I saw on a website called Spikey bits that GW have been trying to increase women player/customer numbers.

But then I saw this the other day: https://pp.userapi.com/c841334/v841334710/b3d1/wHmLr4jRX0Y.jpg

There aren't many female special characters in 40k, I can just think of Lelith Hesperax, Jain Zar, Celestine and Inquisitor Greyfax.

So you'd think in terms of writing, GW would want to protect them somewhat?
As opposed to having probably the strongest female character in the setting job to, and get horribly butchered by one of the many uber tier male characters?

Why would they put over Kharn and have Celestine job when Celestine's army is coming out soon?

Does GW think this kind of story attracts women? Cos what happened with Kharn reads like some domestic violence level ****.

I don't get it. Maybe they wanted her out the way t be re-released for the SoB, but there were better ways to do it that doesn't make her look like such a victim.

Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

Here's the thing: we used to have more female characters before GW had to can them for not having models.

And "protecting" characters based on sex is brainless pandering, not equality. If you want a stronger female customer base you speak to them, you don't speak down to them.

Lastly, Celestine wasn't rereleased for Sisters as much as for the Imperium in general (hence why she can buff Imperium units). They needed a shining beacon of hope and faith in the story and she's the most well known one they can use. Considering they were giving us Cawl and Greyfax at the same time it makes sense to give us someone who could both be there, and was well recognizable both in and out of the setting itself.

Seriously, you're just stirring a pot for no real reason other than to promote outrage for something that was FAR more reasonable to most of us to read than the Bloodtide was (and that's a story I stand by could have been well done if they had tweaked a few details, such as mindwiping the Sisters into Servitors or serfs to serve the Grey Knights since their purity was proven, or just killing them to silence them when they purged the evidence).

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

My problem isn't that she died. It's how it was done. Why's she gotta be victimized like that? How an army will be treated in the setting starts from the top down. If the best sister of battle gets such disrespect than the rest of the army will follow suit as far as I'm concerned , we'll be seeing more Matt Wardian SoB bloodbaths. So no point buying any. Great marketing that.

Handmaiden wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

My problem isn't that she died. It's how it was done. Why's she gotta be victimized like that? How an army will be treated in the setting starts from the top down. If the best sister of battle gets such disrespect than the rest of the army will follow suit as far as I'm concerned so no point buying any. Great marketing that.

Why would a Chaos Marine of one of the Legions known for their brutality be "respectful" of an Imperial Saint? I mean the whole premise is laughable from the outset.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

^

Celestine's glorious inspiring martyrdom and arising to once more do battle the enemies of Mankind is her whole core concept.

Falling to the Chosen of the Blood God in battle only to rise again seems rather fitting. There's a horrifying death to show how the martyr suffers and show how evil and powerful the bad guy is (literally mythical in this case, there is no shame in losing a contest of blades with the blood gods mortal avatar), but the heroine takes it all in stride through her faith, which can then be rewarded with resurrection and righteous vengeance.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Handmaiden wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

My problem isn't that she died. It's how it was done. Why's she gotta be victimized like that? How an army will be treated in the setting starts from the top down. If the best sister of battle gets such disrespect than the rest of the army will follow suit as far as I'm concerned so no point buying any. Great marketing that.

Why would a Chaos Marine of one of the Legions known for their brutality be "respectful" of an Imperial Saint? I mean the whole premise is laughable from the outset.

And she had to be written to die fighting him...why?
And even if she was, why's it a curbstomp? Not too long ago she was holding her own against Abaddon where it was implied she'd have taken him if it weren't for the pylons.

Why would this make women want to play 40k?

Handmaiden wrote:
As opposed to having probably the strongest female character in the setting job to, and get horribly butchered by one of the many uber tier male characters?

This is 40k. Everyone gets butchered by everyone. The solution to improve gender balance is not to "protect" characters by keeping them alive, it's to have Kharn get horribly butchered by a bunch of female guardsmen making a bayonet charge.


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Handmaiden wrote:
And she had to be written to die fighting him...why?

Because everyone dies in 40k. And, as stated, because Celestine's character gimmick is that she dies and is reborn over and over again. You can't be reborn through faith in the Emperor if you don't die.

And even if she was, why's it a curbstomp? Not too long ago she was holding her own against Abaddon where it was implied she'd have taken him if it weren't for the pylons.

Because GW sucks at writing. Celestine is hardly the only character to look pathetic when GW decides it's their time to die against the designated Best Fighter Ever of the particular story they're in.

And "protecting" characters based on sex is brainless pandering, not equality. If you want a stronger female customer base you speak to them, you don't speak down to them.

When I can count the number of female special characters on more than one hand, then lets talk about pandering and having no protection in terms of the writing. How is this speaking to us? It's victimisation of a strong female character.




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This is 40k. Everyone gets butchered by everyone. The solution to improve gender balance is not to "protect" characters by keeping them alive, it's to have Kharn get horribly butchered by a bunch of female guardsmen making a bayonet charge.

Oh really? Then why couldn't she butcher him back with him barely winning? Why's it a curbstomp? Didn't have to be. Why is it? Why's she written as a victim when the goal is to attract female players?

Because everyone dies in 40k. And, as stated, because Celestine's character gimmick is that she dies and is reborn over and over again. You can't be reborn through faith in the Emperor if you don't die.

I didn't ask why she has to die. I asked why she had to die fighting him. As a victim. What does that gain GW when they're trying to attract female players.

Because GW sucks at writing. Celestine is hardly the only character to look pathetic when GW decides it's their time to die against the designated Best Fighter Ever of the particular story they're in.

But Celestine's army is coming out and this book came out fairly recently. So doesn't it make sense to put her over in THIS instance? I would have thought so. These are fictional characters. They're as strong or weak as the writer demands. I'm aware of that. My point is that I don't think it was a smart decision in terms of business. GW already has a reputation of being extremely male focused and woman unfriendly in their fiction. This perpetuates that stereotype and keeps female players away. Take it from a woman telling you this.

Basically if this snipped of text can be one of a few things. It can be a teaser for the resurrection of Celestine and then her going for round two against Kharn, a classic revenge plot like there has been so many. It can be cheap low quality shock value gore just for edgy sake (look this well known special character gets killed, this means special characters can die in books, not just exclusively Black Library character!). It can also be the classic setup for a "woman in the refregirator" routine. Celestine gets butchered so Guilliman gets really pist and fights Kharn. Sisters of Battle have a rather long history of being used as punching bags for the villains to look tough and mean. The entire shtick of the Sister of Battle is pretty much getting horribly killed and achieve martyrdom because they were neither afraid or corrupted when they got massacred. That's one of the reason Sisters are so unpopular in my opinion (that and the fact they were never truly supported in the first place). GW placed them in a corner where their only use is to be martyred and rarely achieve anything cool and awesome in the process, neither are they humanised or comical like Guardsmen and Orks respectively. While this particular instence isn't terrible, it does fit in a already well established pattern of killing Sisters for shock value only and not exactly to further a character story or promote the Sister of Battle brand.

Handmaiden wrote:
Oh really? Then why couldn't she butcher him back with him barely winning? Why's it a curbstomp? Didn't have to be. Why is it? Why's she written as a victim when the goal is to attract female players?

Because "everyone gets butchered" does not mean "everyone kills each other equally in the same scene". Celestine gets her ass kicked here, in some other scene she (presumably, I don't bother reading most of the books) kicks another character's ass and butchers them horribly. You're taking one partial scene where she loses out of context and assuming that this means that she loses every fight when you should be looking at her entire presence in the fluff.

I didn't ask why she has to die. I asked why she had to die fighting him. As a victim. What does that gain GW when they're trying to attract female players.

Because this is 40k, and "die so you can be resurrected by faith in the Emperor" means dying in combat? What do you expect, Celestine to die peacefully in bed of old age before resurrecting?

And who says she's a victim here? This is a short fragment of a scene that clearly happens at the end of a fight, with explicit references to her strength finally failing. It's pretty clear that she has been fighting up until this point and has simply lost the fight. Dying in combat, sword in hand, against a powerful enemy is hardly being a helpless victim.

But Celestine's army is coming out and this book came out fairly recently. So doesn't it make sense to put her over in THIS instance? I would have thought so. These are fictional characters. They're as strong or weak as the writer demands. I'm aware of that. My point is that I don't think it was a smart decision in terms of business. GW already has a reputation of being extremely male focused and woman unfriendly in their fiction. This perpetuates that stereotype and keeps female players away.

Are you seriously arguing that GW should make the latest new releases also win in the fluff, purely for cynical marketing purposes? Making "smart business decisions" with the fluff is something people already hate, and you're asking for more of it.

Take it from a woman telling you this.

Take it from a woman telling you this in return.

Nobody wins in 40k, everybody is a victim of something stronger. Kharn might come across as a badass in that particular scene, but he's a tortured soul, given over to a higher power. As others have said, Celestine is a living saint who comes back from the dead to bring emperor's justice to the galaxy. If you don't think that is equally badass then you I think you're probably just looking for a point to pick at.

It should also be noted that Kharn himself has been offed in rather unceremonious ways more than once, including being impaled on a Rhino's hedgecutter.

Handmaiden wrote:

And "protecting" characters based on sex is brainless pandering, not equality. If you want a stronger female customer base you speak to them, you don't speak down to them.

When I can count the number of female special characters on more than one hand, then lets talk about pandering and having no protection in terms of the writing. How is this speaking to us? It's victimisation of a strong female character.




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This is 40k. Everyone gets butchered by everyone. The solution to improve gender balance is not to "protect" characters by keeping them alive, it's to have Kharn get horribly butchered by a bunch of female guardsmen making a bayonet charge.

Oh really? Then why couldn't she butcher him back with him barely winning? Why's it a curbstomp? Didn't have to be. Why is it? Why's she written as a victim when the goal is to attract female players?

Because everyone dies in 40k. And, as stated, because Celestine's character gimmick is that she dies and is reborn over and over again. You can't be reborn through faith in the Emperor if you don't die.

I didn't ask why she has to die. I asked why she had to die fighting him. As a victim. What does that gain GW when they're trying to attract female players.

Because GW sucks at writing. Celestine is hardly the only character to look pathetic when GW decides it's their time to die against the designated Best Fighter Ever of the particular story they're in.

But Celestine's army is coming out and this book came out fairly recently. So doesn't it make sense to put her over in THIS instance? I would have thought so. These are fictional characters. They're as strong or weak as the writer demands. I'm aware of that. My point is that I don't think it was a smart decision in terms of business. GW already has a reputation of being extremely male focused and woman unfriendly in their fiction. This perpetuates that stereotype and keeps female players away. Take it from a woman telling you this.

It is not up to games workshop to play identity politics with you or for you. The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling. Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now. As for Kharne "victimizing" your favorite character? Well, its kinda what he does. It makes little difference that he does it to a female, male or his own squadmate. He is the mortal avatar of Khorne, god of butchery. He is gonna butcher most things that encounter him. And often times he is as much of a danger to his own faction as he is to the imperium. Abbadon had to trick him into a literal cage to keep him from murdering the entire ship he was on (traitors hate). The man is a death machine. Would it have bothered you if it was Marbo that got shanked by him? Or Vect? The gender of the shankie is irrelevant.


She had to die fighting him because that is what the author thought was called for. When you write a book or story you are free to victimize Kharne. You will probably get smack for it however. Fans tend to dump on mary sues or gary stu's, and for good reason. Very few people in the fluff can take on Kharne in close combat (primarchs?) so almost everyone is going to lose. That includes your girl. In the end, "putting over" someone for sales is a terrible idea. What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering. I think what you want to do and is the proper way of handling your issue is to ASK for a SoB book with Celestine as the focus.

Another suggestion is to play a non-imperial faction. You will get good practice at being "victimized" by GW's favortism. Look at the poor Orcs and their players.

GW is pretty poor at writing female characters but they tend not to fall into the pure fantasy that video games do. I'd imagine that the staff is largely made up of white geeky British boys.



Note: there is no judgement here, please no-one bring a toxic American culture war reply to this post.

Dai wrote:
GW is pretty poor at writing female characters but they tend not to fall into the pure fantasy that video games do. I'd imagine that the staff is largely made up of white geeky British boys.



Note: there is no judgement here, please no-one bring a toxic American culture war reply to this post.

Pandering and identity are not a "toxic American culture war". When a post is about pandering, then the replies will be about pandering.

In addition.



Saint Celestine is a revered Living Saint of the Adepta Sororitas' Order of Our Martyred Lady.

What do martyrs do? They die. Get used to her dying. And probably horribly.

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

Because crunch is more important than fluff

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

For once Peregrine I agree with everything you say here.

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?
Identity politics are what they are. The OP invoked them, the rest is in answer. Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics. But we could probably has a conversation about it.
I dont have a dog in this fight. I dont like Kharne as a character so whom he abuses or is abused by means little to me. I am confused by your statement. Elaborate. Not being snarky, im very open to self introspection and admiting wrong. But im not seeing what you are saying here.
She did not ask for more wemon in the story. Now you are moving the goal posts because you didnt like what I typed.



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 Stux wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

For once Peregrine I agree with everything you say here.

Yea for once I don't. Funny that .

Literally the entire point of 40k is pandering; this is not high literature, the things GW does do not have any motivation more complex than what they think would be cool, or fun. Their games used to be a sausage fest because GW is run by a bunch of dudes who's idea of cool and fun is macho men and macho men exclusively. We're getting more female models in both 40k and Sigmar because GW realized that there are, in fact, women who play these games who think it'd be nice if the concept of "cool and fun" was expanded a bit.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Literally the entire point of 40k is pandering; this is not high literature, the things GW does do not have any motivation more complex than what they think would be cool, or fun. Their games used to be a sausage fest because GW is run by a bunch of dudes who's idea of cool and fun is macho men and macho men exclusively. We're getting more female models in both 40k and Sigmar because GW realized that there are, in fact, women who play these games who think it'd be nice if the concept of "cool and fun" was expanded a bit.

This basically.

I feel like the politicisation of identity is not as strong in the UK as it is in North America. Might be wrong, but that's the impression I get.

As such, when GW adds women characters I do not believe it is to make a political stand or to bow to political pressure. It's because either they think it would be cool to do, or because they think there's a market for it. Probably both.

The question shouldn't be 'why add women to the setting?' and rather 'why not?'

As peregrine pointed out, 40k being a setting light on female characters is not really a defining factor of the setting, ruined if we change that.

Rather, it's because at the time it was created no one thought to introduce many females. But now they are, so why not?

Dai wrote:
GW is pretty poor at writing female characters but they tend not to fall into the pure fantasy that video games do. I'd imagine that the staff is largely made up of white geeky British boys.



Note: there is no judgement here, please no-one bring a toxic American culture war reply to this post.

GW have good female characters too. Koriel Zeth and Linya Tychon at least.

Table wrote:
Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?

Not disagreeing with that. But you were originally talking about the number of women in the setting, which is an entirely different question.

Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics.

Of course they have. Choosing to make the setting a bunch of white dudes (with occasional token non-white-dude characters) is identity politics. It just happens to be identity politics in a different direction.

Now you are moving the goal posts because you didnt like what I typed.

Perhaps you can clarify then, because your reference to "amount of females in the setting" sure seems to suggest that you're also talking about the general question of including more women (and identity politics in general), not just the OP's specific objection to Kharn killing a particular character in one scene. If this wasn't intended then I'll drop the argument in your direction.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Literally the entire point of 40k is pandering; this is not high literature, the things GW does do not have any motivation more complex than what they think would be cool, or fun. Their games used to be a sausage fest because GW is run by a bunch of dudes who's idea of cool and fun is macho men and macho men exclusively. We're getting more female models in both 40k and Sigmar because GW realized that there are, in fact, women who play these games who think it'd be nice if the concept of "cool and fun" was expanded a bit.

Basically this. Warhammer defined the "Rule of cool". Thats a rule based around the idea of pandering to the lower and most mundane tastes of the fans ignoring everything else: Coherence, sense, reason, etc...


About the topic at hand. As others have said, GW has the problem that Blizzard has, where to make some character look good, they need to make all characters around them look sad and pathetic, instead of making the character they are centering the history about stand on his own merits.
But in this specific instance Khârn is a bad beast, that is famous for killing many people and dying a ton of times in the process. Actually the fight couldn't be more meaningless because both characters are resureccted when they die, so who wins was irrelevant.

Handmaiden wrote:
IWhy would they put over Kharn and have Celestine job when Celestine's army is coming out soon?

Don't worry about it. I'm sure she'll heal up just fine in time for the release.
It's like when Marvel/DC screws up a character in their books. You'll get about a two year stretch of crap & then about a month before the character hits the screen again in their next movie, SURPRISE! Suddenly everything resets and is made right.

Besides, at least she got her ass kicked by Kharn. In actual play she's just as likely to get taken out by a grot blaster, a las-pistol, shrapnel from an exploding vehicle, or any other # of stupid random dice rolls. Heck along time ago (3e?) I saw her get killed by PLANT LIFE. Twice. Once by some man eating plant that got rolled up from a terrain chart - she landed too near it, dice were rolled & "gulp", she became a snack. The second time? She impaled herself on a tree. In that edition if you jumped/flew into terrain you had to make a check upon landing or take an un-savable wound. Dice were rolled, dead saint.
So at least she fell to Kharn, not slipped & drowned in a muddy crater or such.

Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

BTW what book/story is this extract from? Because right now we have a single page of a larger story, that's not a whole lot of room for CONTEXT. I mean "Kharne runs up and butchers celestine, the end" is a biiiiiiiiig differance from "they've been fighting for a dozen pages, both getting their hits in, and this is just finally Kharn winning"

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

For Kharn it's a win as he shed blood. Win or lose that's all that matters, although with Kharn it's usually win.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

Infinite blood for the blood god and skulls for the skull throne > finite blood and skull.

Can't really judge this excerpt without knowing the entire story, but GW has had a long history of having Sisters of Battle suffer because of gak. It's a common enough thing with GW that 1d4chan even has a whole section about it: https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Sisters_of_Battle#Sisters_Snuff

-Removed by insaniak-

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?

Not disagreeing with that. But you were originally talking about the number of women in the setting, which is an entirely different question.

Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics.

Of course they have. Choosing to make the setting a bunch of white dudes (with occasional token non-white-dude characters) is identity politics. It just happens to be identity politics in a different direction.

I wanna talk about this one for a second because it's AMAZING how few people forget this: 40k abso-freaking-lutely plays identity politics.

Until very, very recently, the appearance of any race besides "white" or any females have been pretty much treated as a defining trait by GW.

If a female model appeared, "female" is at least a part of their shtick (Succubus/Wyches, Eschers from Necromunda, Sisters of Battle, Howling Banshees). If a not-white model appeared, not being white was part of their shtick (original Dark Angels/Salamanders concepts, Tallarn, White Scars, whatever the mongolia themed IG regiment was called).

That is identity politics, as defined by the people who complain about identity politics. And yet, they seem to have no problem with it. A model just HAPPENING to be female seems to cause much more complaints because "oh you're just shoving women in for no reason."

But if you're really trying to avoid identity politics, wouldn't just putting more women in WITHOUT calling out the fact that "oh, this is an IG regiment of only women, this is an elite warrior women order, this is the Space Watermelons marine chapter" be the absolute best way to do things? Having your gender/race/whatever be a part of your identity is exactly what people complain about when they're complaining about identity politics.

 kastelen wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

Infinite blood for the blood god and skulls for the skull throne > finite blood and skull.

Sure, but it more or less traps Khorne and his followers in their own dumb rage. If their head-chopping has no consequence other than as a mild annoyance, you've effectively removed one of the four Chaos Gods as a threat. "The Emperor is so powerful that his most devout followers can brush off even the foulest of heretics with ease. If you're faithful and pious enough, YOU could become like her! Enlist in the Imperial Guard today!"

Khorne's followers are tratidionally scary because they show up as a gibbering mass of madmen who kill everything in the most gruesome way possible. If the Emperor can be shown to have such power that the negative effects of Khorne existing are largely mitigated, isn't Celestine's "sacrifice" and prompt rebirth the ultimate triumph of Mankind over Khorne?

Celestine as mentioned has the whole rising again thing. If this were literally ANY other named character, there would have been some convenient lazy deus ex machina to intervene and prevent that named character from dying and ticking off all their fans (seriously, can you imagine the butthurt over some precious spahs mahreen character properly dying?). Celestine doesnt truly die (heroes never die) she just gets knocked down and gets back up again. That is her machina. She doesnt need someone in blue power armour to swoop in and save the day. She IS the one that does the day saving and if shes going down then by crikey you know the brown matter has hit the fan.

That said, the excerpt OP has provided isnt a flattering light for her. Her spirit and her faith is unbroken which is good, but the except lacks any substance and context. As mentioned, this could be the end of a 12 page awesome fight; or a trashy blurb text (which is what it reads like). I think this is from a recent novel which i cant think of the name of because i havent been compelled to read new stuff of late as the impression ive gotten of it has been shallow.

Regardless she will be back. There is a book coming out soon entitled "Celestine" so kind of a giveaway there.

You made an account to start this thread? who's alt are you?

 Stux wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

For once Peregrine I agree with everything you say here.

I see you agreeing with him all the time lol

 SHUPPET wrote:
You made an account to start this thread? who's alt are you?

 Stux wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

For once Peregrine I agree with everything you say here.

I see you agreeing with him all the time lol

Today that seems to be the case, it usually isn't!

EDIT: wait, you read through the thread and this was the one point you found contentious enough to question? That seems a bit... Odd

 Vaktathi wrote:
It should also be noted that Kharn himself has been offed in rather unceremonious ways more than once, including being impaled on a Rhino's hedgecutter.

That didn't actually kill him, the only time Kharn died was at the Gates of Terra where he was either slain by Sigismund or a bunch of Blood Angels, and was either resurrected by his sheer anger or Khorne's whimsy.

If you have nothing constructive to add to the discussion then do not post.

Handmaiden wrote:
There aren't many female special characters in 40k, I can just think of Lelith Hesperax, Jain Zar, Celestine and Inquisitor Greyfax.

Well there is also Praxedes (killed by nids), Sabbat (nuked), Helena (old age), Ephrael... ecclesiarchal characters do have a tendency of dying in their fluff - Jacobus was killed off in his opening fluff for instance (lung disease).

They are a bit lazy with Celestine getting her killed in every appearance though, as if it's some kind of checklist they have to tick off when she is featured.

 Draco wrote:

Dai wrote:
GW is pretty poor at writing female characters but they tend not to fall into the pure fantasy that video games do. I'd imagine that the staff is largely made up of white geeky British boys.



Note: there is no judgement here, please no-one bring a toxic American culture war reply to this post.

GW have good female characters too. Koriel Zeth and Linya Tychon at least.

Inquisitor Amberley Vail, too.

Kharn died was at the Gates of Terra where he was either slain by Sigismund or a bunch of Blood Angels

Anywhere to read further on this?

Other decent female characters were the Navigator from the NLs trilogy and the female assassins in Nemesis.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?

Not disagreeing with that. But you were originally talking about the number of women in the setting, which is an entirely different question.

Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics.

Of course they have. Choosing to make the setting a bunch of white dudes (with occasional token non-white-dude characters) is identity politics. It just happens to be identity politics in a different direction.

I wanna talk about this one for a second because it's AMAZING how few people forget this: 40k abso-freaking-lutely plays identity politics.

Until very, very recently, the appearance of any race besides "white" or any females have been pretty much treated as a defining trait by GW.

If a female model appeared, "female" is at least a part of their shtick (Succubus/Wyches, Eschers from Necromunda, Sisters of Battle, Howling Banshees). If a not-white model appeared, not being white was part of their shtick (original Dark Angels/Salamanders concepts, Tallarn, White Scars, whatever the mongolia themed IG regiment was called).

That is identity politics, as defined by the people who complain about identity politics. And yet, they seem to have no problem with it. A model just HAPPENING to be female seems to cause much more complaints because "oh you're just shoving women in for no reason."

But if you're really trying to avoid identity politics, wouldn't just putting more women in WITHOUT calling out the fact that "oh, this is an IG regiment of only women, this is an elite warrior women order, this is the Space Watermelons marine chapter" be the absolute best way to do things? Having your gender/race/whatever be a part of your identity is exactly what people complain about when they're complaining about identity politics.

GW is doing excellent with gender in Age of Sigmar, which I believe is where they are pulling a more diverse audience. Personal experience is that women like fantasy more than scifi, especially when the scifi is basically a micheal bay movie on steroids. Sure, AoS has gender specific factions, like Daughters of Kain being only women, and kharadron overlords being only men, or daemons being only entities of pure chaos without gender. Other factions like sigmar and deepkin have a good diversity, and are not in your face about it, which is how it should be.

 gwarsh41 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?

Not disagreeing with that. But you were originally talking about the number of women in the setting, which is an entirely different question.

Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics.

Of course they have. Choosing to make the setting a bunch of white dudes (with occasional token non-white-dude characters) is identity politics. It just happens to be identity politics in a different direction.

I wanna talk about this one for a second because it's AMAZING how few people forget this: 40k abso-freaking-lutely plays identity politics.

Until very, very recently, the appearance of any race besides "white" or any females have been pretty much treated as a defining trait by GW.

If a female model appeared, "female" is at least a part of their shtick (Succubus/Wyches, Eschers from Necromunda, Sisters of Battle, Howling Banshees). If a not-white model appeared, not being white was part of their shtick (original Dark Angels/Salamanders concepts, Tallarn, White Scars, whatever the mongolia themed IG regiment was called).

That is identity politics, as defined by the people who complain about identity politics. And yet, they seem to have no problem with it. A model just HAPPENING to be female seems to cause much more complaints because "oh you're just shoving women in for no reason."

But if you're really trying to avoid identity politics, wouldn't just putting more women in WITHOUT calling out the fact that "oh, this is an IG regiment of only women, this is an elite warrior women order, this is the Space Watermelons marine chapter" be the absolute best way to do things? Having your gender/race/whatever be a part of your identity is exactly what people complain about when they're complaining about identity politics.

GW is doing excellent with gender in Age of Sigmar, which I believe is where they are pulling a more diverse audience. Personal experience is that women like fantasy more than scifi, especially when the scifi is basically a micheal bay movie on steroids. Sure, AoS has gender specific factions, like Daughters of Kain being only women, and kharadron overlords being only men, or daemons being only entities of pure chaos without gender. Other factions like sigmar and deepkin have a good diversity, and are not in your face about it, which is how it should be.

In general, I agree. And I don't have much of a conceptual problem with the passage posted by the OP, except to point out that it's a bit laughable to have people on this thread going "Celestine shouldn't have just won because shes a WOMAN that'd be sexist/stupid PC culture!" when the reason why Celestine loses the fight is because she's a freely killable character and you can nearly 100% of the time accurately predict who will win a given fight in 40k based on who is involved (Killable character vs important character who can't die because they make a model for them) and where it takes place (Tyranids must lose on Baal because otherwise Blood Angels cease to exist, for example).

It's lazy, obnoxious storytelling to have a female character win because they're female. it's also lazy, obnoxious storytelling to have a whole slew of characters who always win because there's models made for them.

If you wanna take a quick jump over to AoS, you can use Lady Olynder as an example... the Mortarch of Grief of the Nighthaunt. Another example, to the best of my knowledge, is Neave Blacktalon, Knight-Zephyros of the Stormcast Eternals.

Just my $0.02

SG

40 thousand years in the future humanity fights an endless war, united against aliens and the threat of chaos. Do you guys think they care if their fellow soldiers are black or white? Do you guys think they care how many of their lasgun sporting fellows are female? Get a grip and stop feeding the troll.

Besides, ladies play nids and drukhari, SoB is for neckbeards.

 Fueli wrote:

Besides, ladies play nids and drukhari, SoB is for neckbeards.

SoB group will change when they come into plastic as they will be more accessible. For the most part they have been collected by diehards ands masochists due to gakky rules(up until 8th) and being in metal for the most part.

I must say that having Celestine as an endless resurrection machine kinda makes her less dramatic. She sacrificing herself?! Nah, she'll be back next weekend. She becomes a writer's gimmick to make things look powerful, a bit like the poor Craftworld Avatar and its encounters with every single Space Marine.

On the other hand, being constantly slain in the service of the Emperor is quite the martyrdom, especially when that sort of thing is why Daemon Princes are slaves to darkness.

 Eldarsif wrote:

I must say that having Celestine as an endless resurrection machine kinda makes her less dramatic. She sacrificing herself?! Nah, she'll be back next weekend. She becomes a writer's gimmick to make things look powerful, a bit like the poor Craftworld Avatar and its encounters with every single Space Marine.

See also: Jain Zar.

Hell thats most of the original point of the Phoenix Lords: give the Imperium big names Xenos to knock off to fluff up the hero of the week without actually killing anyone.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

Khorne cares not for if the skull comes back to like at some other point after being chopped...only that the skull was chopped. Kharne collected a skull..and moved on. Her coming back to like just lets he collect her skull again... Happy Day!!!

A.T. wrote:


They are a bit lazy with Celestine getting her killed in every appearance though, as if it's some kind of checklist they have to tick off when she is featured.

That's a trope that all characters with immortality have to suffer though. The writers want to show off the character's super power and they generally over do it.

Handmaiden wrote:


And she had to be written to die fighting him...why?
And even if she was, why's it a curbstomp? Not too long ago she was holding her own against Abaddon where it was implied she'd have taken him if it weren't for the pylons.

Why would this make women want to play 40k?

The problem is that GW did it in the wrong order. If I recall correctly, a character is supposed to get curbstomped by a champion of Khorne, then declare a great war of vengeance to prove themselves once again. Carve a bloody path to the Avatar of Chaos Undivided at the height of his power just before he seizes complete victory. Then sucker punch him, beat the snot out of him, spit on his face and say "Green iz da best" before walking away as the Chaos forces crumble.

Wait... were we talking about Celestine or Storm of Chaos Grimgor?

ccs wrote:

Handmaiden wrote:
IWhy would they put over Kharn and have Celestine job when Celestine's army is coming out soon?

Don't worry about it. I'm sure she'll heal up just fine in time for the release.
It's like when Marvel/DC screws up a character in their books. You'll get about a two year stretch of crap & then about a month before the character hits the screen again in their next movie, SURPRISE! Suddenly everything resets and is made right.

Besides, at least she got her ass kicked by Kharn. In actual play she's just as likely to get taken out by a grot blaster, a las-pistol, shrapnel from an exploding vehicle, or any other # of stupid random dice rolls. Heck along time ago (3e?) I saw her get killed by PLANT LIFE. Twice. Once by some man eating plant that got rolled up from a terrain chart - she landed too near it, dice were rolled & "gulp", she became a snack. The second time? She impaled herself on a tree. In that edition if you jumped/flew into terrain you had to make a check upon landing or take an un-savable wound. Dice were rolled, dead saint.
So at least she fell to Kharn, not slipped & drowned in a muddy crater or such.

I feel like after the Tomb Raider reboot we could call that means of dying "being Tomd Raider'd" considering the number of QTE deaths Laura could face versus trees and other dangerous spikey things in that game.

What book is this quote/page from. It's impossible to judge any story based on one page that the OP clearly isolated to support a particular agenda. Additionally her dying is kinda her thing, and she gives as good as she get's in a lot of stories. Hell, in Gathering Storm she stands toe to toe with Abaddon and manages to wound him pretty badly. Sisters being murdered off hand is kinda a played out trope but there are plenty of good stories about them were they actually win.

A.T. wrote:

Handmaiden wrote:
There aren't many female special characters in 40k, I can just think of Lelith Hesperax, Jain Zar, Celestine and Inquisitor Greyfax.

Well there is also Praxedes (killed by nids), Sabbat (nuked), Helena (old age), Ephrael... ecclesiarchal characters do have a tendency of dying in their fluff - Jacobus was killed off in his opening fluff for instance (lung disease).

They are a bit lazy with Celestine getting her killed in every appearance though, as if it's some kind of checklist they have to tick off when she is featured.

Yeah, martyrdom is a strong trait of the Sisters, and if you read what happened to the original six who overthrew Vandire they all had bad ends as well.

I also want to point out that while Celestine is a cool-headed Emperor-powered living saint, she's against a madness engine powered by BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD and SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE who has ten thousand years of fighting experience against anything and everything that moves. One of those things is going to have a leg up in a fight, and it ain't the girl with wings and shiny armour, it's the nutter who doesn't care if you have a flaming sword stuck through his chest as long as he can take the head off your neck.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gwarsh41 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?

Not disagreeing with that. But you were originally talking about the number of women in the setting, which is an entirely different question.

Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics.

Of course they have. Choosing to make the setting a bunch of white dudes (with occasional token non-white-dude characters) is identity politics. It just happens to be identity politics in a different direction.

I wanna talk about this one for a second because it's AMAZING how few people forget this: 40k abso-freaking-lutely plays identity politics.

Until very, very recently, the appearance of any race besides "white" or any females have been pretty much treated as a defining trait by GW.

If a female model appeared, "female" is at least a part of their shtick (Succubus/Wyches, Eschers from Necromunda, Sisters of Battle, Howling Banshees). If a not-white model appeared, not being white was part of their shtick (original Dark Angels/Salamanders concepts, Tallarn, White Scars, whatever the mongolia themed IG regiment was called).

That is identity politics, as defined by the people who complain about identity politics. And yet, they seem to have no problem with it. A model just HAPPENING to be female seems to cause much more complaints because "oh you're just shoving women in for no reason."

But if you're really trying to avoid identity politics, wouldn't just putting more women in WITHOUT calling out the fact that "oh, this is an IG regiment of only women, this is an elite warrior women order, this is the Space Watermelons marine chapter" be the absolute best way to do things? Having your gender/race/whatever be a part of your identity is exactly what people complain about when they're complaining about identity politics.

GW is doing excellent with gender in Age of Sigmar, which I believe is where they are pulling a more diverse audience. Personal experience is that women like fantasy more than scifi, especially when the scifi is basically a micheal bay movie on steroids. Sure, AoS has gender specific factions, like Daughters of Kain being only women, and kharadron overlords being only men, or daemons being only entities of pure chaos without gender. Other factions like sigmar and deepkin have a good diversity, and are not in your face about it, which is how it should be.

One of my experiances is that women tend to collect Nids more than human factions in 40k (because, and I quote one person "they're cute").

At the end of the day though, once you start saying "women can't be hurt in stories because they're women" you start going down a slippery slope of "X can't because they're X" things I've seen bandied about too much. Don't restrict who can be the villian, or who can be killed as long as it properly serves the story. Celestine dying to Kharne highlights how dangerous the Chaos Space Marines are, even to the most powerful of humans, and it also works with her character since she doesn't stay dead. It serves the story well, even if the way its executed is poorly written.

On a different note, anyone else wonder if Kharne just gets an extra life for every 888 skulls he reaps?

Spitybits is click bait, Celestine fluff is she cant die. End thread.

the_scotsman wrote:

In general, I agree. And I don't have much of a conceptual problem with the passage posted by the OP, except to point out that it's a bit laughable to have people on this thread going "Celestine shouldn't have just won because shes a WOMAN that'd be sexist/stupid PC culture!" when the reason why Celestine loses the fight is because she's a freely killable character and you can nearly 100% of the time accurately predict who will win a given fight in 40k based on who is involved (Killable character vs important character who can't die because they make a model for them) and where it takes place (Tyranids must lose on Baal because otherwise Blood Angels cease to exist, for example).

It's lazy, obnoxious storytelling to have a female character win because they're female. it's also lazy, obnoxious storytelling to have a whole slew of characters who always win because there's models made for them.

My counterpoint would be to say that they're BOTH equally killable since Kharn has died more times than Celestine has over 10,000 years. The difference is one being a murder blender known for killing anything that moves in axe range (suprised he hasn't found a way to God of War things around him with that axe actually) against one of the most powerful humans in existance. At the end of the day the fight is still between an Astartes and a Human and even with them being powered by their individual patrons (the Emperor and Khorne respectively) the Astartes basically has cheat mode on in that fight no matter how good you are in combat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Fueli wrote:
40 thousand years in the future humanity fights an endless war, united against aliens and the threat of chaos. Do you guys think they care if their fellow soldiers are black or white? Do you guys think they care how many of their lasgun sporting fellows are female? Get a grip and stop feeding the troll.

Besides, ladies play nids and drukhari, SoB is for neckbeards.

I'l have you know my beard stays firmly on my jaw thank you.

My counterpoint would be to say that they're BOTH equally killable since Kharn has died more times than Celestine has over 10,000 years. The difference is one being a murder blender known for killing anything that moves in axe range (suprised he hasn't found a way to God of War things around him with that axe actually) against one of the most powerful humans in existance. At the end of the day the fight is still between an Astartes and a Human and even with them being powered by their individual patrons (the Emperor and Khorne respectively) the Astartes basically has cheat mode on in that fight no matter how good you are in combat.

She did put up quite an amazing fight against Abbadon on Cadia.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

My counterpoint would be to say that they're BOTH equally killable since Kharn has died more times than Celestine has over 10,000 years. The difference is one being a murder blender known for killing anything that moves in axe range (suprised he hasn't found a way to God of War things around him with that axe actually) against one of the most powerful humans in existance. At the end of the day the fight is still between an Astartes and a Human and even with them being powered by their individual patrons (the Emperor and Khorne respectively) the Astartes basically has cheat mode on in that fight no matter how good you are in combat.

She did put up quite an amazing fight against Abbadon on Cadia.

Oh I'm not saying she can't fight well, I'm just saying that she's fighting against an Astartes which to a human is basically like fighting someone with cheat mode on. The fact that she can go toe to toe with them so well is more a compliment to her ability than her dying to Kharne is a point against her ability.

As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

i mean, I guess. You could pretty much say the same about any other character, though - you know "oh, I'm sure Guilliman dies all the time in the lore, he's probably a super flawed character and the emperor just resurrects him. You just don't see that written about in the lore."

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Are you saying that because it doesn't specifically state that Kharn can't come back from the dead as a matter of course, we should assume that he can?

That's quite a leap of logic!

 RobS wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Are you saying that because it doesn't specifically state that Kharn can't come back from the dead as a matter of course, we should assume that he can?

That's quite a leap of logic!

This is a bit of silly bending over backwards to be trying to justify that one of the characters involved in this fight was the Designated Die-er and one of them had impenetrable plot armor.

I bet Worf is super tough and beats aliens all the time! Just not in the episodes they film.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Kharn was found on Istvaan 5 impaled on a rhino by Skane who called apothecary Kargos over. They patched him up and he was fine. He didn't die. This was in the Intro/First chapter of HH Betrayer. If there was a second rhino impaling, then so be it.

 RobS wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Are you saying that because it doesn't specifically state that Kharn can't come back from the dead as a matter of course, we should assume that he can?

That's quite a leap of logic!

Actually my leap of logic was that it's possible that he may have "died" in other campaigns, we just haven't heard about them. Seeing as he has spent 10,000 years murdering almost everyone he meets there is a lot of room for other stuff to happen other than just him murdering anything that isn't a kitten. I mean, being angry all the time doesn't protect against disease, explosive decompression in a ship, his landing craft being shot down, or other things that that could kill him without him dying in a straight fight against someone else.

Regardless the whole thing is kind of moot since the whole scene was likely to set up how badass Kharn is as a murderblender while highlighting the martyrdom and faith powered resurrection abilities of Celestine (and considering Celestine was nuked in her original lore in C:WH, I'm going to say that being hacked up by Kharn isn't the most potentially fatal thing she experianced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 deviantduck wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Kharn was found on Istvaan 5 impaled on a rhino by Skane who called apothecary Kargos over. They patched him up and he was fine. He didn't die. This was in the Intro/First chapter of HH Betrayer. If there was a second rhino impaling, then so be it.

When Loken shoved him into the dozer blades he seemed to have died, but that was apparently not fatal enough.

Besides, Kharn only went after her because he was angry at her audacity to wear white after Labor Day.

 deviantduck wrote:
Besides, Kharn only went after her because he was angry at her audacity to wear white after Labor Day.

It's not her fault. Black wings are so 1999.

 deviantduck wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Kharn was found on Istvaan 5 impaled on a rhino by Skane who called apothecary Kargos over. They patched him up and he was fine. He didn't die. This was in the Intro/First chapter of HH Betrayer. If there was a second rhino impaling, then so be it.

I unlucky the does guy needs to be to be impaled twice on a Rhino? I don't think we can say that Kharn died twice or even once. As far as I am concerned, he was presumed dead or seriously injured enough to be thought dead at least twice it doesn't mean he actually died in either situation. On another note, it does seem like Celestine resurrection shtick designate her as an ideal "Worf". Though, it's fairly useless to Worf her to show Kharn strength. Evrybody knows that Kharn is almost unbeatable. Only a handful of character could hope killing him in duel. I would say Celestine is more in need of a "Worf" to showcase what she can actually do beside bouncing back from the dead like a grumpy cat meme.

 Nurglitch wrote:
On the other hand, being constantly slain in the service of the Emperor is quite the martyrdom, especially when that sort of thing is why Daemon Princes are slaves to darkness.

How is Martyrdom if you don't actually die?

I get it, I don't dislike Celestine or anything. But I agree that she can very easely be overused and lose all of his narrative weight.

 deviantduck wrote:
Besides, Kharn only went after her because he was angry at her audacity to wear white after Labor Day.

Khorne: lord of skulls, blood, war, and fashion policing.

KHORNE CARES NOT FROM WHERE THE STYLE FLOWWWWS


Automatically Appended Next Post:

epronovost wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Kharn was found on Istvaan 5 impaled on a rhino by Skane who called apothecary Kargos over. They patched him up and he was fine. He didn't die. This was in the Intro/First chapter of HH Betrayer. If there was a second rhino impaling, then so be it.

I unlucky the does guy needs to be to be impaled twice on a Rhino? I don't think we can say that Kharn died twice or even once. As far as I am concerned, he was presumed dead or seriously injured enough to be thought dead at least twice it doesn't mean he actually died in either situation. On another note, it does seem like Celestine resurrection shtick designate her as an ideal "Worf". Though, it's fairly useless to Worf her to show Kharn strength. Evrybody knows that Kharn is almost unbeatable. Only a handful of character could hope killing him in duel. I would say Celestine is more in need of a "Worf" to showcase what she can actually do beside bouncing back from the dead like a grumpy cat meme.

but but but but but she ALMOST got to worf Abbadon and then died and came back to life like a grumpy cat meme....

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

For Kharn it's a win as he shed blood. Win or lose that's all that matters, although with Kharn it's usually win.

Question: was Celestine ever actually alive? She's an Imperial Saint, not a Sister of Battle, and therefore not mortal.

From a fluff standpoint, she's just as much an abhorrent creation of the warp as any Daemon Prince. She's just a slave to the Emperor instead of a Dark God.

I object to Kharn butchering her on the grounds that he's technically fighting against Chaos. They should be collecting skulls together.

the_scotsman wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:
Besides, Kharn only went after her because he was angry at her audacity to wear white after Labor Day.

Khorne: lord of skulls, blood, war, and fashion policing.

KHORNE CARES NOT FROM WHERE THE STYLE FLOWWWWS

He makes people catatonic on the catwalk, he makes blood run on the runway, and empties every magazine in every issue of Vogue.
...and don't get me started on Apothecary Fabulous Bile

epronovost wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Primortus wrote:
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, Kharn has died exactly once in his 10000 year lifetime, at the gates of Terra.

Let's see:
+Impaled through the chest on a Rhino's dozer blade (presumed dead)
+Died at the Gates of Terra on a mound of corpses

Yeah, no other deaths listed, though I almost could swear I recall him having a rule that let him get back up after getting dropped in a game, but those weren't supper uncommon in 5th.

That said, just because it hasn't been written doesn't mean it doesn't have room to happen in the lore.

Kharn was found on Istvaan 5 impaled on a rhino by Skane who called apothecary Kargos over. They patched him up and he was fine. He didn't die. This was in the Intro/First chapter of HH Betrayer. If there was a second rhino impaling, then so be it.

I unlucky the does guy needs to be to be impaled twice on a Rhino? I don't think we can say that Kharn died twice or even once. As far as I am concerned, he was presumed dead or seriously injured enough to be thought dead at least twice it doesn't mean he actually died in either situation. On another note, it does seem like Celestine resurrection shtick designate her as an ideal "Worf". Though, it's fairly useless to Worf her to show Kharn strength. Evrybody knows that Kharn is almost unbeatable. Only a handful of character could hope killing him in duel. I would say Celestine is more in need of a "Worf" to showcase what she can actually do beside bouncing back from the dead like a grumpy cat meme.

Most of those characters who could beat him (such as Sigismund) are already dead too.

the_scotsman wrote:
but but but but but she ALMOST got to worf Abbadon and then died and came back to life like a grumpy cat meme....

First, lol.

Second, if she keeps dying and resurrecting like that, maybe all the talk about her keeping her faith is fairly diminished. I mean, full faith in the God-Emperor i great and all, but when death and resurrection becomes your normal wednesday afternoon, it makes it very easy and rather cheap. Did she even accomplished anything with that most recent death or was it a completly pointless death?

 techsoldaten wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

For Kharn it's a win as he shed blood. Win or lose that's all that matters, although with Kharn it's usually win.

Question: was Celestine ever actually alive? She's an Imperial Saint, not a Sister of Battle, and therefore not mortal.

From a fluff standpoint, she's just as much an abhorrent creation of the warp as any Daemon Prince. She's just a slave to the Emperor instead of a Dark God.

I object to Kharn butchering her on the grounds that he's technically fighting against Chaos. They should be collecting skulls together.

Celestine was a Repentia who died in battle before coming back to life "redeemed". This promoted her to saint status which has only grown since then as she's appeared countless times since the second time she died (to a nuke) to aid the Imperium, leading wars of faith against the enemies of man. There was a book I recall them mentioning that she'd stabbed through a man to kill the traitor behind him and the man not only didn't die, but had a wound that never properly healed and was seeping blood to the day the novel was set in (basically a stigmata).

Gathering Storm established that she was supposed to be the first of others, but something failed and she's the only one of her kind (my guess is a shard of the Emperor's Psyche wanted to try to forcibly uplift humanity, saw the purity of her soul and used her only for it to not work out as intended).

thinking about it, it is just hilarious just HOW many different factions have fluff excuses for them to get curbstomped by space marines.

Sisters: Pretty much only named character resurrects
Eldar: Pheonix Lords resurrect, avatar of khaine is just a statue so you can kill him as much as you want.
Dark Eldar: everyone can haemoncurevive.
Tyranids: yep, their named characters can die and get reborn.
Necrons: Yep, their named characters can die and get voiped back to the tomb world/repaired.
Daemons: Yep, their named characters can die and get re-pooped out by their deity.

I'm frankly more amazed that the Orks and Tau are the only NPC races that DONT have built in Get Out of Dead Free cards so they can get curbstomped by the heroes. Though IIRC Tau made like a hatsune miku of the space pope, so maybe that's their solution to that.

I guess their solution for the orks is to just delete all their named characters except for ghazzy and have them run totally all-NPC all the time.

epronovost wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
but but but but but she ALMOST got to worf Abbadon and then died and came back to life like a grumpy cat meme....

First, lol.

Second, if she keeps dying and resurrecting like that, maybe all the talk about her keeping her faith is fairly diminished. I mean, full faith in the God-Emperor i great and all, but when death and resurrection becomes your normal wednesday afternoon, it makes it very easy and rather cheap. Did she even accomplished anything with that most recent death or was it a completly pointless death?

She's something other than completely human now and it may be more the faith that others have in the Emperor that keeps bringing her back rather than her own belief at this point. She clearly believes in the divinity of the Emperor though and even lead a religious service on the steps of the Imperial palace for the pilgrims who'd traveled there, but her faith may not be driving her to keep coming back and she knows everytime she dies it's wearing her away to the point that conceivably any death could be her last one.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Most of those characters who could beat him (such as Sigismund) are already dead too.

Right now I would say the only potential candidates for capable of handling Kharn are Lelith, a Phoenix Lord (most likely one from a close combat aspect shrine), Abbadon himself, Guilliman (duh), Ghazkull (duh again), Calgar, Crowe, Obiron, the Swarmlord (duh again) and, irony, I would have probably placed Celestine there, but I guess I was wrong on this one. I don't count Lucius in there because he is obviouly a little bitch and nobody likes him, not even his mom, plus he is ugly and has no sense of style and panache (:p).

 Galas wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
On the other hand, being constantly slain in the service of the Emperor is quite the martyrdom, especially when that sort of thing is why Daemon Princes are slaves to darkness.

How is Martyrdom if you don't actually die?

I get it, I don't dislike Celestine or anything. But I agree that she can very easely be overused and lose all of his narrative weight.

She can't come back to life if she didn't die first, and while I'm reasonably sure dying isn't strictly necessary for martyrdom, the suffering is.

the_scotsman wrote:
thinking about it, it is just hilarious just HOW many different factions have fluff excuses for them to get curbstomped by space marines.

Sisters: Pretty much only named character resurrects
Eldar: Pheonix Lords resurrect, avatar of khaine is just a statue so you can kill him as much as you want.
Dark Eldar: everyone can haemoncurevive.
Tyranids: yep, their named characters can die and get reborn.
Necrons: Yep, their named characters can die and get voiped back to the tomb world/repaired.
Daemons: Yep, their named characters can die and get re-pooped out by their deity.

I'm frankly more amazed that the Orks and Tau are the only NPC races that DONT have built in Get Out of Dead Free cards so they can get curbstomped by the heroes. Though IIRC Tau made like a hatsune miku of the space pope, so maybe that's their solution to that.

I guess their solution for the orks is to just delete all their named characters except for ghazzy and have them run totally all-NPC all the time.

Sisters haven't fought Space Marines outside of the one time they fought Space Wolves over blowing up an Ecclesiarchy missionary lander that was in Fenris airspace. They did fight the Guard in two novels (one where the Guard sided with Chaos and they were blindly serving a corrupt priest they should have killed making them dumb mooks instead of real Sisters in my mind) and again in another where the Canoness was practicing Istvannian doctrine to the point she was allowing whole worlds to die in hopes that any sole survivor would come out of it stronger (basically let the chaffe of humanity purge so the survivors come out stronger....and one said survivor kills her in a fight, so it's possible she was right, albeit possibly crazy).

Sisters job it a bit against CSM, but seeing as you're taking humans in power armour up against Astartes in power armour I'm not too shocked.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Celestine was a Repentia who died in battle before coming back to life "redeemed". This promoted her to saint status which has only grown since then as she's appeared countless times since the second time she died (to a nuke) to aid the Imperium, leading wars of faith against the enemies of man. There was a book I recall them mentioning that she'd stabbed through a man to kill the traitor behind him and the man not only didn't die, but had a wound that never properly healed and was seeping blood to the day the novel was set in (basically a stigmata).

That would actually be Saint Katherine and it wasn't a traitor it was an Eldar Autarch she was duelling. When the fight took a turn against him, he took an imperial soldier hostage, but it didn't work. At least that's the sotry in Faith and Fire. A similar event might have happened to Celestine too. In her earlier lore, it was hinted she might have been a reincarnation of Saint Katherine in the first place (her sword and armor were Saint Katherine artefact afterall).

BrianDavion wrote:
BTW what book/story is this extract from? Because right now we have a single page of a larger story, that's not a whole lot of room for CONTEXT. I mean "Kharne runs up and butchers celestine, the end" is a biiiiiiiiig differance from "they've been fighting for a dozen pages, both getting their hits in, and this is just finally Kharn winning"

Just quoting BrianDavion, but others have asked: Its from the novel "Shroud of Night" by Andy Clark. It was one of the first novels to come out since the fluff moved forward after Cadia was destroyed.

Kharn and Celestine are mostly ancillary characters in the novel about a group of Alpha Legion who are trying to steal a relic with anti-chaos properties that separate and opposing forces of Chaos are trying to destroy/corrupt for their own ends. The Imperials are of course defending the relic, but its a losing battle for them.

The excerpt that OP focused on is near to the culmination of the novel (going off memory, I read the novel when it was released over a year ago) :



The above action is maybe, at most, 3 pages of text, and the duel is interspersed with the AL squad ex-filtrating themselves from the scene. To call it "domestic violence level" is an absurdity.

Straight up troll thread, imo. If OP isn't guilty of trolling, they're definitely guilty of being intellectually infantile. Taking a small paragraph from a near 300 page novel and taking it out of context to prove some kind of point is ridiculous. If you are truly concerned about that sequence of events, maybe read it for yourself? Or failing that, ask for clarification on the scene, from someone who read it.

0/10.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
thinking about it, it is just hilarious just HOW many different factions have fluff excuses for them to get curbstomped by space marines.

Sisters: Pretty much only named character resurrects
Eldar: Pheonix Lords resurrect, avatar of khaine is just a statue so you can kill him as much as you want.
Dark Eldar: everyone can haemoncurevive.
Tyranids: yep, their named characters can die and get reborn.
Necrons: Yep, their named characters can die and get voiped back to the tomb world/repaired.
Daemons: Yep, their named characters can die and get re-pooped out by their deity.

I'm frankly more amazed that the Orks and Tau are the only NPC races that DONT have built in Get Out of Dead Free cards so they can get curbstomped by the heroes. Though IIRC Tau made like a hatsune miku of the space pope, so maybe that's their solution to that.

I guess their solution for the orks is to just delete all their named characters except for ghazzy and have them run totally all-NPC all the time.

Sisters haven't fought Space Marines outside of the one time they fought Space Wolves over blowing up an Ecclesiarchy missionary lander that was in Fenris airspace. They did fight the Guard in two novels (one where the Guard sided with Chaos and they were blindly serving a corrupt priest they should have killed making them dumb mooks instead of real Sisters in my mind) and again in another where the Canoness was practicing Istvannian doctrine to the point she was allowing whole worlds to die in hopes that any sole survivor would come out of it stronger (basically let the chaffe of humanity purge so the survivors come out stronger....and one said survivor kills her in a fight, so it's possible she was right, albeit possibly crazy).

Sisters job it a bit against CSM, but seeing as you're taking humans in power armour up against Astartes in power armour I'm not too shocked.

A space marine is a space marine whether theyre slightly spikier or not. And boy oh boy are sisters the Worf of choice for the spiky boys.

epronovost wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Celestine was a Repentia who died in battle before coming back to life "redeemed". This promoted her to saint status which has only grown since then as she's appeared countless times since the second time she died (to a nuke) to aid the Imperium, leading wars of faith against the enemies of man. There was a book I recall them mentioning that she'd stabbed through a man to kill the traitor behind him and the man not only didn't die, but had a wound that never properly healed and was seeping blood to the day the novel was set in (basically a stigmata).

That would actually be Saint Katherine and it wasn't a traitor it was an Eldar Autarch she was duelling. When the fight took a turn against him, he took an imperial soldier hostage, but it didn't work. At least that's the sotry in Faith and Fire. A similar event might have happened to Celestine too. In her earlier lore, it was hinted she might have been a reincarnation of Saint Katherine in the first place (her sword and armor were Saint Katherine artefact afterall).

I could have sworn it was Celestine, but I definitely retain the right to be wrong. I'm not nuclear rocket surgeon afterall.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I'm not nuclear rocket surgeon afterall.

That's why your mom is secretly disapponted in you

the_scotsman wrote:
A space marine is a space marine whether theyre slightly spikier or not. And boy oh boy are sisters the Worf of choice for the spiky boys.

A spikey space marine is also powered by chaos and fights dirtier.

Also, there aren't a lot of Sisters bits of lore (as crying shame really), most of the losses to Chaos tend to be background lore for Word Bearers characters more than something we see actually played out in the novels themselves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 nels1031 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
BTW what book/story is this extract from? Because right now we have a single page of a larger story, that's not a whole lot of room for CONTEXT. I mean "Kharne runs up and butchers celestine, the end" is a biiiiiiiiig differance from "they've been fighting for a dozen pages, both getting their hits in, and this is just finally Kharn winning"

Just quoting BrianDavion, but others have asked: Its from the novel "Shroud of Night" by Andy Clark. It was one of the first novels to come out since the fluff moved forward after Cadia was destroyed.

Kharn and Celestine are mostly ancillary characters in the novel about a group of Alpha Legion who are trying to steal a relic with anti-chaos properties that separate and opposing forces of Chaos are trying to destroy/corrupt for their own ends. The Imperials are of course defending the relic, but its a losing battle for them.

The excerpt that OP focused on is near to the culmination of the novel (going off memory, I read the novel when it was released over a year ago) :

Spoiler:

The Alpha Legion squad have seized the relic and are trying to get off world. They have a running battle with Chaos and Imperial forces. Kharn shows up and he's an unstoppable killing machine, as he has been throughout the novel. He handily defeats the main character and his squad, but as he is about to either destroy the relic or the AL leader (can't remember which) Celestine attacks. Its a fairly brief battle, but she gives a good account of herself (she was an unstoppable killing machine for the imperials up to this point). She knows she can't win once Kharn gets his wits about him, but her main objective is to delay Kharn, so that the AL can escape with the relic intact. Its the lesser evil, and its implied that it was her patrons plan. She "dies" satisfied that Chaos snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because of their single mindedness. The relic lives on(for whatever purpose the shifty AL folks have for it), instead of being corrupted or destroyed by the overtly sinister forces of Slaanesh or Khorne. Its essentially a noble rearguard sacrifice.

The above action is maybe, at most, 3 pages of text, and the duel is interspersed with the AL squad ex-filtrating themselves from the scene. To call it "domestic violence level" is an absurdity.

Straight up troll thread, imo. If OP isn't guilty of trolling, they're definitely guilty of being intellectually infantile. Taking a small paragraph from a near 300 page novel and taking it out of context to prove some kind of point is ridiculous. If you are truly concerned about that sequence of events, maybe read it for yourself? Or failing that, ask for clarification on the scene, from someone who read it.

0/10.

Not to mention, domestic violence implies they actually share a domestic setting, not, you know, fighting in the middle of a warzone while on opposing sides.

Handmaiden wrote:

And she had to be written to die fighting him...why?
And even if she was, why's it a curbstomp? Not too long ago she was holding her own against Abaddon where it was implied she'd have taken him if it weren't for the pylons.

Why would this make women want to play 40k?

You answered your own question right here. She got killed by Kharn, but got the jump on the big bad of the universe.

TL,DR: My favorite character didn't win a fight, and i'm upset about it.

This setting is primarily about Chaos. They need to be strong in the lore. I'm reminded of a Horus Heresy scene wherein Horus is blasted by like the entire Space Wolf fleet and takes no damage because he's protected by chaos. Or, Angron blocking a stomp from a Titan.

Chaos is beast mode. The best fighters in the Imperium struggle with Chaos.



And let's all QQ, this was released in 7th edition and her 7th edition rules were baller status. And the crunch is always > the fluff.

epronovost wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I'm not nuclear rocket surgeon afterall.

That's why your mom is secretly disapponted in you

Nah, she's more disappointed that I play a game of pretend with little plastic people and spend all my free time on the internet talking about playing pretend with little plastic people. You know, like how most of our parents are disappointed in us.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Nah, she's more disappointed that I play a game of pretend with little plastic people and spend all my free time on the internet talking about playing pretend with little plastic people. You know, like how most of our parents are disappointed in us.

Hey now, some of my little people are metal. Lets not be excluding them.

 Marmatag wrote:
TL,DR: My favorite character didn't win a fight, and i'm upset about it.

This setting is primarily about Chaos. They need to be strong in the lore. I'm reminded of a Horus Heresy scene wherein Horus is blasted by like the entire Space Wolf fleet and takes no damage because he's protected by chaos. Or, Angron blocking a stomp from a Titan.

Chaos is beast mode. The best fighters in the Imperium struggle with Chaos.

You know.

Unless they're space marines. Like. Literally any space marine with a model to his name. Pick one, I'll bet they take down at least a Greater Daemon of chaos in their lore.

Do I gotta link the hilarious battle scene from the Ultramarines movie for a solid example of how much the best fighters in the imperium "struggle" with Chaos? You know, the one where it's such a foregone conclusion that the chaos marines are going to get gunned down before they even get near the space marines that the movie only bothers to show them on screen for like 5 seconds and 90% of the footage is just marines center frame firing bolters?

Sterling191 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Nah, she's more disappointed that I play a game of pretend with little plastic people and spend all my free time on the internet talking about playing pretend with little plastic people. You know, like how most of our parents are disappointed in us.

Hey now, some of my little people are metal. Lets not be excluding them.

Sorry, I don't mean to be a metalist. I mean I have a whole army of metal models, honest!

the_scotsman wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
TL,DR: My favorite character didn't win a fight, and i'm upset about it.

This setting is primarily about Chaos. They need to be strong in the lore. I'm reminded of a Horus Heresy scene wherein Horus is blasted by like the entire Space Wolf fleet and takes no damage because he's protected by chaos. Or, Angron blocking a stomp from a Titan.

Chaos is beast mode. The best fighters in the Imperium struggle with Chaos.

You know.

Unless they're space marines. Like. Literally any space marine with a model to his name. Pick one, I'll bet they take down at least a Greater Daemon of chaos in their lore.

I recall Sanguinius losing a fight to a greater daemon. The single best close combat fighter in Imperium's history, including anything alive right now.

And, let's pause for a minute: is your argument that because Celestine is female she was going to lose? Because that's a crap argument. She only loses because of the Pylon, anyway. In a straight up fight she wins. In the fluff and on the table (which is more important anyway).

 Marmatag wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
TL,DR: My favorite character didn't win a fight, and i'm upset about it.

This setting is primarily about Chaos. They need to be strong in the lore. I'm reminded of a Horus Heresy scene wherein Horus is blasted by like the entire Space Wolf fleet and takes no damage because he's protected by chaos. Or, Angron blocking a stomp from a Titan.

Chaos is beast mode. The best fighters in the Imperium struggle with Chaos.

You know.

Unless they're space marines. Like. Literally any space marine with a model to his name. Pick one, I'll bet they take down at least a Greater Daemon of chaos in their lore.

I recall Sanguinius losing a fight to a greater daemon. The single best close combat fighter in Imperium's history, including anything alive right now.

And, let's pause for a minute: is your argument that because Celestine is female she was going to lose? Because that's a crap argument. She only loses because of the Pylon, anyway. In a straight up fight she wins. In the fluff and on the table (which is more important anyway).

no, my argument is that in the fluff (which is what's being discussed right now) you can predict with pretty much 100% accuracy who is going to win a given fight based on the following criteria:

1) are they a named character with a model on the tabletop

if answer to 1 is yes for both

2) can one of them allowably die and then come back?

if answer to 2 is no for both (Conveniently, the answer is "yes" for the majority of chaos and xenos named characters)

3) is one a loyalist space marine?

If this chart doesn't have over a 95% success rate in all of 40k fluff as a whole I will eat my hat.

Oh, you mean Ka'Bandha? That greater daemon? The one Sanguinius ends up Bane-ing against his knee?

Obvious troll is obvious guys.

New account, username is clearly political, topic is clearly political flame-bait, cites Spikey Bits.

To give my two cents anyway, when it comes to this issue the only winning move is not to play. No matter what you do it will always be offensive or "not enough" or "pandering", so the best bet is to just ignore it and do whatever you want, political correctness be damned.

 nels1031 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
BTW what book/story is this extract from? Because right now we have a single page of a larger story, that's not a whole lot of room for CONTEXT. I mean "Kharne runs up and butchers celestine, the end" is a biiiiiiiiig differance from "they've been fighting for a dozen pages, both getting their hits in, and this is just finally Kharn winning"

Just quoting BrianDavion, but others have asked: Its from the novel "Shroud of Night" by Andy Clark. It was one of the first novels to come out since the fluff moved forward after Cadia was destroyed.

Kharn and Celestine are mostly ancillary characters in the novel about a group of Alpha Legion who are trying to steal a relic with anti-chaos properties that separate and opposing forces of Chaos are trying to destroy/corrupt for their own ends. The Imperials are of course defending the relic, but its a losing battle for them.

The excerpt that OP focused on is near to the culmination of the novel (going off memory, I read the novel when it was released over a year ago) :

Spoiler:

The Alpha Legion squad have seized the relic and are trying to get off world. They have a running battle with Chaos and Imperial forces. Kharn shows up and he's an unstoppable killing machine, as he has been throughout the novel. He handily defeats the main character and his squad, but as he is about to either destroy the relic or the AL leader (can't remember which) Celestine attacks. Its a fairly brief battle, but she gives a good account of herself (she was an unstoppable killing machine for the imperials up to this point). She knows she can't win once Kharn gets his wits about him, but her main objective is to delay Kharn, so that the AL can escape with the relic intact. Its the lesser evil, and its implied that it was her patrons plan. She "dies" satisfied that Chaos snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because of their single mindedness. The relic lives on(for whatever purpose the shifty AL folks have for it), instead of being corrupted or destroyed by the overtly sinister forces of Slaanesh or Khorne. Its essentially a noble rearguard sacrifice.

The above action is maybe, at most, 3 pages of text, and the duel is interspersed with the AL squad ex-filtrating themselves from the scene. To call it "domestic violence level" is an absurdity.

Straight up troll thread, imo. If OP isn't guilty of trolling, they're definitely guilty of being intellectually infantile. Taking a small paragraph from a near 300 page novel and taking it out of context to prove some kind of point is ridiculous. If you are truly concerned about that sequence of events, maybe read it for yourself? Or failing that, ask for clarification on the scene, from someone who read it.

0/10.

Thank you for providing the context of the excerpt.
. . .
*Sigh*
I mean, interpret the excerpt all you want, but jeez OP. . . context!

As others have posted already, Celestine can be the Imperial Avatar because she resurrects. Also martyrdom and self sacrifice is a major theme with the Sisters anyways, as part of their fanaticism. And in a greater sense of context, it's in a BL novel, which seems pretty far down the list of places to go for introductory lore, as opposed to Calgars defeat of the Avatar, or Draigos defeat of Mortarion, both in a codex.

Meanwhile - thousands of people are sacrificed daily to honor a sarcophagus of a man and trillions live and die in squalor.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
TL,DR: My favorite character didn't win a fight, and i'm upset about it.

This setting is primarily about Chaos. They need to be strong in the lore. I'm reminded of a Horus Heresy scene wherein Horus is blasted by like the entire Space Wolf fleet and takes no damage because he's protected by chaos. Or, Angron blocking a stomp from a Titan.

Chaos is beast mode. The best fighters in the Imperium struggle with Chaos.

You know.

Unless they're space marines. Like. Literally any space marine with a model to his name. Pick one, I'll bet they take down at least a Greater Daemon of chaos in their lore.

I recall Sanguinius losing a fight to a greater daemon. The single best close combat fighter in Imperium's history, including anything alive right now.

And, let's pause for a minute: is your argument that because Celestine is female she was going to lose? Because that's a crap argument. She only loses because of the Pylon, anyway. In a straight up fight she wins. In the fluff and on the table (which is more important anyway).

no, my argument is that in the fluff (which is what's being discussed right now) you can predict with pretty much 100% accuracy who is going to win a given fight based on the following criteria:

1) are they a named character with a model on the tabletop

if answer to 1 is yes for both

2) can one of them allowably die and then come back?

if answer to 2 is no for both (Conveniently, the answer is "yes" for the majority of chaos and xenos named characters)

3) is one a loyalist space marine?

If this chart doesn't have over a 95% success rate in all of 40k fluff as a whole I will eat my hat.

Oh, you mean Ka'Bandha?

Spoiler:

It would not be until the closing days of the Horus Heresy that Sanguinius would once again confront the savage Daemon Lord. During the Battle of Terra, the Bloodthirster confronted the Primarch atop the Eternity Gate of the Imperial Palace which guarded the way to the Emperor's throne room. The Greater Daemon struck Sanguinius, casting the angel upon the broken stone. Preparing to strike a killing blow, the Primarch called upon his last reserves of strength and power. With a massive effort, he confronted the Greater Daemon for the final time and leapt upon the Bloodthirster, seized him about the wrist and ankle and rose up high into the air. Sanguinius slammed the great beast across his knee, breaking the creature's back with a powerful crack. He swung the body of Ka'Bandha around and hurled the broken behemoth into the midst of the daemonic host, slamming the Eternity Gate shut against the ravening hordes of Chaos. The servants of the Ruinous Power would not claim Terra that day, and the Traitor Legions were ultimately defeated when the Emperor bested their Warmaster Horus in single combat aboard his flagship the Vengeful Spirit.

That greater daemon? The one Sanguinius ends up Bane-ing against his knee?

Your flow chart is bad, and your statistics are made up on the spot.

It's still an example of a lost fight. You can't deny that it happened just because Sanguinius won round two.

But let's rewind to your general argument here. What exactly are you saying? That Celestine should have won the fight outright with little difficulty because she is female? Or because she isn't a space marine? I'm not getting the outrage or the call to action.

 Ratius wrote:

Kharn died was at the Gates of Terra where he was either slain by Sigismund or a bunch of Blood Angels

Anywhere to read further on this?

Other decent female characters were the Navigator from the NLs trilogy and the female assassins in Nemesis.

Unfortunately not, not until either 2025 or whatever far off year the Black Library actually starts and finally concludes the Horus Heresy series altogether.

and that's just Florida!


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 ClockworkZion wrote:

Sterling191 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Nah, she's more disappointed that I play a game of pretend with little plastic people and spend all my free time on the internet talking about playing pretend with little plastic people. You know, like how most of our parents are disappointed in us.

Hey now, some of my little people are metal. Lets not be excluding them.

Sorry, I don't mean to be a metalist. I mean I have a whole army of metal models, honest!

I even have a pound of steel nuts in all of my Rhinos so they're more weighty.

 Marmatag wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
TL,DR: My favorite character didn't win a fight, and i'm upset about it.

This setting is primarily about Chaos. They need to be strong in the lore. I'm reminded of a Horus Heresy scene wherein Horus is blasted by like the entire Space Wolf fleet and takes no damage because he's protected by chaos. Or, Angron blocking a stomp from a Titan.

Chaos is beast mode. The best fighters in the Imperium struggle with Chaos.

You know.

Unless they're space marines. Like. Literally any space marine with a model to his name. Pick one, I'll bet they take down at least a Greater Daemon of chaos in their lore.

I recall Sanguinius losing a fight to a greater daemon. The single best close combat fighter in Imperium's history, including anything alive right now.

And, let's pause for a minute: is your argument that because Celestine is female she was going to lose? Because that's a crap argument. She only loses because of the Pylon, anyway. In a straight up fight she wins. In the fluff and on the table (which is more important anyway).

no, my argument is that in the fluff (which is what's being discussed right now) you can predict with pretty much 100% accuracy who is going to win a given fight based on the following criteria:

1) are they a named character with a model on the tabletop

if answer to 1 is yes for both

2) can one of them allowably die and then come back?

if answer to 2 is no for both (Conveniently, the answer is "yes" for the majority of chaos and xenos named characters)

3) is one a loyalist space marine?

If this chart doesn't have over a 95% success rate in all of 40k fluff as a whole I will eat my hat.

Oh, you mean Ka'Bandha?

Spoiler:

It would not be until the closing days of the Horus Heresy that Sanguinius would once again confront the savage Daemon Lord. During the Battle of Terra, the Bloodthirster confronted the Primarch atop the Eternity Gate of the Imperial Palace which guarded the way to the Emperor's throne room. The Greater Daemon struck Sanguinius, casting the angel upon the broken stone. Preparing to strike a killing blow, the Primarch called upon his last reserves of strength and power. With a massive effort, he confronted the Greater Daemon for the final time and leapt upon the Bloodthirster, seized him about the wrist and ankle and rose up high into the air. Sanguinius slammed the great beast across his knee, breaking the creature's back with a powerful crack. He swung the body of Ka'Bandha around and hurled the broken behemoth into the midst of the daemonic host, slamming the Eternity Gate shut against the ravening hordes of Chaos. The servants of the Ruinous Power would not claim Terra that day, and the Traitor Legions were ultimately defeated when the Emperor bested their Warmaster Horus in single combat aboard his flagship the Vengeful Spirit.

That greater daemon? The one Sanguinius ends up Bane-ing against his knee?

Your flow chart is bad, and your statistics are made up on the spot.

It's still an example of a lost fight. You can't deny that it happened just because Sanguinius won round two.

But let's rewind to your general argument here. What exactly are you saying? That Celestine should have won the fight outright with little difficulty because she is female? Or because she isn't a space marine? I'm not getting the outrage or the call to action.

There is neither. I'm mostly just laughing at people defending 40k's writing as anything remotely consistent, thought out or not lazy by pointing out just how much of the setting is structured around making sure the Space Marines can be the big heroes and kill the baddies, without having to stop making the models for the baddies they kill.

The initial responses to OP were basically "it'd be really lame if Celestine wasn't allowed to lose a fight because that'd show violence against women" which is true. But it's also really lame that you can predict with nearly 100% accuracy the outcome of any fight by checking if one of the combatants is allowed a Get Out of Dead Free Card and the other is not.

Swarmlord fighting Calgar? I wonder who will win, I wonder if it's the guy who won't just come back....

Urien Rakarth in an arm wrestling contest with Colonel Straken? Well lets see, they make a model for both but Urien has died 6 billion times and regenerates..

The second you say "Celestine Fighting *insert CSM here*" you know Celestine loses because she comes back.

That's exactly as lazy as the "celestine must win because she's a woman" idea that everyone is reviling.

Um the Swarmlord wrecked Calgar and nearly killed him. He's down a few limbs and an eye after that fight.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Um the Swarmlord wrecked Calgar and nearly killed him. He's down a few limbs and an eye after that fight.

Sorry, you're right, I was confusing Calgar with Dante, Yriel, and Farsight, who've all killed swarmy in single combat.

the_scotsman wrote:

There is neither. I'm mostly just laughing at people defending 40k's writing as anything remotely consistent, thought out or not lazy by pointing out just how much of the setting is structured around making sure the Space Marines can be the big heroes and kill the baddies, without having to stop making the models for the baddies they kill.

The initial responses to OP were basically "it'd be really lame if Celestine wasn't allowed to lose a fight because that'd show violence against women" which is true. But it's also really lame that you can predict with nearly 100% accuracy the outcome of any fight by checking if one of the combatants is allowed a Get Out of Dead Free Card and the other is not.

Swarmlord fighting Calgar? I wonder who will win, I wonder if it's the guy who won't just come back....

Urien Rakarth in an arm wrestling contest with Colonel Straken? Well lets see, they make a model for both but Urien has died 6 billion times and regenerates..

The second you say "Celestine Fighting *insert CSM here*" you know Celestine loses because she comes back.

That's exactly as lazy as the "celestine must win because she's a woman" idea that everyone is reviling.

Other than you being wrong about the Swarmlord fight, you're right it is a problem. And it's not like the authors don't want to do different things. Josh Reynolds mentioned in a recent podcast that James Swallow was told multiple times that he wasn't allowed to kill off Bile in his book (which is where the whole cloning thing comes into play because Swallow REALLY wanted to kill Bile).


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the_scotsman wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Um the Swarmlord wrecked Calgar and nearly killed him. He's down a few limbs and an eye after that fight.

Sorry, you're right, I was confusing Calgar with Dante, Yriel, and Farsight, who've all killed swarmy in single combat.

Yriel is wielding a cursed spear (later revealed to be a Chrone Sword) to do it and originally was up against a regular Hive Tyrant before the lore promoted the HT to a Swarm Lord.

And Commander Farsight has a really super powerful sword, and Dante's got the worlds most meltiest melta pistol, and Thanos can easily beat up hulk to establish how scary he is even before he's got his super macguffin glove because he's got the power of cosmic rays. They're super duper powerful!

Worf Effect is a boring and lazy way to establish a character's strength regardless of whether you come up with a reason for it.

the_scotsman wrote:
And Commander Farsight has a really super powerful sword, and Dante's got the worlds most meltiest melta pistol, and Thanos can easily beat up hulk to establish how scary he is even before he's got his super macguffin glove because he's got the power of cosmic rays. They're super duper powerful!

Worf Effect is a boring and lazy way to establish a character's strength regardless of whether you come up with a reason for it.

A cursed spear that's killing you to make you better in a fight is loads more interesting than Farsights "add your lifespan to mine" sword.

Not to mention Yriel "saved" a broken craftworld that was reduced to a skeleton crew of people compared to before (a skeleton crew made of wraithbone, but the point remains). There was more going on in that event than just that single punch up. I can't speak for the others because I don't really pay attention to the Tau that much and the Space Vampire chapter isn't that interesting to me thematically.

I agree over all that 40k has an annoying trend of upping the ante to a ridiculous degree just to make characters feel special and that drowns out everything else. Using one of the better written moments for the Ultra Marines is how Hive Fleet Behemoth played out. Calgar tried to do his Big Dam Hero's moment and gets his ass handed to him by a legit scary monster that outfought and outthinked him. It was logical end to the fight that made both parties look good in there own way. Calgar did what any marine would do and did his best to kill the monster but for once that didn't work out so well. The Swarmlord looks scary because it did a lot of damage to the poster boy's poster boy. Sadly it's been kinda down hill since then.

Worf Effect is a boring and lazy way to establish a character's strength regardless of whether you come up with a reason for it.

As a Star Trek fan I agree. They wasted him in Next Generation by keeping him a punching bag. Even punching bags need a moment in the sun to establish themselves and that never happened in Next Generation. Deep Space Nine, however, that's where they struck gold.



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I agree over all that 40k has an annoying trend of upping the ante to a ridiculous degree just to make characters feel special and that drowns out everything else.

Dragonball Z effect.

 Eldarsif wrote:


As a Star Trek fan I agree. They wasted him in Next Generation by keeping him a punching bag. Even punching bags need a moment in the sun to establish themselves and that never happened in Next Generation. Deep Space Nine, however, that's where they struck gold.

TNG's fundamental flaw was that it didn't allow for any meaningful character evolution. When your series is a carousel of one-off stories, it's hard for anything to mean anything. DS9s entire schtick was that it was an ongoing narrative, which made so many things work better.

the_scotsman wrote:
And Commander Farsight has a really super powerful sword, and Dante's got the worlds most meltiest melta pistol, and Thanos can easily beat up hulk to establish how scary he is even before he's got his super macguffin glove because he's got the power of cosmic rays. They're super duper powerful!

Worf Effect is a boring and lazy way to establish a character's strength regardless of whether you come up with a reason for it.

Thanos had the space gem when he fought hulk - Every gem is essentially superior to hulks powers.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarsif wrote:

Worf Effect is a boring and lazy way to establish a character's strength regardless of whether you come up with a reason for it.

As a Star Trek fan I agree. They wasted him in Next Generation by keeping him a punching bag. Even punching bags need a moment in the sun to establish themselves and that never happened in Next Generation. Deep Space Nine, however, that's where they struck gold.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

I agree over all that 40k has an annoying trend of upping the ante to a ridiculous degree just to make characters feel special and that drowns out everything else.

Dragonball Z effect.

Indeed - Worf is one of the best parts about DS9. Also - Love Sisko.

We've gone so far off-topic here, I think we're done.