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I just got my copy of the 93 rulebook and in the actual rules section bit, did anyone else find those like aborted festuses attached to bolt guns creepy? I mean I've gottne used to the cyber cherubs and the ammorium cherubs, but those fetus bolters were just at the edge of what I could look at without cringing.

Honestly, that looked like stuf ol' fabius should be working on, not the imperium.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Honestly, that looked like stuf ol' fabius should be working on, not the imperium.

It's almost like the Imperium are the bad guys!

Wait...

On a serious note, that's nothing special for the Imperium. Body horror and mutilation is the order of the day.

Any reference material for those of us who only got the CA2020 rulebook please?

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just got my copy of the 93 rulebook and in the actual rules section bit, did anyone else find those like aborted festuses attached to bolt guns creepy? I mean I've gottne used to the cyber cherubs and the ammorium cherubs, but those fetus bolters were just at the edge of what I could look at without cringing.

Honestly, that looked like stuf ol' fabius should be working on, not the imperium.

Were talking about the same Imperium that abducts people from their homes to soulbind them, lobotomizes their citizens to turn into mindless single-task cyborg slaves for minor infractions, feeds living people to a corpse to keep it "alive" because they worship it, among other things?

Yeah, that thing you mentioned isn't entirely on brand for them at all.

If that creeps you out stay the hell away from the 3rd edition book! 40k has always been known for their creepy as hell art and the rulebook is where it often gets to shine.

Yes I also find some of the artwork to be quite excessive.

About time. 40k art should be a grotesque horror show of depravity humanity has been willing to sink in either in order to survive or simply because of decrepit inertia has made the society degenerate into ritualistic barbarism.

The Imperium is the absolute worst in government and culture, with a more humanitarian vision only peeking out here and there in the huge galaxy. Reflecting this in the art is one of the biggest draws of the setting, especially with the casual and needless body horror that shows how dehumanized both your average citizens and "heroes" can be before the oppressive system.

Seems par for the course to me, how is this new at all? 40k has always had disturbing imagery, body horror, and grotesque morbid imagery permeated throughout its existence. Imagery of skulls, decapitated heads, daemons, sacrifices, xenos monsters, weaponry, blood spatter, twisted body parts, cybernetic horrors, self flaggelation, etc ad nauseum are replete throughout 40k rulebooks and codex art. Hell, the 4E imagery of the High Lords of Terra has half of them looking like horrific cybermonsters.

I hope we get some rules for those abortion decorated bolters. We need more bolters IMO. Autoaborted Heavy Boltrifle would be a nice name.

 Sherrypie wrote:
About time. 40k art should be a grotesque horror show of depravity humanity has been willing to sink in either in order to survive or simply because of decrepit inertia has made the society degenerate into ritualistic barbarism.

The Imperium is the absolute worst in government and culture, with a more humanitarian vision only peeking out here and there in the huge galaxy. Reflecting this in the art is one of the biggest draws of the setting, especially with the casual and needless body horror that shows how dehumanized both your average citizens and "heroes" can be before the oppressive system.

"good" is a relative term in the grim darkness of the far future.
Nids are just hungry = good
Orks just wanna rumble = good
Chaos just wants to exist = good
Tau just wanna make everyone like them = WORST OF THE WORST & MUST BE PURGED

I am glad that they're returning to show just how horrific the galaxy is. More horror, gruesome goings on & DEATH on a massive scale, for in the 41st millennium...you will not be missed.

A few months from now we'll have posts about how GW is ruining the grim dark and kiddifying miniatures.

Lilith has pants! *gasp*

 Daedalus81 wrote:
A few months from now we'll have posts about how GW is ruining the grim dark and kiddifying miniatures.

Lilith has pants! *gasp*

but they are really nicely fitting pants

40k needs the grimdark imagery, it's a big part of what it is. You take it away and you lose a whole chunk of its unique identity.
Is aborted babies taking it a bit far? Maybe, but... no-one's pretending this is a game for children.

...oh, uhhhh... oops. I'll see myself out.

I don't know if OP is saying 40K was never like that, but (sight unseen) I'd be pleasantly surprised to see it start committing to that direction again. I don't think any of us would argue that Imperium stuff in particular has been feeling a little too clean and wholesome recently.

I would love to see some examples?

Eh. I had to go look for these pictures, as nothing came to mind. My impression of the rulebook as a whole is that its too clean- lined white fancy future printer paper with cut corners, with obviously inset pictures. A lot of the pictures are also too busy, so the details get washed out.

As for the 'fetus bolters' (pages 216, 222 & 225 for those wondering)- not really. Not that different from standard imperial cherubim, and far less creepy than actual porcelain dolls I've encountered in real life.

I think its mostly the color choice- the grey-green blends too much with the guns, makes them look artificial. Makes me think more of gargoyles or grotesques. Obviously not real, so not scary or disturbing, but makes me mildly curious about the mental state of the artist.

@ OP - More context please.

Are you saying 9E BRBR is more creepy than its predecessors ?

The rule book is absolute peanuts compared to some of the Chaos entries (the infamous Chaos Spawn pictures are fantastic body horror)

I don't think those are actual fetuses.

Yeah it's creepy, but in a good way that 40K should have more of.

Made me think of HR Giger's "Birth Machine"

 Sherrypie wrote:
About time. 40k art should be a grotesque horror show of depravity humanity has been willing to sink in either in order to survive or simply because of decrepit inertia has made the society degenerate into ritualistic barbarism.

The Imperium is the absolute worst in government and culture, with a more humanitarian vision only peeking out here and there in the huge galaxy. Reflecting this in the art is one of the biggest draws of the setting, especially with the casual and needless body horror that shows how dehumanized both your average citizens and "heroes" can be before the oppressive system.

40K was more upfront about being a thinly veiled jab at the real world and where it was headed from the beginning. Fetus bolters might be striking close to home for people following what US troops have done to Iraqis and Afghanis these past twenty years, but for some of us Vietnam and Korea were stand out examples of the real life horror show that has been and remains Western corporate militarism aka fascism in the twentieth and now twenty first centuries. When I see this art in 40K, I am returned to that initial insight that I had thirty years ago, that this is a thin veil on the world as we make it, and a window on how it may be once a religion guiding policy through faith in the Empire after a few thousand years of ritual... in that context, of course, fetus bolters a a logical eventuality.

Nope...

Well, maybe it was just me but the things that looked like late term abortions grafted to guns just kinda made me cringe.

Yeah, seen all sorts of body horror, hell I like carpenter's the thing, and i've seen earlier editions, and i've seen the chaos codex.

I don't know maybe it was just personal, but the fetusguns just seemed to be hard to look at.

Also, just gross for gross' sake. I mean I can deal with servitors, chaos horrors, cherubim, etc. But a fetus grafted to a bolter? You just screwing with us now...

And if it;s not a fetus grafted to a gun it sure looks like one.

 jeff white wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
About time. 40k art should be a grotesque horror show of depravity humanity has been willing to sink in either in order to survive or simply because of decrepit inertia has made the society degenerate into ritualistic barbarism.

The Imperium is the absolute worst in government and culture, with a more humanitarian vision only peeking out here and there in the huge galaxy. Reflecting this in the art is one of the biggest draws of the setting, especially with the casual and needless body horror that shows how dehumanized both your average citizens and "heroes" can be before the oppressive system.

40K was more upfront about being a thinly veiled jab at the real world and where it was headed from the beginning. Fetus bolters might be striking close to home for people following what US troops have done to Iraqis and Afghanis these past twenty years, but for some of us Vietnam and Korea were stand out examples of the real life horror show that has been and remains Western corporate militarism aka fascism in the twentieth and now twenty first centuries. When I see this art in 40K, I am returned to that initial insight that I had thirty years ago, that this is a thin veil on the world as we make it, and a window on how it may be once a religion guiding policy through faith in the Empire after a few thousand years of ritual... in that context, of course, fetus bolters a a logical eventuality.

god I miss the brutality of the early books(STD, ROC, etc). Servitors & Tech-Priests are some of my favorite parts of 40k, it always made me smile when I would be flipping thru a book and see something that made me uneasy.

We need more UNCARING UNIVERSE, where you will not be missed.



well that and more comedy about Magaret Thatcher as an ork.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Any reference material for those of us who only got the CA2020 rulebook please?

^^ anyone?

a_typical_hero wrote:Any reference material for those of us who only got the CA2020 rulebook please?

Nitro Zeus wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
Any reference material for those of us who only got the CA2020 rulebook please?

^^ anyone?

References

Good old page furniture, filling up empty space with evocative weirdness. I also love the fact that those were painted with a broken hand (according to Stu in the release Twitch streams the new artist who did a bunch of those had an accident but pressed on like an absolute legend )

Inquisitor boltgun. The small bugger hugging the bolter is a weird alien lifeform that imbue the bolts with... something. Something dark and creepy, I expect. Don't want to be on the receiving end to find out!!

 Hanskrampf wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:Any reference material for those of us who only got the CA2020 rulebook please?

Nitro Zeus wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
Any reference material for those of us who only got the CA2020 rulebook please?

^^ anyone?

References

Spoiler:

OK, those do not look like fetuses to me. I was expecting it to be more half-formed, more obviously flesh and not sculpted rusted metal/rock. It's literally just a doll face on a gun. Akira came out in like 1980, this is a nothing thing.

I'd say the 9th rulebook is more "grimdark" than the 8th rulebook, but not to the level of the art seen in earlier editions (I have a fondness for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions' art).

One thing that really bugs me about the 9th edition rulebook is that there is so much "blank" space on many of the pages, especially with the large margin size and the triangle images on the corners of many pages. I know it is a stylistic approach, but I think the book could have had significantly fewer pages or larger text if they had made better use of the space for text on many of the pages.

Those are way tamer than I was expecting from the phrase "fetus bolters".