|
Schadenboner posted:Speaking of, is the condition of Abnett in re: he appendectomy known? Through his Facebook (eww I know) it appears he is at home and on the mend. Going to be a story about some guard or Inquisitor getting appendicitis in the works I bet.
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 23:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 14:32 |
|
|
Biplane posted:I know I brought it up but can you please stop talking about Space Marine cum. out of context statement
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 23:22
|
|
|
Gravitas Shortfall posted:EDIT: I just checked, and the Horus Heresy only lasted for NINE YEARS? For a galaxy spanning war? That's loving stupid. Technically a lot of the galaxy during the Crusade still wasn't conquered, much less the current state of things in 40k. The traitors managed to get a leg up early on with the Istvaan massacre nearly wiping out the Salamanders, Iron Hands, and Raven Guard, but the rest of the war was focused on driving towards Terra for a decapitation. There's a lot of battles that were fought to shore up the flanks of the traitor advance, to get resources for the traitors, to harass traitor supply lines, to harry the traitor rearguard. While 40k scales are huge, 30k scales were also huge - Legions of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands, the regular humans. Not to mention whole Titan legions and Knight houses committed to a single engagement. But the war was always the traitor Primarchs versus their hated father and they wanted him dead - what happened afterwards was to be decided afterwards. Plus the Chaos Gods had a hand in it that they wanted the Emperor dead and gone - with Horus being essentially a warp puppet by this point, the daemon primarchs in thrall, the Word Bearers being true believers, it was easy to drive them towards the Emperor.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 23:26
|
|
|
MariusLecter posted:Bayard is dismissive and condescending of the humans at Helsreach, Grimaldus tells him to stop being such an rear end in a top hat and have some humility. Ehhh Grimaldus is a dick to humans, but imo he hates most in other spehss mahrines what he hates most in himself.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 23:30
|
|
|
SerCypher posted:Some of the novels are grimdark to the point of satire, and Cain's view is a good counterpoint. 
Improbable Lobster fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Aug 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2020 23:38
|
|
|
I mean the Imperium has lasted thousand of years longer than any previous human government. It's clearly stable. As that comic sort of implies it shouldn't be stable though. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too, the Imperium is so grimdark in some stories there is no way it could function for a few centuries, let along millennia. The Cain memoirs depiction of an extremely corrupt yet still somewhat reasonable place at least makes a little sense. Where warp storms are a problem but rare, demons can be overcome by force of will, and there are bars and taverns on planets for Soldiers to do R&R and get drunk at. The regiments even get regular reinforcements to train rather than being ground down to nubs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 00:09
|
|
|
The imperium being a horrible grinding bureaucracy that's rotting from the inside is not in fact an endorsement of the imperium ffs
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 00:19
|
|
|
Improbable Lobster posted:The imperium being a horrible grinding bureaucracy that's rotting from the inside is not in fact an endorsement of the imperium ffs I mean arguably it is on the part of Games Workshop because it's shown as something that can endure for 10,000+ years and nothing else human has. That's why I don't really like the super grimdark stories because they sort of encourage the idea that facism works. Since in the Imperium's case it clearly has. Every terrible story and tale and how the Imperium is this horrible soul crushing thing is followed by the fact that it is in fact still around. So yeah, I hope they make the Imperium less soul crushing moving forward with primarchs coming back.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 00:34
|
|
|
My preferred read is that yes, taking literally every tool used for control of a populace and extending it to hit a critical mass, a fascist theocracy founded on human supremacy can stand the test of time for longer than usual. This is not an endorsement. 10,000 years of loving awful is in fact worse than the ups and downs of the normal life and death of civilisations. Think of the Imperium not as a modern nation, but instead as an ancient monarchy or empire. Those usually died when their rulers died. The Imperium dies with the Emperor.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 00:49
|
|
|
It's probably worth mentioning that the "human" empire is being lead by an undead warp-creature and has been for 10,000+ years. What's human about the Imperium is the self- serving hierarchy that filled the void when the Greatest Man* left the stage. It's our greed, violence, fear, desires, and panic writ large and imposed, at gunpoint, upon the universe.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 00:51
|
|
|
I agree with all of that, but at the same time you're also supposed to joke and have fun with the setting and make models of the armies and read about the people and play games with them. I think it's no suprise that there was and is a big problem with facists and warhammer 40k. Even if the message is that this oppressive xenophobic regime is bad, 80% of players are still playing as the oppressive xenophobic regime. I would prefer if things were a little less facist-adjacent in the setting moving forward, and I think Games Workshop is realizing the same thing as the Imperium seems to be getting a little less Judge Dredd every year. So yeah it's one of the reasons I like the Cain books, since it's just shown as a giant sprawling bureaucracy that's more incompetent and uncaring than malevolent. The fact that in the first book there are human colonists with tau braids and blue face paints shouting at the Imperial Guard and calling them murderers without immediately getting shot is so "live and let live" that it feels like a different setting. SerCypher fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Aug 14, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 00:59
|
|
|
SerCypher posted:The fact that in the first book there are human colonists with tau braids and blue face paints shouting at the Imperial Guard and calling them murderers without immediately getting shot is so "live and let live" that it feels like a different setting. That's mainly because if the Guard did shoot them they'd be immediately murked by the local Tau forces. The trick with the Imperium is that it's in a constant cycle of growth and decay. A world gets a run of good leaders, anchors a stable subsector or even sector for a few centuries, the various adepta move in and start building cathedrals, it turns into a hive world, goes decadent, everything around it goes to poo poo, leaving a vacuum for the next bright spot of hope to fill for a few centuries. All those nice planets around where Eisenhorn lived ? In 500 or a 100 years a rogue trader will be picking over their carcasses for trade goods to sell on worlds that hadn't even been colonized when we saw them in the novels. The Imperium only looks like a monolith that's fraying at the edges because the various adepta are good at the one thing any bureaucracy or bacteria is good at: reproducing. Internally it's a seething mess of civilization and decay acting in endless cycles, just with the same architectural styles throughout. Armageddon has been repopulated what, three times now ?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 01:34
|
|
|
First by Orks, then by humans, then by humans again, then by Daemons.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 02:23
|
|
|
Rites of Passage is as good as advertised.moths posted:What's human about the Imperium is the self- serving hierarchy that filled the void when the Greatest Man* left the stage. It's our greed, violence, fear, desires, and panic writ large and imposed, at gunpoint, upon the universe. Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Aug 14, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 02:43
|
|
|
Telsa Cola posted:The one thing that never ever got touched on again after the Iron Snakes books was that space marine blood acts as some sort of weird longevity and anti-radiation drug when given to humans. I'm pretty sure this comes up in Spear of the Emperor, a very recent book many in the thread have enjoyed.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 03:09
|
|
|
40k is at its best when it's clear that humanity is a lone, flickering candle on the vast stage of an uncaring universe. The Eldar are our ghost of Christmas Future, and we're defined by our arrogance that we'll somehow do better than our betters.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 03:13
|
|
|
If anything I would have thought spacemarine blood to be super caustic and bad for you. moths posted:40k is at its best when it's clear that humanity is a lone, flickering candle on the vast stage of an uncaring universe. :eldarsay:
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 03:15
|
|
|
abrosheen posted:I'm pretty sure this comes up in Spear of the Emperor, a very recent book many in the thread have enjoyed. Spoiler the passage?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 03:37
|
|
|
abrosheen posted:I'm pretty sure this comes up in Spear of the Emperor, a very recent book many in the thread have enjoyed. How about space Marines absorbing memories by eating brains or USB sticks?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 04:14
|
|
|
Heretic Burger.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 04:26
|
|
|
SerCypher posted:I mean the Imperium has lasted thousand of years longer than any previous human government. It's clearly stable. As that comic sort of implies it shouldn't be stable though. I would recommend everybody read Bloodlines, the new Wraight crime novel, to get one of the best depictions of how the Imperium actually works for average citizens that has been written so far. It does a great job of showing how the Imperium could actually work and addresses a lot of what you are saying above. SerCypher posted:Haha that's amazing. Is that where Juve-nat treatments come from? Bloodlines also explores this exact subject. Rejuve treatments can be cultured/made in a lab but it is incredibly expensive, time consuming, very few have access to the equipment required, and it isn't easy to mass produce. On the other hand, you can just strap some poor citizen nobody is going to miss to a chair and rig them up to slowly extract the stem cells from their body while also giving them just enough nutrients to continue living. It's incredibly painful and they won't die for a very long time. I'm sure you can imagine where most treatments are actually coming from. A great parallel to the golden throne. Seriously, Bloodlines is awesome. Read it. Arquinsiel posted:Rites of Passage is as good as advertised. I've said it a ton in this thread and I'll say it again: Everybody should read this book. I am very excited for Mike Brooks upcoming Ork POV novel. I also just listened to Dredge Runners, the crime audio drama that dropped last week, and it is very good. It's about a Ratling and Ogryn who deserted the guard and do crime for hire in poo poo part of the hive city. The ogryn is awesome. He got shot in the head and as a result he is still a dumb Ogryn who does dumb Ogryn things, but he also says very smart things that he doesn't actually understand like: quote:I am merely trying to assess the situation. A mental calculation made all the more challenging by my genetic pre-disposition towards violence which is urging me to resolve this situation by pulling your arms and legs off. It also is broken up by imperial radio propaganda broadcasts done in 1930s news bulletin style.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 05:36
|
|
|
Okay the radio thing sold me.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 05:41
|
|
|
Telsa Cola posted:Okay the radio thing sold me. Yeah that sounds incredible.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 05:54
|
|
|
SerCypher posted:I mean arguably it is on the part of Games Workshop because it's shown as something that can endure for 10,000+ years and nothing else human has.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 05:56
|
|
|
Speaking of Cain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRozBAIbaG4 Delightful. Only thing missing was stinklines on Jurgen.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 09:34
|
|
|
SerCypher posted:I mean arguably it is on the part of Games Workshop because it's shown as something that can endure for 10,000+ years and nothing else human has. The imperium being less soul crushing would be an endorsement of fascism as a "necessary evil." You really don't get satire huh
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 10:21
|
|
|
Telsa Cola posted:Spoiler the passage? Note that this isn't explicitly describing what you described regarding life extension, but it suggests beneficial effects. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. The passages below are from chapter XIV of Spear of the Emperor. Here is the first passage where the injection happens: "The [astartes] druid injected her with a cocktail of combat stimms and his own blood, both to act as a painkiller and adrenal amplifier. When he offered me the same, I accepted it gladly. The nausea from my broken skull only faded to a background pulse rather than vanishing completely, but I could at least stand without vomiting." Here's a passage from further in the chapter: "We tried to keep pace with them, while Tolmach's blood-stimm narcotic cocktail sloshed through our veins. One moment my skin was painfully sensitive to the touch, the next I felt numb enough to take a las-round and keep running." I think I remember more passages later in the book where that character is thinking about the blood injection and what effects it had, which your post reminded me of, but that would be harder to locate than the excerpts I posted, if I'm not imagining it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 14:19
|
|
|
drat someone stole my idea about a ratling and an ogryn who do crime.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 14:38
|
|
|
The Cain books are literally in-universe Imperial propaganda, they portray the Imperium in the best light and despite that it’s still pretty awful. I don’t think enough people understand that 40k is not supposed to be a logical and consistent universe, everything in the setting is built to be horrible and justify continual brutal war (and more importantly to sell plastic space men). It’s a setting created by nihilistic British punks in the 80s based on nihilistic comics from the 70s. The satire of it all has been stretched thin but it’s still at the core. You can’t say things like “The galaxy is a so big there must be some good places.” Because the setting doesn’t support that, the setting only supports things being awful. Anything that appears good and clean and safe is either a facade covering deep corruption or fleeting and set up for utter destruction just to reinforce how awful thing are. It says it right in the original Rogue Trader intro: To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 15:24
|
|
|
The Cain books are his diaries collated for the Inquisition and kept under lock and key.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 15:35
|
|
|
It depends how you define a "good" place. I'm sure there are plenty of worlds where you can live a good life, and that during your lifetime it'll remain fine. Eventually it might become awful, or some people might have it worse than others, but at the very least not every world is as awful as Terra is even for the wealthy and powerful. I take "good" in a Warhammer context to mean that it's not grimdark for literally everyone, the top 0.000001% on the planet can live life like we can. Also, I thought the Cain books weren't in-universe propaganda, Cain's memoirs were taken in by the Inquisition, not published right? I might be wrong there.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 15:43
|
|
|
Again I have to recommend people discussing this read Bloodlines. As usual, Wraight has done a good job of clarifying something that always generates a lot of debate. The main character lives like a very poor person here who lives in the projects, but for his hive city it's basically upper middle class and he is extremely lucky. His nutrient bars are flavored with high fructose corn syrup instead of being flavorless/poo poo flavored and some of his appliances in his hab unit actually work. He visits the area the richest people live in and they live like our billionaires except it's still poo poo because they have to contend with assassin's and crime lords and all kinds of people constantly trying to bring them down.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 16:01
|
|
|
Reading Bloodlines now and it is good so far. Manflayer was a great end to Reynolds' Bile books and now I'm kind of bummed he left. There's still Apocalypse and Fulgrim I guess. Harlequins always seem to make thing worse for everyone. They should probably knock that poo poo off.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 16:11
|
|
|
Hot take Harlequins are the worst plotline of any book because then I have to read more ~mysterious~ whiny elf deus ex machina bullshit. This isn’t a spoiler they suck in every novel that they are in.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 16:42
|
|
Cat Army
|
Fluff question. If the Shadowsword is so effective at killing Titans why doesn't the Imperium invest in superheavy tanks? Is the Shadowsword STC appreciably rarer than Titan STCs and it's a matter of production over practicality?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 16:47
|
|
|
D-Pad posted:I would recommend everybody read Bloodlines, the new Wraight crime novel, to get one of the best depictions of how the Imperium actually works for average citizens that has been written so far. It does a great job of showing how the Imperium could actually work and addresses a lot of what you are saying above. Cool, I will have to get a hold of it. I love little side stories in a core universe. Arcsquad12 posted:Fluff question. If the Shadowsword is so effective at killing Titans why doesn't the Imperium invest in superheavy tanks? Is the Shadowsword STC appreciably rarer than Titan STCs and it's a matter of production over practicality? Titans and Knights are so comparatively rare that it almost never comes up. Also only a few forgeworlds can make Shadowswords. So I think they just make as many as they can and spread them out where they think they might need them. 'Invest' is a loaded word with the imperium because everything they know how to make they're already making as much of as possible. Any STC machine they have they're dumping raw materials into. If they decide they want to up the production of something and all the machines that make them are maxed, unless it's something simple that they can produce by other means (like lasguns or something) then the only option is to retake a forge world or discover a machine that can do it. That's why the Adeptus Mechanicus are always scurrying around putting their little mechadendrites on everything.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 17:11
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:Fluff question. If the Shadowsword is so effective at killing Titans why doesn't the Imperium invest in superheavy tanks? Is the Shadowsword STC appreciably rarer than Titan STCs and it's a matter of production over practicality? The imperium does, it has a lot more super heavy tanks than it does titans. However, there’s 3 problems with going nuts building shadowswords: 1. they’re basically a giant tank destroyer. They’re optimized around killing 1 thing: big enemy vehicles. It can’t break and destroy 10,000 infantry and 100 enemy tanks the way a Reaver or Warlord can, it would get annihilated. 2. It’s reactor is tiny compared to a titan. This means it can only drive around at very low speeds while it’s charging it’s volcano cannon. It’s not a high mobility platform that can shoot and scoot while firing. 3. It lacks the defenses that a titan has. It has good armor, but no void shields. It’s best used as an ambush predator. It’s a specialized heavy-killer, you can’t use it to break thousands of orks or do urban street fighting against heretics the way you can use a titan.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 17:23
|
|
|
Improbable Lobster posted:The imperium being less soul crushing would be an endorsement of fascism as a "necessary evil." You really don't get satire huh This article came out a few days ago and someone posted it in the TG thread: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/...pVfWsOjrMr0zHHI It's interesting because it's basically exactly what I said. Modern 40k can't decide what it wants to be. The lore and story of the past decade or so has essentially lost most of its satirical quality for the Imperium. They either need to make the Imperium back to being comically evil and incompetent, or make its worst excesses a thing of the past and make the Modern Imperium more of a flickering candle of hope in a cruel universe. If you look at things like the new Primaris Marines and how heroically they're sculpted and it is not comical at all. They are meant to be heroic and cool and neat. They seem to be moving more towards a less dark and less facist Imperium though, with putting black ultramarines on the cover of novels and otherwise trying to get more diversity in the models. There is no point in worrying about diversity if the Imperium is supposed to be a parody of space nazis. My prediction is the new Avenging Son Ultramarines book is going to have an extremely hopeful bent, and not be very Grimdark at all. We shall see though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 17:37
|
|
|
HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:It depends how you define a "good" place. I'm sure there are plenty of worlds where you can live a good life, and that during your lifetime it'll remain fine. Eventually it might become awful, or some people might have it worse than others, but at the very least not every world is as awful as Terra is even for the wealthy and powerful. I take "good" in a Warhammer context to mean that it's not grimdark for literally everyone, the top 0.000001% on the planet can live life like we can. Nice planets only exist so that it's more tragic when the necron tomb under the hive awakens during a chaos invasion on one hemisphere while an ork rok plows into the other hemisphere
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 19:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 14:32 |
|
|
Arbite posted:Speaking of Cain: Incredible song/tune
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2020 19:44
|
|
