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How do!

Spinning off from a thread in 40K General, as I think it’s a topic worth discussing and didn’t want to derail.

And as the title suggests, it’s centring on “how come modern Cawltech is significantly fancier than stuff used in the Heresy?”. And I think I’ve got a pretty straight forward answer. All I ask is that folk put aside whatever opinion they have on Cawl as a character and initial introduction of him into the lore.

So, the main difference is…..time. Cawl had 10,000 years. 10,000 years and who knows how many mind-copies to produce his stuff. The Emperor and his forces? Didn’t. Rather He knew the Warp Storms were about to abate/blowout, but couldn’t know exactly when.

He was also building his forces more or less from complete scratch, and needed to arm and equip as many troops as possible - because the Galaxy is a big place. Cawl was building from established logistics. Cawl was working in and around a pretty set level of demand.

Cawl was also beavering away during a period of relative stability. The Great Crusade had to find, fight and claim resources as it went. Some came willingly, others not so much.

And finally? Cawl wasn’t fighting against the tide of war. When he finished a product, it went into mothball, not the front line. His efforts never saw attrition.

But it’s the 10,000(ish) years which were the deciding factor. They allowed a relatively sedentary pace, removed from the pressures The Emperor and His forces had to deal with.

Grav technology for instance is relatively rare. But one glance at the sheer number of Servo-Skulls show that relatively to be the important part. The materials must be fairly easy to get hold of, though few have the knowledge to make it. Everyone else is tasked and tithed with producing lots of stuff each and every year. This makes the more complex Grav plating less appealing than good ol’ treads or wheels etc. Cawl….had no tithe to meet. That Cawl had the right plans to make Grav plating is of course self-evident. And being an Arch Magos, would certainly have been able to obtain the raw materials without anyone overly caring, especially when once again you factor in he had 10,00(ish) years to source, obtain and stockpile it.

We can also safely assume he had the capacity to store raw materials in a beneficial state, so even if some stuff might decay if not properly stored, that’s not the problem we might assume.

So we have a perfect mix of something nobody else in the history of The Imperium has had - and time is the rarest of those commodities. Even if he only churned out 100 of each tank class a year? That’s still 1,000,000 examples of each. Because none of it was being damaged or destroyed in the meantime.

Time. Time is what allowed Cawl to produce such wonders.

There’s even little suggestion he outright invented anything. Improved and refined? Sure. But even the Bolt Rifle is either an existing STC found during that period, or a refinement to the basic boltgun. It’s not a new invention. The STC for the Impulsor and Repulsor chassis aren’t necessarily new inventions either - just long known STC’s considered too time consuming to produce when a Land Raider and Rhino could be churned out instead, and in greater numbers - when you don’t have 10,000 years to play with.

See, once that stuff is assembled and issued? The maintenance itself becomes a lesser issue. Cawl himself still has his Manufactora to produce them. And by necessity, Space Marine Forges will have the ability to maintain and replace their own stock. Sure there are steps in between (you still need the raw materials for fresh production and repairs) - but it’s just not the same job as equipping everyone in the first instance.

Anyways, that’s my thoughts.

TL/DR? Things being complex and harder to produce doesn’t mean a lot when you’re left to it for 10,000 years, free from attrition.

You're right about the materials going out the door. Think about how Russia is doing in their current invasion. Whatever war supplies are made are straight out the door.

I doubt they're perfecting sci fi technology while burning their supplies and materials. Better to take workers and have them make things you know

Cawl stockpiled and innovated in safety

I'd like to add in the Cawl has his own Ark Mechanicus which is essentially a mobile Forge World laded with the most advanced technology and archeotech the Mechanicus has access to.

 Stevefamine wrote:

Cawl stockpiled and innovated in safety

Cawl's master move was probably to abscond from the ridiculous levels of infighting and internal turmoil in the Imperium - sitting out stuff like the Age of Apostasy & Reign of Blood, the various schisms in the Adeptus Mechanicus, power-hogging, power-plays and vendetta among the High Lords and so on. It falls back on the attrition aspect MDG put so forcefully: once your disposition is legible to actors and powerbrokers in the Imperium, you get dragged into their games whether you like it or not - you either become a pawn of an established actor, or you become a player yourself, but in both cases your ressources are going to be expended to further someone's goals or to secure your own position. Just like bureaucracy expands to consume all ressources devoted to it, in the imperial power system there's always another war to fight or another plot to scheme, until your output is barely enough to keep the status quo togehter with duct-tape and WD40; it's the state every imperial institution inevitably ends up in, until they get wiped out by major, unplanned setbacks that they can't never recover from, that is. Cawl has the ridiculous headstart of 10.000 years of not being tied up in that mess, and that's his major advantage.

Being removed from the in-fighting and being able to produce a massive army in secret is the dream many in the Imperium have had. It's a sign of what the Imperium could achieve IF it was to actually unite and function as it should.

Cawl represents a fragment of what the Imprium could do with its vast potential. Just a fragment since, even though he had 10K years he was one agent acting in secret the whole time.

In some ways its a grim sign of the state of the Imperium that so little was achieved for those 10K years with such vast potential.


Question is, now that Cawl is in the open, now that his tools and machines are being used; how will that stand against the test of time with the Imperium.




Another thing to consider with the in-fighting is Cawl didn't have to contend with other Magos arguing over his Cawls work was within the strict confines of their interpretation of how machinery and science should be used. Things that might see advance or even just use of existing tech held in limbo for decades or subject to random and crazy changes to fit different interpretations of holy texts. If he wanted to do something, he did it; he only had himself to argue with

It's a lore development that I'm not massively keen on, to be honest. I rather liked the idea that the 40K Imperium was a technologically-regressed society, desperately fighting to stay alive with poorly-understood and irreplaceable relic weaponry from the past. It provided some scant justification for the fascist dystopia that mankind had slid backwards into.

Nowadays it feels a bit more uncomfortable, in that the same fascist dystopia has shiny new kit and is now kicking arse and taking names across the galaxy.

Crispy78 wrote:
It's a lore development that I'm not massively keen on, to be honest. I rather liked the idea that the 40K Imperium was a technologically-regressed society, desperately fighting to stay alive with poorly-understood and irreplaceable relic weaponry from the past. It provided some scant justification for the fascist dystopia that mankind had slid backwards into.

Nowadays it feels a bit more uncomfortable, in that the same fascist dystopia has shiny new kit and is now kicking arse and taking names across the galaxy.

I think that's just a phase really, used to up the ante and increase the stakes, it will regress in time. There are hints towards all sorts of problems for Cawl, from dissent brewing in the Adeptus Mechanicus to his (probable) meddling with traitor geneseed, and now with the events of AoO we have Chaos Primaris and corrupted Cawl-Stuff as well. I think this hints towards GW flip-flopping on what the CSM codex represents yet again, and maybe this edition will be the one we finally get a recently-turned Renegades and an veterans-of-the-long-war Legionnaries codex...

To be fair they kind of needed a little bit of victory to hold things together. And heck even now it still looks like GW could easily take the lore in a "half the Imperium is protected by Marines; the other half fell free and collapsed into warring, bickering local system leaders. Each one loyal to the Emperor, but no longer able to commune with Terra itself. Struck with strife of surviving on their own; no Black Arks to take the psychers away; no support; no relief; forced to deal with Xenos and more.

Also leaving room for the creative team to develop new alien threats as once cowed and hiding Xenos armies rise up.


I could VERY easily see the lore going that way even with the new Crusade having won many victories. Even with Cawls legions the Imperium is still a monster crippled by its own size and madness and yet reliant on both to sustain itself.

I don’t entirely disagree. But for me, the difference is that Cawl and Guilliman have, thus far, only staved off total defeat.

Combined, they and The Imperium were able to start grinding attrition in its favour. For all the dynamism of Cawl and Guilliman, even they can’t properly get the Imperium off the ropes, and it remains largely reactive to the predations of its foes. There’s current little capacity to actively hunt Abaddon down and remove him as the lynch pin of Chaos’ successes - the only being even vaguely holding the disparate forces together

Reading some of the HH novels, I'm getting this idea that the Emperor wasn't even half as good as he claimed himself to be, and he was kind of a narcissistic bully who was successful because he was the only helicopter in a universe of stupid. So Cawltech being better than Emperortech isn't very surprising considering the latter is just a bunch of stolen (and usually sabotaged) stuff squeezed out from some randos (usually squatting in some ruins and making terrible life choices).

Overread wrote:
Also leaving room for the creative team to develop new alien threats as once cowed and hiding Xenos armies rise up.

I'd hope we see some more Xenos not only coming out of hiding to reap the spoils of a decaying Imperium, but also waves of them being driven before the Tyranid fleets and becoming refugees-cum-invaders out of desperation and necessity.

AtoMaki wrote:Reading some of the HH novels, I'm getting this idea that the Emperor wasn't even half as good as he claimed himself to be, and he was kind of a narcissistic bully who was successful because he was the only helicopter in a universe of stupid. So Cawltech being better than Emperortech isn't very surprising considering the latter is just a bunch of stolen (and usually sabotaged) stuff squeezed out from some randos (usually squatting in some ruins and making terrible life choices).

The Emperor got his scientific advances mostly by plundering stuff or by having his thralls develop it and then unpersoning them after they got the job done; he's not so much a great scientist as a great (and ruthless) manager of science programs: he offers his subordinates ressources and time to do their work, while he uses his warlord skills to keep distractions away and get enough slaves, raw materials and exotic stuff to keep his legions of Mengeles and von Brauns happily occupied. The big exception is his human webway project, which he mostly worked on himself, but rather out of jealousy and paranoia and less because he was the best available scientist.

 AtoMaki wrote:
Reading some of the HH novels, I'm getting this idea that the Emperor wasn't even half as good as he claimed himself to be, and he was kind of a narcissistic bully who was successful because he was the only helicopter in a universe of stupid. So Cawltech being better than Emperortech isn't very surprising considering the latter is just a bunch of stolen (and usually sabotaged) stuff squeezed out from some randos (usually squatting in some ruins and making terrible life choices).

It depends on the perspective. If you read Loyalist focussed novels he comes across better but in Traitor focussed novels he's a muppet.
The problem with the Emperor is that he had all these big plans that were ruined and then he didn't really fix them very well afterward.
He always plays ten steps ahead of what everyone else which often blinded him to issues that were right in front of his face.

Take Angron for example. We as readers know that helping Angron's rebellion would have been a better choice compared to having a son who hates you and turns his Legion into broken raving maniacs because he's just that sadistic. But from the Emperor's perspective, he was rushing about trying to pick up the pieces of his big Primarch Project and trying to start the Webway Project. The Emperor didn't have the time to run around Nuceria razing cities in a vengeance war when it was a functioning society that could provide troops and materials for the Crusade. So he steals Angron, deals with the tantrum, and gets a Legion that causes issues but is very effective at annihilating some of the worst enemies of the Crusade.

The other thing to consider is that many of the Emperors problems often stem from humanity and his creations being, well, alive. Whilst the Emperor is much more like a player playing Stellaris.

He doesn't care about any one individual, only the survival of his race at the galactic level. It's also his undoing at times because his pawns on the board don't do what he expects of them because they have free will and can be tempted or twisted by emotional forces and other agents.

The other issue was that he was just one person with his own vision. He had the power to enact much of what he wanted, but he lacked a proper breakdown of power to other levels who would understand and support his total vision.

 Overread wrote:
The other thing to consider is that many of the Emperors problems often stem from humanity and his creations being, well, alive. Whilst the Emperor is much more like a player playing Stellaris.

He doesn't care about any one individual, only the survival of his race at the galactic level. It's also his undoing at times because his pawns on the board don't do what he expects of them because they have free will and can be tempted or twisted by emotional forces and other agents.

The other issue was that he was just one person with his own vision. He had the power to enact much of what he wanted, but he lacked a proper breakdown of power to other levels who would understand and support his total vision.

Which may well have been part of the intent of the Primarch Project. Not just powerful war leaders, but beings near enough his own knowledge and intelligence to form a proper council of sorts. Not only to understand the scale, scope and importance of The Emperor’s vision, but to rein Him in should his plan seem narrow minded.

We see this reflected in Horus’ own Mournival. Not just trusted advisors, but trusted not to be mindless lickspittle yes-men toadies. Those whose job it was to second guess Horus, pick holes in his plans and suggest other approaches, and not to be overawed by his presence.

Indeed, this is the one thing Guilliman lacks and may never truly find in the 41st Millennium. And indeed is a significant downside to the beatification of Primarchs post Horus Heresy and their disappearance.

It’s something I myself rely on at work, even though I’m just a Spod. I’ll talk to colleagues and team mates about a case. Not only to gauge their thoughts against my own, but looking for easy rebuttals. Sometimes I’m absolutely on the money, and off it goes out the door. Other times a question or observation pops up which skewers my suggested outcome. But both ensure my outcomes are as water tight as they can be with the available information. It works - but it needs everyone to be heard to work.

The plan was to have pioneers who would build the Imperium and perform particular roles when the Emperor eventually turned it over to the psychically evolved humanity. For example, it is believed that Magnus was intended to be the power source for the portal leading to the human Webway.
The Legions and the Primarchs would have turned out exactly as the Emperor wanted them and not the varied melting pot they became had The Plan not been messed with. Everything after that was essentially damage control which he obviously was not very good at.

The other way to look at it is cawl was just improving on things that had already been invented. Like taking an existing product and putting a clock in it

mrFickle wrote:

The other way to look at it is cawl was just improving on things that had already been invented. Like taking an existing product and putting a clock in it

^ This.
Essentially Cawl's technology is 10,000 years of iteration rather than anything actually new.

Aash wrote:

mrFickle wrote:

The other way to look at it is cawl was just improving on things that had already been invented. Like taking an existing product and putting a clock in it

^ This.
Essentially Cawl's technology is 10,000 years of iteration rather than anything actually new.

I mean... that is all science really. The striking thing is that 10k years is a really long time to make the mostly fairly marginal improvements that he did make. I suppose there are an increasing amount of different marginal improvements, but most of the stuff is only a bit better than the stuff from the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy era, and worse than Leagues of Votann stuff.

 Haighus wrote:

Aash wrote:

mrFickle wrote:

The other way to look at it is cawl was just improving on things that had already been invented. Like taking an existing product and putting a clock in it

^ This.
Essentially Cawl's technology is 10,000 years of iteration rather than anything actually new.

I mean... that is all science really. The striking thing is that 10k years is a really long time to make the mostly fairly marginal improvements that he did make. I suppose there are an increasing amount of different marginal improvements, but most of the stuff is only a bit better than the stuff from the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy era, and worse than Leagues of Votann stuff.

Just because i iterate and improve doesn't mean that i actually improve it.

Chances are that cawl lacked critical field testing. Whilest actually in the field and pressures often produce advancement at a faster rate rather than sittig outside in a personal bubble.

NVM that the logistics around cawl and cawlitis or as he should be more aptly named personified-plot-device-excuse-for-more-profit or short ppdefmp are ludicrous.
Then there are things in which he just usurps the balance of the supposed technological regression, cue antigrav f.e. and you get very questionable story telling within the context of the universe regarding stringency.

Iow cawl is a parade exemple of a bad charachter, shoehorned in for sales. In a way that makes him worse than a certain other authors creations.

Cawl innovates and invents but he's not a Heretek. Outside of some personal projects the majority of his work is still using base Imperial technology and much of it, especially with anti-grav, is rediscovery, not innovation.
The Impulsor is essentially a grav-Rhino after all which is something that existed.

There’s also nothing to really say Bolt Rifles weren’t around in the Heresy Era, just that the comparative Carbine equivalent of the Bolt Gun was preferred because Astartes were intended as “in yer face”, overwhelming, up close ultra violence. And so the extra range wasn’t as desired as a compact weapon which could be wielded effectively in most environs, but especially City Fights and boarding actions.

Post Heresy? Yeah they kind of changed a bit in intent. They still are overwhelming force - but not in overwhelming numbers. So having a longer ranged weapon does make more sense.

Cawl builds upon exciting tech. Not having to invent the wheel means you can focus on ingenting rubber tiers that make the wheel work better.

Also he is a deus ex machina device to introduce new technology into the lore. And quite fresh instead of just retroactively writing it in from the beginning in next edition.

He is also one of the few individuals who understands the stuff in the setting. A lot of the tech priests also believe it to be 'magical'. (I would like to recommend the PC game mechanicum for some fun takes. Like when they do not understand why holy incense does not drive away Necrons, but the purefying flamers does.)

Crispy78 wrote:
It's a lore development that I'm not massively keen on, to be honest. I rather liked the idea that the 40K Imperium was a technologically-regressed society, desperately fighting to stay alive with poorly-understood and irreplaceable relic weaponry from the past. It provided some scant justification for the fascist dystopia that mankind had slid backwards into.

Nowadays it feels a bit more uncomfortable, in that the same fascist dystopia has shiny new kit and is now kicking arse and taking names across the galaxy.

I agree with this primaris should have just been new models. Imperium was much cooler as a regressing society.

Boosykes wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
It's a lore development that I'm not massively keen on, to be honest. I rather liked the idea that the 40K Imperium was a technologically-regressed society, desperately fighting to stay alive with poorly-understood and irreplaceable relic weaponry from the past. It provided some scant justification for the fascist dystopia that mankind had slid backwards into.

Nowadays it feels a bit more uncomfortable, in that the same fascist dystopia has shiny new kit and is now kicking arse and taking names across the galaxy.

I agree with this primaris should have just been new models. Imperium was much cooler as a regressing society.

Considering that Primaris came out of the same management system as AoS and the idea of subfaction paint schemes locking you into those subfaction armies and their stats.

Honestly I'm 100% convinced Primaris were just going to be the new Marines. Perhaps some, like hte hover tanks, would have been split off into their own thing; or might never have evolved as the line would have sought to replace existing models. It explains why their model like so similar to regular marines.


It's a bit like how GW ran out of ideas for Orks in Old World/AoS for a while which resulted in 3 different style of ork model based on the exact same concept - warboss; wyrdboy warlock; boyz; boyz with arrows; boyz riding boars. Just through 3 design concepts of regular; less armour and bulky with more armour.

It's a bit weird. Big E had a lot of ability to get whatever resources he wanted, the greatest minds and his own ability to in theory know what will and wont work. Trial and error could be done with foresight psykick power nonsense.

Cawl had more time yeah, but he had to be at least a bit secretive and probably had to waste resources trying and failing then refining before going into the mass production needed to outfit the thousands of primaris marines that were in hibernation for 10000 years. I'm imagining he would have had to sneak away resoucres or have them under false projects so the inquisition or lords of mars didn't come knocking.

A few Cawl things are also meant to be short term. The dreads are known for burning through their pilots. It reminds me of the thunder warriors who were replaced by marines due to stability issues. Are Primaris going to live as long as firstborn? Would one get to the age of Dante or Bjorn or just burn out before then?

Big E is confirmed to have communicated to Cawl through one of the minds he attached onto his own. Sooo, is it all planned or just a desperate gamble by Big E?

Because there were some new Miniatures to sell

cody.d. wrote:
It's a bit weird. Big E had a lot of ability to get whatever resources he wanted, the greatest minds and his own ability to in theory know what will and wont work. Trial and error could be done with foresight psykick power nonsense.

Cawl had more time yeah, but he had to be at least a bit secretive and probably had to waste resources trying and failing then refining before going into the mass production needed to outfit the thousands of primaris marines that were in hibernation for 10000 years. I'm imagining he would have had to sneak away resoucres or have them under false projects so the inquisition or lords of mars didn't come knocking.

A few Cawl things are also meant to be short term. The dreads are known for burning through their pilots. It reminds me of the thunder warriors who were replaced by marines due to stability issues. Are Primaris going to live as long as firstborn? Would one get to the age of Dante or Bjorn or just burn out before then?

Big E is confirmed to have communicated to Cawl through one of the minds he attached onto his own. Sooo, is it all planned or just a desperate gamble by Big E?

Happy to be proven wrong, but I think you’re confusing Leviathan Dreadnoughts with Redemptor Dreadnoughts?

But I cannot stress enough that 10,000 years is a long arse time period. Even with stagnant technology, the sheer time factor opens doors entirely closed, quadruple locked, dumped in concrete and then dumped in the deepest ocean you can find when you don’t have it.

The Emperor just…didn’t. Indeed one could put many of his flaws and errors down to never being able to tell just how much time he had to achieve the next step across his entire plans.

Cawl didn’t invent new Astartes Implants. Rather he used his access to the original files (or at least what remained) for both the Primarch and Astartes programmes to follow an unpublished recipe. One The Emperor had followed in its entirety 20 times, before being forced to Bodge Job the original Astartes. Because, once again, with the abduction of the Primarchs? The original Astartes were a Bodge Job. Making the most “it’ll do” version He could with time pressing down upon him.

Same with the tech. The Emperor never had the chance to truly stockpile arms. Matters and time were just too pressing. Soon as it’s made, it’s assigned, shipped, deployed, wrecked, recovered, repaired, deployed, wrecked, recovered, repaired…..and so on and so forth.

There is of course a flaw in my argument. Kind of. Ish. Sort of.

Whilst we know Cawl had the thick end of 10,000 years? That’s inherently retrospective. You wanna know what really, really makes Cawl a Massive Richard? Like….really really really?

*Wayne’s World diddly doot”

Think back to the end of 7th Ed. And the books which lead to Guilliman’s Ressurection.

Cawl started out as a fairly random Ad Mech Priest on a mission. With Guilliman’s soon-to-be-new-armour contained in an auto reliquary type thing. And that armour had Super Life Support Gubbins in it (which, had it not been for Yvraine wouldn’t have worked, but for now that’s beside the point I’m about to make).

And we’ve absolutely No Idea Whatsoever how long Cawl had been holding on to that. You wanna point to Cawl being a great big John Thomas? For all we know, he had that perfected centuries or Millenia ago - but decided “dude is in stasis, he can wait, I wanna keep tinkering and improving”, and so chose not to deploy it until he was about done.

Now that could be a loyal, if anal, worker, wanting to ensure they completed their work before reporting to the boss. Or it could be selfishness.

I mean, The Imperium could’ve used a Primarch returning much earlier!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

I mean, The Imperium could’ve used a Primarch returning much earlier!

Except it wouldn't have worked earlier. If you read the details of Guilliman's return closely, he had to be freed from the stasis field and then he actually died briefly before being revived by Ynnead acting through Yvraine. Then the life support armor seemed to take over. Why it should have had to be that way is not clear but probably it is from a mystical/warp related reason. Maybe Guilliman had to die for Fulgrim's no doubt supernatural poison to stop working? His return required Ynnead to have stirred just enough to have created a champion, Yvraine, to then channel Ynnead's power.

Iracundus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

I mean, The Imperium could’ve used a Primarch returning much earlier!

Except it wouldn't have worked earlier. If you read the details of Guilliman's return closely, he had to be freed from the stasis field and then he actually died briefly before being revived by Ynnead acting through Yvraine. Then the life support armor seemed to take over. Why it should have had to be that way is not clear but probably it is from a mystical/warp related reason. Maybe Guilliman had to die for Fulgrim's no doubt supernatural poison to stop working? His return required Ynnead to have stirred just enough to have created a champion, Yvraine, to then channel Ynnead's power.

Cawl didn't know that though? They thought the armour was enough by itself presumably. Sure, Guilliman would have actually died, but Cawl thought he could revive him.

Cawl couldn't do it without the Ynarri. He was good but not quite good enough and watching their powers of resurrection gave him the last piece of the puzzle.