AdMech=] of later generations would be the technicians to the Mechanicum's scientists and engineers, as the decline of the Emperor's original ideals would see dogmatism and blind faith take over all sectors of the Imperium. |
| 1041 | [[/folder]] |
| 1042 | |
| 1043 | [[folder:Magnus, there's such thing as Occam's Razor]] |
| 1044 | * Why didn't Magnus just send his warning to the Emperor through regular astropathy? It would have taken a little longer, but it still would have arrived in enough time to be decisive. |
| 1045 | ** Because he wanted to prove his specialty was useful, thus he [[DidntThinkThisThrough failed to think things through]]. |
| 1046 | ** In part, Phase 1 of the Ruinstorm made things difficult for loyalists. An often overlooked bit of lore is that the galaxy was being riven by intermittent warpstorms during the early phases of the Heresy, and in this instance, they made astrotelepathy difficult, which was part of why there was such a fog of war in the early phases of the war. As for why Magnus decided to go to the Emperor in "person", it was basically hubris. |
| 1047 | [[/folder]] |
| 1048 | |
| 1049 | [[folder:Suspicious emptiness of space hulks]] |
| 1050 | * How is it that space hulks aren't all crawling with daemons or daemon-possessed objects? They spend most of their time in the Warp without any Gellar fields. How are they not all completely haunted? |
| 1051 | ** Presumably they ''are'' crawling with daemons while in the Warp, but when the hulks drop back into realspace the daemons can't make the transition and get left in the Warp. |
| 1052 | ** Also note that it's not uncommon for space hulks to indeed be warp-haunted. |
| 1053 | ** Another simple reason is what you said - empty! What reason would daemons have to hang out in abandoned ships devoid of life? They feed off emotion and thought; common objects might come across a living being eventually but it's not likely. That's why it's always cursed weapons and relics: things people want to find make way better traps. |
| 1054 | [[/folder]] |
| 1055 | |
| 1056 | |
| 1057 | [[folder:Did this thing even work?]] |
| 1058 | * So, the Kryptman's Gambit. Is it ultimately working or not? I understand the concern that both Orks and Tyranids are getting stronger, but I think it is the general concensus that Leviathan was strong enough to topple the Imperium as it was, so no much loss here, and the Octarian Orks were harrassing the humans in the past, so again, it's not like things are much different for them. On the other hand, the war on such an apocalyptic scale is ''bound'' to waste resources irretrivably - it must be hard to recuperate biomass that was blown to bits, and there's got to be some limit to which even the orks can restore the destroyed vehicles. All the while the Imperium has received a reprieve need to bolster their forces. Also I've read some bits about the Eldar working on some uber-biological weapons that would wipe out the tyranids. Unless the pointy-eared gits plan to use them on humans next, the net gain seems to be in the good guys favor, isn't it? |
| 1059 | ** Ultimately it depends on the Imperium succeeding or failing to execute Exterminatus on Octarius before one of the two sides wins: if the Imperium manages to wipe out the planet they've won, otherwise either the Octarian Orks or Hive Fleet Leviathan will emerge stronger. |
| 1060 | ** And as it turns out, they've failed. Ghrazghkull turned the tide in da orkz' favor and krumped the 'nids (though not the whole of the hive fleet) and continued on his merry way with Octarian Orks in tow as part of his Great Waaagh. So that means that the Leviathan is still there, presumably still strong from their battle with da orkz, and the pumped up orkz are also still out there, only now they aren't occupying each other's time anymore. |
| 1061 | [[/folder]] |
| 1062 | |
| 1063 | [[folder:How do Navigators sleep?]] |
| 1064 | * Given how dangerous travel through the Immaterium is, it cannot be the case that a ship's Navigator can just take a break to catch some sleep while the ship is in the Warp. Do all Warp-capable ships carry multiple Navigators who work in shifts? Do they drop back into the Materium once a day or so so that the Navigator can sleep? What about when the Navigator needs to go the bathroom, or eat? |
| 1065 | ** We know that there are genetic modifications that let you sleep much less often - Space Marines can stay awake for hundreds of hours if necessary. Given how Navigators were engineered in Dark Age of Technology, AKA the golden days of ClarkesThirdLaw, perhaps they dispensed with the need for sleep altogether? Failing that, they might be pumped up with some drugs for duration of the journey. There are also, IIRC, several mentions of Navigators having assistants - perhaps they work in shifts. |
| 1066 | ** It's stated that Navigators are attended by lesser members of their house that both fortify the Navigator Prime and take over basic duties while he/she sleeps. The Navigator sets the course, and steers in a storm, but his attendants can hold the sails and keel in place. |
| 1067 | [[/folder]] |
| 1068 | |
| 1069 | [[folder:Shouldn't the Imperium be trying to create more blanks than psykers?]] |
| 1070 | * I don't remember specifics, but I remember something about how the Emperor is buying time for the evolution of humanity to become a much more psychic species. Why is this preferable to becoming a much less warp-present species like the Tau? It seems there are more benefits in this setting to being less warp-present than being more present. Less warp-present means less feeding of chaos, easily the main opponent of the Imperium. The only argument I can think of is that less psykers means less navigators for warp travel, so I may have answered my own question essentially, but at least it means less horrendous giant holes being ripped in space-time to contend with? |
| 1071 | ** Because, for all the advantages of the Pariah gene (the genetic marker that makes one a blank), it's actually a bad thing. All the interpersonal problems of characters like Bequin and Jurgen are caused by the Pariah gene. |
| 1072 | ** The Emperor knew that psychic powers were evolutionary advantages to the species. This is even borne out in the modern setting of 999.M41: even excepting the thousand psyker-a-day appetite of the Emperor/Golden Throne/Astronomican, both astropaths and navigators are considered psykers (albeit an extreme version in the case of navigators); and without either, the Imperium would cease to exist and humanity would go extinct, isolated from itself on a million worlds. |
| 1073 | ** The Imperium cannot create either. Psykers are a natural part of humanity's evolution, and blanks are a genetic oddity that isn't supposed to happen, but does. And it's not just humanity evolving to be more psychic, but to be more ''stably'' psychic, like the Eldar or the Emperor himself. |
| 1074 | [[/folder]] |
| 1075 | |
| 1076 | [[folder:Catachan skin color?]] |
| 1077 | * Pretty much every picture of a Catachan shows them with caucasian skin color but if they've been living on a hot jungle world for thousands of years shouldn't they have a darker skin tone? |
| 1078 | ** WriteWhatYouKnow would be one reason. Plus, this is not a setting known for being written with evolutionary biology, [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale distance]], the square/cube law, etc in mind. |
| 1079 | ** dark skin is not necessarily an adaptive advantage in a jungle environment, especially when technology is one of the defining traits to allow Catachans to survive on the planet. |
| 1080 | ** The same reason they're inordinately muscular. Because the entire regiment is a giant Rambo reference. |
| 1081 | [[/folder]] |
| 1082 | |
| 1083 | [[folder:How do you just forget that space is 3D?]] |
| 1084 | * So, as you may or may not know, there was an incident where Tyranids were showing up in Imperial space behind their defensive lines, nobody knew how that happened... and THEN they realized that the Tyranids were coming up from under them. My question is this: Why did they not set up defensive lines on their vertical axis or at least checking in those directions? Yeah, the Imperium is stupid and dogmatic, but I don't really think "space is 3D and we should prepare for attacks from above or below the galactic plane" would go against any of their teachings. The alternative would probably be that they just didn't think of it, which, when you've been a galactic empire for tens of millennia and are at war with everyone else in the galaxy, is just pathetic. |
| 1085 | [[/folder]] |
| 1086 | ---- |
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