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I'd assume they would be knowledgeable about both, at least as a concept, since they might have been cut off by warp storms from far-flung places, but they already had a galaxy spanning empire. There's almost no chance you could go very far without encountering Orks, which is probably a hilarious first race for humanity to meet when it's finally exploring the stars. Can't imagine the first contact went particularly well. Eldar might be kind of unknown and mysterious, but that's their whole deal, and I imagine their galaxy spanning empire probably got into some contact with humanity as well, before it all came crashing down with the birth of Slaanesh.
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Aug 5, 2018 21:46
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Yeah, the Pariah & Mars Dragon retcons needed to happen, but were also kind of cool; It's a bit of a shame they're gone.
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Aug 6, 2018 01:30
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Its a plot point in a short story that the imperium would be more interested in loving up a planet full of humans that modifed themselves to be people centaurs than they would if they were primitive xenos. Something about the form being too deviant from the human template that it had to be fixed. The imperium really kinda doesnt give a poo poo unless they are or could be an existental threat or occupy enough of a prime world to warrant genociding for the real estate. Its why you get a bunch of primitive semi-sapient to sapient aliens on a bunch of shared worlds that the colonists just kinda view as pests but dont actually make any reall effort to wipe out. Basically they were much more genocide happy before everything went to poo poo and now its not worth the effort when Waaagh number 8373837 is on its way Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 06:16
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Ardent Communist posted:I'd assume they would be knowledgeable about both, at least as a concept, since they might have been cut off by warp storms from far-flung places, but they already had a galaxy spanning empire. There's almost no chance you could go very far without encountering Orks, which is probably a hilarious first race for humanity to meet when it's finally exploring the stars. Can't imagine the first contact went particularly well. Eldar might be kind of unknown and mysterious, but that's their whole deal, and I imagine their galaxy spanning empire probably got into some contact with humanity as well, before it all came crashing down with the birth of Slaanesh. The funny thing is, the new Aeldari Codex mentions no contact with Humans pre-fall, but also points out the Eldar lost a ton of their knowledge in the fall and the intervening thousands of years. The Eldar-history of 42K is basically a mix of myth and legends, and completely unreliable. It probably didn't help that after the fall and until the end of the Age of Strife, most of mankind was isolated from each other and the rest of the galaxy by the warp storms caused by Slaanesh's birth, so the Eldar probably didn't have a lot of contact with Humans immediately after the fall, either.
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Aug 6, 2018 08:15
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Libluini posted:The funny thing is, the new Aeldari Codex mentions no contact with Humans pre-fall, but also points out the Eldar lost a ton of their knowledge in the fall and the intervening thousands of years. The Eldar-history of 42K is basically a mix of myth and legends, and completely unreliable. Also, in that vein, weren't all the Craftworld elder basically the equivalent of doomsday preppers and the kind of people who would be religious fundamentalist? So clearly they went into the whole situation with a very strong view of what they expected to happened and then just used every coincidence to justify it. For all we know, the wholesale decadence and depravity of pre-fall Elder was just dancing, drinking, and casual sex.
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Aug 6, 2018 17:55
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Mostly exactly what the Dark Eldar have been doing but turned to 11.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:05
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pentyne posted:For all we know, the wholesale decadence and depravity of pre-fall Elder was just dancing, drinking, and casual sex. I feel like this is one thing GW/Black library have addressed sufficiently, and explicitly in some of the Eldar and a couple of the Chaos novels- what led to the fall wasn't orgies in the sense of your late-night skinimax show, it was like harvesting your kids' for blood and intestines because you thought it'd sound super sweet on your mandolin framed by the ribs of the family pet. Once you were done with your musical interlude, you'd go out with the other eldar couples and see what's going on in the neighborhood. This would entail marauding down the street and killing, torturing, and maybe eating whoever you came across. If you saw another group, maybe the evening would get a little spicy with a gang war. Then you would return to your home made of the finest wraithbone made of tortured souls singing in eternal torment and do a whole lotta drugs. I'm talking Keith Richards would stage an intervention lot of drugs. Drugs that don't actually DO anything to you, but you're taking them anyway because the synaptic pulse of thinking that you are doing drugs is all you have left. At the end of this consumption period, you'd be pretty wired, so off to the conservatory in your murderpalace to engage in some finger painting. Of course you took the fingers from lil Eldari mentioned above, to get the crisp fine lines that smaller fingerbones can make. After a solid 4 hours of eldar-youtube cat videos you pass out in a puddle of your liquidated former-spouse, which you try to get high off of. Dark Eldar are the folks who were like "Goddamn, we should take a tolerance break for a few eons. Maybe just keep it down to the murdergames"
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Aug 6, 2018 18:21
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Also the insane prepper Eldar where the ones who hosed off the jungle deathworlds to ride dinosaurs around.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:36
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Telsa Cola posted:Also the insane prepper Eldar where the ones who hosed off the jungle deathworlds to ride dinosaurs around. I thought those were the "back to the land" types. The craftworld ones were the Huguenots, long-distance truckers, or assorted hangers-on (including preppers) that would go on intentionally circuitous journeys away from the Eldar empire. Weren't the harlequins preppers, hoarding all the knowledge and such in safety and confidence for the inevitable fall. Immanentized fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 18:38
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Immanentized posted:I thought those were the "back to the land" types. The craftworld ones were the Huguenots, and the harlequins were the preppers, hoarding all the knowledge and such in safety and confidence for the inevitable fall. If I remember correct without checking the wiki they were disgusted by poo poo that was happening prefall and hosed off and removed themselves into the wild from all that poo poo so they were fine when poo poo when south. I think they kinda knew poo poo was going to happen. They were they people who go "Society is hopelessy corrupt, Im going into my bunker in the woods Craftworlders got by because they were like self sufficent space cruiseships and didnt have a whole lot contact with the wider empire except for trade. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 18:41
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For a while I tried to maintain a spreadsheet of recommended WH books from this thread, in some sort of continuity order but the wheels have come off. I need to perform a Great Reconciliation and get this sorted out so I can start buying again.
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Aug 6, 2018 18:46
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Dick Trauma posted:For a while I tried to maintain a spreadsheet of recommended WH books from this thread, in some sort of continuity order but the wheels have come off. I need to perform a Great Reconciliation and get this sorted out so I can start buying again. Ah, roleplaying a Historitor I see
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Aug 6, 2018 18:56
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Immanentized posted:I thought those were the "back to the land" types. The craftworld ones were the Huguenots, long-distance truckers, or assorted hangers-on (including preppers) that would go on intentionally circuitous journeys away from the Eldar empire. Weren't the harlequins preppers, hoarding all the knowledge and such in safety and confidence for the inevitable fall.  hoarders, stashing everything they can get their hands on in a server somewhere in Eastern Europe accessible only via TOR network.
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Aug 6, 2018 19:07
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Slaves To Darkness was really loving good.
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Aug 7, 2018 06:11
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Man. I'm about 50%through the eisenhorn trilogy now. I read it years back, but I'd forgotten how insanely obvious it is that he's crossed the line and become a radical or worse as he kills loyal Throne Servants and consorts with the warp as he makes his way towards Quixos . How did I not catch this on my first read through?
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Aug 7, 2018 12:47
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Vadoc posted:Mostly exactly what the Dark Eldar have been doing but turned to 11. Until the Dark Eldar found out they could keep Slaanesh away by torturing people, then it was what the Dark Eldar where doing, turned down by 11 But yeah, the Dark Eldar only survived because they had started to live in the webway like freaks, so when all their worlds burned and trillions died, they could hide in the webway like cowards. The Dark Eldar are the last remnant of what pre-fall Eldar civilization looked like. 
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Aug 7, 2018 13:11
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And even then, the Dark Eldar had to stop using their psychic powers because otherwise Slaanish would notice them. So basically, pre-Fall Eldar were like Dark Eldar, except they wouldn't have to get up to flay the skin from your meat, the meat from your bones, the veins from the skin, and craft your bones into decorative tea cozies, all while keeping you alive and screaming.
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Aug 7, 2018 13:29
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A bit late but re: Tanith chat 5 pages ago.. My personal theory since everything is so centered on prophecies and the destinies of Gaunt and to a large degree, Milo (Milo being mentioned specifically in Sabbat Martyr), is that Tanith was burned specifically because the Ghosts have a central role in the victory in every foreseen outcome. It's probable that an Imperial victory was certain without the destruction of Tanith and that destroying it muddled the odds a bit. Or it's a self fulfilling prophecy and the destruction of Tanith is what leads to an Imperial victory and some chaos sorcerer read it wrong.
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Aug 7, 2018 21:41
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Or it's a long-con thing, and they were just trying to prevent those Tanith snipers turning up on Cadia several hundred years late 
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Aug 7, 2018 21:56
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Oblivion Knight is a good tryhard title for a person im surprised there wasn't already a thing in 40k named that, prior to the introduction of the silent sisters
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Aug 7, 2018 23:15
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I caught an interview with Abnett on the black library Facebook and he said Milo and Sabbat will be coming back along with another character we haven’t seen in a long time. He also said Bequin 2 and 3 are basically next on the list once the Siege of Terra is done which they are working on now.
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Aug 8, 2018 07:21
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That Ciaphas Cain novel mentioned earlier with the Tau leaning planet with Genestealers on it, actually has several imperial officers including an inquisitor state that the shoot all Xenos on sight rule is stupid and they don't get why it's a thing when it's ignored half the time. Mentioning stuff like trade and the occasional alliance with the Tau and that many worlds hire Kroot Mercenaries. Hell the Imperium officers state they are actually not willing to fight the Tau over the world they are currently on. As it's largely worthless, and the soliders and guns could be used better elsewhere. The only issue is that they just don't want to give the world to the Tau and seem like pushovers. (Due to the issues with the Genestealers the Tau end up giving up on the world as it turns out they were also unwilling to fight over the world.)
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Aug 9, 2018 05:58
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Immanentized posted:I feel like this is one thing GW/Black library have addressed sufficiently, and explicitly in some of the Eldar and a couple of the Chaos novels- what led to the fall wasn't orgies in the sense of your late-night skinimax show, it was like harvesting your kids' for blood and intestines because you thought it'd sound super sweet on your mandolin framed by the ribs of the family pet. Once you were done with your musical interlude, you'd go out with the other eldar couples and see what's going on in the neighborhood. This is a thing of beauty, by the way. Just so I'm clear in my head with the timeline (yeah right, clear timelines in WH) - Humanity has a pant-shittingly vast empire with amazing technology (but not really an empire as no centralised emperor yet). Golden age. - Eldar go too far with the drugs and hookers and Event Horizon a chunk of the galaxy tearing a new rear end in a top hat in space - The psychic backwash of the tearing of a new rear end in a top hat in the space cuts all of humanity off from eachother - Humanity is fractured due to warp storms, some regress to medieval castles and poo poo, others are tech advanced, plenty get wiped out as they have no support - The storms die down, the Emperor pops up and says "peekaboo!", kicks humanity's rear end into gear and launches the crusade to reclaim the galaxy So a few questions... 1. Where the flying gently caress was the emperor during this golden age? In 31k he's tinkering with old tech and figuring out what it all does, but wasn't he around while humanity is living in it's unicorns and rainbows utopia? 3D printing agriculture and poo poo? 2. The minor footnote or mankind almost being wiped out in a galaxy wide Skynet rising was pre-fall of the eldar so must have been before the golden age, right? But AI was banned by a decree from the Emperor, so... had the emperor already showed his face before the crusade? Was he part of the fight against the AIs? If not, WTF was he doing? Did he just impose his ban on earth while building his armies and then spread the word to ban toasters as he conquered worlds? "Sorry, you can't use the cappuccino machine anymore, please use this lobotomised child with it's arm replaced with a spout. Also, don't worship me as a god" (displays god-like powers and demands fealty) I know "unreliable narration" is a keystone of WH and the Emperor himself may not know the answers. I haven't read the book with Malcador the SillyCunt throwing random plot changing bombs at a dying dude (and it sounds like an annoying book designed to purposely muddy the waters for drama), but the timeline has always been a bit foggy when you have major chapters in mankind's history summed up with a footnote. "Yeah, we were totally nearly wiped out by AI, but we got over it. Oh, and there were also men of stone this other time... so moving on"
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Aug 9, 2018 07:58
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From what I understand, the birth of Slaneesh happened before humanity even had space travel. I may be mistaken, one of the lore masters in the thread can probably point you in the right direction.
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Aug 9, 2018 09:47
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Chewbaccanator posted:From what I understand, the birth of Slaneesh happened before humanity even had space travel. Nah, the human and eldar golden ages occur at the same time. The 'birth pangs' of Slaanesh are the warp storms that cut the human worlds off from each other and cause the dark age. The actual birth clears up the storms and gets everything moving again, [Edit] Golden age humanity was destroyed by the one-two punch of the machine uprising and the warp storms, plus betrayal by various xeno allies. ZeusJupitar fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Aug 9, 2018 |
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Aug 9, 2018 09:59
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If I remember right the first psykers also show up at that point which served to make things worse.
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Aug 9, 2018 14:32
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Yeah, human history is pretty messed up. According to unreliable narrator stuff, the emperor was rolling around in the background trying to guide humanity through its golden age towards becoming a psychic race. This coincided with the Eldar having their society implode in a Galactic blood orgy. Eldar society was already ancient and was done, humanity was the new hotness. The emperor's plan was coming to fruition with the emergence of psychics and the genetic crafting of the Navigators. Communication and travel across the void was possible, STCs were giving humanity the power to set up wherever they wanted. Then the Fall and suddenly the dude who was able to bend forks with his mind turns into a portal to hell and there are demons spewing forth flaying flesh from bones and raping humans in whichever hole is most traumatising. My own guess about why the Dark age caused such a huge issue is that the emperor was never a hands on guy. He was an influencer and counselor who responded to the collapse of society by grabbing anyone he could get ahold of with talent or resources and personally trying to recreate humanity's knowledge. He's the analogy of a polymath who has to deal with a nuclear winter and societal collapse. Even if you're a brilliant scientist and academic, you don't bother learning how to wire a toaster or know how get a solar power set up to run your gene looms after a greater Daemon ate the nuclear power station
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Aug 9, 2018 15:36
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There's some suggestion that the Emperor doesn't have any innate talents himself and his genius stems from the people around him. When he examines Angron he has the best Mechanicus expert in genetics and bionics come to his lab, but he doesn't actually do anything there, he just watches the Emperor. So my take on that is the Emperor needed him there because he doesn't know poo poo about what he's doing but he was able to channel his talents psychically in order to do the job.
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Aug 9, 2018 15:48
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Demiurge4 posted:There's some suggestion that the Emperor doesn't have any innate talents himself and his genius stems from the people around him. When he examines Angron he has the best Mechanicus expert in genetics and bionics come to his lab, but he doesn't actually do anything there, he just watches the Emperor. So my take on that is the Emperor needed him there because he doesn't know poo poo about what he's doing but he was able to channel his talents psychically in order to do the job. As the Chaos Gods draw on their followers emotions the Emperor (as the god of humanity) draws on the communal power of humanity? That sounds dangerously close to a hive mind and communism...
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Aug 9, 2018 15:59
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Demiurge4 posted:There's some suggestion that the Emperor doesn't have any innate talents himself and his genius stems from the people around him. When he examines Angron he has the best Mechanicus expert in genetics and bionics come to his lab, but he doesn't actually do anything there, he just watches the Emperor. So my take on that is the Emperor needed him there because he doesn't know poo poo about what he's doing but he was able to channel his talents psychically in order to do the job. But Land wasn't specifically a genetic and bionics dude, he was there for the archaeotech aspect of things, Emps wanted to know if there was a technological precedent for the nails, not that Angron was on his way out. I think one thing that IS established is that the Emperor does have some significant or forgotten insight into genetic manipulation and modification, but it's limited to his own experience and/or experimentation. It's why Cawl was able to improve on the astartes genetics package, and there are 3 different story lines in the heresy series about Primarchs or apothecaries messing with geneseed.
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Aug 9, 2018 16:25
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I like the other explanation they hint at ocassionally and is my personal head-canon. The whole Emperor has been around since ancient mesopotamia secretly guiding mankind story is total BS, and he is in fact a late Golden Age experiment that got loose in the destruction that ended that age and decided to take over.
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Aug 9, 2018 16:44
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Deptfordx posted:I like the other explanation they hint at ocassionally and is my personal head-canon. The whole Emperor has been around since ancient mesopotamia secretly guiding mankind story is total BS, and he is in fact a late Golden Age experiment that got loose in the destruction that ended that age and decided to take over. Or he was a perpetual from ancient Mesopotamia that just kinda bumble through history until he used some golden age tech to enter the warp and become a pants shittingly powerful psyker.
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Aug 9, 2018 21:26
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Deptfordx posted:I like the other explanation they hint at ocassionally and is my personal head-canon. The whole Emperor has been around since ancient mesopotamia secretly guiding mankind story is total BS, and he is in fact a late Golden Age experiment that got loose in the destruction that ended that age and decided to take over. Expanding on that I always figured he was the last of the men of gold. 3rd Edition Rulebook posted:"And so it was that in the First Age of Man, the Golden Age, there is the Emperor Unseen and unheralded he prepares the Old Earth for the coming of Mankind and he watches and he waits. He is joined by the First Men of the Golden Race, fine of limb and strong of mind, yet still the Emperor is content to wait in shadow. To watch and learn from Mankind, the Golden Race spreads across the face of Old Earth, multiplying and establishing Order and Civilisation on the anarchy of Nature. In time, the Second Men of the Stone Race appear, and in their wake come many miracles and marvels of technology that strengthen to Sone Men’s power, but are also harnessed by those of th Golden Race. Although physically inferior to the Golden Race, and not of philosophical temperament and disposition, the Stone Men have in them the conjurations of great artifices and mechanisms. In time, the Golden Race looks to the stars to expand their dominion. The Stone Race builds great machines of power that send both Men of Stone and Men of Gold into the Ether. However, once the burgeoning race of Mankind has taken its first steps into the greater cosmos, the Golden Race dwindles in influence through their dependence on the artifices of the Stone Race. This the Golden Age comes to an end and the Stone Men prevail."
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Aug 9, 2018 21:30
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I forget the book, but in one of them ollanius pile discuses meeting the man who would become the emperor for the first time outside of the gates at Nineveh. They briefly discuss what it means to be a perpetual and the emperor fails to convince him that he should be doing worthwhile stuff with his gift.
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Aug 9, 2018 21:49
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Nuclear War posted:Man. I'm about 50%through the eisenhorn trilogy now. I read it years back, but I'd forgotten how insanely obvious it is that he's crossed the line and become a radical or worse as he kills loyal Throne Servants and consorts with the warp as he makes his way towards Quixos . How did I not catch this on my first read through? We don't notice it because Gregor himself doesn't notice it, and we're seeing the story through his eyes. Every step is justified. Every death is self-defense. Every taste of power is controllable. Until it isn't. The whole trilogy is exactly what Pontius Glaw was taunting Eisenhorn with....the descent of a Puritan into a Radical. We even see the endpoint in Quixos himself, a guy wielding a soul eating demon blade about to massacre millions or billions of Imperials in the hope of quelling the Eye of Terror. And even after seeing Quixos' fate, after killing the guy himself, Gregor still ends up all alone, his only remaining ally the demonhost he once swore to destroy, kept alive by warp magic and hate. It's a masterclass in how seductive Chaos is, even to those sworn to combat it. No horseshit "Hey Luke, how'd you like to join the Dark Side while I kill your sister and all your friends" half-rear end Dark Side seduction like Lazy Emperor Palpatine in RotJ. Falling to Chaos isn't usually one huge leap. It's hundreds or thousands of tiny decisions that pull you ever closer to the edge of the cliff until you fall off to your doom. Even Pontius Glaw, whose ill fated tampering with a warp artifact sealed his fate, still took a bunch of steps to get there. After all, he was only in the position to get the artifact in the first place because he was indulging in slave ownership and bloodsports. That's not a hobby one just picks up right after leaving the scholum. You kind of have to work your way through a bunch of sins to get there. The hell of it is, that Glaw is mostly right. Every Inquisitor we see either dies young, or gets corrupted by what they fight as they go along. Even Ravenor is making pacts with "My Lord Farseer" before even the end of Eisenhorn's books! The only question is how much good can you accomplish before you fall off that cliff.
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Aug 9, 2018 22:44
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I was on the Audible app because I heard it had a bunch of Warhammer audiobooks and dramas for cheap(er). I was surprised to find they had they both Hammerhal and Other Stories and Crusade and Other Stories for $5.50 each. Considering that's like 30 combined hours of Black Library, I got it, and I've been surprised by how much I've liked Hammerhal so far. It's done a pretty good job of setting up the tonal differences between Age of Sigmar and 40,000. Even the Chaos Gods feel different, which I can't quite decide if I like or not. I might pick up some more of Josh Reynolds AoS stuff after this. That said, I imagine that Abnett and ADB's contributions to Crusades will blow it out of the water, as I love their stuff.
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Aug 9, 2018 23:19
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jng2058 posted:
Except Rorken, right? I guess Field Operatives are more at risk than a Lord at his desk
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Aug 9, 2018 23:51
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Nuclear War posted:Except Rorken, right? I guess Field Operatives are more at risk than a Lord at his desk Which one was Rorken, Vaults of Terra?
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Aug 10, 2018 00:31
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On the subject of Inquisitors, how's 'Horusian Wars'? Almost done with Nightlords, need a new book.
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Aug 10, 2018 00:39
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susan posted:On the subject of Inquisitors, how's 'Horusian Wars'? Almost done with Nightlords, need a new book. I'm working through book 2 now, I like it, not as well written as Eisenhorn/Ravenor, but full of character and a decent 40k-themed mystery. Unrelated: New 40k short series fan-effort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7UuKrLrEqU
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Aug 10, 2018 01:48
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