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So reading through the Gaunt books, and currently at the end of Ghostmaker and one thing is oddly apparent to me. They do a lot of "Chaos is damn terrifying" lore building in every book, but with the exception of a blind and damaged Chaos Dread, and a few Chaos Marines in book 2(?) there are very few Chaos Space Marines in these Giant Chaos Legions.

Is this normal? I mean, are they as rare as when Loyalist Marines show up? I don't know why Tanith Troopers who full on fight with a full Chaos Space Marine unit in book 2 are suddenly all full on PTSD mode at seeing Chaos Cultists. Even Gaunt seems repulsed and taken aback at the sight of Chaos troops in book 3, and I like, Really dude? Didn't you fight off a full unit of World Eaters in the last book as they tore apart the Basalisk you were riding on?

Also, are there any books where the commissar isn't mr. Heartofgold who cares about saving lives? I love Gaunt and Cain, but where are the ones who shoot their own guys just for saying Chaos Space Marines exist? Wouldn't a commissar have shot Brin Milo or Rawne by now? Milo is by all hints a unsanctioned psyker, and Rawne is basically a traitor who has attempted to kill a superior officer multiple times, let alone his Commissar. I haven't read book 4 yet, but are there any Commissars that are more "By the book"?

Back in the day, yes. Remember that book was probably written near 2 decades ago. CSM are a very rare sight, Daemons even moreso with the Imperium quashing every mention of both for the "betterment" of their citizens and their sanity.

Nowadays, it's just "Oh look some Plaguebearers- the footsoldiers of Nurgle's armies."

I think its easier to sell how powerful Marines are when they appear so little in the stories. A single Space Marine is to be talked of; a single Chaos Marine is a fearsome foe.

Also when your soldiers are characters like Gaunts Ghosts - basically chaff and fodder for bolters - its a lot easier to write about them dealing with a single marine than it is a whole Chapter descending upon the battlefield.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So reading through the Gaunt books, and currently at the end of Ghostmaker and one thing is oddly apparent to me. They do a lot of "Chaos is damn terrifying" lore building in every book, but with the exception of a blind and damaged Chaos Dread, and a few Chaos Marines in book 2(?) there are very few Chaos Space Marines in these Giant Chaos Legions.

Is this normal? I mean, are they as rare as when Loyalist Marines show up? I don't know why Tanith Troopers who full on fight with a full Chaos Space Marine unit in book 2 are suddenly all full on PTSD mode at seeing Chaos Cultists. Even Gaunt seems repulsed and taken aback at the sight of Chaos troops in book 3, and I like, Really dude? Didn't you fight off a full unit of World Eaters in the last book as they tore apart the Basalisk you were riding on?

Gaunt's Ghosts takes place more than 300 years before the current era in a relatively backwater sector. The chaos forces that first took control of the Sabbat Worlds were not chaos marines, but humans. CSM came in later. So compared to many other warzones you might've read about, CSM are not that common here. That said, book 2 is generally considered the oddball of the series and should not be considered as the most hard canon of them all.

Also, are there any books where the commissar isn't mr. Heartofgold who cares about saving lives? I love Gaunt and Cain, but where are the ones who shoot their own guys just for saying Chaos Space Marines exist? Wouldn't a commissar have shot Brin Milo or Rawne by now? Milo is by all hints a unsanctioned psyker, and Rawne is basically a traitor who has attempted to kill a superior officer multiple times, let alone his Commissar. I haven't read book 4 yet, but are there any Commissars that are more "By the book"?

You want Honourbound and Fire Caste. Severina Raine is significantly more by the book than any of the other big name commissars, while still absolutely being her own character. And the commissars serving on Phaedra...well you should read Fire Caste anyway. It's excellent/

jareddm wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So reading through the Gaunt books, and currently at the end of Ghostmaker and one thing is oddly apparent to me. They do a lot of "Chaos is damn terrifying" lore building in every book, but with the exception of a blind and damaged Chaos Dread, and a few Chaos Marines in book 2(?) there are very few Chaos Space Marines in these Giant Chaos Legions.

Is this normal? I mean, are they as rare as when Loyalist Marines show up? I don't know why Tanith Troopers who full on fight with a full Chaos Space Marine unit in book 2 are suddenly all full on PTSD mode at seeing Chaos Cultists. Even Gaunt seems repulsed and taken aback at the sight of Chaos troops in book 3, and I like, Really dude? Didn't you fight off a full unit of World Eaters in the last book as they tore apart the Basalisk you were riding on?

Gaunt's Ghosts takes place more than 300 years before the current era in a relatively backwater sector. The chaos forces that first took control of the Sabbat Worlds were not chaos marines, but humans. CSM came in later. So compared to many other warzones you might've read about, CSM are not that common here. That said, book 2 is generally considered the oddball of the series and should not be considered as the most hard canon of them all.

Also, are there any books where the commissar isn't mr. Heartofgold who cares about saving lives? I love Gaunt and Cain, but where are the ones who shoot their own guys just for saying Chaos Space Marines exist? Wouldn't a commissar have shot Brin Milo or Rawne by now? Milo is by all hints a unsanctioned psyker, and Rawne is basically a traitor who has attempted to kill a superior officer multiple times, let alone his Commissar. I haven't read book 4 yet, but are there any Commissars that are more "By the book"?

You want Honourbound and Fire Caste. Severina Raine is significantly more by the book than any of the other big name commissars, while still absolutely being her own character. And the commissars serving on Phaedra...well you should read Fire Caste anyway. It's excellent/

Thank you! But in the very first book he fights against literal Chaos Space Marines (I forget what chapter) I in the second book, which you called the odd one out, he's fighting Word Bearers and Black Legion CSM. He also fights along side an Eldar Farseer, so whatever. I just think it's odd whenever there is lore, like CSM are ultra Rare, and then in the next page they are being "decapitated" by las-bolts. I never really questioned the lore about las guns until one of the Tanith goes all John Woo and takes out like 100 Chaos Cultists with two las Pistols. I felt like the Colonel in Monty Python: STOP STOP, TOO SILLY, THIS IS FAR TOO SILLY INDEED!

Cultists vary a lot and some are little more than peasants dressed in rags. So killing 100 with a pair of pistols isn't impossible; esp if they've gone a bit insane and are running at the shooter with close combat weapons.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:So reading through the Gaunt books, and currently at the end of Ghostmaker and one thing is oddly apparent to me. They do a lot of "Chaos is damn terrifying" lore building in every book, but with the exception of a blind and damaged Chaos Dread, and a few Chaos Marines in book 2(?) there are very few Chaos Space Marines in these Giant Chaos Legions.

Is this normal? I mean, are they as rare as when Loyalist Marines show up? I don't know why Tanith Troopers who full on fight with a full Chaos Space Marine unit in book 2 are suddenly all full on PTSD mode at seeing Chaos Cultists. Even Gaunt seems repulsed and taken aback at the sight of Chaos troops in book 3, and I like, Really dude? Didn't you fight off a full unit of World Eaters in the last book as they tore apart the Basalisk you were riding on?

Chaos Marines are very rare, yes. The VAST majority of battles, like in the Imperium, feature no Astartes (traitor or loyal), and when they do show up, it's very rarely as a massed force. We only hear about those cases as GW promotes the big Astartes battles because of their importance and rarity.

Chaos is terrifying because it can strike any time, any where, and if not checked, can lead to the arrival of stronger Chaos forces, Chaos Marines, and daemons.

The case in Necropolis when Gaunt and Caffran (I think? Might be Daur) unmask a Zoican soldier and get SUPER creeped out by them is more a commentary on however horrific it was what happened to the Zoicans than anything else. Plus, with the Astartes situation, you can sort of rationalise it away with "these are superhuman servants of the Arch-Enemy", whereas more human soldiers have a degree of connection, or "oh, I could have been like that". It's why Space Marines have such a hatred for Chaos Marines, and vice versa - they see eachother in their enemy.

Also, are there any books where the commissar isn't mr. Heartofgold who cares about saving lives? I love Gaunt and Cain, but where are the ones who shoot their own guys just for saying Chaos Space Marines exist? Wouldn't a commissar have shot Brin Milo or Rawne by now? Milo is by all hints a unsanctioned psyker, and Rawne is basically a traitor who has attempted to kill a superior officer multiple times, let alone his Commissar. I haven't read book 4 yet, but are there any Commissars that are more "By the book"?

This is largely because it's much more engaging as a reader to have a protagonist who's not a murderous sociopath and is somewhat admirable/likeable. And hell, Gaunt does do his fair share of field executions (in Necropolis, actually!) - his case for Rawne is that he's proving to Rawne (and the rest of the Tanith) that he's NOT like all the other Commissars, and that he respects the situation that they're all in. Had the Tanith gotten off world and Chaos didn't destroy Tanith? Gaunt probably would have field-executed Rawne. But the only reason Rawne was so tetchy of Gaunt was because of that same homeworld destruction.

As for Milo, Gaunt is more than happy to keep him around out of sheer pragmatism. Gaunt is, if nothing else, pragmatic. If he can get more use out of a soldier by keeping them alive, he'll do that. His role is to inspire and enforce the Emperor's Will - and for him, he does a better job inspiring by NOT blowing people's heads off. But that doesn't stop him putting down people who have no use to him, and would continue being such.

Basically, it's a combination of "Gaunt's not like the other Commissars, but gets the job done" and "we want our protagonist to be likeable". That's not to say you can't have a "likeable" protagonist who's more trigger-happy, but there's a reason Gaunt's one of the most famous BL characters out there.

Two final questions, I know fluff lore is hardly realistic, but:

Are Lasgun really powerful? I mean they are descriped as blowing holes in Chaotic Men of Iron and punching holes through astartes armor?

Is the Bolt Pistol used by Commisars and other field officers the same as used by Astartes? He talks about having a bunch of spare magazines, but if these are mass-reactive bolts like in honest to goodness Bolters, wouldn't that weigh a lot, and also break his arm every time he fires it? What the fluff has lead me to believe is that Bolt Pistols and Bolters use basically the exact same rounds.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Two final questions, I know fluff lore is hardly realistic, but:

Are Lasgun really powerful? I mean they are descriped as blowing holes in Chaotic Men of Iron and punching holes through astartes armor?

Is the Bolt Pistol used by Commisars and other field officers the same as used by Astartes? He talks about having a bunch of spare magazines, but if these are mass-reactive bolts like in honest to goodness Bolters, wouldn't that weigh a lot, and also break his arm every time he fires it? What the fluff has lead me to believe is that Bolt Pistols and Bolters use basically the exact same rounds.

Lasguns are the equal to any modern day rifle with the benefit of having exceptional ammo supply. They seem pale in comparison when your enemies are orks, chaos daemons, and endless swarms of Tyranids, but against human rebellions and cultists, which are significantly more common for the guard to handle, it's very effective.

As for the bolt pistol, there are human-scaled versions of them so they're not the same patterns as what astartes have.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:Two final questions, I know fluff lore is hardly realistic, but:

Are Lasgun really powerful? I mean they are descriped as blowing holes in Chaotic Men of Iron and punching holes through astartes armor?

There are multiple different variants of lasgun, but generally, they're as strong, if not stronger, than a modern rifle.

From what I remember in Gaunt's Ghosts, in the cases where they do punch holes in Astartes armour, it's because the guardsman deliberately sets their power pack to maximum damage, which seems to drain/damage the lasgun, but does much more power. However, it seems that not every regiment has access to lasguns with this firing mode.

Is the Bolt Pistol used by Commisars and other field officers the same as used by Astartes? He talks about having a bunch of spare magazines, but if these are mass-reactive bolts like in honest to goodness Bolters, wouldn't that weigh a lot, and also break his arm every time he fires it? What the fluff has lead me to believe is that Bolt Pistols and Bolters use basically the exact same rounds.

Not the same, I don't think. Gaunt goes on to use double pistols, with drum magazines, in later books, which have a variety of different types of ammo (I vaguely remember red crossed explosive rounds?). I think it's also supported in other texts and materials that Astartes weaponry isn't the same as the same weapons used for humans. That's why Sisters carry Godwyn-Deaz bolters, and not full-on Godwyn, Umbra or Phobos designs.

They're still mass reactive, even in human bolters and bolt pistols, but they're probably slightly less strong than their Astartes cousins. In game terms, this is not represented.

Putting CSM and daemons in more lore these days makes sense due to the Great Rift, as they now have far more places they can attack and have accrued far more followers. Same with daemons, as the explosion of warp storm has given them more bases of operation in the material realm. There's also the gradual return of the Chaos primarchs and the coalescing of major renegade armies like the Purge and the Crimson Slaughter. Finally, the growing threat of non-Chaos enemies like Necrons and Tyranids has given Chaos Space Marines more room to maneuver, as the Imperium has to stretch its resources thinner and thinner. Cultists still make up the bulk of Chaos followers, but the larger and more dangerous Chaos threats on the whole are more widespread than ever.

About censoring knowledge of Chaos when it comes to the Guard, in the book Storm of Iron, an Imperial Fist librarian straight up tells the local Guard commanders who the Iron Warriors are and why they are so dangerous, with nothing being mentioned of anyone being purged for knowing this. If everyone in the Imperial military was as pragmatic as this, I think a lot more progress might have been made in the fight against Chaos. People who fought Chaos and lived to tell the tale and who were not corrupted could be vital war assets if the Inquisition wasn't so hellbent on purging them all the time.

If the Imperium operated with sensible sane pragmatic attitudes they'd have beaten most of the Xenos and Chaos thousands of years ago. Whilst many characters we interact with directly are not borderline insane; the system itself is.

For example in the past men of high class could duel to settle insults. In the Guard you can duel with your regiments! In theory, when the Lord General hasn't banned it etc...

jareddm wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So reading through the Gaunt books, and currently at the end of Ghostmaker and one thing is oddly apparent to me. They do a lot of "Chaos is damn terrifying" lore building in every book, but with the exception of a blind and damaged Chaos Dread, and a few Chaos Marines in book 2(?) there are very few Chaos Space Marines in these Giant Chaos Legions.

Is this normal? I mean, are they as rare as when Loyalist Marines show up? I don't know why Tanith Troopers who full on fight with a full Chaos Space Marine unit in book 2 are suddenly all full on PTSD mode at seeing Chaos Cultists. Even Gaunt seems repulsed and taken aback at the sight of Chaos troops in book 3, and I like, Really dude? Didn't you fight off a full unit of World Eaters in the last book as they tore apart the Basalisk you were riding on?

Gaunt's Ghosts takes place more than 300 years before the current era in a relatively backwater sector. The chaos forces that first took control of the Sabbat Worlds were not chaos marines, but humans. CSM came in later. So compared to many other warzones you might've read about, CSM are not that common here. That said, book 2 is generally considered the oddball of the series and should not be considered as the most hard canon of them all.

Also, are there any books where the commissar isn't mr. Heartofgold who cares about saving lives? I love Gaunt and Cain, but where are the ones who shoot their own guys just for saying Chaos Space Marines exist? Wouldn't a commissar have shot Brin Milo or Rawne by now? Milo is by all hints a unsanctioned psyker, and Rawne is basically a traitor who has attempted to kill a superior officer multiple times, let alone his Commissar. I haven't read book 4 yet, but are there any Commissars that are more "By the book"?

You want Honourbound and Fire Caste. Severina Raine is significantly more by the book than any of the other big name commissars, while still absolutely being her own character. And the commissars serving on Phaedra...well you should read Fire Caste anyway. It's excellent/

Also Baneblade/Stormlord/Shadowsword - the commissar there is very much a pragmatist - "I can live without shiny buttons but if you flee I will shoot you dead", and reacts "By the book" to potential warp taint.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

As for Milo, Gaunt is more than happy to keep him around out of sheer pragmatism.

Well, we already know he's NOT a Psyker, just intuitive. Note the differences between his "guesses" and the very specific information from the actual unsanctioned pysker that pops up in the regiment later.