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so ive always liked them for one reason or another and after reading the lexicanum again it really has my interest up.

besides the mutation the thousand sons were never really a bad chapter.

what i'm after is any source of information that i can find on them. i think that i'd really like to gather all of the fluff that i can and then dive into making a force.

im think ing of using grey knight models and rules so any links to sites with similiar themes sould be appreciated.

i need to figure out how to make scarab emblems while im at it too

This format will be more helpful to you if you ask specific questions. You can use the bibliography of the Lexicanum article to assemble the beginnings of a collection of published sources.

good idea manchu, thank you!
i guess it was sort of a broad stroke of the brush i was looking for.

Well pre Heresy, there used to be 10 pasedjet* (companies) of TS until 1 was destroyed fighting the Orks.

* At least I think its Pasedjet

i think im going to run them as a current day chapter (well current day by 40k standards).
if i can make it work theyll be one of the forces that magnus sent away from prospero when the space wolves attacked.
using that theme it will hopefully allow me to avoid only having rubrics and include mortal troops.

No Reason why you can't do that anyway avoiding the troops sent away from prospero, as some would argue that's the beginnings of the Blood Ravens whilst others would argue its a long time to hide in Imperial Space.

But anyway

This is my own background for my own Sorceror and his Thousand Sons. Its still being expanded upon however. But see what you think and if it promts any ideas.

http://s1.zetaboards.com/New_Badab/topic/3509531/1/#new

I cant stress enough for you to read the HH novel A THOUSAND SONS. It will give you all the info you need to understand the inner workings of the sons before the rubric. If you want to know how they operate after the rubric read "battle of the fang". (I just wish the last 100 pages could be rewritten, but that's neither here no there.) Read these books and use the lexicanum online and you will be set.

thanks a lot guys.

@eetion - great story, thanks. i didnt know that about the blood ravens. im checking that out too now.

@dionysus - i just picked up a thousand sons and am working on it ill make my way to battle of the fang for completeness. out of curiousity why do you say that about the last 100 pages? did it go to crap or you just didnt like how everything turned out =P

So yes. My advice to you, one tzeentch cultist to another, is keep the thousand sons as your core elite along with the lord/sorceror.
Then have all other options as a renegade chapter/warband that somehow your lord has manipulated the fall and destruction of. Really go to town on their fall. In my opinion add so much more dynamic and threat for your lord that he was able to engineer this. Plus it also means you don't have to have exactly the same colours as the Rubrics so they really stand out...

Also you don't have to explain how/why the Spaceship thousand Sons work with the Lord in they eye of terror.

battle for the fang is 80 space wolves vs 800 1k sons and 4 million or so regular soldiers. And the wolves win.

oh and incidentally, if you want completeness, read prospero burns in between those 2 books if you want the total story. tho prospero burns is just the spacewolf side of things.

dionysus wrote:
battle for the fang is 80 space wolves vs 800 1k sons and 4 million or so regular soldiers. And the wolves win.

That and Magnus never really intended to 'capture' the Fang in the first place.



In saying that, the book was still rather rubbish in my mind...

dionysus wrote:
battle for the fang is 80 space wolves vs 800 1k sons and 4 million or so regular soldiers. And the wolves win.

oh and incidentally, if you want completeness, read prospero burns in between those 2 books if you want the total story. tho prospero burns is just the spacewolf side of things.

Dan Abnett is a lot kinder in describing the Thousand Sons than Graham McNeill was in describing the Space Wolves. By the end of A Thousand Sons, you hope Tzeentch himself shows up to wreck Space Wolf face. By the end of Prospero Burns, you just hope it's quick (and it is) for the Thousand Sons.

Save for anything involving Othere Wyrdmake, the Space Wolves are as a generalization, not enthused about facing their own battle-brothers. The Thousand Sons, naturally however, are less bothered by the notion....then again, they really did get the short end of the stick. Realistically, of all the legions, I dare say the Thousand Sons are the most tragic as their downfall was actually a very deliberate and orchestrated plan. The other major victims (Salamanders, Iron Hands, and Raven Guard come to mind) of course face horrific fates as well, but they were merely a step along the path towards Terra. The destruction of the Thousand Sons was in the writing on the wall basically since Lorgar and Magnus met.

Here is an online copy of the Thousand Sons Index Astartes article from WD #267.

As Manchu said, you can use the Lexicanum article to dig up other sources and study them yourself. I advise to do this, rather than relying on the Lexicanum article itself, or any single source exclusively, for in this franchise there are usually a lot of different interpretations and opinions between the various authors, which means that the fluff of two books can appear conflicting. In lieu of a "proper canon", it will be up to you to decide with which version you'd want to go, or if you even wish to come up with some stuff of your own.

Good luck and enjoy that project of yours.

dionysus wrote:battle for the fang is 80 space wolves vs 800 1k sons and 4 million or so regular soldiers. And the wolves win.

Would that surprise anyone? From all I've read so far, they've got the thickest plot armour of any army in 40k. Repelling armies that should've had no problem wiping the floor with them is pretty much part of their cliché by now.

 Lynata wrote:
Here is an online copy of the Thousand Sons Index Astartes article from WD #267.

As Manchu said, you can use the Lexicanum article to dig up other sources and study them yourself. I advise to do this, rather than relying on the Lexicanum article itself, or any single source exclusively, for in this franchise there are usually a lot of different interpretations and opinions between the various authors, which means that the fluff of two books can appear conflicting. In lieu of a "proper canon", it will be up to you to decide with which version you'd want to go, or if you even wish to come up with some stuff of your own.

Good luck and enjoy that project of yours.

dionysus wrote:battle for the fang is 80 space wolves vs 800 1k sons and 4 million or so regular soldiers. And the wolves win.

Would that surprise anyone? From all I've read so far, they've got the thickest plot armour of any army in 40k. Repelling armies that should've had no problem wiping the floor with them is pretty much part of their cliché by now.

Thank you so much, this answers a lot of questions I had about pre-heresy Thousand Sons.
Cheers !

Without giving too much away, my disappointment with the book came down to the final 2 on 1 showdown that should have favored the 1 much more than it did.

And yes goals were achieved but at the same time the whole book felt like "good guys need to win because they are the good guys" as opposed to the good guys winning because they deserved it.

Maybe its just that the heretic in me wanted The Fang to crumble to the ground.

Battle for the Fang wasn't very good, but most of the "Battles of the Space Marines" novels are just bolter porn trying to make their protagonists look badass.

You can also get more insight into the Thousand Sons after the events of Prospero in Ahriman: Exile (and if you want to see how far he's come from that, read Atlas Infernal...dude is a total demi-god by then).

Battle for the fang was a great book - easy my favorite...Why? Because it was bad for the SW as it was for the TS...
This book is definitely above SM battle gak,and to quote 1d4chan

The Thousand Sons do something to piss off the Space Wolves, usually some brilliant, convoluted plan, and the Space Wolves just charge and beat the living gak out of them and laugh in their faces when they find out how much work those Tzeentchies put into their plots. Sadly, this usually comes at a staggering toll in Space Wolf lives. So grimdark.

I' sorry but this is like "canon"....


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nerobellum wrote:

Dan Abnett is a lot kinder in describing the Thousand Sons than Graham McNeill was in describing the Space Wolves. By the end of A Thousand Sons, you hope Tzeentch himself shows up to wreck Space Wolf face. By the end of Prospero Burns, you just hope it's quick (and it is) for the Thousand Sons.

QFT , Dan wrote a kind book ("Prospero burns" )while Mcneill came down hard on SW....

I don't think Prospero Burns was any kinder to the Wolves than Abnett.

McNeill made them look like judgmental and belligerent hypocrites and bullies (like a number of other books). Abnett made them look like "wet leopard-purring" animals sitting around in darkness playing with bones, just as prone to passing judgment and making rash decisions as in McNeill's books, and Russ himself as not above a cover-up.

"Oh, our assumption that it was Magnus screwing with us was wrong, and in fact our BFF Horus was fething with us all along, and we just put the entire world of an otherwise loyal Legion when our instructs were to just bring Magnus to account. Let's lock up the only human to know of these events in stasis, and never speak of it again. We're the executioners, after all, so it's okay."

Disagree 100% -
Magnus and the TS had a taint all along, so SW did a good thing putting them down...Magnus BFF with Tzeench and later free willingly joinin' Horus (when he knows he was most guilty for their fall) shows that he was a deuchebag...
Even his legion didn't listen to him - not to mention 4th fellowship who rejected him completely...
Do I fell sorry for them, NO - grimdark is absolute...

You could argue Magnus deserved his fate. His sons, however, did not.

That doesn't change the fact that the Space Wolves acted on an assumption, and were tools for Chaos. And that they then covered this assumption up.

Prospero Burns is an example of a book where by any sane rationale the Wolves were wrong to do many things they did, but the book (Or at least Kasper) treats them as right, and Kasper sucks Wolf cock so hard that his face nearly caves in on itself. But then he is a fallible character.

I'm not so sure that the Thousand Sons can be absolved of their Primarch's sins. They were Magnus's accomplices as much as the Wolves were Russ's.

They had no idea that Magnus made a pact with Tzeentch, Magnus kept them in the dark about quite a bit.

 Manchu wrote:
I'm not so sure that the Thousand Sons can be absolved of their Primarch's sins. They we'ree Magnus's accomplices as much as the Wolves were Russ's.

And what of the people of Prospero? The non Legion glassed a productive and magnificent city as well as destroying what was essentially a loyal legion. It wasn't targeted against astartes, it destroyed literally everything.

dionysus wrote:
Without giving too much away, my disappointment with the book came down to the final 2 on 1 showdown that should have favored the 1 much more than it did.

And yes goals were achieved but at the same time the whole book felt like "good guys need to win because they are the good guys" as opposed to the good guys winning because they deserved it.

Maybe its just that the heretic in me wanted The Fang to crumble to the ground.

I thought the book was good, but I agree about the final fight being disappointing.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
They had no idea that Magnus made a pact with Tzeentch, Magnus kept them in the dark about quite a bit.

They knew about Nikaea.

 Manchu wrote:
They knew about Nikaea.

When a 12 to 15 foot bronze demigod with the psychic power to raze a world tells you to jump, you ask how high.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
They knew about Nikaea.

When a 12 to 15 foot bronze demigod with the psychic power to raze a world tells you to jump, you ask how high.

There was more bravery than that among the other traitor legions.

No, there was apparently not a Loken, Tarvitz, or Garro among the sorcerers. And one cannot even say that they knew a greater loyalty to their Primarch. Ahriman and his cabal gave the lie to that excuse after the Heresy. The Thousand Sons always have an excuse -- the Flesh Change. Magnus justified betraying his father in the exact same way Ahriman would later justify his betrayal of the Legion. Their intentions are always so good, how tragic ... except not really. It's always a matter of arrogance, to demonstrate greater power, to delve even deeper into the secrets of the Empyrean. The corruption of the Thousand Sons lay in Magnus himself and his vain striving for mastery simply deepened the taint. It's no wonder that his Legion followed him, seemingly to a man, into damnation. They deserved their tragedy; each of them earned it.

This is why Russ felt such utter contempt for them.

Now, did the Emperor engineer their flaw? That is the question.

 Manchu wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
They had no idea that Magnus made a pact with Tzeentch, Magnus kept them in the dark about quite a bit.

They knew about Nikaea.

If their disobedience of the stupidity of Nikaea is your criteria for treachery, you are being extremely obtuse.

Guilliman noted the decree was ill-conceived and poorly timed, and made a note to circumvent it in his Codex.
The Sigilite basically reached the same conclusion and went on to create an organization directly in defiance of the decree.
Sanguinius followed the decree to the letter, but made no moves to punish or sanction the Librarians that saved his life.
The Lion followed the decree until it was inconvenient, at which point he punched the head off an Emperor-appointed Chaplain.
Russ ignored the decree entirely because of in-universe plot armor?

Whether the Thousand Sons were tainted from the start is debatable, since they were succumbing to mutation long before discovering Magnus. Of course, given the non-linear nature of Chaos, it could very well be that the moment Magnus made his deal to save his sons from mutation, they were marked by Chaos, which caused the very mutations Magnus was trying to save them from. Still, while they may have gone too far with their experimentations and daemon familiars, the party line at the time was that there were no such things as daemons or evil entities. And given that the Emperor frequently communed with Magnus, that could be taken as an unspoken approbation of their actions. Yes, many of them were guilty of arrogance, but that is hardly a character flaw unique to the Thousand Sons.

At the end of the day, for all their faults, the Thousand Sons and even their Primarch (who sacrificed an eye for knowledge and unknowingly gave up his perspective...hint hint nudge nudge no pun intended) are essentially Faustian characters who wanted to preserve and progress humanity's knowledge and understanding of the universe around them. To not see the tragedy in their final fate (especially given your pet theory of the Emperor setting them up) is moral absolutism at its worst.

I don't disagree that this is a matter of moral absolutism. Morality does not exist independent of positive power in 40k. The Emperor is thus the source of all morality as far as humanity goes. Orienting relative to him in the mode of obedience is "good." Orienting relative to him in the mode of disobedience is "evil." If you prefer, we might say that we are not dealing with "good" and "evil" but rather loyalty and treachery.

Neither Malcador nor Guilliman violated the decree, which had two parts:

(1) no Legion will maintain a Librarius department

and

(2) all Librarians should return to the battle companies and never use psychic powers again

Arguably, even Russ did not violate the letter of the Decree given that his Legion seemingly never maintained a Librarius department.

Further, the letter of the Decree did not obligate Sanguinius to punish the former Librarians you say saved him (presumably via psychic powers). The Emperor said he would himself "visit destruction" upon anyone who violated the Decree. If the Emperor ordered Sanguinius to punish them, of course Sanguinius would have to, as an extension of the Emperor's own hand. Similarly, he commanded Russ to punish the Thousand Sons. Russ did not act of his own accord in that, even despite his prejudice against Magnus. After all, Russ did attempt to contact his estranged brother before beginning bombardment.

I'm not familiar with the anecdote you brought up about Jonson.

Even if the Emperor "set up" the Thousand Sons, which seems as likely as not to me, neither they nor their Primarch had to take the bait ... unless we are meant to believe that the Primarchs are nothing more than puppets, with the Emperor's explicit commands and schemes "programmed" into them at the genetic level. That seems kind of lame, however.

Oh and they're tragic alright, in the sense of irony. It is obviously tragic that the very knowledge Magnus sought blinded him. It is tragic that the power he thought was so noble actively sought to undo him and his Legion. Hubris is, after all, the archetypal tragic flaw.