Demiurge4 posted:

Wasn't there a piece of fluff on how the emperor cast aside his compassion in order to make himself kill Horus? Essentially he split off a part of his soul and lost power that way which is why he can't heal himself and get off the throne. I've always imagined that's what the star child is. The imperium is a poo poo hole because the passive influence of the emperor leaves no room for compasion. I've also been of the opinion that this part of his soul is what influences certain events, like the reincarnation of Sabbat in the Gaunt universe.

Thulsa Doom posted:

3. Magnus picks the exactly wrong time to send his message, and the psychic push needed to get it through fucks up the human webway.

quote:

FAR BENEATH THE birthrock of the race that currently bestrode the galaxy as its would-be masters, a pulsing chamber throbbed with activity. Hundreds of metres high and many hundreds more wide, it hummed with machinery and reeked of blistering ozone. Once it had served as the Imperial Dungeon, but that purpose had long been subverted to another.
Great machines of incredible potency and complexity were spread throughout the chamber, vast stockpiles and uniquely fabricated items that would defy the understanding of even the most gifted adept of the Mechanicum.
It had the feel of a laboratory belonging to the most brilliant scientist the world had ever seen. It had the look of great things, of potential yet untapped, and of dreams on the verge of being dragged into reality. Mighty golden doors, like the entrance to the most magnificent fortress, filled one end of the chamber. Great carvings were worked into the mechanised doors: entwined siblings, dreadful sagittary, a rearing lion, the scales of justice and many more.
Thousands of tech-adepts, servitors and logi moved through the chamber’s myriad passageways, like blood cells through a living organism in service to its heart, where a great golden throne reared ten metres above the floor. Bulky and machine-like, a forest of snaking cables bound it to the vast portal sealed shut at the opposite end of the chamber.
Only one being knew what lay beyond those doors, a being of towering intellect whose powers of imagination and invention were second to none. He sat upon the mighty throne, encased in golden armour, bringing all his intellect to bear in overseeing the next stage of his wondrous creation.
He was the Emperor, and though many in this chamber had known him for the spans of many lives, none knew him as anything else. No other title, no possible name, could ever do justice to such a luminous individual. Surrounded by his most senior praetorians and attended by his most trusted cabal, the Emperor sat and waited.
When the trouble began, it began swiftly.
The golden portal shone with its own inner light, as though some incredible heat from the other side was burning through the metal. Vast gunboxes fixed around the perimeter of the cave swung up, their barrels spooling up to fire. Lightning flashed from machine to machine as delicate, irreplaceable circuits overloaded and exploded. Adepts ran from the site of the breach, knowing little of what lay beyond, yet knowing enough to flee.
Crackling bolts of energy poured from the molten gates, flensing those too close to the marrow. Intricate symbols carved into the rock of the cavern exploded with shrieking detonations. Every source of illumination in the chamber blew out in a shower of sparks, and centuries of the most incredible work imaginable was undone in an instant.
No sooner had the first alarm sounded than the Emperor’s Custodes were at arms, but nothing in their training could have prepared them for what came next.
A form pressed its way through the portal: massive, red and aflame with the burning force of its journey. It emerged into the chamber, wreathed in eldritch fire that bled away to reveal a robed being composed of many-angled light and the substance of stars. Its radiance was blinding and none could look upon its many eyes without feeling the insignificance of their own mortality.
None had ever seen such a dreadful apparition, the true heart of a being so mighty that it could only beat while encased in super-engineered flesh.
The Emperor alone recognised this rapturous angel, and his heart broke to see it.
“Magnus,” he said.
“Father,” replied Magnus.
Their minds met, and in that moment of frozen connection the galaxy changed forever.

berzerkmonkey posted:

Except replace "the Codex Astartes" with "the Bible" or "the Koran" and, woah! People follow it without question to the point of fanaticism. It happens in real life, so why not in a fictional world?

Add to that the fact that for a ling time, military tactics were word for word out of a text and there was no deviation whatsoever. Why the hell do you think the British troops hated the Colonists so much? We were savages for hiding behind trees and shooting their commanders!

I have no problem with believing that over ten thousand years things have become so warped that some organizations view the Codex as a sacrosanct text - the Ultramarines most of all. Their primarch wrote the drat thing - of course they're all ga-ga over it.

Trast posted:

The option involving the Emperor waking up and being supremely pissed off at the state of humanity and it's worship of him would make for some pretty interesting fluff. But I doubt they'd ever pull the trigger on it and risk the gravy train.

Trast posted:

The option involving the Emperor waking up and being supremely pissed off at the state of humanity and it's worship of him would make for some pretty interesting fluff. But I doubt they'd ever pull the trigger on it and risk the gravy train.

drkhrs2020 posted:

They are the absolute top of the social/political/economic hierarchy, so they know the truth about all the religious bullshit and ongoing wars with the various alien races, so I highly doubt they're concerned with the Emperor outside of keeping the Astronomican working.

Cream_Filling posted:

Very few people like 40k just to play the game apart from the excellent fluff, especially since the rules are kind of outdated and clunky compared to other competing miniatures games.

Trast posted:

I'm on Straight Silver in the second Gaunt omnibus right now and I really, really want Cuu to die in a spectacular fashion.

Trast posted:

It's like Abnett got told that trench warfare and demons weren't grim dark enough so he whipped up Cuu in his last draft to put the screws to the reader.

Thulsa Doom posted:

Either the Emperor succeeds, heals the Imperium, and continues his plan to separate humanity from the Warp

EyeRChris posted:

The Cabal I think look at it this way. If Horus did win and killed all of Humanity in less than a thousand years. The Chaos gods would be denied the power they'd have gained from the conflict making it easier for the next galactic generation to fight and perhaps destroy Chaos.

Can-O-Raid posted:

Specifically, the Mechanicum opposes science and 'new' technology because it believes that the only true source of knowledge is from the past, namely the Golden Age of Technology. I feel like that's more a consequence of the Ad Mech arising from the ruins of a much more advanced civilization than anything else though.

hopterque posted:

That's basically the core theme of 40k, as someone posted above.

The reason why technological advancement is clamped down on super hard by basically the entire Imperium is because it has pretty consistently led to awful chaos things happening. So advancement is ruthlessly suppressed by Mechanicum and the Inquisition and the clergy and everyone because nobody wants some guy trying to invent a better lasgun or a knife or whatever getting corrupted by the chaos gods and say starting a cult and taking over a world and turning into a big pain in the rear end.

Impaired Casing posted:

handbanana125 posted:

I think the established excuse is that Games Workshop refuses to share any merchandising income or profits from any spin off projects, hence the exclusive deal with THQ, the in-house development group, and the publishing company established JUST to put out their own stuff.
To be honest, any media that would come out from the GW family of products would pretty much print money.

berzerkmonkey posted:

I think that the truth is that GW holds onto its IP very tightly because it is afraid of dilution and wants to control everything about a project. Hollywood, were it interested in 40K, would be more interested in changing elements of the story to fit into perceived notions regarding demographics. I think we are starting to see that change a bit with directors like Joss Whedon and Guilermo Del Toro, but they're definitely the exception to the rule.

Kurzon posted:

The tech-priests see alien technology as corrupt and refuse to reverse-engineer it for the benefit of humans, so why are they so eager to get their hands on captured Necron and Eldar tech? What do they hope to learn?

Demiurge4 posted:

Sadly it seems GW doesn't want to have any video games where Space Marines aren't playable characters. This wouldn't be such a huge issue to me though if it wasn't for the fact that in every game Space Marines are boring, they always downplay the differences between chapters and go for generic big guy with a gun.

Abnett really fleshed out the Space Wolves in such an amazing way with Prospero Burns and I would just love some indepth RPG's or adventure games that deal with those issues instead of endless RTS games and shooters.

VanSandman posted:

Their business practices are kind of poo poo, and they don't license things out. Seriously, get a weekly comic going, people would eat that poo poo up.

vannevar posted:

I wouldn't necessarily call that a theory given Kallisti Eris' ravings in A Thousand Sons. It's as much confirmation as one can hope for in 40K.

Cooked Auto posted:

At least 10 to 100+ years or something long like that. I mean space is loving huge and regardless of how much the warp compresses time it's still a massive distance to cover.