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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I was with you right up till "This all continued until 6th edition when they were wiped out and replaced by a chapter of cunningly disguised ultramarines."
Please explain?

Earlier Templars were characterised as a firmly non-codex compliant chapter - no tac squads, no devastators, no squad sergeants (formed into Sword Brethren squads), similar to the space wolves rather than the more codex-like structure of the Blood Angels/Dark Angels.

When their codex was dropped and they were moved in with marines they became your standard ten men in a rhino supported by devastators, scouts, artillery, etc. By 7th edition you actually got better bonuses on the charge with Ultramarines than with Templars.
Plus sweeping fluff changes regarding their size, attitudes, structure and doctrines and so on.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So in the same Chapter, Grimaldus both derided Yarrick (The guy who fought a warboss in Melee) for being weak and cowardly for giving up a world without a fight (Smart tactical plan) and then laments that the "Mortals" are incapable of properly dealing with the situation at hand. Throughout the book Grimaldus accuses several brothers of lacking fore-thought or intelligence, and rushing blindly into a situation thus causing brothers to be wounded. But then wants to fight the largest Ork Fleet in HISTORY, because "THES COLURS DON'T RUN SON!" He's a walking contradiction of intent and purpose as a character, only eclipsed by the completely flawed attempt at a character that makes up his Chapter Master (Helbrect).

When does Grimaldus say that - I recall him looking at Yarick with respect - like the vast majority of the Astartes present.

Can you quote the relevant sections if you have time - Grimaldus is often a dick but thats part of his character - its even noted by other BTs

 =Angel= wrote:
I happen to think that a lot of the cruelty is practical. Burning a heretic means that no trace of organic material is left(which could be tainted by chaos, and could otherwise infect others/enter the corpse starch recycling). Blessed promethium cleanses spiritual infection and protects the community.

You could humanely put someone to death and cremate their corpse afterwards, but you run the risk of the heretic being immune to mundane weapons or lethal injections. Plus, where is the flair in that?

The problem is that the cruelty and hatred and negative emotion associated with that just ends up feeding Chaos. The Imperium is needlessly cruel and corrupt; it's not a pragmatic society. The pragmatic society in 40k would be the Tau (who still do horrible gak to survive, but are not needlessly cruel like the humans).

 Mr Morden wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So in the same Chapter, Grimaldus both derided Yarrick (The guy who fought a warboss in Melee) for being weak and cowardly for giving up a world without a fight (Smart tactical plan) and then laments that the "Mortals" are incapable of properly dealing with the situation at hand. Throughout the book Grimaldus accuses several brothers of lacking fore-thought or intelligence, and rushing blindly into a situation thus causing brothers to be wounded. But then wants to fight the largest Ork Fleet in HISTORY, because "THES COLURS DON'T RUN SON!" He's a walking contradiction of intent and purpose as a character, only eclipsed by the completely flawed attempt at a character that makes up his Chapter Master (Helbrect).

When does Grimaldus say that - I recall him looking at Yarick with respect - like the vast majority of the Astartes present.

Can you quote the relevant sections if you have time - Grimaldus is often a dick but thats part of his character - its even noted by other BTs

Let me get home and re-read it. I could have sworn it was Grimaldus, but it may have been the other Chapter's leader that was there, which name escapes me, but there was a second chapter in the room and someone clearly displays shock and anger at the declaration that Yarrick makes to abandon the first "platform/moon/world" or whatever in the system to the orks.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So in the same Chapter, Grimaldus both derided Yarrick (The guy who fought a warboss in Melee) for being weak and cowardly for giving up a world without a fight (Smart tactical plan) and then laments that the "Mortals" are incapable of properly dealing with the situation at hand. Throughout the book Grimaldus accuses several brothers of lacking fore-thought or intelligence, and rushing blindly into a situation thus causing brothers to be wounded. But then wants to fight the largest Ork Fleet in HISTORY, because "THES COLURS DON'T RUN SON!" He's a walking contradiction of intent and purpose as a character, only eclipsed by the completely flawed attempt at a character that makes up his Chapter Master (Helbrect).

When does Grimaldus say that - I recall him looking at Yarick with respect - like the vast majority of the Astartes present.

Can you quote the relevant sections if you have time - Grimaldus is often a dick but thats part of his character - its even noted by other BTs

Let me get home and re-read it. I could have sworn it was Grimaldus, but it may have been the other Chapter's leader that was there, which name escapes me, but there was a second chapter in the room and someone clearly displays shock and anger at the declaration that Yarrick makes to abandon the first "platform/moon/world" or whatever in the system to the orks.

I found the scene you are referring to, it is a Captain of the Angels of Fire, a lesser successor chapter, that demands that they defend Hades Hive as a symbol of mankind's defiance and superiority over the Orks. Grimaldus actively disagrees with him and sides with Yarrick in having the foresight to see that it would be destroyed rather than attempted to be occupied by Ghazghkull's forces.

https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/bps4r7/book_excerpt_helsreach_commissar_yarrick_shuts_up/

This is the scene for anyone who doesn't easy access to the book.

I think your initial negative impression of the Black Templars may be tainting your viewpoint on some of the characterization in the story.

GW isn't exactly subtle with their naming conventions - Black Templars are Templars who were also historically jerks. The symbolism of the Black Templars chapter is there to make you consider the historical analogue. To get an idea of the BT you have to think of the crusades, a lot of burning of heretics and pillaging and doing bad things in the name of religion because you see yourself towards absolution. The utter belief that you are right in your duty and to question is to perhaps admit that you aren't exactly doing 'Good'.

Given that everyone in 40k is a jerk, the Templars aren't exactly different. They are more inquisitorial than the other chapters.

 Olthannon wrote:
GW isn't exactly subtle with their naming conventions - Black Templars are Templars who were also historically jerks. The symbolism of the Black Templars chapter is there to make you consider the historical analogue. To get an idea of the BT you have to think of the crusades, a lot of burning of heretics and pillaging and doing bad things in the name of religion because you see yourself towards absolution. The utter belief that you are right in your duty and to question is to perhaps admit that you aren't exactly doing 'Good'.

For what it's worth, that's how other people (namely, the King of France) treated the Templars, not the Templar's own M.O. (whose main 'crime' was running a succesful international financial credit institution and being creditors to the wrong people).

If we're going for historical analogies, a far better comparison for the whole "burn the unbeliever and pillage his lands" stick would be the Teutonic Knights, who also incidentally match the Black Templars colors.

Its actually kinda funny, GW has gone out of there way to portray their main characters (Black Library talking here) as NOT jerks. They portray Eisenhorn as likeable, they portray most of their Commissars as likeable or even approachable (Severina is the outlier) and they portray most Space Marines as honorable, and eager to do the right thing. Is it just me or has GW strayed from their GrimDark upbringings for a much more Space Fantasy thing?

No, they haven't. They still do horrible things, these things are just portrayed in a positive light now cause 90% of BL writers are Imperial fanboys at this point.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

1. Never read a book where SM's disdain for anything not a SM was so....prevelent. Their disrepect for base humans is borderline Racist, and yet they have this out of no where respect for the Princeps of Ad Mech.

A princeps is a high-ranking figure with a relative amount of independence and very directly commands a titan, which packs considerable firepower. Insulting them can harm your tactical efforts while gak-talking a guardsman is free.

 Esmer wrote:


For what it's worth, that's how other people (namely, the King of France) treated the Templars, not the Templar's own M.O. (whose main 'crime' was running a succesful international financial credit institution and being creditors to the wrong people).

If we're going for historical analogies, a far better comparison for the whole "burn the unbeliever and pillage his lands" stick would be the Teutonic Knights, who also incidentally match the Black Templars colors.

It would be nice if that were true, that they simply were good guys doing their best. Just because Philip IVth was in debt to them doesn't make them any less unpleasant. The templar knights had a bad image problem because of all that indiscriminate killing they did.

 Olthannon wrote:

 Esmer wrote:


For what it's worth, that's how other people (namely, the King of France) treated the Templars, not the Templar's own M.O. (whose main 'crime' was running a succesful international financial credit institution and being creditors to the wrong people).

If we're going for historical analogies, a far better comparison for the whole "burn the unbeliever and pillage his lands" stick would be the Teutonic Knights, who also incidentally match the Black Templars colors.

It would be nice if that were true, that they simply were good guys doing their best. Just because Philip IVth was in debt to them doesn't make them any less unpleasant. The templar knights had a bad image problem because of all that indiscriminate killing they did.

At the danger of moving into threadjack territory, I'd like some credible sources on that. The Knights Templar fell out of public favor the more they stopped being a primarily military and started becoming a primarily financial institution, and the charges brought forth against them were: intermingling too much with the local Muslims in the Middle East and adopting their beliefs (so, the opposite of murder-y fanaticism), being depraved homosexuals (always a classic accusation against all-male institutions), and secret devil/Baphomet-worshippers (again, standard conspiracy stuff about secretive societies, "Baphomet" likely being a corrupted form of "Mahomet/Muhammad" some poor Templar screamed out while having the gak tortured out of him). The latter part levolved into anti-Freemason paranoia in later centuries.

Did you just make a case for the Christian Crusades being a good thing? You really must love the 40k lore.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Did you just make a case for the Christian Crusades being a good thing? You really must love the 40k lore.

Do you need some Tylenol? It looks like you must have hurt your back pretty badly, what with all those tons of straw you had to carry.

He didn't make any comment about the Crusades being "good" or "bad", he simply offered the facts on why the the Knights Templar fell out of (Christian) public favour. Regardless of what the modern / your personal view of the Crusades are, in the historical context, "intermingling too much with the local Muslims in the Middle East and adopting their beliefs" is indeed something that would cause them to fall out of favour with the Christian sphere of influence.

Cronch wrote:
No, they haven't. They still do horrible things, these things are just portrayed in a positive light now cause 90% of BL writers are Imperial fanboys at this point.

Nice and sutiably dark bit in the new Inferno book 5 by Ultramarine Sgt



Templars also lost influence as they failed to keep their holdings in the Holy Land and their purpose became less clear as well as their independance from the laws (and taxes) of the kings of Europe (mainly France). Even then many were protected by the King of Portugal and others.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Did you just make a case for the Christian Crusades being a good thing?

...reaching, much?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Its actually kinda funny, GW has gone out of there way to portray their main characters (Black Library talking here) as NOT jerks. They portray Eisenhorn as likeable, they portray most of their Commissars as likeable or even approachable (Severina is the outlier) and they portray most Space Marines as honorable, and eager to do the right thing. Is it just me or has GW strayed from their GrimDark upbringings for a much more Space Fantasy thing?

There's a large portion of the fanbase that wants the Imperium to be portrayed as good guys *because* they are baby-murdering xenophobic fascists, without a hint of irony.

It's also funny that those some people HATE HATE HATE, anything about Tau culture or lore. Gotta hate the Tau who don't have centuries of the worst imaginable gak as their backstory. Honestly the best "race" or faction in the entire lore is likely the Orks. They don't hate anyone, they just love fightin. Or they hate everyone equally. Has there ever been any lore as to whether or not the average ork has the capacity to be racist/xenophobic?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It's also funny that those some people HATE HATE HATE, anything about Tau culture or lore. Gotta hate the Tau who don't have centuries of the worst imaginable gak as their backstory. Honestly the best "race" or faction in the entire lore is likely the Orks. They don't hate anyone, they just love fightin. Or they hate everyone equally. Has there ever been any lore as to whether or not the average ork has the capacity to be racist/xenophobic?

Well, they believe Orks are the best, so there's that.

They will also enslave or murder you without feeling an iota of remorse.

No one is a good faction in 40k. They're all terrible.

The Squats were too trusting. But is the Absence of racism not-racism? Are the Nid's or Necrons Racist? Certainly not. The nids exist off hunger and sheer desire to extend their race. The Necrons are just machine slaves following their design. Their gods might be, but they have no intent in the matter.

It's like saying a Bolter is evil I think. There are no "Good guys" I will give you that. But to say the Nids are Evil is to anthropomorphize them.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:It's also funny that those some people HATE HATE HATE, anything about Tau culture or lore. Gotta hate the Tau who don't have centuries of the worst imaginable gak as their backstory. Honestly the best "race" or faction in the entire lore is likely the Orks. They don't hate anyone, they just love fightin. Or they hate everyone equally. Has there ever been any lore as to whether or not the average ork has the capacity to be racist/xenophobic?

Hmm Those Sterilisation Programs ala the Aschen from Stargate except worse, the rampant T'au superiority disguised as Xenophilia, the enslavement of the Vespids... yeah the T'au are the good guys!

JNAProductions wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It's also funny that those some people HATE HATE HATE, anything about Tau culture or lore. Gotta hate the Tau who don't have centuries of the worst imaginable gak as their backstory. Honestly the best "race" or faction in the entire lore is likely the Orks. They don't hate anyone, they just love fightin. Or they hate everyone equally. Has there ever been any lore as to whether or not the average ork has the capacity to be racist/xenophobic?

Well, they believe Orks are the best, so there's that.

They will also enslave or murder you without feeling an iota of remorse.

No one is a good faction in 40k. They're all terrible.

See, the thing with the Orks is, yes, they will enslave and butcher you, and have a good time doing it, but it's not out of any sense of malice, it's simply Kraterocracy in it's purest form. Also, ya know, the fact they were literally created to be so, so it's not really their fault.

The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn? And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude. — From Culture vs. Kultur: Thoughts on Orkish Society by Uthan the Perverse, a controversial Eldar philosopher

Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The Squats were too trusting. But is the Absence of racism not-racism? Are the Nid's or Necrons Racist? Certainly not. The nids exist off hunger and sheer desire to extend their race. The Necrons are just machine slaves following their design. Their gods might be, but they have no intent in the matter.

It's like saying a Bolter is evil I think. There are no "Good guys" I will give you that. But to say the Nids are Evil is to anthropomorphize them.

Preeeeeety sure the whole reason the Necrons exist is like, galactic level racism (though I guess technically Xenophobia is a more fitting word), first against the Old Ones, then against anything that didn't live on a C'tan-Eating-Your-Star-Irradiated-To-Hell-And-Back planet, then against anything that had the sheer audacity to dare evolve into anything more complex than a virus.

Yeah I never quite got the Tau hate.. I mean not a fan of the older suit asthetics but the general concept of drones etc. is cool.

The greater good lore thing.. its pretty much Like the emperors crusade +1 coz they accept all races into compliance and aren't as picky

The Tau chaos arc is going to be interesting

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Hmm Those Sterilisation Programs ala the Aschen from Stargate except worse, the rampant T'au superiority disguised as Xenophilia, the enslavement of the Vespids... yeah the T'au are the good guys! .

Compared to the Imperium, they *are* the good guys. They're the "making hard choices to survive" faction. The Imperium is the "needlessly cruel far beyond what is necessary for survival" faction.

The Imperium is just Skaven in space.

Hecaton wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Hmm Those Sterilisation Programs ala the Aschen from Stargate except worse, the rampant T'au superiority disguised as Xenophilia, the enslavement of the Vespids... yeah the T'au are the good guys! .

Compared to the Imperium, they *are* the good guys. They're the "making hard choices to survive" faction. The Imperium is the "needlessly cruel far beyond what is necessary for survival" faction.

The Imperium is just Skaven in space.

The Imperium has spent Nearly ELEVEN GODS-DAMNED-MILLENIA being beset on all sides by vile Xenos and Chaos. Humanity learned during the Age of Strife what happens when you take half measures, or treat with Xenos. You get, well, The Age of Strife. It was the Eldar, after all, that caused Golden Age Humanity to crumble into the shell that the Emperor had to begin his Great Crusade to restore. It was Chaos who sliced the Imperium in twain, and it was the Orks who very nearly finished the job.

And let's not forget, DAOT Humanity were even more aggressive, but had the tech to back up their bluster. When the Eldar look at humanity, wiping out entire Solar Systems because a fraction of their population turned to Chaos and they judged that the ones who didn't stop them before the Astartes had to get involved (Iron Hands, woo!) were not worthy of mercy, they think "Well at least the Mon-keigh have calmed down a little and are back to using just normal weapons rather than GUNS THAT SHOOT BLACK HOLES BACK IN TIME TO DESTROY AN ENEMY BEFORE IT WAS EVEN AN ENEMY."

The Imperium of Man is making the hard choices to survive, and even then it's not working. After 11,000 years of this I am surprised the Imperium isn't MORE cruel. It's just like the Eldar, if you can sacrifice a billion lives to potentially save a trillion later on, it's worth whatever "nastiness" that comes with it. The only difference is the scale, since the Eldar would happily sacrifice a trillion Mon-keigh lives for a bakers dozen of Eldar.

Why do we always trot out the trope of "Beset on all sides" ala "They made us do it" when defending utterly indefensible. Last I checked the Imperials have done countless "Crusades" with the sole intent and purpose of wiping out anything either A. Not in keeping with church Doctrine, or B. not human or chaos touched. Everyone was just doing there thing until the Emperor decided it was time to start slaughtering the blue people, or the green people, or the red people, or in another way, ANYTHING THAT WASN'T WHITE. People hate the tau for one very good and obvious reason. 40k is crack for the Alt Right, and the Tau are the Lefties.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Why do we always trot out the trope of "Beset on all sides" ala "They made us do it" when defending utterly indefensible. Last I checked the Imperials have done countless "Crusades" with the sole intent and purpose of wiping out anything either A. Not in keeping with church Doctrine, or B. not human or chaos touched. Everyone was just doing there thing until the Emperor decided it was time to start slaughtering the blue people, or the green people, or the red people, or in another way, ANYTHING THAT WASN'T WHITE. People hate the tau for one very good and obvious reason. 40k is crack for the Alt Right, and the Tau are the Lefties.

Like... for serious, are you all right? If you seriously think the Imperium hates black people, I don't really know what to say I've never heard anything so ludicrously wrong in my life. I guess Tallarn doesn't exist in your reality? Or the Catachan? Or the Nocturnean?

Also, if you think T'au are Communist or Leftist, you have zero clue whatsoever as to what those two terms mean. Yeah, a society that is made up of five explicitly classes where one of those classes rules over the other four and only one of those classes controls the means of production is 100% what Karl Marx said. /s

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So just finished the Helsreach book, and I gotta say, the entire chapter of the Black Templars are kinda, jerks. From Helbrect and his "Thank you sir may I have another" initiation ceremony, to Grimaldus going full Darth Vader on anyone who slightly loses hope while he is constantly bemoaning how he's going to die, to the constantly weepy apothacary who gets smacked around for crying, it's all so.....not what I expected.

1. Never read a book where SM's disdain for anything not a SM was so....prevelent. Their disrepect for base humans is borderline Racist, and yet they have this out of no where respect for the Princeps of Ad Mech.

I know, isn't it great? Seriously, it's one of the reasons I've always liked the Templars. You see, in this world of mostly squishy humans, Space Marines are so far removed from mere mortals, even the best of them will to most seem aloof, stand-offish, almost impossible to relate to, etc. So yes, the Templars are indeed 'jerks', and that's putting it mildly.

2. Black Templars call themselves Knights. This was a little confusing at first. Not really a bad thing, just thrown by it at first. Are they the only chapter that does this? I know the Death Company call themselves "Knights of Caliban", but I've never seen the words Space Marine almost uniformly replaced by "Knight".

Again, this is part of their flawed character that makes them a little more interesting compared to the various vanilla / poster boys / goodie goodies out there. Marines in general view themselves as superior to normal humans, because, well... they are. The Black Templars take that superiority complex even further by placing themselves above 'normal' Space Marines. They are Knights, Sons of Dorn, them and a bunch of other Imperial Fist successors who take part in the Feast of Blades, etc, they all circle-jerk in an elitist club reserved for the Knights, who are better than mere 'regular' Astartes - from their own viewpoint, of course.

I'll say it - yeah, the BT's are brutal, zealous, fanatical killers. If you're not a fellow Son of Dorn, they will view themselves as above you and as better than you and they will not attempt to hide their disdain or contempt at your (perceived) inferiority. In short, they're downright unpleasant to be around, they're real ... and that's all only to those fighting on their side.

And I love them for it. Crusade on, my brothers!

 BaconCatBug wrote:
If you seriously think the Imperium hates black people, I don't really know what to say

Well that escalated quickly...

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Why do we always trot out the trope of "Beset on all sides" ala "They made us do it" when defending utterly indefensible. Last I checked the Imperials have done countless "Crusades" with the sole intent and purpose of wiping out anything either A. Not in keeping with church Doctrine, or B. not human or chaos touched. Everyone was just doing there thing until the Emperor decided it was time to start slaughtering the blue people, or the green people, or the red people, or in another way, ANYTHING THAT WASN'T WHITE. People hate the tau for one very good and obvious reason. 40k is crack for the Alt Right, and the Tau are the Lefties.

I don't think you actually seem to know the 40k lore very well if you assume that the Imperium is the alt right and Tau are leftists in any way. Both are authoritarian oligarchal empires that have a "my way or the highway" approach to expansionism, but the Tau are anything but communist when they have a literal caste system that prevents any social mobility. Similarly, it's incredibly reductionist to the Imperium to the alt right when they're so decentralized that governance is really about paying taxes and lip service to the Emperor than anything else, that's why you can range from feral worlds with borderline cavemen to fully fledged democracies that exist on worlds in the Imperium.

As long as the imperial tithe is paid and the black ships keep being supplied i font think iom cares at all about how a planet is run. Apart from maybe if the population has some tentacles growing out of rheir elbow...