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In the preview on Warhammer Community, it talks about how Ragnar beheaded Ghazghkull, but then Mad Dok stitched him back together.

Is this from a story? Codex? Or is this new?

It's new, from the upcoming Saga of the Beast. My question is how the hell did Ragnar behead Ghaz if his neck was broken and how the feth did Ghaz break Ragnar's neck if he'd been beheaded? One or the other had to happen first.

Orks keep fighting after being beheaded.

Alternatively they both landed their blows simultaneously.

Either way both essentially got killed, both were bought back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Check the psychic awakening site. I guess that may have more info.

Christ.. more childish lore from GW.. 'I got you first..no! it was the the same time so were both dead'..sounds like kids when theyre playing... they need to do a game of thrones and actually kill some characters off... and not just magical ones who come back cough saint cough... that just makes any storyline super boring.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Christ.. more childish lore from GW.. 'I got you first..no! it was the the same time so were both dead'..sounds like kids when theyre playing... they need to do a game of thrones and actually kill some characters off... and not just magical ones who come back cough saint cough... that just makes any storyline super boring.

They traded a stagnant timeline for an advancing timeline with unkillable characters. I agree, super boring in the long run.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Christ.. more childish lore from GW.. 'I got you first..no! it was the the same time so were both dead'..sounds like kids when theyre playing... they need to do a game of thrones and actually kill some characters off... and not just magical ones who come back cough saint cough... that just makes any storyline super boring.

I'd rather this than a stagnant timeline.

Just now. Did you blink? You might have missed it.

 Hanskrampf wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Christ.. more childish lore from GW.. 'I got you first..no! it was the the same time so were both dead'..sounds like kids when theyre playing... they need to do a game of thrones and actually kill some characters off... and not just magical ones who come back cough saint cough... that just makes any storyline super boring.

They traded a stagnant timeline for an advancing timeline with unkillable characters. I agree, super boring in the long run.

Ugh, some of us liked the stagnant timeline. It added to the whole "the galaxy is so huge and everything is so spread out that nothing you do matters" hopeless grimdark feel. Now heroes bounce from warzone to warzone all across the galaxy like their taking a trip to the next town over. Everything feels smaller.

I'd rather have characters being killed off than ones that can't die, with only minor filler fodder characters dying. its not like you cant still have and use their miniatures. LOTRSBG manages it fine.

thats also why I like the heresy.. people are actually able to die. makes a much more interesting story.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Christ.. more childish lore from GW.. 'I got you first..no! it was the the same time so were both dead'..sounds like kids when theyre playing... they need to do a game of thrones and actually kill some characters off... and not just magical ones who come back cough saint cough... that just makes any storyline super boring.

I'd rather they didn't do a GoT.

It wasn't an issue when there was a setting. The good old days.

Does it just feel like the PA stories are being rushed to allow GW to release new hero model for each army. And for every SM chapter he’s at deaths door and had to cross the rubicon primaris

DontEatRawHagis wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Christ.. more childish lore from GW.. 'I got you first..no! it was the the same time so were both dead'..sounds like kids when theyre playing... they need to do a game of thrones and actually kill some characters off... and not just magical ones who come back cough saint cough... that just makes any storyline super boring.

I'd rather this than a stagnant timeline.

This. GW wanting us to care about the same 5 big battles for 20 years was dumb and I'm glad we've moved on from it.

mrFickle wrote:
Does it just feel like the PA stories are being rushed to allow GW to release new hero model for each army. And for every SM chapter he’s at deaths door and had to cross the rubicon primaris

What they need to do, to make it have any real meaning, is have at least one character attempt to become Primaris, and die on the table permanently. Saying "oh its a 60% chance of success" is meaningless if important characters have 100% of success.

 Kcalehc wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Does it just feel like the PA stories are being rushed to allow GW to release new hero model for each army. And for every SM chapter he’s at deaths door and had to cross the rubicon primaris

What they need to do, to make it have any real meaning, is have at least one character attempt to become Primaris, and die on the table permanently. Saying "oh its a 60% chance of success" is meaningless if important characters have 100% of success.

Could be that the 40% who don't make it just didn't have that extra special something that allowed them to survive the procedure. Established characters will never be killed off in such a fashion.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I'd rather have characters being killed off than ones that can't die, with only minor filler fodder characters dying. its not like you cant still have and use their miniatures. LOTRSBG manages it fine.

thats also why I like the heresy.. people are actually able to die. makes a much more interesting story.

You say this, but there's a reason everyone gets so obsessed about whatever new updates there are. Outside of Horus Heresy players, I've never met anyone interested in playing a narrative that wasn't set in the absolute most recent time period because, "You already know how it ends." You kill a character off, and sales of their model tank, sales of their books tank, and many fans who were invested in that character are likely to give up on 40k entirely. Because if there's one thing I've learned in introducing dozens and dozens of people to 40k, there are A LOT of one faction/one character fans, who are interested in one part of 40k and one part only.

Primaris models are the best!
Primaris lore is the worst!

From what I could tell they fought ghaz wrecks Ragnar. He survives and gets moved on up to Primaris. He hunts down Ghaz again and beheads him with his upgrades. Ghaz lives on after beheading as orks do. Mad dok puts the pieces back together and pumps him full of roids and the new Ghaz is born and there you get your two new models.

It's all so lame though.. If no one can die then what's the point. Wheres the peril? Why should we even care. They could kill off a character I liked, I don't know, kharn for example... And it would still be more interesting than this perpetual character nonsense. The Perpetual lore was bad enough, and now everyone's a perpetual without even being a perpetual.

Ill give lucius a pass on this as he has a cool and suitable reason for never dying.

The main difference in 40k now is the narrative focus.

It used to be the inexorable March of time, sweeping everyone along with it. Wars fought, heroes died and time marched on.

Special characters were players on the stage like everyone else. It's not like a chapter master is immortal, they die and are replaced all the time. Skip 1000 years into the future and no special characters alive now and be around.

The current story is now character centric. The narrative is driven around the characters and their actions.

They are now the prime drivers of actions in the setting.

Now they sweep the galaxy along with them, rather than the other way around.

This was the last vestige of verisimilitude the setting had. It reflected real life where the world just happened and we just live in it. It's one of the reasons imo 40k has had such great appeal, this intangible feeling of authenticity, not in the sense of chainsaw swords and space Orks, but in the sense of the powerlessness of existing in a world that doesn't care about you and will continue 0n without you.

Now 40k is firmly on the comic book narrative train and it has become far less than it was.


I remember a time when people were arguing the affect of trying to stick ctan into all parts of the story. Now they're trying to jam every character into every event across the galaxy.

yeah I know man, like remember when they introduced Armageddon and no important characters where in it? ohh wait, they created characters for it. well.. the 13th black crusade.. oh wait that was Abaddon's show and creed was important to it,. major characters have ALWAYS played a big role in 40k.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
Now heroes bounce from warzone to warzone all across the galaxy like their taking a trip to the next town over. Everything feels smaller.

I'd just like to say that this was a feature of pre-8th 40k as well.

Calgar was jumping around from defending Macragge, to Orar's Sepulchre, to Ichar IV.
Sicarius, from Damnos, to Black Reach, to Damocles, to Medusa V.
The same could be said of any of the large heroes - they just happened to be in all the important places anyway.
And if you played as someone like Abaddon or Ghazghskull or Farsight, in a narrative campaign, you'd best hope it wasn't in the heart of the Charadon Sector, which is geographically and chronologically improbable for them to be present at.

The issue with pre-8th was the ever increasing amount of sub-dates and just how much you could cram into 999.M41. They had *so much space* to work with, but ended up putting it all in the last minute (chronologically speaking).


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BrianDavion wrote:
yeah I know man, like remember when they introduced Armageddon and no important characters where in it? ohh wait, they created characters for it. well.. the 13th black crusade.. oh wait that was Abaddon's show and creed was important to it,. major characters have ALWAYS played a big role in 40k.

Exactly. Special characters have ALWAYS been a thing, and they've always been a BIG thing.

As long as ANY special characters have existed, 40k has had it's heroes and villains who transcend importance. And that's okay. But 40k, for longer than it's not, has had it's fair share of legendary heroes who defy the whole "you will not be missed" tagline.

EDIT: And, you know the whole "you will not be missed" part? That's still true, even now, because it's always been possible! As above, who cares if Abaddon doesn't die, and they're not quite as vulnerable as Your Dude? It's Your Dude, who cares about Abaddon when you're telling YOUR story?
Pre-8th had unique characters who very clearly had plot armour, stole the show when they were around, and generally acted like, as said above, comic book heroes and villains - and that never stopped anyone making their own characters, who, as the tagline says, "will not be missed" in the vast scale of 40k? That's still possible now.

For a long time you needed your opponents permission to use special characters, so even though they were taking part in in-universe plotlines, they weren't on every table the way they are now.

Also, back in the day, the action Calgar took in the defense of Ultramar was commanding the fleet, iirc. Not falcon punching dudes. UM also had a special character, Captain Invictus, and he straight up died in defense of Macragge. That's at least a little different.

Captain Cortez of the Crimson Fists and Captain Tycho of the Blood Angels are also special characters who've died.

BrianDavion wrote:
yeah I know man, like remember when they introduced Armageddon and no important characters where in it? ohh wait, they created characters for it. well.. the 13th black crusade.. oh wait that was Abaddon's show and creed was important to it,. major characters have ALWAYS played a big role in 40k.

My point is entirely around HOW they play their roles, not that they have them.

There is a big tonal and narrative difference between a story told in 3rd person narrative about an event that has named people in it, and a story told through the actions of those people.

Current 40k would grind to a halt of these characters stoped doing things because all the core story hinges on their actions.

The Armageddon war wouldn't stop because yarrick was 5hought dead in his battle. Because the world goes on.

When story outcomes are only character outcomes, the story becomes about these characters rather than just including them.


There never used to be main characters in 40k, they all. Used to be side characters following the driving narrative of fatalistic inevitability


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 Insectum7 wrote:
For a long time you needed your opponents permission to use special characters, so even though they were taking part in in-universe plotlines, they weren't on every table the way they are now.

Also, back in the day, the action Calgar took in the defense of Ultramar was commanding the fleet, iirc. Not falcon punching dudes. UM also had a special character, Captain Invictus, and he straight up died in defense of Macragge. That's at least a little different.

Captain Cortez of the Crimson Fists and Captain Tycho of the Blood Angels are also special characters who've died.

Maybe one of the distinctions is that it was institutions and races/cults/movements that were the prime movers not the people in them.

The thing is we know the Ultramarines will show up and fight a war, it really is irrelevant who is leading them. Are we to believe that previous chapter masters couldn't defend their Homeworld?

Chapter masters will chapter master, so it shouldn't matter that it's marneus leading them. Every chapter Master will lead them well and bring victory.

Each named character is a person in a position at a particular point in time.

The chapter Master is just as much a cog in the chapter as a brother is and they all fullfill their function.

Armageddon would have been fought with or without yarrick. And any warboss can lead a waaagh. There is nothing special about these characters.

It's like we're trying to find them medals for fulfilling the requirements of their jobs....

^Aye. The "grown up version" is that the individuals aren't as important as the institution they are a part of. The sacrifice of heroes is done selflessly for the survival/honor/etc of the institution. Not to make a comic book vs. match.

Or, as it was put in an unrelated video I watched recently, WWII didn't end with Churchill and Hitler in a punching duel.

Well this got deeper than I expected... I was only really commenting on the lameness of the whole 2 characters technically killed each other, but then they both came back to life thing.

Hellebore wrote:

The Armageddon war wouldn't stop because yarrick was 5hought dead in his battle. Because the world goes on.

When story outcomes are only character outcomes, the story becomes about these characters rather than just including them.

I'd argue that Yarrick and Ghaz were important locally on Armageddon. Armageddon was important galactically because of its distance to terra and the potential for snowballing Ork Waagghs.
Similarly with Creed at Cadia, they were context-vehicles for exploring a local conflict, examples of the kids of things that could happen anywhere. Yarrick wasn't supposed to have significance on the other side of the galaxy but he was a local hero on Armageddon.

What has instead happened is that Ghaz is now king of the Orks and teleports around the galaxy, rallying them. Yarrick became a galactic figurehead for the commissariat, his speeches included in the Primer.

This has the effect of reducing the general galactic conflicts with infinite possible iterations to facets of small interpersonal struggles. Orks on a forgeworld, looting plasmaweapons and having a massive conflict with the mechanicus? Better throw Ghaz in there. Orks fighting tyranids across a score of worlds? Ghaz shows up to lend a hand. These are now his fights, continuing with his support and blessing.

Just more daft fluff written by an unimaginative company to satisfy the slavering unwashed hordes.

Insectum7 wrote:For a long time you needed your opponents permission to use special characters, so even though they were taking part in in-universe plotlines, they weren't on every table the way they are now.

They've been this way for over ten years now, at least. May have been for a long time before you needed permission, but that's not been the case for a similarly long time.

Also, back in the day, the action Calgar took in the defense of Ultramar was commanding the fleet, iirc. Not falcon punching dudes. UM also had a special character, Captain Invictus, and he straight up died in defense of Macragge. That's at least a little different.

Captain Cortez of the Crimson Fists and Captain Tycho of the Blood Angels are also special characters who've died.

Now, in all fairness, I'd actually like to see more of this - characters who canon "die" still get their own rules. Make it clear to the audience that you can still use this character (maybe this is just their successor, or a past battle), but the game doesn't need to lose units just because the fluff has advanced.

Having someone like Sammael die crossing the Rubicon, or Creed/Harker die of old age shouldn't really be an issue, they can still have their own datasheet.

=Angel= wrote:What has instead happened is that Ghaz is now king of the Orks and teleports around the galaxy, rallying them. Yarrick became a galactic figurehead for the commissariat, his speeches included in the Primer.

In all fairness, Ghaz being the prophet of the Waaagh! has been his fluff for AGES. He's not the single figurehead, not yet, so there's still otehr Orks rivalling him, but he's always been regarded as one of the biggest, baddest, and cunnin'ist.

Yarrack, likewise, for his defence of Armageddon, makes absolute sense being venerated as such.

ValentineGames wrote:Just more daft fluff written by an unimaginative company to satisfy the slavering unwashed hordes.

Slavering, I'll take, but unwashed? Psssh.

I’m expecting more character deaths in the future, once the Index/Legacy rules stick. A good way to kill off characters.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Insectum7 wrote:For a long time you needed your opponents permission to use special characters, so even though they were taking part in in-universe plotlines, they weren't on every table the way they are now.

They've been this way for over ten years now, at least. May have been for a long time before you needed permission, but that's not been the case for a similarly long time.

When it happened is rather beside the point. The point is that the treatment of said characters has changed in emphasis. Not even about whether or not characters performed heroic acts, but how much the storytelling focuses on the acts of those individuals.