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 Mr. Grey wrote:
Those are way tamer than I was expecting from the phrase "fetus bolters".

Right? Like, it's not even accurate. They're just cherub heads or doll heads.

About as shocking as "American Mcgee's Alice" lol.

If this is too "grimdark" for the OP don't let him read Red Sky Black Sun....

 Hanskrampf wrote:


References

Spoiler:

OK.

Yeah.

Those are creepy.

Granted horror and despair are the order of the day in 40k but yeah those are authentically creepy, the life/death, innocence/evil contrast is in full force.

the_scotsman wrote:
About as shocking as "American Mcgee's Alice" lol.

Hey don't diss that game it was cool!

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Inquisitor boltgun. The small bugger hugging the bolter is a weird alien lifeform that imbue the bolts with... something. Something dark and creepy, I expect. Don't want to be on the receiving end to find out!!

On the plus side, you're unlikely to find out as it is impossible for the inquisitor to aim!

 jeff white wrote:

40K was more upfront about being a thinly veiled jab at the real world and where it was headed from the beginning. Fetus bolters might be striking close to home for people following what US troops have done to Iraqis and Afghanis these past twenty years, but for some of us Vietnam and Korea were stand out examples of the real life horror show that has been and remains Western corporate militarism aka fascism in the twentieth and now twenty first centuries. When I see this art in 40K, I am returned to that initial insight that I had thirty years ago, that this is a thin veil on the world as we make it, and a window on how it may be once a religion guiding policy through faith in the Empire after a few thousand years of ritual... in that context, of course, fetus bolters a a logical eventuality.

As a US veteran of Afghanistan I just wanted to jump in here and say that you're wrong. Just didn't want to let that uncalled for slander slide past without anybody standing up and pointing out how wrong you are.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
If this is too "grimdark" for the OP don't let him read Red Sky Black Sun....

I've only read like 5 or 6 BL novels, but that was one of them. There are definitely a couple things in that one I wasn't expecting. . .

Doesn't look much different the a censer in any bigger and older church. There is an old convenant in Poland where the top of it has an inlaid in silver top of skull of the female priores that founded it.

And places like italy or spain have even more older stuff like that, because they didn't have as many lootings done by non catholics.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Inquisitor boltgun. The small bugger hugging the bolter is a weird alien lifeform that imbue the bolts with... something. Something dark and creepy, I expect. Don't want to be on the receiving end to find out!!

On the plus side, you're unlikely to find out as it is impossible for the inquisitor to aim!

The creepy doll face is the aim. You can just imagine it now, in it's creepy child voice like "left a bit, right a bit, fire!"

there is a definite element of horror when you're a chaos guy who's fought through the space marine ranks, then turn to face their leader to find a creepy doll face poised over a barrel aimed at your face, and then the doll innocently says "you're 'd now, heretic!". Bang.

 dadx6 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:

40K was more upfront about being a thinly veiled jab at the real world and where it was headed from the beginning. Fetus bolters might be striking close to home for people following what US troops have done to Iraqis and Afghanis these past twenty years, but for some of us Vietnam and Korea were stand out examples of the real life horror show that has been and remains Western corporate militarism aka fascism in the twentieth and now twenty first centuries. When I see this art in 40K, I am returned to that initial insight that I had thirty years ago, that this is a thin veil on the world as we make it, and a window on how it may be once a religion guiding policy through faith in the Empire after a few thousand years of ritual... in that context, of course, fetus bolters a a logical eventuality.

As a US veteran of Afghanistan I just wanted to jump in here and say that you're wrong. Just didn't want to let that uncalled for slander slide past without anybody standing up and pointing out how wrong you are.

Because you didn't see it personally, it didn't happen, right?

As a US veteran of Afghanistan you are far FAR more prone to be biased here, and absolutely no more capable of knowing the reality. Why do you think that gives your statement any more agency at all here?

Folks, let’s please keep it on-topic. Thanks!

I just want to take a moment to appreciate the sentence "Fetus bolters are a logical eventuality."

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
If this is too "grimdark" for the OP don't let him read Red Sky Black Sun....

If you mean dead sky black sun, I red it.

 Super Ready wrote:
40k needs the grimdark imagery, it's a big part of what it is. You take it away and you lose a whole chunk of its unique identity.
Is aborted babies taking it a bit far? Maybe, but... no-one's pretending this is a game for children.

...oh, uhhhh... oops. I'll see myself out.

AHHHHH.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just got my copy of the 93 rulebook and in the actual rules section bit, did anyone else find those like aborted festuses attached to bolt guns creepy? I mean I've gottne used to the cyber cherubs and the ammorium cherubs, but those fetus bolters were just at the edge of what I could look at without cringing.

Honestly, that looked like stuf ol' fabius should be working on, not the imperium.

If you find that creepy, i reccomend you to never, ever, set an eye upon any of these things:

Second WW , especially the eastern front.
Holocaust,
Sino-japanese war. Especially rape of nanjing.
Unit 731 and any associated fellow chemical and biological weapons formations from the IJA/IJN.
Einsatzgruppen, doubly disturbing considering the ammount of intellectuals in these formations.
Witchhunts
Italian "pacification" of lybia, including the butcherer of Fezzan,
Italian -abessynian war.
Blockade of the first WW.
Armenian genocide
Late colonial empires and their practices, especially the Dutch east indies and belgian Kongo.
Indian Famines.
Opiate wars.
Mental institutions, especially early on with human trials.
Chemical and biological warfare.


Etc, etc, etc.


We as a species have allready done way worse then strapping a weapon to a fetus.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 Super Ready wrote:
40k needs the grimdark imagery, it's a big part of what it is. You take it away and you lose a whole chunk of its unique identity.
Is aborted babies taking it a bit far? Maybe, but... no-one's pretending this is a game for children.

...oh, uhhhh... oops. I'll see myself out.

AHHHHH.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

The pae for one of the books called War of the Orks says:

READ IT BECAUSE
Discover what happens when orks battle orks – and how those caught in the middle fare! The latest chapter in the galaxy-spanning sci-fi adventure is here, and you don't want to miss it.

So, assuming it's canonically correct ,the children will be either slaughtered, eaten or enslaved. or blown up in the inevitable collateral damage. It's fair to say that, set in the grimdark WH40k setting, there's no place for a happy ending, right?

On the one hand, Christian imagery itself is pretty much the standard for body horror.

Saint Ebba cut off her nose and upper lip, along with all her nuns, to stop Vikings raping them. Happily, the Vikings were repelled and only burned them to death.

On the other, the body horror stuff got old decades ago, for me at least. Giger was shocking and thought-provoking, I just find his successors unpleasant now. Any game that piles it on is an auto-pass for me - KS mini boardgames seem particularly prone to making every sculpt a twisted monstrosity. I prefer the more subtle stuff - "my lust for power has driven me to make myself an inhuman monster", rather than "fire the baby cannons!"

Are Sid's creations in Toy Story a cool kitbash, a reaction against "disturbing" Japanese imports by "wholesome" Americans, or a sad case of Gandalf's warning that if you take something apart to understand it, you have merely broken it?

Did read one theory years ago, that the horrors supposedly visited upon us by aliens are a mental reaction to the horrors we inflict daily on the poor and sick and disadvantaged. A victimisation complex to absolve Western audiences of our inaction. "You're hungry and your kids are pooping themselves to death? Hey man, I was probed!". A bit of a reach as ideas go, but not without value.

hahahaha

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just got my copy of the 93 rulebook and in the actual rules section bit, did anyone else find those like aborted festuses attached to bolt guns creepy? I mean I've gottne used to the cyber cherubs and the ammorium cherubs, but those fetus bolters were just at the edge of what I could look at without cringing.

Honestly, that looked like stuf ol' fabius should be working on, not the imperium.

If you find that creepy, i reccomend you to never, ever, set an eye upon any of these things:

Second WW , especially the eastern front.
Holocaust,
Sino-japanese war. Especially rape of nanjing.
Unit 731 and any associated fellow chemical and biological weapons formations from the IJA/IJN.
Einsatzgruppen, doubly disturbing considering the ammount of intellectuals in these formations.
Witchhunts
Italian "pacification" of lybia, including the butcherer of Fezzan,
Italian -abessynian war.
Blockade of the first WW.
Armenian genocide
Late colonial empires and their practices, especially the Dutch east indies and belgian Kongo.
Indian Famines.
Opiate wars.
Mental institutions, especially early on with human trials.
Chemical and biological warfare.


Etc, etc, etc.


We as a species have allready done way worse then strapping a weapon to a fetus.

Sigh.

Yes.

I know that. I'm familiar with just about everything you listed. The thing is they are historical fact. The 40k rulebook is not. It's stuff people made up. The creators decided to make what looked like guns with fetuses on them. Just for gross points or shock value. Also even in 40k it doesn;t seem to make sense. It's just gross for shock value.

Actually, I reckon it does fit with the setting. Remember - "even in death I still serve". That baby's lifeless body isn't useful to anyone just lying there, you gotta put it to good use!

The art has always taken some inspiration from HR Giger and been creepy AF. Not really anything new in the new book. I like Giger’s work so for me it’s nice to have some grisly, disgusting art back in the rulebook. YMMV.

 Super Ready wrote:
Actually, I reckon it does fit with the setting. Remember - "even in death I still serve". That baby's lifeless body isn't useful to anyone just lying there, you gotta put it to good use!

This, life is a currency.
It's not even anymore split up in worthless (for subhumans) and worthy.
It's just a commodity that get's spent for the maintenance of a governing system in place.

 Matt Swain wrote:


I know that. I'm familiar with just about everything you listed. The thing is they are historical fact. The 40k rulebook is not. It's stuff people made up. The creators decided to make what looked like guns with fetuses on them. Just for gross points or shock value. Also even in 40k it doesn;t seem to make sense. It's just gross for shock value.

A catholic church, at least in Poland has a memorial day for fetuses, and pictures and are of them are carried around in processions, every year, even this year , which was kind of a illegal, but elections were close so the ruling party didn't dare to do anything about it.

Karol wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:


I know that. I'm familiar with just about everything you listed. The thing is they are historical fact. The 40k rulebook is not. It's stuff people made up. The creators decided to make what looked like guns with fetuses on them. Just for gross points or shock value. Also even in 40k it doesn;t seem to make sense. It's just gross for shock value.

A catholic church, at least in Poland has a memorial day for fetuses, and pictures and are of them are carried around in processions, every year, even this year , which was kind of a illegal, but elections were close so the ruling party didn't dare to do anything about it.

Something similar used to happen in Ireland, but it tailed off a bit at least in part because people started pointing out the images were in fact of cat fetuses. Because human fetuses didn't look human enough to provoke the reaction they were angling for.

I mention this because the imagery above, while creepy, is also extremely stylised, further because of how it's coloured. It's not even clear if the faces are organic at all. They are shocking and strange, but they aren't clearly practical or biological realistic - the intention is entirely to evoke and disturb.

That's not the same as just existing for shock value. It's valuable to set the tone of this universe and immerse the reader in the nightmarishly hyperbolic and stylised visual language of 40k.

I'm of the opinion that GW urgently needs to do more of this stuff, both tonally and explicitly, to underline that the Imperium is an inherently ugly, crumbling structure that does weird and nasty things, and not because they're always necessary - just because it's always done weird and nasty things. More needs to be done to make it explicitly, undeniably clear to both players and onlookers that the Imperium is not the hero or the anti hero of this narrative eco system - there is no such thing to be found in it.

The Guilliman and Primaris driven stuff imho steered way too close to saying outright "Here are the Space Marines, they're the goodies!". That would be to the major detriment of the game lore imho, and at the risk of drifting into the forum's topical DMZs, encourage a deeply unwelcome element to continue co opting WH40K iconography. Individual characters may be fundamentally good and decent and strong, and unreliable narratives can pretend the Imperium is, but anyone outside the fourth wall shouldn't have room to think it really is. I consider it close to an ethical issue for the lore, visuals and execution of the game to respect the old school 2000AD "Everything is terrible" tone.

 Matt Swain wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just got my copy of the 93 rulebook and in the actual rules section bit, did anyone else find those like aborted festuses attached to bolt guns creepy? I mean I've gottne used to the cyber cherubs and the ammorium cherubs, but those fetus bolters were just at the edge of what I could look at without cringing.

Honestly, that looked like stuf ol' fabius should be working on, not the imperium.

If you find that creepy, i reccomend you to never, ever, set an eye upon any of these things:

Second WW , especially the eastern front.
Holocaust,
Sino-japanese war. Especially rape of nanjing.
Unit 731 and any associated fellow chemical and biological weapons formations from the IJA/IJN.
Einsatzgruppen, doubly disturbing considering the ammount of intellectuals in these formations.
Witchhunts
Italian "pacification" of lybia, including the butcherer of Fezzan,
Italian -abessynian war.
Blockade of the first WW.
Armenian genocide
Late colonial empires and their practices, especially the Dutch east indies and belgian Kongo.
Indian Famines.
Opiate wars.
Mental institutions, especially early on with human trials.
Chemical and biological warfare.


Etc, etc, etc.


We as a species have allready done way worse then strapping a weapon to a fetus.

Sigh.

Yes.

I know that. I'm familiar with just about everything you listed. The thing is they are historical fact. The 40k rulebook is not. It's stuff people made up. The creators decided to make what looked like guns with fetuses on them. Just for gross points or shock value. Also even in 40k it doesn;t seem to make sense. It's just gross for shock value.

I mean, 40k is grimdark and turns everything up to 11. This includes the Imperium. How are fetus bolters any crazier than having literal engines of war being made around torturing people? (Penitent engines) The Imperium is supposed to be largely illogical by IRL standards, they use literal lobotomized cyborgs for the vast majority of their labour and their technological processes, body horror is Imperium to a T.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Seems par for the course to me, how is this new at all? 40k has always had disturbing imagery, body horror, and grotesque morbid imagery permeated throughout its existence. Imagery of skulls, decapitated heads, daemons, sacrifices, xenos monsters, weaponry, blood spatter, twisted body parts, cybernetic horrors, self flaggelation, etc ad nauseum are replete throughout 40k rulebooks and codex art. Hell, the 4E imagery of the High Lords of Terra has half of them looking like horrific cybermonsters.

I feel like when I was playing in 5th and 6th, the art was so fetishy for skulls it became kind of funny. Kind of like where's Waldo but instead of finding Waldo it was all about finding something that didn't have a skull somewhere on it XD

Is that just me? Not complaining about creepy imagery, it totally fits the setting, but I look back at my old books and feel like the art for a time was more laughable in how it seemed to slap skulls on every surface it could than creepy. So throwing in more actual creepiness seems like an improvement XD Mountains of skulls haven't been creepy since Terminator.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Seems par for the course to me, how is this new at all? 40k has always had disturbing imagery, body horror, and grotesque morbid imagery permeated throughout its existence. Imagery of skulls, decapitated heads, daemons, sacrifices, xenos monsters, weaponry, blood spatter, twisted body parts, cybernetic horrors, self flaggelation, etc ad nauseum are replete throughout 40k rulebooks and codex art. Hell, the 4E imagery of the High Lords of Terra has half of them looking like horrific cybermonsters.

I feel like when I was playing in 5th and 6th, the art was so fetishy for skulls it became kind of funny. Kind of like where's Waldo but instead of finding Waldo it was all about finding something that didn't have a skull somewhere on it XD

Is that just me? Not complaining about creepy imagery, it totally fits the setting, but I look back at my old books and feel like the art for a time was more laughable in how it seemed to slap skulls on every surface it could than creepy. So throwing in more actual creepiness seems like an improvement XD Mountains of skulls haven't been creepy since Terminator.

The whole skull shtick indeed is basically for any non GW inducted the first thing visible.

Like, why does the wall of martyerers, have so many bloody skulls on it...
Housing units, you bet your ass there's skulls on it.
Models, skull decorations to skulls on pikes, funnily enough khorneberzerks had less skulls on them and if mostly in the form of small "fetishes" then many other units.

Casualty 792072 10932058 wrote:

Something similar used to happen in Ireland, but it tailed off a bit at least in part because people started pointing out the images were in fact of cat fetuses. Because human fetuses didn't look human enough to provoke the reaction they were angling for.

I mention this because the imagery above, while creepy, is also extremely stylised, further because of how it's coloured. It's not even clear if the faces are organic at all. They are shocking and strange, but they aren't clearly practical or biological realistic - the intention is entirely to evoke and disturb.

Oh I don't claim it isn't stylised or that I have big know how in the nature of fetuses, but to me it doesn't seem historical or creepy. When I was 2 years younger and my mom was still forcing me to go to church, I had to dingle a censer that would fit in to w40k. 3 baby faced buttom and the cap in form of a stylised wings. And in a big convent near us, there is a censer, which is still being used durning big festivities, that has the bottom in the shape of a females face and the top is a saints top of the skull inlaid in silver. Now DG on the other hand, those models are creepy as hell. Worse they make me remember how dead horse smells.

Like, why does the wall of martyerers, have so many bloody skulls on it...

Well there are those things in churchs called ossoariums or martyr walls, whole rooms made out of monk and priests bones and skulls. There are a few in Poland, and I know they are also in spain. Maybe it was inspired by that.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Seems par for the course to me, how is this new at all? 40k has always had disturbing imagery, body horror, and grotesque morbid imagery permeated throughout its existence. Imagery of skulls, decapitated heads, daemons, sacrifices, xenos monsters, weaponry, blood spatter, twisted body parts, cybernetic horrors, self flaggelation, etc ad nauseum are replete throughout 40k rulebooks and codex art. Hell, the 4E imagery of the High Lords of Terra has half of them looking like horrific cybermonsters.

I feel like when I was playing in 5th and 6th, the art was so fetishy for skulls it became kind of funny. Kind of like where's Waldo but instead of finding Waldo it was all about finding something that didn't have a skull somewhere on it XD

Is that just me? Not complaining about creepy imagery, it totally fits the setting, but I look back at my old books and feel like the art for a time was more laughable in how it seemed to slap skulls on every surface it could than creepy. So throwing in more actual creepiness seems like an improvement XD Mountains of skulls haven't been creepy since Terminator.

The whole skull shtick indeed is basically for any non GW inducted the first thing visible.

Like, why does the wall of martyerers, have so many bloody skulls on it...
Housing units, you bet your ass there's skulls on it.
Models, skull decorations to skulls on pikes, funnily enough khorneberzerks had less skulls on them and if mostly in the form of small "fetishes" then many other units.

You answered your own question. The Imperium is one giant martyrdom cult and the skull is the face of The Emperor. Same reason out own resident martyrdom cult has crosses everywhere.

Ossuaries and similar skull-encrusted structures are indeed a big inspiration for the all-permeating religious imagery of the Imperium, canonically to both remind all citizens of their impeding martyrdom's necessity and to impress on them the holiness of the human form. Like it was in Nemesis the Warlock, another 2000AD inspiration, the citizens are expected to buy wholly into the cult of martyr and intolerance, where only the "normals" are allowed to live. To this end they must be indoctrinated to see, live and breathe the idea that any deviation from the human form is an abomination to be feared and destroyed.

This imagery is the heart of 40k, as well as the understanding of its sheer horror. Those pictures that show the brutal grind, oppression and squalor of its denizens tell a thousand stories with more humanity in them than any glorification of their "heroes" would.