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Made in gb
Automated Rubric Marine of Tzeentch




dorset

Give chaos the Dark imperium.


In the wake failed attack on terra, chaos make a fighting retreat to the line of the Rift, Giving up ground before the Indomitus Crusade but trying to maintain their force, trading space for time. they use this time to properly take control over the majority of the Dark Imperium. Bhaal still stands under the blood angels legion (and allies), plus a few other mostly isolated locations but the majority of the region is under chaos control, and used to rebuild the Traitor legions to a threat able to grind the indomitus Crusade into a standstill. However, Abaddon soon finds that conquering territory is much easier than holding it. Orks, Nids, the tau all expand into the same vacuum, creating strong local empires that are extremely difficult to stomp out, and the imperial holdouts begin slash and burn raids into the lost territory, all of which draws troops off the Crusade front to deal with this "secondary" theatres. on top of this, chaos lords drunk with success being pursuing personal agendas, establishing pocket empires of their own which rapidly start fighting each other as much as the external threats. Despite his position as the notional leader of the forces of chaos, Abaddon finds he is powerless to deal with these issues, he simply cant afford to take the troops off the imperial front to force these breakaways back into line.

The net result is that while Chaos is technically in control of vast swathes of the galaxy, and at its strongest since the Heresy, it is now beset by the same issues of too many local problems that keep siphoning off troops that the Imperium has been hamstrung by for millennia. The Imperium, too, is unable to make significant headway past the great rift. the front swings back and forth over a broad area of systems, but no great advance is possible. billions die in the fighting, but no victory is in sight, only a endless war.....

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Coven of XVth 2000pts
The Blades of Ruin 2,000pts Watch Company Rho 1650pts
 
   
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Morally-Flexible Malleus Hearing Whispers




Remove Knights and LoW from non apoc games.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/04 22:15:14


 
   
Made in au
Regular Dakkanaut



Tallarook, Victoria, Australia

Make the imperium split into two factions
   
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As much as I hate primaris, from being a full model overhaul for one of the armies that needed it least, to fluff that I really don’t agree with or like, to bringing tacticool aesthetics to an army I preferred to lack them (shoulda left that to Tau) I can not support a retcon or fluff change designed to strip them from the tabletop. People have invested heavily in primaris and I can not support taking those models away from the tabletop game altogether. And no legends BS either; that still stings that my chaos bike lord is in that atrocious category XD

Instead, I like the idea that chaos and the imperium are a delicate balance struggling for ultimate control of mankind. Make it akin to the marriage of heaven and hell, where the imperium represents authoritarian order and chaos an expression of yearning for libertarian freedoms, and where either extrema ultimately leads to ruin. For irony, make it so neither side is capable of understanding how much one needs the other.

The imperium would be confined to the old ways of doing things, and chaos would constantly be attempting to innovate and evolve. Let both methods have their merits and flaws.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. -Kurt Vonnegut 
   
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macluvin wrote:
As much as I hate primaris, from being a full model overhaul for one of the armies that needed it least, to fluff that I really don’t agree with or like, to bringing tacticool aesthetics to an army I preferred to lack them (shoulda left that to Tau) I can not support a retcon or fluff change designed to strip them from the tabletop. People have invested heavily in primaris and I can not support taking those models away from the tabletop game altogether. And no legends BS either; that still stings that my chaos bike lord is in that atrocious category XD


Retconning primaris away doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of the models though. My pitch on the first page was basically just to say that marines got all the primaris gear without the super-sized marines themselves. So intercessor models are basically just a chance to get truescale tactical marines. Interceptors are just a new type of unit made popular throughout the galaxy now that the tech is available. Etc.

As a more likely alternative, I could see future fluff basically saying, "Yeah, firstborn and primaris are both still around, but they're functionally very similar. Turns out those extra organs weren't important enough to represent on the tabletop. Both firstborn and primaris marines end up assigned to 'bolter squads.' Instead of assault intercessors and assault marine, you just have 'chainsword squads.' "


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in us
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Wyldhunt wrote:
macluvin wrote:
As much as I hate primaris, from being a full model overhaul for one of the armies that needed it least, to fluff that I really don’t agree with or like, to bringing tacticool aesthetics to an army I preferred to lack them (shoulda left that to Tau) I can not support a retcon or fluff change designed to strip them from the tabletop. People have invested heavily in primaris and I can not support taking those models away from the tabletop game altogether. And no legends BS either; that still stings that my chaos bike lord is in that atrocious category XD


Retconning primaris away doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of the models though. My pitch on the first page was basically just to say that marines got all the primaris gear without the super-sized marines themselves. So intercessor models are basically just a chance to get truescale tactical marines. Interceptors are just a new type of unit made popular throughout the galaxy now that the tech is available. Etc.

As a more likely alternative, I could see future fluff basically saying, "Yeah, firstborn and primaris are both still around, but they're functionally very similar. Turns out those extra organs weren't important enough to represent on the tabletop. Both firstborn and primaris marines end up assigned to 'bolter squads.' Instead of assault intercessors and assault marine, you just have 'chainsword squads.' "


Seems like a sensible way to patch a few things up. I personally love this idea.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. -Kurt Vonnegut 
   
Made in us
Focused Fire Warrior




Les Etats Unis

A lot of other people have posted some very good ideas, but here's one that's gone undiscussed:

Retcon things so the Emperor is dead.

No comatose state. No Star-Child. No "if the Emperor dies then the entire solar system gets flushed down his magic warp toilet" nonsense. The Emperor is unequivocally a rotting corpse, and all the daily sacrifices are just to power his golden chair and let the Imperium pretend he's still kicking. If that's too much, make it so he is comatose, but is explicitly never coming back or doing anything important under any capacity. Make it so the guy can't form conscious thought at all.

Obviously, if this were done, all the stories from the Imperium perspective would still treat Big E as if he were alive. It wouldn't stop being heresy to suggest that he died. It would only add another layer of tragedy and dark humor to those discussions, since it's so obvious that the Imperium is in a state of collective religious denial.

That will of course never happen because it conflicts with the power fantasy of having a big hypermasculine shiny guy who can come down and solve all your problems for you, but what can you do, right?

Dudeface wrote:
 Eldarain wrote:
Is there another game where players consistently blame each other for the failings of the creator?

If you want to get existential, life for some.
 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






another +1 to upping the mystery. It used to be that there were theories (Which could never be confirmed or denied as they had never written the answer) that it was Horus, not the Emperor, who was sat on the throne in a comatose state. Now we have basically explicit things where people are going to see the emperor, and I think it's a bit rubbish to be honest.

+1 for killing off some characters. Shake things up a bit, push factions into big fights, allow new characters to rise. If needs be, make a "second age" of 40k, and have it so that you cannot include 1st-age and 2nd-age units in the same army as they wouldn't have existed at the same time, or something.

I think that my changes would include:

1: More prominence of the T'au empire taking humans into their fold. The T'au empire is supposedly one of the better places to live - I can see why humans would ditch the imperium for them.
2: More terrifying tyranid-ness. They used to be unstoppable, every world they touched they eventually consumed. Now they seem to be more of a pest that you can slap on the nose to stop it knawing on solar systems.
3: Split the imperium - perhaps Guillimann finds out that Horus is actually in the golden throne, and seeks to destroy and replace him. The primaris side with Guillimann, the firstborn with the emperor. Everyone thinks they're in the right. Primaris start making their own rules and creating new technology, and the firstborn & inquisition claim it to be heresy. Guillimann, in his arrogence, will ultimately move towards AI and potentially doom the galaxy to men of iron.

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Monticello, IN

I would have one of the Fallen turn himself in at The Rock and have him be spared execution as he's seen as being both uncorrupted as he was led on by Luther rather than down the path, AND because he had been taking the fight TO the Fallen in the interim. It would be a cool story to tell which gives us a character with some depth, AND it would and a moment of complete altruism from the Dark Angels no less that would grate on all the nihilistic grimderp edgelords that obsess over the thought of the setting being totally amoral.

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 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Its AoS, it doesn't have to make sense.
 
   
Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut




There is a genetic fault in the Primaris....and they all die.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/05 09:10:24


 
   
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Tangentville, New Jersey

 Duskweaver wrote:
Arguably, this isn't just "one change", but what I'd really want to do can be summarized as "bring the mystery back".

Spoiler:
Delete all the Horus Heresy stuff. Explicitly make it non-canon. Delete Guilliman's return. Delete Cawl.

Nobody in the Imperium is more than 1000 or so years old (so Dante can still exist, and you can still have some ancient, senile AdMech magi). Nobody in the Imperium remembers the Horus Heresy, or the Age of Apostasy or any of that. It's all myths and legends. Did it even happen? Is the Emperor even real, or is the Throne room just a sealed room full of machinery nobody understands? Did the founders of the SoB really get taken to see the Emperor by the Custodes, or was that just a story invented to cover up them assassinating Vandire for other reasons?

Nobody knows.

Did the primarchs exist, or were they just the original leaders of the Astartes, or the scientists who designed them, filtered through 10,000 years of ignorance and supersition? Are the daemon primarchs just powerful daemons who have convinced a bunch of Warp-crazy traitor Astartes that they are their fathers, and that they're part of some glorious holy war against "the False Emperor"? Maybe they call him that because they know he never really existed?

Nobody knows.

Is that really Roboute Guilliman in that stasis field on Macragge? Or is it just an ancient abhuman giant in armour? Or a statue painted to look like a living man? You can't see properly through the blurring of the stasis field. And you can't switch the field off to check. If it's really Guilliman, switching off the field might kill him. Or what if that's not Guilliman but rather the traitorous brother who killed him? Switching off the field might unleash a terrifying horror from the ancient past that the present-day Imperium has no way to deal with.

Nobody knows.

Do the Traitor Legions even remember things as they were? Can anyone trust their memories after ten millennia in the Eye of Terror? The oldest of them might remember a great galactic war against a glowing golden figure who led their brothers against them. But did that really happen? Is it a trick of the Chaos Gods to make them want to conquer/destroy Terra? Or maybe they're the ones who fought for the Emperor and then were betrayed, and the 'loyalist' Astartes are really just a later creation (not as strong but more controllable) made to defend the nascent Imperium from their outcast predecessors? Maybe the original Chaos Marines were actually the Thunder Warriors?

Nobody knows.

Maybe Living Saints are real, or maybe it's all a con by the Ecclesiarchy who keeps putting a new mindwiped and hypno-indoctrinated woman in that fancy golden armour every time the previous 'Celestine' gets her head lopped off by Kharn? Even if they're real, are they anything to do with the Emperor, or are they spawned by the Chaos gods as a joke? Or are they just a new evolution of the human psyker gene, the next stage of the human species as designed by the Old Ones? Are they the Eldar gods who have found a way to cheat Slaanesh and are reincarnating in human bodies now? Are they the biological descendants of the Emperor from the thousands of years he spent in hiding on Old Earth? Or are they the last fading remnants of the superhuman subspecies that gave rise to the Emperor in the first place?

Nobody knows.

The point is that I'd ensure the official fluff would present things in such a way as to avoid nailing down anything that the people of the Imperium couldn't possibly know the 'real' answer to. So you'd never have some 10,000 year old supergenius popping up and telling us all "this is how it really happened". Recent events would still be known, and basic facts about the setting (like how space marines are made, or which part of the galaxy Iyanden is in, or how orks reproduce) would still have an 'objectively true' version (even if most people in the setting are wrong about it). But Imperial record-keeping is terrible and anything more than a couple of thousand years in the past should be at least as uncertain as similarly ancient events in our own (pre-)history are to us. To someone in the 41st millennium, the Horus Heresy is as distant as the invention of pottery is to you and me. Even if there are written records from the Heresy era, nobody in the 41st millenium should be able to read them. There should be contradictory stories about even the most basic 'facts' of that time, even down to (for example) different Blood Angels successor chapters having radically different accounts of who Sanguinius was and what he did during the Heresy (was he just a particularly heroic Blood Angels officer? was he the scientist who created the original Blood Angels geneseed? was he the first Blood Angel marine? was he just a psychic gestalt of the legion, or an aspect of the God-Emperor? was he killed by Horus? did he kill Horus? was he Horus' twin and the Emperor killed him accidentally thinking he was Horus? did he kill himself to give the Emperor the power to defeat Horus?).


TLDR: To quote Rick Priestley: "The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years' separation would give you. Whenever I wrote anything that referenced back to those times I always wrote in a legendary, non-literal style. It's as if you were dealing with something like the Iliad rather than literal history ... I don't get any sense of understanding about 'deep time' when I look at anything GW have set in the 40K 'past'."


There are not enough exalts in the universe for this quote. This is how I've felt about the 40K lore for a long time.


 
   
Made in ca
Regular Dakkanaut



Canada

I'd remove the Space Wolves

Old World Prediction: The Empire will have stupid Clockwork Paragon Warsuits and Mecha Horses 
   
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Fixture of Dakka





 Flipsiders wrote:
A lot of other people have posted some very good ideas, but here's one that's gone undiscussed:

Retcon things so the Emperor is dead.

No comatose state. No Star-Child. No "if the Emperor dies then the entire solar system gets flushed down his magic warp toilet" nonsense. The Emperor is unequivocally a rotting corpse, and all the daily sacrifices are just to power his golden chair and let the Imperium pretend he's still kicking. If that's too much, make it so he is comatose, but is explicitly never coming back or doing anything important under any capacity. Make it so the guy can't form conscious thought at all.

Obviously, if this were done, all the stories from the Imperium perspective would still treat Big E as if he were alive. It wouldn't stop being heresy to suggest that he died. It would only add another layer of tragedy and dark humor to those discussions, since it's so obvious that the Imperium is in a state of collective religious denial.

That will of course never happen because it conflicts with the power fantasy of having a big hypermasculine shiny guy who can come down and solve all your problems for you, but what can you do, right?

See, I feel like we already have the tragedy/dark humor you're going for. The Emprah doesn't seem to be in the habit of swooping in and solving problems. He's been rotting for 10,000 years, and he doesn't show any sign of getting better. He's not exactly taking charge of the situation and giving orders. He's certainly not pulling on his armour and jumping into battle. But the masses of humanity don't know that and suffer horribly in the name of a largely inert skeleton because of ecclesiarchal propaganda said skeleton would despise.

We have the tragedy/comedy. Have I missed some recent hands-on activities he's been involved in?


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
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Get back to sharing the lore development with the players through sponsored campaigns. The fun of the old days was when players felt like they had a role in shaping the story lines.

With social media, GW doesn't even need to run big worldwide campaigns anymore. You could have several mini campaigns that are designed to tie up some of the loose ends for the many unresolved campaign narratives out there.

The way I would do it would be to have one GW Store as the "anchor" to run the campaign and host the big events. Then let local gaming groups register with the store and report results through social media.


"Iz got a plan. We line up. Yell Waaagh, den krump them in the face. Den when we're done, we might yell Waagh one more time." Warboss Gutstompa 
   
Made in au
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Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

Lot of interesting suggestions in this one, I don't agree with all of them (I think making the Imperium unsure if the HH ever happened or if the Emperor is on the Golden Throne is perhaps creating too much mystery), but interesting nonetheless.

My change is simple:

The thing during the HH that brought the Tyranids to our galaxy. Remove it. Delete it. Pretend like it never happened.

Universe-shrinking events such as that one boil my brain.

 Gert wrote:
Yay, more complaining about Primaris. Must be a day ending in Y.
A lot of people discussing alternatives, some in quite a lot of detail, and you boil it all down to "complaining about Primaris"?

Remember what I said about a week ago about how you seem to go around shutting people down? This is an example of that.

Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in us
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Les Etats Unis

Wyldhunt wrote:
 Flipsiders wrote:
A lot of other people have posted some very good ideas, but here's one that's gone undiscussed:

Retcon things so the Emperor is dead.

No comatose state. No Star-Child. No "if the Emperor dies then the entire solar system gets flushed down his magic warp toilet" nonsense. The Emperor is unequivocally a rotting corpse, and all the daily sacrifices are just to power his golden chair and let the Imperium pretend he's still kicking. If that's too much, make it so he is comatose, but is explicitly never coming back or doing anything important under any capacity. Make it so the guy can't form conscious thought at all.

Obviously, if this were done, all the stories from the Imperium perspective would still treat Big E as if he were alive. It wouldn't stop being heresy to suggest that he died. It would only add another layer of tragedy and dark humor to those discussions, since it's so obvious that the Imperium is in a state of collective religious denial.

That will of course never happen because it conflicts with the power fantasy of having a big hypermasculine shiny guy who can come down and solve all your problems for you, but what can you do, right?

See, I feel like we already have the tragedy/dark humor you're going for. The Emprah doesn't seem to be in the habit of swooping in and solving problems. He's been rotting for 10,000 years, and he doesn't show any sign of getting better. He's not exactly taking charge of the situation and giving orders. He's certainly not pulling on his armour and jumping into battle. But the masses of humanity don't know that and suffer horribly in the name of a largely inert skeleton because of ecclesiarchal propaganda said skeleton would despise.

We have the tragedy/comedy. Have I missed some recent hands-on activities he's been involved in?


From my understanding, things have really devolved since the HH books started. There's at least one instance a few years back where (IIRC) Mortarion was scared off in the real 41st millennium by a psychic ghost/projection of the emperor or some nonsense, and the BL books in general give off this general vibe that the Big E was planning to get himself chaired the whole time, and it's all a part of his brilliant master plan to save humanity. There's a couple other things, too, but those are the big ones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I could be wrong, but it's felt as if for the past five years so there's been an overwhelming sense that the Emperor will come back Soon™ and save humanity from chaos once and for all, just like he always planned.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/06 03:39:40


Dudeface wrote:
 Eldarain wrote:
Is there another game where players consistently blame each other for the failings of the creator?

If you want to get existential, life for some.
 
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




I want a greater emphasis on the existential horror of the setting. The majority of stories should be human focused, not super-human. There are quadrillions of humans, and approximately 1 million space marines.

Space marines make up 1 in 1 billion regular humans, even smaller than that actually as that’s only 1 quadrillion. The odds of actually seeing a space marine is so incredibly small 99.99% of the Imperium would have believed them to be myths.

Having more stories based around the Regular Joe humbles the reader. Making them fully understand the insignificance of humanity in the setting and how little the Imperium as a whole cares about the individual.

Even planets mean nothing to the Imperium. Worlds are re-discovered, settled, re-conquered everyday. As are worlds lost or corrupted. The loss of any 1 world, even dozens of worlds mean nothing to the Imperium. Unless it’s Terra or Mars.

Scale is another issue, it detracts from the existential horror as well. When we read that squads of marines, or individual marines conquer planets it’s ridiculous. The same goes to a handful of Guard regiments with a tens of thousands of soldiers.

To put this into perspective, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union with 3 million soldiers. That’s a single country, not an entire rebel world. To reinforce this point, over the entire duration of the Battle of Stalingrad there were approximately 2 million in losses combined from both sides. That’s a single battle over a city.

Imperial Guard deployments should be in the millions minimum.

To be a human alive at this time should be giving the reader a sense of dread. Their lives mean nothing, yet they keep going on.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/08 06:45:18


 
   
Made in de
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Nuremberg

Though I think the mystery is the most important thing to bring back to the setting, if I had to choose another change it would be to make the influence of the Warp on realspace much much much much less obvious and easy.

SOB faith would not have obvious in universe effects. Stuff like Euphrati Keeler burning hordes of demons with her faith would not happen. To burn demons you need to be a psyker. Faith is not enough unless it's over a population of trillions, and even then all you're going to do is create some minor warp entities that would still only be contactable by psykers.

The Ork "Anzion" theory I would relegate back to being the theory of one Tech Priest baffled by ork tech. I'd scale back the ork psychic field to being something much less physically influential, and really just a sort of collective mood enhancer, with some extra amplifying effects during REALLY big Waagh. "If Enough Orks Believe It" is so Tinkerbell and I hate it so much. Ork Meks are geniuses, their tech works because they're really smart, not because of space magic.

Machine Spirits are not actual ghosts in most cases. (There can be exceptions to this). They're the mechanicum's explanation for ancient AI or subroutines or whatever. A bolter doesn't have a warp spirit associated with it.

Daemonic Incursions should be rarer, and generally only happen in areas of significant realspace overlap or where there's been enormous ritual effort.

Just generally tone down some of the sillier "the Warp did it" crap in the background.

   
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When we dig into the Orky psychic thing, it is very much up in the air whether the thing really should not work (trigger does nothing, complete lack of firing pin, no ejection port) or if the scientists studying them just don’t understand the principle behind it.

It’s the old science vs magic, but coloured by Orks being seen as very primitive and brutal.

Without meaning to get political, consider Ancient Aliens, and how much boils down to “if Europeans couldn’t explain how it was done, it must’ve been Aliens”.

It’s quite likely a mix of the two.

   
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It's a vestigial left-over from the days when GW left more up to the customer's imagination.
   
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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Lot of interesting suggestions in this one, I don't agree with all of them (I think making the Imperium unsure if the HH ever happened or if the Emperor is on the Golden Throne is perhaps creating too much mystery), but interesting nonetheless.

My change is simple:

The thing during the HH that brought the Tyranids to our galaxy. Remove it. Delete it. Pretend like it never happened.

Universe-shrinking events such as that one boil my brain.



It's kinda funny how different some people will take certain aspect of the lore. I mention this because that specific scene was one of, if not my all time favorite scene in the HH. It made me feel like watching Planet of the Apes for the first time as seeing the statue of Liberty. Suddenly the curtain is pulled back and you realize that it was all humanity fault, that they screwed up so badly they pretty much doomed everything. Don't get me wrong they've royaly fethed up the galaxy plenty of times, but I think it's safe to say that the Tyranids are objectively the greatest threat to the galaxy in the lore. It was also the first time in the lore that I realized that Tzentch was verifiably not all knowing as I can't imagine any reason why the Tyranids showing up in thousands of years would be part of one of its grand master plans. (Maybe everyone else knew this before, but I wasn't that much aof a lore buff before HH, so it was news to me).

Not to say that you're wrong in your opinion or to come down on you or anything, I do certainly get where you're coming from, I just find it interesting how differently people see things sometimes, that's all.

17210 4965 3235 5350 2936 2273 1176 2675
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Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

I love my Tyranids. I love that they're this extra-galactic force of super-hungry bugs hell bent on eating everything in their path.

I don't like that they found us because the Horus Heresy over explained something.

Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






More so that it was already long theorised they were Mothboying toward the Astronomicon in the first place, believing it to be an Astronomnomnomnomicon.

Pharos really didn’t bring anything to that.

   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





 Duskweaver wrote:
Arguably, this isn't just "one change", but what I'd really want to do can be summarized as "bring the mystery back".

Delete all the Horus Heresy stuff. Explicitly make it non-canon. Delete Guilliman's return. Delete Cawl.

Nobody in the Imperium is more than 1000 or so years old (so Dante can still exist, and you can still have some ancient, senile AdMech magi). Nobody in the Imperium remembers the Horus Heresy, or the Age of Apostasy or any of that. It's all myths and legends. Did it even happen? Is the Emperor even real, or is the Throne room just a sealed room full of machinery nobody understands? Did the founders of the SoB really get taken to see the Emperor by the Custodes, or was that just a story invented to cover up them assassinating Vandire for other reasons?

Nobody knows.

Did the primarchs exist, or were they just the original leaders of the Astartes, or the scientists who designed them, filtered through 10,000 years of ignorance and supersition? Are the daemon primarchs just powerful daemons who have convinced a bunch of Warp-crazy traitor Astartes that they are their fathers, and that they're part of some glorious holy war against "the False Emperor"? Maybe they call him that because they know he never really existed?

Nobody knows.

Is that really Roboute Guilliman in that stasis field on Macragge? Or is it just an ancient abhuman giant in armour? Or a statue painted to look like a living man? You can't see properly through the blurring of the stasis field. And you can't switch the field off to check. If it's really Guilliman, switching off the field might kill him. Or what if that's not Guilliman but rather the traitorous brother who killed him? Switching off the field might unleash a terrifying horror from the ancient past that the present-day Imperium has no way to deal with.

Nobody knows.

Do the Traitor Legions even remember things as they were? Can anyone trust their memories after ten millennia in the Eye of Terror? The oldest of them might remember a great galactic war against a glowing golden figure who led their brothers against them. But did that really happen? Is it a trick of the Chaos Gods to make them want to conquer/destroy Terra? Or maybe they're the ones who fought for the Emperor and then were betrayed, and the 'loyalist' Astartes are really just a later creation (not as strong but more controllable) made to defend the nascent Imperium from their outcast predecessors? Maybe the original Chaos Marines were actually the Thunder Warriors?

Nobody knows.

Maybe Living Saints are real, or maybe it's all a con by the Ecclesiarchy who keeps putting a new mindwiped and hypno-indoctrinated woman in that fancy golden armour every time the previous 'Celestine' gets her head lopped off by Kharn? Even if they're real, are they anything to do with the Emperor, or are they spawned by the Chaos gods as a joke? Or are they just a new evolution of the human psyker gene, the next stage of the human species as designed by the Old Ones? Are they the Eldar gods who have found a way to cheat Slaanesh and are reincarnating in human bodies now? Are they the biological descendants of the Emperor from the thousands of years he spent in hiding on Old Earth? Or are they the last fading remnants of the superhuman subspecies that gave rise to the Emperor in the first place?

Nobody knows.

The point is that I'd ensure the official fluff would present things in such a way as to avoid nailing down anything that the people of the Imperium couldn't possibly know the 'real' answer to. So you'd never have some 10,000 year old supergenius popping up and telling us all "this is how it really happened". Recent events would still be known, and basic facts about the setting (like how space marines are made, or which part of the galaxy Iyanden is in, or how orks reproduce) would still have an 'objectively true' version (even if most people in the setting are wrong about it). But Imperial record-keeping is terrible and anything more than a couple of thousand years in the past should be at least as uncertain as similarly ancient events in our own (pre-)history are to us. To someone in the 41st millennium, the Horus Heresy is as distant as the invention of pottery is to you and me. Even if there are written records from the Heresy era, nobody in the 41st millenium should be able to read them. There should be contradictory stories about even the most basic 'facts' of that time, even down to (for example) different Blood Angels successor chapters having radically different accounts of who Sanguinius was and what he did during the Heresy (was he just a particularly heroic Blood Angels officer? was he the scientist who created the original Blood Angels geneseed? was he the first Blood Angel marine? was he just a psychic gestalt of the legion, or an aspect of the God-Emperor? was he killed by Horus? did he kill Horus? was he Horus' twin and the Emperor killed him accidentally thinking he was Horus? did he kill himself to give the Emperor the power to defeat Horus?).

TLDR: To quote Rick Priestley: "The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years' separation would give you. Whenever I wrote anything that referenced back to those times I always wrote in a legendary, non-literal style. It's as if you were dealing with something like the Iliad rather than literal history ... I don't get any sense of understanding about 'deep time' when I look at anything GW have set in the 40K 'past'."


This is the biggest problem I have with how things are done now, really. So many questions just get answered with effectively a simple "Yes" and that's it or linked together in a way that makes the setting feel smaller. The Imperium believed the Emperor was a God, so the lore decided they're right and he pretty much is, rather than an important figure distorted by millenia of half-truths, superstition and propaganda.. The Space Marines believed their Primarchs to be great extremely powerful figures, so the lore on them made that the case rather than just stories of men that had been heavily exaggerated over the years. The lore implied there might potentially be more to the Tau and that there might be some sort of insidious mind control plot, so the lore now has them actually have some insidious mind control, even though the original idea was that the the Imperium didn't know that and just couldn't believe they'd be obedient any other way so suggested mind control. There was a theory suggested by the Imperium that Orks could make stuff work via the gestalt field they generate, so several bits of lore have tried to turn out to be Orks could make stuff work via the gestalt field they generate, no alternative explanations considered. The story of the Men of Iron and how powerful they were and all that destruction caused, now there's just one casually walking around and they're little more than just a sentient robot.

So many things answered with the simplest, most boring answer, with no nuance or subtlety. Just taking away the mystery and thought-provoking aspects of the lore to answer those things with a "It's as simple as it seemed, nothing more to what was suggested".

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/06 15:52:55


 
   
Made in us
Ollanius Pius - Savior of the Emperor






Gathering the Informations.

I'd kill off the idea of "Renegade Chapters". Either make them all fall to Chaos or just have varying degrees of savagery and independence going on. Not every Chapter needs to be going down a highway to moustache-twirling villainy because an Inquisitor says they've been naughty.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/10/06 20:01:36


 
   
Made in it
Insect-Infested Nurgle Chaos Lord






Jarms48 wrote:

Space marines make up 1 in 1 billion regular humans, even smaller than that actually as that’s only 1 quadrillion. The odds of actually seeing a space marine is so incredibly small 99.99% of the Imperium would have believed them to be myths.


It's quite odd that the only recent book that seems to have done this right is The Infinite and The Divine. At one point in the maguffin planet's history it gets invaded by Orks (IIRC) and Trazyn and an army of Necrons have to go out to repel them, lest the tomb world and the maguffin(s) contained therein are lost to rampaging Orks.

In honour of this glorious victory, the inhabitants of the planet erect a statue of the commander and there are stained glass artworks etc. all depicting the "Silver Skulls" Marine chapter and their great victory. Later on, the Inquisition (well, Trazyn in disguise as it was a damned fine-lookin' statue and he wanted it), mysteriously confiscate the statue in the town centre. But that little snippet shows, how little the Imperium at large knows precisely what Astartes are. They should be mythological figures, the Emperor's Angels of Death- spoken only of in whispers and rumour as the average citizen will never have seen one.


Games Workshop Delenda Est.

Users on ignore- 53.

If you break apart my or anyone else's posts line by line I will not read them. 
   
Made in au
Owns Whole Set of Skullz Techpriests






Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

I thought of one other:

I would have never revealed who or what the Legion of the Damned are.

Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in us
Ultramarine Chaplain with Hate to Spare






 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I thought of one other:

I would have never revealed who or what the Legion of the Damned are.
Oh no. . . were they revealed somehow?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

The thing during the HH that brought the Tyranids to our galaxy. Remove it. Delete it. Pretend like it never happened.

Yeah that's silly.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/08 04:16:27


And They Shall Not Fit Through Doors!!!

Tyranid Army Progress -- With Classic Warriors!:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/743240.page#9671598 
   
Made in us
Focused Fire Warrior




Les Etats Unis

 Insectum7 wrote:
 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I thought of one other:

I would have never revealed who or what the Legion of the Damned are.
Oh no. . . were they revealed somehow?


I think he's just alluding to the suggestion which has been around for a while that they're all Fire Hawks.

Dudeface wrote:
 Eldarain wrote:
Is there another game where players consistently blame each other for the failings of the creator?

If you want to get existential, life for some.
 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Another one from me: I wouldn't have introduced Yvraine or (probably) the Visarch; I would have had them be Malys and maybe Yriel respectively. It really feels like this might have been the intention at one point in time what with Yvraine having the fan and the fluff mentioning that Malys was Yvraine's arena patron.

This would have been a neat continuation on some old Malys and harlequin fluff, would have given Malys a model and some updated rules, and would have given them a chance to update Yriel's spear and rules.

Seems like someone just wanted to do the whole, "I've had coffee with all the major eldar factions" thing with Yvraine for obvious thematic reasons and changed plans at some point in the development process. But honestly, as much as I love the Ynnari? Yvraine herself has come across as pretty bland so far.



ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
 
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