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Made in us
Whiteshield Conscript Trooper



Idaho

How does a Chapter not know it’s origins? I don’t get it. I have the most basic way of knowing my ancestors. In 30 to 40k the tech is a lot better. How does a Chapter forget it’s founder and where he came from? I don’t get it. You think they would have something. I’m truly baffled.

Hey guys….I’m joe. No idea when or where I was born, apparently I’m good at stuff. Let’s go kill stuff, in 2k year see can wonder where we come from, yeah? *random cheers from the confused*

Right then! Let’s kill everything. Worry about the past in the future! *more confused cheers*
   
Made in it
Shas'la with Pulse Carbine





This way the player can write part of the lore of that chapter.
And also cherrypick the best rules of the moment


 
   
Made in us
Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







Do you know who your ancestors were five hundred years ago? A thousand? How many planet-destroying wars have there been in the intervening period to wreck the records involved? Couple that with the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Administratum, the unreliability of interstellar communication, and the Mechanicum's rules on computers and I think it's a wonder anyone in the 41st Milennium has a clue what happened a hundred years ago, let alone ten thousand.

If you're asking specifically about the Blood Ravens somewhere along the line the leadership decided it'd be less embarrassing to tell people they'd forgotten who their Primarch was than have to admit it's Magnus.

Balanced Game: Noun. A game in which all options and choices are worth using.
Homebrew oldhammer project: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790996.page#10896267
Meridian: Necromunda-based 40k skirmish: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795374.page 
   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






Some Chapters deliberately hide their history to erase a great shame, some might have suffered a horrific defeat that resulted in the loss of much Chapter knowledge. Finding out the lineage of a Chapter isn't as easy as getting a paternity test and only the Mechanicus has the means and ability to perform such a task, even then its not a surefire way to find out. We also know that on at least one occasion the High Lords specifically ordered gene-seed to be tampered with resulting in the 21st "Cursed" Founding. Maybe the High Lords decided most of these cursed Chapters would be better off not being able to tell their parent Chapter the High Lords had meddled with the lineage of the Holy Primarchs.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






Because Chapters are so small, it's relatively easy for them to suffer massive losses as a percentage of their overall strength.

It was only a bit over 1000 years ago that the Blood Angels took 95% casualties trying to board a Space Hulk. Now imagine if it was the Dark Angels taking those losses, and oops, we've got nobody left who knows anything about the Fallen...
   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

The High Lords, Mechanicus & Inquisition (and possibly the Ecclesiarchy) have all tampered with Chapter records & geneseed to their own ends.
   
Made in us
The Marine Standing Behind Marneus Calgar





Upstate, New York

Sometimes they literally don’t know.

Chapters can be created out of the stocks of gene seed sent in as tithes. High Lords order a new founding, and they whip up a batch. At no point do they need to tell the new chapter where they stem from.

Plenty of reasons to not let them know. Part of the whole reason to break up the chapters was to break up the legions. If a chapter thinks of themselves first as a descendent and brother to their gene-brothers, and not as an independent chapter (I.E. the Unforgiven) then the whole point is kind of lost. If a primarch came back and said “The imperium has lost its way, burn it all down” all the known successor chapters might feel a strong pull to take the challenge. Those who didn’t know their roots might resist better. Even just loyalty to their first founding sire in less extreme circumstances might give the HLoT enough pause to keep things unknown.

   
Made in fr
Stalwart Tribune





On top of all the accidental ways a chapter's lineage can be lost, some chapters may have purged their records voluntarily. Maybe some really shameful stuff happened at some point and the successor chapter doesn't want to risk tarnishing the reputation of their parent chapter. Or perhaps they had a major disagreement with their parent chapter that ended with both sides pretending they were never related.
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




In 30 to 40k the tech is a lot better.

In many ways, its worse.

In terms of records, its absolutely fething awful.

No computers. Organic human minds wired into systems until they rot. Records are produced by rote, and per quite a few bits of background fiction (latest being Avenging Son), the paper itself become part of stratified layers inside buildings, scavenged by half-feral tribes to make new paper and start the process all over again.

No historians. Just propagandists with weird titles: Remembrancer, historitor.

Its also a matter of scale. We know we're missing pieces of Roman or even later history (scholars reference volumes that don't exist anymore), and in many ways what's left is bare bones and 'common knowledge,' with a lot of educated guesses at what goes in the blanks, and that's only two thousand years. 5X times that, on the scale of worlds upon worlds upon worlds? Good luck.

Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in se
Stubborn Hammerer




Sweden

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Do you know who your ancestors were five hundred years ago? A thousand? How many planet-destroying wars have there been in the intervening period to wreck the records involved? Couple that with the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Administratum, the unreliability of interstellar communication, and the Mechanicum's rules on computers and I think it's a wonder anyone in the 41st Milennium has a clue what happened a hundred years ago, let alone ten thousand.

If you're asking specifically about the Blood Ravens somewhere along the line the leadership decided it'd be less embarrassing to tell people they'd forgotten who their Primarch was than have to admit it's Magnus.


Excellent post. Spot on, on all counts.

Ten thousand years back from now will take you to the Ice Age. It's a substantial amount of time. The Age of Imperium is not the Dark Age of Technology: Things get lost, a lot. It's all dysfunctional and riven with bureaucratic madness, warfare, secrecy, competing interest groups wanting to rewrite history, and censorship. Not least from the Inquisition. Sometimes things don't make sense in 40k, but that's only realistic: Often, they do not in the real world either.

No wonder people forget and records get destroyed.

Also, the Blood Ravens' background is just lovely.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/07/04 22:23:24


   
 
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