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Warhammer 40,000 |OT| In the Grim Darkness of the 40K Era There Is Only War

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Siggy-P

Siggy-P

Avenger
Mar 18, 2018
11,865
ShadowSwordmaster said:
I think the Imperial Guard is a lot louder than the others.
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To be fair I actually understand what you mean. I play Guard myself and there's a lot of Guard players out there who treat them with a weird amount of worship. Every Guard based section on a 40k forum seems to be filled with real life army reserves or right wing people that take any insult towards the Guard personally.

Me, I like the way they're presented in GW's Regimental standard and the Commissar Cain books as massive numbers of pitiful idiots. Like I don't want Guardsmen to be badass, I want 19 year old skinny kids staring up at giant monsters and shaking. I like Guardsmen dying in droves and bodies flying everywhere.

More specifically though, I want Commissars to be absolute A-holes. GW glorifies Commissars way too much. They're supposed to be imorral executioners yet all the books about them either downplay what they do or feature Commissars that don't shoot their own men.
 
Redcrayon

Redcrayon

Patient hunter
On Break
Oct 27, 2017
12,713
UK
Siggy-P said:
To be fair I actually understand what you mean. I play Guard myself and there's a lot of Guard players out there who treat them with a weird amount of worship. Every Guard based section on a 40k forum seems to be filled with real life army reserves or right wing people that take any insult towards the Guard personally.

Me, I like the way they're presented in GW's Regimental standard and the Commissar Cain books as massive numbers of pitiful idiots. Like I don't want Guardsmen to be badass, I want 19 year old skinny kids staring up at giant monsters and shaking. I like Guardsmen dying in droves and bodies flying everywhere.

More specifically though, I want Commissars to be absolute A-holes. GW glorifies Commissars way too much. They're supposed to be imorral executioners yet all the books about them either downplay what they do or feature Commissars that don't shoot their own men.
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Rachel Harrison's stories about Commissar Severina Raine are pretty good. She turns up, finds a popular officer who cares about his men refusing orders to send them into an assault with a guaranteed high casualty rate, and promptly executes him. Leading to her assuming command and the regiment hating her for it. Short story 'the execution' (honestly there's no spoilers here) followed by novel Honorbound.

Commissars are a difficult one to get right. They are a good choice for 40k novel protagonists as their job role has an investigative element allowing interesting stuff to happen off the battlefield. They are more human than marines and still feared and hated by the troops. They have more freedom of movement than junior officers and move freely between scenes of high command, field command and the frontline, allowing for the bigger picture to emerge. They are also well-educated about the Imperium, given their schooling and job role, allowing for infodumps. Their role as the first line of defence against chaos taint adds constant tension too. However, you then get this contrast between commissars that don't seem very Commissar-esque as the writer wants to make them a lot more sympathetic and warm than a political officer in a totalitarian regime where troops might start sprouting tentacles at any given moment should be. I've always imagined they might only serve with a regiment for a relatively short period of time to stop them getting too friendly, but you've then got longrunning series where the Commissar is also firmly embedded and functioning as an intelligence officer and backup platoon leader as much as technically a 'civilian' outsider.

I do like Victor Hark in the Gaunts Ghosts books though, and the constant reminders that while Gaunt is conflicted with a command role and Hark is a political animal, they each have their strengths.
 
Dragon's Game

Dragon's Game

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Banned
Apr 1, 2019
1,624
question to you guys

if you were a high ranking astarte say in the blood angels during 30k

would you ever question Sanguinius orders?
 
Naarmight

Naarmight

Member
Oct 27, 2017
668
Its interesting to see how much has been retconned with the Hersey over the past decade. Fairly certain Vulkan was never part of terras defence, and Roboute was just sent to the other side of the Galaxy by Horus and missed the whole rebellion.
 
Redcrayon

Redcrayon

Patient hunter
On Break
Oct 27, 2017
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UK
Naarmight said:
Its interesting to see how much has been retconned with the Hersey over the past decade. Fairly certain Vulkan was never part of terras defence, and Roboute was just sent to the other side of the Galaxy by Horus and missed the whole rebellion.
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That's how I remembered it being before the HH novels too. Essentially a galaxy wide event that used to be summarised in a handful of paragraphs in the early books (particularly Rogue Trader, 2nd edition and the early SM codices in the early 90s) has now been expanded out into 50+ books. So they needed to come up with something cool for Roboute to be doing, especially as he's a big new model kit, the boss of most of the imperial factions, and a lynchpin of the new setting.

I remember Russ and Johnson just being described as rushing to reach Terra in the wake of the chaos fleets, as again something mentioned in passing has now been wildly expanded. It's cool though- looking at Forgeworld's 30k miniature range, and the expanded plot points in the books, any further returning Primarchs will have more to work with.
 
Dragon's Game

Dragon's Game

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Apr 1, 2019
1,624
I know Necrons, Tau, and Tyranids have no Warp presence or any presence to Chaos like Humanity and the Eldar do

Do the Orks have any warp presence?
 
Serule

Serule

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,765
Orks have their own psykers and gods, but they interact with the warp a little different than the other races. Individually, they each have a weak warp presence, but the more orks you have present, the more warp energy each ork generates. So a group of ten orks generates more warp energy than if you had ten separate orks.
 
Mindwipe

Mindwipe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,188
London
Naarmight said:
Its interesting to see how much has been retconned with the Hersey over the past decade. Fairly certain Vulkan was never part of terras defence, and Roboute was just sent to the other side of the Galaxy by Horus and missed the whole rebellion.
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TBF, they had to do something with Vulkan that was a retcon because they had pretty clearly established that he died in the heresy and that he was actively walking around afterwards...
 
Avitus

Avitus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,898
What's the coolest successor or unknown founding chapter that has been fleshed out in (hopefully good) books?
 
Nazo

Nazo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,828
Avitus said:
What's the coolest successor or unknown founding chapter that has been fleshed out in (hopefully good) books?
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There are quite a few, The Flesh Tearers and Black Templars are personal favorites of mine. The Crimson Fists, Red Scorpions, Minotaurs, Silver Skulls, Carcharodons, and Lamenters are all fit that criteria.
 
Tacitus

Tacitus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,024
Dragon's Game said:
question to you guys

if you were a high ranking astarte say in the blood angels during 30k

would you ever question Sanguinius orders?
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Most wouldn't. Captain Amit, AKA "The Flesh Tearer", would openly talk back to the Angel. Which almost got him killed when he refused to withdraw his accusation about Horus sending them intentionally to a trap in the Signus system.
 
Bombless

Bombless

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,573
I just was pestering the other day at the vior'la pathfinder I was working on about the bloody white. That Apothecary White can't come soon enough.
 
RationalGinger

RationalGinger

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,004
Bombless said:
I just was pestering the other day at the vior'la pathfinder I was working on about the bloody white. That Apothecary White can't come soon enough.
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The trick with white is - not to use white. I tried ceremite white and white scar. They both looked like crap.

Pallid witch flesh on the other hand, on top of celestra gray - amazing.
 
Avitus

Avitus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,898
Omanisat said:
I like the Excoriators.
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I read the LotD book featuring them a while back, pretty good. And I love the whole 'we don't repair our stuff, it makes us more intimidating' angle.

Nazo said:
There are quite a few, The Flesh Tearers and Black Templars are personal favorites of mine. The Crimson Fists, Red Scorpions, Minotaurs, Silver Skulls, Carcharodons, and Lamenters are all fit that criteria.
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Familiar with all of them but didn't know the Silver Skulls had gotten more lore. Chapters like C.Fists and Templars are so mainstream they are going to get attention, I tend to like the oddballs that have a unique approach to things. Are there any upcoming books featuring such chapters? I think I briefly saw something about the Silver Templars primaris chapter.
 
Nazo

Nazo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,828
Avitus said:
I read the LotD book featuring them a while back, pretty good. And I love the whole 'we don't repair our stuff, it makes us more intimidating' angle.



Familiar with all of them but didn't know the Silver Skulls had gotten more lore. Chapters like C.Fists and Templars are so mainstream they are going to get attention, I tend to like the oddballs that have a unique approach to things. Are there any upcoming books featuring such chapters? I think I briefly saw something about the Silver Templars primaris chapter.
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The Spears of The Emperor chapter just got a book (of the same name) not too long ago. They were a chapter with previously zero lore beyond a basic color scheme so there's that. Not much else for the lesser known chapters lately. Which is a shame. I'd LOVE a book for the Emperor's Shadows Chapter:

250


Because the idea of samurai space marines is awesome.
 
Nazo

Nazo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,828
Finally finished writing out the first session of my Wrath & Glory Campaign. Really happy with how it came out. Thanks to those on here for the advice on the final encounter. I would never have thought of using a Lictor.

Felt like sharing my work and see if anyone has any constructive criticism. So here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GVO92oVewySpFW1YMNZiAdYjanw-2-skylonCRxMmxo/edit?usp=sharing

*note: some of the notes references some of the players characters. So if you're confused. The Characters are as follows:

Brother Sir Arthur Geldhardt of the Millennium Knights chapter (homebrew) 5th company champion,
Inquisitor Andronika Nauticus,
An as of yet named Tech-Priest,
Gigi, The Death Cult assassin,
and finally, Dolly Parton, the Skaven Ganger (homebrew, of course)

Any feedback is much appreciated! :)
 
Siggy-P

Siggy-P

Avenger
Mar 18, 2018
11,865
Nazo said:
Finally finished writing out the first session of my Wrath & Glory Campaign. Really happy with how it came out. Thanks to those on here for the advice on the final encounter. I would never have thought of using a Lictor.

Felt like sharing my work and see if anyone has any constructive criticism. So here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GVO92oVewySpFW1YMNZiAdYjanw-2-skylonCRxMmxo/edit?usp=sharing

*note: some of the notes references some of the players characters. So if you're confused. The Characters are as follows:

Brother Sir Arthur Geldhardt of the Millennium Knights chapter (homebrew) 5th company champion,
Inquisitor Andronika Nauticus,
An as of yet named Tech-Priest,
Gigi, The Death Cult assassin,
and finally, Dolly Parton, the Skaven Ganger (homebrew, of course)

Any feedback is much appreciated! :)
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That's pretty interesting, and I always like the idea of plushy Space Marine merchandise existing in-universe.

Tere's a bit of context that I'm lacking reading it due to not having been a part of the game but I'd always be interested if you upload any more you write.
 
Matttimeo

Matttimeo

Member
Oct 26, 2017
762
Nazo said:
Any feedback is much appreciated! :)
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All looks very promising, looks like you got it all planned out well. The one thing I would say is just make sure you have an idea of how to get players back on track if they wander off the planned path. You do have an advantage with this because you can always point out that they are gonna lose their PCs if they don't get to the Thunderhawk in time but you don't want to over rely on that (could make the game a bit railroady) so it is worth having a think about what you might do if they just don't navigate events like you expected them to. Like, for example, they decide to not team up with the Imperial Guard and not visit the crashed Thunderhawk, they decide to go look for Lillys parents, they can't get into the Keeps blastdoors and go look for an alternate way in. they decide to stay with Agathon in the hope they can save him or they just decide to go Lictor hunting in the keep rather then heading straight for the escape. These things will probably never happen but it never hurts to just have a vague idea about what to do in case they do and you need to do a bit of on the spot improvising.

But yeah, looks grand and I'm sure your players are in for a great (if completely terrifying) time. Also, to echo a little what Siggy just said, I love the Blood Angel doll. It never occurred to me that children in the 40k universe would toy-ify the Space Marines but once you think about it it makes total sense, nice idea.
 
Nazo

Nazo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,828
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you both like the Marine doll idea. I though it would be a great way to help endear Lilly to the party. I always thought that since so much of the Imperium's culture is consumed by the imperial cult, that a doll of a Space Marine would be something that children would find comfort in when things get inevitably bad.

I hadn't considered that they might decide to hunt the Lictor through the keep (as well as those other variables). I'll have to plan for some other area's that it might ambush them.

I did think to make the first session a little railroady on purpose mostly because all the players except 1 don't know next to anything about 40k and so I want to cut time down as they get familiar with the games systems and the setting. As time goes on I'm definitely going to open up the narrative a bit more once they have their bearings on the game and the setting.

Thanks again for the feedback. I might run by future session notes through here or even a mini log of the party's adventures in the future for fun if anyone is interested.
 
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Siggy-P

Siggy-P

Avenger
Mar 18, 2018
11,865
In regards to railroading, in my experience of role playing games in general you'll often find that some players will want to be railroaded and some won't.

It's alwahs advised to stay open entirely, but I actually find the players with less confidence and/or experience will want to be more passive, and expect the DM to guide them on a story, so ideally you wanna find a balance were the general story is slightly railroaded but the more confident players can go about it anyway they want.

But they're just the ones I've RP'd with, YMMV and so on.



Also not a blood angel but...
AdeWbYi.jpg
 
Redcrayon

Redcrayon

Patient hunter
On Break
Oct 27, 2017
12,713
UK
Everything I've seen so far of them looks good. What base size are they on? Looks like 32mm to be so comfortably spaced with those poses?
 
Matttimeo

Matttimeo

Member
Oct 26, 2017
762
That's a weird coincidence, the person who won the SoB army from the survey shares my first name and lives in the same county. My heart skipped a beat before I realised it wasn't me.
 
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