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Did we ever see them again after the whole Gothic War /12th Black Crusade?

I vaguely recall that they showed up during the 13th Black Crusade...but unsure as to what the context was.


And aside from the whole McGuffin aspect of the situation - did we ever get an inkling as to why they were so important in the first place?

They were weapons designed to destroy the C'tan, which basically means you can destroy just about anything in the 40k Universe (including entire star systems).

Although that sounds less impressive now C'Tan are like Pokémon.

At least one of them was in the 13th Black Crusade. It ended up orbiting Cadia as a defence platform and ate Eldrad.

The Blackstone Fortresses are still impressive. They could not only shard C'tan, but kill them outright, at the height of their power, while they were in full battle mode.

pm713 wrote:
Although that sounds less impressive now C'Tan are like Pokémon.

No. They're not for killing Ctan shards.They killed intact, full power, pre-shattering ctan permenantly dead.

One of tgem led the attack on cadia. As noted, it ate eldrad beforeccoming under attack by a necron fleet - a battle not seen resolved - in the closing narrative of the campaign.

locarno24 wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Although that sounds less impressive now C'Tan are like Pokémon.

No. They're not for killing Ctan shards.They killed intact, full power, pre-shattering ctan permenantly dead.

One of tgem led the attack on cadia. As noted, it ate eldrad beforeccoming under attack by a necron fleet - a battle not seen resolved - in the closing narrative of the campaign.

Well for one thing the Eldrad thing never happened.

C'Tan got killed by their own slaves. Killing them sounds meh now.

The Eldrad thing does happen. Just like the Cain books happen. It just hasn't happened yet because of the timeline freeze. Without a miracle of some sort, though, as soon as the timeline moves a few hours forward, Eldrad is dead.

The whole 13th Black Crusade was retconned and the timeline pushed back after Chaos won in the global campaign back in 2003-4ish? Am I remembering right? I know a lot of people were up in arms.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
At least one of them was in the 13th Black Crusade. It ended up orbiting Cadia as a defence platform and ate Eldrad.

The Blackstone Fortresses are still impressive. They could not only shard C'tan, but kill them outright, at the height of their power, while they were in full battle mode.

Except the Void Dragon, he was just weakened and made sleepy prior to the Wardcron codex.

Chaos are guaranteed one Blackstone fortress as they are available to use in BFG.

This guarantee lasts only as long as interest in BFG remains, currently it is on hold, and I wouldn't put it past the idiots writing the current fluff to destroy them for an attempt at a dramatic theme.

 Lord Corellia wrote:
The whole 13th Black Crusade was retconned and the timeline pushed back after Chaos won in the global campaign back in 2003-4ish? Am I remembering right? I know a lot of people were up in arms.

Yes, but the timeline was only pushed back to just before Eldrad launched his attack on the Blackstone Fortress, which was the final action of the crusade.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, but the timeline was only pushed back to just before Eldrad launched his attack on the Blackstone Fortress, which was the final action of the crusade.

Ah, I'd missed that bit. Good to know!

It's worth to notice that despite the retcon, the Blackstone Fortress wich "ate eldrad" was in fact housing Slaanesh itself (speak about possesed machines) and not just any smaller demon or Greater demon.

It gives some kind of measure about the kind of warp energies those things can handle if a whole chaos God essence can be placed inside of those things.

No, it wasn't. It was just a fragment of Slaanesh. A really, really powerful one, but a fragment of him none the less.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
No, it wasn't. It was just a fragment of Slaanesh. A really, really powerful one, but a fragment of him none the less.

So, yeah, it was possessed by a Daemon, since Daemons are, by definition, fragments of their respective gods.

 Lord_Inquisitor_Doge wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
No, it wasn't. It was just a fragment of Slaanesh. A really, really powerful one, but a fragment of him none the less.

So, yeah, it was possessed by a Daemon, since Daemons are, by definition, fragments of their respective gods.

I think she meant it wasn't possessed by Slaanesh itself.

pm713 wrote:

 Lord_Inquisitor_Doge wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
No, it wasn't. It was just a fragment of Slaanesh. A really, really powerful one, but a fragment of him none the less.

So, yeah, it was possessed by a Daemon, since Daemons are, by definition, fragments of their respective gods.

I think she meant it wasn't possessed by Slaanesh itself.

My point was: It was just a greater daemon, because it was a really big fragment of Slaanesh, which is what a greater daemon is.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Lord_Inquisitor_Doge wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
No, it wasn't. It was just a fragment of Slaanesh. A really, really powerful one, but a fragment of him none the less.

So, yeah, it was possessed by a Daemon, since Daemons are, by definition, fragments of their respective gods.

I think she meant it wasn't possessed by Slaanesh itself.

My point was: It was just a greater daemon, because it was a really big fragment of Slaanesh, which is what a greater daemon is.

I literally just restated your point...

I know you did, but 713 didn't get it.

I am now so unclear about the whole change in the c'tan, necron, old one, early eldar conflict to even understand whether the black stone fortresses even had a purpose being built in the new fluff????

They did. The Necrons didn't Shard the C'tan until after they beat the Eldar down.

Yeah. So basically, Blackstones were built to destroy C'tan, but somehow didn't, and necrons take the credit for doing what they are supposed to do.

I don't like that. It really should have been Blackstones that shattered the C'tan, just before they went into hibernation.

Like, can you imagine it? Enslavers popping up everywhere, galaxy is going to gak, and in the confusion the Eldar take a few potshots at the C'tan with their new shiny superweapons in a last ditch attempt to save the galaxy from Lawful Evil star gods.
That would have been much better than rebel robot shenanigans, imo.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah. So basically, Blackstones were built to destroy C'tan, but somehow didn't, and necrons take the credit for doing what they are supposed to do.

I don't like that. It really should have been Blackstones that shattered the C'tan, just before they went into hibernation.

Like, can you imagine it? Enslavers popping up everywhere, galaxy is going to gak, and in the confusion the Eldar take a few potshots at the C'tan with their new shiny superweapons in a last ditch attempt to save the galaxy from Lawful Evil star gods.
That would have been much better than rebel robot shenanigans, imo.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Silent King manipulated the C'tan with misinformation in order to funnel them into a battle involving the Blackstone Fortresses. In fact, that would make perfect sense, since the Necrons don't currently have any weapons (that I know of) capable of shattering C'tan, otherwise we probably would have seen some stories about said superweapons.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Eldrad thing does happen. Just like the Cain books happen. It just hasn't happened yet because of the timeline freeze. Without a miracle of some sort, though, as soon as the timeline moves a few hours forward, Eldrad is dead.

And then someone else picks up his soul stone and hat and life goes on with Eldrad mk 2...

As the original Rogue Trader books said, "Whatever happens, you will not be missed"

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Eldrad thing does happen. Just like the Cain books happen. It just hasn't happened yet because of the timeline freeze. Without a miracle of some sort, though, as soon as the timeline moves a few hours forward, Eldrad is dead.

I dunno, it's kinda confusing, honestly, if I was in charge of 40k one of my first actions would be to take the 40k fiction etc, and work out a cohesive timeline. there are waaaaaay too many cases of "well Dante was here according to this book, here according to that comic, here according to this codex, and here according to this campaign supplement. all are dated as being M.41 999"

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Eldrad thing does happen. Just like the Cain books happen. It just hasn't happened yet because of the timeline freeze. Without a miracle of some sort, though, as soon as the timeline moves a few hours forward, Eldrad is dead.

And then someone else picks up his soul stone and hat and life goes on with Eldrad mk 2...

As the original Rogue Trader books said, "Whatever happens, you will not be missed"

Eldrad doesn'th ave a soul stone. His waystone was left empty and unused. He was consumed while his soul was not even in his body, it was in the blackstone fortress. He was fighting the daemon inside the circuits of the fortress because he was trying to possess it himself (since that's how large-scale Eldar tech works, apparently). When I say the daemon ate him, I mean literally consumed his soul, nom nom nom.

Cool, I support both killing Space Elfs and killing special characters.

But where is that fluff?

And anyway my point is anyone can be replaced. That's one of the great things about the 40k universe.

That fluff appeared in the 'Eye of Terror Campaign Results' article in white dwarf magazine. It's available on Scribd, but everything except page 1 is behind the paywall. I'm not sure where else you could find it.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Eldrad thing does happen. Just like the Cain books happen. It just hasn't happened yet because of the timeline freeze. Without a miracle of some sort, though, as soon as the timeline moves a few hours forward, Eldrad is dead.

And then someone else picks up his soul stone and hat and life goes on with Eldrad mk 2...

As the original Rogue Trader books said, "Whatever happens, you will not be missed"

Eldrad doesn'th ave a soul stone. His waystone was left empty and unused. He was consumed while his soul was not even in his body, it was in the blackstone fortress. He was fighting the daemon inside the circuits of the fortress because he was trying to possess it himself (since that's how large-scale Eldar tech works, apparently). When I say the daemon ate him, I mean literally consumed his soul, nom nom nom.

That is explicitly not true. In the last Eldar Codex where reference was made to Eldrad's death, it said he had split his soul into fragments in waystones to guide multiple Eldar forces (as per also the original Eye of Terror Codex). He reassembled most of himself when he went to the Fortress. When Eldrad died in the Fortress, most (i.e. not all) of these remaining stones went dark. His pupil Q'sandra (note the reference to the mythical Cassandra) believed that Eldrad's soul lived on at least partially and that he was not entirely gone, though nobody believed her. Given that the mythical Cassandra was cursed with always knowing and speaking the truth but being disbelieved, then GW was implying Q'sandra is right.

honestly at this point we proably shouldn't assume GW will follow the end of the 13th black crusade. didn't they do something simikler to the 13th black crusade with WFB and completely retcon it out with time of ending?