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Dear Insectum.

Yes I am perfectly aware The Avenging Son is front and centre on the rulebook. Do I win £5?

Now. Would you care to engage on a more honest level and actually dispute my previous points?

Don’t worry. I’m not gonna be a phallus about it if you do. This is debate-discussion. No-one is gonna be ultimately correct.

But if won’t engage in good faith? That a different matter entirely. But looking at your other cherry picked quotes, I suspect you’ve not particular interest in robust discourse, and will simply cherry pick. Which is a shame, because I bloody love proper background discussion on account so much of it is simply point of view - and at no point do I consider myself an authority, even when I’m quoting directly from my substantial library of early 40K books, I’m just regurgitating information.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hecaton wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
the Imperium turning against him because they would rather have a dead but silent mythological messiah than one that is running around and saying thing they don't want to hear.

This, I would really like to see and I think would be thematically appropriate. Or at least, a good portion of the Imperium deciding that full-bore hyperfascism is what they want, not Guilliman's pragmatism, and a civil war coming from that.

This is where the Deadlock comes in.

Guilliman is Guilliman. The sole Primarch, the only existent Son of The God Emperor.

I’m sure there are many, many folk in positions of Vested Interest who would rather he hadn’t turned up. But, to move against him? Not only are they moving against The Emperor’s Son. But the Author of the Codex Astartes. A being who was permitted, by the Custodian Guard, a one-on-one audience with your collective deity, and now has the willing command of His own guard.

The flip side is already covered. Even Guilliman hasn’t had to negotiate a political web as complex as The Imperium as it stands. He can’t simply depose The High Lords. He needs to guide, persuade, coax and perhaps even subtlety threaten them to follow his lead. I could even make an argument that, if we can (not unreasonably) assume he’s capable of that? It’s the work of by our lifetime standard generations.

He absolutely can become a Proper Regent. He just cannot be heavy handed about it. He cannot go against the other Lords of Terra. At all. To do so would only cause further schisms, infighting and ultimately distractions from the “no, seriously. They’ll kill us all and you’re making it easier you dumbass” more pressing matters.

 Gert wrote:
Care to give an example? I'm not really sure what you mean by this.

22nd century


23rd century


24th century

Star Trek for example used to be quite well periodised. There were quite distinct visual and political flavours to the 22nd, 23rd and 24th century. It was slowly eroded, with novel tactically-important technology being pushed back by another century, and 'first contact' with numerous cultures likewise clumping further and further back in time. The original 23rd century had a Cold War atmosphere of an arms race, parity of starship design, strategic paranoia, proxy war, and a threat of mutual annihilation between the 'United Federation of Planets' and the 'Klingon Empire'. This was surpassed in the 24th century by wider challenges. Then most recently prequels altered the fundamental tension of the 23rd century from a political rivalry of which system, totalitarian or democratic, would rise to dominance, into a comment on essentially America and the Middle East. This could have simply been set in the 25th century, but it is widely acknowledged that aside from being some of the worst TV ever produced, the show runners attempted to have their cake and eat it by wanting to set it around familiar faces like Spock, often undermining classic characters in the process.

It worked quite well as an analogy for our own 19th, 20th and 2st centuries.

I really want to know what you mean by the latter part of that statement because it doesn't make much sense.

One way of conceptualizing it would be psychological. Carl Jung argued that when we feel a story has meaning, it means it is hitting multiple levels of truth for us on a subconscious level. The subconscious is, in this view of things, thought to be much more powerful than the conscious mind, so notices meaning well, and expresses it in dream imagery. Philosophers of the Traditionalist school noticed that one of the most potent myths is that of a 'procession of ages' in decline from a pure origin, so if we accept Jung's premise, you might say that this narrative, for some reason, hits many layers of 'feels', thus multiple metaphorical layers of truth perhaps. It perhaps expresses a fundamental reality we are not always conscious of. I've noticed I tend to like settings with an element of decline, even when there is valiant heroism, which have a touch of this bitter element in them. I was just speculating on whether GW might fundamentally alter this metaphysical view of Warhammer one day; basically I don't want 40K to be end-times-ed and reset into a different character of setting when it works so damn well.

 Olthannon wrote:
The threat of Chaos is that it turns a human into something else or debases them into something animalistic. And yet simultaneously, we see humanity in 40k not as an ideal. It's a brutal regime that cares little for its inhabitants and uses faith in the God Emperor to keep the masses in line. The elite protectors of humanity are barely human themselves having been so enhanced by genetic mutation to strengthen them.

The Horus Heresy was always a mythological biblical analogy about God and his angels fighting Satan and his demons. God and the angels won and managed to push back the armies of darkness and saved the world. Except God was wounded and turned his light from humanity and nobody truly knows if he is alive or dead. Does he answer our prayers or are we left to fight the demons alone? In his absence, humanity has descended further into darkness and are barely surviving. The apocalypse was pushed back but the cost was that humanity is trapped in purgatory, constantly fighting for survival. Eternal war is the price of victory.

And now one of God's vaunted angels has returned at the end of times to try and pull humanity back from the brink. That's interesting, it's something new and hopefully the way they play it will constantly have Gullieman's ideals butting up against the dark heart of humanity.

Good post, this is getting to the mythic core of the Emperor, Sanguinius and stuff. Someone even made a litany of Sanguinius:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Orks I'm less certain about, and although while Ghazgull was an important figure, I don't believe he held the same stature in the lore in the way he currently does. He was more of an example of a particularly big Warboss, of which there could potentially be thousands.

Avatars? There's one for every Craftworld, basically Eldar Greater Daemons, potentially thousands (how many Craftworlds are there?). C'tan? Well it never sat right with me that THE Nightbringer could show up in a 40K game, and the concept of "shards" has made nice work with that. Bloodthirsters and the like also number in the thousands (millions?) lore wise. Likewise Chapter Masters, there's one Marneus Calgar, but there are a thousand other CMs with their own storied history, and even more, there's been even more of them through time since the founding of the Chapters themselves. The individuals perish but the institutions live on (or don't).

Yeah, I agree, I think a Primarch like I said in an above post, is something different from the other immortal characters in 40K. It's hard to articulate but essentially it's like most of the other examples are either (alien) "mythological monsters" like chaos daemons, or else in the case of someone like Abaddon, mythic in the meta sense of being one of those timeless eternally plotting dark lords like a Skeletor/Gannondorf figure where it is more acceptable in a villain. The Eldar are the fading majestic entities of the setting like Tolkien's Elves, likewise. It's okay for Elves to have that perspective, but perhaps not a human narrative, as they are 'us'.

@RomulanSoldier
In general, I think you are thinking way too deeply into this and you could do with some more research into the topic.

Your analysis of Star Trek is quite flawed IMO and while I agree that Discovery has abysmal writing, it doesn't ruin TOS in the slightest by choosing to feature S1 around the first Federation-Klingon War. The end of the conflict has both sides massively ramping up their fleets, with the Klingons actually starting to look more like the unified imperial force we see in TOS compared to the loosely aligned culture of marauders in Enterprise. It sets the stage for the Cold War that follows. The design of the Klingons is dumb and their ships are bad but the conflict itself isn't a problem.

As for the bit about 40k, you've not said you think GW might be changing what you believe to be the theme of the setting, you've said you believe GW has already changed it. It also seems that (like so many others) haven't actually read novels or stories that are set within this new era. People have a habit of looking at Guilliman and going "Oh GW has brought Guilliman back and he's fixed everything" when that couldn't be further from the truth. You have taken Guillimans return out of context to the wider expanding narrative of the setting, ignoring the many other threats and issues that have presented themselves which means the return of Guilliman has essentially done very little. If the Rift didn't exist and Cadia hadn't fallen then yes the return of Guilliman and the advent of the Primaris would have meant the Imperium would no longer have been in decline but the Rift is there and the Imperium is broken in two, with little hope for a full half of Mankinds empire of survival. The story of the Imperium has always been the great beast being worn down slowly by the many thousands of cuts over the millennia. Now a great wound has been dealt and the scent of blood is in the water with the many enemies of Humanity moving in for the kill. Even Guilliman's great effort, the Indomitus Crusade, has already suffered multiple setbacks and failures. Guilliman was drawn into a protracted war in Ultramar against the forces of Nurgle and the Deathguard, Fleet Quintus suffered masses of sabotage, disease, and logistical failures, Fleet Tertius had to divert from its mission to defend a vital segmentum fortress, and on top of that Guilliman almost lost Terra to a coup by ex-High Lords.
The Imperium is still trapped in an eternal war and is slowly losing ground to the many enemies that surrounds it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dear Insectum.

Yes I am perfectly aware The Avenging Son is front and centre on the rulebook. Do I win £5?

Now. Would you care to engage on a more honest level and actually dispute my previous points?

Don’t worry. I’m not gonna be a phallus about it if you do. This is debate-discussion. No-one is gonna be ultimately correct.

But if won’t engage in good faith? That a different matter entirely. But looking at your other cherry picked quotes, I suspect you’ve not particular interest in robust discourse, and will simply cherry pick. Which is a shame, because I bloody love proper background discussion on account so much of it is simply point of view - and at no point do I consider myself an authority, even when I’m quoting directly from my substantial library of early 40K books, I’m just regurgitating information.

I don't have the time at the moment to give you something more thorough (although I will try later), but I'd certainly say the cover art to the main book functions as a point of reference in the matter. And the text within the rulebook is pretty glowing in regards to the Primarch as well, iirc. Yes the galaxy is burning and the Imperium might fall, etc. But a singular shining beacon of hope sure seems to me to be part of the Guilliman presentation.

And I think that's a part (one of many) of my rub about him. There is "hope" centered on this one, non PC guy. Prior to Guilliman I would say that any "hope" was more local to whatever character/s/army the player themselves was using. Every character, every player, doing their part and telling their own little story that's not going to be overshadowed by what these Major in-setting characters are doing.

Come to think of it I think the current rulebook is the first one with major characters on the cover, at that. I think any others have just featured "Space Marine Captain Guy".

To me, Gman's return is a very double edged sword. On one hand he's exactly what the Imperium need right now. Then his fish-out-of-water and depression from the weight on his shoulders is a compelling story.

However, on the other hand it makes me worried we're going to move from grimdark to nobledark. As well as have a heavy focus on hero-hammer. Where nearly every codex and rulebook story is about 2 named characters fighting each other and never dying. I don't want the setting to be watered down, I like the idea that the 41st millennium is a setting where you can forge a narrative at any place and any time in it.

GW will swing to what they feel the majority of the playerbase or potential playerbase wants. They dont give a darn about grimdark or noblebright or any other such meaningless nonsense.

I do think (as a history BA ) talk of historical golden or dark ages, on a grand or local scale are usually rather amateur.

I think the whole thing has more in common with the Roman Empire.

Does anyone remember what happened after the Western Roman empire fell. We had the Byzantine Empire with a whole bunch of cool emperors and this amazing civilization that lasted all the way into the 1400s!

That's what Guilliman is. He's Constantine.

There is hope of a restoration to greatness, just like there was in the Byzantine Empire, but its a small hope. And that's a pretty good setting if you ask me.

One other cool thing. I've noticed that after the great rift and weakening of the Imperium there is more emhasis on the Imperium's enemies fighting each other.

That's extremely cool. Orks vs Tyranids. Heck yes. Give me more of that. Sometimes I want to tell stories that have nothing to with the Imperium. Its a big universe afterall.

I think the best thing they could do for the setting. Now is have guilliman go darker and embrace what the imperium has become and have humanity start to worship him as the son of the emperor, but also part of the emperor in a sort of sci fi holy trinity. This is because he has decided that he wants to take control of the imperial cult as he sees faith as the best way to assert as much control as possible.

But then he realises what he can get people to do when they worship his a living god and he goes a bit power mad

I understand that the 40k universe is different for all of us and enjoyed subjectively. My interpretation is obviously very different to MDG and to Gert above, that's fine.

I have been so, so heavily invested in 40k lore for long periods of my life and going back to the early 90s. I knew what it was that attracted me to it; in the same way I picked up copies of 2000AD rather than the Marvel releases at the time; it was the dark, scabby, dirty view of a dystopian future. The satire of heroism and military adventure, rather than the celebration of it. Even though it was horribly depressing and dystopian from most perspectives, the moments of heroism and of humour were that much more powerful because of it.

I'm afraid I don't see any of that any more in the new lore. In my view there are some really quite poor, contrived pieces of background material that in some cases completely volte-face on the foundation stones of the setting, and are just intended to sell new miniature lines and that's it. This is fine; GW are a business and their job is to sell miniatures (making many new ones is a good way of doing this) and we have known for many years the sales department dictate projects to rule/game makers and not visa-versa. But IMO they have fundamentally changed the core concepts of what the game universe used to be about.

But like I said it's a personal thing. Some people will do a bit of mental juggling and make it fit (or it might be that their initial interpretation was a different one, or more aligned). But unfortunately that boat has now sailed for me.

I have had one crazy idea rattling through my skull. What if a second loyal primarch showed, but did not become an ally with Guilliman? Maybe he opposes Guilliman's choices and wants to push the imperium in another direction. Rather than coming into direct conflict, they could be pushed to either side of the rift. something historically similar to the east and west roman empires or maybe the cold war. Having an equal to Guilliman be in conflict is interesting, but more primarchs might not help the story anymore.

I do think he broke the setting a little, it's all a little to glamourous, and the primaris arch was nonsense taken straight out of the 2nd Star Wars prequel, literally a cache of primaris out of the imperium's ass, this is a dying empire of anti-innovators. Almost none of needed to happen to get Guilliman in, nor was it needed to update the marines.

Calgar was always enough for the plot in my opinion, and in a way he might as well just been Guilliman.

But we have the model and I don't think it's going anywhere, what I'd want to do is retcon the lore to be more grim-dark and say something to the effect of...

Guilliman had never been that popular outside of Ultrama, he was actually wounded by an assassin from terra with a nano-device, he was put in stasis and was ultimately saved by technomancy gathered from the men of iron. This was a quest to bargain with the men of iron was undertaken by the Squats, whose AI-cores sent a message into deep space, a couple of hundred years later they hear back, and a team of Imperial Agents escorted by the squats go to retrieve the technology and bring it to Ultrama. -cough- This journey brushed against the Rak-Gol and Hrud (box-set plez) -cough-

(No longer was Guilliman saved directly by the Eldar, only indirectly with the Imperial Agents as hires)

The Squats retrieving the device came under attack from (allegedly) "rebel" Admech and a team of assassins, which were defeated when support arrived from the Custodies and Calgar with the Ultramarines.

(The Custodies were never a purely terran force, they are given notions of what to do by the emperor along with the sisters of silence, and often those not "on-guard" are sent to help collect tithes, or head out on divine instruction. (more of an excuse to come into conflict if they're tax-collectors))

Cawl was taken to oversee the operation on Guilliman by the Custodies, it's rumored the device was a man of iron which self detonated into slag before Cawl could try to seize the machine after the operation, Guilliman is now mostly cybrog (which is why he looks freakishly disproportioned), Guilliman granted the Squats a protected self-governing status with freedoms (from the Administratum, Ecclesiarchy and Mechanicus) in return for complex military and resource gathering contracts as reward for their services to him.

(No Primaris cache, all marines are primaris, Phobos marines are tatical marines, we get a true(-r) scale terminator armor kit, Gravis is a rare super-armor, Grey Knight Terminators were wearing a form of Gravis armor all along (the Gravis Intercessors I've no clue, wish they never happened))

The puritan Admech are particularly bothered, some become separatists, claiming Guilliman to be corrupted by abominable-intelligence. Other radicals feel like they have the emperor given right to plunder the Squats.
The prior view is of concern to the Ordos, and some of the Ecclesiarchy find Guilliman's irreverence to the Emperor of great concern.

...Then you go for a contentious divide between brothers with multiple heirs to the golden-throne

Not all the Primarchs are dead, Lion’El Johnson is crippled by psychic damage and sits blindfolded (to halt the epileptic fits he suffers) on his throne (possibly able to see into the future now) waging a war of shadows. Jaghatai Khan scorns politics, and focuses on battling the Red Corsairs and their black-fortress. Vulkan the opposite, he seeks to use diplomacy, and ease tensions and improve conditions within the imperium. Russ seems unhinged after his failed hunt for Magnus, he abstained from leading his Space Wolves and instead wonders the imperium (like Strider from Lord of the Rings) occasionally fighting where he is needed most.

Sanguinius is different though, he was/is dead, and for a long time his soul haunted the warp, but his legend, and the reverence he was held in, seeped into warp-space and made him larger than he was in life, Mephiston came into contact with the Ulthwe who offered to bind the soul of Sanguinius into a gem, and stifle the black-curse.
Now this gem drives the angelic constructs known as the Sanguinors (golems), and communicates telepathically somehow. It is rumored the blood-ritual and/or the sacrifice of potent psykers may be involved in this warpcraft.
...
Sanguinius's essential return caused a freenzy within the Ecclesiarchy (think the 2nd coming of Christ), and there seems to be massive contention over who should lead the Imperium of Man into the future. Massive citizen crusades are being launched under the Ecclesiarchy and their battle-siters claiming to be doing the biding of the Emperors true Son (Box Set of Imperial Zealots (Loyalist Cultists)). There have been civil-wars between the new faiths.
Sanguinius has started a renascence in a sub-alliance of the galactic north-eastern imperial worlds that is beginning to rival Ultrama. It's implied Sanguinius holds a grudge against Guilliman for his absence during the siege of terra and for seemingly holding more favor with their father in spite of Sanguinius's sacrifice.

Guilliman is actually said to be struggling with the Imperium, disillusioned and bitter after his attempted assassination, some accuse him of putting Ultrama before the Imperium, whilst others say he is being expansionist in trying to get Imperial worlds to adopt Ultrama policies. Guilliman distrusts the thing claiming to be Sanguinius, and the religiosity surrounding him/it, he is frustrated by his other brothers, and is concerned the Emporer of Mankind may be going mad.

Other Changes maybe...