Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Actually they do NOT believe in the imperial creed. Read the books. Everything that happened AFTER the Emperor "died" was done by the Imperium, on it's own, without the consent of the E, or the Custodes. It's almost a direct quote by Trajaan in book 1 when he is admonishing the Counselor for his belief that the Custodes and the Church should join together and fight the wars of the Imperium. He's like: those are your wars of your perverted church, of a perverted imperium. It's never what they wanted, and they are the literal counselors of the Emperor, who talk with him and commune with him. Valarian knows what the greatest truth of the galaxy is, as a "best friend" of the emperor, and he knows machine Spirits exist. I don't see the breakdown in the logic.

I don’t buy it, for a number of reasons. 1, it’s from black library book, the quality products that brought us perpetuals and back flipping grey knights in terminator. 2, it doesn’t mean they have unlimited knowledge of the admech deep dark secrets. If the admech don’t know machine spirits are made up then how would they be able to tell the custodes the truth? No, it’s accepted as the truth so that’s what they believe. It doesn’t make it true. 3, these are the same people who believe the emperor talks to them and that they can meditate on and divine signs from him and act upon them. We know that that is rubbish because he’s dead. So any dreams they are having are just that, dreams. But more importantly they are indoctrinated and brainwashed as part of their creation period and bombarded with what “knowledge” the imperium has. So they are in doctrines with a jumble of absolute rubbish entirely out of context.

One custodes saying he believes in machine spirits in a black library book in no way proves they exist in universe. It only proves that he believes they do and that black library books aren’t very good. So I won’t read them if that’s ok. (Disclaimer, not all BL books are garbage, some are entertaining enough but none are reliable sources).

It seems the background has changed. I think the new background is worse, and a step in the wrong direction. I do not like the idea that technology has a belief based shadow in the Warp, that to me is amping up the power of human belief in the setting to the level of the stupid Ork gestalt field background and I just find it distasteful and silly.

Human's always had that. That's where the Dark Gods come from, the emotions and psychic presence of sentient life reflected in the Warp. Belief in 40k translates directly to events in reality. You could even take the stance that machine spirits could be demons bound to the Omnissiah. The concept is directly tied to the religious dogma of the Imperium after all and they do love their angels/demons.
For us readers, it can still be taken as the Admech having a poor understanding of advanced tech or we could believe as the Admech believes in-universe and that machines really do have spirits. I prefer the latter because a computer not booting up properly because you didn't say please is pretty funny.

End of he day people can choose to read it how they like but I remember how it clearly was and it hasn’t change except maybe the writing is getting worse. Otherwise if you choose to believe that in 40K machine spirits are real then you are missing a lot of the fun of the setting by missing the subtle jokes in the setting.

 Gert wrote:
Human's always had that. That's where the Dark Gods come from, the emotions and psychic presence of sentient life reflected in the Warp. Belief in 40k translates directly to events in reality. You could even take the stance that machine spirits could be demons bound to the Omnissiah. The concept is directly tied to the religious dogma of the Imperium after all and they do love their angels/demons.
For us readers, it can still be taken as the Admech having a poor understanding of advanced tech or we could believe as the Admech believes in-universe and that machines really do have spirits. I prefer the latter because a computer not booting up properly because you didn't say please is pretty funny.

I dunno, I don't have a problem with the idea that the warp is about human emotions and even belief, I have a problem with the degree. If the belief of one human in their lasgun is enough to cause a physical effect in universe, that to me is a power orders of magnitude above what I think the transference between the material and the warp should be. That's my personal taste and I am not arguing that it's not how it now works, but I don't think that is how it worked when I got into 40K and I think it is in all aspects a lame and uninteresting thing to put into the setting. It's also pretty inconsistent, because we should be seeing all sorts of crazy things from the beliefs of humans and Eldar and so on but we just...don't, to any great extent. The Chaos Gods are representing "primal" forces (though I would argue that cosmology is really badly thought out to be fair) that are common to all living things. I don't see a guardsman's superstitions about his rifle being anywhere near the same order of magnitude.

Well, to be fair, Custodes are supposed to be without emotion, as in they are not capable of it, or understanding it.

I disagree with the writing getting worse. The first few books of the BL were TERRIBLE, looking at you Brothers of the Snake. and the first few Gaunt books, those weren't BAD, but they weren't Dostoyevsky either. Let's be real. The majority of 40k writing is just bolter porn and cheap serialized fan fiction. None of it would make a best seller list outside of it's own genre. Even in Science Fiction it's not among it's peers as to quality.

Saying that it's "gotten worse" is a misnomer. It's always been kinda crap.

I think that's one of the disconnects between people like me and Andy and yourself. I don't consider the Black Library to be the main source of setting information. I see it as being more the game books - stuff like the codices, the rulebooks and maybe White Dwarf articles.

The books I see as an interesting side show, just some stories set in the universe vaguely but nothing to take too seriously WRT the setting - take what you like out of it and leave the rest.

But more and more I see people referring to the novels and saying you've got to read the books to talk about the background. I'm not really interested in that, because to my mind the majority of the output of the Black Library is pretty terrible.

I think both points of view are valid, it's just something I've noticed in these discussions.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think that's one of the disconnects between people like me and Andy and yourself. I don't consider the Black Library to be the main source of setting information. I see it as being more the game books - stuff like the codices, the rulebooks and maybe White Dwarf articles.

The books I see as an interesting side show, just some stories set in the universe vaguely but nothing to take too seriously WRT the setting - take what you like out of it and leave the rest.

But more and more I see people referring to the novels and saying you've got to read the books to talk about the background. I'm not really interested in that, because to my mind the majority of the output of the Black Library is pretty terrible.

I think both points of view are valid, it's just something I've noticed in these discussions.

Got to say you have the nail on the head there as far as I’m concerned. I enjoy some of the books but mostly the ones set away from the big events that aren’t tying to flesh out the history of the setting. The ones that are just stories set in the universe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Well, to be fair, Custodes are supposed to be without emotion, as in they are not capable of it, or understanding it.

I disagree with the writing getting worse. The first few books of the BL were TERRIBLE, looking at you Brothers of the Snake. and the first few Gaunt books, those weren't BAD, but they weren't Dostoyevsky either. Let's be real. The majority of 40k writing is just bolter porn and cheap serialized fan fiction. None of it would make a best seller list outside of it's own genre. Even in Science Fiction it's not among it's peers as to quality.

Saying that it's "gotten worse" is a misnomer. It's always been kinda crap.

You’re right they aren’t ever going to classic works of literature, but even by the low threshold of “bolter porn” (good term by the way) some are awful. The worst for me are the ones realised to sell a new edition etc. Dark imperium was garbage! Where as Dan abnets stuff is a good fun read.

I think it's a good idea to differentiate between what is said in codices, rulebooks, and campaign material and novels, much like how religious fanatics differentiate between canon and Apocrypha. But freely admitting when we just don't like what they say is very good too. For me it's the Great Devourer fluff for Tyranids; it's stupid and nonsensical and I can't be bothered with it. Conversely I love my head-canon for it. I can sympathize with an aesthetic disgust even if I don't share it.

That said, I think this thread has encouraged me to consider that Warhammer just isn't for me any more, as it's more head-canon than lore now, and it's probably best to move on and develop my own setting. Thank you all for helping to motivate me on that.

In the 40K I grew up with, the in-universe concept of "machine spirits" was just a dark example of a "tool for control of the masses" and ironic mocking of technology/learning-loss that the reader was assumed to recognize. It was just another element of the decay of the setting, rather than everything mechanical having a soul-reflection in the warp.

The closest the theories really got back then was how the Imperial use of organic components for non-computer "computing" could be the pathway for a warp-influence gaining a foothold. A demon could take over a titan because not only could an entity control (and horribly mutate) the occupants to control it normally, but it would also enter the networked "brain-matter" all throughout the titan which combined together formed what was essentially an organic-AI. Of it the titan/ship was old enough, it might secretly contain an ancient AI in actuality, that the occupants were not learned enough to recognize as anything more than circuitry.

I know the games are zero percent cannon, but I LOVED the story in the Inquisitor game. A merged Null with an AI (I can't remember exactly). It was capable of ripping chaos worlds apart and closing and opening warp rifts.

I really wish GW wasnt so lazy with their lore department, and really stepped outside the box with it. The games do a better job with it than the actual company....