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Just a thread for discussion on where people would like GW to start to expand the background material in the 30k/40k setting?

So many periods of the 40k 'history' have only been mentioned in passing or perhaps with a few lines of very mysterious-sound text.
Just a few for starters:
- Unification wars
- Conquest of the Sol System and the early Great Crusade
- The age of strife (warlords fighting amongst each other on Terra with Nathan Hume, the Emperor & Thunder Warriors as factions etc)
- Even earlier (Dark Age of Technology)
I would love an art book or TCG to start kicking off areas which are currently only referenced in a few lines of text. This was how the FW/30k focus started, and it generated a whole sub-niche of crusade-era/pre-heresy gamers with the Horus Heresy TCG. So I think there is potential if some imagination gets involved and enough people start taking an interest.

Just a few thoughts for starters!

On the other hand, would you prefer these periods to remain as just those mystical-sounding lines of text and for gamers/hobbyists to be able to fill in the blanks with their own imaginations?

Well, Heresy has fully opened the dam so why not delve into the unification wars and before

We have had glimpses of terran regiments, techno barbarians, sorcerers using warp spawned magiks etc so theres a wealth of source material to go wild with models should a game be made.

Thunder Warriors are ripe for exploitation.

Early crusade would also provide a wealth of gaming options. a TCG would be great for this era as well. possibly board games or something like the old mighty empires?

Warhammer twighlight Imperium anyone?

I think could see Great Crusade being explored after 30k reaches the siege of terra. Plenty of ways for you to take your legion and fight your buddies orcs, eldar, etc... as wel as introduce some new Xenos maybe?

The Nova Terra Interregnum would be the obvious choice, but creating lore for historical periods like these tends to badly damage their mystique and leave the background in a worse position than before. The heresy books are the worse example of this, but the Saga of the Beast books did much the same thing.

Ultimately it might be better if GW just left the good bits of background material we already have alone!

I'm up for expanding 40k on a little further. Let's bring back another loyal Primarch (the Lion? Vulkan?) and have a release for Fulgrim and/or Angron to match. Can't hurt to have something further come from the Ynnari, too.

I imagine 40k lore this edition will have a few different campaigns resulting in not much for the Dark Imperium, a solid and distinct Necron territory, and, otherwise, Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade being successful in strengthening the rest of the Imperium...only to have Abbadon's forces + some Chaos primarch, and the largest Tyranid fleet to date making a beeline for Terra itself.

I really wish we never get anything pre heresy. But between 31k and 41k there are lots of stuff to be seen

IMHO GW's already answered this with the Dawn of Fire series. I think after the horus heresy the plan is to go forward

I was going to suggest fleshing out the Octarius War, thinking naively that it didn't involve space marines, but reading back it seems some deathwatch were always involved, and it already has been added to with World Eaters joining the fight. You'd think the 40k verse is so small you can't move for space marines

Anyway, at the very least if space marines have to be involved I'd like to see them lose to xenos. Not 'win but suffer heavy casualties' off screen, actually lose. To orks, nids, necrons etc. Let the focus be more on IG, and it can be an excuse to release one of the classic IG regiments in plastic.

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
I was going to suggest fleshing out the Octarius War, thinking naively that it didn't involve space marines, but reading back it seems some deathwatch were always involved, and it already has been added to with World Eaters joining the fight. You'd think the 40k verse is so small you can't move for space marines

Anyway, at the very least if space marines have to be involved I'd like to see them lose to xenos. Not 'win but suffer heavy casualties' off screen, actually lose. To orks, nids, necrons etc. Let the focus be more on IG, and it can be an excuse to release one of the classic IG regiments in plastic.

Marines lost in Indomatus BTW just FYI

Mr. Burning wrote:Well, Heresy has fully opened the dam so why not delve into the unification wars and before

We have had glimpses of terran regiments, techno barbarians, sorcerers using warp spawned magiks etc so theres a wealth of source material to go wild with models should a game be made.

Thunder Warriors are ripe for exploitation.

Early crusade would also provide a wealth of gaming options. a TCG would be great for this era as well. possibly board games or something like the old mighty empires?

Warhammer twighlight Imperium anyone?

That would be an amazing idea!

An idea would be a unification era gang-wars type game based on the Necromunda ruleset. Perhaps increase the model count slightly and change some of the campaign elements to fit the scale of warfare?

Kroem wrote:The Nova Terra Interregnum would be the obvious choice, but creating lore for historical periods like these tends to badly damage their mystique and leave the background in a worse position than before. The heresy books are the worse example of this, but the Saga of the Beast books did much the same thing.

Ultimately it might be better if GW just left the good bits of background material we already have alone!

Yes I kind of agree with you.. there is an argument that we know enough about the pre Horus-Heresy era to create some modelling opportunities.

And I look now at what is being done with 40k; the Primaris, Primarchs waking up, really actually the whole ethos and founding principles of 40k being turned upside down (that it's no longer that time of absolute darkness, hopelessness and dispair, 1 second to midnight before mankind sinks into the abyss) and I think it's possibly a good thing that the other areas of the background get left alone.

Yea but saying all that they did a brilliant job with the Badab War, so maybe a few more choice hints and oblique references to time periods we know nothing about would be pretty cool.

We know very little about the Macharian Crusade or the Macharian Heresy, I wouldn't mind knowing a little more about those.

I'm hoping that the Scouring is next, as the period directly after the Heresy is the next step in the story and very underdeveloped.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
I'm hoping that the Scouring is next, as the period directly after the Heresy is the next step in the story and very underdeveloped.

Yeah. You could so scouring and the legion wars at the same time.

I’d really like to see Fabius biles new Men become a serious faction, if at least only in the books. He’s doing the emperors work and he’s the only one that is

I think the way the 40k lore is moving forward now with the timeline no longer set, and new marine types and everything else, I think it a matter of time before you see 'new' chaos marines as a balance for those.

As with Primaris, new lore will be written to fit the new miniatures, and I guess Fabius Bile creating some new plus-size chaos guys would be the most obvious way of doing that.

I'd like to see a unification wars era game, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Loads of opportunities for different factions and vehicles.

I would really like to see Dorn return, if any loyalists do return. Also I'd love it if they would check in on whats going on with Yrgvain (SP?) and her battles.

Plain and simple the Lion rolls out of bed bumps his head than gets mad and bitch slaps Luther to death! Than joins with Guillaman makes nice and goes on a Warmaster type killing spree against chaos! And Xenos! And that one guy you know ........cypher!

 Pacific wrote:
Just a thread for discussion on where people would like GW to start to expand the background material in the 30k/40k setting?

So many periods of the 40k 'history' have only been mentioned in passing or perhaps with a few lines of very mysterious-sound text.
Just a few for starters:
- Unification wars
- Conquest of the Sol System and the early Great Crusade
- The age of strife (warlords fighting amongst each other on Terra with Nathan Hume, the Emperor & Thunder Warriors as factions etc)
- Even earlier (Dark Age of Technology)
I would love an art book or TCG to start kicking off areas which are currently only referenced in a few lines of text. This was how the FW/30k focus started, and it generated a whole sub-niche of crusade-era/pre-heresy gamers with the Horus Heresy TCG. So I think there is potential if some imagination gets involved and enough people start taking an interest.

Just a few thoughts for starters!

On the other hand, would you prefer these periods to remain as just those mystical-sounding lines of text and for gamers/hobbyists to be able to fill in the blanks with their own imaginations?

The Heresy series was a mistake. To do more of the same would be an even larger mistake.
40k was- should be- set at the very end of an Empire. The clock is permanently stuck around the 41st (or 42nd?) Millenium because to go much further would see the end of the Imperium, and of the status quo.

The Heresy took place 10,000 years before 40k. Ten. Thousand. Years.
That’s a very long time.
That’s such a long time that the knowledge of any more than few specific names from the period surviving into 40k is... well, even for 40k, it’s silly. It detracts from the tone.

30k should not be known about, even to the reader.

The Unification Wars? The same.

The DAoT? Literally nothing should be known. Not a single name, date, detail, anything. Just the name.

That was a rambling post. Sorry.

DalekCheese - I do kind of agree with you.
I remember reading comments from Rick Priestly where he said initially that was the intent; it was ten thousand years ago, and other than a few names the people living in 40,000 would have literally no idea of what had happened, it was all just lost in myth and in the vast expanse of time.

But then Epic Space Marine happened and GW apparently needed a way of reducing sprue cost and using multiples of the same unit - Marine fighting marine was a good way of doing that, so Bill King wrote the 1st Horus Heresy short story and made the first story about the events*.

Many years later and really we didn't have that much more to go on, until the Horus Heresy TCS and then associated art books (with their newly written background material) came along.
I don't think 'pre-heresy' had really been a thing until that point, and it was only when you suddenly had this great artwork and more detail on the story that the sub-genre of 30k modelling and gaming came about and then alongside that the Horus Heresy black library books were released which really cemented that as a genre.
I assume from that FW realised there was something to be made there (I do wonder if their ridiculously high sales of 'Red Scorpion mk4 upgrade packs' might have alerted them!) and of course Alan Bligh started on the great FW books.

What's interesting is that a similar pattern seems to be followed for all of these fantasy universes, be it Star Wars, Star Trek or 40k. The fans start turning over stones trying to get more details and then eventually something official follows.
I'm kind of in the place that a bit of detail is good (the Horus Heresy art books for instance just gave so much inspiration to people who wanted to convert and model their armies) but that we don't need to see what laces Sanguinius has in his boots, and you can leave a bit of space for people to use their own imagination. And also to cherry-pick eras that they enjoy - I am really enjoying creating a Crusade-era force at the moment which lets me focus on the marines before Primaris and Primarchs started coming back to life for instance, and it could well be that if those areas get more attention then my own interpretation or imagination of what took place there would suddenly officially become 'incorrect'.


* That raises an interesting comment about people complaining that GW write background just to justify a miniature range (i.e. see the new Primaris marines). But, it just goes to show that they have always done this!

Yeah there have been some awesome things about the Heresy (card game, some boardgames, the collected visions stuff, even the FW black books, to my mind, are a nice addition. The Black Library book, I can understand one don't like them though, as they are a different kind of books, they go so much into so many details and characters and explain everything and a everyone, not always nicely).

 godardc wrote:
Yeah there have been some awesome things about the Heresy (card game, some boardgames, the collected visions stuff, even the FW black books, to my mind, are a nice addition. The Black Library book, I can understand one don't like them though, as they are a different kind of books, they go so much into so many details and characters and explain everything and a everyone, not always nicely).

I enjoy the 30k books now that they’re here. The genie is out of the bottle, so you might as well enjoy your wishes. Even so, in an ideal world the Heresy would have remained a mystery.

I want them to open the terminus decree and we can finally have a new game called "Warhammer 45,000 : The future age of sigmar." that will ditch D6 and IGOUGO

There are tons of events that happen between 30k and 40k but I want a rules update for 30k to be able to play against a 40k army like back in 7th edition how the crossover and rules matched well enough to cross play.

Stalked21 wrote:
There are tons of events that happen between 30k and 40k but I want a rules update for 30k to be able to play against a 40k army like back in 7th edition how the crossover and rules matched well enough to cross play.

...in most cases, just used the 7th ed rules for that faction? Or house-rule something you can both agree on for new units?

GW should do something with this whole Unification Wars. They basically have their own Fallout setting at their disposal.
Imho it has better potential than 40k and 30k taken together.

https://i.imgur.com/1g3emU7.jpg - well made fan map, based on a scraps of information from manuals and books.
The factions are crazy as hell, a lookout on the Terra map makes you like uncanny valley.
- Merica - good to know old good USA is still around. It escaped northward what suggests south of US is not habitable anymore. This state is described as federation of technocratic hive cities. Just remind yourselves a 80's sci-fi movies.
- Albia - this is Canada displaced into Arctics by Merica. Supposedly it's also Merica's vassal. Victorian British style Hive Cities (something like Gilneas from WoW Cataclysm) and roaming Eskimo-like/Trapper tribes outside of them.
- Hy Brasil - the state with apparently the only remained forest on Terra. Basically South American cartels doing their job.

Here we go - Europe:
- Nordyc (aka "Skand") - clans of Techno-vikings. Raiding and pillaging. Enough said.
- Kievan Rus Khaganate - perhaps a merge of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. They rather aren't just space Kislev (this being the Vostroya likeness). I imagine them like Druzhina with explosive-tipped lances and early Slavic-like stuff with all this postapo. (the source is "Vengeful Spirit" novel, and while it most probably (an adjective "ancient" is used before the name) has in mind the real life Kievan Rus' (which disappeared as geopolitical entity in 1240) it would be interesting if a state of similar character existed during Unification Wars).
- Jermani - descendants of Germans. I've read somehwere they are said to often use ancient symbol (swastika in Nazi context), and that it's kind of ignorant from their side, as Humans in 20th millennium are race mixed. I see them somehow like Death Korps of Krieg but more crude and primitive and maybe a bit of Landsknecht's aesthetics stereotype for higher rank lieutenants but with breeches instead of puff and slash style we know from WHF Empire. Generally savage Nazis, gothic and sallets/stahlhelmets.
- Franc - techno-feudal estates ruled by barbarian king and his power-armored knight vassals. Basically Charlemagne's realm 2.0.
- Europa - wannabe Rome 2.0. Similar to Caesar's Legion from Fallout universe.
- Albyon - radioactive bogs and marshes interspersed betwixt concrete jungle with mutated flora and fauna inhabited by biohacked Picts.
- Boeotia (aka "Bania") - Alexandrian Empire in space. See: Episode XXV: Jack and the Spartans
- Terrawatt Clans - equivalent of WHF Dwarf facions. Basically Adeptus Mechanicus beta version. Ruled by Theologiteks in subterranean cities inside Ural mountains. Ally with the Emperor.

Middle east and Asia:
- Urartu - Dieselpunk Hettites warring with Gyptus and Achaemid Empire. Madmax style.
- Achaemid Empire - Persia. They ally with the Emperor. Also homeland of Thousand Sons.
- Ursh - USSR on steroids. Generic villain and "last boss" faction. They even worship Chaos (sic!).
- Hymalazia - Tibet and Nepal. Here is start location of The Emperor. He was de facto future version of buddhist btw.
- Xeric Tribes - Asiatic dustfields with duneworms. Asylum of raiding tribes of riders. Basically Mongols/Xiongnu vibe we all know.
- Pan-Pacific Empire - China. High technological human machine. One of the hardest enemies of Emperor during these times.
- Yndonesic Bloc - Khmer Rouge 2.0. Genocidal regime ruled by "Cardinal".
- Hive Cities of the Lands of Indoi - Caste society ranging from overcrowded lands of human mass living in misery to extremely wealthy aristocracy and rulers. Just archetype of your generic Hive World. It's not known much about this place. The main religion here is "weird cult" worshipping animals and many lesser deities.

Africa:
- Gyptus - wannabe pharaohs with long ruined pyramids in the background.
- Nordafrik Conclaves - desert with mutant Nomads on mutated beasts. They migrate from one to another of few settlements there. They stock up and they return to the desert avoiding overcrowded cities.
- Desert Wastes - as above but there are no cities here. You can only find ruins, hideous monsters and crazed mutants there.
- Abyssna - Ethiopia. I guess it is, similarly to Hymalazia, some of spiritual place (analogy to Rastafari movement) where the Emperor has witnessed some mystical experience. Except of that, a lot of scavengers and pirates here.
- Mid Afrik Hive Polity - land ruled by lesser warlords rivalizing with each other.
- Sa'Afrik - Fortified hive cities outside of which a wild, barbarous tribes raven a land.


This being said I dream and daydream to one day see this gem.

I’m not sure about a table top game for unification wars but I bet a Board game like risk Would be very popular


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I doubt GW would make a mobile game full of in app purchases

or GW could even release a RPG of it.

BrianDavion wrote:
or GW could even release a RPG of it.

Problem is everyone knows the story, who would you play in an RPG? The emperor himself? I suppose if GW were willing to commit to the idea that Emps was one of many eternals until the end of the The unification wars when he goes to molec and achieves apotheosis. That’s would be a cool end to the game