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 LumenPraebeo wrote:

 argonak wrote:
There's a book with Cawl where he talks to a Ctan. The Ctan looks at him and tells him that humans have the touch of the Old Ones on them. By which I infer that the Ctan at least thinks the Old ones have meddled in our evolution.

Which book is that?

https://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/belisarius-cawl-the-great-work-ebook-2019.html

I thought it was a very enjoyable book.

Although the background has said in various forms that the Old Ones may have tinkered with humanity, I think the impression was always that humanity (or rather the creatures of Earth that would later produce humans) were an unfinished product. Maybe even barely touched, perhaps with a little nudge perhaps on the psychic ability.

My headcanon is that the Old Ones' product line was:
1. Eldar, fine tuned and psychically powerful but slow reproduction. The hand crafted premium product
2. Humans, mass production model though less powerful individually. Prototyping stage aborted due to collapse of Old One civilization
3. Orks. Last minute rush job in order to produce cannon fodder.

(4. Tau. Tinkered with by one or more surviving Old Ones in an attempt at another direction given the disaster that producing psychically active races proved to be)

The T'au are 100% unconnected to the Old Ones. The Old Ones were millions of years extinct before the T'au even formed.

More likely it was Eldar who tinkered with them to be a tool against Slaanesh.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
The T'au are 100% unconnected to the Old Ones. The Old Ones were millions of years extinct before the T'au even formed.

More likely it was Eldar who tinkered with them to be a tool against Slaanesh.

In Xenology Qah (an Old One) survived. Tinkering with other races genetics was something the Old Ones did and is not something the Eldar are known for. The all too fortuitous warp storm that isolates and protects the Tau world from interference is also suspicious, but again that kind of massive wholesale warp storm manipulation is not exactly something the post-Fall Eldar are able or willing to do given the risks posed.

Also GW has never actually said the Old Ones became extinct, only that their civilization collapsed. If Qah could survive, it is possible others could have as well.

The 3rd edition Necron Codex even said to use WHFB Lizardmen to represent degenerate Old Ones, pretty much hinting that the Old Ones were Slann, with the WHFB versions being the degenerate ones.

My preference for the Old Ones being behind the Tau is also due to the personal rule of:
"No existing playable faction will be the ultimate cause or secret ruler/controller of any other playable faction"

That's why I didn't like GW putting Necrons and C'tan behind every mystery of the 40K universe, including that of other races and factions. That was the era in which GW was writing "A C'tan did it" for everything from the War in Heaven to the Gothic War to Abaddon finding his sword, to the fear of death in all humans etc... It diminishes them and pumps one faction up to be too powerful if they are the ones orchestrating everything behind the scenes.

And thus why I don't like Eldar (of any variety) being behind the ultimate origin the Tau or Tau Ethereals.

You could always go with the assumption that no one tinkered with the T'au... It's not like you need some shadowy puppetmaster to explain every single little thing in the universe. Or do you?

 Tiennos wrote:
You could always go with the assumption that no one tinkered with the T'au... It's not like you need some shadowy puppetmaster to explain every single little thing in the universe. Or do you?

The only problem is the sudden appearance ex nihilo of the Tau Ethereals with their abilities which go beyond just purely persuading with their words. In the Farsight novel for example, an imminent stampede of panicking Tau is suddenly stopped by the presence of an Ethereal, before a word is spoken.

Iracundus wrote:
Although the background has said in various forms that the Old Ones may have tinkered with humanity, I think the impression was always that humanity (or rather the creatures of Earth that would later produce humans) were an unfinished product. Maybe even barely touched, perhaps with a little nudge perhaps on the psychic ability.

My headcanon is that the Old Ones' product line was:
1. Eldar, fine tuned and psychically powerful but slow reproduction. The hand crafted premium product
2. Humans, mass production model though less powerful individually. Prototyping stage aborted due to collapse of Old One civilization
3. Orks. Last minute rush job in order to produce cannon fodder.

(4. Tau. Tinkered with by one or more surviving Old Ones in an attempt at another direction given the disaster that producing psychically active races proved to be)

The Orks as they are represent a broken version of what was designed, there are records of there being Orks that were much more intelligent/civilised so to speak than the masses we see now. I think warlords like Thrakka have the recessive genes that those brain boyz had.

For me humans were designed to be cannon fodder aswell with a few more powerful individuals. Orks were clearly successful because they spread like wildfire and don’t need to be educated. By comparison I think humans were a bit of a failure in terms of developing an army race.

mrFickle wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Although the background has said in various forms that the Old Ones may have tinkered with humanity, I think the impression was always that humanity (or rather the creatures of Earth that would later produce humans) were an unfinished product. Maybe even barely touched, perhaps with a little nudge perhaps on the psychic ability.

My headcanon is that the Old Ones' product line was:
1. Eldar, fine tuned and psychically powerful but slow reproduction. The hand crafted premium product
2. Humans, mass production model though less powerful individually. Prototyping stage aborted due to collapse of Old One civilization
3. Orks. Last minute rush job in order to produce cannon fodder.

(4. Tau. Tinkered with by one or more surviving Old Ones in an attempt at another direction given the disaster that producing psychically active races proved to be)

The Orks as they are represent a broken version of what was designed, there are records of there being Orks that were much more intelligent/civilised so to speak than the masses we see now. I think warlords like Thrakka have the recessive genes that those brain boyz had.

For me humans were designed to be cannon fodder aswell with a few more powerful individuals. Orks were clearly successful because they spread like wildfire and don’t need to be educated. By comparison I think humans were a bit of a failure in terms of developing an army race.

From the 3rd edition Necron Codex and later Xenology, it was hinted the Orks were created as a stopgap measure for cannon fodder (Xenology claimed Orks had simple but robust internal organs and systems, with a hint of being a rough rush job), with their ruling BrainBoyz being the managerial caste. The whole point was a fire and forget self-sustaining cannon fodder force that would not require micro-management from the Old Ones.

My list was not necessarily meant to be a chronological timeline of the order the Old Ones developed things. They could very well have done several products in parallel, or perhaps these represented different schools of thoughts among the Old Ones. Which is why my headcanon has the Tau the result of an Old One going the other way, and trying to beat the Necrons at their own game of tech rather than trying to engineer for psychic power, after seeing what a mess the psychic races have made of the galaxy.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
If they can cross breed they must be related

Looking for the missing Ultramarine librarian!!

What’s this?

mrFickle wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
If they can cross breed they must be related

Looking for the missing Ultramarine librarian!!

What’s this?

There was a half-Eldar Ultramarine librarian in the very early days of 40K. I consider that retconned.

Iracundus wrote:

mrFickle wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
If they can cross breed they must be related

Looking for the missing Ultramarine librarian!!

What’s this?

There was a half-Eldar Ultramarine librarian in the very early days of 40K. I consider that retconned.

Biologically?

Looking at our own planet, we’re obviously a good design for survival. So it’s not a massive stretch to assume the same might be true for other higher sentience species.

But remember, it’s only a similarity in form. Humans and Eldar have quite radically different internal physiology.

Ref, from Xenology

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Biologically?

Looking at our own planet, we’re obviously a good design for survival. So it’s not a massive stretch to assume the same might be true for other higher sentience species.

But remember, it’s only a similarity in form. Humans and Eldar have quite radically different internal physiology.

Best just to look at the pictures rather than the text. GW fails miserably whenever they attempt to "bio babble".

Iracundus wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
You could always go with the assumption that no one tinkered with the T'au... It's not like you need some shadowy puppetmaster to explain every single little thing in the universe. Or do you?

The only problem is the sudden appearance ex nihilo of the Tau Ethereals with their abilities which go beyond just purely persuading with their words. In the Farsight novel for example, an imminent stampede of panicking Tau is suddenly stopped by the presence of an Ethereal, before a word is spoken.

Yeah, the Ethereals are weird. How does that prove that someone created them?

Let's look at how the Imperium was born: humanity is in shambles, but after millenia of terrible warp storms, things finally calm down and some mysterious, godly figure emerges out of nowhere. He then unites humanity and conquers most of the galaxy in a manner of centuries. Surely, someone must have created the Emperor and stopped the storms just for that purpose. There's no way it could have happened otherwise, right?

 Tiennos wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
You could always go with the assumption that no one tinkered with the T'au... It's not like you need some shadowy puppetmaster to explain every single little thing in the universe. Or do you?

The only problem is the sudden appearance ex nihilo of the Tau Ethereals with their abilities which go beyond just purely persuading with their words. In the Farsight novel for example, an imminent stampede of panicking Tau is suddenly stopped by the presence of an Ethereal, before a word is spoken.

Yeah, the Ethereals are weird. How does that prove that someone created them?

Let's look at how the Imperium was born: humanity is in shambles, but after millenia of terrible warp storms, things finally calm down and some mysterious, godly figure emerges out of nowhere. He then unites humanity and conquers most of the galaxy in a manner of centuries. Surely, someone must have created the Emperor and stopped the storms just for that purpose. There's no way it could have happened otherwise, right?

I mean, there is the whole "Malcador Meat Puppet" hypothesis...

Isn't Xenology confirmed as non-cannon?

Ok, head canon/pet theory time.

The old ones (huge bloated magic space toads) created the eldar as some sort of project, possibly wanting to create a model society and even a warrior species for the war in heaven. So the eldar had p[sy powers but also art, culture, etc.

The eldar were too poncy to get the job done so the created their exact opposite, the krorks who were nothing but war and violence. But they were hardly a model society.

Now I think that maybe the space toads wantd to create something that was kinf of halfway between erldar and orks. More social and sophisticated than the krorks, and more rought and ready than the eldar.

They started work on humanity but then the whole galaxy kinda went to hell and they abandoned the project in its earliest stages.

Humans have always come off to me as having elements of the ork and eldar to them, more or less halfway between both.

That's just m,y pet theory, judge it for yourself. But many humans can be nearly as brutal, crude and bluntly direct as the orks and some can be nearly as sophisticated and refined as the eldar.

 Tiennos wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
You could always go with the assumption that no one tinkered with the T'au... It's not like you need some shadowy puppetmaster to explain every single little thing in the universe. Or do you?

The only problem is the sudden appearance ex nihilo of the Tau Ethereals with their abilities which go beyond just purely persuading with their words. In the Farsight novel for example, an imminent stampede of panicking Tau is suddenly stopped by the presence of an Ethereal, before a word is spoken.

Yeah, the Ethereals are weird. How does that prove that someone created them?

Let's look at how the Imperium was born: humanity is in shambles, but after millenia of terrible warp storms, things finally calm down and some mysterious, godly figure emerges out of nowhere. He then unites humanity and conquers most of the galaxy in a manner of centuries. Surely, someone must have created the Emperor and stopped the storms just for that purpose. There's no way it could have happened otherwise, right?

The Emperor as a gestalt of shaman souls is a deliberately created construct to guide humanity. Just the manner of guidance has changed from the original conception.

Iracundus wrote:

The Emperor as a gestalt of shaman souls is a deliberately created construct to guide humanity. Just the manner of guidance has changed from the original conception.

And who can say the T'au Ethereals aren't the same kind of thing? Maybe they were created through mystical means by some bunch of ancient T'au wisemen. Or maybe some random mutation just created the caste and they eventually realized that they could use their power to make T'au society into what they wanted it to be, so they did.

You don't need to involve the old ones or the eldar or the necron to explain how one small xeno empire can exist.

The thing with the tau is that warpstorms isolated them from the imperium for a convenient amount of time, then there were sightings of strange lights in the sky just before the first eths appeared.

A little while later the tau disocver a derelict ship at the edge of their space with a form of ftl drive they can use.

Yeah, way to many coincidences there.

From a lore standpoint its heavily implied that Humans are one of many creations of the Old Ones, like the Eldar.

From a design standpoint its just easier for an artist to make a humanoid character, especially if they want to market it.

Its why something like 90% of all aliens are humanoid in feature.

I mean, Necrons shouldn't look humanoid at all, because they weren't created by the Old Ones. But they do.
Hell, it actually doesn't make much sense for the Old Ones to make mammalian humanoids either, because apparently they were reptiles.

Yeah even nids look like earth insects or animals.

I’d love to see something super original like an army of gelatinous cubes haha

But seriously an army that isn’t body and 4 or more limbs would be great.

However considering the 40K universe even the necrontyr seem to be humanoid and they were not created by the old ones. Maybe it’s a law of evolution in the 40K universe.

Maybe humans were clones of the necrontyr that the old one made to find a weakness in them, genetically

Craaaaaaab people craaaab people...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Isn't Xenology confirmed as non-cannon?

40K has no canon, especially when we're talking about a book that is written from the point of view of an in universe character that was being deceived.
I don't think they've ever explicitly said that something isn't 'canon', and I can't think of much from the book that has been outdated - few minor things like the drawing of T'au feet and the colour of ork blood.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


I mean, Necrons shouldn't look humanoid at all, because they weren't created by the Old Ones. But they do.
Hell, it actually doesn't make much sense for the Old Ones to make mammalian humanoids either, because apparently they were reptiles.

They're also slow, contemplative beings as reptiles - it might be that the various humanoid aliens are based on the necrons, with the cold blooded Old Ones realising that the warm blooded Necrontyr had a distinct advantage living faster, albeit shorter, lives and used them as the pattern for their early soldiers. If this is the first time you've really come into conflict with something, why not start your defence by copying what the enemy does?

Waitwaitwait, where is it established that the Old Ones are reptiles, cold blooded, or slow and contemplative? I know Slann are like that, but afaik Slann have not featured in 40k fluff since WHFB was part of the same universe. And Slann were always creations of the Old Ones, not Old Ones themselves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tastyfish wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Isn't Xenology confirmed as non-cannon?

40K has no canon

I think I know what you are trying to say, but phrased like this the statement is objectively untrue.

There is all that new uber grim dark xenos art with some really freaky things.Those walking mushroom things and the wierd spacemen robo-octopus?? I mean I would love to see more of tha art. I find it very fascinating and damn right scary..
But I don't want them to make it into a race, give it models or explain it in anyway. It can just be. Without needed an explanation no ?

On the whole humanoid thing. you kind of need things to be relatable to us, and within some sort of vague logical/physical continuity.
Otherwise whose to say that you cant have an army of supernatural shapeless light/gass clouds or magically powered sentient coffee mugs taking over the universe from the back of a flat wolrd thats on the back of some elephants...? You can have that but do they belong in the same Story as space marines the IOM or the demons of the warp? Its a different type of story.

I think the old ones is bit of a heavy crutch and a cop out. A catch-all relic from a time when 40k didin't really exist, and did not know what it want to be and the ideas were not fleshed out so there were ties to WHFB lizardmen coz reasons.

But this is all beside the point. Why would anyone want everything to be explained anyway ?? The lore has already been padded out so much the galaxy no longer feels vast or mysterious. I wouldn't want that eroded an iota more personally. My OCD be dammned..
Tbh I consider the orks to be the most successful old ones creation. They are by no means elegant but are as far as I know immune to chaos, and up for a scrap with Necron and chaos alike spanning vast parts of the galaxy and ever expending.

mrFickle wrote:
Yeah even nids look like earth insects or animals.

I’d love to see something super original like an army of gelatinous cubes haha

But seriously an army that isn’t body and 4 or more limbs would be great.

However considering the 40K universe even the necrontyr seem to be humanoid and they were not created by the old ones. Maybe it’s a law of evolution in the 40K universe.

Maybe humans were clones of the necrontyr that the old one made to find a weakness in them, genetically

Some of the Tzeentch demons do alright. Discs look like floating rays, Flamers have weird mushroom bodies. Slaanesh fiends are pretty strange, too.

The Enslavers look like floating brain jellyfish, iirc.

 Insectum7 wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Yeah even nids look like earth insects or animals.

I’d love to see something super original like an army of gelatinous cubes haha

But seriously an army that isn’t body and 4 or more limbs would be great.

However considering the 40K universe even the necrontyr seem to be humanoid and they were not created by the old ones. Maybe it’s a law of evolution in the 40K universe.

Maybe humans were clones of the necrontyr that the old one made to find a weakness in them, genetically

Some of the Tzeentch demons do alright. Discs look like floating rays, Flamers have weird mushroom bodies. Slaanesh fiends are pretty strange, too.

The Enslavers look like floating brain jellyfish, iirc.

Have there ever been models for enslavers ?
The remind me of the ship navigators from dune.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Waitwaitwait, where is it established that the Old Ones are reptiles, cold blooded, or slow and contemplative? I know Slann are like that, but afaik Slann have not featured in 40k fluff since WHFB was part of the same universe. And Slann were always creations of the Old Ones, not Old Ones themselves.

Not quite. In the beginning, like in RT era, it was the Old Slann (not Old Ones). Then the Slann were their descendants. Then GW shifted to make Old Ones with the Slann of WHFB for example being their servants, however the Old Ones' forms were never given as only the 1st generation Slann got to see them. It is therefore not incompatible with the Old Ones being Slann. The beliefs of the lesser Slann and their Lizardmen followers could be inaccurate. An Old Slann with an interest in light, plasma, and energy (i.e. Chotec) might be portrayed as bright and shining, but maybe it was just a Slann. Or maybe this Old Slann really was bright and shining but it was due to its psychic power rather than it being the natural form.

GW has given an implied nod to this with the 3rd edition Necron Codex when it said to represent degenerate Old Ones by using a WHFB Lizardmen army. This implies the Slann of a Lizardmen army are degenerate Old Ones.

I prefer this as it adds to the tragedy of the Slann and the Old Ones: their degenerate descendants worshipping their own ancestors as gods, unaware of what they had achieved in the past, numbly clinging to ancient rituals and prophecy (albeit powerful rituals giving for example invulnerable slaves to Slann).

Hm., I do not understand your argument. Can you give me the source where it is actually written that Slann=Old Ones? For that matter, have there been any references to Slann in 40k after it was split from WHFB? The fluff where they were part of the same galaxy is long gone, so anything linked to that is pretty suspect in legitimacy if it does not have a later source.

As for 3rd ed Necrons, I don't think we need to go into how much of that codex has been cut out and replaced...