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The imperial line or out of universe line is that very few people have even heard of the heresy and the traitors and the imperium out a lot of effort into writing the history they want everyone have.

But the salamanders have always been very self contained and localised and as far as I am away their home planet has never been subject to significant destruction.

So it would seem logical to think that they have retained a solid knowledge of the history, particularly the dropsite massacre and what happened to vulkan.

I think the statement that few people know much detail about or even know about the heresy and the traitor legions refers to generic civilians on backwater planet #2,341,555.

Any first founding chapter can be expected to have a pretty good record of the heresy era. Possibly biased due to their experiences but reasonably thorough.

The salamanders definitely know about the dropsite massacre. The one thing I'd say is that they don't know exactly what happened to Vulkan, in no small part because he didn't want them to and may have actively obscured that detail.

I thought that doctoring the recorded histories was part of RGs initiatives when he reformed the astartes. Of course I may be wrong.

For example though I would expect that only Azreal would know about the Heresy and what happened with Luther.

The dark angels are very much a special case.

The dark angels as a collective entity have a complete history but only fairly high ranking officials are allowed to access a lot of it.

Asking unprompted the question "so what happened to the Lion, anyway?" is apparently one of the things which gets you noted for possible assignment to the ravenwing.

Whilst Luther is deep dark secret, the inner circle - including deathwing squaddies - know the essentials of the heresy INCLUDING WHAT HAPPENED ON CALIBAN, because they couldn't effectively hunt the fallen if they didn't.

I don't recall Gulliman doctoring histories.

If anything he'd be arguing for the reverse - information is victory and all that - and when brought back he established the Logos Historica Verita specifically to try and un-feth the tangled, distorted mess of imperial history.

IIRC, the only thing Guilliman removed from the historical record was any reference to Imperium Secundus.

It wasn't so much Guilliman or the High Lords doctoring or altering history, except sort of the Ecclesiarchy for religious reasons, but more a case of people just forgetting what happened. People know the Heresy happened in the same way we know what caused the Bronze Age collapse.
In the Wolftime novel, most people, even higher ups, don't even know that the War of the Beast happened.

mrFickle wrote:
I thought that doctoring the recorded histories was part of RGs initiatives when he reformed the astartes. Of course I may be wrong.

For example though I would expect that only Azreal would know about the Heresy and what happened with Luther.

Having just read the very paragraph this morning about this in the Dark Imperium book, mrFickle is spot on. Guilliman mentions that he closes the great library on Ultramar or wherever because he doesn't want people knowing about Imperium Secundus. He reckons people knowing about it would be politically difficult considering what he's currently doing with the Indomitus crusade and all that. In the same novel he talks about creating a group of historians who are purposefully sent out to recover lost records. The fact he keeps the Imperium Secundus secret he admits as a deep hypocrisy.

He also mentions that the historical society has a lot of pushback from the Inquisition and several other areas because they dont want history that has been purposefully destroyed coming to light. So it's not that it has been forgotten, but deliberately destroyed.

Apparently he has little knowledge from the War of the Beast because he wasn't there and Cawl was busy beavering away on the Primaris.

 Gert wrote:
It wasn't so much Guilliman or the High Lords doctoring or altering history, except sort of the Ecclesiarchy for religious reasons, but more a case of people just forgetting what happened. People know the Heresy happened in the same way we know what caused the Bronze Age collapse.
In the Wolftime novel, most people, even higher ups, don't even know that the War of the Beast happened.

10,000 years is a LOOONG time, consider the Trojan war, it's estimated to have been around 1194-1983 BC, but we only have a rough estimate of it. For ages many historians belived it was entirely fiction, until we actually found the ruins of Troy. even then what we know of the conflict is pretty limited and almost certainly more heavily influenced by stories then facts..

and the Trojan war was only 3000 years ago.

Exactly my point. We can't even be sure about our own history and that's just one planet.
Large swathes of the Imperium legitimately don't believe Xenos exist and are just a made up enemy designed to scare children.

Yeah but in Trojan times they didn’t have electronic data storage

The Imperium doesn't use electronic data storage. Scribes write things and if it's lost its lost. Astropathic messages are typed out or written down to be shown to others. Dataslates are a thing but paper is easier to aquire and use.

 Gert wrote:
The Imperium doesn't use electronic data storage. Scribes write things and if it's lost its lost. Astropathic messages are typed out or written down to be shown to others. Dataslates are a thing but paper is easier to aquire and use.

This can’t be totally correct? The admech must be using electronic data storage to run the STCs they have and hard drives would be needed to run vehicles and ships etc.

And I’m pretty sure that given how much more convenient it is than writing everything down as space marines go around doing thing they collect data and store it.

Scribes might be his official holy records are kept but some storage must be used…..

mrFickle wrote:

 Gert wrote:
The Imperium doesn't use electronic data storage. Scribes write things and if it's lost its lost. Astropathic messages are typed out or written down to be shown to others. Dataslates are a thing but paper is easier to aquire and use.

This can’t be totally correct? The admech must be using electronic data storage to run the STCs they have and hard drives would be needed to run vehicles and ships etc.

And I’m pretty sure that given how much more convenient it is than writing everything down as space marines go around doing thing they collect data and store it.

Scribes might be his official holy records are kept but some storage must be used…..

It basically is - their data storage only lasts a few hundred years, and they can't search it properly because that would require something approaching an Abominable Intelligence...
Cawl knows he's forgotten/lost stuff, but can't remember what!

There's a scene in one of the Iron Hands novels where a dreadnought has to show/remind the command staff how their tactical control centre works, and there's a sub-plot that there written Chapter history is wrong...

beast_gts wrote:

mrFickle wrote:

 Gert wrote:
The Imperium doesn't use electronic data storage. Scribes write things and if it's lost its lost. Astropathic messages are typed out or written down to be shown to others. Dataslates are a thing but paper is easier to aquire and use.

This can’t be totally correct? The admech must be using electronic data storage to run the STCs they have and hard drives would be needed to run vehicles and ships etc.

And I’m pretty sure that given how much more convenient it is than writing everything down as space marines go around doing thing they collect data and store it.

Scribes might be his official holy records are kept but some storage must be used…..

It basically is - their data storage only lasts a few hundred years, and they can't search it properly because that would require something approaching an Abominable Intelligence...
Cawl knows he's forgotten/lost stuff, but can't remember what!

There's a scene in one of the Iron Hands novels where a dreadnought has to show/remind the command staff how their tactical control centre works, and there's a sub-plot that there written Chapter history is wrong...

Crikey

mrFickle wrote:
Crikey

Some people think it's grim-dumb - but we're still trying to work out the best way to warn future humanity about radioactive waste dumps, etc. , and NASA no longer has the equipment to watch/review the data/video from the moon landings.

In bill Kings old space wolf novels, old wolf priests who are too old to fight are basically their it team and talk about their data storage and their computers (can't remrmber the terms) and how a lot of it has been lost because they lose passwords (people die in battle) or data gets corrupted when machines are replaced.

It will be interesting to see what we learn from new LOV lore as it sounds like they have significant data storage in the ancestor core, although it sounds difficult to access

mrFickle wrote:
This can’t be totally correct? The admech must be using electronic data storage to run the STCs they have and hard drives would be needed to run vehicles and ships etc.

And I’m pretty sure that given how much more convenient it is than writing everything down as space marines go around doing thing they collect data and store it.

Scribes might be his official holy records are kept but some storage must be used…..

Even the Mechanicus uses paper copies. The Imperium is technologically advanced but culturally backward. It might very well be the case that an IPad would be better for writing down orders or histories but most people in the Imperium are too uneducated to manage that and for the Mechanicus, it's part of the religion that only the upper echelons are allowed "advanced" technology. Plus, paper is cheap. All the Imperium needs to do is have a few thousand planets dedicated to forestry and there is no issue getting paper. And if there is? Well, these documents are just history, current orders of the day are much more important, as is the word of the God-Emperor (BTW monks actually did this last part IRL with documents about the classical era).

 Gert wrote:
The Imperium doesn't use electronic data storage. Scribes write things and if it's lost its lost. Astropathic messages are typed out or written down to be shown to others. Dataslates are a thing but paper is easier to aquire and use.

They use both, but its not like electronic records are some cure for losing historical data.

I suspect that the use of large amounts of paper is down to two things. 1) It is tradition to use paper data storage alongside electronic data. 2) It functions as a backup. Electronic records can be deleted on accident with the press of a button, or scrambled due to some malfunction. At least a sheet of paper won't spontaneously delete itself and it is tougher for someone trying something nefarious to physically sift through and falsify records.

The US government maintains vaults in which they put paper versions of all government records just in case nuclear war deletes all computer records.