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New article:https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/07/28/lore-of-the-votann-who-are-the-guilds/

Some interesting stuff.

Kin are organized into groups called Kindreds, and their holds can be anything from small factory complexs to asteroid bases or stations orbiting black holes.

Guilds are basically seperate to Kindreds/The Leagues and manage different ventures and areas of society. Sort of like competing companies covering different things.

Guilds care about profiting to the point they don't really care if someone / something is already on a planet that has something they want.








And I just love how all the artwork is! Capitalistic industrial Dwarf megacorp vibe from the city one.

The first crack in the "we're perfect at everything and better than everything the Imperium does always" facade has appeared:

WarCom wrote:Competition between Guilds can become heated, even drawing other species into the crossfire as jockeying Guildmasters sponsor Oathband expeditions to survey systems rich in resources. Anyone who happens to already inhabit these hotly-contested worlds are out of luck – existing civilisations and ecosystems are a much lower priority than beating rivals to the punch.

Love the look of the ships

Loving that artwork! Looks like the berserks are next to be revealed and they are from the mining guild. The new lore very much sounds like the old lore of holds, leagues and guilds, The guilds sound pretty ruthless when after profits and the freelancers sound interesting too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Love the look of the ships

Yes they look impressive- almost like giant hammers floating in space.

We've got some specific names now for some subfactions:
Ymyr Conglomerate (clearly a play on Ymir from Norse creationism myth)
Seran-Tok Mercantile Leagues (which trade with the Tau, so some type of Tau connection confirmed)
Cthonian Mining Guilds (I'm assuming not related to Horus' Cthonia, but ??)

Still trying to figure out what that THU is all about. ᛏᚻᚢ in elder futhark, close but not close enough so could mean literally anything. Acronym for a specific subfaction is likely, but which one?

The Cthonian Mining Guilds are particularly powerful, embodying the belligerent acquisitiveness of the Kin. Fearless in the cause of locating, securing, and harvesting resources for their race, the Cthonians think nothing of braving environments so extreme that even other Kin would baulk at their hazards. You can expect to hear more about this particular Guild – and its much-modified members – soon enough.

I'm guessing that it is related to the HH. IIRC, Cthonia was a tapped out mining world stripped of its resources so maybe the squats are partly to blame for that via a retcon. I think it used to be the Mechanicum before that did it.

Anyone else getting a Ferangi vibe from this lore snippet? Competition and profit to the extreme!

KillerAngel wrote:

Seran-Tok Mercantile Leagues (which trade with the Tau, so some type of Tau connection confirmed)

I think this is another suggestion that the Leagues are the Demiurg, as one of the two Demiurg groups that works with the Tau are known by the name Srry'Tok.

This image in particular really highlight that one of the problem with the LoV look may not really be their design per say, but the minies themselves.
That guy here look pretty good and appropriately "dwarvish" (the morphology is what you'd expect, they look bulky and sturdy and even their armor look better here), but the minies they made out of it look just straight up.

It's the same thing with the Necrosquats, where the helmet on the artwork looks way better than the result in plastic.

Domandi wrote:
Anyone else getting a Ferangi vibe from this lore snippet? Competition and profit to the extreme!

Well if the Votann suddenly get a bit in their Codex about the Lyws Of Acqysytyon, then we'll know.

Yeah, they look way better on the art than as models, The models simply have weird proportions.

Mining squat looks pretty man-sized. I think it's because he has long legs

KillerAngel wrote:
We've got some specific names now for some subfactions:
Ymyr Conglomerate (clearly a play on Ymir from Norse creationism myth)
Seran-Tok Mercantile Leagues (which trade with the Tau, so some type of Tau connection confirmed)
Cthonian Mining Guilds (I'm assuming not related to Horus' Cthonia, but ??)

Also the Grymnir. No, wait, Grimnyr :

Guildmasters typically sit on the Hearthspake – a Kindred’s governing council – as civilian representatives, alongside the military commanders of the Kinhosts and the Grimnyr.

Some other military chain of command, apparently

 silverstu wrote:
Loving that artwork! Looks like the berserks are next to be revealed and they are from the mining guild. The new lore very much sounds like the old lore of holds, leagues and guilds, The guilds sound pretty ruthless when after profits and the freelancers sound interesting too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Love the look of the ships

Yes they look impressive- almost like giant hammers floating in space.

Hammerhead from Star Wars came to mind.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The first crack in the "we're perfect at everything and better than everything the Imperium does always" facade has appeared:

Of course? Some of the earlier "discussion" on this thread was that they appeared perfect. A "mary-sue" faction. Obviously that wasn't going to pan out that way. It's 40k, even the brightest stars are waning. All of the lore snippets we have had were pointing to plenty of bad times a-coming. They were just showing off the best parts first.


The artwork for the Votanni has been excellent, love the look of these larger landscapes.

 warboss wrote:

The Cthonian Mining Guilds are particularly powerful, embodying the belligerent acquisitiveness of the Kin. Fearless in the cause of locating, securing, and harvesting resources for their race, the Cthonians think nothing of braving environments so extreme that even other Kin would baulk at their hazards. You can expect to hear more about this particular Guild – and its much-modified members – soon enough.

I'm guessing that it is related to the HH. IIRC, Cthonia was a tapped out mining world stripped of its resources so maybe the squats are partly to blame for that via a retcon. I think it used to be the Mechanicum before that did it.

Cthonia also just means "underworld", and given squats are miners, maybe that's just the connection. They're just very big miners

Cthonia also just means "underworld", and given squats are miners, maybe that's just the connection. They're just very big miners

Plus if they specialize in severely inhospitable worlds it makes sense that their name references Hell

 GaroRobe wrote:

 warboss wrote:

The Cthonian Mining Guilds are particularly powerful, embodying the belligerent acquisitiveness of the Kin. Fearless in the cause of locating, securing, and harvesting resources for their race, the Cthonians think nothing of braving environments so extreme that even other Kin would baulk at their hazards. You can expect to hear more about this particular Guild – and its much-modified members – soon enough.

I'm guessing that it is related to the HH. IIRC, Cthonia was a tapped out mining world stripped of its resources so maybe the squats are partly to blame for that via a retcon. I think it used to be the Mechanicum before that did it.

Cthonia also just means "underworld", and given squats are miners, maybe that's just the connection. They're just very big miners

I doubt that GW would pass up the opportunity to link (even via just retcon) something else new to the HH with its recent release but I suppose we'll find out in the next few months. Either way, it's just a background tidbit and nothing I'm worried about but rather just curious.

 Olthannon wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The first crack in the "we're perfect at everything and better than everything the Imperium does always" facade has appeared:

Of course? Some of the earlier "discussion" on this thread was that they appeared perfect. A "mary-sue" faction. Obviously that wasn't going to pan out that way. It's 40k, even the brightest stars are waning. All of the lore snippets we have had were pointing to plenty of bad times a-coming. They were just showing off the best parts first.


The artwork for the Votanni has been excellent, love the look of these larger landscapes.

I don’t know about “first” either; they’ve been relying on faulty god-puters that have had so many patches and updates they’ve outgrown their hardware, but don’t know how to address this because there’s too much data and no backups because their creativity and foresight was excised to make them less vulnerable to the warp. Oh and the god-puters are slowly replacing everyone with AI robots for some reason. Also, their whole society is cloned so they probably don’t know how to reproduce without the machines, and almost certainly have no medical or cultural data relevant to raising a child even if they did.

 Mr_Rose wrote:

I don’t know about “first” either; they’ve been relying on faulty god-puters that have had so many patches and updates they’ve outgrown their hardware, but don’t know how to address this because there’s too much data and no backups because their creativity and foresight was excised to make them less vulnerable to the warp. Oh and the god-puters are slowly replacing everyone with AI robots for some reason. Also, their whole society is cloned so they probably don’t know how to reproduce without the machines, and almost certainly have no medical or cultural data relevant to raising a child even if they did.

See, if this is actually conveyed throughout the background writing, I'll be very happy about the tone they're giving to the Votann.

I was pleasantly surprised with how Cathay is written in the recent Total War game, and I assume GW had a hand in crafting those narratives, so there has to be someone there who still knows how to bake a couple nails into the pie.

 Mr_Rose wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The first crack in the "we're perfect at everything and better than everything the Imperium does always" facade has appeared:

Of course? Some of the earlier "discussion" on this thread was that they appeared perfect. A "mary-sue" faction. Obviously that wasn't going to pan out that way. It's 40k, even the brightest stars are waning. All of the lore snippets we have had were pointing to plenty of bad times a-coming. They were just showing off the best parts first.


The artwork for the Votanni has been excellent, love the look of these larger landscapes.

I don’t know about “first” either; they’ve been relying on faulty god-puters that have had so many patches and updates they’ve outgrown their hardware, but don’t know how to address this because there’s too much data and no backups because their creativity and foresight was excised to make them less vulnerable to the warp. Oh and the god-puters are slowly replacing everyone with AI robots for some reason. Also, their whole society is cloned so they probably don’t know how to reproduce without the machines, and almost certainly have no medical or cultural data relevant to raising a child even if they did.

Nothing in the lore we've been given has said their engineered souls make them less resistant to the Warp at the cost of creativity, the Votann are replacing Kin With Ironkin, or they have no idea how to reproduce (and can't) without the Votann. Infact the lore says the opposite of that last point, because the Ironhead Squats didn't take an Ancestor Core with them and have been fine.

Well, the Tau are the Advanced space-Communists. I guess balancing that with Advanced Space Capitalists was bound to happen.

KillerAngel wrote:
We've got some specific names now for some subfactions:
Ymyr Conglomerate (clearly a play on Ymir from Norse creationism myth)
Seran-Tok Mercantile Leagues (which trade with the Tau, so some type of Tau connection confirmed)
Cthonian Mining Guilds (I'm assuming not related to Horus' Cthonia, but ??)

Still trying to figure out what that THU is all about. ᛏᚻᚢ in elder futhark, close but not close enough so could mean literally anything. Acronym for a specific subfaction is likely, but which one?

THU is Greater Thurian Leagues. One of the strategem leaks made reference to them and they seem to be the main faction that we have seen GW show with their paint scheme.

The Seran-Tok then may be the Demiurg, and mistakenly thought to be a new alien race due to being more genetically modified from the baseline template. In fact, existing Tau background says they got their ion cannons from a Brotherhood calling themselves SrryTok, which perhaps may be a mistranslation of Seran-Tok. Looking at the art, there is a vague similarity between the shown ships and the Demiurg as both have a certain "verticality" to them.

The new information suggests perhaps the Leages of Votann have elements of a corporatocracy? In theory the Guilds are not political but in practice they are.

Their lack of care towards existing inhabitants and ecosystems may mean they have that aspect of uncaring corporatism.

 Olthannon wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The first crack in the "we're perfect at everything and better than everything the Imperium does always" facade has appeared:

Of course? Some of the earlier "discussion" on this thread was that they appeared perfect. A "mary-sue" faction. Obviously that wasn't going to pan out that way. It's 40k, even the brightest stars are waning. All of the lore snippets we have had were pointing to plenty of bad times a-coming. They were just showing off the best parts first.


The artwork for the Votanni has been excellent, love the look of these larger landscapes.

That and those so clumsily wielding the non-existent hammer of Mary-Sue seemed to have quite remarkable skills in selective reading.

The Votann are of course STC. Fully functioning. Well. Kind of fully functioning. Ish. They’re slowing down. Some are proper proper broken, and for all the Leagues have maintained a tech level well above The Imperium? They’re still reliant on the STC. Take that away, and it’s their own dark age of technology and decline, just postponed a few milennia. Same benefits, same pitfalls.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
[

Nothing in the lore we've been given has said their engineered souls make them less resistant to the Warp at the cost of creativity, the Votann are replacing Kin With Ironkin, or they have no idea how to reproduce (and can't) without the Votann. Infact the lore says the opposite of that last point, because the Ironhead Squats didn't take an Ancestor Core with them and have been fine.

No. But the assumption is that Ironkin are pretty much Men of Iron. They are "computationally advanced enough to mimic Kin behaviour" some even have ambition. Where does that leave the fleshy Kin when they decide they are superior? Who knows? Not us presently.

Also worth pointing out that they state in this new article the largest holds are in the millions. So we've got a small population, likely similar problems to the poor old Fantasy Dwarves. So in order to push up the numbers, more Ironkin can be made by certain Votann, if their mad superbrains were so inclined.

 Olthannon wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
[

Nothing in the lore we've been given has said their engineered souls make them less resistant to the Warp at the cost of creativity, the Votann are replacing Kin With Ironkin, or they have no idea how to reproduce (and can't) without the Votann. Infact the lore says the opposite of that last point, because the Ironhead Squats didn't take an Ancestor Core with them and have been fine.

No. But the assumption is that Ironkin are pretty much Men of Iron. They are "computationally advanced enough to mimic Kin behaviour" some even have ambition. Where does that leave the fleshy Kin when they decide they are superior? Who knows? Not us presently.

Also worth pointing out that they state in this new article the largest holds are in the millions. So we've got a small population, likely similar problems to the poor old Fantasy Dwarves. So in order to push up the numbers, more Ironkin can be made by certain Votann, if their mad superbrains were so inclined.

It says Kindreds may number several million, not Holds. Does that mean that Holds may have multiple Kindreds or is it mono-Kindred? We don't know.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The first crack in the "we're perfect at everything and better than everything the Imperium does always" facade has appeared:

Of course? Some of the earlier "discussion" on this thread was that they appeared perfect. A "mary-sue" faction. Obviously that wasn't going to pan out that way. It's 40k, even the brightest stars are waning. All of the lore snippets we have had were pointing to plenty of bad times a-coming. They were just showing off the best parts first.


The artwork for the Votanni has been excellent, love the look of these larger landscapes.

That and those so clumsily wielding the non-existent hammer of Mary-Sue seemed to have quite remarkable skills in selective reading.

The Votann are of course STC. Fully functioning. Well. Kind of fully functioning. Ish. They’re slowing down. Some are proper proper broken, and for all the Leagues have maintained a tech level well above The Imperium? They’re still reliant on the STC. Take that away, and it’s their own dark age of technology and decline, just postponed a few milennia. Same benefits, same pitfalls.

The Votann aren't actual STC as in the full thing, though? The impression I got from the article was that they're a database that contains full/complete STC templates amongst their data, not a full database of STCs.

 Olthannon wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
[

Nothing in the lore we've been given has said their engineered souls make them less resistant to the Warp at the cost of creativity, the Votann are replacing Kin With Ironkin, or they have no idea how to reproduce (and can't) without the Votann. Infact the lore says the opposite of that last point, because the Ironhead Squats didn't take an Ancestor Core with them and have been fine.

No. But the assumption is that Ironkin are pretty much Men of Iron. They are "computationally advanced enough to mimic Kin behaviour" some even have ambition. Where does that leave the fleshy Kin when they decide they are superior? Who knows? Not us presently.

Also worth pointing out that they state in this new article the largest holds are in the millions. So we've got a small population, likely similar problems to the poor old Fantasy Dwarves. So in order to push up the numbers, more Ironkin can be made by certain Votann, if their mad superbrains were so inclined.

The Ironkin have been with them for 10, 000 years at least.

Iracundus wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
[

Nothing in the lore we've been given has said their engineered souls make them less resistant to the Warp at the cost of creativity, the Votann are replacing Kin With Ironkin, or they have no idea how to reproduce (and can't) without the Votann. Infact the lore says the opposite of that last point, because the Ironhead Squats didn't take an Ancestor Core with them and have been fine.

No. But the assumption is that Ironkin are pretty much Men of Iron. They are "computationally advanced enough to mimic Kin behaviour" some even have ambition. Where does that leave the fleshy Kin when they decide they are superior? Who knows? Not us presently.

Also worth pointing out that they state in this new article the largest holds are in the millions. So we've got a small population, likely similar problems to the poor old Fantasy Dwarves. So in order to push up the numbers, more Ironkin can be made by certain Votann, if their mad superbrains were so inclined.

It says Kindreds may number several million, not Holds. Does that mean that Holds may have multiple Kindreds or is it mono-Kindred? We don't know.

A Kindred might be a few dozen strong, or a few million, but they all live, train, and toil in the same shared Hold. Kin prefer not to waste words, so “Hold” is a malleable term – it could mean a fortified outpost, a live-in factory, or a warren of tunnels. Some Holds float in the void of space, cling to asteroids, or hover on the fringe of a black hole, while others may stretch out across the surface of an entire planet.


Most Kindreds have some means of defending themselves, and some are mighty battleforces in their own rights – but they tend to unite for protection under the banner of a League.

Right but even if a Hold has multiple Kindreds, if the largest is a "few million strong" that doesn't suggest a large population in a Hold to me. It's this follow up line where they talk about uniting in a League that I took to mean mainly small Holds that band together in times of trouble for protection. A League presumably governs a small area of space that has multiple Holds. I presume similar to the Dwarf clans of Fantasy. A Hold might contain several clans depending on the size of the mine. In times of war they form the Throng and go kick shins.

All modelled off the First Parliament of Earth, a Governance covering a settlement to the planetary North of Migard, as legends say, with some conspiracy theorists putting that lost world in the Alpha Centauri or New Eden systems. Might be where the STCs came from.

Can someone point out if I'm making an error in reasoning here, or if my facts are wrong?

- We know that the LoV have Cthonian Berserks.

- We know that they have a Cthonian mining guild.

- We know that Horus was raised on Cthonia, a mining world that might have been destroyed because it was so heavily exploited for resources.

- We know that the LoV once had a closer relationship with the rest of humanity, but that something caused them to retreat into solitude and isolation

- ... the colour of the armour of the Hearthkyn Gaurd, as well as parts of the regular kin, are almost exactly the same as the colour of the armor adopted by the Lunar Wolves after being reunited with Horus.


Is GW teasing a deep connection between the LoV and the Heresy? Or even Horus himself? There are just too many odd coincidences for me to consider it all a fluke of the writing.

(And honestly, the fact that they chose to paint the models to match the SoH seems really on the nose to me.)