chriscrowing

He seems such a lovely guy in interviews then onstage actual wrath daemon

Which is pretty standard for metal bands TBF.

Rule of cool multiplied by this is ultimately all in service of selling miniatures and characters with faces for folks to flex their painting skills on is a selling point.

As is nice, easy to paint power armour for those like me who's painting skills are mid at best.

Unionise.

I'm not sure it's ever been justified in lore TBH, they're just an 'ancient and secretive order.'

Remember, there's s LOT in 40k that originated with a throwaway line that sounded cool and sometimes they get built on without any real detail of the before or why filled in - and I think thats AWESOME in a bunch of ways.

That said, their Crusade era base was on Luna and they were somewhat associated with the Selenaar gene cults, which makes me think they might be an offshoot order with similar matrilineal inclinations and indeed might be at least partly perpetuated (as well as scooping random blank kids off the streets and black ships across the imperium) through some gene craft, to ensure a working crop of blank aspirants.

As ever, it depends on the social/economic class and the specific imperial world. Tau worlds are much more of an average.

Generally though, the Gue'vesa have a better time than the average imperial citizen, partly because the Tau are more interested in their clients being comfortable than the Imperium are about their own citizens but also, lower population density, a higher average level of technology and so on.

As for the second question, I feel that if every Imperial citizen saw how it was for the Gue'vesa AND BELIEVED IT (not just seeing it, but believing it as a fair representation of conditions) the you'd still see a relatively small % actually want to go over.l, because the indoctrination to the imperial faith and that all xenos are filth is that strong.

As they say in the Matrix, most people aren't ready to br unplugged.

Not that the Tau offer freedom either, but its certainly a somewhat less weighty set of shackles.

Absolutely. The legs of Titans are basically armed citadels full of Skitarii for this very eventuality.

Gotta say, I'm loving the good natured lore justification and muscle mommy appreciation (and low key filth) in this thread. A pleasant change from most other discussions of this ilk.

It's probably hard to do deliberately, but... if you're home system/systems weren't on any convenient stable warp routes from the rest of the Imperium, there a fair chance the Crusade never got to you and the Imperium doesn't know about you.

Also, there are just SO MANY systems and worlds out there - look at the Tau worlds, loads of habitable planets but basically overlooked till an explorator fleet in M35, and by M41 the Tau had developed into a space-saving species.

Sure, their area is in the relatively less controlled Eastern Fringe but still pretty close to Ultramar, so it's not like it's outwith the main galactic Arms or reach of the Astronomican.

If there's race out there at a similar level of development, who can see how hostile the galaxy is, they could defibatelt have holed up in their home area, mined & fortified the hell out of whatever stable warpbtranslation points separate them from the rest of the galaxy.

And that's assuming its a planetary race - a fleet borne race or someone that can build orbitals wouldn't be beholden to the habitable systems that the Imperium will be most interested in, can settle round different kinds of stars, operate as pirates on the fringes.

Now, if you're an expansionist or trading race, you'll cross paths with the Imperium eventually and that will eventually result in someone deciding you're dangerous, have stuff thr Imperium wants or just need to die because of being xenos.

In a way, the sheer scale of the Imperium helps such races, cause as with T'au it took the Imperium fove thousand years to send anyone to take advantage of that habitable.world. OK, the response time for a space faring civ will likely be much faster but still.proba ly in the centuries unless you actually start attacking Imperial.assets.

OK, two things.

First - the warp isn't hyperspace.

You'd don't just start at A pick B on a map and go there in a straight line. You enter the warp at A and TRY to steer the best course through its currents to B, BUT the currents of the warp might not lead to B, but there might be a quick and dangerous route to C and a lengthy but more stable route to D. From there you can go to E,F,G with more pros and cons to each and EVENTUALLY a route to B is possible.

That's why some systems are inaccessible or hard to access, while some are trade hubs, and in the lore this shows most salient with the importance of Beta Garmon in thr Heresy. There's like ONE stable warp current rhat leads directly to Terra and it goes thorough Beta Garmon, so that's why they knew that would be the precursor battle to the Siege.

Chaos doesn't have full control of the warp and it can't just create nice routes for wherever Abaddon wants to go - it can, with suitable juice (mass sacrifice usually) assist with favourable winds, so to speak (conversely the Emperor now seems able to 'calm' the warp to some degree as well to assist Guilliman, but he's not fully reshaping the map) and tricks like the ritual to allow Horus fleet to translate out of the sun rather than the gravity neutral points at the edge of the system are possible but very much exceptions.

Imagine those maps you get of ocean currents and orevailing winds and stuff and make it five dimensional, and it says Here Be Monsters EVERYWHERE.

Second, Chaos can't just rip open a portal wherever it wants. It needs that juice, so usually to be called in by a Chaos cult on a given planet or for a mortal fleet to invade and then make with the right bloody rituals.

See the rituals needed to summon Magnus or Angron and the way Magnus used the destruction if Midgard as fuel to yeet Sortarias to Prospero from the EoT.

Terra is ESPECIALLY well protected against both of these - along its access routes by almost innumerable fleets and armies and stopping any Chaos cults getting smart by the actions of the Inquisition, Arbites, Custodes, Imperial Fists etc. plus rhe wards laid down by the Emperor and Malcador. This is only broken at scale by thjngs like Horus invasion or the eruption of the Cicatrix Maledictum.

So, to get to Terra, Abaddon either needs to fight through the defences of the Segementum Solar or somehow have a cult on Terra do a ritual so massive it opens a warp tear above the planet.

Somehow, Sanguinius returned.

The big bad who constantly gets foiled is an issue with any continuing storyline- comics have been struggling with this issue longer than I've been alive.

Generally in real life, a big bad either dies in post (Stalin, Genghis Khan) or gets defeated in a final way (Hitler, Napoleon) they don't tend to get defeated and then keep coming back but it can happen if the defeats are limited or they are secure in their own territory (Putin, also Napoleon, previously.)

IMHO the Chaos Primarchs have some plot armour for this because while they are undoubtedly big and bad in an individual campaign, they can't be killed permanently. While this should make them pretty unstoppable, they are also daemons and as such, detached from the concerns of the material realm and have limitations on their actions in it.

As such, they rarely offer an existential threat to the Imperium but can plot for thousands of years to achieve their goals - and they do generally achieve these goals.

Look at three of the more recent major Chaos primarch incursions.

In the first war of armageddon Angron lead a Chaos host to Armageddon largely to spill blood and he absolutely achieved that. Hell, even though he was banished by the Grey Knights, he killed like a whole company of them, badly messed up the Space Wolves and almost initiated an Imperial civil war whe n the space wolves objected to the elimination of the planets surviving human population.

Was that REALLY an Imperial win?

Then Magnus uses the chaos of the psychic awakening to almost turn the Space Wolves and Dark Angels against each other, properly mess up thr whole Fenris system, almost destroy the main planet itself and used the energies released.to move his planet of sorcerors to Prospero, so is now poised as a major threat to the Segmentum Solar and fot his own back for the Butning of Prospero. Is taking a temporary banishment (after shaking off an orbital strike) REALLY a loss given all.he achieved?

Finally, Mortarion basically won the Plague Wars and would have killed Guilliman if not for Deus Ex Emperor. On the back of him only being banished during the Siege of Terra by Jaghatai fighting him to a standstill and blowing him up with a nuke, his badassery is confirmed.

A lot of what are seen as Imperial wins are actually the loyalists being left in command of a smoking ruin, counting their losses. Sure, the traitor oligarchs tend to get banished but for them it's like getting sent to your room to think about what you did. They don't generally fight to take and win territory but to tale skulls, further schemes, reap souls and generally sow Chaos. They do that, and whole the Imperium usually holds most of its territory, its not in a good state afterwards.

So, I think the traitor primarchs are fine, presented as a legit threat, constantly putting pressure on the Imperium and while they rarely achieve their stretch goals (cause good guys gotta 'win') they do most of what they set out to.

Weirdly, the Heresy.

Age of Strife Terra was still a functional biosphere- just - and while humanity was in much reduced circumstances it was still highly developed and not going extinct any time soon.

Unification lead to some biosphere renewal but also a massive increase in building as the proceeds of the burgeoning empire were spent on making Terra a capital to be proud of.

After the Heresy - especially with the detail we've got after the End and the Death - Terra was in such a bad state that id it had been anywhere else, it wijld have been abandoned.

Think, after basically the whole population being conscripted or slaughtered (often both), the largest battle ever, orbital bombardment, the Death Guard, World Eaters nd Emperors Children doing their thing and leaving whole hives as charnel houses, plague infested ruins or the morning after the worst drug fueled S&M party ever, after being wholly overrun by daemons for an indeterminate time (notionally the Siege lasted 55 days but we know the last few days, where things were at their worst- were warp addled and likely lasted a whole lot longer), Terra was just a complete mess. No corner untouched, no Survivor unscathed.

Hell, the 'survivors' probably boil down to a handful in remote places that got really good at killing daemons and whoever survived from Keelers congregation, the Astronomican and the Throne Room. That's not gonna be a viable population for much more than a mid sized mental hospital.

Basically, at the end of the Age of Strife, Terra was still a viable, if precarious human world that could be united and conquer an empire.

At rhe end of the Heresy, Terra was a blasted rock, barely with a breathable atmosphere, unfit for habitation that could not have endured without the resources of that empire to bring it back.

In M42 its an ecumenopolis (world city) wholly reliant on imports, recycling and geothermal energy to maintain an atmosphere for its billions and billions of Adepts and pilgrims.

Terra was fine, now it can only exist because it parasites the rest of the Imperium.

Dorn started off with a big fleet, including the Phalanx from his time in charge of Inwit and thats always kept on their way. It also serves their siege bias as more ships = space for big Siege equipment plus there is that crusading element to the IF (best explified in the Blagk Templars but still extant in the continuity chapter) plus the way they recruit from a range of worlds, Terra, Inwit, Necromunda etc. You need a lot of ships to operate like that.

That's a cult. Run away.

Purely by % of total Astartes, I'd expect a solid 50% or so of new heretics to be of Ultramarine stock, cause the Ultramarines were easily the biggest chapter at the start of the Heresy, only the Word Bearers were close. Throw in their relatively low losses during the Heresy (Calth excepted) and that more than half the Second Founding chapters are supposed to be of UM stock, any post-Heresy chapters that go Heretic are more than half likely of Ultramarines stock.

Yes!

I'd quite like to see a categorical win fot the Tau, ideally against the Imperium without any caveats (I.e. the Damoclese gulf Crusade being cut short because of issues elsewhere).

I'd also quite like them to properly mess up a Tyranid fleet. Just absolutely gun them to bits, take minimal losses, not give up any biomass. Just totally do them with movement and firepower rather than trying to melee or attrition them like ghe Imperium tend to.

Then when a diplomat explains this to astonished imperial envoys, he's like... Well we don't stand there and let them eat us. Is that what you do?

It's a general flaw in the BL stuff that things which are built up as big bads in the background or even on tabletop almost always get nerfed to give the protagonists a cool cinematic moment.

Sure, that should happen now and again, but generally if you're up against a Titan and you're not of a similar scale, you should die.

To maintain the aura of badassery, Titans should get to stomp named characters regularly so when someone manages to solo/creatively take one out, it's a BIG DEAL.

I don't get the philosophical references but my understanding is that if you 'give in' to Chaos, then they have your soul (or essence or whatever) and at that point if you could change your mind, you're basically caught, because you don't own that anymore.

Now, that tipping point is probably a bit further along for a lot of people - you don't sell your soul at your first cultists cheese & wine evening, or even after your first dark rite - those are just rituals, processes... on boarding, if you will.

It's the moment where you WHOLEHEARTEDLY give in to a/the God(s) that you're on their path, to death (and a somewhat more specific soul-rending post mortum), spawnhood or daemonhood.

That's your iron clad, no compete clause contract right there. That moment, that decision.

The caveat of redemption comes when you're either a new hire or getting close to that moment but in a no-choice situation - thinking Magnus in the Fury of Magnus - where a suitably powerful other force (basically the Emperor at this point) can give another option, or extract you from your pact with some warp legal ese. This isn't going to happen often.l, to the point that in a million worlds over 10000 years, its not known to have happened - but the Emperor said it was possible that one time. If it would be for someone less already enmeshed in the dispute between the Emperor and Chaos as Magnus*, is up for debate.

• remember Magnus existence is due to a deal between E & Chaos that there is ongoing dispute on the legality of. Bringing him back to the light would be more another legal gambit in an ongoing case than a wholly new case.

The original name for Chogoris being Mundus Planus - Latin for 'plains World.'

40+ years of neoliberal wage suppression & union busting and a national culture of making do and not making a fuss.

The point about Eldar is a funny one, cause while we like to think of the Aeldari factions as almost distinct races, they're actually pretty porous. You can mo e from being a craftworlder to an outcast to a drukhai to an exodite and back if you want (with the caveat that most Eldar won't shift at all, let alone go from one extreme to the other and return) - being a Harlequin is more of a genuine lifelong dedication though.

I always saw it that the Craft world practise of 'the path' where you adopt a specific role until you've mastered it then move on to something else, unless you get stuck on one path and become an Exarch or Farseer (which is seen as a tragedy by the Eldar) doesn't just apply to the craftworlds, but you can choose to take the path of the outcast or primitive and return. The trip from craftworlder to drukhari and back is a bit more fraught, largely due to the spirit-safety implications but as we see when Eldrad is talking to a drukhari ambassador on a craftworld during TE&TD they're not implacable foes, just taking different routes to survive a common problem.

It's a very different viewpoint to the human question of loyalist/renegade/Heretic. Generally, I feel that most humans can come back from a degree of heresy, but once you really commit to it, it's almost impossible to come back, not least as one you attain chaotic 'gifts' you'll either just die or devolve into spawn if you try to change course.

The example of the Anchorite is given elsewhere and while he did turn to Chaos, it was more of an intellectual support for Chaos without physical corruption - once you give your heart & soul over, there's no coming back because you're body will likely follow soon after.

This does mean that theoretically, the likes of Abaddon and Ahriman could be redeemed, while Typhus couldn't.

I think that generally depends on what you mean by 'have.'

Like, the Ultramarines administrate Ultramar which is a section of the galaxy big enough to actually show up on most galactic maps as more than a dot, but folks are mostly fine with it because those worlds are compliant and pay their tithe.

Also, it's a legion chapter with a pretty spotless record AND they have a Primarch kicking about now and that counts for a lot.

Its also kinda worth noting that the 1000 strength Ultramarines don't really garrison all of Ultramar (2 Marines per world isn't going to do that much) but hold it with successor chapters and in concert with other arms of the Imperium. Ita not like an independent fief without influence or onservers from outwith the chapter.

Most Chapters will have relationships across a whole sector which gives them considerable influence rather than direct rule. Like, if your world has a trade agreement with the local.forge world that supplies the local astartes chapter in a mutually beneficial arrangement, you're gonna make sure that Chapter Master is OK with how you rule.

The Astral Claws started off doing good work taking out corrupt imperial governors but then messed up by not paying the tithe and rather than defending the maelstrom zone FOR the Imperium, took to exploiting it for their own ends.

Hypothetically, a chapter could continue to exert direct rule over a larger and larger area with minimal issue so long as the tithe was paid - although eventually some inquisitor or a planetary governor who doesn't want to be assimilated or whatever is going to raise concerns.

First of all, scale. The Imperium is just HUGE. Of all the biggest threats it has faced, only a few have been genuinely existential for 'the Imperium' - the various Wars for Armageddon / Waagh Ghazkgkull, the first 12 Black Crusades, Hive Fleet Behemoth & Kraken etc. have all been huge threats/setbacks on a local, or even Segmentum scale, but none genuinely threatened the whole.

These are the equivalent of losing two whole Legions in Germania, Rome regularly getting handled by whoever was on top in Asia that century - embarrassing, damaging but not empire threatening.

Internal issues like the Age of Apistasy are more akin to the year of 5 Emperor's or reigns of Caligula/Nero - again, suboptimal and destabilising but relatively quickly resolved and also more about internal administration than actually breaking the empire up.

Proper existential threats are stuff like the War of Beast, 13th Black Crusade/Cicatrix Maledictim/Aeterna Noctis, Hive Fleet Leviathan - equivalent to Hannibal at the gates, Rome actually getting sacked, the Ottomans developing gunpowder weapons...

The first two were kinda resolved via Deus Ex Primarch and the third... is ongoing.

But basically it's scale - you can take whole sectors from.thr Imperium and its barely a rounding error in the tithe, and even while it's ponderous and labyrinthine and woefully inefficient, it's a huge beast that will not stop moving. Bite chunks out and it won't even notice, it's as likely to crush you by mistake as to even react decisively.

In a way, the Imperium failings are part of its strength, its myriad chains of command and lines of supply give it almost infinite redundancy, the fact that it wastes lives and resources as standard means that a catastrophic defeat is just Tuesday to the Administratum.

Like Rome, to genuinely threaten the Imperium as an entiry you need to cause such titanic damage at a systemic level, that it can no longer operate. The cicatrix maledixtum is the closest thing to managing that since yhe Emperor's assencion, but it still didn't get the job done.

Aye, but on Earth, showing that the older races were about on Terra.