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The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Astartes? That would have to be a development of the background, because for decades now the background has been consistent the conversion process is keyed to male chromosomes and that.
Even that is highly negotiable given the sci-heavy aspect of the -fi is considerably less fixed than in the minds of the tranche of white British men that wrote the originating background (he says, as a white British man.)
Automatically Appended Next Post:
stonehorse wrote: GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this.
Yes they have. It's in the Codex.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/04/21 20:33:55
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Astartes? That would have to be a development of the background, because for decades now the background has been consistent the conversion process is keyed to male chromosomes and that.
Even that is highly negotiable given the sci-heavy aspect of the -fi is considerably less fixed than in the minds of the tranche of white British men that wrote the originating background (he says, as a white British man.)
It's been said a few times, including by me: all you have to do is say, "Cawl did it" and the problem is solved.
She/Her
"There are no problems that cannot be solved with cannons." - Chief Engineer Boris Krauss of Nuln
Kid_Kyoto wrote:"Don't be a dick" and "This is a family wargame" are good rules of thumb.
The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
Spoiler:
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
responding to the highlighted passage: i think that's a really interesting thing to focus on because it shines a light on some interesting commentary. what does and doesn't count as abhuman is entirely a political label born from the imperium's ability to find use in someone and how they want to be used. perhaps it turns out that people of catachan and other deathworlds have had the same level of genetic tampering as squats, but they still look human and are useful as soldiers for the imperium, so they get considered human. this parallels how race works in the real world, which ethnicities being considered part of one race or another based on social convenience— ie, "white" as a concept is created for the convenience of creating a pan-european identity to unit groups which otherwise would have issues amongst each other. ie, various european groups are all "white" despite the significant differences in histories, cultures, and tensions that exist between these groups. much can be said about jews and our relationship to whiteness, where we either are or aren't white depending on one's bigoties and politics, which often comes down to how useful it is for us to be considered white
(oh and also, concepts of whiteness will naturally vary from culture to culture as all of these are social factors so a european's concept of whiteness will be different from a usamerican's, which will be different from a brasilian's)
House Goliath of Necromunda are an example of a proper borderline case.
Explicitly a created variant of humanity, to some they’re Abhuman as a result, the muscle mass of Natborn and Vatborn being far in excess of the norm. That nature uh, found a way, and they’ve developed beyond the intentional limitations (sterile, short life span) is where the question really arises, and why they’ve been accepted, however begrudingly, as a Clan House.
Escher likewise. Something happened to them, which saw any males born to that Clan House withered and imbecilic. Yet nobody, except House Goliath, consider them weak because their fighters are all women. It could be that the men and women are both the result of genetic tinkering going wrong. And where the men are useless, the women are stronger than the average human woman. Because muscle density is a factor as well as mass in terms of strength.
In short? There’s far, far too much weirdness in 40K to claim existing dimorphism is the standard to be applied.
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
There’s a few stories from 30k (the Dorn Primarchs series book is a particularly good example) that highlight in a big way how a lot of the humanity ‘rediscovered’ during the crusade had varying degrees of genetic tampering going on to fit the local conditions and how the Imperium purged those they deemed too far from the baseline.
In the Dorn book:
Spoiler:
Dorn fights a long war against a particularly difficult (human) foe in an anomalous region of space. At the end of the story he eventually lands on their home world and gets them to agree to submit to the Imperium. However when they submit they reveal they’ve had their brains altered to better cope with traversing that region of space. Dorn decides they’re therefore not really human any more and wipes them all out. He then muses on how he was one of the few primarchs with the sense of duty and force of will to do ‘what needed to be done’ and that many of his brothers would have balked at the genocide.
.
The Imperium are bad people. The vast majority of Imperials appear superficially to be like modern humans because the nascent Imperium purged those that didn’t, a few strains of a humans aside.
And the prejudice against abhumans can be rather self defeating. Most pointedly Beastmen getting very badly mistreated and therefore taking solace in Chaos, but there are cases with other abhumans as well. The Warhammer Crime story Wraithbone Phoenix gives some good examples of backfiring consequences of abusing ratlings and ogryns.
Yet pre-Dark Age, humanity seems to have had intergalactic trade.
So the ones Dorn wiped out as you described? Whatever genetic tweaks were made are quite possibly still out there, in the bubbling cauldron of the Imperium’s genetic soup, and could manifest again and again to a greater or lesser degree.
Which for me is a huge part of what makes 40K so fascinating and discussion worthy. Relatively little is truly definitive, which allows for a lot of “what ifs” which aren’t as daft as one might first think.
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House Goliath of Necromunda are an example of a proper borderline case.
Explicitly a created variant of humanity, to some they’re Abhuman as a result, the muscle mass of Natborn and Vatborn being far in excess of the norm. That nature uh, found a way, and they’ve developed beyond the intentional limitations (sterile, short life span) is where the question really arises, and why they’ve been accepted, however begrudingly, as a Clan House.
Escher likewise. Something happened to them, which saw any males born to that Clan House withered and imbecilic. Yet nobody, except House Goliath, consider them weak because their fighters are all women. It could be that the men and women are both the result of genetic tinkering going wrong. And where the men are useless, the women are stronger than the average human woman. Because muscle density is a factor as well as mass in terms of strength.
In short? There’s far, far too much weirdness in 40K to claim existing dimorphism is the standard to be applied.
Existing dimorphism seems to be the baseline, and is what is generally portrayed across the majority of the fiction (particularly males being generally larger/stronger).
But it is just that, a baseline, and there’s plenty of examples all over the Imperium where that baseline is pretty firmly deviated from. Plus a lot of the tinkering going on (both genetically and surgically/with bionics like Techpriests) make the baseline fairly irrelevant in a lot of individual cases.
The Custodes treatment seems to take a baby and rewrite them at a genetic level, so frankly is a prime candidate for the latter. Most of the dimorphism in terms of strength/size/etc comes in puberty which who knows if it even happens after all the Custodes tinkering long before it would and in any case has a much smaller effect than whatever they do to Custodes.
The marine process by contrast (as currently written) seems to hijack and enhance male puberty specifically (hence generally only working properly for pre-pubescent boys), which I’d speculate may be an artefact of its rush job/mass production nature, in that it may be easier/less resource intensive to key off something the body is already doing (compared to Custodes which have a much more bespoke process).
Now there have been cases where it’s been made to work on adults, though the (lethal) failure rate is near total so even in the Great Crusade they generally didn’t try and generally did other, lesser, enhancements (Ross’s companions being the main exceptions). Clearly though that means it’s possible the frigg the process (probably with the application of a boat load of drugs). Therefore one could probably similarly frigg the system with a female, especially a prepubescent girl, though the failure rate and resource requirement would presumably be similarly higher for an end result that’s probably pretty much the same (other than their crotch), so it’s probably a bit of ‘why would you bother?’.
Of course ‘Cawl did it’ is potentially a way round this, ultimately the whole Primaris process was to improve on and develop the rushed nature of the original Astartes template.
We also understand why people don't want the change. They don't want women in the hobby.
well, that is sexism if you think woman want only to play with female models or armies containing female models
this change is mostly there for man who want female models because sex sells
from experience, woman chose Eldar/DarkEldar for aesthetics, Orks because they are funny or Chaos Marines rather than imperial factions, simply because the background of what the Imperium is turns them off and not because there are not enough female models
And this is not the first time that woman appear in the background or would be a model in 40k, acting like this is the change needed to bring woman in because somehow all the other female models did not work, you may should think about why it did not work with the other armies
the other point is, "the hobby" as plenty of woman and nobody has a problem with, this is something exclusive to the "warhammer hobby" and it starts looking like those problems are exclusive to the "following exclusive games workshop products" hobby
There is a reason I play eldar.
But I also have a custodes collection.
And I nostalgia bought into Votann too.
And I can assure you, more female models do, in fact, help draw women to the hobby. It's not a shock.
There is also a huge difference between female rep and cheesecake. Sisters of Battle are a bit too cheesecake for me even after the refresh toned that down, partly because I am distinctly aware that they originated out of someone's bondage nun fetish. Craftworld Eldar hit the right balance.
Insectum7 wrote: No no no, jesus no. Don't paint with that broad brush. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy the hobby with women, I just don't think the background has to change to make that happen.
So you're perfectly happy for women to visit the hobby on your terms.
Bad faith much?
women are telling you what makes us comfortable in the hobby, and in return, you're telling us that such things are unacceptable. so we're allowed to exist in the hobby, but only when it's hostile to us
And the woman who likes the lore, paints up a Tyranid army and joins her local club is "just visiting" apparently?
There's a dissonance here.
"A real woman is telling me something, but I have invented a hypothetical one in my head that agrees with me. "
Tyel wrote: I'm pretty sure the reason women weren't involved in war isn't due to the fact they can't jump or culture.
The issue is that suffering significant losses of your tribe's/kingdom's/country's young men is a tragedy - but suffering significant losses of your young women means you rapidly cease to exist.
Yes, powerful men have, since recorded history, attempted to control the bodies and sexuality of women.
JNAProductions wrote: FemMarines
Misters of Battle
The recently announced lady Custodes
General thoughts and feelings on the various genders of 40k forces?
Split off from a news and rumours thread to avoid too much sidetracking.
With where 40k is at right now there only seems to be four factions left that have or in terms of Custodes, had, specific gender bias (as far as I'm aware):
1. Custodes: Most people tend to just lump Custodes in the Space Marines and the whole all Male genetic template thing. However, they are so far beyond and opposite to Space Marines, that while the misconception is understandable, it's also completely wrong. Each Custodian is selected individually and goes through a very personal genetic modification program. Unlike the mass scale Space Marine program that was streamlines by applying it to a single gender (smong many other things), there's no reason the Custodes program needs to be this way. In fact from some lore context about Malcador and Big E debating if the Primarchs should have been female, that certainly implies that they know from experience that you can genetically ascend woman in a similar way, likely from their work with the Custodes.
From what I could dig up in the lore, there were only two references (outside of VERY old lore that has mostly been retconned already) which state Custodes as being specifically male, one of them refers to a region of Terra offering up their "sons" to the program and the other is a colloquial usage similar to "hey guys" referring to a group which doesn't prelude women. Even the first example is only talking about one induction group, so even with a non-retcon interpretation, you could just say that was only one induction group.
Regardless of that though, I would personally think that they are in general more rare than men and after so much genetic modification, you'd get a similar experience to Dwarves in LotR. "It's true that you don't see many Custodes Women, and they're so alike in voice and appearance, that they're often mistaken for Custodes Men. This has given rise to the belief that there are no Custodes Women." That kinda thing.
2. Space Marines: While currently it's templated that they can only be men, it's already been established that Cawl is going far and away above and beyond the original Space Marine template design. There's no reason he couldn't make the ascension process work for women too. Does the hobby NEED it, debatable, but I don't think we loose anything by having it, so why not. Again in a similar vein to Custodes, after so much genetic modification and indoctrination, I don't see them behaving all that different from male Astartes, or even using a different armour set. At most, it would be some head swaps and done.
3. Sisters of Battle: This one is not genetic, but in the setting, is surprisingly more fixed than Space Marines. While you can hand waive some techno mumbo jumbo to get Cawl to make female Space Marines, the sisters are a little trickier. Because their order is based on Faith, and having been established for so long, part of their power comes from the belief that only they can do what they do. Dramatically changing anything about them, would shake those foundations.
That being said, it's not impossible. There have always been male support members to the Sisters of Battle, confessors, crusaders, and others, even though they are in the minority. You'd just need a reasonably sized lore even where one of these characters fights with the Sisters and is very visibly seen tapping into the same faith based power, they become ad hero and then they could then get some kind of sub order within the Sisters that could slowly grow to be a main part of the army. It's a longer road, but certainly doable.
4. Orks: While culturally masculine by human standards, Orks don't really have gender as we know it, and that's fine. Keep them alien. Yeah they may be called Boyz, but I've never heard anyone complaining that this is an issue in any way. These "boyz" are fine just they way they are.
Orks are fine, but they are also a male faction. They have a gender, but not a sex.
AldarionTelcontar wrote: I also believe female Space Marines make no sense for a very good reason.
Why? The physical transformation from human to space marine is so ridiculously large that the differences between male and female humans are basically nil compared to the differences between human and space marine. As such the baseline really shouldn't matter that much as the technology required to make the transformation from human to space marine in the first place makes transforming a female into a male childs play in comparison.
AldarionTelcontar wrote: I also believe female Space Marines make no sense for a very good reason.
Why? The physical transformation from human to space marine is so ridiculously large that the differences between male and female humans are basically nil compared to the differences between human and space marine. A such the baseline really shouldn't matter that much as the technology required to make the transformation from human to space marine in the first place makes transforming a female into a male childs play in comparison.
It is also much less than the differences between recruiting stock used by Chapters in the current lore, with roughly the same output in Marines.
Chapters recruit from a range between well-nourished nobles in formal military academies (Macragge) to irradiated mutant waifs barely clinging to life (Baal) with everything in between. I don't think it is controversial to say that the majority of well-nourished females in a military academy will be stronger than irradiated mutant males that barely survive...
Excellent points. The "but girls can't be soldiers," arguments in the guardsmen thread fell pretty flat. But in the context of transhumans where 99% of your physical strength is the result of the transformation, the 1% of your strength that may or may not have carried over from your time as a human is basically irrelevant.
People can make the point that retcons are awkward in the same way that retcons are always awkward, but trying to use bad science to insist that women can't be guardsmen or marines or custodes always come off as cringe.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:I consider SoB to be like the woman warrior in the cover of Heavy Metal. She’s a badass, but it’s not women she appeals to.
Probably a hot take, but I personally never found sisters to be especially sexualized? Sure, they have boob plate and corsets (do corsets even work as corsets over the top of power armor?), but I don't recall ever seeing them give "fanservice" vibes the way that, for instance, female superheroes often do in comics.
Sisters right now are way less fetish then they were 20 years ago. But they still have artifacts of that time where they were almost straight up some dude's bondage fuel
Don Savik wrote: I disagree that the concepts of Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods are inherently wrong and need changing. Nobody in the real world cares about making female buddhist monks or male nuns. Sisters of Battle and Sisters of Silence aren't Space Marines, and they shouldn't be. And Space Marines shouldn't be Sisters of Silence or Battle either.
And I also disagree with this notion that women are treated with such contempt in the community that the only way to 'fix' it is to add female space marines. Changing that lore isn't going to make those people start playing if they haven't already. If a woman started a 40k army right now, of any faction, im sure 99% of people would encourage them. They aren't being 'kicked out' of the hobby. In fact, many female wargamers I know detest the changing of this lore.
People absolutely care about the overwhelming patriarchal misogyny inherent in most of the world's religions.
Tyran wrote: I would say that yes, agency is a big important part.
I can see the argument that Slaanesh is empowering sexualization... for those that are capable of relating to gender fluid rape daemons of space hell. There is some degree of agency there.
But with Sisters it is harder because they aren't a textually or thematically sexual in-universe. Sure the models are pretty to look and boob armor and all that, but space nuns with guns isn't something that make much sense to be sexual in nature. The few times I have read a Sister character, they don't seem to be people to wield their sexy looks, nor does it seem to add anything to them.
Admittedly I have come around to their boob armor as the IoM being silly dumb IoM and the in-universe need to make it clear to everyone involved the SoB are women because the whole stupidity surrounding the Decree Passive.
Still sometimes their armor is depicted as way too thin to offer real protection, the damn thing almost seems leather in some depictions.
Some LGBT people essentially take back slaanesh as a thing, just like we take back ursula in TLM, but a core pillar of slaanesh has always been about degenerate evil queers. We're just so used to being either rapidly dead (bury your gays) or degenerate villains that we take what we can get. even negative representation is representation for a community starved of it.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: A miniature game that isn’t 90% men: Shadows of Brimstone. Every hero miniature is available in a male and female form, and there are lots of women who paint the minis and play the game.
I don't play it, but Infinity?
\
Infinity has a legacy of women being models in bikinis or miniskirts with the panties peeking out. They have redone all those models, but women are still just a little more cheesecakey then the men, and when your history is literally playboy poster tier, the remaining cheesecake garners scrutiny
robbienw wrote: Women have extensive 'representation' in 40K. Doesn't preclude there being a couple of male only factions just like their are a couple of female only factions.
They don’t, though. And the community is very toxic to women and to any increase in ‘representation’. The vast bulk of 40k minis sold, books sold, armies played, etc. belong to an aggressively no-gurlz faction, and if you remove Space Marines you’re still left with a game that feels old fashioned in its treatment of women and female representation. Granted, a little less old fashioned now.
Yes they do. Armies are replete with female models these days. A couple of male factions doesn't change that, as a couple of female only factions in turn doesn't exclude men.
The community is not toxic to women. The fact is this kind of hobby doesn't and never will appeal to the majority of women no matter how much you change it.
robbienw wrote: Marines are recruited from the most miniscule percentage of the toughest hardest young men on martial or extremely dangerous planets, and only a vanishingly small amount make it through the trials and the surgery to become a marine.
The idea that any young women in any kind of numbers would be able to make it when so few boys can stretches credibility.
House Escher would like a word with you
Also the Sob recruit from the same kind of situation and the SoB aren't restricted on numbers to recruit like Marines are - in theory the SoB could even grow to outnumber the marines .
House Escher are a Hive Gang who lack effective men due to genetic faults.
SoB are all female because of the decree passive, and they are no equal to marines
To the bolded bit? Especially in marketing and presentation.
The poster faction, the one that's in every launch box and has the most lore and subfactions and all manner of other things-that's all men.
That's obviously not what I'm talking about
They aren't physically equal to marines.
Hi, your arguments are in fact pretty toxic to women
Insectum7 wrote: I'm not sure how much it matters how much he knows. It sure seems like a lot of commentators on the either side miss a lot of the nuances in the 40k verse, either out of ignorance or convenience.
I do agree that much of the noise is people trying to cash in on controversy though.
It matters because he accuses others of the same. He's a hypocrite.
Hypocrisy doesn't make him wrong, though.
Besides semantics, in which case people are just being pedantic here about him saying "more elite space marines" (please, guys, stop), he's pretty spot on with everything.
Anyway, I personally do not mind female Custodes. What I DO mind is:
- The insult to players' intelligence w/ the twitter post of "oh, it's always been that way, kid." Okay, clearly their twitter community manager doesn't know the lore and tells us lies.
- Also, why even retcon it? Why not just create NEW lore to include female Custodes? Like, it's beyond me why they didn't just add new lore. This likely all would've been prevented if they just added new lore instead of retconning existing lore.
- Also also, why not just promote Sisters of Silence and Sisters of Battle more? Is it truly just to test homogenizing a single faction to see how well it goes w/ fans?
IF YOU WANT WOMEN SPACE MARINES, YOU ARE A TOURIST: The refrain of 40k twitter bigots since time immemorial
For those who'll be convinced from a woman's perspective to understand the "bigots" who are against this change, for some reason. Or you can just call her a bigot, too, I guess.
Women can, in fact be bigots. As can racial minorities and LGBT people too.
Heck in britain around WW2, there was a rash of former major feminists coming out in support of the British Fascist party.
Miguelsan wrote: It's bitten them in the ass because I'm sure they were not counting with the levels of outrage it has generated. Probably they thought it would be a storm in a teacup, now it's out in the wild, and nobody knows how's it going to end.
There's only a very small segment of the playerbase that's getting pissy about this update, youtube influencers jockeying to cash in on the outrage notwithstanding.
And the bolded part is the key point. If you are a clueless parent that it's looking into 40K for your kids, and suddenly you see a bunch of articles on the internet raging that 40K is all about bigotry/wokism/whatever, and you cannot discern the what, the why, or the how because the only thing you knew about GW was that the miniatures are expensive, would you still let your kid join that kind of enviroment?
Back in my day my mom got warned by a "concerned party" that my brother was playing DnD, and we had to do a lot of explaining. And that was without easy access to all kinds of unhinged articles/videos.
Sometimes no publicity is better than bad publicity no matter what the marketing guy says.
M.
It's a storm here on Dakkadakka, the arse end of the teakettle of the warhammer community.
Hd404 wrote: Well if you're interested I've been playing since fourth edition, have a solid two thirds of Horus heresy in paperback which I've been collecting since high school when I started. Seriously, I could tell you why the fates decreed the Khan be sent to chemos and fulgrim to chogoris and what arcane force prevented it. The reason I never bother posting, aside from crafting queries on bolter and chainsword, is because there's always someone derailing the discussion by trying to shoehorn their annoying outside politics into it.
Which is why I felt compelled to speak out, because as this thread so ably demonstrates, the discussions of the future will be about political BS like this instead of interesting stuff about the setting.
Two third? I'm sorry you had to suffer through that.
Hellebore wrote: I don't think many people would be supporting racial segregation for lore purposes in something like 40k
Why not?
"You're telling me the genocidal space-Nazis who are all about genetic and racial purity might be racist? I'm literally shaking with how triggered I am!"
Racism is a problem in real life, and if it were present in the game most of us never would have stuck around to get to know the lore. The whole point of the 40k satire is to use fake Sci Fi bigotry and religious extremism that lets them comment on real issues without furthering the actual injustices they are lampooning.
Imagine that Star Trek episode where the half black and half white aliens were just a black alien and a white alien (in the human race sense). It wouldn’t work.
If the movie Starship Troopers had the Federation fighting wave after wave of communist Chinese, it wouldn’t work as satire.
Real racism doesn’t belong in a Sci Fi satire of bigotry, and only the kinds of people who want to see that bigotry present in the far future think it does.
I don't gotta imagine, I just remember the TNG season 1 episode where the leader of an all black tribal african dressed aliens tried to coerce the white female head of security to join his harem, It, uh, was bad on many levels.
Right, that is the trash taken out and permanently removed from this site. Again a massive thanks to those who are discussing in good faith and within the rules. For those who struggle to remember what they are the main one is to be polite, and that includes keeping your vile little opinions to yourself.
gak, considering some of what's still up I can't imagine how bad what got taken down was.
stonehorse wrote: I think it is hilarious how GW utter one line, and the Fandon seems to lose ther minds.
We have one side arguing conspiracy theories that it is because of Amazon, or Black Rock.
Then we have the other side who seem to tar everyone who questions this with the same brush as being a bigot.
I have no dog in this, but I do find the whole debate/nerdrage quite bizarre.
GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this. Things should be shown, not told. Until we see female Custodian models, it seems like someone got a bit carried away at Warhammer Community, and the end result is the fandom turns a bit toxic.
Being a bigot doesn't just involve active conscious hatred of a marginalized group. Most bigotry is from passive assumptions, a dedication to the status quo, and general ignorance. While damaging, the active hateful bigot is just rarer than someone who staunchly refuses to see the status quo changed in any way that might benefit people not in their immediate group
I find this whole debate strange, however a reflection of the terrible society and culture we have created.
I think back to film, history, books. And powerful characters of Men, Women, any race etc I have loved to read about, and enjoyed the ride in seeing how these people navigate the trials they face.
I have never been unable to relate, because the 'hero' doesn't carry immutable characteristics like myself. The need to have your exact reflection represented in all you see, is not normal or healthy.
It means you cannot empathise, you cannot support ideas outside of your narrative. It is narcissistic. None of which are good.
We also see many people, coming out to make arguments about 'the lore always changes, why do you care??' It is easy to state such things when the lore has changed to something you are happy with, or indifferent. If the latter, why comment?
The Custodes were created by the Emperor, prior to the 8/9th codexes, there were early references (check youtube) for Custodes being male only. Every single book, story etc only mention male/brothers etc. The only way to bring Female Custodes was to retcon the whole 30k/40k universe, as all living Custodes were made by the Emperor. Hence the perception GW is gaslighting, because we all know otherwise.
I largely dismiss those who state 'the lore is always changing', or refer to Rogue Trader differences to now. You only need to watch videos of the early creators on youtube to know these comments are dishonest. 1st/2nd were in flux, by 3rd it was established. Lore changes were often to iron out errors, refines early assumptions or the change the arc of an new race. To compare these to the custodes question, is blatantly dishonest.
This is an obvious injection of changing established Lore and Canon to bend to pressure groups, and force current social morass into the hobby. Even people supportive of the change, know this by their statements. We live in frail times, and our societies definitely stands on the shoulders of titans (the difference between Firstborn Lore and Primaris Lore shows the decline).
I am not supportive of the change in this way. It is lazy, and has created the worst level of discourse in the hobby. Now every single sex army MUST be changed, this is how pressure groups work.
A story arc could have been amazing, you will always get dissenters, but it brings people with you. The hobby is a people hobby. Its not for those who never leave the only space (they can enjoy it, but their views should be ignored). It is a social hobby, and this kind of poor manipulation of the lore, half-assed social media response has just created division where it needed not be created.
For me, it was a great awakening. GW dont actual 'care' about those who choose to invest their time in the hobby. So for me, Warhammer ended with 7th Edition. However, I know many will come to enjoy it, so do so.
W40k is Dead, Long Live W40k!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/04/21 21:21:17
But I’d argue it would require a greater shift in the background.
Right now? Chapters are strictly size limited. And whilst there’s seemingly no upper limit on the number of active Chapters, such is the intensity of the current war zones the Chapters are having to replace losses to maintain themselves as viable forces.
Cawl’s refinements already allow that. Whilst some degradation is once again manifesting, the purified geneseed seems to be making the conversion process more likely to succeed, and so replenishment is in turn easier and more reliable.
Now. If Guilliman, Regent of Terra and author of the second Founding decided “yeah OK we actually need to consider enlarging the headcount of each Chapter”? Then we might see a further refinement, if only to increase the pool of viable candidates.
Which brings me on to another oddity of thought. Being strictly size limited (even those who don’t cleave terribly closely to it don’t completely take the piss), the current selection process may be a direct result. That when you can only recruit 10 new Astartes, you’ve an inherent bias to ensure they’re the best of the best.
Which stands in stark contrast of the rapid recruitment and expansion of the Great Crusade. Which not only saw the Legions grow to comparatively staggering proportions, but did so in a background of constant attrition. Even those Legions involved in the Rangdan Genocides bounced back from horrendous losses in quite a short space of time.
So, degradation of geneseed and the problems that brings notwithstanding, I think we can reasonably say existing Chapters have high standards because of the strict size limitations encourage a super selective recruitment process.
And so (for me at least!) it would take more than Cawl just cracking the problem for it to be widely adopted, when Marines now have a 10,000 year legacy and tradition of being an All Boys Club.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
But I’d argue it would require a greater shift in the background.
Right now? Chapters are strictly size limited. And whilst there’s seemingly no upper limit on the number of active Chapters, such is the intensity of the current war zones the Chapters are having to replace losses to maintain themselves as viable forces.
Cawl’s refinements already allow that. Whilst some degradation is once again manifesting, the purified geneseed seems to be making the conversion process more likely to succeed, and so replenishment is in turn easier and more reliable.
Now. If Guilliman, Regent of Terra and author of the second Founding decided “yeah OK we actually need to consider enlarging the headcount of each Chapter”? Then we might see a further refinement, if only to increase the pool of viable candidates.
Which brings me on to another oddity of thought. Being strictly size limited (even those who don’t cleave terribly closely to it don’t completely take the piss), the current selection process may be a direct result. That when you can only recruit 10 new Astartes, you’ve an inherent bias to ensure they’re the best of the best.
Which stands in stark contrast of the rapid recruitment and expansion of the Great Crusade. Which not only saw the Legions grow to comparatively staggering proportions, but did so in a background of constant attrition. Even those Legions involved in the Rangdan Genocides bounced back from horrendous losses in quite a short space of time.
So, degradation of geneseed and the problems that brings notwithstanding, I think we can reasonably say existing Chapters have high standards because of the strict size limitations encourage a super selective recruitment process.
And so (for me at least!) it would take more than Cawl just cracking the problem for it to be widely adopted, when Marines now have a 10,000 year legacy and tradition of being an All Boys Club.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Yeah, I 100% agree with everything you’ve put here MDG.
The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
"There are no wolves on Fenris" also comes to mind when talking about colonists who have had their genes edited to better adapt to a hostile planet.
For absolute clarity? Female Astartes could become a thing even with crap reasons (including, “there just are, deal with it”) I’d still be perfectly fine with it.
Disappointed we potentially missed out on some cool background, never disappointed that female Astartes do an exist.
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
See my previous post that the super sniffy elitist selection process of Space Marine Chapters stands in pretty stark contrast to the expansion and replenishment of the Crusade Era Legons.
That “modern” candidates are the top 0.1% or what have you is clearly not entirely a necessity of the process. Now we have to allow for geneseed degradation making a successful conversion less likely than during the Crusade. But I’d still argue the real selection pressure there is a firm cap on how many Astartes can be in a single Chapter.
Now that’s not to therefore say “absolutely anyone can have the worky bits shoved in and it’ll work”. But it does strongly query what percentage of the general populace it would work on. Hence, if there was a background development that now young girls are viable candidates for the selection process, there’d (for me) have to be other shifts, like a major relaxation on 1,000 per Chapter, where such a widening of the recruitment pool was necessary in the first place.
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For all the pearl clutching about the sacred immutability of the lore, people forget that GW is models first. Some designer made Custodes models back in like 2014 and just didn't bother to make any female heads, so then the actual lore writers had basically stick to what had been made. ADB even tried to write in female Custodians in Master of Mankind and was told "No" because of the recently sculpted male-only Custodes kit.
Then we get Admech who, on their initial release, didn't have a dedicated transport so the lore writers had to write a whole segment as to why the Adeptus Mechanicus didn't use transports in their armies for 10,000 years. Only for GW to release a dedicated transport for the faction 3 years later and that little segment before was retconned.
It's weird how people weren't up in arms about the lore changing there. Wonder why. It's a mystery really.
To give a hopefully innocent and only slightly crap comparison.
It’s like a kid in a toy shop. If they could? They’d have every toy they wanted. But there are selection pressures introduced by the parent or grandparent.
That could be “only two toys” or “£10 spend limit”. The exact pressure doesn’t matter, only that it’s there, and so the kid has to make choices.
If it’s purely a monetary cap? They could go for the biggest most expensive toy that comes within that limit. If it’s a per-toy cap, and a limit on how many (say, you can have five toys, each individually no more than £10 in price) that’s a different set of selection pressures.
But they’re still pressures, and by hook or by crook will inform the kid’s final selection. Remove or alter those pressures, and you alter said final selection.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bosskelot wrote: For all the pearl clutching about the sacred immutability of the lore, people forget that GW is models first. Some designer made Custodes models back in like 2014 and just didn't bother to make any female heads, so then the actual lore writers had basically stick to what had been made. ADB even tried to write in female Custodians in Master of Mankind and was told "No" because of the recently sculpted male-only Custodes kit.
Then we get Admech who, on their initial release, didn't have a dedicated transport so the lore writers had to write a whole segment as to why the Adeptus Mechanicus didn't use transports in their armies for 10,000 years. Only for GW to release a dedicated transport for the faction 3 years later and that little segment before was retconned.
It's weird how people weren't up in arms about the lore changing there. Wonder why. It's a mystery really.
I’m trying not to put words in the mouths of others. As it’s more fun to watch them dance around what their point actually is.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/04/21 21:52:58
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
stonehorse wrote: GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this. Things should be shown, not told. Until we see female Custodian models, it seems like someone got a bit carried away at Warhammer Community, and the end result is the fandom turns a bit toxic.
I mean, we might not have any models yet, but they *are* shown to exist in prose in the Codex. I'd personally say that's a "shown, not told", myself.
That is quintessentially tell don't show. A single piece of fluff text is not enough to establish a full lore. Especially when we have all 529 books of the Horus Heresy go into exhaustive detail and not once in these 634 (more were written during my message, got to churn that Bolter p0rn) have we heard about a female Custodian. Not once, if they have been there from the start, we would have heard about them.
Again no issue with female Custodians, what makes me go 'hang on', is the very 1984esque 'we have always been at war with Oceania' way of doing this. Yes, it could have been a way to reference that 40k is a authoritarian nightmare that Geaorge Orwell's book no doubt influenced. Just the way it was handled comes off as a bit amateurish. If they had gone with something like, 'due to the on going wars the Custodians need to bolster their ranks, so now include daughters of nobles along side their sons, it wouldn't have got half the response it had received I imagine.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Also, given the extreme differences between a baseline human and a post-conversion Custodes, it’s entirely possible any kind of sexual dimorphism is lost in the process, either due to the enhanced growth and hormones involved, or because boobs are removed, as they’re of no value or purpose to a finished Custodes.
And depending how young the candidate is when the process begins? Mammaries may simply not develop at all.
A bit more Sexual Dimorphisim between the 2 sexes than 'boobs', but yeah those differences are more than likely erased during the process. However the lore has always been 'sons of nobles', not children of nobles, if was quite clear which of the sexes was used, which has been reinforced by all the lore being about male Custodians. Have that changed to include both sexes. GW choose a silly way to go about this needed change.
Nowt wrong with more female representation in the hobby.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/04/21 22:00:47
The objective of the game is to win. The point of the game is to have fun. The two should never be confused.
conscriptboris wrote:I find this whole debate strange, however a reflection of the terrible society and culture we have created.
I think back to film, history, books. And powerful characters of Men, Women, any race etc I have loved to read about, and enjoyed the ride in seeing how these people navigate the trials they face.
I have never been unable to relate, because the 'hero' doesn't carry immutable characteristics like myself. The need to have your exact reflection represented in all you see, is not normal or healthy.
It means you cannot empathise, you cannot support ideas outside of your narrative. It is narcissistic. None of which are good.
We also see many people, coming out to make arguments about 'the lore always changes, why do you care??' It is easy to state such things when the lore has changed to something you are happy with, or indifferent. If the latter, why comment?
The Custodes were created by the Emperor, prior to the 8/9th codexes, there were early references (check youtube) for Custodes being male only. Every single book, story etc only mention male/brothers etc. The only way to bring Female Custodes was to retcon the whole 30k/40k universe, as all living Custodes were made by the Emperor. Hence the perception GW is gaslighting, because we all know otherwise.
I largely dismiss those who state 'the lore is always changing', or refer to Rogue Trader differences to now. You only need to watch videos of the early creators on youtube to know these comments are dishonest. 1st/2nd were in flux, by 3rd it was established. Lore changes were often to iron out errors, refines early assumptions or the change the arc of an new race. To compare these to the custodes question, is blatantly dishonest.
This is an obvious injection of changing established Lore and Canon to bend to pressure groups, and force current social morass into the hobby. Even people supportive of the change, know this by their statements. We live in frail times, and our societies definitely stands on the shoulders of titans (the difference between Firstborn Lore and Primaris Lore shows the decline).
I am not supportive of the change in this way. It is lazy, and has created the worst level of discourse in the hobby. Now every single sex army MUST be changed, this is how pressure groups work.
A story arc could have been amazing, you will always get dissenters, but it brings people with you. The hobby is a people hobby. Its not for those who never leave the only space (they can enjoy it, but their views should be ignored). It is a social hobby, and this kind of poor manipulation of the lore, half-assed social media response has just created division where it needed not be created.
For me, it was a great awakening. GW dont actual 'care' about those who choose to invest their time in the hobby. So for me, Warhammer ended with 7th Edition. However, I know many will come to enjoy it, so do so.
W40k is Dead, Long Live W40k!
I don't disagree that there could have been more lore explanation to improve the Custodes retcon, but I do disagree that retcons largely dtopped in 3rd edition.
To quote my own post on how GW canit even keep their story straight on something as simple as Guard regiment sizes (only one source is from 2nd and it matches the 5th edition source):
Haighus wrote:For an example of consistency in 40k, I present: the size of an Imperial Guard regiment. These sources cover a spread of 19 years from 1995 to 2014, and are vaguely in publication order to highlight the back and forth nature of the lore.
Spoiler:
Codex: Imperial Guard (2nd edition), pg.6:
"Regiments can consist of a few hundred men or hundreds of thousands..."
40k main rulebook (3rd edition), pg.104:
"Imperial Guard regiments, each numbering tens of thousands of soldiers and tanks..."
Codex: Imperial Guard (3rd edition, 2nd codex), pg.4:
"Most sources concur that the basis for regimental formations is what would fit into the interstellar ships available to the crusades- typically producing three thousand man regiments which can be carried by a single transport vessel or one of the many available classes of cruiser."
Codex: Imperial Guard (3rd edition, 2nd codex), pg.10:
"Shown here are twelve companies (almost 4000 men) of the 8th Cadian Shock Troop regiment... Roughly half of the regiment is present."
40k Apocalypse main rulebook (1st edition), pg.102:
"The Tactica Imperium sets down a basic template around which regiments are to be organised. Each is organised into companies, some with as few as three, others with as many as twenty. Companies are further divided into between three and six platoons, and platoons consist of between two and six ten-man squads lead by a command squad." That works out as a range of 225 to 7800 (this doesn't include the unmentioned company and regimental command elements including heavy weapons squads, which would add a few hundred extra at max size).
Imperial Armour Volume 5: The Siege of Vraks part 1, pg.18:
"...200,000 guardsmen of the Krieg 143rd siege regiment..."
Eisenhorn: Xenos, pg.81:
"...seven hundred and fifty thousand men are being inducted into the Imperial Guard to form the 50th Gudrunite Rifles."
Epic: Armageddon main rulebook, pg.86:
"Each regiment numbers between 2,000 and 6,000 men..."
40k main rulebook (5th edition), pg.138:
"...the number of men in a new regiment can range from a few hundred to several tens of thousands."
Codex: Imperial Guard (5th edition), pg.9:
"Regiments are typically raised with a strength of several thousand but the precise numbers can very enormously. The Valhallan 18th Light Infantry 'Tundra Wolves' consists of over one hundred and twenty thousand men whilst the Vostroyan Heavy Armoured 24th 'Iron Bloods' comprised less than one and a half thousand tank crewmen."
Codex: Astra Militarum (6th edition), pg.18 (ebook page):
"Though each regiment can consist of between three and twenty companies, and may number from a couple of hundred men to tens of thousands..."
So, for those paying attention, that is:
Hundreds to hundreds of thousands
Hundreds to tens of thousands
Ten thousand plus
Typically ~3000, but has an example of ~8000
225-7800 (more or less)
2000-6000
Several of these are mutually exclusive statements. Much consistency.
Also note how they typically say men, despite female troopers being canon throughout this period.
Edit: to flesh this out a little more- this is one example of a basic lore tidbit that would have been trivially easy to keep consistent. Custodes now being mixed gender is definitely on par with this.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
The thing is, Marines select recruits in bananas circumstances, like chucking a few thousand irradiated, sickly kids into a gladiator contest and selecting the survivors. Very little of it is scientific and psychological factors seem to be the most important recruiting factors (especially given the compatibility with hypnotherapy is the make or break characteristic). When it comes down to it, some ten year old girls would survive the desperate gladiator contests with ten year old boys. Plus, you know, they are ten, when dimorphic changes are much less pronounced.
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
stonehorse wrote:GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this. Things should be shown, not told. Until we see female Custodian models, it seems like someone got a bit carried away at Warhammer Community, and the end result is the fandom turns a bit toxic.
I mean, we might not have any models yet, but they *are* shown to exist in prose in the Codex. I'd personally say that's a "shown, not told", myself.
That is quintessentially tell don't show. A single piece of fluff text is not enough to establish a full lore. Especially when we have all 529 books of the Horus Heresy go into exhaustive detail and not once in these 634 (more were written during my message, got to churn that Bolter p0rn) have we heard about a female Custodian. Not once, if they have been there from the start, we would have heard about them.
I mean, as much as I find the amount of HH books funny (can you believe I genuinely thought for a moment that there were actually 529 HH books?? madness!), the Custodes don't appear in *that* many. As for those books, we don't see *all the Custodes*. Sure, retroactively, having some non-male Custodes in Master of Mankind or beyond would have been *great*, but we also have a reason for that (no models, no fluff!). Not that I really think having women Custodes really *needs* that much lore. I mean, they're Custodes with different pronouns. I don't think they need much more than that. And I can live with knowing that those previous Custodes texts are products of their time - I can fill in the blanks and assume that there were women Custodes who were simply unnamed in the story who were doing cool stuff off screen.
Ultimately, we're shown two women Custodians. We're told there's more than just those two. I don't mind that so much, however.
Again no issue with female Custodians, what makes me go 'hang on', is the very 1984esque 'we have always been at war with Oceania' way of doing this. Yes, it could have been a way to reference that 40k is a authoritarian nightmare that Geaorge Orwell's book no doubt influenced. Just the way it was handled comes off as a bit amateurish. If they had gone with something like, 'due to the on going wars the Custodians need to bolster their ranks, so now include daughters of nobles along side their sons, it wouldn't have got half the response it had received I imagine.
I'll ask the same question I have earlier - if we're to assume that GW want to retcon Custodes to have *always* had women (aka, no "due to XYZ change in universe, Custodes now have women" excuse), how would you have liked them to do it?
Would you have liked a piece of lore essentially saying "hey, here's some of the Custodes you missed in the Horus Heresy, they were always there, and here's a story about one of them!"?
Would you have liked GW to say "yeah, we're retconning that because this was a product of its time and we're correcting our mistake"?
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth.
You do realise though, that the science of marine making is not actual science? Like not just in sense that we don't know how to do it, but that most of it literally couldn't work. Yes, it is nominally our future, but it still fiction, and quite fantastic sort at that. 40K is not, nor ever was any sort of hard scifi.
Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death.
Not men, children. They recruit young teenagers, so manly strength has nothing to do with the selection criteria. Also, as noted many times, irradiated dregs of Baal seem to turn into perfectly adequate space marines, so the physical quality of the recruits certainly isn't a concern.
And to reiterate, it is fiction. The "science" could just as well be magic, so unscientific it is. It can work exactly as the writers want, so if tomorrow GW decides that the process can work on women, it doesn't make it any less plausible.
The children of Baal are a particularly interesting example, because the Geneseed doesn’t just make them well ‘ard, it corrects many low level mutations and that.
Plus, let’s just focus on “men are, on average, naturally possessed of greater strength than women”.
Superficially, that’s true. We do tend to be bigger and bulkier. But how much of that is societal, and discouragement young girls face from taking part in the rough and tumble I recall from my own childhood?
Then, by the time we’ve applied Space Science Magic to make an Astartes, then bunged them into strength enhancing Power Armour? How big do you think that difference is gonna be?
Much of the natural differences in strength can be changed by the application of testosterone and anabolic steroids, let alone strength focussed exercise, and so the line is already pretty blurred.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/04/21 22:45:32
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
conscriptboris wrote: Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
There are a couple of misconceptions in here.
As others have pointed out, Marine Chapters don't recruit men. They recruit pre-pubescent boys. If your sole criteria is physical strength, up until around age 13, there is very little difference in physical strength between a fit, active boy and a fit, active girl. Marines supposedly select aspirants from around age 10. So if strength is the criteria, there is no reason to exclude girls.
Thing is, the failure rate for implants is nothing to do with physical strength (see Blood Angels, or Space Wolves who recruit warriors who have suffered near-mortal wounds in battle). The failure rate is due to incompatibility with the zygotes, which can't be predicted purely off physical characteristics (because if it could, they wouldn't take so many recruits that are going to fail). And the zygotes are only incompatible with girls because a couple of badly sculpted female marine models didn't sell well in 1992.
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
Except, once again, it's not a 'genius' anything. In an era when the Imperium routinely executed entire Space Marine companies or sterilised entire planets for just hearing a rumour of Chaos, we're expected to believe that the High Lords, on hearing of this 'clever' loophole, just said "Oh, jolly well played, old chap!" and let the church keep their standing army?
No, there would have been several prompt executions, and the Sisters would have been disbanded along with the rest of the church's military forces.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
Making psychic blanks only women would be another retcon, since we already have male Culexus assassins.
And several male blanks in the Eisenhorn series along with a whole minor collective of them that he created. It's very much given to suggest that blanks are simply rare, but by no means bound to a specific gender.
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
Except, once again, it's not a 'genius' anything. In an era when the Imperium routinely executed entire Space Marine companies or sterilised entire planets for just hearing a rumour of Chaos, we're expected to believe that the High Lords, on hearing of this 'clever' loophole, just said "Oh, jolly well played, old chap!" and let the church keep their standing army?
No, there would have been several prompt executions, and the Sisters would have been disbanded along with the rest of the church's military forces.
Actually I disagree. The Imperium does have rules and regulations, indeed many arms of it will follow those rules and regulation to the letter. Often to a scary level of by-the-book.
If there really is an interpretation that can stand the test of argument, then the Imperium will follow it. Be it if it allows Church to have armed women or if it means always using the exact same design of lasgun even if superior ones exist.
If anything you might have more luck arguing that the Church not using women would see executions take place.
The Imperium has rules and regulations; if you find a way to manipulate them or interpret them a certain way; good for you.
It’s suggestive that The Imperium’s rules are very much “of the moment”. That if you can find a loophole for that sort of Gotcha, you need to do it right off the bat.
It probably also helps that their origins is with the Daughters of the Emperor, their particular role in stopping Vandire, and that the least thing The Imperium needed in that circumstance was another round of Civil War.
Taken together? It is quite possibly just poorly written legislation, an immediate exploitation of the wording, an immediate lack of appetite for Round Two, and so it was just accepted. That Sisters have a proven run of loyalty now insulates them from anyone having a “now wait a moment” reaction later on.
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: That Sisters have a proven run of loyalty now insulates them from anyone having a “now wait a moment” reaction later on.
Of course, the flip side of that is the argument that if the church has proven that it can maintain its own military without turning against the Imperium, the Decree Passive is no longer required anyway.
Deathwatch +3000p
Farsight +2000p
Kraken +2000p
Nephrekh +1000 
