Atrocity Exhibition wrote:The best book to understand the workings of the Imperial Navy from a Black Library point of view is probably 'Relentless' followed closely by 'Gothic War'. I've not yet seen Battlefleet Kronos (Rogue Trade RPG) but that will surely have everything in minute detail- whether or not its canon... meh:

Finally you have the ratings- these guys are essentially indentured slave types - forced to work in the lower decks in terrible conditions and extremely high mortaility. They come from planetary tithes (so the governors often give the navy the dredges of their population - drain out the prisons, sweeps threw slums etc) and also from previous boarding actions - the losers come aboard in chains. Therefore the ratings cannot generally be trusted in a fight, they are as likely to turn on the Imperial Navy as they are the invaders of the ship (hence the fortress level/armsmen). These guys are often chained together or locked inside rooms - they have overseers (who tend to be fragged) and may well attempt their own uprising if given a chance during some big battle.

Battlefleet Koronus pg 70 wrote:raTings

Ratings take care of the functions that need muscle instead of
training—hauling shells and missiles, re-routing cables, clearing
debris and conducting basic maintenance (i.e., scrubbing the
decks). They are the basic voidsmen aboard a ship. Men in this
class typically have a myriad of sub-classifications (ratings) that
specify their role further, e.g. gun-layer third class, fuse-changer
second class and so on. Ratings make up the bulk of the crew and
will be the ones doing most of the fighting in boarding actions.
Contrary to popular belief, many Navy ratings are
volunteers—the pay is good and the conditions are better
than those on many Imperial worlds*. The Navy can make
generous promises when it knows barely half the ratings will
survive a cruise and collect their gelt at the end.

If there aren’t enough volunteers to fulfil a captain’s
requirements he always has the right to send press gangs to
tithe more crew directly from any planet along his way. This
can mean anything from emptying penal colonies to pressganging
collections of citizens out of hab-blocks. In practice this
is often achieved with the collusion of the planetary governor,
but an Imperial Navy captain does not need permission to take
crew from any world. The necessary practice of press-ganging
remains a potential flashpoint for rebellion on many worlds and
Navy ratings have an unsavoury reputation as little more than
convicts because of it.

As stated previously, there are multitudes of
different types of ratings, but they can often
be divided into two broad classifications,
armsmen and voidsmen.


ArmsmAN

Armsmen are crewmembers trusted to carry weapons at all
times onboard the ship and maintain the contents of the
weapons lockers. They keep discipline among the lower ranks
and protect the crew as needed—usually by wading in with
truncheons or shooting first and asking questions later. Unlike
most ratings, armsmen get to move around different decks
of the ship in the course of their duties and their loyalties
are carefully scrutinised. Many ratings spurn the chance
to become an armsman simply because they don’t want to
become part of the systematic brutality of ship discipline.


voidsmeN

Voidsmen (also referred to by the more archaic “shipmen” on
some Imperial Navy vessels) are those ship’s crew with some
training and skill, the ratings most likely to be entrusted with tasks
such as conduit-maintenance, bulwark repairs, cog polishing, or
other jobs that might require some skill and autonomy. Hiveworlders
are favoured as voidsmen due to their familiarity with
technology and the fact that they are inured to the worst of the
noise and claustrophobic conditions found on ships. However,
a captain sometimes has to take what he can get so a crew can
become an eclectic mix of feral barbarians, agri-world farmers
and cynical hive-worlders by the end of a long cruise.
The lowest ranking voidsmen are given the most mundane
drudgery. However, those who are smart, lucky, and dutiful may
advance in rank after many years of service.

On many ships,
these individuals are called able voidsmen, the title officially
acknowledging their skill and experience. Some captains require
examinations be passed to achieve able voidman rating while
others simply bestow it as a marker for time served onboard.
Occasionally, a voidsman with both brains and ambition
may become a leading voidsman. Officially, leading voidsmen
are simply those placed in charge of work gangs but
unofficially many officers use it as a proving ground for those
under consideration to be warrant officers. Needless to say,
only a very rare few reach this point.

indenTured WorKers

Almost every warship has a voracious appetite for unskilled hard
labour, and this appetite is fed by a steady diet of indentured
workers. Often these are unfortunates who are press-ganged
from a worlds slums or taken en masse from penal colonies—
some of the Imperium’s teeming hordes of humanity, only valued
for their ability to work. The Navy sees these unfortunates as
much a resource as fuel for the drives and food for the crew,
and they are given duties such as hauling guns into position,
turning flywheels, and carrying supplies, heavy equipment, and
macrocannon shells. Most ships must replenish their crews of
indentured workers every so often, as a steady stream die to
malnutrition, accidents, and disciplinary actions

Many indentured workers may be “upgraded” with crude
augmentics and even mental inhibitors to make them more
compliant to orders (and likely ensuring they’ll serve as
indentured workers for the remainder of their lives). For those
who avoid that fate, their best hope is to become a rating,
learning some task that makes them valued in the ship hierarchy

Brother Captain Andrecus wrote:Part of the problem is that the Eisenhorn novels are written by Dan Abnett, who takes some interesting liberties with the 40k canon. Which means that anything you read in one of his books is probably either completely made up on the spot, or a twisted version of some pre-existing piece of 40k lore. Ah, Dan Abnett. Your books are so trippy.

Lynata wrote:SNIP

Atrocity Exhibition wrote:Yeah I realised the ratings error in another thread, the roles of indentured workers and ratings seems to overlap across novels

as for what's canon, GW official stance is that only their publications are canon - rule books and codexes. So BL RT and DH aren't offically canon but since GW offer such a little slice of 40kverse I think we're all happy to accept anything they endorse and over look the many contradictions

Seaward wrote:
There isn't ambiguity in the statements; there's not a lot of room for interpretation. They're simply not telling you what you want to hear.

Gav Thorpe wrote:Often folks ask if Black Library books are ‘canon’. With Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy.

Dead.Blue.Clown wrote:Let's just dismiss that ol' rumour right now. It's not true. The design studio, Black Library and Forge World are all canon. However, it's based on the fact that the 40K IP isn't concerned with "canon" in the way a lot of fans assume, since they're basing their perceptions on guesses, rumours, and occasionally a few old misquotes taken out of context.

http://www.boomtron.com/2011/03/grimdark-ii-loose-canon/

baphomael wrote:Quite right. Rather than having an established basis of 'canon truth', like some settings, 40k counts *all* material produced as, in some ways, part of the universe.

Rather, they seem to be taking an approach that views all the background stuff as some kind of historical nugget of information. Often, these are corroborative, and help fashion a consensus. Likewise, just as in history, there will be sources that are contradictory. We, as the readers, judge and interpret what is accurate, apocryphal, what are lies, whispers and propaganda. And even then, as with history, there will be conflicting interpretations of the same essential event or fact (indeed, I remember chuckling at the booklet I read containing the correspondence of two historians furiously arguing with each other, via letter, as to whether his club foot lay on the left or the right side of his body... strangely interesting reading, leaving me questioning what is more tragic - that obsessive pedantry of the two correspondents over something as trivial as the exact placement of Byron's club foot.... or that I actually read their correspondence... having said that, I think we all, as a community of wargamers, are guilty of the same level of obsessive pedantry over trivial things, otherwise we wouldn't have posts such as this )

Likewise, there are also parallels to theological inquiry - akin to the theological debates about what biblical stories are considered 'canon', 'apocrypha' or outright heresy (its not for nought the 30k fluff gives a nod to the Council of Nicaea). Likewise, even within established 'canon' there are rampant theological debates between academics, with more letters after their name than I knew were in the alphabet, about what aspects of religious texts are considered metaphorical model, symbolic, allegorical, literal etc etc. Indeed, there are debates over the authorship of certain parts of gospels (in much the same way as arguments amongst historians, linguists and literary experts, have debated whether some of Shakespeare's works are plagiarised (or, likewise, whether that accusation has stemmed from Shakespeare having changed his name, making the writing style similar to another) or else wrongly attributed.

And, in that sense, I rather like it that way.

Lynata wrote:I understand his criticism, for - in my opinion - there's a huge difference between expanding the setting with new things and contradicting it stuff that, for whatever reason, bumps into something that had been established before, forcing the reader to choose one of the two (or more) versions for his own interpretation by using any of the popular conditions that are usually applied in such cases (publishing company, author credibility, release date comparison, or just plain and simple personal preference) - ending up in thousands of fans argueing about a truth that does not exist, each of them believing himself to be right. It's ... messy. I wish GW would at least make it completely clear that there is no canon (in terms of consistency) instead of forcing its fans to go hunt for quotes hidden in some obscure interview or blogpost or whatever.

Uh, isn't that exactly what I just wrote? I "got it" a few months ago - thanks to this forum, actually.

At the time of Eisenhorn, we didn't have all that much information about the Inquisition and the philosophies of the organization. We had some, but not all.
At the time of Eisenhorn, the Navy wasn't entirely well fleshed out other than we had very different sectorial fleets Phht. The Inquisition? Perhaps. But the Navy? There were quite a lot of articles in White Dwarf, the BFG books and the BFG Magazine. It's not GW's fault if people can't be bothered to look it all up, including the "minor sources", before beginning to write their stuff. We do know that the company is quite forthcoming to new authors who wish to gain access to such material, after all. If you're truly committed it's not that hard to retrieve such admittedly rare information - you'd be surprised what I managed to dig up on the SoB where people always claim that GW wrote next to nothing on them apart from the Codices.
I'd say it's much more plausible that Dan Abnett, who keeps displaying a rather liberal attitude on background details, simply prefers a greater deal of freedom, just like Andy Chambers and ADB do.

Atrocity Exhibition wrote:jeese I can tell you're a real joy at your local store, I don't know when I came across it - maybe it an Dabnett interview or maybe some more fallible source but it's essentially summed up by this webpage:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Discontinuity/TabletopGames?from=Discontinuity.TabletopRPG

Technically, Black Library isn't canon when it contradicts lore established in the official Codices, so this trope is only tenuously applicable to Black Library. It's like feeling the need to ignore fanfiction.
Everything published by Games Workshop (Which includes Black Library) is canon. This is indisputable fact. Everything they put out is canon. Not everything that is canon is, however, true.

To clarify, it is assumed that many of the pieces of work are written by Imperial scholars, and thus the book you're reading could be true, or it could be nothing but propganda the Imperium has made up, or a plethora of other things.

so bl are on legitimate but fragile ground as the sovereignty of GWs direct publications always trumps them, which causes problems when they rewrite the codex fluff. Whatever I originally read/heard went one step further saying GW only recognised codexes as explicit canon and you can understand why (well you probably can't). I'm not going to waste anymore time trying to find it because you're not really a friendly a debater- more of an arse who drains enjoyment out of forums

as for the rpg lines - I don't think you really understand the greyness of this area and I'll let you research that on your own - it's not difficult to find