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When ever Ciaphas Cain does anything.

Whenever Gaunt's Mob survives.

Whenever I re-read Helsreach.

40k is about really over-stating how powerful something is, ala the Imperator Titan. But then watching it get basically bent over by an Ork Scrap titan makes my brain scream, wait what?

The Cain novels are arguably one of the more consistent and realistic ones.

Cain simply isn’t the coward solely surviving through luck he believes himself to be.

Yes, he’s always looking for ways to save his own skin - but he’s never squandered Imperial lives in doing so. And often, his “how do I best survive this?” leads to acts of abject heroism, from leading troops into a Necron Tomb Complex, taking out Korbut, slaying a Patriarch etc.

His discomfort comes from him not swallowing Commissariat Propaganda hook, line and sinker. He never quite gets that his approach is the best one. He inspires his charges rather than seeks to rule through fear. He can spot a suicidal approach a mile off, and instead finds a more survivable solution which works,

It’s his education he truly doubts - not himself. Yet he recognises the burden of his duty all the same, and executes it time and again to the best of his ability.

He is the epitome of doing the right thing, not the easy thing. Having just finished it, Death or Glory is an excellent example there on. Sure he didn’t want to take the civvies with him, because he felt they’d slow down his mad dash for safety. But whether he acknowledges or not, he goes along with it, and ends up leading a small ragtag army not just to safety, but to victory.

I think that’s why I keep returning to those novels. Not only are they genuinely amusing in the way they play with 40k’s tropes, but because Cain, for all his faults, is a genuine, bona fide hero.

His inability to actually get injured or even lose a fight occaisionally feels like he's got Godmode activated. I mean, there is literally zero possible chance he will ever die. All the "immersion" is gone because he's never in any danger. He's literally narrating himself, so he obviously survives. How to you expect there to be suspense or even the chance of something sad happening when you know every major character survives. Sulla Survives, Cain Survives, Jurgen survives, Amberly servives, the 597th leadership all survive. No one ever actually dies. It's hard to be daunted by the odds when you know the outcome before hand.

As opposed to LOTR? Or any number of novels and movies?

Both Cain and Jurgen have been confirmed as dead.

Admittedly, the problem is they've been confirmed as dead a few times at this point, but they didn't manage to outrun everything.

In fact, the only character we know to still be alive is Amberley, as she's acting as editor for the books.

 Dysartes wrote:
Both Cain and Jurgen have been confirmed as dead.

Admittedly, the problem is they've been confirmed as dead a few times at this point, but they didn't manage to outrun everything.

In fact, the only character we know to still be alive is Amberley, as she's acting as editor for the books.

Cain is supposedly dead in ‘the present’ though you know he must survive any given story since they’re his narrated memoirs.

Though knowing he’ll survive is no different to a huge number of other stories and it’s how he does it that’s the interesting bit.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
His inability to actually get injured or even lose a fight occaisionally feels like he's got Godmode activated. I mean, there is literally zero possible chance he will ever die. All the "immersion" is gone because he's never in any danger. He's literally narrating himself, so he obviously survives. How to you expect there to be suspense or even the chance of something sad happening when you know every major character survives. Sulla Survives, Cain Survives, Jurgen survives, Amberly servives, the 597th leadership all survive. No one ever actually dies. It's hard to be daunted by the odds when you know the outcome before hand.

In fairness most lead characters survive to the end of their story.
The few that fall often do so in some kind of heroic fashion or in a "and then they got old and died"

Stories like Game of Thrones or Malazan Book of the Fallen* are rare where there's often no singular lead character setup and where any character can die. Even then there's still core characters that are very hard to write out (you can't write all the Starks out of Game of Thrones - in theory you can but it would likely go down as well as a lead balloon).





*ok I will accept that in this case quite a few do kinda sorta come back as undead and other things

Rynn's World. Specifically the part where Kantor botches which Captain was killed by the Ork Warboss. He directly describes Drakken's death at Kruegerport on Badlanding but names the dead Captain as Captain Alvez who died in the siege of New Rynn City. Easily missed detail? Could have been, if it wasn't for the fact that the writer wrote both death scenes in the SAME fething BOOK. Was it too hard to flit back to the other chapter to doublecheck?

Cain surviving all the wacky gak he does doesn't break my immersion. Him being an unbearable gigachad Mary Sue who feths hot female Tech Priests that the author tries to pretend has flaws by giving him surface level insecurities while never allowing his so-called shortcomings to impact him or the story in any tangible way. Or so I've gleaned, I never looked much deeper than this so maybe it gets better if I've read more.

In a more general sense, any scene with sufficiently powerful psykers who have to act like morons for the sake of the plot. It happens most consistently with Magnus. The writers have made psykers too powerful and as such they have to be written down.

There's been many but they can all be forgiven because of the nature of 40K. The first for me was at 12 years old, discovering there was a Death World called Birmingham.

Sadly it is now a Dead World, so only slightly worse than actual Birmingham.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Cain surviving all the wacky gak he does doesn't break my immersion. Him being an unbearable gigachad Mary Sue who feths hot female Tech Priests that the author tries to pretend has flaws by giving him surface level insecurities while never allowing his so-called shortcomings to impact him or the story in any tangible way. Or so I've gleaned, I never looked much deeper than this so maybe it gets better if I've read more.

In a more general sense, any scene with sufficiently powerful psykers who have to act like morons for the sake of the plot. It happens most consistently with Magnus. The writers have made psykers too powerful and as such they have to be written down.

I've said this before but its an homage to the Flashman series of novels. Read one of them and his character will become far clearer

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
His inability to actually get injured or even lose a fight occaisionally feels like he's got Godmode activated. I mean, there is literally zero possible chance he will ever die. All the "immersion" is gone because he's never in any danger. He's literally narrating himself, so he obviously survives. How to you expect there to be suspense or even the chance of something sad happening when you know every major character survives. Sulla Survives, Cain Survives, Jurgen survives, Amberly servives, the 597th leadership all survive. No one ever actually dies. It's hard to be daunted by the odds when you know the outcome before hand.

I preume you don't read books and watch movies in general then because funny that, main characters have funny habit of not dying.

If main character not dying removes immersion then pretty much every single book and movie has no immersion. Frodo survives. Ethan Hunt survives. Luke Skywalker survives. Hell you could tell in prequel trilogy who survives and who doesn't and whole god damn main plot point had been revealed by then.

Poor you. Never finding immersion.

tneva82 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
His inability to actually get injured or even lose a fight occaisionally feels like he's got Godmode activated. I mean, there is literally zero possible chance he will ever die. All the "immersion" is gone because he's never in any danger. He's literally narrating himself, so he obviously survives. How to you expect there to be suspense or even the chance of something sad happening when you know every major character survives. Sulla Survives, Cain Survives, Jurgen survives, Amberly servives, the 597th leadership all survive. No one ever actually dies. It's hard to be daunted by the odds when you know the outcome before hand.

I preume you don't read books and watch movies in general then because funny that, main characters have funny habit of not dying.

If main character not dying removes immersion then pretty much every single book and movie has no immersion. Frodo survives. Ethan Hunt survives. Luke Skywalker survives. Hell you could tell in prequel trilogy who survives and who doesn't and whole god damn main plot point had been revealed by then.

Poor you. Never finding immersion.

That's not entirely true. Even John Wayne died once as arguably the main character. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. There's even some pretty decent bait and switch in the 40K genre with Remebrancers able to fake out the narrator is the main character who died thing. The thing is, GW probably shuts down most deaths for a non-everyman or non-black-hat character. But the gist of what you're saying is still true. People in 40K books die less often than Soap Opera Characters, and stay dead even less often than that.

 Gert wrote:
Sadly it is now a Dead World, so only slightly worse than actual Birmingham.

Wait, Birmingham is no longer a feral world? Did it get nommed by 'Nids?

Necrons I think.

Huh, had no idea. Need to look into that.

Anytime a marine book starts to become bolter porn.

"This marine moved like a blur, too fast for the human eye to see." Yeah, yeah. That's not possible.

"The marines power armour absorbed a direct hit from a renegade battle cannon." Surrrre, what about the dozens of examples where small arms and basic melee weapons killed them?

"The marines bolter roared, killing a horde of 50 Orks." Ok, so he didn't have to reload? The Orks just died to a single bolt each?

Jarms48 wrote:
Anytime a marine book starts to become bolter porn.

heh yeah, thats why i usually read 40k books from like 15+ years ago. fab bile was my first delve into the newer fiction. book 1 was really good.

Jarms48 wrote:
Anytime a marine book starts to become bolter porn.

"This marine moved like a blur, too fast for the human eye to see." Yeah, yeah. That's not possible.
"The marines bolter roared, killing a horde of 50 Orks." Ok, so he didn't have to reload? The Orks just died to a single bolt each?

Human eyes missing action because its a blur is actually possible even just with regular human movement. We see something like 20-30ish frames per second (or at least a rough equivalent). Heck a lot of TV is only filmed at something like 21fps. So its very possible for motions to be a blur. Just look at something fast moving like horse legs or felines fighting or such and you can see all around you examples where you can see something happening but cannot pick up the individual motions of parts moving.

As for killing 50 orks with a bolter, sometimes its because mundane things like reloading are just left out of the description.

Pah you tell you self that, everyone knows that they don’t need to reload when fighting orks because dem beakies is a gud fight an der dakka juz keeps comin until yer gi um a gud krumpin

Given long standing background for a Marine’s reaction time, and the sheer level of maintenance their equipment receives? I can see it being a second at most.

The Bolter, as known, interfaces with the Power Armour through the grip. The Power Armour, via the Black Carapace, interfaces directly with the Marine’s central nervous system.

Therefore (speculation I’m afraid) through training and feedback, a Marine may very well be plucking and prepping his next magazine just in time for the exhausted magazine (clip? I don’t know guns, feel free to correct) to be ejected, and have the hand/eye/armour/gun coordination to set it home as…well…near as dammit instinct.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Given long standing background for a Marine’s reaction time, and the sheer level of maintenance their equipment receives? I can see it being a second at most.

The Bolter, as known, interfaces with the Power Armour through the grip. The Power Armour, via the Black Carapace, interfaces directly with the Marine’s central nervous system.

Therefore (speculation I’m afraid) through training and feedback, a Marine may very well be plucking and prepping his next magazine just in time for the exhausted magazine (clip? I don’t know guns, feel free to correct) to be ejected, and have the hand/eye/armour/gun coordination to set it home as…well…near as dammit instinct.

Generally speaking, the difference between a clip and a magazine is active parts, usually a spring. A magazine has them, the clip does not. So the M1 Garand uses a clip that holds the rounds together which is then inserted in the magazine that does the loading into the chamber.

As for the original question lets also not forget that Bolter rounds are/were caseless. So all those brass cases you've been painting on bases, Calgar, Guilliman, etc shouldn't exist. Every time you see one hit the floor in slow mo with a resounding thunk? Nah uh. But that also could allow for 50+ rounds in a bolter.

Originally yes, but that has been changed in multiple sources from design studio publications to black library to physical miniatures.

The standard astartes bolter, the godwyn pattern, has been stated in a similar number of sources to use 24 round magazines by default, though variants with extended mags, belt feeds and box mags all exist. Equally, versions with fire selectors may have three or more (usually smaller) magazines loaded at once.

I haven't read the book itself, but I once read a Black Library blurb stating in a dire tone of warning that "an Ork Waaaagh! is upon us", or something like that. I refuse to believe any Imperial officer who values their dignity would deign to utter such a word, unless they were making sarcastic air quotes while saying it. I haven't checked if the actual text of the book uses that word.

It's been mentioned in other threads before, but some lore says that blessed bolter rounds each take an artificer a lifetime to make, which is a laughably inefficient use of an artificer's skill and training.

The absurdity of an officer like Kubrik Chenkov lasting even one campaign (let alone several) without suffering an unfortunate "friendly fire" incident. Although I suppose it happened eventually, since he's no longer part of the lore.

Yvraine initially hopes to save the Eldar species by collecting a series of magic swords. She turns away from that path after a dream vision, sent by Slaanesh, shows her that one of the swords is in Slaanesh's possession and thus unreachable. Now why the frack would she unquestioningly believe a vision sent to her by the archenemy of her entire species? If anything, it would be in Slaanesh's advantage to keep his/her possession of the sword a secret, so that the Eldar keep wasting resources looking for it.

.

I just read the bit in the Night Lords omnibus where Talos incapacitates ~100 unaugmented humans at once by screaming into his helmet's megaphone. Apparently howling banshees don't hold a candle to one astartes with a loudspeaker.