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I don't think anyone was arguing otherwise.

At least they aren't Ultramarines.

Still, I know SPEHSS MAHREENS! are the main selling point of 40K, but I would much rather see a movie/game in the viewpoint of a Guardsmen, showing just how much of a difference between humans and Marines there is. Sort of a Watson to our chainsword weilding Sherlock.

Looking at the results so far, I wonder if people like the Blood Ravens or just dislike C. S. Goto. What if I had written "they're just more miserable crap from Goto"? Would most people chose that one instead. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Goto at all . . . On the other hand, I thought it was important to separate out the existence of the Blood Ravens from Goto's attempt to write in the GrimDark.

The existence of Blood Ravens is not, by itself a bad thing.

The problem is that Goto did some ridiculous things, and is the biggest originator that can be linked to the whole "Thousand Sons Successor!11!!" theory. Prior to that, the Index Astartes had(as I've pointed out so many times it's second nature) only mentioned Magnus in passing.

Then Goto wrote a line where Ahriman calls one of the Astartes "Brother" and the gak hit the fan.

Manchu wrote:I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to draw between "comments" and "selections." I'll use your comment as an example: they were only designed to sell a product. Fine but that is true of every single Chapter that has been published in a GW or GW-licensed book/audiobook/movie/videogame/whatever. That doesn't really explain how you feel about Blood Ravens as opposed to Space Wolves or Word Bearers or Bad Moons or Craftworld Ulthwe or the Cadian 88th Armored Regiment, either as "characters" in a story or even as products.

Perhaps a clarification is in order? All of the line was made to sell a product. Bottom line. Why have a business if it has no income? I dislike the fact that they made up an entirely new Space Marine chapter in this particular situation rather than use one that is very well established.

-J.

@Kanluwen: For what it's worth, that may be the best line he ever wrote.

@Alazahr: Okay, I see what you mean. That would be the fifth option on the poll.

Alazahr wrote:

Manchu wrote:I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to draw between "comments" and "selections." I'll use your comment as an example: they were only designed to sell a product. Fine but that is true of every single Chapter that has been published in a GW or GW-licensed book/audiobook/movie/videogame/whatever. That doesn't really explain how you feel about Blood Ravens as opposed to Space Wolves or Word Bearers or Bad Moons or Craftworld Ulthwe or the Cadian 88th Armored Regiment, either as "characters" in a story or even as products.

Perhaps a clarification is in order? All of the line was made to sell a product. Bottom line. Why have a business if it has no income? I dislike the fact that they made up an entirely new Space Marine chapter in this particular situation rather than use one that is very well established.

-J.

What?

I'm kind of confused as to why you think the Blood Ravens were made to "sell a product". If the goal was to do that, then they likely would have used an established Chapter.

The reason Blood Ravens were 'invented' rather than them using one which is very well established is fairly easy to see. Blood Ravens, when they were originally introduced, were meant to be something for THQ to muck about with and if they screwed the pooch--GW could just write them off as destroyed at some point before the current timeline. If that were done with one of the established Chapters...you can imagine how well that would end.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Manchu wrote:@Kanluwen: For what it's worth, that may be the best line he ever wrote.

And the single most trolling next to a pedophile Farseer.

For what it's worth though, I'm not sure why his usage of it resulted in this huge controversy of the Thousand Sons being the primogenitor of the Blood Ravens.
It was done before then, and it was always fairly clear that it was done in a mocking manner.

I voted that they don't add much, but they don't detract from anything. They're pretty generic.

I'm a big fan of their fluff compared to other SM chapters and Gabriel actually gets really smashed in the end, which is unusual for a lot of SM characters as far as I can tell

Kanluwen wrote:The existence of Blood Ravens is not, by itself a bad thing.

The problem is that Goto did some ridiculous things, and is the biggest originator that can be linked to the whole "Thousand Sons Successor!11!!" theory. Prior to that, the Index Astartes had(as I've pointed out so many times it's second nature) only mentioned Magnus in passing.

Then Goto wrote a line where Ahriman calls one of the Astartes "Brother" and the gak hit the fan.

Eliphas calls them Brother in Chaos rising, multiple times. Surely that shows as much potential for them to be sucessors of the Black Legion, or (With Eliphas' legion-hopping nuttiness) even the Word Bearers. Though I agree The whole Thousand sons sucessor thing is ridiculous, as you can tell. Where did that originate from anyway?

Slarg232 wrote:At least they aren't Ultramarines.

That was my vote too. They can be a bit cheesy at times, but definately not as bad as Ultrasmurfs. I like their colour scheme though...

liquidjoshi wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:The existence of Blood Ravens is not, by itself a bad thing.

The problem is that Goto did some ridiculous things, and is the biggest originator that can be linked to the whole "Thousand Sons Successor!11!!" theory. Prior to that, the Index Astartes had(as I've pointed out so many times it's second nature) only mentioned Magnus in passing.

Then Goto wrote a line where Ahriman calls one of the Astartes "Brother" and the gak hit the fan.

Eliphas calls them Brother in Chaos rising, multiple times. Surely that shows as much potential for them to be sucessors of the Black Legion, or (With Eliphas' legion-hopping nuttiness) even the Word Bearers. Though I agree The whole Thousand sons sucessor thing is ridiculous, as you can tell. Where did that originate from anyway?

The internet, awhile after the Index Astartes article that's in my sig. People afterwards started pointing towards it as being 'evidence' when in fact there's pretty much just the one mention of Thousand Sons and Magnus in there.

I do not recall when/how exactly it started though.

Wouldn't it be possible, if not probable that the various Chaos marines call the loyalists 'brother' sarcastically? I mean, that is what they are, battle brothers. In Star Wars, when the Emperor calls Luke 'Jedi', he isn't doing it out of respect. I don't think the whole brother thing holds any water at all.

lledwey wrote:Wouldn't it be possible, if not probable that the various Chaos marines call the loyalists 'brother' sarcastically? I mean, that is what they are, battle brothers. In Star Wars, when the Emperor calls Luke 'Jedi', he isn't doing it out of respect. I don't think the whole brother thing holds any water at all.

Shhh! You're going to ruin their theories!

I think they represent a couple of good ideas weighed down by a greater number of bad ones. Beyond that, their name is hilariously generic and they strike way too close to the Blood Angels in terms of their emblem and color scheme.

The only things I know about the Blood Ravens comes from doing a few missions of DoW (Havn't completed any of them but own all).

As they seem interesting I'd prefer to not see another SM codex. I Think we have enough SMs, I could see an HQ added to C:SM with a Blood Raven specific Chapter Tactic, but thats the extent to my interest.

I can't think of anything really doable for the Blood Ravens as a 'Chapter Tactic' that would be considered easily balanced.

Maybe the option to have a single Librarian Power on a Sergeant, but it can be one of three powers from a list or something like that.

For anyone wanting more information on the Blood Ravens and their origin, please see my signature. It's the Index Astartes Article, as published on GW's website. It is the exact same that was published in White Dwarf.

I think they're alright, apart from the fact their name and symbol couldn't have been more generic if it had been devised by some kind of random chapter generator.

They have their own real life rhino though, and that's gotta count for something.

Kanluwen wrote:How is it not hard to figure out why a retcon is necessary?

The entirety of the Chapter isn't psychic but they did have a larger than usual complement of Librarians, who were supposed to be more powerful than normal---while the Thousand Sons were ,completely through and through their Legion, psykers.
The only thing to realize about the Thousand Sons is that it's not as though they were all able to do what each of the Cults did. Few of them could see the future, set the air on fire, manipulate their body chemistry, all while raising huge barriers of kinetic energy with their mind. They were organized into the Cults based upon what they were able to do.
The Corvidae, Athaneans, Raptora, Pavoni, and the Pyrae.

I don't mind the idea of Blood Ravens being Successors of a Traitor Legion---but why does it need to be the Thousand Sons, the one Legion that doesn't actually lend itself to Successors due to the Flesh Change or the geneseed which was suspected to be the reason for the huge amount of psykers in the Legion(seriously--even the Terrans were supposed to be psykers. That's pretty clearly not a case of the Prosperan psychic trait, it's the geneseed)?

Maybe they are 21st Founding? Maybe all those wacky experiments being conducted on the geneseed during that Founding actually worked for once, and the Imperium got a Chapter that corrects the original Legion's flaws? Okay, a "larger than average number of psykers" isn't as Thousand Sons-ish as "everybody is a psyker including my servitor and the guy who cleans the toilets" but maybe correcting the Flesh Change meant scaling waaaaaaaaay back on the genetic markers that triggered the 100% psyker rate.

Or maybe, just maybe (blue skying here) the Flesh Change wasn't caused by geneseed mutation, but was really caused by Tzeentch himself. Maybe it was part of his Just As Planned to get Magnus to fall? And now that he has Magnus and his Legion, he isn't really paying a lot of attention to what's being done with the geneseed the Imperium has on hand.

Or maybe he is paying attention, and not hitting the BRs with the Flesh Change this time around is part of an all-new Just As Planned, since that kind of mutation would get them purged before they would be worth turning to Chaos. As I understand it, they are kind of renegade-ish these days, right?

Just supposition, of course. Nothing anywhere to support this, but nothing anywhere to refute it. And no, the list of 21st Founding Chapters that we have doesn't have to be complete... record keeping in the 41st millenium is a joke, and the 21st Founding was ended rather abruptly and with much bolter fire, if I recall correctly...

Kanluwen wrote:

Alazahr wrote:

Manchu wrote:I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to draw between "comments" and "selections." I'll use your comment as an example: they were only designed to sell a product. Fine but that is true of every single Chapter that has been published in a GW or GW-licensed book/audiobook/movie/videogame/whatever. That doesn't really explain how you feel about Blood Ravens as opposed to Space Wolves or Word Bearers or Bad Moons or Craftworld Ulthwe or the Cadian 88th Armored Regiment, either as "characters" in a story or even as products.

Perhaps a clarification is in order? All of the line was made to sell a product. Bottom line. Why have a business if it has no income? I dislike the fact that they made up an entirely new Space Marine chapter in this particular situation rather than use one that is very well established.

-J.

What?

I'm kind of confused as to why you think the Blood Ravens were made to "sell a product". If the goal was to do that, then they likely would have used an established Chapter.

The reason Blood Ravens were 'invented' rather than them using one which is very well established is fairly easy to see. Blood Ravens, when they were originally introduced, were meant to be something for THQ to muck about with and if they screwed the pooch--GW could just write them off as destroyed at some point before the current timeline. If that were done with one of the established Chapters...you can imagine how well that would end.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Manchu wrote:@Kanluwen: For what it's worth, that may be the best line he ever wrote.

Care to explain the Army Painter in Dawn of War then? I agree that there is a high possibility that GW was watching their backs, but then they wouldn't have allowed the Army Painter. (Or hell, even mods.)

-J.

squidhills wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:How is it not hard to figure out why a retcon is necessary?

The entirety of the Chapter isn't psychic but they did have a larger than usual complement of Librarians, who were supposed to be more powerful than normal---while the Thousand Sons were ,completely through and through their Legion, psykers.
The only thing to realize about the Thousand Sons is that it's not as though they were all able to do what each of the Cults did. Few of them could see the future, set the air on fire, manipulate their body chemistry, all while raising huge barriers of kinetic energy with their mind. They were organized into the Cults based upon what they were able to do.
The Corvidae, Athaneans, Raptora, Pavoni, and the Pyrae.

I don't mind the idea of Blood Ravens being Successors of a Traitor Legion---but why does it need to be the Thousand Sons, the one Legion that doesn't actually lend itself to Successors due to the Flesh Change or the geneseed which was suspected to be the reason for the huge amount of psykers in the Legion(seriously--even the Terrans were supposed to be psykers. That's pretty clearly not a case of the Prosperan psychic trait, it's the geneseed)?

Maybe they are 21st Founding? Maybe all those wacky experiments being conducted on the geneseed during that Founding actually worked for once, and the Imperium got a Chapter that corrects the original Legion's flaws? Okay, a "larger than average number of psykers" isn't as Thousand Sons-ish as "everybody is a psyker including my servitor and the guy who cleans the toilets" but maybe correcting the Flesh Change meant scaling waaaaaaaaay back on the genetic markers that triggered the 100% psyker rate.

Or maybe, just maybe (blue skying here) the Flesh Change wasn't caused by geneseed mutation, but was really caused by Tzeentch himself. Maybe it was part of his Just As Planned to get Magnus to fall? And now that he has Magnus and his Legion, he isn't really paying a lot of attention to what's being done with the geneseed the Imperium has on hand.

Or maybe he is paying attention, and not hitting the BRs with the Flesh Change this time around is part of an all-new Just As Planned, since that kind of mutation would get them purged before they would be worth turning to Chaos. As I understand it, they are kind of renegade-ish these days, right?

Just supposition, of course. Nothing anywhere to support this, but nothing anywhere to refute it. And no, the list of 21st Founding Chapters that we have doesn't have to be complete... record keeping in the 41st millenium is a joke, and the 21st Founding was ended rather abruptly and with much bolter fire, if I recall correctly...

That entire supposition is based upon the idea that they used Traitor Legion geneseed. There's hintings towards "tainted" geneseed being used, but that doesn't necessarily mean "traitor". geneseed.

The thing about Blood Ravens is that if it's Tzeentch...DOW: Retribution very much slaps that idea down because of who The Ascended turns to for his ascension.
The only "renegades" are in a sense the Loyalists of the Chapter, who've discovered why/what The Ascended is doing. It leads to a civil war within the Chapter, very much in the vein of how Krieg fell.

Alazahr wrote:Care to explain the Army Painter in Dawn of War then? I agree that there is a high possibility that GW was watching their backs, but then they wouldn't have allowed the Army Painter. (Or hell, even mods.)

-J.

Why wouldn't they allow Army Painter? It only affects multiplayer, not campaign.

As for mods--they can't stop them, for the most part.

Kanluwen wrote:
That entire supposition is based upon the idea that they used Traitor Legion geneseed. There's hintings towards "tainted" geneseed being used, but that doesn't necessarily mean "traitor". geneseed.

The thing about Blood Ravens is that if it's Tzeentch...DOW: Retribution very much slaps that idea down because of who The Ascended turns to for his ascension.
The only "renegades" are in a sense the Loyalists of the Chapter, who've discovered why/what The Ascended is doing. It leads to a civil war within the Chapter, very much in the vein of how Krieg fell.

Oh, well I was just tossing out ideas. I don't really have an opinion of them one way or the other (in fact, I've only ever played the first DoW) so most of what I know about them is based on what I see here on Dakka.

Admittedly, if everyone is basing the Thousand Sons link on one line where Ahriman calls a Marine "brother", then there is no reason at all to think they are descended from the 1k Kiddies. Chaos Marines have been mockingly calling loyalists "brother" since waaaaaaaay back in 2nd edition, when each army had a little green pamphlet with a sample army list and a wee bit of story to let you know who they were. In the CSM pamphlet, a CSM from a faction that I don't remember (it would be one of the 4 aligned Legions, because the other 5 were never really talked about at this point) mocks a dying Blood Angel with the one word that he knows the loyalist would find most insulting: Brother.

Now, if Ahriman had said "We are more like brothers than you imagine" that might be something to base a theory off of.

For the record, I don't have a problem with them being Thousand Sons descendants. I have been running a Loyalist Emperor's Children descended Chapter since I started back in 1995, so the concept of Loyalists with Traitor geneseed doesn't set my hair on fire. As long as it's handled intelligently.

The thing about Blood Ravens is that if it's Tzeentch...DOW: Retribution very much slaps that idea down because of who The Ascended turns to for his ascension.

And who might that be?

Inserting my customarily utilized lengthy diatribe before a spoiler so it doesn't get ruined for anyone by thread preview...

It's an understandable person for The Ascended to turn to, given that he's an Astartes Librarian(a warrior-mystic, for all intents and purposes) and was renowned as a figure of martial prowess.

Kanluwen wrote:Inserting my customarily utilized lengthy diatribe before a spoiler so it doesn't get ruined for anyone by thread preview...

It's an understandable person for The Ascended to turn to, given that he's an Astartes Librarian(a warrior-mystic, for all intents and purposes) and was renowned as a figure of martial prowess.

Spoiler:

"The Ascended" is Azariah Kyras, the Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens. He was corrupted by the whispers of a Great Unclean One during an incursion on a Space Hulk some decades before, leading to him engineering the circumstances for the Daemon to be released(see: Chaos Rising). However, when it comes time for Kyras to finally 'Ascend' to Daemon princehood...he swears fealty to Khorne. There is no way in hell, if Tzeentch was behind all this, that he would allow Khorne to take the credit or the victory of fully half a Loyalist Chapter turning to Khorne.

Ifound that whole bit kind of Ironic, given that Khorne despizes psykers.

It was all part of Tzeentch's plan? Get a sorceror to swear fealty to Khorne to make Khorne look bad in front of his own champions?

"What gives, Boss? You letting sissy little sorcerors in the club now? Feth this, I'll go join Slaanesh and get laid. And high."

TechMarine1 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Inserting my customarily utilized lengthy diatribe before a spoiler so it doesn't get ruined for anyone by thread preview...

It's an understandable person for The Ascended to turn to, given that he's an Astartes Librarian(a warrior-mystic, for all intents and purposes) and was renowned as a figure of martial prowess.

Spoiler:

"The Ascended" is Azariah Kyras, the Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens. He was corrupted by the whispers of a Great Unclean One during an incursion on a Space Hulk some decades before, leading to him engineering the circumstances for the Daemon to be released(see: Chaos Rising). However, when it comes time for Kyras to finally 'Ascend' to Daemon princehood...he swears fealty to Khorne. There is no way in hell, if Tzeentch was behind all this, that he would allow Khorne to take the credit or the victory of fully half a Loyalist Chapter turning to Khorne.

Spoiler:

I found that whole bit kind of Ironic, given that Khorne despises psykers.

Sounds like someone's playing the long game to me. Rather Tzeentchian, I'd say. Anyway, there does not need to be any connection between the 1ksons and BRs through Tzeentch. The more likely connection is through Ahriman, who himself despises Tzeentch.

there like cream cheese spread to thin over a cracker, okay at first but leaves a dry longing sensation in the back of your throat.

No option for "I don't know anything about them and don't care"