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After all these years of fleshing out, 40k has an incredible amount of story attached to it. Not just novels, but also all the little snippets scattered through the rulebooks to help bring the setting to life.

So what's the one piece of fluff that stands out from the rest, for you?



Mine is a short story from one of the second edition books, of a group of Orks in an engagement with Imperial troops. The mob's weirdboy psychically evesdrops on the crew of a nearby Titan and starts parroting the dialogue of a psyker onboard. The psyker detects the intrusion and traces it back to the source, passing on the targeting data to the weapons crew... And the ork boss realises only at the last instant what is about to happen.

Not sure why that one in particular sticks out after all these years, but it was perfectly written and just so very orky...


So, I've shown you mine. What's yours?

For the novels, Dead Men Walking is my all-time fave, though Death World, Angel Exterminatus, and Betrayer are all in contention these days. I also really love James Swallow's Red and Black audiobook.

For favourite bit of lore out in the universe, we must go back to the Space Hulk Missions and Background book. It was this description that made me like Genestealers, and eventually Tyranids:

"I don't know where they come from. It seems highly unlikely that they evolved naturally into what they are now - impossible, given what we know about evolution. Perhaps they are some kind of bioweapon, created millennia ago by madmen for some long-forgotten war. If so, I suspect that their creators soon came to regret their creation. Or perhaps they come straight from the warp. Possibly the Lords of Chaos themselves cast them out because they were too unpleasant."

That time the Harlequins invaded the Imperial Palace, with the Shadowseer and Death Jester absolutely schooling dozens of Custodes in Throneworld. Kind of hope Guy Haley decides to use that Shadowseer character again. Never have I been prouder of the fact that I was an owner of a Harlequin army.

I liked the time when Land Raiders fired Multilasers and then transmorphed into Razorbacks.

The Forge World fluff which deals with background and organisational fluff. Like the DKoK or Minotaurs stuff in Imperial Armour 12.

An old short from the second edition eldar book describing the awakening of the avatar.

The little bit about the DKoK dealing with a Hive city on the planet Derondis that decided not to pay its tithes. They dealt with the issue by removing the city from the planet with guns, took ten years.

There's an old short story (maybe WD?) about an IG patrol coming across the initial stages of a Tyranid infestation. The tale follows the progression to its inevitable and icky conclusion, with the whole planet being consumed and all our heroes getting eaten. Excellent cameo appearance from the Lamenters (drop in, shoot stuff, get overwhelmed, die).

The Astral Knights vs the World Engine is another fave, as is the destruction of Sanctuary 101.

There's a line in NICK KYME's Feat of Iron short story that really hit me hard. As we all know, Ferrus Manus was prone to running head first into battle. Well, during the Heresy he did that chasing after some Dark Eldar. He gets lost in a cave, and is wandering around being tormented by elder mind trickery as well as his well-documented feelings of inadequacy. He hears voices condemning him, and the one that hit home for me was, "UNWANTED SON!!!" I let out and audible "shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit" when I read that. I can't imagine a more painful insult. That would take any man to his knees.

On a lighter note, I love Deff Skwadron, a comic book style publication about a bunch of Ork Flyboyz doing Ork Flyboy things

The stuff that's still mostly just small irrelevant quotes or mini-stories in the codecies.
Some of the things that got fleshed out worked well but as I get the books and read what most of those quotes became I liked them better as a mystery.
My favourite quote or mini-story that got fleshed out was the Wolf and the Lion, it actually made a bratty squabble into a more bratty squabble rather than something justified.

I know that many people dislike the NewCron [now what, 6 years old?] fluff, but I really liked it. I never was, nor am now, a Necron player, so I had no base line on which to be agrievated.

"I am not capricious, nor am I given to cruel acts for their own sakes. It is simply a fact that you and your kind have trespassed, and thus invited extermination. Curse you for putting me to this inconvenience." - Anrakyr the Traveller


On pg 59 of the 5th [?] edition Necron Codex, there's a blurb about Trazyn the Infinite, in which he expresses "appreciation" for an Inquisitor sending Catachan troops to his gallery...

"... one of a series of tesseract labyrinths... It is a trinket, really, of interest only to scholars such as you and I, but I trust you will find it amusing - assuming you have the wit to escape its clutches, of course." - Trazyn, the Infinite