History Awesome / Warhammer40000

* The Dark Angels combat squad in "Angels of Darkness". While they are outwitted and outmaneuvered by the Fallen[[labelnote:info]]Basically the Dark Angels Legion was split in two after the Horus Heresy; half of them remained loyal to the Emperor and half of them supposedly fell to Chaos, although it's somewhat implied not all Fallen are Chaos marines[[/labelnote]], which in fairness wasn't that surprising in that only one of the members of this squad knew about the existence of the Fallen at all, they choose to commit suicide within their own fortress rather than letting the entire planet they're on die of a failsafe-virus in sealed in there with them. They could have easily opened the door and left, condemning the world to doom. In the same novel they single handedly take out what amounts to a small warship. There are 6 of them.
** In the same novel, the Fallen Angel Astelan, for his general resilience to the merecies of the Interrogator Chaplain. Put in perspective, beyond the Dark Eldar, the Interrogator Chaplains are possibly they best torturers in the galaxy. He lasts 14 days in total isolation. He's over 10,000 years old too.

** The rematch is also quite awesome. When the Great Rift opens the old portal on Shadowbrink roars back to life and the daemons, apparently having learnt absolutely nothing from last time, come charging out. The Hive Mind, not about to take this lying down, dispatches its newest weapon Hive Fleet Kronos. The Tyranids methodically land at the the eight central focuses of Warp energy, deploying nodes of Zoanthropes and Malaceptors. Around them the Shadow goes so strong even ''Chaos'' can't resist it, and the daemon portals begin to close. Khorne's legions try to charge their position - key word, try. Kronos just [[CombatPragmatist shells them to oblivion]] with massed artillery and fleshborer fire. The daemonic presence on Shadowbrink is relentlessly hunted down and exterminated, putting the Great Devourer at 2-0.

* ''Awesome/CiaphasCain''[[note]]HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!![[/note]]

* One ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' issue a few years back featured someone who had built a diorama of a Tau Stealth Suit ([[http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m490157a_UK_WD319_TauStealthSuits.pdf page 2 of this PDF]]) which blends in so well with the backdrop from the right angle that you can barely see it. Bear in mind that the backdrop isn't just some vague shape; it's a pretty heavily detailed Imperial-made wall, with panels, grilles and even skulls. Now ''that'' is stealth.
* A clever German modeller took a 54mm Space Marine from ''TabletopGame/{{Inquisitor}}'' and converted him so that he [[http://demonwinner.free.fr/germany/2007/golden_demon_winner.php?categorie=11#3rd is painting]] some 6mm Epic Marines!

*** The crowning moment of awesome for Vulkan after being captured by Conrad Kurze, A.K.A psycho Batman, following the Drop Site Massacre. After being tortured both mentally and physically, killed numerous times and subjected to numerous taunts from his fallen brother, the Onyx Primarch uses Conrad as a bludgeon to beat the shit out of a force field guarding his personal [[DropTheHammer hammer Dawnbringer]]. Finally, he uses a teleporter button he had on the thing to teleport halfway across the galaxy to Ultramar.

--->'''Vistario:''' Primarch Fulgrim! [[CallingTheOldManOut Rylanor deserves better than you.]] [[HeelRealization He deserves better than all of us.]] [[MercyKill (Vistario shoots Akhtar, unleashing the Virus Bomb]]

* No love for Anchient Rylanor? A loyalist dreadnought from the Emperor's Children, thought to have died on Isstvan III, only to be rediscovered millenia later by a trio of Thousand Son's marines investigating a signal sent out. A signal he made to lure in FULGRIM. And what does he do upon seeing his traitorous primarch, now a Daemon Prince? DETONATE A VIRUS BOMB TO TRY AND KILL HIM. One of the Thousand Sons contains the explosion, and Fulgrim proceeds to tear into Rylanor, cutting into his dreadnought shell, offering to have him be reborn as a chaos marine. The response?

--> Gimzod: Payload deployed, boss!
--> Uzgob: What about Killboy?
--> Gimzod: [[RidingTheBomb Oh yeah, he's been deployed too.]]

-->Gimzod: "Killboy. [[CaptainCrash 35 missions flown, 35 replacement fighta-bommerz an' 35 major bionik surgery proceedures.]] 67 konfirmed kills, includin' 43 actually belongin' to the enemy..."

** Scout Omar. During a mission outside the city Omar is ambushed and literally buried alive in a cultist horde after they force him into an open grave. He survives and makes it back to the city as the Cholercaust is siegeing it. Corpus-Captain Kersch rescues him, but Omar loses the lower half of his body to a gelatinous Daemon. That doesn't stop him from being a sniper spotter in the battle, and when his shooter is killed he takes the rifle and continues fighting. He is the last Excoriator to die, the bell tower he is firing on is swarmed by Furies. Even his death is awesome as Omar detonates the grenades he is wearing and takes the tower, and the Fury swarm, with him and the falling tower crushes a hell of a lot of cultists.

* A subtle and understated one, yet in hindsight one of the most epic moments in 40k literature has to be in Graham Mcneill's ''The Last Church'' a story set in the earliest days of the canon in which a man heavily implied to be the very last Christian priest, whom after having his faith verbally ripped to shreds by a mysterious visitor, and having his beloved Church set alight and desecrated by Proto Space Marines, manages to deliver an '''epic''' TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to none other than the Emperor, beautifully calling him out on his hypocricy and brutality, as well as pointing out with perfect accuracy and foresight how utterly crapsack his vision is, before rejecting him entirely and deciding to burn with his Church rather than be any part of it. Even more awesome is how this event is implied to have left an impact on the Emperor later on, considering how he listens to the long-lived but very human Malcador the Sigilite.

* The Fall of Shadowbrink is a [=CMoA=] for the Tyranids. When their invasion wakes a Daemonic portal that allows the [[TheDreaded Quadrifold Abominatum]], an alliance of a single Greater Daemon from each of the Chaos Gods, the Tyranids at first ignore them because Daemons have no biomass. They '''ignored''' the Primordial Annihilator. Only when a fortress containing millions of Daemons arises does the Hive Mind realize that it isn't dealing with prey, it's facing a fellow predator. It wastes no time in responding appropriately by sending millions of Tyranids in a suicidal attack to distract the Daemon Lords while elsewhere the Ripper swarms continue to devour Shadowbrink. This allows the Hive Mind to focus on creating more ranged bioforms, numbering in the tens of millions, before sending them against the Daemons. The combined firepower of the Tyranid horde tears apart the Great Unclean One, which in turn makes the Lord of Change flee the battle. Finally only the Bloodthirster and Keeper of Secrets remain, the two lead a charge against the Tyranid line and are met by many Tyrannofexes and Trygons, the Hive Mind having absorbed the Daemons' strategies and formed a counter-strategy. The Daemonic lines falter and the Bloodthirster is dragged back into the Warp as he wrestles with three Trygons simultaenously. With the Daemons bested, the Tyranids consume Shadowbrink.

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X98ImCbhjnI reveal trailer]] for 10th edition contains a spectacularly vicious jungle battle between Space Marines and Tyranids, containing a number of very awesome moment. Highlights include a Terminator, run straight through in battle with a particularly large and nasty bioform, continuing to fire his assault cannon right into its chest even with its fanged maw mere inches from his face, followed immediately by said xenos horror cleanly tearing ''a Terminator'' in two with no more effort than ripping toilet paper.

** First off, Imperium fans rejoice for Roboute Guilliman '''[[HesBack is back]]'''. He's awoken from his stasis, taken one look at the insane Orwellian nightmare the Imperium is and is ''not'' happy one bit. He's acting Emperor now, and he's vowed to ''fix it''. Also, Cypher is on Terra and the Adeptus Custodes are fighting again.

* Yvraine, the Daughters of Shades and the Emissary of Ynnead, gets several in her backstory. Including killing a Hive Tyrant in melee combat via GroinAttack, [[CurbStompCushion being the first person in thousands of years to nick Lelith Hesperax's skin]] (and being regarded as a WorthyOpponent to the veteran Succubus as a rersult), and fighting on despite being impaled through the sternum and losing a hand. Her most awesome moment though might be ''reversing the Rubric on a dozen Thousand Sons'' in front of Ahriman as a demonstration of her power, reverting them to their normal selves... and then ''un''doing it just to mess with him. While it might seem more like a KickTheDog moment, remember that [[TheUnfettered Ahriman has burned entire star systems and killed millions in his quest for the cure for the Rubric so far]]; Yvraine doing so casually in front of him is an incredible display of power.

* An obscure, seldom heard bit of background lore speaks of what may be ''the'' most awesome feat ever accomplished by any human: Tzeentch makes his home in an ever shifting, ever changing maze known as the Crystal Labyrinth, where even space and time bend around each other in constantly shifting knots. If you can navigat those without losing your sanity, you still have to pass nine gates, guarded by a sphinx who will ask you a different, incredibly difficult riddle at each, the kind only the most brilliant minds could ever hope to solve; failure to answer correctly will mean death. And yet this maze was successfully navigated, apparently effortlessly by... a little girl, and her small black dog. And not even Tzeentch himself knows how she did it. Fans have theorized on her being everything from a phenomenally powerful child-psyker, to the Emperor himself [[{{Troll}} Trolling]] Tzeentch. Equally possible and ''far'' more awesome, however, is that she really was [[BadassNormal a completely ordinary little girl]] who somehow stumbled into the Warp, and solved the unsolvable maze by virtue of a child's imagination. In the grimdarkness of the far future, many fans prefer to believe the latter.

* There's one moment in the Space Marine Battles novel ''Helsreach'', while the commanders of Armageddon's defense are meeting. Commissar Yarrick is talking about how Hades Hive won't survive the week, when a Captain of the Angels of Fire Space Marines Chapter steps up and says that they should try and defend it, because it was where the Ork invasion was broken sixty years ago. Yarrick is adamant in his decision, and the Astartes [[TooDumbToLive laughs at him, saying that he's underestimating them and that any Astartes in the room has more military experience than he does.]] Yarrick doesn't reply, doesn't say anything. He doesn't get angry, doesn't break down. He just ''stares'' at the Space Marine, until eventually the arrogant sap realizes he's goofed up and sits back down.

* An obscure, seldom heard bit of background lore speaks of what may be ''the'' most awesome feat ever accomplished by any human: Tzeentch makes his home in an ever shifting, ever changing maze known as the Crystal Lbayrinth, where even space and time bend around each other in constantly shifting knots. If you can navigat those without losing your sanity, you still have to pass nine gates, guarded by a sphinx who will ask you a different, incredibly difficult riddle at each, the kind only the most brilliant minds could ever hope to solve; failure to answer correctly will mean death. And yet this maze was successfully navigated, apparently effortlessly by... a little girl, and her small black dog. And not even Tzeentch himself knows how she did it. Fans have theorized on her being everything from a phenomenally powerful child-psyker, to the Emperor himself [[{{Troll}} Trolling]] Tzeentch. Equally possible and ''far'' more awesome, however, is that she really was [[BadassNormal a completely ordinary little girl]] who somehow stumbled into the Warp, and solved the unsolvable maze by virtue of a child's imagination. In the grimdarkness of the far future, many fans prefer to believe the latter.