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khorne cultists check under their bed for sly marbo.


he can win a game of connect 4....in 3 moves.

Sly marbo killed his own father...because NOBODY sleeps with Sly Marbos mother and gets away with it!

 Overread wrote:
But those are more Cadians than Catatchans

No, Cadians are starship troopers. Catachans are American GI’s in Vietnam and 80’s action hero’s.

Some say Sly Margo is an American martial artist, actor, film producer and director who has won martial arts championships - but others think this is mere hyperbole . . .

Toxic doesn't mean immediately lethal either. It could cause, say, a lethal buildup over time, like mercury. Or have a detrimental impact over time, like lead emissions.

And not everything on Catachan wants to kill you. Sometimes they just accidentally kill you as part of their natural defenses, like the barking toad.

Guys, the OP might be on to something. I mean, we all know that in the Grim Darkness of the far future, there is only war, but the lore contains numerous references to part time soldiers, or even people that do not fight at all! This strongly implies that the 40k universe might have aspects beyond war, which we know is a contradiction, and fictional universes only make sense if they are logically airtight, and don't include any form of hyperbole or unreliable narration.

I like to think that Catachan's inhospitably is deliberately overstated by its inhabitants and the Imperium itself. This serves 2 purposes. It is a moral boost for humans to survive in such an inhospitable place so they use that to its full advantage. It also serves as a tongue in cheek distraction from the real suffering on the planet.

Its kinda like how everybody jokes about how nasty it is to live in Australia, where everything is trying to kill you. Even the Aussies themselves joke about it. Its not actually as bad as the memes and jokes say, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Soooo, basically Catachan is the meme'd up Australia of the Imperium. Its nasty flora and fauna are used for levity and humor, though this doesn't take away from the fact that it is still quite deadly.

Personally I think the more ridiculous the fluff is, the better it is. I love reading a codex and having a chuckle at the outrageousness of the background of a particular army/unit. The fact that orks can believe in something so hard it becomes true? Sweet. The fact that space marines can eat their enemies and gain their memories? Super cool. Machine spirits and admech silliness in general? Awesome. Black templars in possession of the holy hand grenade of Antioch? Even cooler. What truly makes 40k great is the overwhelming absurdity of the entire setting. If Catachans weren’t just Alien vs Predator vs Rambo vs the Tree from Evil Dead then they wouldn’t be as cool as they are

 Grey Templar wrote:
I like to think that Catachan's inhospitably is deliberately overstated by its inhabitants and the Imperium itself. This serves 2 purposes. It is a moral boost for humans to survive in such an inhospitable place so they use that to its full advantage. It also serves as a tongue in cheek distraction from the real suffering on the planet.

Its kinda like how everybody jokes about how nasty it is to live in Australia, where everything is trying to kill you. Even the Aussies themselves joke about it. Its not actually as bad as the memes and jokes say, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Soooo, basically Catachan is the meme'd up Australia of the Imperium. Its nasty flora and fauna are used for levity and humor, though this doesn't take away from the fact that it is still quite deadly.

Catachan could also be a paradise world full of sexy girls with abs and hunky body builder dudes, but they know too much tourism/immigration would destabilise their economic and ecological balance. So they lie.

Barring Catachan embelishment, and barring being holed up in fortresses 100% of the time like Cadians, I'd like to work backwards and think there are ways to adapt to the environment- since the Catachans did adapt.
Maybe every fish is highly poisonous, but you can eat around the poison

Maybe the you can microdose the toxins from one common plant, giving you immunity to it overtime, and resitance to similar more rare and dangerous breeds.

Maybe you can cultivate those big cactus with the spiky red barbs that shoot out as a perimeter defence against the leaping crotch burrowing worms or whatever.

Maybe some of the aquatic bugs that are trying to kill you taste great with microdoses of poison from the exploding hell plants.

Exactly. It's embellished, but still remains quite deadly.

Isn’t it basically the same for all death planets in 40K, none of them really makes sense except in the context of fantasy sci fi where you just have to accept it.

Calliban was a death world, the plant wouldn’t get you but if you left the castle a beast would kill you unless you were a knight and then you might have a fighting chance.

And the necrontyr evolved on a planet exposed to so much radiation that that they had really short life spans but also managed to invent space travel which should have solved the problem but somehow didn’t

By the time the Necrontyr had developed space flight their DNA was damaged beyond their ability to repair. Its why they pleaded with the Old Ones for the ability to fix their DNA. Remember, it wasn't a natural process that caused this, it was the strange power radiating from the C'tan feeding on the Necrontyr's home star.

For a modern reference the Necrontyr were like a race of Mr Meeseeks. Existence was pain and short lived. So when the Old Ones said "no" the Necrontyr took to war to force them to give them the knowledge, then wound up in a fight for their lives in a losing war as the Old Ones sought to destroy them utterly.

Given how dangerous the jungles of our own little globe can be, an entire eco system of a planet being out to get you just isn't a crazy thing.

People survive in the Sahara, in sibiria, they colonized polynesia with little boats, even in the Slums of brazil and Bangladesh the population is increasing. It’s all hard to imagine from a middle class view in an industrialized country, but it is what it is.

40k isn't supposed to be realistic, it's supposed to be awesome. Rule of cool always takes precedence.

Catachanerd wrote:
Who ever wrote that every single plant is hostile and toxic and these creatures ,everything wants to kill you ,nobody would have survived, lets use logic and reason here , how do you possibly make in an envinorment that every organism wants to devour, turn you to something else etc, just imagine walking in the Jungle or anything nobody can be aware 24/7 and survive under these conditions.

They went to far with it. Catachan lore has to be re-written to sound at least remotely possible to survive.

Have you ever been to Australia ?

I have a bit of difficulty reconciling how advanced the Necrontyr were, with their short lifespans. They seemed to have super science verging on magic, yet right up to the point of becoming Necrons, they were still suffering very short lifespans. Maybe biological sciences were their weak area, and maybe there was something deeply damaged or wrong with their genome that was not easily fixable with genetic modification or genetic engineering because the Twice Dead King novels mentioned how this persisted even after they had space flight and could get away from their original harsh sun.

Those novels said the main character discovered a throat tumor on the day he turned 18 years old. Although the noble class had access to "oncomancers" as the book termed them, they only prolonged life a little bit. It is hard to acquire any significant knowledge if potentially you might already be dying of cancer by the time you turn 18. Now maybe the main character was unlucky and the age of onset of the cancers was usually later, but it is not that much later as the character mentioned already going through a daily morning ritual of checking the body for any thing like cancer.

When your life is short you dedicate as much time as possible to the advancement of your race. If your entire academia is dedicated to finding a way off your cursed world with a fairly unified central authority, what's to stop you from advancing faster?

Actually the reason the catachans are so buff is only partially because of it being a death world. Catacha is a rather large planet. It has a strong gravity. The catachans are buff because their bodies need to be stockier to compensate. I think it’s also been mentioned that they’re generally shorter then most imperial citizens. As in short but muscular. I can go dig for a source if requested.

Iracundus wrote:
I have a bit of difficulty reconciling how advanced the Necrontyr were, with their short lifespans. They seemed to have super science verging on magic, yet right up to the point of becoming Necrons, they were still suffering very short lifespans. Maybe biological sciences were their weak area, and maybe there was something deeply damaged or wrong with their genome that was not easily fixable with genetic modification or genetic engineering because the Twice Dead King novels mentioned how this persisted even after they had space flight and could get away from their original harsh sun.

Yeah, it's a bit interesting considering that curing cancer is theoretically possible, whereas FTL travel is theoretically... not.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I like to think that Catachan's inhospitably is deliberately overstated by its inhabitants and the Imperium itself. This serves 2 purposes. It is a moral boost for humans to survive in such an inhospitable place so they use that to its full advantage. It also serves as a tongue in cheek distraction from the real suffering on the planet.

Its kinda like how everybody jokes about how nasty it is to live in Australia, where everything is trying to kill you. Even the Aussies themselves joke about it. Its not actually as bad as the memes and jokes say, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Soooo, basically Catachan is the meme'd up Australia of the Imperium. Its nasty flora and fauna are used for levity and humor, though this doesn't take away from the fact that it is still quite deadly.

The planet is a deathworld that results in some of the toughest guardsman, and the few examples of flora and fauna we know of are pretty horrific and mean the population lives in heavily fortified cities, I don't think the idea of it just being exaggerated makes much sense considering those.

 StewMan Group wrote:
The fact that orks can believe in something so hard it becomes true? Sweet..

They can't. That's not something that's actually part of the lore, that's a heavily exaggerated meme that takes their abilities to an absurd hyperbolic level far beyond what they can actually do, and even then what the lore does say about things isn't definite with what's actually going on.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
They can't. That's not something that's actually part of the lore, that's a heavily exaggerated meme that takes their abilities to an absurd hyperbolic level far beyond what they can actually do, and even then what the lore does say about things isn't definite with what's actually going on.

*Ahem*

Omophagea
Phase 8: This implant, also called "the Remembrancer", allows a Space Marine to 'learn by eating'. It is situated in the spinal cord but is actually part of the brain. Four nerve bundles are implanted connecting the spine and the stomach wall. Able to 'read' or absorb genetic material consumed by the marine, the omophagea transmits the gained information to the Marine's brain as a set of memories or experiences. It is the presence of this organ which has led to the various flesh-eating and blood-drinking rituals for which the Astartes are famous, as well as giving names to chapters such as the Blood Drinkers and Flesh Tearers. Over time, mutations in this implant have given some chapters unnatural craving for blood or flesh.

When Sgt Learchus consumes part of a T'au Pathfinders brain in order to discover their base on Pavonis, he learns how to use Markerlights and gains certain codes to get past the perimeter defences. He then has to spend a length of time with the Chaplains to ensure he wasn't tainted by the Xenos.

Catachanerd wrote:
Who ever wrote that every single plant is hostile and toxic and these creatures ,everything wants to kill you ,nobody would have survived, lets use logic and reason here , how do you possibly make in an envinorment that every organism wants to devour, turn you to something else etc, just imagine walking in the Jungle or anything nobody can be aware 24/7 and survive under these conditions.

They went to far with it. Catachan lore has to be re-written to sound at least remotely possible to survive.

I see you've never been to Australia
But yeah, it's a death world, being extremely hostile is sort of the point. It also pays homage to other works of science fiction and ties into how over the top and brutal the 40k universe is.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
People survive in the Sahara, in sibiria, they colonized polynesia with little boats, even in the Slums of brazil and Bangladesh the population is increasing. It’s all hard to imagine from a middle class view in an industrialized country, but it is what it is.

The Amazon too. Your typical Western city dweller wouldn't survive a day in the jungle on their own, but there are native tribes who get along just fine.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Altima wrote:
Toxic doesn't mean immediately lethal either. It could cause, say, a lethal buildup over time, like mercury. Or have a detrimental impact over time, like lead emissions.

And not everything on Catachan wants to kill you. Sometimes they just accidentally kill you as part of their natural defenses, like the barking toad.

The barking toad is a weird one, imo.
So it's defense mechanism is to die? That seems counter productive.

When a Bee stings you, it dies. Barking Toads are just extreme Catachan Bees

 Gert wrote:
When a Bee stings you, it dies. Barking Toads are just extreme Catachan Bees

True, but that's because they are eusocial insects in service of the hive, and the stinger not only continues to pump venom into the wound but also transmit pheromones alerting the hive to the threat.
Are Barking Toads eusocial amphibians in service of the brood? I could see the toad's poison having pheromones that can act as a signal though, like one of those warning flares that emit a lot of smoke a light.

You don't think an exploding frog is a warning?

Fair enough, I guess that makes sense if they live in large groups and are skittish.

Ok, I just checked and the Barking Toad doesn't blow up. It emits clouds of extremely toxic gasses that melts everything within a kilometer, including the Toad, into sludge. Just a weird evolution I guess, good way to get people to learn to stay away from a species-wide perspective. Hell, they might even be the result of experimentation during the Dark Age of Technology.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I like to think that Catachan's inhospitably is deliberately overstated by its inhabitants and the Imperium itself. This serves 2 purposes. It is a moral boost for humans to survive in such an inhospitable place so they use that to its full advantage. It also serves as a tongue in cheek distraction from the real suffering on the planet.

Its kinda like how everybody jokes about how nasty it is to live in Australia, where everything is trying to kill you. Even the Aussies themselves joke about it. Its not actually as bad as the memes and jokes say, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Soooo, basically Catachan is the meme'd up Australia of the Imperium. Its nasty flora and fauna are used for levity and humor, though this doesn't take away from the fact that it is still quite deadly.

The planet is a deathworld that results in some of the toughest guardsman, and the few examples of flora and fauna we know of are pretty horrific and mean the population lives in heavily fortified cities, I don't think the idea of it just being exaggerated makes much sense considering those.

I don't mean that it is 100% exaggerated and made up. I mean that its maybe 10-20% exaggerated above what it actually is. Its still quite nasty, but everybody hypes it up beyond what it actually is.

Its kinda like a guy catching and wrangling what he claims to have been a 30 ft anaconda when in reality it was 25 ft. Yes, he exaggerated, but it was still an effing huge snake. That's Catachan. Its exaggerated, but its still really really effing dangerous.

My favorite bit of catachan is the sentinel sized orks that have been to punch through leman russes. Scary .