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Not at all.

I’m going for a specific format. First, state the claim and find its source. Then begin exploring it, including other sources etc.

The intent is something akin to a master thread others can be linked to. One with actual citations and that.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Earlier Guard codexes had characters like Karamazov who's entire shtique was sending in infinite waves of poorly trained and equipped men.

Point of order - Karamazov is/was the Inquisitor on the first walking throne. Colonel Chenkov was the Valhallan office known for his human wave attacks.

 Dysartes wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Earlier Guard codexes had characters like Karamazov who's entire shtique was sending in infinite waves of poorly trained and equipped men.

Point of order - Karamazov is/was the Inquisitor on the first walking throne. Colonel Chenkov was the Valhallan office known for his human wave attacks.

Thanks
Honestly I'm just impressed I spelt Karamazov right first time It's just a shame I got completely the wrong guy
I thought they were one and the same tbh. But obviously not!

I chose the two I haven't heard that much about, but they're also the two I don't have that much interest in That is Alpha Legion and Death Korps. I feel like we've discussed the Ork thing more than once here already.

Haighus wrote:MDG, to clarify is the end result of the poll that a thread would be created to discuss the winning topic?

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Yup.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Not at all.

I’m going for a specific format. First, state the claim and find its source. Then begin exploring it, including other sources etc.

The intent is something akin to a master thread others can be linked to. One with actual citations and that.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

Is there any particular reason more than one thread can't be started? Is the poll needed? It isn't like multiple threads cannot be active at the same time.

Got to start somewhere. Figured finding a common point of interest was as good a place as any.

If anyone wants to kick one off on something they’re informed about (for instance, I’m not up on Alpha Legion myself) feel free to

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Got to start somewhere. Figured finding a common point of interest was as good a place as any.

If anyone wants to kick one off on something they’re informed about (for instance, I’m not up on Alpha Legion myself) feel free to

Are you sure about that? That sounds exactly Iike something an Alpha Legionnaire would say.

I am not sure all (or really any) of these deserve a thread. They're generally fairly simple to deconstruct. The issue tends to be community games of telephone, warping the lore from retelling to retelling, along with deliberate meme sites like 1d4chan, r/grimdank etc.

Like the Alpha Legion -is- sneaky and deceptive in a lot of ways. They -do- tend to introduce themselves as Alpharius to keep their membership opaque (and, as the Harrowmaster novel explains, it's also done internally as a symbolic act to indicate the speaker wants to put value on what is to be said rather than who exactly is saying it). They absolutely disguise their troops in false colours, set ambushes and so on.

The reason people meme about Alpharius sneaking superheavy tanks up to hide them behind lampposts is because, well, memes. Before him it was Castellan Creed. Memers gonna meme, and a veteran who jokes about something may be seen by a newbie who takes it at face value.

(Addendum: Text-To-Speech Device and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race).

Orky belief really bothers me because the reality of the Imperium not being able to comprehend the concept of a kultur they don't respect far funnier and more in line with the satire they represent.

Gman+Yvrainne is my favorite meme in the setting though and I will defend that one out of pure love of the concept.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I am not sure all (or really any) of these deserve a thread. They're generally fairly simple to deconstruct. The issue tends to be community games of telephone, warping the lore from retelling to retelling, along with deliberate meme sites like 1d4chan, r/grimdank etc.

Like the Alpha Legion -is- sneaky and deceptive in a lot of ways. They -do- tend to introduce themselves as Alpharius to keep their membership opaque (and, as the Harrowmaster novel explains, it's also done internally as a symbolic act to indicate the speaker wants to put value on what is to be said rather than who exactly is saying it). They absolutely disguise their troops in false colours, set ambushes and so on.

The reason people meme about Alpharius sneaking superheavy tanks up to hide them behind lampposts is because, well, memes. Before him it was Castellan Creed. Memers gonna meme, and a veteran who jokes about something may be seen by a newbie who takes it at face value.

(Addendum: Text-To-Speech Device and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race).

See that stuff you mentioned? That’s new info to me. And I won’t be the only person. Already you’ve illustrated greater depths to their background. Which is the aim of the proposed threads.

 Ashiraya wrote:
...

All of this and the simple fact that a majority of the fans get the vast majority of their lore through memes. Whether that be photo memes, comic memes, voiced comic memes, or whatever, that's just how the younger generations consume media now.
Even those fans that actually do read (even just their codex, which have almost no lore these days) read for only a small subset of 40k but will view memes about everything.

If we take 15 Hours - a book that we established earlier isn't actually unreasonable in it's depiction of the Guard.
But very few people read it. Someone makes a meme about "POV: you're a Guardsmen 15 hours after deploying" and millions more are gonna see it and take it at face value without any of the original nuance.

Stuff like Orky Beleef has propogated so readily because it makes good memes. A Guardsmen just yelling "bang bang bang" and Orks dropping dead from bullet wounds is just funny. [Once... then it gets tired and boring and silly, but I digress].
And in no small part too, it's funny so people enjoy it so they want it to be true.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
And in no small part too, it's funny so people enjoy it so they want it to be true.

Umies beliefs reshape the reality of the galaxy?

Oh I’ll be covering that…

Ah, the Death Korps, lots to de-meme from them, yeah. Between shovels, cloning and un-breakability, though the first aspect is by far the worst.

Speaking of Kriegers, there is some part deep within me that feels violent disgust when the community talks about how "badass" they are.

They are extremely tragic victims of an obscenely oppressive society. Implicitly cloned, raised from birth to be meat for endless war with no identity of their own. They are victims. The Imperium has done nothing to earn their sacrifice. They are saddled with generational guilt, made to be faceless troops, beaten down, all individuality crushed out of them. Any culture they once might have had has been stomped out, they're left with nothing.

There is something fundamentally repulsive about calling that "badass". It's like looking at a picture of a nine year old sub-Saharan child soldier with a machine gun IRL and calling that "badass". No, you absolute cretin. That's a victim forced into this, indoctrinated, never given a chance to be their own person. Every victory won by the Death Korps is a tragedy of them pointlessly spilling their own blood for a cause that cares nothing for them. A Krieg rebel regiment would be absolute heroes for standing up for the life and dignity of their people, but we all know that'd never happen, they'd definitely never be depicted that way even if they appear.

That's just all Astartes though surely

Krieg rebelled against the Imperium, though, so unlike Astartes, the Death Korps are being made to feel guilty over that and that is used to keep them fervently loyal to the Imperium. Their ancestors action are being used to dictate what they should and to impose on them a cult of sacrifice.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Krieg rebelled against the Imperium, though, so unlike Astartes, the Death Korps are being made to feel guilty over that and that is used to keep them fervently loyal to the Imperium. Their ancestors action are being used to dictate what they should and to impose on them a cult of sacrifice.

Yeah, it's what I mean about generational guilt. The Kriegers of today are made to suffer for what their ancestors did (not even their literal ancestors - the actual traitors of old were all nuked, the survivors were loyalist!)

Astartes are also tragic child-soldiers, don't get me wrong, but they are honoured, respected, even celebrated. They are definitely given a prestigious position and a fair deal of authority, and are given a place of reverence in Imperial dogma.

Meanwhile the Kriegers are eternal penitents for sins committed, what, 1800 years before the present day of 40k? That's somehow even worse.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Krieg rebelled against the Imperium, though, so unlike Astartes, the Death Korps are being made to feel guilty over that and that is used to keep them fervently loyal to the Imperium. Their ancestors action are being used to dictate what they should and to impose on them a cult of sacrifice.

Yeah, it's what I mean about generational guilt. The Kriegers of today are made to suffer for what their ancestors did (not even their literal ancestors - the actual traitors of old were all nuked, the survivors were loyalist!)

Astartes are also tragic child-soldiers, don't get me wrong, but they are honoured, respected, even celebrated. They are definitely given a prestigious position and a fair deal of authority, and are given a place of reverence in Imperial dogma.

Meanwhile the Kriegers are eternal penitents for sins committed, what, 1800 years before the present day of 40k? That's somehow even worse.

In fairness, I believe that Krieg's penance is entirely self-imposed.

Krieg was isolated from the Imperium for a while after the rebellion and the nuclear winter and when contact was made the Imperium was shocked that not only had someone survived, but they were also loyal, wanted to continue with the Tithe, and had 10 times what could have been reasonably expected for starting it back up again.

20 Regiments, though their regimental output is 10 times what is expected of a planet of that type to produce in 10 years.

And while it's self-imposed, the Imperium certainly doesn't mind, considering they're allowed to use the Vitae-Womb.

I suspect the vitae womb is going to be a big part of the discussion in a dedicated thread. Not going to go into it here and will humour MDGs goal of dedicated threads.

What annoys me most about this whole topic are not the memes, but the people who take them at face value.

Yes, 'happy gasmask noises' funny. But some people look at the funny haha meme and thing Kriegers are having a great time.

Come on, stop and think for a second. They are miserable.

Ok, been playing 40k since 2nd edition and read most of the codexes and lore books since that time (though not all black library) so I'm going to address some of these memes, starting with the orks.

First off, X is a krork or turning into a Krork.
Krork are not super orks, superior orks or ork ancestors, they are orks. Krork is simply the Necton and Aeldari name for the Ork race. What is true though is the Orks get bigger the more they win, and smarter the bigger they get. Its also true that the technology levels of the orks and emergence of Mad boyz and other specialists is directly tied to the number of orks and is likely linked to the gestalt psychic field.

Speaking of which, the gestalt psychic field. My understanding is that its less that belief makes things work and more that Ork tech is designed to function alongside the psychic field, much like craftworld technology. Ork instinctively know how to make things, but not necessarily how is works. Ork paint might be psychoreactive, hence red and blue paint having minor noticible effects. Its also been noted in at least one codex that the red paint might not do anything and that mellows subconsciously make red vehicles faster. A good example of this working in the rules is the fantasy flight games where ork projectile weapons gain the unreliable trait in the hands of non orks, they just about function, but clearly designed to be used by orks.

Purple orks, the meme started as a joke because someone online said, have you ever seen a purple ork. But they clearly are not old enough to remember Ork Genestealer hybrids and non-bad moon freebootaz

As for Ullunor/armageddon. It may or may not be the ork homework, only the brain boys know for sure, and they are gone. But it was the seat of the ork empire, and why ghazakhul is constantly drawn to it.

It's weird that Orks seemingly weren't drawn to Armageddon prior to the 2nd War, almost 9000 years after it was moved to it's current location...
Don't think about it!

Next, Alpha Legion being super sneaky and I am Alpharius.

So, super sneaky. The legion was designed for covert operations. Legion geneseed means marines occasionally change their appearance over time to mimic their primarch (See Abbadon and little House as famous examples). In the Alpha legion this was amplified and taken advantage of to make most marines look the same. Then the Primarchs special power was basically reversing the Primarch aura, making them appear smaller and more ordinary. This combined with the Alpha legion blood ritual, which is unclear if its a mutation of their brain eating organ, but it basically allows marines to absorb memories of a marine or primarch and assume their identity, which is how the Primarch and higher level marines seem to be in multiple places at once. They also use psykers to suppress memories, allowing agents to infiltrate other legions more effectively. Its unknown whether "modern" Alpha Legion still do this, but they do operate a web of spies and informants. Like other chaos Legions, individual marines range from barely corrupted renegades to full blown daemon princes and everything in between.

I am Alpharius stems from a combination of the above blood drinking ritual (appointed marines would literally become Alpharius) and the primarchs habit of becoming one of their own men, making everyone in the group an equal voice combined with the Alpha Legions distrust of outsiders and habit of spreading false information means that I am Alpharius is a natural choice when pushed for information. Unless of course the Marine is trying to make a name for themselves or their warband, such as Daemon Princes, mighty sorcerers or Harromasters


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's weird that Orks seemingly weren't drawn to Armageddon prior to the 2nd War, almost 9000 years after it was moved to it's current location...
Don't think about it!

Maybe no Ork had the visions before that, telling them where it was (blame Eldrad and that bolt shell)

I find the Alpha Legion so silly, astartes have to be the worst spy agents you could imagine.

What are they supposed to do in the Great Crusade? spying, infiltration, and sleeper agents aren't gonna be remotely useful when you're fighting against the Orks or Megarachnids. Their whole existence and approach as a Legion assumes a great civil war where they are fighting other astartes.
I was chuckling reading some of their novels where they repeatedly depict a fully armoured astartes just hiding in the shadows in a [lit] room to surprise a character. Like how?!
Honestly the memes aren't even that inaccurate to what's actually written, it's just stupid and lame because the writing is stupid and lame.

Before the Horus Heresy novels the Alpha Legion lore was more in leading uprisings and using cult troops to fight their battles. Similar I guess to Word Bearers but more subtle. I guess too similar and subtle for the writers of HH.

Military Intelligence. It’s more than just spying and infiltration.

Where say, the Space Wolves relied on sheer brutality to prosecute their wars of compliance, the Alpha Legion used their talents for intelligence gathering to understand their foe, identify weak points etc to ensure the inevitable war was a short as possible. And they weren’t limited to only Astartes as agents and infiltrators.

In some ways, we could say they were perfecting the surgical precision that Chapters of the future would later rely on for maximum effect.

Now they have of course gone completely pants on head hatstand wibble dibble two pieces of Parkin please bonkers since then. Well, some of them have. Chaos tends to do that to a chap. But whichever of the Twins didn’t snuff it is still laying plans and strategies, gathering intelligence to better aid the overall efforts of Chaos.

Are there examples of dodgy writing mixed in there? Absolutely. But I understand the various books starring the Legion are pretty damned good.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Military Intelligence. It’s more than just spying and infiltration.

Where say, the Space Wolves relied on sheer brutality to prosecute their wars of compliance, the Alpha Legion used their talents for intelligence gathering to understand their foe, identify weak points etc to ensure the inevitable war was a short as possible. And they weren’t limited to only Astartes as agents and infiltrators.

In some ways, we could say they were perfecting the surgical precision that Chapters of the future would later rely on for maximum effect.

Now they have of course gone completely pants on head hatstand wibble dibble two pieces of Parkin please bonkers since then. Well, some of them have. Chaos tends to do that to a chap. But whichever of the Twins didn’t snuff it is still laying plans and strategies, gathering intelligence to better aid the overall efforts of Chaos.

Are there examples of dodgy writing mixed in there? Absolutely. But I understand the various books starring the Legion are pretty damned good.

But even if we grant that... Astartes are absolutely the worst people to be doing that
Can you imagine an Astartes trying to snoop around a Megarachnid nest trying to figure out the weakpoints? That's the Great Crusade that we're supposed to believe these guys were built and trained for.
Even if you take an internal view that the the Alpha Legion are intended to police the burgeoning Imperium... can you imagine an astartes infiltrating a human world?
And why are they simultaneously a fully fledged fighting force? Imagine if the WW2 SOE were also trained and expected to fight as frontline infantry. It's just a nonsensical pairing.
Absolutely none of what the Alpha Legion has ever been depicted as doing I would ever describe as anything like the surgical precision of the later codex astartes.

I found Legion (the first Alpha Legion Heresy book) to be an enjoyable read but it absolutely sets up the full meme level spy nonsense right from the start, and pre-chaos. Really their fall to chaos is *because* of their meme level spy nonsense. This is directly where the meme of "we can't remember which side we're fighting on" comes from, as in the book Alpharius agrees to fight for Horus because he's told Horus winning is the best result for the galaxy as Chaos will burn itself out without constant war. Literally fighting for the baddies to ensure they win so they actually lose so the goodies actually win is their canon reason to fall to chaos.

I think Legion is a terrible book. It has some cool concepts, like the Geno-5 or whatever the Imperial Army unit was called, but it introduced so much actual dross. Like the entire concept of unkillable perpetuals...

It is a prime example of primarchs being shown to be idiots because writing a genius is hard.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
The 15 hours guard thing clearly comes from the book “15 hours” by Mitchel Scanlon 2005. Where a young guardsman is crash landed on a random planet where guard are fighting ORKS and the average life expectancy of the guard is 15 hours.

It’s a great book and can recommend highly, it highlights the absurdity of the imperium brilliantly. But the 15 hours is a thing specific to this brutal war zone not all guard.
This was actually picked up earlier - it's not even the warzone as a whole, but specifically raw conscripts thrust straight into the frontlines. Actually battle experienced Guardsmen survive longer even in that warzone.
Unfortunately most people don't read more than the blurbs - and often just the title/headline, so nuances like that get lost.

Although I don't think that particular book started the myth, I think all it actually did was give it a number and more legitimacy.

It is a call back to wars like WW1 where things like average life expectances were calculated. Stuff like getting past X amount of hours to learn the ropes and have a greater chance of surviving and all that. the one that is frequently referenced is flying officers (and sent up in black adder), during periods of rapid innovation life expectances dropped and veterans died by the bucket load, with I believe at one point a British officer having an average of 69 hours in the air before dying.