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Yeah....I can see why theyre nervous around the mechanicus...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/04/22/the-leagues-of-votann-are-coming-but-what-actually-is-a-votann/

Yeah I like this lore teaser. Very interested to know what STCs they have as it will be an interesting insight into the golden age.

Also how do the iron men fit into this, we’re the Voltann some how missies from the iron men rebellion or were they another player in that war.

I like it too, fits into the established setting quite well.

mrFickle wrote:
Yeah I like this lore teaser. Very interested to know what STCs they have as it will be an interesting insight into the golden age.

Also how do the iron men fit into this, we’re the Voltann some how missies from the iron men rebellion or were they another player in that war.

Probably outsiders to that war. The 'men of iron' might have de-prioritized them (or allied with them) as they were properly 'ruled' by AI already. Particularly if that rebellion wasn't the standard 'all biologicals must be exterminated, because reasons' nonsense cliche.

Since the dark age (for now) remains a mystery, there's lots of room for possibilities (including that while traumatic and remembered, the men of iron weren't really a galaxy wide event)

Huh. That's pretty much the same idea that I've been using for my own custom "non-chaos traitor marines".

As much as I'd like to pat myself on the back, I'm probably not the only person to have thought of the idea of using one of the old A.I. as a sort of mysterious space-power that allows for a small faction to still be relevant.

Now, if they also have their strongholds hiding behind some kind of perpetual warpstorm I may have to speak to a lawyer or something :-P

(Kidding, obviously.)

I’m getting very hype to get my hands on their Codex and whatever background stuff they release.

I’m well beyond caring what any given force is or isn’t capable of on the board. But the background is everything to me!

The existence of the Squats/Leagues of Votann is interesting because it also punctures the lie of the Imperium being the only way for humanity to survive. Now of course there are still things like undiscovered human societies but none of them have a Codex.

I wonder if their Codex will be as much of a seminal breakthrough as the 2nd edition Eldar Codex was. That was what moved the Eldar into their own unique space rather than just being literal WHFB Elves in space.

Iracundus wrote:
The existence of the Squats/Leagues of Votann is interesting because it also punctures the lie of the Imperium being the only way for humanity to survive. Now of course there are still things like undiscovered human societies but none of them have a Codex.

I wonder if their Codex will be as much of a seminal breakthrough as the 2nd edition Eldar Codex was. That was what moved the Eldar into their own unique space rather than just being literal WHFB Elves in space.

Don’t agree with that about the eldar, the army list in WD and compilation established the eldar as they are today, imagery and lore wise. All the 2nd edition book did was buy into the named character thing that persists today with the Phoenix lords. Everything else was well established prior the 2nd edition.

Anyone here played Deep Rock Galactic? I hope they go heavy on the mining theme; lots of lore about delving deep into planetary crusts.

mrFickle wrote:Yeah I like this lore teaser. Very interested to know what STCs they have as it will be an interesting insight into the golden age.

Also how do the iron men fit into this, we’re the Voltann some how missies from the iron men rebellion or were they another player in that war.

My theory, at least for the moment is that they are connected to the Men of Stone. Either the super computers are the men themselves or are created by them.

Don’t ai devices ran by psychic (non Tau) races get exposed to chaos stuff and turn all big bad and evil?

Only if there's Chaos stuff kicking about with nothing to keep it in check.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Don’t ai devices ran by psychic (non Tau) races get exposed to chaos stuff and turn all big bad and evil?

Yeah it's a pretty well established fluff that thinking machines end up corrupted. You need a soul, like, a part living machine (servitors) to remain pure and avoid corruption
But whatever...

 godardc wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Don’t ai devices ran by psychic (non Tau) races get exposed to chaos stuff and turn all big bad and evil?

Yeah it's a pretty well established fluff that thinking machines end up corrupted. You need a soul, like, a part living machine (servitors) to remain pure and avoid corruption
But whatever...

That's just some bizarre Imperial superstition.

 Crimson wrote:

 godardc wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Don’t ai devices ran by psychic (non Tau) races get exposed to chaos stuff and turn all big bad and evil?

Yeah it's a pretty well established fluff that thinking machines end up corrupted. You need a soul, like, a part living machine (servitors) to remain pure and avoid corruption
But whatever...

That's just some bizarre Imperial superstition.

Very bizarre, considering how often souls get corrupted.
And that's before we get into how messy and fallible machines would be with people bits rotting away in them.

I really like this background, as it preserves the whole idea of 'living ancestors' without necessitating hoary old dudes psychically channelling wisdom (which sounds too much like wizards, or jedi, or space geezers).

It also kind of ties the League into mature, static technology without mysticism and decline. They don't have the loss of everyday technical knowledge that the Imperium does, but given that they have great technology that hasn't regressed or been made inaccessible, they also don't need to have the wizbang development of the Tau, either.

Da Butcha wrote:
I really like this background, as it preserves the whole idea of 'living ancestors' without necessitating hoary old dudes psychically channelling wisdom (which sounds too much like wizards, or jedi, or space geezers).

It also kind of ties the League into mature, static technology without mysticism and decline. They don't have the loss of everyday technical knowledge that the Imperium does, but given that they have great technology that hasn't regressed or been made inaccessible, they also don't need to have the wizbang development of the Tau, either.

I think we don't have enough detail to judge yet. The whole "Ancestor" thing leads part of me to suspect whether there is something like hoary old dudes being uploaded or wired into the core somehow, and that artwork seems to show 4 figures in alcoves. Are those meant to be statues or representations of gods/ancestors?

There's probably going to be some weakness or downside that explains why the Squats didn't just up and conquer all other humans, after the fall of the Dark Age of Technology. Something must have held them back or prevented them from leveraging all that stored data and technology. Something has to bring them down to a level on par with the Imperium and the other races, rather than DaoT levels of tech.

Indeed. They clearly aren't full dark age humanity - it may be a case of them being refugees from the war with unfortunately or deliberately limited technologies, a bit like the exodites.

And yes, the specific use of the phrase 'ancestor core' makes me think of those alcoves being the new representation of the 'living ancestor' concept.

Since we've seen something happen with titan and Knight machine spirits, something similar happening with a huge colony ship's mainframe isn't unthinkable.

locarno24 wrote:
Indeed. They clearly aren't full dark age humanity - it may be a case of them being refugees from the war with unfortunately or deliberately limited technologies, a bit like the exodites.

And yes, the specific use of the phrase 'ancestor core' makes me think of those alcoves being the new representation of the 'living ancestor' concept.

Since we've seen something happen with titan and Knight machine spirits, something similar happening with a huge colony ship's mainframe isn't unthinkable.

I think they are also being a bit hypocritical to look down on other factions for being superstitious with their tech if they themselves revere their computer cores as some form of Ancestor, whether literal or metaphorical.

The description of the cores becoming idiosyncratic and developing personalities seems to fit in with Titan and Knight machine spirits. However perhaps by virtue of sheer size and volume of data, they are more full personalities. Maybe they choose names for themselves and one of them is named Grungni. The Squats and their AI ancestor gods, fully manifest in the material realm.

Now maybe though their gods are near effectively dead or silent, if a request can take decades or centuries for a response. Maybe they did ask the cores for super tech and they are still staring at the spinning cursor thousands of years later. The cores maybe are still processing the request (and that is the Squats' "endgame" of dominating the galaxy if they can finally download and build that supertech).

GW is finally righting the wrongs of the past. Now just tell us in 10th edition that the Tau are gone now, and all were all eaten by Tyranids and all will be forgiven.

(I say this jokingly of course). However I really do wonder if Squats are going to be some hyper buffed thing that the Guard player brings along as an ally to help him beat Tau.

As we know, AI in the 40K Universe for some reason usually translates into Super Shooty!

It's not AI, there's a decomposing human head inside there somewhere, like all civilised societies have. Honest guv!

 Dekskull wrote:
GW is finally righting the wrongs of the past. Now just tell us in 10th edition that the Tau are gone now, and all were all eaten by Tyranids and all will be forgiven.

If we have to have story progress, this would be something I could get behind.

It seems from the article that the Votann include the personalities of important squat ancestors. This is tech the Tau have dabbled in (Puretide Engram Chip, Aun'va Hologram), and it sounds a lot like the Kree Supreme Intelligence from Marvel Comics.

I'm not fond of the 'computer can't handle 10000 years of operation' concept, because if it's a true AI with lots of engrams you think they would have recognized any long haul issues after the first 1000 years or so of operation and found a work-around - and presumably before the Age of Strife got into full swing. I mean, if an AI can't foresee and solve a problem like "I need more memory and processing power", it's not much of an AI to begin with. Same if it can't foresee issues with having lots of personality engrams loaded into it memory banks.

I'd much rather have the Votann being properly inscrutable AI playing some kind of long game the Squats themselves don't understand, but the AIs run the show and there's not a lot they can do about it even if they did suspect the Votann to be having ulterior motives.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Don’t ai devices ran by psychic (non Tau) races get exposed to chaos stuff and turn all big bad and evil?

It will happen to the Tau in time I would think.

There seems to be alot of "Deep Thought" in the new AI's and that might be as far as the GW team have considered.

A few Culture style Minds in charge of the squats could be fun - they can also go "odd" and add in possible chaos courruption....

Also be itneresting to see Necron interactions with advanced machine intelligence.

 John Prins wrote:
It seems from the article that the Votann include the personalities of important squat ancestors. This is tech the Tau have dabbled in (Puretide Engram Chip, Aun'va Hologram), and it sounds a lot like the Kree Supreme Intelligence from Marvel Comics.

I'm not fond of the 'computer can't handle 10000 years of operation' concept, because if it's a true AI with lots of engrams you think they would have recognized any long haul issues after the first 1000 years or so of operation and found a work-around - and presumably before the Age of Strife got into full swing. I mean, if an AI can't foresee and solve a problem like "I need more memory and processing power", it's not much of an AI to begin with. Same if it can't foresee issues with having lots of personality engrams loaded into it memory banks.

I'd much rather have the Votann being properly inscrutable AI playing some kind of long game the Squats themselves don't understand, but the AIs run the show and there's not a lot they can do about it even if they did suspect the Votann to be having ulterior motives.

Well, sure, but then some genius decides to put everything onto the ancestor-blockchain and from there it's procedurally-generated images all the way to the AI brain eater.

 John Prins wrote:
It seems from the article that the Votann include the personalities of important squat ancestors. This is tech the Tau have dabbled in (Puretide Engram Chip, Aun'va Hologram), and it sounds a lot like the Kree Supreme Intelligence from Marvel Comics.

I'm not fond of the 'computer can't handle 10000 years of operation' concept, because if it's a true AI with lots of engrams you think they would have recognized any long haul issues after the first 1000 years or so of operation and found a work-around - and presumably before the Age of Strife got into full swing. I mean, if an AI can't foresee and solve a problem like "I need more memory and processing power", it's not much of an AI to begin with. Same if it can't foresee issues with having lots of personality engrams loaded into it memory banks.

I'd much rather have the Votann being properly inscrutable AI playing some kind of long game the Squats themselves don't understand, but the AIs run the show and there's not a lot they can do about it even if they did suspect the Votann to be having ulterior motives.

i think part of the issue is that the likely solution, to shutdown, clear out useless data, and reboot, might known but unthinkable. To delete the memories of your ancestors, to decree their knowledge no longer worthy of keeping? No Kinsman would dare pass judgement over his own ancestors like that. and all it takes is a few well known stories of a stronghold saved by the esoteric knowledge of a Voltann, producing a solution based on some millennia old mining report, to reinforce this to the point of dogma.

No, knowledge must be kept, for who knows when it might come in use? almost a digital age version of the classic "dwaven" greed, holding onto it even as it begins to cost them.

and thats assuming they even still know how to turn it off and on again....

 godardc wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Don’t ai devices ran by psychic (non Tau) races get exposed to chaos stuff and turn all big bad and evil?

Yeah it's a pretty well established fluff that thinking machines end up corrupted. You need a soul, like, a part living machine (servitors) to remain pure and avoid corruption
But whatever...

No it isn't. That's a belief from the Mechanicus that ties in to their technology-as-religion and backwards superstitious views, it's not something that's meant to be taken as being true.

Doesn’t this effectively mean they are going to be seperate from the Inperium? Doesn’t sound like they have any intention of swearing fealty to the emperor

I seriously cannot think of the last time any new GW lore developments turned out as exciting to me as this. In more ways than one. It opens up so many narrative doors to flesh out the setting with.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
Doesn’t this effectively mean they are going to be seperate from the Inperium? Doesn’t sound like they have any intention of swearing fealty to the emperor

They are separate, explicitly:

WarCom wrote:if the secrets of the Votann were ever revealed to the galaxy at large, the uneasy peace between the Leagues and the Imperium of Man would quickly crumble.

They're effectively their own secret cult(s). They're outwardly acceptable enough to not be quashed by the Imperium, and a war would be too costly with so many 'real threats' about.

The timeline should be interesting. If they accepted 'compliance' during the Great Crusade, or broke off afterwards in the chaos of rebuilding the Imperium. Or if contact came later, someone ticked the box of 'stable human descendants with no warpcraft' and got lost in the shuffle of the reports.(and some quiet bribes so that the AdMech didn't get detailed reports) Happily there is a lot of lost history for them to hide in.