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Actually, that said, does anyone know and what point does DoW2 and its expansion takes place?

Some time between the Siege of Terra and the year 42,000.

More seriously, I believe there's a reference to the Waaagh! on Armageddon in one of the between-mission voice overs in the original DOW, so more accurately, between one of the Armageddon Waaghs and the current end of the 41st millenia.

purplefood wrote:I disagree with the TS successors idea...
Mainly because it's a fairly stupid idea (For more than just the obvious reasons) and i like them.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think it's a fairly stupid idea?

Mainly because someone, somewhere, in the Imperium, either in the Inquisition (most likely) or the Administratum (also highly possible) will put 2 and 2 together and then the lumen above their head will light up with the fizzle of burning electrodes.

"Ah ha!" they will say, "The loyal Blood Ravens are of the geneseed of Magnus the Red!"

This, of course, begins the utter purgation of the Blood Ravens by much larger, stronger Chapters, like the Space Wolves or the Black Templars.

And, thus, the Blood Ravens are, indeed, found wanting, damned simply by the mark of the heretic's geneseed they bear.

Which is fair enough... if the Inquisition/Administratum didn't already know about it. I suspect that the founding of the Blood Ravens happened with Inquisition/Admin support. Don't the High Lords of Terra have to approve a Chapter's founding in the first place? And then they all went to the effort to hide the Blood Raven's origins. I mean, it's a little odd that a Chapter known for its pursuit and preservation of knowledge just "lost" all information about its own origins. It would've taken a lot of help from all levels to hide/destroy that sort of information so completely. And after ten thousand years, who'd really think much about where the Ravens came from now? There's more important things to worry about.

Hell, if they accepted loyalists from the Traitor Legions into the Grey Knights (Traitor Legion loyalists were pretty much the foundation of the Grey Knights!), I don't see why they wouldn't do something similar for the loyalist Thousand Sons. It just so happened that there was an entire Fellowship (Chapter)'s worth of loyalist Sons, instead of just a handful...

If they were going to purge the Blood Ravens, they wouldn't even need the "they're Thousand Sons!" reason. They could do it purely for the fact that its own Chapter Master fell to chaos. But they haven't, so. As long as the Ravens continue to clean and maintain their own house, the rest of the Imperium probably doesn't give much of a damn.

There's just so many clues hinting to the Blood Ravens descending from the Thousand Sons that I find it hard to believe something incidental like someone putting two and two together would prevent it.

Granted, all these clues could just be Games Workshop trolling us hardcore, which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

The reason this hasn't happened is because the BR owe their existence to a video game first, and rules for a table-top army second. Relic didn't write the 1kS link to BR, and it is likely that Relic really didn't know (or care) about the intricacies of the founding of a Space Marines Chapter to consider it for their video game. It's an interesting development for the storyline of the various DoW games that the Chapter is threatened from within by the taint of Chaos... and, originally at least, nothing in DoW had to jive with anything else in the 40K universe. After all, you can, apparently, recruit squad after squad after squad of Grey Knights and throw them at Orks or Necrons or Imperial Guardsmen without having your mind wiped or even seeing a shred of evidence of daemonic presence and so forth and so on.

Of course, GW decided to pick this ball up and run with it. And why not? It was a successful and popular franchise, they would have been fools not to, but this lead to GW having to somehow tie the Blood Ravens into the greater continuity of the 40K saga. Perhaps it was short-sighted, or perhaps it's meant to be one of those mysteries that is never solved, but hinting that the BR have ties to the historical Thousand Sons Traitor Legion adds a bit of edgy, grimdark history to this mysterious, enigmatic, popular and well-selling Chapter.

Fitting it into the rest of the narrative took a distant third place within the rest of the canon, though I will point out that the Inquisition does not necessarily have a say in the Founding of every SM Chapter, and what some random Inquisitor knows, or discovers, way the hell out in the Segmentum Obscuras, or the Jericho Reach, or the Kronus Expanse, might take years, even centuries, to ever come to the attention of the Inquisitorial Conclave of their Sector, let alone the High Lords of Terra.

It could as well be a case that this knowledge is possessed by a Radical Inquisitor, who is going to use it (with proper safeguards) to ensure that he has a Space Marine Chapter at his beck and and call whenever he needs them. A bit of blackmail, a bit of "If I don't return from this meeting before a certain time, what I know will be transmitted by Astropaths directly to the Inquisition" and so forth, and the Blood Ravens are now working for this guy when he needs them.

It could, just as easily, be possible that the AdMech and other personnel responsible for the creation of the BR were secret DarkMech operatives, or Tzeentchian cultists or, even paring away the conspiracy theory, purely by an accident of chance, the BR were founded using the geneseed of the Thousand Sons, rather than the pure geneseed of the Ultramarines, because Tzeentch set up five thousand years of random events, accidents and chance coincidences that lead to the bottle getting the wrong label slapped on it.

Out of curiosity, how much say did GW have in the making of the Blood Ravens/DoW games? Mostly concerning the armour colour scheme and the name; did Relic come up with those, or did GW go "hey, use this name and these colours"? I honestly don't know how much, if any, input GW had in the origination of the Blood Ravens, but it'd be interesting to find out.

I also don't know when the Thousand Sons' pre-Heresy colour scheme was revealed - was that before or after the DoW games? If it was after, then yeah, the TSons/BR link probably wasn't thought of till later, but if it was before, then I find that... incredibly coincidental. Especially if Relic came up with the BR name/colour scheme without GW's input.

Putting aside the whole Relic thing, I still don't think it's such a stupid idea for the BR to be TS successors. Even if some bright cookie in the Inquisition or Administratum did put two and two together... where's the proof? It's all very well and good for someone to go "I believe the Blood Ravens are of Magnus the Red's geneseed!", but what actual, solid evidence would they have? They'd need some to accuse a long-standing, loyal Space Marine chapter of such heresy - and if there were any of that sort of proof lying around, the Blood Ravens most likely would've found it first, what with their drive to find out where the hell they came from. Even in the fluff already some people have had their suspicions about the BR, but nothing's come of it because there's no real evidence.

Also, even if someone did go "aha!" and present their case to the powers that be, there's a good chance someone very high up already knows and would just silence said bright cookie again. A lot of effort has gone into hiding the BR's origins and keeping it hidden - and for good reason, if they really are TS successors. Heck, the BR might have their geneseed tested for instability so often not because of their high percentage of psykers, but because someone very high up in the AdMech knows the truth - or knew the truth, and left standing orders for the more regular testing, just in case.

Wheee theorising! Hehehe.

Skits wrote:

purplefood wrote:I disagree with the TS successors idea...
Mainly because it's a fairly stupid idea (For more than just the obvious reasons) and i like them.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think it's a fairly stupid idea?

Because it's a C.S. Goto idea.

Let me put this bluntly. Everything that people accuse Mat Ward of doing with the fluff in the books he's helmed? Goto actually does.

Prior to the Dawn of War novels, there was an Index Astartes article for the Blood Ravens. It had a section on the possible origins of the Blood Ravens. Those were: Dark Angels, Blood Angels, or potentially the Raven Guard.

The latter two were because of the rather obvious ties between naming conventions and the Chapter. The first was because of the obsessive planning that the Dark Angels and their Primarch are famed for and their obsessions with secrecy.

The Thousand Sons connection came after when for some idiotic reason, C.S. Goto basically bludgeoned people over the head in his second Dawn of War novel with it after fan conspiracies on the Internet went wild because of one reason associated with the game.
That reason?
Ahriman called a Blood Raven "Brother". Do you realize how ridiculous that is? I've played the game. There's no vagueries to the voice actor's way of saying it. It's clearly meant to be a mocking/sarcastic reference. But people either did not get that or chose to ignore it in favor of making the most wild jump ever.

Since then, it's gotten ridiculously out of control and McNeill does not help by toning things down and introducing what could be a fantastic opportunity for a "mysterious Chapter with ties to the dawn of the Imperium" but instead perpetuating the reasons started by continually introducing hamfisted ties.

I dunno, but I'm kind of tired of the BR Chapter (no offense, fans). When they showed up in Space Marine the game, I sighed.

I need to make this clear:
I have no hatred of the Blood Ravens. I like them. They're rather interesting(if one dimensional at times) for a Codex Chapter.

I just dislike the headbludgeoning attempts being done to associate them with the Thousand Sons. It's unnecessary. It's like an M. Night Shamalyan movie, or a twist in a Michael Bay film.

You know it's illogical. You know it makes about as much sense as Megan Fox saving the world in a bikini. And it kind of sours the whole thing for you.

iirc most marines call most other marines be it same or different chapter "brother" o.o so by that statement being callled brother by a sarcastic chaos marine (considering they use to do the same and some still might) makes using the "brother" statement null