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Wait, was there an astronomicon before the Emperor revealed himself?
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Jul 4, 2013 03:32
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Kind of... in that he WAS it.Demiurge4 posted:I thought that was supposed to be the Astronomican? Tyranids aren't particularly susceptible to chaos.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:59
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Arquinsiel posted:Kind of... in that he WAS it. So he was just secretly being an incredibly bright warp beacon during the entire age of technology?
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Jul 4, 2013 04:23
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No; warp travel itself does not require the Astronomican, and the warp used to be less turbulent during the DAoT. In the present time of m41, following the Astronomican is the safest (and more importantly, most reliable) way for Imperial ships to travel, and its light dimming out or flickering means countless ships getting lost; along with the astropathic network, the beacon is what allows the unified Imperium to function considering its scope.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:37
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VanSandman posted:So he was just secretly being an incredibly bright warp beacon during the entire age of technology? As part of the Emperor's prep for the Great Crusade he reconquered Earth and set up the Astronomicon powered by the adeptus astropath division. They sacrificed psykers to keep it running. The golden throne was designed to open the webway which would have removed the need for the astronomicon, but when the Emperor was mortally wounded he had the machine changed to use himself to power the thing. It existed pre-heresy and onward. In the dark age of technology and time before that Humans simply ruled too hard to need the thing.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:40
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The Emperor doesn't power the Astronomican, he manages it, like a conductor at a orchestra. Most/all the power comes from the psykers sacrificed to it. Presumably he was able to do this quite remotely while active during the great crusade, but as he's more dead than alive it's gradually fading. The Golden Throne serves the same function it did back when it was created, which is to administer the webway entrance being built in the lab under the Imperial Palace, and by that I mean keeping it closed since Magnus hosed things up and there's a whole lot of warp just itching to get in. The modifications made post-Horus are to provide life support for Big E, and have little to do with the managing of the Astronomican.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:47
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There are a few references to navigating by the Emperor's warp presence during the Great Crusade in some of the old books I read, but it seems like a completely insane prospect given the nature of the warp and, you know, him MOVING and all.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:57
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Arquinsiel posted:There are a few references to navigating by the Emperor's warp presence during the Great Crusade in some of the old books I read, but it seems like a completely insane prospect given the nature of the warp and, you know, him MOVING and all. Yeah, I never got that. You can just about figure out how the Astronomicon would work - relative position for X axis, doppler shift for Y, and assuming it pulses or something, ping rate for Z. But all that requires it to be stationary (or as close as you get in galactic space). If he is moving with it you can tell where you are with respect to him, but unless you know the exact coordinate he is at at a given moment you can't use it to navigate.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:18
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The astronomicon existed in the great crusade, it was on Terra, so it did not move.
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Jul 4, 2013 08:24
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The fluff is also really confusingly written on this point: the Astronomicon is powered by psykers taken to Earth who have their lifespan significantly shortened by being strapped into the thing, but those are different to the thousands of psykers sacrificed every day to the Golden Throne to keep the Emperor alive.
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Jul 4, 2013 09:42
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Alchenar posted:The fluff is also really confusingly written on this point: the Astronomicon is powered by psykers taken to Earth who have their lifespan significantly shortened by being strapped into the thing, but those are different to the thousands of psykers sacrificed every day to the Golden Throne to keep the Emperor alive. Let's face it, getting tapped for the Astronomicon choir was never a good thing at any point; before, after, or during the Great Crusade. Shutting down the Astronomicon would be like a modern day American advocating the destruction of the interstate highway system, the national rail network, and every airport capable of landing a cargo plane of any significant capacity. This doesn't cover warp-related effects, which would be systemic in any society in that setting.
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Jul 4, 2013 09:57
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Nephilm posted:No; warp travel itself does not require the Astronomican, and the warp used to be less turbulent during the DAoT. In the present time of m41, following the Astronomican is the safest (and more importantly, most reliable) way for Imperial ships to travel, and its light dimming out or flickering means countless ships getting lost; along with the astropathic network, the beacon is what allows the unified Imperium to function considering its scope. Ok this answered my question. One more, though. So until Slaanesh was born the Eldar had a huge empire that conquered most of the galaxy... Yet humanity was also at its technological peak, with countless worlds colonized. Why are there no mentions of gigantic gently caress-off pre-fall Eldar/Human battles? Or ship graveyards. Or anything, really.
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Jul 4, 2013 14:35
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VanSandman posted:Ok this answered my question. One more, though. So until Slaanesh was born the Eldar had a huge empire that conquered most of the galaxy... Yet humanity was also at its technological peak, with countless worlds colonized. Why are there no mentions of gigantic gently caress-off pre-fall Eldar/Human battles? Or ship graveyards. Or anything, really. There was a fire in the library. 
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Jul 4, 2013 14:57
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VanSandman posted:Ok this answered my question. One more, though. So until Slaanesh was born the Eldar had a huge empire that conquered most of the galaxy... Yet humanity was also at its technological peak, with countless worlds colonized. Why are there no mentions of gigantic gently caress-off pre-fall Eldar/Human battles? Or ship graveyards. Or anything, really. I think that a) It's a question of how big the galaxy really is and b) the Eldar basically not giving a gently caress about any other races because they considered themselves so superior. I'm sure there was some occasional conflict but the eldar could basically just fly around in the webway going wherever and if they found a planet with a bunch of humans on it they'd probably ignore it in the same way that we would probably pass on an apartment infested by cockroaches. There's just so many drat planets out there and who knows what exactly the Eldar could do as far as making planets liveable, they probably didn't even need to bother with humanity. Also maybe they were just super busy having a ton of sex and stuff, who knows.
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Jul 4, 2013 15:17
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An analogy that I like is that, without a Navigator, going through the Warp is like sailing your ship along the coastlines. It's slower but that's what you must do to avoid getting lost. If you have a Navigator, you can cut right across the ocean, saving valuable time. During the DAoT, the Warp was a less turbulent place, calm enough that Navigators could perceive the stars and other bits of realspace in order to navigate. After the AoS, it's all overcast and only the Astronomican can penetrate the murk. VanSandman posted:Ok this answered my question. One more, though. So until Slaanesh was born the Eldar had a huge empire that conquered most of the galaxy... Yet humanity was also at its technological peak, with countless worlds colonized. Why are there no mentions of gigantic gently caress-off pre-fall Eldar/Human battles? Or ship graveyards. Or anything, really. I think that the Eldar were as dependent on the Webway then as now. They didn't dare use Warp travel as they'd be gobbled up. There were plenty of planets with no Webway gates where humanity could settle on without being bothered.
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Jul 4, 2013 15:23
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Dan Abnett has started a new trilogy of books focusing on one of Eisenhorn's pet blanks, Beta Bequin. She has acquired this cuff that can switch her blank powers off, making her normal (thus temporarily giving her a soul - what philosophical implications!). I can understand the need for such a plot device, given that she's the protagonist of a spy thriller and she can't do much if everyone wants to puke in her presence, but this device takes away the curse of being a blank, and in the 41st millennium everything is a curse, even the blessings.
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Jul 4, 2013 15:31
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Baron Bifford posted:Dan Abnett has started a new trilogy of books focusing on one of Eisenhorn's pet blanks, Beta Bequin. She has acquired this cuff that can switch her blank powers off, making her normal (thus temporarily giving her a soul - what philosophical implications!). I can understand the need for such a plot device, given that she's the protagonist of a spy thriller and she can't do much if everyone wants to puke in her presence, but this device takes away the curse of being a blank, and in the 41st millennium everything is a curse, even the blessings. Frauka had the same device in Ravenor
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Jul 4, 2013 15:47
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I think it probably just limited her "blankness" to her actual body instead of a field projected around it, I don't know anything about the new books but I would guess this is the same thing.
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Jul 4, 2013 16:37
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Nope, when the cuff was active she could hear telepathic messages and could be mind-controlled. It completely reversed her blankness, giving her a soul.
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Jul 4, 2013 16:48
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Baron Bifford posted:Nope, when the cuff was active she could hear telepathic messages and could be mind-controlled. It completely reversed her blankness, giving her a soul. Yeah, I've always interpreted the "no soul" thing to be simply psykers not knowing what the gently caress is up with blanks. They can't sense Exorcists either, and Exorcists have been deliberately possessed and then thrown off the possession. I figure it's kind of like a black hole: The mass is there but it doesn't emit anything, you can only tell it exists because of how it effects the world around it.
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Jul 4, 2013 16:59
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The 'no soul' thing is based on the fact that presence in the warp is called a soul to link it easily to a concept most people understand, not that the presence in the warp is literally a soul as most people would understand it. It makes sense that a sufficiently powerful psyker could charge something up to fill the gap caused by the blanks lack of warp presence. Also Abnett always has and always will write 40k-lite, it's just his take on it.
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Jul 4, 2013 17:05
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Fellblade posted:The 'no soul' thing is based on the fact that presence in the warp is called a soul to link it easily to a concept most people understand, not that the presence in the warp is literally a soul as most people would understand it. Yeah, Eisenhorn and Ravenor are hardboiled detective slash techno-thrillers and the 'army of blanks' thing is a plot device to lessen the insidiousness and inherent unpredictability of the warp so it can better fit into the genre he's going for. There is precedence in the pre-heresy Sisters of Silence, though then again Abnett might have made those up too. I prefer to think that true blanks such as Culexis assassins are actually sociopaths, and what Abnett calls blanks are either lesser forms of this or else a form of psyker with an aberrant expression, similar to his other invention the 'mirror' psyker.
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Jul 4, 2013 17:40
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Cream_Filling posted:Yeah, Eisenhorn and Ravenor are hardboiled detective slash techno-thrillers and the 'army of blanks' thing is a plot device to lessen the insidiousness and inherent unpredictability of the warp so it can better fit into the genre he's going for. There is precedence in the pre-heresy Sisters of Silence, though then again Abnett might have made those up too. I think it's safe to assume that all Temple assassins are sociopaths, but it has nothing to do with having a soul or not.
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Jul 4, 2013 17:52
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Cream_Filling posted:I prefer to think that true blanks such as Culexis assassins are actually sociopaths, and what Abnett calls blanks are either lesser forms of this or else a form of psyker with an aberrant expression, similar to his other invention the 'mirror' psyker.
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Jul 4, 2013 18:36
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Baron Bifford posted:I think that the Eldar were as dependent on the Webway then as now. They didn't dare use Warp travel as they'd be gobbled up. There were plenty of planets with no Webway gates where humanity could settle on without being bothered. Fellblade posted:The 'no soul' thing is based on the fact that presence in the warp is called a soul to link it easily to a concept most people understand, not that the presence in the warp is literally a soul as most people would understand it.
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Jul 4, 2013 19:25
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Arquinsiel posted:It goes back further than that. Eldar and Humans have exchanged a lot of information over time, and they were always horrified that humans randomly turned up blank. For an Eldar to do it there's an actual mystical soul-selling deal with Slaanesh made. Sadly the Solitaire fluff has kind of been trimmed out of Harlequins a bit. When humans started mucking around with Culexus assassins they went NUTS, since they're not just blanks, they're effectively the opposite of a regular warp presence. In some ways, they're described as being line the warp shadow 'nids cast, but smaller. Originally it was implied that the pariah trait is unique to humans and might be due to the machinations of the Eldar's ancient enemies the Necrons trying to create anti-warp weapons because they were getting their asses kicked by warp magic and weaponized warp entities (the Eldar Gods and maybe also the Ork gods). But I think this has all been retconned out with the necron reboot.
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Jul 4, 2013 20:42
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Nope, Codex Assassins predates the Necron fluff entirely. I got the first WD with Necron rules for the same birthday as my Assassin's book, and there was no mention of Pariahs in the Necron army for another four years with the release of the 3rd ed Codex.
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Jul 4, 2013 22:29
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Arquinsiel posted:Nope, Codex Assassins predates the Necron fluff entirely. I got the first WD with Necron rules for the same birthday as my Assassin's book, and there was no mention of Pariahs in the Necron army for another four years with the release of the 3rd ed Codex. Codex Assassins doesn't speculate on the origins of the Culexus, though, beyond some Eldar dude implying only humans can create them and calling them psychic abominations. They say it's super rare but have no idea why it happens. Necrons were the first time they expanded on why, as part of their comprehensive "a C'tan did it" campaign where every single mystery in the setting gets attributed to the C'tan. Who are now all gone with the next edition.
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Jul 4, 2013 22:40
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Cream_Filling posted:Codex Assassins doesn't speculate on the origins of the Culexus, though, beyond some Eldar dude implying only humans can create them and calling them psychic abominations. They say it's super rare but have no idea why it happens. Necrons were the first time they expanded on why, as part of their comprehensive "a C'tan did it" campaign where every single mystery in the setting gets attributed to the C'tan. Who are now all gone with the next edition. Which is one of the best decisions GW ever made, fluff-wise, in my opinion. The C'tan were boring malevolent fuckers. The Necrons as warp-hating assholes are much more interesting without them.
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Jul 4, 2013 23:11
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Baron Bifford posted:The wikis I've read says that blanks come in degrees just like pyskers. On one end you have people like Bequin, whose aura of wrongness is mild and bearable. On the other extreme you have the Pariahs, who can feed on the energies of psykers and whose presence is intolerable even to a normal. I imagine that since humanity is portrayed as getting more and more psychic (psykic?) as time goes on, originally humans were almost all mild blanks like Bequin or the Tau. Like, if you took anyone from now forward into the 40k setting they'd be seen as a blank because even regular humans have evolved psyk sensitivity. That's why there's no one on Earth right now shooting lighting bolts and sprouting tentacles.
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Jul 5, 2013 00:26
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Cream_Filling posted:Codex Assassins doesn't speculate on the origins of the Culexus, though, beyond some Eldar dude implying only humans can create them and calling them psychic abominations. They say it's super rare but have no idea why it happens. Necrons were the first time they expanded on why, as part of their comprehensive "a C'tan did it" campaign where every single mystery in the setting gets attributed to the C'tan. Who are now all gone with the next edition.
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Jul 5, 2013 00:51
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VanSandman posted:Which is one of the best decisions GW ever made, fluff-wise, in my opinion. The C'tan were boring malevolent fuckers. The Necrons as warp-hating assholes are much more interesting without them. But now they use the webway, which makes no sense and annoys me irrationally, so it's kind of a two steps forward one step back kind of deal. But I agree, I like them as warp-hating grandpas. On the other hand, I took a gander at the latest Imperial Armour at a friend's house, and it kind of annoys me how comprehensively they win everything with zero effort, how the book takes all this time to set up an entire sector just to wreck all of it, and also how their flyers seem a little nuts.
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Jul 5, 2013 02:30
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Recent discussion has made me dying to read Pariah right now. One BL story idea I have is a blank who becomes an Inquisitor, which in my mind offers a lot of crazy possibilities. Only thing keeping me is the dreadful price... Has there been any books on the new Necrons yet?
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Jul 5, 2013 02:48
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Schneider Heim posted:Recent discussion has made me dying to read Pariah right now. One BL story idea I have is a blank who becomes an Inquisitor, which in my mind offers a lot of crazy possibilities. A blank probably wouldn't be targeted to be an inquisitor. They're far too useful as a tool for any inquisitor who finds them to want to give them up.
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Jul 5, 2013 02:54
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It feels like if The EMP just let Angron have his last stand / honorable death and recorded it with Servo-skulls the War Hounds would have been the most loyal of the legions. Angron would have been a martyr of loyalty to friends and humanity and the hounds would have been the line of defense for humanity. They could have been the legion standing their ground against the encrouching Nids. Instead he denied a man who was losing grip on himself and falling further and further into rage to control a legion of super human killers and infect them with his rage. The real mercy would have been to let him have his choosen death. He was damned by the nails with no hope of becoming himself again.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:11
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EyeRChris posted:It feels like if The EMP just let Angron have his last stand / honorable death and recorded it with Servo-skulls the War Hounds would have been the most loyal of the legions. Angron would have been a martyr of loyalty to friends and humanity and the hounds would have been the line of defense for humanity. They could have been the legion standing their ground against the encrouching Nids. But then you're down 1 of the 10 remaining priceless irreplaceable demigods. Also, the War Hounds were already one of the most loyal of the legions. Hence the name. In general, loyalty was not a concern before the Heresy and all the legions basically were only interested in trying harder to please their primarchs and emperor, though their approaches and values on what was important differed. Not that the Imperium even knew of the existence of the tyranids at that time. Also, the Crusade kept on rediscovering all sorts of miraculous new technologies and long-lost repositories of learning. You'd feel really dumb if you let one of your irreplaceable superhuman spirit-children die just to find the cure for his condition a few years later. It's like asking a father whether he'd let his terminally ill son commit suicide versus fighting it out and looking for a cure. Then there's the other angle that mercy is a luxury the Imperium can't afford, which is more in tune with latter 40k than the crusade era but it's till plenty present considering that they'll conquer by force anyone who doesn't peacefully integrate into the Imperium. I mean your perspective is also perfectly valid and true, but it's not as simple as just one view even with the limited information we have.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:28
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The reason the Emperor saved Angron is hubris. Jeez, it's kind of a theme, people.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:30
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I really wish some of the "lesser" legions would get a novel or two set during the Heresy. I'd love to see the Iron Hands' slow descent into self-loathing technophiles or the White Scars whatever. Are there any good Iron Hands or White Scars books besides Wrath of Iron?
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Jul 5, 2013 04:40
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Improbable Lobster posted:I really wish some of the "lesser" legions would get a novel or two set during the Heresy. I'd love to see the Iron Hands' slow descent into self-loathing technophiles or the White Scars whatever. There's an Iron Hands short story in one of the Horus Heresy anthologies, but it's a little weird and not great. Fulgrim is practically an Iron Hands book, though, and is really good. The Hunt for Voldorius is a White Scars book, but it kind of sucks.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:51
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Chris Wraight (who has a decent reputation round here) has a HH White Scars novel coming out at some point, they posted the cover art a while back on their Facebook page. Hunt for Voldorius is absolute garbage and should be avoided.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:57
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