Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I read the new lore for the recent Lord Solar model guard got where, he’s basically just a posh guy from Terra who is playing at being the Lord Solar and fighting a war in the Western Imperium like Macharius. If your robot horse is more interesting then the guy that’s saying something.

I think if you want to bring a Lord Solar Macharius style character into the story, why not just outright do that and go all in? I am sure in Last Chancers books they actually were trying to clone or splice his genes. If you can clone a Primarch then cloning a man is a much easier sell. Instead of having random Terran noble cosplaying as Macharius.

It would be more interesting because you could have Macharius see that all his conquests were lost and have motive to turn things around like the old days. Yes, it is paralleling Guillimans story but it’s a good story and the Guard having one or two larger than life but still human characters seems fine.

Cloning is illegal in the Imperium. Also eternally rehashing old characters is already too much of a thing in 40k, new characters are better.

Nah. The new guy's fine.

Macharius was overrated anyways. Same as Yarrick.

They tried. Look up Afriel Strain, it ended rather poorly.

 Irbis wrote:
They tried. Look up Afriel Strain, it ended rather poorly.

Not tried, they did.

One of his clones was present in the Last Chancers book, was one of the few survivors. Was female too.

Jarms48 wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
They tried. Look up Afriel Strain, it ended rather poorly.

Not tried, they did.

One of his clones was present in the Last Chancers book, was one of the few survivors. Was female too.

Yeah, the Afriel Strain is cursed by fate - cloning seems to do bad stuff with someone's soul (see also: Horus Clones, Ferrus Clones etc.) and basically makes it so that the universe is really out to get you, starting out with just bad luck and getting worse and worse with time.

There was an attempt to clone all of the Imperium's greatest heroes and put them in a single Guard regiment. That ended up failing because they consistently had the worst possible, as in supernaturally bad, luck.

 Gert wrote:
Cloning is illegal in the Imperium. Also eternally rehashing old characters is already too much of a thing in 40k, new characters are better.

Cloning isn’t illegal in The Imperium though.

Frowned upon by some, sure. And by no means an especially common technology. But not actively proscribed.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Cloning isn’t illegal in The Imperium though.

Frowned upon by some, sure. And by no means an especially common technology. But not actively proscribed.

When the only canon examples come from secret Inquisitorial projects (Afriel Strain), direct allowance by the Emperor himself (Corax's rebuilding of the Raven Guard post-Massacre), or from old Fabulous Bill, I'd argue it's pretty illegal.
I mean especially in Bile's case he was very specifically delving into experiments and practices that the Emperor had banned.
The is also a big distinction between Vatborn humans and clones. The former still requires two sets of DNA (or whatever I'm not a biologist) to make a human/human-esque being while the latter is one.

 Gert wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Cloning isn’t illegal in The Imperium though.

Frowned upon by some, sure. And by no means an especially common technology. But not actively proscribed.

When the only canon examples come from secret Inquisitorial projects (Afriel Strain), direct allowance by the Emperor himself (Corax's rebuilding of the Raven Guard post-Massacre), or from old Fabulous Bill, I'd argue it's pretty illegal.
I mean especially in Bile's case he was very specifically delving into experiments and practices that the Emperor had banned.

The waters get muddled quite a bit by the fact that both vat-growing bodies for all sorts of purposes (Servitors chief among them) and rampant gene-editing seem to be fine, but outright cloning is not. Nobody get's upset by e.g. Krieg farming/hothousing their armies at industrial scale (please let's not go into details) but the fact that they may be clones seems to be a closely guarded secret, for example. I think it befits the general state of the Imperium not to have any actual consistent policy about it though - if the puritans are out to get you, they simply declare that you have crossed some nebulous line in technical detail, and off to the pyre it is. If they can catch you, of course.

My reading of the Vitae Wombs is that they are essentially industrialised IVF. So the components are all still there but just on a massive scale rather than with one person making the child. Throw in some growth enhancements to rapidly mature the child to an appropriate age so that they can begin training to be Guardsmen and you get butt loads of Regiments ready to serve.
I think the clone notion comes into play because very few Krieg are named, and that getting a name is a big honour. However, when you take the utterly fatalistic aspect of the Krieg into account, they already want to die so a name isn't really something that bothers them when a number suits just fine.

 Gert wrote:
My reading of the Vitae Wombs is that they are essentially industrialised IVF. So the components are all still there but just on a massive scale rather than with one person making the child. Throw in some growth enhancements to rapidly mature the child to an appropriate age so that they can begin training to be Guardsmen and you get butt loads of Regiments ready to serve.
I think the clone notion comes into play because very few Krieg are named, and that getting a name is a big honour. However, when you take the utterly fatalistic aspect of the Krieg into account, they already want to die so a name isn't really something that bothers them when a number suits just fine.

IIRC there are some Krieg stories that heavily hint at (spoilers):

I thought Lord solar was the horse.

 Niiai wrote:
I thought Lord solar was the horse.

"We named the horse Lord Solar!" [in Sean Connery voice]

 Kanluwen wrote:
Nah. The new guy's fine.

Macharius was overrated anyways. Same as Yarrick.

Who is your new favourite? Ursula?

Da Butcha wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
I thought Lord solar was the horse.

"We named the horse Lord Solar!" [in Sean Connery voice]

As he was my Granny’s milkman (no, really), I think you mean…

“We named the horshe Lord Sholar”

 BertBert wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Nah. The new guy's fine.

Macharius was overrated anyways. Same as Yarrick.

Who is your new favourite? Ursula?

Don't really have one? There's really not enough crunch lore to go off of yet for the two new characters.

For what it's worth? I still think Ursula being Ursukar's actual daughter is a mistake.

Tsagualsa wrote:

Yeah, the Afriel Strain is cursed by fate - cloning seems to do bad stuff with someone's soul (see also: Horus Clones, Ferrus Clones etc.) and basically makes it so that the universe is really out to get you, starting out with just bad luck and getting worse and worse with time.

Considering she was stabbed to death in that same Last Chancers book by a "friendly" penal legionnaire I would definitely agree. Also the fact she was the last. After recently losing her clone "brother".

Jarms48 wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

Yeah, the Afriel Strain is cursed by fate - cloning seems to do bad stuff with someone's soul (see also: Horus Clones, Ferrus Clones etc.) and basically makes it so that the universe is really out to get you, starting out with just bad luck and getting worse and worse with time.

Considering she was stabbed to death in that same Last Chancers book by a "friendly" penal legionnaire I would definitely agree. Also the fact she was the last. After recently losing her clone "brother".

Technically, she was the last of her batch, which happened to be Macharius clones. Apparently, some group within the Inquisition keeps churning them out despite most other groups within the Inquisition trying to kill them. They keep trying to fine-tune the process to remove the flaw that must be affecting luck, and it keeps failing. Whether every batch is a different hero, or whether they occasionally re-attempt previous heroes like Macharius is an unknown.

Incidentally, they are clearly doing more than simply cloning or the entire regiment would be male like Macharius.