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Lynata wrote: that there is such a thing as "Navigator-Servitors",

I should point out that, having read Eisenhorn, the "Navigator-Servitor" is actually a "Navigator-cyborg", not a servitor. It is easy to miss, but the notion of them eating and interacting with other people as people would is brought up, and they can be made into Daemonhosts, and explicitly the top half of it was nearly totally flesh.

Also, Lynata, to be honest, you don't have to point out 40k's lack of a canon stance and pro-interpretation policy in every post.

While technically true, it isn't really necessary to constantly reiterate in every thread.

For Schoola Stormtroopers I agree, they are Stormtroopers especially trained to serve the Inquisition. But as they are guarding the Inquisitors from all 3 orders their number should still be bigger then Sisters.

And I think that we don't understand each other. For me Stormtrooper is better trained solder, with advanced close combat skills and fully automated weapon whose primary goal is storming and clearing the enemy position, getting behind enemy lines and sabotage the equipment and occasionally being anti-tank specialists. This description is also usable for Krieg Grenadiers - it is basically Krieg Stormtroopers, Cadian Kasrkins to.

To my knowledge difference between Guardsmen and Stormtrooper is like difference between private in US Army and Ranger. And I agree that Stormtrooper Regiments are rare thing, basically because they are most of the time attached to some Guard fighting group and doing scouting or sabotage - or simply helping in the most important missions. So giving the sheer number of Regiments in galaxy alone the number of that kind of elite infantry can't be just 30 - 50.000 in the entire galaxy.

Lynata wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:This is the silliest stance one can take on the matter.

The silly stance is that you keep pointing to some individual authors' personal interpretations in spite of all the contradictions and idiocy that keeps coming from that direction (Multilaser Marines anyone?) because you don't like what it says in the studio Codex. And it's not even enough that you're still free to pursue this as your personally preferred version of the setting, you have to ram it down everyone's throat by citing some sort of canonicity that has never existed in the first place.

I actually did the same, but I relented when I was confronted with the quotes I'm throwing around nowadays, admitting that I made a mistake and adapting my stance accordingly.

No, you overcompensate with this malarky of "NOTHING IS CANON!" and then firing back with that anytime someone disagrees.

Kanluwen wrote:It's a lazy stance, which when repeated ad infinitum just makes you come off as that kid whose older siblings told them there is no Santa Claus and then makes a point of telling it to every other child they know.

Then you are the kid that still insists of Santa existing for real, I take it, even though the guy who plays him at the supermarket already told you the truth.

Sure. Why not.

Kanluwen wrote:Tertiary canon is there for a reason.

There is no such thing as "tertiary canon", and I think you should stop pulling this sort of stuff out of thin air and go hunt for some proof that actually backs up your opinion, like I did, even if you still refuse to acknowledge it. Black Library, as said by George Mann, exists "to tell a good story", that's about it. It fleshes out the universe in exactly the same way as fanfiction does - by providing opinions and suggestion you are free to adopt or dismiss.

Kanluwen wrote:Not actually sure what you're referring to here. Is it that George Mann piece--again?

Nope, I was referring to Gav Thorpe's blog. Maybe you should go and read it, too.
http://mechanicalhamster.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/jumping-the-fence/

Gav Thorpe wrote:With Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy.

I love how you skip the very next statement.

Gav Thorpe wrote:There are certainly established facts – the current Emperor is Karl-Franz, the Blood Angels have red armour, Commissar Yarrick defended Hades Hive during the Second Armageddon War.

So while "the notion of canon is a fallacy", there are "certainly established facts". The Imperium of a Million Worlds is not going to have 10,000 Stormtroopers no matter how much you wish it did. Until we have a DEFINITIVE source which isn't just copy/paste from an edition before some posters here were even born, the authors of Black Library are the go-to source.

Kanluwen wrote:Stormtroopers having a single regiment made sense in the "Olden Days" when Space Marines were still humans in power armor.

You are free to believe that. Doesn't change the fact that studio material pursues a different angle. You need to build a bridge.

The studio material didn't pursue any angle. It copy/pasted.

Given the fact that they even mention "Hellguns" in the "Hotshot Lasgun" entry it's brutally obvious.

Kanluwen wrote:We should also probably keep in mind that Black Library(and Forge World) staff are also GW employees.

Whose individual opinions, just like with any other company, may not reflect the stance of the studio as a whole.

Except for the fact that it's their job to flesh out the setting, while the studio's is to create gaming supplements.

Kanluwen wrote:And then it falls right back apart when you realize that in the view of every author except Cruddace and whoever else worked on the Imperial Guard book, Stormtroopers are no longer just a "mobile rapid reaction add-on to reinforce Imperial Guard regiments in high profile crisis zones". They fulfill vital roles like headquarters security, bodyguard compliments for high-ranking officers, etc. "Blood Pact" has an entire Company of Stormtroopers devoted to guarding a Lord-Commissar and his headquarters contingent.

I couldn't care less what some licensed product claims - I don't have to incorporate it into my perception of the setting as molded by the stuff released by GW themselves. Outsourced books also want to tell me that Space Marines go into battle with multilasers, that Terminators can do backflips, that Sisters of Battle are perfectly free to sleep around out of boredom, that D-Cannons fire projectiles, that there is such a thing as "Navigator-Servitors", that the Deathwatch has its own fleet of battle barges and invisible remote-controlled Exterminatus drone ships, that the height of a Space Marine changes between 7 and 10 feet in every damn book and a ton of other shenanigans.

So because you have some examples of bad, it means that the good aren't valid?

Please. If that were true, codices aren't canon either. Orks riding motorcycles through a Titan and Marines riding Giant Wolves are somehow more acceptable simply because they're in a codex?

So don't try to claim a consistency where clearly it doesn't exist.

Then don't try to claim a consistency because of laziness. We have multiple recent sources which put Stormtroopers at more than a single regiment. Quite a few of those were published while Rick Priestley was still at the company, and had him working on it.

Void__Dragon wrote:I should point out that, having read Eisenhorn, the "Navigator-Servitor" is actually a "Navigator-cyborg", not a servitor. It is easy to miss, but the notion of them eating and interacting with other people as people would is brought up, and they can be made into Daemonhosts, and explicitly the top half of it was nearly totally flesh.

Whew, one thing to scratch off that list, then.

Void__Dragon wrote:Also, Lynata, to be honest, you don't have to point out 40k's lack of a canon stance and pro-interpretation policy in every post.
While technically true, it isn't really necessary to constantly reiterate in every thread.

Aye, I wish that were the case, but there are still people who propagate false information, potentially confusing readers who are new to the hobby.

I've been misled by the very same practice of "community hearsay" in the past. Both regarding the question of canonicity ... as well as the Navigator-Servitor/Cyborg.

Anyone still remembers that thread on "how big is the average Space Marine"? Perfect example of what this can result in. At least Jes Goodwin can joke about it on the GW podcast where he says that he's read a few BL novels and "they seem to get bigger with every book".

Most of the "how big is the average Space Marine" stuff was members of the DCM community being tools and purposely inflating the numbers.

That makes that point perfectly irrelevant.

Kanluwen wrote:[I love how you skip the very next statement.
"There are certainly established facts – the current Emperor is Karl-Franz, the Blood Angels have red armour, Commissar Yarrick defended Hades Hive during the Second Armageddon War."

I love how you skipped the very next paragraph:

"Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong.
Whether a particular author’s take on the world matches up with an individual gamer’s or readers is another matter. The fact that each of us is allowed to take possession of that world and envisage it to our own ideal means that it is inevitable our vision will sometimes clash with the vision of others. Such conflict does not render either vision obsolete."

And hey, here's another one, this time from Andy Hoare:

"It all stems from the assumption that there’s a binding contract between author and reader to adhere to some nonexistent subjective construct or ‘true’ representation of the setting. There is no such contract, and no such objective truth."
-- http://www.boomtron.com/2011/03/grimdark-ii-loose-canon/

Kanluwen wrote:The Imperium of a Million Worlds is not going to have 10,000 Stormtroopers no matter how much you wish it did.

Because you say so, amirite?

Kanluwen wrote:The studio material didn't pursue any angle. It copy/pasted.

No reason to change what's still valid, obviously. Also, did you even notice that it's not the entire entry that was copypasted but just that bit, or have you ignored it out of convenience to preserve your rage?

Kanluwen wrote:Except for the fact that it's their job to flesh out the setting, while the studio's is to create gaming supplements.

No. Their job is to tell a story. I think you misunderstood what a novel is supposed to do.

Read the blogs of Gav and ADB linked above. They are the novel authors working for that which you cling to. Shouldn't they know best?

Kanluwen wrote:So because you have some examples of bad, it means that the good aren't valid?

Again: YOU dedice what's good and what's bad? You need to get off your high horse.

Kanluwen wrote:Then don't try to claim a consistency because of laziness. We have multiple recent sources which put Stormtroopers at more than a single regiment. Quite a few of those were published while Rick Priestley was still at the company, and had him working on it.

Show me a Games Workshop resource stating this. I dare you.

Uhm, back to subject and mind taking it to pm's, please?

Hmm, the problem is that the question posed by the actual topic hinges heavily on which sources you're looking at.

But as that debate isn't likely to end soon (I guess Kan and I at least share a certain stubbornness ), I suggest that the two of us simply agree to disagree. What has been posted so far should be enough to let everyone decide for himself which path to follow. Deal?

Good enough if that was directed at me, if it was direct to Kan, I overrule him and say good enough in his name

I say, in cases like this one it's best to go with what seems most logical in the face of the entire fictional universe as you choose to perceive it.

For instance, a number as low as 10k for STs to be able to represent their real-life analogous role, in an accurate and believeable manner (remember, this is a galaxy filled with hundreds of thousands of battlefields, across millions of stars, with an Imperium filled with billions of troops), is simply rather ridiculous.

I like the sound of a previous poster saying about each Segmentum having their own ST regiment of which they take responsibility. The Imperium must have Schola facilites throughout their controlled space, and there will no doubt be a large demand for special forces troops and their spec-ops capabilites across the board. Throw in an extremely high attrition rate and you'll quickly find that a 10k headcount spread across an eternally-at-war galaxy will not go very far at all . . .