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I've been reading up on the Blood Ravens fluff.

Not the lost primarch (SPOILER - it's Magnus), but the random company changes that the characters from DOW II have suffered.

In the game, Thule is listed as 4th company captain, yet all of the playable squads are from 5th company and they say Thule is their company captain.

In game and in the novels, there seems to be a great deal of mistakes in continuity and not just between the two mediums... This happens in the game and separately in the book.

Shouldn't Thule have been the Captain of 5th company, commanding the elements in the Aurelian Crusade and then have Aramus replace him as Captain?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or is this merely up to interpretation?

I think you might want to check who wrote those novels.

It is not a name that is spoken lightly.

Ahhhhhh... yup, makes sense.

All the units from Dawn of War 2 bear 4th Company insignias on their shoulder pauldron. It's the right company.

A video game company's Fan Fiction Chapter with novels written by C.S. Goto.


You can't have possibly expected anything remotely coherent could you have?

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
A video game company's Fan Fiction Chapter with novels written by C.S. Goto.


You can't have possibly expected anything remotely coherent could you have?

Or it's just a case of Goto not being in line with the source material he's writing about, which is common enough. Looking at the games alone, it's all quite coherent.

Also, they've transcended "fan fiction". They've appeared in the Index Astartes.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070209053624/http://uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/bloodravens-indexastartes/assets/index-astartes-blood-ravens.pdf

No more fanfiction than Matt Ward's writing.

They might have updated the game then because they all have a big V on the pads now.

Puscifer wrote:
They might have updated the game then because they all have a big V on the pads now.

I guess you failed to notice the extra I next the V. They`ve always been 4th Company.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
No more fanfiction than Matt Ward's writing.

It really is.
C.S. Goto was Ward before Ward was Ward.

Terrible writing isn't mutually exclusive. And while Goto is awful, Relic's writing was half decent most of the time.

 Troike wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
A video game company's Fan Fiction Chapter with novels written by C.S. Goto.

You can't have possibly expected anything remotely coherent could you have?

Or it's just a case of Goto not being in line with the source material he's writing about, which is common enough. Looking at the games alone, it's all quite coherent.

Coherent with what? Itself? That's not exactly a literary feat, heh. But Dawn of War's plotlines are about as out of touch with the 40K universe as anything Goto might have written.

Also, they've transcended "fan fiction". They've appeared in the Index Astartes.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070209053624/http://uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/bloodravens-indexastartes/assets/index-astartes-blood-ravens.pdf

I think you misunderstand point of what I said, but regardless it's still a fan fic chapter. All GW did was give them a writeup. That's just smart business*. Dawn of War is bringing in players to the game, and GW takes that popularity and creates a solid link from one license to another so that there is continuity for players entering the hobby from the game series. But it's still a fanfic chapter because all McNeill did was take the goofy crap THQ wrote and polished it up. It's got all the classic DIY Chapter Fanfic Fluff hallmarks. Mysterious origins. Unknown geneseed, unknown Founding, Special Snowflake organization, etc. It's beginner level Space Marine Chapter type stuff. Probably because it was devised by a bunch of video game developers. Even the name is derivative and basic.


*Well, maybe not smart business, lol. It took them three years to write that IA. But at least they figured it out at some point that they should do it.

 ace101 wrote:

Puscifer wrote:
They might have updated the game then because they all have a big V on the pads now.

I guess you failed to notice the extra I next the V. They`ve always been 4th Company.

You are actually correct.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
not exactly a literary feat, heh. But Dawn of War's plotlines are about as out of touch with the 40K universe as anything Goto might have written.

Oh? It seems in-line enough to me. Sure you get a fair few small inconsistensies in there, but overall it seems to fit in fine. Certainly, there's nothing on the level of Slaanesh worshiping Farseers or children taking out a Dark Eldar tank (or a turret, I forget).

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I think you misunderstand point of what I said, but regardless it's still a fan fic chapter.

The only point I was really making with that is that they've gotten official GW acknowledgement, so they can be considered "more canonical" than they were before, and are a little more than just the product of a third-party contributor now.

The Blood Ravens are also mentioned in the Blood Angels Codex, by the way.

 Lynata wrote:
The Blood Ravens are also mentioned in the Blood Angels Codex, by the way.

The Blood Ravens are also in Codex: Space Marines, in the back.. They're one of the colour schemes

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Lynata wrote:
The Blood Ravens are also mentioned in the Blood Angels Codex, by the way.

The Blood Ravens are also in Codex: Space Marines, in the back.. They're one of the colour schemes

Not quite as much in the 4th edition one when they actually had rules for them, even though they didn't make sense.

But of course, anything not written by Games Workshop explicitly is fanfiction. /opinions

Honestly, if the worst thing to come from Dawn of War was the Khornate Sorcerer idea with Kyras, I'd still choose it over EVERYONE WANTS TO BE AN ULTRAMARINE that the rest of the fluff wants to dictate. Just because Relic took the time to flesh out their chapter more than simply "Space Marine from sector X" doesn't mean that they are suddenly a special snowflake super awesome godkilling mega heroes.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
But of course, anything not written by Games Workshop explicitly is fanfiction. /opinions

Honestly, if the worst thing to come from Dawn of War was the Khornate Sorcerer idea with Kyras, I'd still choose it over EVERYONE WANTS TO BE AN ULTRAMARINE that the rest of the fluff wants to dictate. Just because Relic took the time to flesh out their chapter more than simply "Space Marine from sector X" doesn't mean that they are suddenly a special snowflake super awesome godkilling mega heroes.

Special Snowflake isn't always about being super awesome. It's just about having something about them that's more or less not fluffy or even well explained, but sets them apart from those "regular old boring psycho-indoctrinated superhuman killing machines".

Basically, somebody trying too hard to make their Spess Mahreens unique, but instead just making them just like every other weak attempt to be unique.

It seems a waste of time to debate your misrepresentation of Codex Space Marines though. If Mat Ward made awful fluff, pointing to the Grey Knights codex might be a good start. Codex: Space Marines 5E was written almost entirely by copy/pasting stuff from Rick Priestley that was written in the early 90s.

Again, how is the Blood Raven's fluff by Relic bad? I'm not debating Goto's awful adaptations, but the actual game fluff? They adhere to the codex with minimal aberrations involving a higher number of psykers.

They might've gotten mentioned by John French and McNeill in their HH contributions.

TheSGC wrote:
They might've gotten mentioned by John French and McNeill in their HH contributions.

They were. It's mentioned that a small part of the Thousand Sons are away from Prospero when the Wolves attack, and the word "Raven" is used in the mentioning of them.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Again, how is the Blood Raven's fluff by Relic bad? I'm not debating Goto's awful adaptations, but the actual game fluff? They adhere to the codex with minimal aberrations involving a higher number of psykers.

I didn't say it was bad.

I just said it was typical fanfiction stuff. A lot of easy/lazy narrative elements that novice writers use, for the most part. Mystery origin, unknown geneseed, unknown Founding, lots of extry-powerful psykers, etc.

Now the plots of the game.. fairly silly. But it's just a loose story designed to hold a massmarket video game together.

 Troike wrote:

TheSGC wrote:
They might've gotten mentioned by John French and McNeill in their HH contributions.

They were. It's mentioned that a small part of the Thousand Sons are away from Prospero when the Wolves attack, and the word "Raven" is used in the mentioning of them.

Yes - Revuel Arvida, member of the Corvidae, is one of the only survivors, which would make sense. Then again, for all we know Garro picks him up too, so that's why I went with 'might'.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Again, how is the Blood Raven's fluff by Relic bad? I'm not debating Goto's awful adaptations, but the actual game fluff? They adhere to the codex with minimal aberrations involving a higher number of psykers.

I didn't say it was bad.

I just said it was typical fanfiction stuff. A lot of easy/lazy narrative elements that novice writers use, for the most part. Mystery origin, unknown geneseed, unknown Founding, lots of extry-powerful psykers, etc.

Now the plots of the game.. fairly silly. But it's just a loose story designed to hold a massmarket video game together.

The same could be said about a lot of stuff that Games Workshop writes.

They're definitely mentioned, quite overtly. I found the actual quote.

It's too late... the Wolf is at the door and it hungers for blood. Oh, Throne... no, the blood! The Ravens, I see them too. The lost sons and a Raven of blood. They cry out for salvation and knowledge, but it is denied!

I know that it's not an outright mention, but it's such heavy implying that it might as well be.

I know, I argued for it on McNeill's blog as a matter of fact back when it was released, but I'm still staying safe.

Well okay, but I hardly see how you can interpret that any other way. "Blood", "Raven" a desire for knowledge... It's presented ambiguously like a lot of 40K fluff, but it's pretty obvious what they're getting at.

Or that's simply what they want you to think, and the BR are actually a fifth-founding UM off-shoot that someone lost the paperwork on six thousand years ago.

It's all an Alpha Legion plot, you see, that's how they got people buying into the idea that there was a Khornate Psyker involved in the release of a Great Unclean One. All just as planned.

Give it a rest, Alpharius. No matter how much propaganda you spew, you'll always be second to Tzeentch.