Fan Retcons to Warhammer40K

This is one of those fluffy bits that this wiki has exaggerated - some Tyranids are born without digestive tracts, the ones explicitly designed to be the first wave cannon fodder during something like a mycenic spore bombardment. Hormagaunts, on the other hand, are vanguard organisms that not only have a voracious appetite, but are capable of independent reproduction and lay hundreds of eggs in their brief existences. The end result is a self-sustaining population of chitin and claws that distracts defenders even before the main Tyranid attack arrives.

Or so sayeth the Carnifex-nerfing codex, directly contradicting Xenology and the Ripper theory.

You're approaching this from the perspective of the Tau still regarding sex/romance as linked to reproduction, which given their technology levels and their genetically distinct yet closely intertwined caste system isn't the only option.

Alternately, they could have adopted the Clan method from Battletech: castes are perpetuated artificially or semi-artificially via arranged matches of genetic material either in the lab or in reality. The rest of the time, here's your oral contraceptives, go crazy folks.

Alternatively it could be that the Tau are so collectivist/utilitarian that (thanks to subtle Ethereal manipulation) sexual activity (at least among tau, Ethereal control doesn't extend to kroot or humans) for romantic/casual reasons doesn't occur.

edited 20th May '13 1:10:31 PM by Rationalinsanity

The Tyranid "Shadow in the Warp" is not really a shadow, it's just the fact that the Hive mind is so big it scares everything around sufficient concentrations of itself away, and is so big it renders it impossible to see/sense anything other than the Hive Mind.

Retcon the term "Chaos Space Marine" as a broad term that the Imperium uses to describe any Space Marine Chapter that is hostile to them,

There is already a term for that: Renegade Space Marines. There's a couple of them noted. Red Corsairs before they became Red Corsairs (Astral Claws?), Soul Drinkers, a couple of others.

I was thinking "The Tau dipomats we've seen haven't been that unfriendly..." And then i remember they're Water Caste and probably bred to be able to infiltrate/adapt to any society they might encounter. (Basically drop one in Commorragh and all the DE would be perfectly awed by how cool and epic his torturing skillz would be...) That made me imagine a Water Caste James Bond :p

Didn't know that.

Remind me of 3rd ed. dungeons and dragons with the elemental planes.

You had the four material plnes and the postive and negative energy planes. But you also had the 'Demiplanes' where they over lapped.

You have got the plane of manga (fire-earth) and the plane of mud (earth-water), ice plane (water-negative energy) and other cool combos.

I think you mean "magma". The plane of Manga is a very different thing.

Though perhaps also related to the Tau.

Makes me wonder if one of their art forms is propagandist comic books.

Tau and sexual activity/romance: It seems to me that they would be mostly utilitarian about it, with some exceptions. It would make sense that personal relationships between castes would be frowned on, but not unheard of (no culture is completely uniform in thought). Tau culture (The Greater Good) puts emphasis on cooperation between its component parts, so it is quite likely that Tau and humans would be working in close proximity with each for long stretches of time, building trust and so on.

I remember reading that crossbreeding between castes was forbidden by the ethereal but I can't remember where. 'Course that doesn't forbid romance.

EDIT: Ah, the Lexicanum mention forbidden interbreeding.

edited 23rd May '13 10:16:06 AM by CobraPrime

Also in the various Tau codices.

I say that the Knights may be used with more frequency, seeing as they're faster and easier to use than even the Warhound Titan.

The Necrons are still enslaved to the C'tan, and one of the Eldar Gods (was it the Laughing God? I can't remember) is still responsible for the C'tan shards. The Necrons are still soulless abominations trying to purge the galaxy of all life, but individual Necron Lords are still trying to vie for supremacy against each other. Szarekh, however, is one of the only Necron Lords who realised that the Necrons are just slaves to the C'tan, and is desperately trying to convince the other Lords about this, and plans to overthrow the C'tan and "just" re-establish the Necron Empire with the other races as slaves, as opposed to just harvesting all life so the Star Gods can eat their tasty, tasty souls.

While I understand the sentiments behind returning the Necrons to their pre-5th Ed incarnation, I propose a different approach:

1. Not all of the C'Tan were shattered into Shards; some were "neutralized" through other means, be it at the Necrons' hands, at those of the Old Ones' creations, or some other party. Also, of those that were shattered by the Necrons, not all of them had all of their Shards accounted for and subsequently kept under lock and key (among them the Deceiver and the Nightbringer); those "rogue" Shards hid themselves and entered hibernation to recover their strength, and when the woke up millennia later they started seeking out similarly rogue Shards of the same "progenitor" to slowly merge back into a whole being... However, having inherited their "parent"'s monomaniacal capriciousness, every "reunion" ends up devolving into a savage battle for dominance, the victor of which gets to "consume" the other Shard and have its own "ego" be dominant over the new gestalt being.
   1. The Outsider, for example, was tricked into devouring his own brethren by either the Deceiver or Cegorach (depending on who you ask), ultimately being driven into insanity and then imprisoned by some party into the infamous Dyson sphere that the Tyranids give a wide berth when they arrived in the 41st Millennium.

   2. Meanwhile, the Void Dragon was nearly driven to the point of Shattering, but managed to escape in time to hide in the Solar System and hibernate through the eons, until he woke and was confronted by the Emperor of Mankind at an unspecified date — probably near the end of the Robot War that devastated pre-Imperial human civilization, which in this scenario I blame as the Void Dragon's doing — who barely knocks him back into hibernation with his psychic might and imprisons him in Mars (since even he was not powerful enough to destroy him outright).

   3. BTW, the co-existence of rogue Shards of the same C'Tan can serve as a handwave for how a C'Tan can be present in two or more locations on opposite ends of the galaxy, or any discrepency in motives/methodology/whatever between each C'Tan appearance — they're essentially Literal Split Personalities that almost certainly underwent very different experiences from each other, and thus likely would have developed differently.

2. The Necrons as a whole are split into three major groupings.
   1. The Unshackled: Those Dynasties that managed to maintain the freedom they were granted by the Silent King's actions at the end of the War in Heaven. (Un)fortunately, they are fractured by internecine rivalries, feuds, and the personal ambitions of their leaders — or "artificial simulations" thereof, anyway. (Remember that Tzeentch can't feed off their "intrigue" and whatnot, because it's actually more of a painstakingly organized performance that invokes their pre-robotization existence's intrigue than actual intrigue driven by emotions and desires.)

   2. The Lost: As the name indicates, those are the Necrons that are enslaves to the C'Tan's whims, typically comprising formerly free Dynasties that were found and then subverted by rogue C'Tan Shards during their eons-long hibernation.

   3. The Severed: Arguably the worst of the bunch, these are basically the Empire of the Severed scaled-up into a wider phenomenon that afflicted an unknown number of Tomb Worlds, whether through similarly extreme environmental conditions, a C'Tan Shard's subversion attempt Gone Horribly Wrong, or something else entirely. Note that an encounter between two Severed "Dynasties" (the term is used loosely, as they no longer resemble true Necron Dynasties at all) can just as likely end with the two groups allying with each other and gradually merging into a single, though at first decentralized whole, as it is to immediately result in violent conflict as each Dynasty's governing AI attempts to either assimilate or annihilate its "error-ridden" counterpart.

Canon: Ferrus Mannus was worried about his legion's 'The Flesh Is Weak' attitude and said as much that he was going to nip that write in the bud before it got out of control. Then the Horus Heresy happened.

Retcon: Roboute Guilliman was the jack-of-all-trades of his brothers, he wasn't super good at any one thing except perhaps organizing, systematizing and writing down all his thoughts. He made the Codex Astartes with help from all his brothers, drawing from their various specialties to forge each chapter. He wanted flexibility and variability to be the Ultramarine's thing. In his stated opinion, that should be the way of the Astartes as a whole.

What he meant: Different legions (And afterwards, chapters) doing different things is a good. It means the Astartes, as a whole, are flexible and variable.

What the Ultramarines thought he meant: Everyone needs to invariably follow the Codex Astartes unflexingly, the ultimate guide to flexibility and variability. All praise the Codex Astartes and look to Roboute Guilliman as your spiritual liege.

And Roboute Guilliman started to notice that and was pretty set on fixing that. But first? He heard that traitor Fulgrim was in the neighborhood, time to forget his neck armor!

No Space or Chaos marines.

Bam. Warhammer universe has just become film noir instead of My Little Marty Stu. You are welcome.

But then who would the other factions kill to prove how tough they are?

Each other.

Isha has now been so broken/warped by Nurgle, that the "cures" she creates for his diseases have bizarre symptoms that can sometimes be as bad if not worse than what they were meant to cure.

Ollanius Pius was a human, damnit! Not a space marine, not a custodian, not some kind of immortal — a regular human who stepped between Horus and the Emperor in the final fight and whom Horus killed without even blinking. And this totally pointless murder of a man who could never, ever, ever hope to threaten Horus showed the Emperor that his son was truly beyond redemption and prompted him to strike the final psychic blow. If Pius was a magic immortal or a space marine or anything like that he could potentially harm Horus, and the whole tale is undermined.

Changing him to anything but a normal human also undermines the thematics of the fight in other ways — the Emperor was heavy-handed and an utter bastard, but he was always fighting for humanity. It is for humanity that he kills Horus, his favoured son: for an ordinary man caught in the middle of a battle between gods, not for one of the his special super soldiers.

Having him be a human also lets him act as a perfect symbol for the Imperial Guard. This last part is less strong, as it would also suit the universe for the whole thing to be a fabrication on the part of the Imperium.

I share your feelings, Battle-Brother. Long live the true Ollanius Pius, whom even spin-off RPG lines like Dark Heresy still remember him (even if not explicitly by name).

It's not so much a retcon as favouring one view equally supported view over another, but:

The Codex Astartes does not work like an American football playbook, but more akin to actual works of military and political literature like the US Field Manuals, The Art of War, The Prince, and Rommel's Infantry Tactics. It works as a guide to develop principles and tactical ability, not a template for literally every occasion. And its guiding principle is: "There is only one principle of war and that's this. Hit the other fellow, as quickly as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he ain't lookin'" (but in Latin)

In this vein the disputed Battle of Eskrador between the Alpha Legion and the Ultras was a bit like 40k's Black Hawk Down, with the Alphas being the Somalis. And it really was Alpharius that died.

Here's one: there was and is no Ollanius Pious.

The Emperor has sent billions to war against just as many and the life of a single soldier is so insignificant as to be utterly without further consideration.

Pious's big scene on Horus's flagship, itself so saturated by warp energy and random horrors that even Terminator armor is no help, never happens.

During the Great Crusade the Emperor ordered, or at least tacitly permitted, the mass slaughter of hundreds of human colonies for refusing to swear allegiance, for making "improper" treaties with aliens, or for "genetic deviation" -getting on the bad side of a primarch was also another way.

There are seven billion people on earth and very little reason exists to believe that this planet is unique in supporting that many lives.

W H30k throws around "hundreds of worlds" casually, so if there were a mere _thousand_ rogue colonies with a population of over a billion than the Emperor and his children and servants murder A TRILLION PEOPLE for not bending the knee, not being properly blindly xenocidal, and for looking funny.

So, no. I don't think That Guy cares, or should care, about the life of one miserable, fictional soldier nor do I think that life has a place in Warhammer 40,000.

edited 16th Jul '15 3:42:55 PM by Gavel

The thing anout ollinius plus is...how the hell he get there? I meant the horus flagship is full of horror, neither dorn or abaddon manage to get there unitl is too late so...how in hell he got there, manage not to be kill until he put in front of horus and said those words?.

Also forma those who said It ruin the point is missing something: the horus heresy IS a superhuman conflict between demigods of legend over the fate of mankind, by puting the "comon man" is diluting the important of marines in setting, which many imperial guard fanboy have been doing for a while