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The movie Event Horizon is secretly canon.

^-this-^

A lot of archeotech, DA tech or lost tech is actually not lost and fairly common in other parts of the Galaxy. Not everything is getting worse all the time, and the darkness is less grim than popularly supposed. I hate the whole "the emperor was really bad/weak/the real liar" movement and think heavy metal awesome chaos (or rather its success) is the worst aspect of the setting. I much prefer the lighter BL works to the mopey, hopeless ones.

Really, if BL can't let there be anything in the setting worth rooting for (and if you say chaos, I will roll my eyes and judge you), then I don't know why I should care.

That virtually everything we accept as being canon - in particular from the Imperial side - is in fact mostly lies, baked in mythos, wrapped in misinformation, iced with propoganda and gorged so long ago that we can't remember what the truth really tasted like. Just like a typical dicatorship in other words.

So for example we might never read about the Emperor's death and its consequences... because he's already dead, just a lifeless skeleton sitting on a throne. There might not even be a throne, which is why virtually nobody can get access to it. Maybe SM are more like truly elite of modern NFL/NBA players, and that all the talk of being 8 feet tall and having acid saliva is just an old wives tale. Maybe the exist in their millions per chapter, you just never see more than a few companies worth at a time. Or perhaps the tales of their near ubiquitous presence are in fact the real lie, and in reality they only go to war once every decade or so.

Maybe the Orks have a psychic field that brings them together, but it doesn't actually power their vehicles, make red things go faster etc. These are excuses used by the Imperium because they simply cannot explain/accept how the Orks make their machines work without the use of STC's and machine spirits (I've always hated the whole "they think the petrol tank is full so it is" business). Maybe the meks and doks just learn how to "fix"/build things via trial and error, from watching older orks do it, from messing around with other factions tech, and it's not in fact written in their DNA (again, an explanation I've always hated vs them just tinkering and learning as we do, free from any constraints imposed by a religious order but without universal education).

Maybe Tyranids aren't from another galaxy (which is a patently ridiculous story which by some miracle managed to evade the attentions of an editor). Maybe they're human experiments gone wrong? Maybe this is what happened when viral weapons were tested on some planet(s)? A branch of the Eldar that everyone would rather forget about?

Etc, etc. Pick your preferred over the top, semi/completely ridiculous piece of canon and apply the reverse propaganda filter.

I find solace in the idea that although terrible things befall a lot of imperial worlds and there are sectors of the galaxy in perpetual war, there are also millions of world too far from the clutches of chaos, xenos or imperial cults where people live normal lives and their daily struggles are more akin to normal people. Let's call it the less grimfark side of 40k.

My other favorite piece of head-cannon is that while IG commanding officers are notoriously squishy compared to, say, an ork boss, they are mostly strategists and don't need to take to the field. In a way I like the idea of them being invulnerable on the battlefield (at least in the fluff) because they are behind the scenes and strategizing, and only lose their lives if the whole platoon/brigade/army gets wiped out.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
What people see when they look at the emperor is just a psychic projection. He's actually just a normal human, just a very powerful psyker who is good at using his powers and showmanship to impress people and gain their loyalty. At the time of the great crusade/heresy he's actually a barely-alive shriveled old man, but still a powerful psyker. Maybe he is just a psychic projection created by Malcador.

The "science" used to create the primarchs was actually obtained from the warp and deals made with daemons/chaos gods. And so is most of the emperor's psychic power. Once he had what he needed from them, the "emperor" decided to go back on his deal and not give them whatever his side of the bargain was. So he invented the "Imperial truth" and his goal of spreading it throughout the galaxy in order to defeat the chaos gods so he wouldn't have to pay them what he owed for the power they gave him. The idea being that if he could spread those lies throughout the galaxy, and nobody believed in daemons or gods, they would no longer have any power in the material universe and couldn't get back at him.

The Chaos Gods obviously weren't happy about this. Since the primarchs were, in essence, partially warp beings or daemon possessed to begin with, they had no trouble abducting them and conveniently depositing them on just the right worlds to cause them to develop the way they wanted. The way that would cause them to plunge the galaxy into civil war, killing the emperor for his treachery and insuring belief in chaos for all time. Because, when you make a deal with the devil, of course you always lose.

Neatly explains why the almighty emperor would have any trouble uniting earth or why he didn't do it way earlier. Also explains why he does such dumb things, and why he would create such flawed beings to lead his armies. He didn't really create them, the chaos gods did. And explains his obsession with spreading the false "Imperial Truth" all over.

Ooh this I like not surprising given my previous headcanon though

I like the aspect of the emperor being a psychic projection,and his whole success being a Faustian bargqin he tried to renege on

BrianDavion wrote:

epronovost wrote:
My personnal headcanon involves:

larger Chapters (the thousand Space Marines limit is for their combat units, it doesn't involve their reserves units, their recruits in training AKA scouts, their vehicle crew and their Space Ship crew).
.

That ones actually canon, people have estimated the Ultramarines as being about 1200-1500 strong once you include the honor guard, the Libarius, the scout company (which has no fixed size) and all those other support units that aren't part of the codex in that regard

I know. My headcanon goes only further down the line. Half of the traditional Space Marine company are classified as reserves company. According to my headcanon this would mean that the upper base size of a Space Marine Chapter could actually be of 2000 Marines, a thousand in the first five "combat company" and a unrestricted number of Space Marines in the last five which could be just as numerous or even more than the "combat company" and indeed, this doesn't cover the number of Space Marines who are part of the Chapter HQ like honor guards, librarians, techmarines and, in my case, ship crew, vehicle pilots, Scouts and of course Chapter Serfs who would be trained and equipped to participate in combat.

 Lotus Corgi wrote:
My favorite head canon is that Sigmar really was one of the lost Primarchs.

All 20 Primarchs were found and all 20 participated in the Great Crusade though. It's right there in the 4th ed CSM codex.

My favorite head canon is, that space marines have to engage in some sort of arkward 3D Tetris whenever they want to embark or disembark a rhino...

"Brother Nefarius, please move your boot away from my air intake"

And that rhino's exist in M and XXXL version - one for humans, one for Astartes.

The emperor was a human geneticist/cybernetic engineer/etc...basically a mad scientist. He made a bunch of super warriors to seize power, then realized that his creations were greater than him, so made up the story about him being a veritable god to keep them in check. After he was defeated by one of his creations (Horus), the Lords of Terra discovered the myths but realized it was a good propaganda tool and the rest is history.

Ruin wrote:

 Lotus Corgi wrote:
My favorite head canon is that Sigmar really was one of the lost Primarchs.

All 20 Primarchs were found and all 20 participated in the Great Crusade though. It's right there in the 4th ed CSM codex.

Sigmar did vanish though....

I don't really like it as canon but if people want that as their headcanon there is wiggle room.

Why do you guys play 40k if half of your «headcannons» are : the most grimdark wargame is in fact not grimdark at all, it is just noble bright sf» ?

 godardc wrote:
Why do you guys play 40k if half of your «headcannons» are : the most grimdark wargame is in fact not grimdark at all, it is just noble bright sf» ?

Because even with the lore headcanon’d to something not grimdark, the game world is still fairly interesting and somewhat unique. Also, because it supports 50 different noblebright-ization headcanons and allows people with radically different ideas about the game to still be able to discuss and enjoy the game together due to the attitude towards canon held up by the community and the lore.

Got a little canon going off in my head right now of primaris marines getting through doorways on their hands and knees whIle the regular marine can still at least crouch/angle his way through. Their incompatibility with so much of imperium vehicles and delivery methods is noteworthy despite Cawl having some 10k yrs to get it right. So yeah, Primaris on hands and knees, cuz Cawl no doubt overlooked other things like simple doors and hallways.

Some others:

1. The legend of the Old Ones and the Necrontyr

Legend has it that the Old Ones had denied the Necrontyr their request to "fix" their short lifespans. What's not known is that the Old Ones did indeed try, but something was wrong.
Maybe they couldn't make them truly immortal. Maybe there was a drop in fertility. Maybe it was a slow process, that would take untold generations. Maybe it wasn't something that could be fixed directly, but the Old Ones could create an inheritor race based on them to take over once they died off. Maybe it was a combination of the above.

Whatever the cause, the Necrontyr were not happy, and broke off communications, becoming hostile. The project was put into stasis in one of the seeder solar systems that the Old Ones maintained in a corner of the known universe, and the knowledge that the Old Ones had tried, but couldn't do exactly what the Necrontyr wanted shifted into "the Old Ones had refused" through propaganda.

Millions of years later, something happened, and the project started back up again through an automated process. The resulting species did indeed have longer lifespans (albeit nowhere near immortal), and aren't nearly as fertile, but they did retain their progenitor's knack for technological progress and curious lack of psychic potential. You'd have to forgive the Necrons for not recognizing the Tau as their descendants, they haven't seen themselves in the flesh in millions of years...

2. The Dawn Blade

Not sure if this has been confirmed yet or not, but the Dawn Blade is the missing Cronesword, as it can steal the life of its victims and give it to its wielder.

nobody wrote:
Some others:

1. The legend of the Old Ones and the Necrontyr

Legend has it that the Old Ones had denied the Necrontyr their request to "fix" their short lifespans. What's not known is that the Old Ones did indeed try, but something was wrong.
Maybe they couldn't make them truly immortal. Maybe there was a drop in fertility. Maybe it was a slow process, that would take untold generations. Maybe it wasn't something that could be fixed directly, but the Old Ones could create an inheritor race based on them to take over once they died off. Maybe it was a combination of the above.

Whatever the cause, the Necrontyr were not happy, and broke off communications, becoming hostile. The project was put into stasis in one of the seeder solar systems that the Old Ones maintained in a corner of the known universe, and the knowledge that the Old Ones had tried, but couldn't do exactly what the Necrontyr wanted shifted into "the Old Ones had refused" through propaganda.

Millions of years later, something happened, and the project started back up again through an automated process. The resulting species did indeed have longer lifespans (albeit nowhere near immortal), and aren't nearly as fertile, but they did retain their progenitor's knack for technological progress and curious lack of psychic potential. You'd have to forgive the Necrons for not recognizing the Tau as their descendants, they haven't seen themselves in the flesh in millions of years....

Tau are pretty short-lived as-is. Do your Necrontyr die at 25 from old age?

We know the original Necrontyr were a short lived race and were plagued by cancers due to their home system star, 20-25 wouldn't be out of the question.

nobody wrote:
We know the original Necrontyr were a short lived race and were plagued by cancers due to their home system star, 20-25 wouldn't be out of the question.

True enough, I suppose.

That technology is pretty damn impressive if with that lifespan.

One of my favorite head canons came from this veru forum, though I don't remember who first posted it.

It's that the stone men = normal humans
Iron men = AI/ Robots
And the the otherwise mysterious “Gold Men” = post humans modified on the genetic level to create the next evolution to humanity. Some of those modifications are what would lead to psykers, and other modifications are what the emperor tapped onto to engineer the Custodes and Astartes, and are what actually allow thier bodies to accept new and unnatural glands and organs.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
That technology is pretty damn impressive if with that lifespan.

They all wanted to be recognized in death, so the drive to expand technology etc was extreme

The Necrontyr were on the cusp of roboticising their entire species anyway - by the time the C’tan were discovered they were already using personal powered exoskeletons to go about their daily lives and their “living metal” was originally designed to make perfect prostheses. A few ultra-wealthy were already using full-body living metal prosthetics and were essentially brains-in-robot-jars.

Thus the whole ‘deal’ with the C’tan was less to do with creating the robot bodies and more to do with the mind-machine transfer process to make them fully immortal (their brains could still die even in their shells).


Also, the Heresy would have been circumvented if the Emperor hadn’t quit halfway through. If he’d either stuck it out to the point where the entire galaxy was nominally pacified or stayed home working on the webway project the whole time, the whole thing could have been avoided or nipped in the bud before it got out of hand.

Didn't he leave partway through because he couldn't control the Astronomicon as well?
To be fair the Heresy would also have been avoided with common sense.

The "resurrected" Guilliman is actually a bunch of grots stacked in power armor. So is Cawl. The Primaris were invented by grots as a way to create enemies too big to notice grots, so that while the giant marines and orks are busy fightin' and killin', the grots can sneak under them and steal all of their neat stuff.

The plan got out of hand though, and it turns out that many of the actual primaris marines are also a bunch of grots stacked in power armor.

nobody wrote:
Some others:

1. The legend of the Old Ones and the Necrontyr

Legend has it that the Old Ones had denied the Necrontyr their request to "fix" their short lifespans. What's not known is that the Old Ones did indeed try, but something was wrong.
Maybe they couldn't make them truly immortal. Maybe there was a drop in fertility. Maybe it was a slow process, that would take untold generations. Maybe it wasn't something that could be fixed directly, but the Old Ones could create an inheritor race based on them to take over once they died off. Maybe it was a combination of the above.

Whatever the cause, the Necrontyr were not happy, and broke off communications, becoming hostile. The project was put into stasis in one of the seeder solar systems that the Old Ones maintained in a corner of the known universe, and the knowledge that the Old Ones had tried, but couldn't do exactly what the Necrontyr wanted shifted into "the Old Ones had refused" through propaganda.

Millions of years later, something happened, and the project started back up again through an automated process. The resulting species did indeed have longer lifespans (albeit nowhere near immortal), and aren't nearly as fertile, but they did retain their progenitor's knack for technological progress and curious lack of psychic potential. You'd have to forgive the Necrons for not recognizing the Tau as their descendants, they haven't seen themselves in the flesh in millions of years...

2. The Dawn Blade

Not sure if this has been confirmed yet or not, but the Dawn Blade is the missing Cronesword, as it can steal the life of its victims and give it to its wielder.

There is a slight amount of truth to #2. The Dawn Blade kinda reminds me of melee Necron stuff too.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

nobody wrote:
Some others:

1. The legend of the Old Ones and the Necrontyr

Legend has it that the Old Ones had denied the Necrontyr their request to "fix" their short lifespans. What's not known is that the Old Ones did indeed try, but something was wrong.
Maybe they couldn't make them truly immortal. Maybe there was a drop in fertility. Maybe it was a slow process, that would take untold generations. Maybe it wasn't something that could be fixed directly, but the Old Ones could create an inheritor race based on them to take over once they died off. Maybe it was a combination of the above.

Whatever the cause, the Necrontyr were not happy, and broke off communications, becoming hostile. The project was put into stasis in one of the seeder solar systems that the Old Ones maintained in a corner of the known universe, and the knowledge that the Old Ones had tried, but couldn't do exactly what the Necrontyr wanted shifted into "the Old Ones had refused" through propaganda.

Millions of years later, something happened, and the project started back up again through an automated process. The resulting species did indeed have longer lifespans (albeit nowhere near immortal), and aren't nearly as fertile, but they did retain their progenitor's knack for technological progress and curious lack of psychic potential. You'd have to forgive the Necrons for not recognizing the Tau as their descendants, they haven't seen themselves in the flesh in millions of years...

2. The Dawn Blade

Not sure if this has been confirmed yet or not, but the Dawn Blade is the missing Cronesword, as it can steal the life of its victims and give it to its wielder.

There is a slight amount of truth to #2. The Dawn Blade kinda reminds me of melee Necron stuff too.

I thought the Dawn Blade was confirmed Necron? Plus the last Cronesword is on Belial IV so it is definiely not the Dawn Blade.

Space Marine chapters are 10,000 strong and GW will someday retcon this so that the military actions of space marines actually make a lick of sense.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
The movie Event Horizon is secretly canon.

Secretly?

Also, I refer to the rebuilt Roboute Guilleman as “Robot Guilleman” because Cawl totally went full Robocop on him and he’s now a brain in a walking, talking, animatronic jar.

My personal favorite for recent events, is that "Primaris" marines are just "future" marines.

Which is to say, dark ages don't last forever. Times of plague and ignorance blossom into ages of enlightenment and expansion.

The world of space marines in cobbled together power armor, of fading knowledge and dwindling gene-seed, that's the world of M41. It is a coherent setting, suitable for playing in without worrying about what comes later.

The world of MKX armor and grav-tanks is just what space marines look like a few millennia later, clearly after some changes have occurred that have solved many of the problems that seemed insurmountable from the perspective of M41. They're not super marines in giant armor, they're just space marines as they always were, in regulation modern equipment of their era.

By thinking of them this way, I never need to field the two types side by side, and never have to deal with the weird "replacing the original marines you've loved for 30 years" element in the actual official Primaris fluff.

Wouldn't that kind of be like the Dornian Heresy? I think in that alternate fanfiction timeline Marines were a lot like Primaris, with better than Mk8 armor because it had advanced over the years.