Cornwind Evil posted:

Ye old gameplay and story segregation. Same logic in how many RPGs literal gods who could destroy the universe are stopped by being reduced to zero hit points like the weakest enemies of the starting zone. In everyone's codex, they're unstoppable juggernauts who smash everything that dares oppose them, and every other side gets to get smashed to show off the qualities of the forces the codex is supporting. Then you switch to another one and now those juggernauts are getting smashed in turn.

Lots of "This weapon can cut through armor that should be able to stop moons from crushing its wearer like it's made of paper!" and "This guy picked up this demon who ate ten planets and piledrove him so hard he turned into an accordion!".

But you have to have some kind of balance in an actual GAME, so yeah, on the tabletop Orks smash 'em with choppas, which might literally be the most recent sharp and pointy thing they picked up.

Eclipse12 posted:

Just read about penitent engines and... yikes.

Hollismason posted:

Oh drat GW ended Forgeworld. What the gently caress. I remember the Horus Heresy books and models looking amazing.

Jimbone Tallshanks posted:

Benagain posted:

There's a necron lord whose schtik is that he was one of the greatest generals they've ever known but is suffering from dementia and views all opponents as variations of battles he's already fought with no knowledge of his current state as a soulless robot. He'll do things like take captive generals back to the flagship to feast them in honor of their worthy combat and not in the way where they're all insane and eating each other, he just has a banquet for some poor imperial bastard who can't understand what's happening or why the robots have piles of food in front of them. He wins so much that no one has been able to coup him even though his underlings are sick of it. Well, plus he has an insanely competent and sane bodyguard.

He's been in a few short stories/books and it's heavily implied but not outright stated that the dementia is a ruse to downplay his competence enough so that he's not seen as a serious threat by any ruling dynasties.

For an entire book of Necrons being hilarious, may I recommend The Infinite And The Divine, which features everybody's favorite Trazyn the Infinite vs Orikan the Diviner as they attempt and fail to kill and/or embarrass each other over millions of years.

a pipe smoking dog posted:

My brother recently bought some Tau guys and I don't know what their deal is supposed to be.

CapnAndy posted:

Yeah, you're conflating. There were 20 legions pre-Heresy, which got broken up afterwards into a very carefully never specified amount of chapters which top out at 1000 marines each, specifically so that dudes going Chaos-happy would have the amount of troops they could drag into treachery with them limited.

Bohemian Nights posted:

I don't think rememberancers are stupid at all; they're cool characters, and a good plot device to justify a human POV that has plausible reason to rub shoulders with the major characters across the different legions

SalTheBard posted:

I used to read White Dwarf religiously and they did a series about the different Primarchs and their lives growing up and Ferrus Manus was always my favorite.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

The Primarch backgrounds are fun since they're basically all mythic hero/superhero/supervillain origin stories from different genres, and then the Emperor comes along and usually fucks things up for no reason.

Though he did join Leman Russ in a drinking contest.

Jimbone Tallshanks posted:

Back in early 2000s I remember browsing a 40K book and seeing an entry for Planetary Governor. Is that a standard thing for every edition or would it be in a specific book?

SirPhoebos posted:

Has anyone ever written a story about someone that fakes being an Inquisitor and gets away with it through sheer chuzpah?

Rebel Blob posted:

Puts me in mind of this bit of animation. Not 40K, but relatively close all things considered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-OQFslDKiI

Barudak posted:

Fabius Bile just wants to have kids and its nice that the Chaos Gods support his efforts to be a single parent

bob dobbs is dead posted:

exactly one of em is fond of him. thats what being a champion means.

no, slaanesh doesnt believe in consent

CapnAndy posted:

I'm still working through End and the Death but I like how they did Khorne's pitch to Dorn in that. Dorn spends basically the entire Heresy series trying very hard not to buckle under all the pressure he's under as the one guy responsible for keeping the Emperor safe, stressing out about having to make a billion decisions a day while having to manage at least as many overinflated egos, and chafing at his responsibility to stand on the walls and wait while everyone else is out there fighting traitors.

So Khorne just sidles up, very politely and understated for once, and goes "y'know, if you want to stop thinking for a while and just fight..."

Mumpy Puffinz posted:

at least Hp lovecraft said you couldn't understand what you saw

sad question posted:

"His mind reeled trying to understand the indescribable horror before him. An interracial couple or birth certificate proving his ancestors were Welsh."

Hihohe posted:

Benagain posted:

The best part is immediately after that Malcador thinks "eh. It's just a room"

bob dobbs is dead posted:

high gothic is supposed to be a future language but in all actual cases basically just dog latin. low gothic is also supposed to be a bewildering menagerie of future languages but in all actual cases english or accented english

for being a distant descendent of tolkien, warhams is pretty uninterested in linguistics, except for referencing stuff by linguistic drift, they fuckin love that linguistic drift. the Tale of Gigamech (Gilgamesh)

Benagain posted:

Servitors vary widely in canon, there's a whole spectrum from lobotomized automoton to "on this planet the punishment is getting hardwired into a car AND keeping your personality."

So, yes and also there's a ton that still horrifyingly kept theirs from their previous existence. It just doesn't matter.

quote:

The sound was the worst. Shouting, screaming, praying, weeping, all the cries of human terror and misery.
I’m not a squeamish man, and nor do I spare tears for those who deserve punishment, but what I saw in that processorium haunts me still.
Naked human beings were standing in a switchbacked line between high fences. Outside the fences Adeptus Mechanicus menials in environment suits stood guard with shock goads in hand. The people, all mature men and women, were shepherded down the caged walk like livestock. And they were food beasts being led to the slaughter, meat for the ravenous appetite of the Machine-God. I grew up lucky enough to eat real meat. I was unlucky enough to see where it came from – another gift of my father on another drat tour of my family’s various businesses. The manufactorum produced servitors, but it was more akin to an abattoir than a workshop. Every surface was easily cleanable. Large plastek flaps divided areas from each other. Servitors with spray units surgically attached to their backs prowled about, hosing filth into slit drains set into the perfectly smooth, slanted floors. We walked above all this, past sentry pods on spikes occupied by galvanic rifle-armed snipers. Our path went from one end of the hall to the other, and I could see pretty much the whole sorting process, beginning to end.
As the line slowly advanced, the people were passed through various scanning devices, most of them mounted in ugly, functional arches that let out a constant series of acceptance chimes. Occasionally, one would let out an angry blare, and the indicator lumens would flash red. The rejected person was then swallowed up by a trapdoor opening beneath their feet. From these pits wafted a hideous stench, and the grinding sounds of industrial mincers. One rejected man grabbed on to the lip and hung there, arms and hands bloodied, shouting a stream of defiant profanities. Guards lined the grating either side of him and shocked him until he fell. The adepts wouldn’t even waste bullets on these people.
The trapdoor flipped up, and the next terrified person was ushered forward.
A number of pneumatic gates separated the people from each part of the process, snapping open and shut with bone-crushing force.
Violent metal arms snatched them up and spread-eagled them in the air, and a servitor shearer shaved them all over. At another they were subjected to a high-pressure counterseptic wash whose chemical stink made me choke from a hundred feet away. More scanners, more rejects winnowed out. Machines forcibly dressed them in the heavy rubberised garments common to all mono-tasked servitors. These were saggy on them, all one size, until another process force-shrank them to fit their bodies where metal cuffs, sockets and collars bit into vulnerable flesh. The last few prayers gave way to screams at that point, and even the most stoic shouted in pain. They were ushered over a floor buzzing with power that made them shriek with every footstep.
‘What’s that for?’ I asked.
Djelling answered only reluctantly. ‘Follicular inhibitor. To stop their hair growing,’ he said.
‘How?’ I asked.
Djelling was done answering. ‘Come, come, this way.’ He waved me over to a door.
I didn’t come this way. I watched numbly. The shivering lines of terrified men and women reached a final series of gates, where a high-energy augur beam of such potency it made my dataslate buzz passed over them. Dazed, they were manhandled into different queues, and then hustled from the room to their fates.

Hihohe posted:

I believe it was Hired Gun where the way you "hack" a servitor that handles a door is you just start smacking thier head around yelling "OPEN THE drat DOOR"

Tree Bucket posted:

I kind of regret reading the servitor human factory thing, thread.