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So I finished Godblight the other night which I think gets me all caught up on the current goings on (I haven't read The Wolftime but it sounds like I shouldn't?) and I have no idea what to read now. I guess I should probably get into the SoT books at this point since it seems like everybody likes most of them and I'm one of those weirdos that thinks dudes like Dorn are cool.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 11:04 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 04:13 |
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Benagain posted:I'm gonna be that guy really quick and point out that the Russian human wave thing wasn't real and every time it's repeated it boosts Nazi loser propaganda about why they got their poo poo pushed in. Russian tactics today.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 12:23 |
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Anyone mind posting or pm-ing me spoilers about what happens to Lotara Sarrin in the newest book?
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 14:19 |
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Laughing Zealot posted:Anyone mind posting or pm-ing me spoilers about what happens to Lotara Sarrin in the newest book? Throughout the book Lotara is dealing with the fact that everyones starving on the ship and they're just sat in orbit. Kharn is aboard but never saying anything, and people like Horus keep making cryptic comments about how 'she isnt Lotara' when they see her. eventually she looks at her command throne and Kharn says don't look. she sees that she's actually physically mutated and become part of the throne, is all claws and teeth. this version of Lotara tells the version we've been following that she is actually a spirit of the old Lotara Sarrin conjured by the increasingly demonic ship. the crew is all horribly mutated and melded and these spirits have been appearing for a while. the demon Lotara even says that 'our' POV Lotara isn't the first spirit to appear. That's where it leaves off with her. Not sure if the spirit fades away or not but its implied it will, like the ones before it.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 15:20 |
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At this point in the siege there is barely anything left of the besiegers' humanity. The warp is flowing freely into the skies of terra and everyone has turned into a monster, literally.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 15:44 |
Inspector_666 posted:So I finished Godblight the other night which I think gets me all caught up on the current goings on (I haven't read The Wolftime but it sounds like I shouldn't?) and I have no idea what to read now. Wolftime was terrible. The story could have been really great with what it was about but it's one of the worst depictions of space wolves in the lore. Not at all accurate. Throne of Light is the next book after Wolftime and is middling but has some very big lore...if they continue the plot thread it starts and I really think they will it's important. It's been foreshadowed in the previous DoF books and I believe it will be one of the main plot drivers moving forwards in the series. It really sucks that the series hasn't been that great so far considering it's supposed to be the HH of the modern setting. I think it's just that all their good authors have been busy with the siege or wrapping up their own trilogies and once that finishes they'll be writing for DoF and quality will drastically increase. You should absolutely read Siege of Terra. IMO the entire series has been excellent, even the less liked books aren't bad. The scale is insane and is really the only 40k/30k that has the correct numbers as far as the complaint upthread goes. My personal theory is that the ending to Siege of Terra, Chris Wraight's two Terra-based trilogies, Pandemonium, latest DoF, and possibly Horusian Wars are all going to tie together with some major lore implications for the setting. Minus DoF they are all excellent and should be read anyway, but I really do think the next Bobby G level event is coming and will involve all of those stories as they all deal with similar issues and characters. At the very least end of Siege and Pandemonium will considering they are both Abnett and include Enuncia and other related lore.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 15:44 |
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I think my favourite example of woeful grasp of scale is in the first Watchers of the Throne book where there's a background plot point about a task force that's being sent to relieve Cadia (pre it's fall obvs.) So to go fight in what is depicted as a 'The whole world is now basically Stalingrad' situation, they send this mighty relief force, which has taken years to assemble. And it's half a million men. Which is a homeopathic level of reinforcement on the scale such a war should be being fought at. Edit: Oh and the way a several km long starship falling out of orbit and hitting the planet is depicted as a bad thing to be near, and not you know, a continent smashing global apocalypse. Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Sep 2, 2022 |
# ? Sep 2, 2022 15:52 |
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Deptfordx posted:I think my favourite example of woeful grasp of scale is in the first Watchers of the Throne book where there's a background plot point about a task force that's being sent to relieve Cadia (pre it's fall obvs.) Eh, it's not THAT bad. Cadia isn't a hive world, it's not a forge world, it's a fortress world. Fighting a purely defensive action especially within the Kasr cities gives a major advantage to the Guard where the overwhelming numbers aren't as needed as for an offensive action. If you want a really silly number the Sabbat Worlds Crusade was launched with a million guardsmen to try and take back dozens if not a hundred planets including multiple forge worlds.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 15:58 |
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Cadia had a population of 850 million, where everyone old enough to hold a gun was supposed to fight. Half a million extra troops really is pitiful. Remember also this is supposed to have been a massive effort that took years of organisation to pull off. From a planet of several hundred billion people at the heart of the most densely trafficked transport hub of the galaxy.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 16:17 |
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Plus the 13th Black Crusade wasn't just confined to a single planet. It was a warzone across dozens of systems simultaneously. I remember reading in one book that some backwater planet in the Cadian system still had hundreds of millions of guardsmen defending it.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 16:20 |
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Guys we all know not to think about numbers too much
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 16:21 |
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I just automatically add two/three zeroes to whatever number the books mention, except Space Marines.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 16:27 |
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wiegieman posted:At this point in the siege there is barely anything left of the besiegers' humanity. The warp is flowing freely into the skies of terra and everyone has turned into a monster, literally. And that would make alot more sense if the rebels had not literally fled into the Eye of Terror, which is basically warptown, and spent the next 10 thousand years there, and they are (mostly) still coherent enough to be a viable fighting force. Then again, maybe they were not prepared/used to it back then. A fair bit of the plot of the Black Legion series is Abbie and his crew going "Hey, things are different now. We have to learn to adjust and use this crazy power to our benefit, or we're done. Like our fathers."
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 17:09 |
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Deptfordx posted:Edit: Oh and the way a several km long starship falling out of orbit and hitting the planet is depicted as a bad thing to be near, and not you know, a continent smashing global apocalypse. In EoE a starship is noted to have crashed and squished 20 million citizens which sounds about right.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 17:20 |
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Sephyr posted:And that would make alot more sense if the rebels had not literally fled into the Eye of Terror, which is basically warptown, and spent the next 10 thousand years there, and they are (mostly) still coherent enough to be a viable fighting force. Why would living in the Eye make them any worse at making war? The Gods want them to make war.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 17:27 |
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wiegieman posted:Why would living in the Eye make them any worse at making war? The Gods want them to make war. If being exposed to the seeping warp above Terra for a few weeks makes them careless/mindless/dumb teamkilling monsters that just charge forward into the enemy guns, being in the condesned warp stew of the Eye of Terror would be even worse, wouldn't it? Of course, this is just nitpicking. The reality is that there will always be enough chaos forces to be a menace in the setting, because that's the setting. Likewise, there will always be enough Ultramarines to handle whatever comes along, no matter if they were just trounced by Tyranids invading ultramar, then Iron Warriors invading ultramar, then Mortarion, and I'm sure I'm missing some other grave menaces that ALSO 'nearly destroyed the chapter'. Because the setting needs Ultramarines in it.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 17:45 |
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wiegieman posted:Why would living in the Eye make them any worse at making war? The Gods want them to make war. There's a certain traitor character in EoE that defines the Chaos Gods as insane and I might add that they are also capricious self-sabotaging assholes. They are not exactly the most reliable patrons.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 18:18 |
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Sephyr posted:If being exposed to the seeping warp above Terra for a few weeks makes them careless/mindless/dumb teamkilling monsters that just charge forward into the enemy guns, being in the condesned warp stew of the Eye of Terror would be even worse, wouldn't it?
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 18:22 |
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D-Pad posted:Wolftime was terrible. The story could have been really great with what it was about but it's one of the worst depictions of space wolves in the lore. Not at all accurate. Oh poo poo, I didn't even realize Throne Of Light was already out. I rather enjoyed Avenging Son and Gate Of Bones even though they were both just kind of "Uh oh big Chaos weapon, we gotta go blow it up!" They should let Guy take a break from DoF to write another Cawl book please. I suppose I'll grab Throne Of Light since the DoF books are pretty quick and then get back into SoT after that. I haven't even started in on Horusian Wars or Gaunts Ghosts, either...
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:00 |
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Z the IVth posted:In EoE a starship is noted to have crashed and squished 20 million citizens which sounds about right. Nah, let's do some fun math with a Kinetic Energy calculator!* A standard Heavy Cruiser is about 6km long. That's about 18 USS Enterprises long, with a similar boxy shape with outcropping on top. Cube square law that and it's roughly 6000 Big E's in volume. It's made of Adamantium, Ceramite, Plasteel and who knows what. We've no idea of the density, so lets just eyeball it and say it weights proportionally as much as an Enterprise (100K tons), so 6000 of them. 6000 x 100k, that's about 600 million tons. Before anyone cries shananigans on advanced lightweight future materials, bear in mind these things are supposed to be massively super dense armoured, so arguably I should be using an Iowa or similar BB as a base. Which are much heavier for their size, so I'm saying it evens out in the wash. So it's orbiting a Terran class planet when something bad happens and it goes nosing into the atmosphere and boom! Orbital speed is 17000mph close in, decreasing with distance, it's about 7k all the way out into geostationary. Lets split the difference and allow some desperate last minute breaking and call it 10,000mph. So you've got 600 million tons hitting at 10,000mph. That's about 5x10 to the 18th power Joules of kinetic energy. That's roughly 1000 Megatons worth of boom. So absolutely devastating, and that's being conservative with speed, size and weight. *Always a terrible mistake to do math online, but what the hell, it's been a slow day. Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Sep 2, 2022 |
# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:09 |
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Arquinsiel posted:Why would you assume that exposure to Chaos would do the same thing every time? Because of the lore. Maybe there is a traitor force out there that has only become more organized, thrived in numbers and got a big sense of brotherhood due to warp exposure, but if so, it hasn't shown anywhere. Frothing, unreliable maniacs with barely-working weapons dying by the hundreds? That's been pretty consistently portrayed.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:12 |
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I swear I forget everything that happened in those Dawn of Fire books 5 minutes after I read them. I enjoy them why I'm reading them, but they are literally forgettable.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:15 |
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Two cruisers hit Calth during Know No Fear. The first one was bad but pretty lackluster (though I guess it fell very slowly lol), but the second one hosed an entire hemisphere up
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:15 |
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Hey now, the Death Guard have consistently been portrayed as functional and disciplined and their weapons work really well even though they all look like they were just dredged up from the bottom of the saltiest ocean they could find.Deptfordx posted:I swear I forget everything that happened in those Dawn of Fire books 5 minutes after I read them. I remember the big stuff but it's all just one amorphous Indomitus Blob in my head, I have no idea which book the stuff I recall is even from.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:18 |
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Death Guard and Iron Warriors tend to have their poo poo together.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:26 |
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They both are somewhat on the "gently caress Chaos" spectrum of things to. Yes, even the deathguard.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:27 |
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Deptfordx posted:Nah, let's do some fun math with a Kinetic Energy calculator!* I see you forgot to factor in Imperial Palace Void Shields And braking And potential breaking up of the ship since it's not designed to smash into a planet in one piece C+ Tallarn got hosed up by one ship smacking into it so real physics is sometimes a thing but clearly when talking about space future magic other factors can be in play.a Z the IVth fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Sep 2, 2022 |
# ? Sep 2, 2022 19:42 |
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Sephyr posted:Because of the lore.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 21:25 |
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Well we haven't seen Archon Gaur yet so the jury is still out on the Blood Pact Supreme commander.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 21:33 |
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Sephyr posted:Because of the lore. Its called the Black Legion
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 21:56 |
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Arc Hammer posted:Well we haven't seen Archon Gaur yet so the jury is still out on the Blood Pact Supreme commander.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 22:27 |
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Arquinsiel posted:Given that he has armour with serrated edges my guess is he's a traitor marine of some flavour. I'm not certain of that. The former Archon that was slain at Balhaut was more of a daemon than anything else and Sek was just a man.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 22:29 |
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Arc Hammer posted:Sek was just a man. In your opinion, MKoll.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 23:03 |
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Z the IVth posted:In your opinion, MKoll. That's why Mkoll could kill him. A man, no matter how mutated, can be killed. A god-king can't.
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# ? Sep 2, 2022 23:15 |
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Arc Hammer posted:I'm not certain of that. The former Archon that was slain at Balhaut was more of a daemon than anything else and Sek was just a man.
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# ? Sep 3, 2022 00:06 |
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Arquinsiel posted:Nadzybar was just a rather heavily mutated human of some form, and Sek was a psyker ("his voice drowns out all others" and all that) who looks pretty weird too. Apparently this is what Gaur looks like. That might be power armour, or it might just be fancy carapace. Bare hands implies he's not a World Eater at least. The World Eater Blood Pact member who appears in short story by ADB and the Urdesh book mentions that he looked down on Gaur or something. Whatever it was its clear that the World Eater did not consider Gaur a marine. Edit: as in literally looked down on Gaur as in the marine was bigger than him i think. Its been a while though since I read it.
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# ? Sep 3, 2022 00:34 |
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I gotta grab that Sabbat Worlds book at some point
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# ? Sep 3, 2022 00:43 |
Deptfordx posted:I think my favourite example of woeful grasp of scale is in the first Watchers of the Throne book where there's a background plot point about a task force that's being sent to relieve Cadia (pre it's fall obvs.) This is a bad example. We are shown that the character knows it's a miniscule drop in an ocean that will make zero difference and that those men are going to their deaths to a man. The point is about Terran bureaucracy. On a world of quadrillions it took ten years to put together 500,000. Wraight is reinforcing how ridiculously byzantine Terran bureaucracy is and how hard it is to get anything done. DaysBefore posted:Two cruisers hit Calth during Know No Fear. The first one was bad but pretty lackluster (though I guess it fell very slowly lol), but the second one hosed an entire hemisphere up I just reread this so fresh in my mind. The ships are around the same size but one comes in at an angle and hits like an airplane landing and the other one knifes straight down and does several orders of magnitude more damage.
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# ? Sep 3, 2022 05:15 |
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On the World Eaters and their numbers. I assume some Warp stuff accounts for them sometimes having more numbers than they should. Of the Traitor Legions only the Black Legion has higher numbers than it did during the Heresy. (Which is pretty high given that they have 10 times more Astartes than the 2nd place the Word Bearers who have 20 to 30k members left).
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# ? Sep 3, 2022 09:28 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 04:13 |
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MonsterEnvy posted:On the World Eaters and their numbers. I assume some Warp stuff accounts for them sometimes having more numbers than they should. Of the Traitor Legions only the Black Legion has higher numbers than it did during the Heresy. (Which is pretty high given that they have 10 times more Astartes than the 2nd place the Word Bearers who have 20 to 30k members left). that's because the Black Legion didn't exist during the Heresy. The Black Legion isn't simply The Sons Of Horus with a new paint job, it's a new force forged from all the legions by Abaddon
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# ? Sep 3, 2022 09:34 |