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 Overread wrote:
Tolkien created entire languages from the ground up.

That said he wasn't trying to create new races, his entire objective was to base his Middle Earth on Norse Legends/folklore. That was a core part of his approach and why you can find a lot of elements of his stories within them.


Many other authors have done likewise and used mythology as the foundation for their stories.




As for why - consider that the more outlandish you create something the more pages and space you've got to devote to explaining it to your readers. It also becomes more complicated and difficult the more you develop your story because you have to add even more layers to your peoples.
Furthermore even if you achieve it people will latch onto key elements that line up with their real world impressions on things. They'll even make connections that either you didn't realise you'd made yourself; or that were never intended.


In the end basing things on real world counterparts can help. It gives you a fleshed out model/structure to work from; it gives you the ability to lean on tropes/common impressions to speed up delivery of the lore to the reader to let them get on with the story etc....

It's the same reason fantasy stories often lean on words like elf and orc even if their story isn't based on anything to do with Norse legends or linguistics at all. Because its WAY faster to say elf and most readers instantly have a mental impression.

yeah, my point was, Tolkien put a lot of effort into his worldbuilding, more than anyone else in the field, and even he used real world cultures as some kind of basis

definitely agree with what you're saying here. having some kind of basis helps significantly for the audience to connect with your story

The irony here is just how parochial humanity is that it would prefer continual recycling of its stories and history than anything actually otherworldly and alien...


of course we are looking through a western lens to discuss it. I doubt that an indonesian reader would be able to appreciate using western cultural short cuts to impart lore.

Tolkien's work wouldn't see anywhere near as profound - it would look like any other fiction with made up concepts without that context.

Which makes it even more parochial, not even for humans in general, but one specific group that gets all that culturally specific context.

I think there is a limit to which a story can be made otherworldly before it just doesn’t apply to humans any more. It’s like Pratchett and his Octarine. If you can’t actually see it, then all you can do is have it described to you as being vaguely purplish.

If the central experiences of a story are ultimately unknowable, then how does the author come up with them in The first place, and how do they then make it compelling story for others to follow. If the characters share identifiably human traits, then why not make them more rather than less identifiably human to help the reader along?

 Hellebore wrote:
The irony here is just how parochial humanity is that it would prefer continual recycling of its stories and history than anything actually otherworldly and alien...


of course we are looking through a western lens to discuss it. I doubt that an indonesian reader would be able to appreciate using western cultural short cuts to impart lore.

Tolkien's work wouldn't see anywhere near as profound - it would look like any other fiction with made up concepts without that context.

Which makes it even more parochial, not even for humans in general, but one specific group that gets all that culturally specific context.

Indonesia still has animals, and knows of other cultures. some associations exist beyond cultural boundaries— insects, for example, like are one of the inspirations for the tyranids, are given negative associations across the world, so while an Indonesian take on "evil space bugs" might look different, an Indonesian person creating a 40k-like setting would likely stumble onto similar concepts

oh, and Indonesia also has elves (the Orang bunian), and also they have access to western culture, so something like elves, or even space elves, wouldn't be that strange

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The irony here is just how parochial humanity is that it would prefer continual recycling of its stories and history than anything actually otherworldly and alien...


of course we are looking through a western lens to discuss it. I doubt that an indonesian reader would be able to appreciate using western cultural short cuts to impart lore.

Tolkien's work wouldn't see anywhere near as profound - it would look like any other fiction with made up concepts without that context.

Which makes it even more parochial, not even for humans in general, but one specific group that gets all that culturally specific context.

Indonesia still has animals, and knows of other cultures. some associations exist beyond cultural boundaries— insects, for example, like are one of the inspirations for the tyranids, are given negative associations across the world, so while an Indonesian take on "evil space bugs" might look different, an Indonesian person creating a 40k-like setting would likely stumble onto similar concepts

oh, and Indonesia also has elves (the Orang bunian), and also they have access to western culture, so something like elves, or even space elves, wouldn't be that strange

Blood angels, space wolves, dark angels, black templars, ultramarines all use very western cultural shortcuts to impart what they are that will not be obvious to someone for whom knights templar, the renaissance or romans are not common cultural touch stones.

I'm not claiming absolutely everything, I'm just saying that what we consider generic cultural touch stones are often no where near as universal as many people might think (because people conflate their perception of general with a universal one and discuss it that way).

A very simple example would be the colour red being lucky in china, which will have an unconscious impact on how they perceive red armies in 40k when that's not at all what the colour is doing. The inverse - where a chinese scifi depicts something like a harlequin type alien that follows a luck god always appearing in red, would have the same issue with a western reader. It may not be explicitly called out so they will miss that facet as a result.

The orang bunian are also not really that similar to elves as the west understands them at all. So if you tried to analogise them with eldar/aelves you'd be giving the read a very weird expectation...

And yet it can evolve. Western fantasy has been dipping into other cultures for decades - Earthsea being a prime example. Of course stuff that's Tolkien based often gets a bias from publishers and is more easily picked up by the masses.

So yes within different major cultural groups there will be different things that rise to the top because of the cultural background. That doesn't prevent other cultural stuff from rising up and honestly I'd say that Western is steadily getting more and mother other mythos and elements into it over time.

It's not a fast process; its often held back because large firms try to avoid risk and often adjust things in translation to fit - Hollywood and US cinema being a prime example where they will adapt things like Anime (series and films) and make massive changes to the stories and structure and content to "westernise" it for their audiences. And yet its the more faithful Ghibli film adaptations that are soaring in popularity not the original adjusted versions (which honestly are likely like golddust to find now).


Also nothing stops a creator explaining things. "Red ones gofasta" is not a thing that's really in any culture*. Yet its 100% part of Warhammer 40K Ork Culture. It's explained, its supported in the narrative and its part of the setting.

You could easily explain red as lucky - sure a western reader might think its just part of the fantasy world not part of an adoption of Chinese cultural/mytho background. Indeed there's likely loads of bits of fantasy stories that we read which ARE lifted right from other cultures that we are blind too because we don't know the original cultural source.


*I guess you could kind of hint that classic formula 1 and Ferrari cars were often red, but even that isn't really true now.

 Overread wrote:



As for why - consider that the more outlandish you create something the more pages and space you've got to devote to explaining it to your readers.

This is def. a good point. As a novel fantasy writer I also am aware of making use of some recognicable concepts, albeit tweaking them into my own shape and form to atleast be a refreshing boon or threat' in the worldbuilding. But considering Warhammer also has a library of lore (which is ever increasing) and not exactly groundbreaking writers, it is somewhat necessary to keep to existing concepts as an engine.

Also, mythology (universal) is a great field of inspiration, and the more varied building blocks one has, the more intricate one can design his castle.

 Flinty wrote:
I think there is a limit to which a story can be made otherworldly before it just doesn’t apply to humans any more. It’s like Pratchett and his Octarine. If you can’t actually see it, then all you can do is have it described to you as being vaguely purplish.

If the central experiences of a story are ultimately unknowable, then how does the author come up with them in The first place, and how do they then make it compelling story for others to follow. If the characters share identifiably human traits, then why not make them more rather than less identifiably human to help the reader along?

It is an intellectual challenge. I have already recommended "Blindsight" in this topic. The idea there is that the author uses our knowledge of neurology and cognition and their limits (the idea that "reality" constructed by our brains is very incomplete) to explore things that our cognition and perception is unable to experience. The incredible neurological phenomenon that gave the book its name is an example of that.

Aliens in the book dwell exactly in the areas that our cognition and perception considers unavailable. A bit as if they were exactly where the blind spot of our eye is - we never know what really is there, but our brain fills in the blank space on its own so that we still see something there. The aliens of Blindsight work like that, but not for just seeing, but all senses and all cognition.

I've never encountered a concept of a creature that is more alien than that.

Not to denigrate the idea, but you could tell the same story by saying "stealth field". In fact it sounds a bit derivative of Douglas Adam's idea of the Somebody Else's Problem Field, or the way Pratchett's characters interact with Death.

While the mechanism of invisibility may be novel, what are the aliens actually interacting wit the human characters about? If they are after resources or living space, or competition for the use of Earth in some way, then we are back into a quite comfortable human-centric story.

the concept of "something so weird that you can't see or perceive it" goes back to Lovecraft, and in that case was inspired by scientific discoveries of his day*, in which our understanding of everyday life was changing rapidly and it seemed like the boundaries of science were limitless. even the guy known for incomprehensible horrors had very contemporary and earthly inspirations (and that's without getting into how every visual depiction of Lovecraft's writing seems to turn into some kind of fish)

*can't forget the racism, tho. that was also a big influence to his portrayal of unfathomable others

 Flinty wrote:
Not to denigrate the idea, but you could tell the same story by saying "stealth field". In fact it sounds a bit derivative of Douglas Adam's idea of the Somebody Else's Problem Field, or the way Pratchett's characters interact with Death.

While the mechanism of invisibility may be novel, what are the aliens actually interacting wit the human characters about? If they are after resources or living space, or competition for the use of Earth in some way, then we are back into a quite comfortable human-centric story.

Oh, it is much more than stealth field, Adam's Somebody Else's Problem Field actually hits much closer, although I doubt it was based on discoveries in neurology and neuropsychology.

Basically it stems from a change in approach to what the human brain does. It used to be considered a tool that accurately translates reality, but further research provides evidence that it has mechanisms explicitely designed to feed us fake information, for example to save energy expenditure. If you are familiar with the concept of cognitive biases then you know what I mean.

The comparison with Lovecraft is also apt. As human brain evolved to deal with earthly challenges, it lacks the tools necessary to even attempt to process something that alien. So even if senses perceive this thing, the brain just fills in the space with whatever strikes its fancy, just like it does with the blind spot in our eye. The thing is real, just unavailable to the brain, not dissimilar to how half of the world in front of the patients with a damaged hemisphere or hemispheroctomy feels unavailable to them (impossible to interact with), even when they are aware of its existance.

Some weird examples of that:
https://www.asrs.org/patients/retinal-diseases/38/charles-bonnet-syndrome
https://www.moodyneuro.org/what-is-left-neglect/

I was trying to draw a distinction between technology/skills that we currently do not have (and therefore are effectively magic) and aliens that are intrinsically unknowable, in response to Hellebore's comment above.

Using magic macguffins to achieve certain plot purposes is used extensively and can be used to great effect to explore human responses to situations. Writing a story about a truly unknowable alien would be difficult to make relevant to the reader, as we would have no frame of reference as to the motivation of the subject. Everything would kind of be random and I'm not sure if that leads to a satisfying narrative.

I now wonder wether there 'can be something that holds form that is unknown to us considering the paradigm of form is wholly cymatic ..and therefor sensory. It requires physical re-sonance'.

Also, just as a reminder, they need to make phsycial toys of this stuff to sell.

 LunarSol wrote:
Also, just as a reminder, they need to make phsycial toys of this stuff to sell.

When, one day, they manage to sell me a model that cannot be perceived by my brain, I will have to admit they deserve my money for being unstoppable marketing overlords

They did sort of try ... ring wearing Frodo anyone?

stroller wrote:
They did sort of try ... ring wearing Frodo anyone?

had to googly this

https://www.deviantart.com/littletanks-n-people/art/Frodo-wearing-The-One-Ring-964519255

lold

Cyel wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Also, just as a reminder, they need to make phsycial toys of this stuff to sell.

When, one day, they manage to sell me a model that cannot be perceived by my brain, I will have to admit they deserve my money for being unstoppable marketing overlords

DND has this now though
https://i.etsystatic.com/20462325/r/il/1cc412/2779668720/il_794xN.2779668720_ww9r.jpg
Graveyard-sludge (admittedly, still has arms and legs)
https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Graveyard_sludge

https://www.sideshow.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/dnd_gibbering_mouther.jpg
Gibbering mouther (or Shoggorath to everyone that plays gems of war)

And then there's this classical thing; https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bd88db093a6320f071b1a50/1555564349762-JQTRS9TYC8BJW4TP4EH6/Xorn_2e.jpg?format=1500w
(the xorn)
(mini version; https://otherworldminiatures.co.uk/figures/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/dm35.jpg )

And someone made this ehehe
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fj8clhrkg9q731.jpg

Lastly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yilT5bcHwA
Odopi lol

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 ultimaratio wrote:
They're mostly based on fantasy tropes, which are based on earth people, history, and pop culture. I understand the need for reference points, but I do think fantasy writers in general go too hard trying to make X race the idealized version of some race or culture on earth. It gets kind of silly, and what's cool changes, but the silliness is endearing. "These lizardmen are pre-columbian americans" or "These space elves are even edgier versions of these elves". It gets really bad with space marine chapters imo, then again there are so many flavors of them, that I don't see the problem.

but what else are they supposed to be based on? are you suggesting that anyone making a fantasy world has to make all new cultures from scratch? not even Tolkien did that

I don't think Tolkien, Wolfe, or Bakker based their worlds on tropes but on special knowledge and experience that BL wouldn't have time or interest to coalate, between all their writers. I simply stated what I see as the problem with pigeon-holing factions into tropes, take it or leave it.

 ultimaratio wrote:


I don't think Tolkien, Wolfe, or Bakker based their worlds on tropes but on special knowledge and experience that BL wouldn't have time or interest to coalate, between all their writers. I simply stated what I see as the problem with pigeon-holing factions into tropes, take it or leave it.

I agree, its generally knowledge of ancient pagan mythology and cosmogony. Atleast as far as Tolkien goes, don't know the other writers work personally.
This is a very niche mythology as most people think that mythology starts with either greece, rome or some northern (nordic) regions, while european mythology started with the gael (wild) celts (hidden, because they did not -write anything down- until ogham script which is technically pretty young) and branched into the baltic regions (estonian mythology such as the tharapita recording for one) and then through hallstatt celts spread into the taurus region while through seafarers spread into kemet (egyptaland, hungary is also called egypt in ancient documents btw, because it just refers to nomadic peoples; gypsies) and then the persian gulf (eridu founding named after eriu) and then into the Indus (using port magan to reach it).

It all is concerned with a middle earth region consisting of four islands with at the middle of it a magnetic mount; a pole', or simply a leafless branchless tree; terrible horse (yg drassil) or black rock (rupus negra) on which the Sun was throned (dhero), an Oak (dru) with a burning eye (see the fall of tharapita) which fell' to which its light diminished (also accounted in the kabbalah).

I'm sure the correlation with the eye of sauron (this word means serpent at its root' and the serpent is the universal ancient symbol for light, so it translates to the eye of light) on top of the barad dur (dark tower), do note the language to this word barad dur is sindarin, which despite its fictional translation also translates to 'present sun' in our ancient languages. Sin comes from Su.En which means sun' (like the germanic sonde/zonde or english syn, hebrew hata equating to asiatic qin equating to the word for moon Iah' or simply the akkadian Sin' (sungod portrayed as a moongod, which equates to the sungod Thoth (solar disk holding baboon) that is portrayed later as a moongod (ibis symbology).

All in all Tolkien used this -fall of the Sun from its tree- mythology, basing the races on many a saka/geta or asiatic branch' people. It is in the adress of races aswell, as Uruk/Orcus refers to a certain (vilified) city(ur) dwelling people one could specify as Akkadian centric, Hittite cultured' and (post neo hittite state migrations) spread into the asiatic north to become the militarized mongol horde. Such potamian asiatics were mythologized as trol in the baltic region, as culturally they adopted and often appropriated other culture's solar reverence warping it into moon reverence, they were dwellers, not steppe peoples like the Saka/Geta (roamers) of gaelic culture; moving along with the seasons.

But ok, enough about this. It's a subject one can write entire books about.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Gert wrote:

Spoiler:

I mean when you actually dig into the background it's not as silly.

Humans are as varied as the planets they inhabit. Longshanks, Ogryns, Squats, and Ratlings are all human variants (maybe not so much all Squats but enough of them) and have all evolved to suit their environments or even adapted their own genetics to do so. I mean you have an entire subtype of humanity that swaps their meat with machines as well.

The Aeldari are a crafted species and Orks are fungal life and adapt to pretty much any environment they can find themselves in.
Tyranids are hyperadative species that do whatever.
Necrons are nanomachine robots.
T'au seem to be the only race that struggles with all sorts of planets but has the culture to adapt and improvise ways of colonising worlds that don't quite suit their home. Also, the Air Caste clearly shows the T'au didn't all live in the same environments even on their homeworld.

Humanity and the Aeldari also had huge empires during their periods of dominion in the galaxy and both could very easily have terraformed thousands of worlds to be what they needed it to be.

Particularly the terraforming.
. . .

The issue with the terraforming argument is that the galaxy is simply just too friggin big. Even if thousands of worlds have been terraformed, that's still basically nothing in a galaxy of 100 billion stars. And even though the Imperium is "galaxy spanning", it's still stated that it holds roughly one million worlds, which is again, basically nothing. We also know that it doesn't hold all the human-habitable worlds either, since Orks, Eldar, Tau, any anybody else have their own territories as well. We have the data point that Eldar had a "galaxy spanning empire" at the same time that humans had also spread across the galaxy prior to the age of strife as well. The galaxy is so roomy that two pan-galactic civilizations were basically right on top of one another, and they either didn't notice or didn't care enough to make any historical note. 100 billion stars is enough to fit all of those human-esque habitable worlds for all of those entities, but still have plenty (more than plenty) of space in it to also have very non-humanoid life.

While there are abhumans noted to evolve on non-standard human-habitable worlds, they still suffer from the limitation of just being humans (I've heard of no ab-Orks, for example), as well as suffering from the contrivance that they're all still incredibly narrow in their environmental requirements. Similar atmosphere, similar pressure, etc.

The old Rogue Trader book at least makes an attempt to fill some of the "unused space" with a reasonable bestiary, and it throws some warp entities in there for some lovecraftian 40k flavor. RT also gets a shout out for giving some rules and equipment for fighting in a vacuum, a material acknowledgment that non-terrestrial worlds are part of the setting.

There's just so much space (pun intended) that is unused in 40k. It's an easy thing to say that most of 40k involves fairly terrestrial worlds because those are the places that are valuable to humans, eldar, etc. But the amount of unexplored potential outside of "earth-ish" is disappointing. Heck, even "earthish" but underwater would be something. (thinking the Orz from Star Control, if anybody knows that reference.)

Depends what you’re doing, I guess.

In theory, a habitable world or two in a solar system gives you a solid base. A local hub for logistics, food production and manufacturing, with work crews of vast size being rotated in and out to plunder the material value of nearby, normally uninhabitable worlds. Stuff like Gas Giants, or Rocky worlds not in the Goldilocks Zone.

And so, terraforming may be reserved for just those sorts of worlds, or perhaps to turn a moon into an agri-world for additional food production.

The genetic tinkering as I speculated could be used as an outright solution (for instance, you can’t terraform your way round stronger gravity, so it’s the people you have to adapt), or as a way to get things going before the Terraforming is complete.

But both would have their limitations, as they’re not universal answers to galactic problems.

The relatively new knowledge that Kin, and by extension perhaps all Abhumans are the result of gene crafting, and not natural evolution, also raises the interesting question of What Is Human Anyway in 40K.

There’s a measure of that in Alien Romulus, which makes the good point that colonising new worlds is hard. Novel diseases, unstable mines, deleterious environments. And so, adapting colonists to the world, and not the world to the colonists, might be the answer. Make humanity more robust and flexible, expand its horizons and speed up colonisation.

Even if it was relatively basic stuff which might leave no outward physical trace (perhaps greater tolerance for short rations, increased resistance to ionising radiation) could’ve been very common. And since those days, the enhancement have entered the general gene pool, quite possibly to the degree any of us might not be recognised as Actually A Human At All within the modern Imperium.

There is a lot of unused lore potential, but the issue is that regardless of how big the galaxy may be, the whole thing still rotates around the tabletop.

 Tyran wrote:
There is a lot of unused lore potential, but the issue is that regardless of how big the galaxy may be, the whole thing still rotates around the tabletop.

And unfortunately these days the tabletop rotates more closely around just models GW sells.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
There is a lot of unused lore potential, but the issue is that regardless of how big the galaxy may be, the whole thing still rotates around the tabletop.

And unfortunately these days the tabletop rotates more closely around just models GW sells.

I mean that's been true since what 2nd edition? At least so far as full factions and races is concerned. Sure in previous editions we'd have some unique characters or weapon optoins that wouldn't have a model, but by and large (every faction that isn't Tau) they'd be the same species as the core faction anyway.

Though even in lore GW mostly only sticks to subfactions of existing armies who get repeat mentions now and then. eg the Exodites for Eldar or the Genestealer Cults (before they got their more recent army since there was a long gap with them not having models) or the Votann (squats).


So yeah it makes sense, GW doesn't want to make loads of art and lore and stories about forces that they aren't selling models of when they can make lore and art of factions that they do. That's part of the limit you get with almost any game based lore. The creators want to focus on what they've got and honestly the majority of customers want lore and art of the faction(s) they are interested in and play with.

The classic alien possession/infestation trope isn't really being mined much.

It's a cheap way to add new factions - just make an upgrade sprue or even just a colour scheme and say that any army using those upgrades or colours is actually infested by yerk/goauld/starro aliens that have taken them over and fighting to keep their species alive.

It also allows for mixing of units from any army, with new stats reflecting the infestation, like WS/BS 5+ for all units and half speed or something.


Or you could literally just counts as that now with no rules changes and just do it yourself.

That was the Genestealer Cults when they launched. A few new models; upgrade pack and heavily reliance on Imperial Guard models.

It was also Yinnari which was two factions mashed together around 3 hero models

It's also every marine army that isn't Ultra Marines.

It's been done, but outside of Space Marines it never seems to gain traction half as much as an actual unique looking new army.

Thing is its not really giving players anything "new" or fresh. It's the same models that they had yesterday with a few bits of flavouring. So its less likely to attract lots of new buyers because anyone with an interest in the core of the army was already a customer before.



It works with Marines, but they are an exception in the whole market and GW has never managed to recapture their magic.

It can be a gateway to creating a whole army though. A couple of characters, a unit or two, and an upgrade sprue to start with, a full unique range a few years down the line. That is what has happened with GSCs.

I could very much envisage similar with Slaught or Enslavers (especially the former).

 Overread wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
There is a lot of unused lore potential, but the issue is that regardless of how big the galaxy may be, the whole thing still rotates around the tabletop.

And unfortunately these days the tabletop rotates more closely around just models GW sells.

I mean that's been true since what 2nd edition? At least so far as full factions and races is concerned. Sure in previous editions we'd have some unique characters or weapon optoins that wouldn't have a model, but by and large (every faction that isn't Tau) they'd be the same species as the core faction anyway.

The link between what you can field and what you can purchase has become tighter over time. During 2nd and through at least 4th, many units and options could be taken in various armies which didn't have specific corresponding models, and players were expected to convert. These days unit options are shrinking further to often only include wargear in the specific amounts that come in the kit.

Though even in lore GW mostly only sticks to subfactions of existing armies who get repeat mentions now and then. eg the Exodites for Eldar or the Genestealer Cults (before they got their more recent army since there was a long gap with them not having models) or the Votann (squats).

So yeah it makes sense, GW doesn't want to make loads of art and lore and stories about forces that they aren't selling models of when they can make lore and art of factions that they do. That's part of the limit you get with almost any game based lore. The creators want to focus on what they've got and honestly the majority of customers want lore and art of the faction(s) they are interested in and play with.

My reaction to that is to say you have been well trained.

I'm no expert in alternate systems, but I recall RPGs like D&D or Star Wars having extensive lore for which no models were sold, early Battletech having Mechs that were given stats and unmade into models, and of course early 40k. I'm sure others can chime in on examples.

And even if many players are only interested in lore for their army, there are loads of people who are interested in the lore outside of their immediate forces. (See: the popularity of the Horus Heresy series prior to any model releases). And I know several people who engage with the lore and don't collect at all.

When you say "the creators want to focus" I'm inclined to think it's less the "creators" and more the suits, with an emphasis on bean counters and lawyers.

 Haighus wrote:
It can be a gateway to creating a whole army though. A couple of characters, a unit or two, and an upgrade sprue to start with, a full unique range a few years down the line. That is what has happened with GSCs.

That's not what happened with Genestealer Cults. The full codex release was clearly planned out even at the point of Deathwatch: Overkill being released.

Necrons in 2nd edition would be a better example.

I think they are talking about the kit bash concept for a new faction.

You could have made genestealer cults with purestrains and the guard, without any additions. only the hybrids would need to be converted.

There was a Citadel Journal army list for 3rd that looked like this.



'Another example would be the chaos mutants from the Eye of Terror list which was a bunch of ork, zombie and cadian (?) sprues in a bag.