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Time ago, I found this pic here, about the Legions, their Primarchs, home world(s), colour scheme/heraldry and approximately size at the begging of the Heresy (More or less around Istvaan III Atrocity time). Not perfect, but still quite useful. Specially for people who start in Horus Heresy

Many years ago, Laurie Goulding( Writer and editor for BL during lot of time. Now, he is Narrative Director of the League Studio Creative eXpressions Team at Riot Games Inc) intervened in a forum (now closed and lost most of the information on it) gave Black Library's official Primarch discovery order. Thankfully, this information was rescued and posted again here, but after so many years some few notes must be added. Anyway, this still looks like canonical. Well, as much canonical something about Warhammer can be, from GW! I add some extra notes at the end. Horus Lupercal* Leman Russ [DELETED FROM IMPERIAL RECORDS]** Ferrus Manus Fulgrim Vulkan Rogal Dorn Roboute Guilliman Magnus the Red Sanguinius Lion El'Jonson Perturabo Mortarion Lorgar Aurelian Jaghatai Khan Konrad Curze Angron Corvus Corax [DELETED FROM IMPERIAL RECORDS] Alpharius Omegon*** Notes: *Officially, Horus was the first recovered Primarch but in the novel Alpharius: Head of the Hydra, Alpharius himself states that he was the first Primarch recovered, hidden by the Emperor and Malcador for secret purposes. He was recovered in Terra, in Zharinam (aka Zhari Namco) Plateau. Remember, is Alpharius. Can be true or not... ** The Primarch of the Second Legion, according the Book Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix. So, the other is the Eleventh Primarch, the 19th recovered. ***Instead of Alpharius,was Omegon, his twin brother. Stated by Alpharius in Alpharius: Head of the Hydra. Same counsel as above (See *). Hope you can find this useful.

So, I thought that I would give an insight into (the pretentiously labelled) "Kage-verse" when it comes down to the Craftworld Eldar. This will be the basis for my idiosyncratic Craftworld for my mini painting (hopefully that will go well), so not a waste either way, but when it comes to the setting this is my basis for the Eldar as a whole that you can tweak to fit the established, canonical Craftworlds. This is probably going to be more bulletpoints/thumbnails until I get to seriously write it up. (It seems that my little supplement was more fragmentary than I recalled!) Inspiration: Peter F. Hamilton. The Reality Dysfunction. Edenist habitats CRAFTWORLD SOCIETY/GOVERNMENT The society of the Craftworlds is a strange hybrid of a number of distinct cultures and sub-cultures forced together as a result of the The Fall. Three major parts of society/government: Ancestor [The Past]. Eldar that have suffered death of the physical form. They transfer into the Infinity Circuit with full consciousness and can act individually for as long as they have the will to do so. Clan [The Present]. These are elective organisations drawing Eldar with similar ideologies and goals. They can be kin-based, but this is the exception rather than the norm. Clan leadership is exclusively derived from those indiviuals who have returned from following the Path of the Outcast. Seer [The Future]. Formed from a combination of the esoteric disciplines. Farseers are separate/advisory, *not* the leaders? Others to include: The Court of Khaine. Kaela Mensha Khaine (Shard; Infinity Circuit) The Young King [Ancestor; ceremonial] The Blood King [Clan; "Autarch"] The Blood Sage [Seer] Other Courts? THE PATH (Ai'elethra) There are five (5) Paths to the Eldar Path: Seer. Development of estoric abilities. Warrior. Development of martial abilities. Steward. Servants to society. Seeker. Explorers of science, art, and the esoteric. Outcast [Eshairr]. Those that fight the constraints of the Path. This differs from canonical treatments where everything is described as a Path. The difference is the use of terminology for older materials, e.g. WD 127, which describes "Ways". Herein, "Ways" are subdivisions of each Path, e.g. the discipline expressed through the "Howling Banshee" is a Way on the Path of the Warrior. The significance here is that an individual can become trapped on a Way OR a Path, with the former being more common than the latter: * Way-sworn. Individuals that have become trapped on a single Way, e.g. Exarchs of a single Temple. * Path-sworn. Individuals that are trapped on a Path, but cycle between the Ways. The wonderful thing about this structure, based on the original background, is that you don't have to invent some nonsense "Path of Command". Autarchs are, for all intents and purposes, Path-sworn Exarchs. (The selected Autarch would likely carry the term "Blood King" or "Blood Queen" if the gendered route is taken.) Thinking More on Outcasts Outcasts must necessarily forgo the protections of the Path. What are those protections? Compartmentalisation of the mind so that the Eldar focuses on the development of a number of related skills/abilities (Primary Abilities). They may readily access Secondary Abilities, or supporting skills that are otherwise not developed on any given Path/Way (as therein defined). Other skills/abilities that are not relevant are locked behind the construct of the Path and are more difficult to access. Outcasts, on the other hand, allow the breakdown of these barriers. <-- Need some way of representing this. (C.f. corruption from GURPS Horror?) TECHNOLOGY Previously I had taken the route that the Eldar had mundane technology to which they added estoric technologies ("warpcraft"). I'm no longer sure about this and would love to discuss the possibilities with learned people of the 40k lore! For example, previously I had Wraithbone as a nanopolymer (based on the literal definition of "psychoplastic") but should I lean towards the "fantasy" interpretation, i.e. psychically malleable energy (or the equivalent of ectoplasm)? This then became a channel for esoteric energies. The long-run idea is to avoid the notion that the Eldar can create matter and are functionally a post-singularity culture that is devoid of resource requirements. Unless they are...? * * * There's a whole bunch of stuff not covered here. I thought that I would throw it out there in case something jarred inappropriately, or there were some possibly better (and newer) interpretations out there that would need to be synthesised into the broader whole etc. Looking forward to the (hopefully) discussion!

A common image conjured of the Imperium is that of the failing or inept bureaucracy that can lose worlds for centuries, resulting in the deaths of billions in an Imperium where human lives don't matter. And so on. You can probably drawn oodles of examples from the background materials that work with this type of imagery. Yet I say, "Au contraire". The Imperium of Man actually has a fantastic bureaucracy and, to have survived for over ten millennia, would have to. The details are, however, in the gaps and where one finds the information. * * * The premise is simple and not too stretch of the imagination from the established background materials on the structure of the Imperium. It was also something that was initially borne out of the consideration of something called the "Universal World Profile" (UWP) from a TTRPG called Traveller. These can be simple, but Googling around revealed a more complex version (that is tongue-in-cheek but includes the real version) that looks about perfect for something stored in the central archive of Terra: IMTU tc+ t5++(LBB#000016) tp ge-() 3i(+) jt a ls+ Eneri Dinshaa 0609 A588865-B S 323 If this looks like gibberish, you're spot on. And that's the point. The kind of thing that is archived on Terra is going to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kind of data footprint that, say, an industrial world could generate over a given period of time. Yet where would more detailed information be found? In that answer you have the structure of the Imperium, which is oft-noted as being feudal and, herein, inherently hierarchical when it comes to data: Terra / Mars. Segmentum Fortress World. < Units of astrographic measure not described> Sector Capital. Subsector Capital. Individual world. For the purposes of, say, Inquisitorial acolytes running around looking for information (ala Dark Heresy 2e---not 1e as that is a terrible system!), where do you go for information. For obvious reasons you're not going to hike your way to Holy Terra (or Mars) to get the high-order information for anything except the most abstract of data investigations looking at patterns over huge swathes of the Imperium on a periodicity of when data is sent back*. No, you're going to go further down the data chain. There are some wonderful implications to this that does a lot of heavy-lifting as to how the Imperium operates in the various background materials. The big decision-makers of the Imperium are dealing with the most abstract data archives that is always going to be outdated (though not due to incompetence) and will rely heavily on "field reports" transmitted over the Astropathic Network. Hmmn. Actually, I'm going to leave it at that as "food for thought". * For those that hark back to the times of Portent / Warseer, can you remember "The Imperial Pony Express"!? ;) * * * As always, DISCUSS.

Figuring out (heh!) the warp and the nature of warp travel is another arrow to add to the quiver of a TTRPG in the 40k setting. Doing so has to of course balance the background materials on the subject (mostly from WD139/140), the various themes (mostly oceanic/sub-oceanic), the official 40k TTRPGs, and the common hyperbolic statements and descriptions that find their way into the novels. Quite a bit of these materials, or thoughts rather, have long-since bit the dust on sites such as Portent/Warseer, 40kOnline, and the Anargo Sector Project, so I thought that I would try and rekindle them here. :) Principle Sources: Realms of Chaos (Slaves to Darkness; Lost and the Damned), WD 139, WD 140, and Watson (Inquisitor). Others as they surface from the darkest recesses of my mind, or as suggested by anyone who drops in their few pennies. * * * SEEING THE WARP (aka "Warp Sensors") Ala Watson (Inquisitor) this is a thing from back in the day and integrated into the premise of the "calculated warp jump", or the notion that slow warp travel is relatively safe and was likely the norm back in the days of the Golden/Dark Age of Technology (G/DAoT). Vitali Googol, when piloting the ship Tormentum Malorum, is able to look onto a screen and see a data visualisation of the warp. This means that computers (cogitators, if you must) are able to process data from some form of sensor and produce an image of local warp conditions that are distinct from the vision of a Navigator. This seems to play merry heck with modern background, so my take on this is to make only the upper portions of the warp---the closest conjunction between the matterium and the immaterium---as resolvable by such sensors, thus the domain of the calculated warp jump. Now, just because such sensors can see the upper-most reaches of the warp doesn't mean that they can interpret all the data that they are processing (more on this later). Furthermore, to penetrate the Veil between the immaterium and matterium also means that doing this is going to take a fantastic amount of power---perhaps the same or close to the amount that they would use when transitioning into the warp. So, how does this play out? Well, our ship sitting at or beyond the "warp zone" (more on that later) has to use fantastic quantities of energy to open up a "window" into the warp so that they can observe it. The navigational computers then have to study the warp and plot a course to their destination, something that has to be done ahead of time because of the rapidity of changes and the difficulty (?) of making course corrections while in the warp. This would mean that the amount of time between the observation/measurement and the amount of time that it might take to "warm up" the Warp Engines are going to be significant---it would allow drift between the observations of the warp and the warp-as-is. Depending on how turbulent the warp is, this would make the plotted journey less reliable the greater the time difference between observation and journey. < Okay, that might need to be filed away for inclusion in things like "Navigation rolls" or situational modifiers that impact that roll. > A BRIEF FORAY INTO THE NATURE OF THE GELLER FIELD The nature of the Geller Field is something that I do, ah, parallel a little bit from the main background for sheer level of interest. As described overall, the Geller Field is a bio-psychic energy field that surrounds the ship providing, in essence, an "air bubble" of reality. When this is turned off or otherwise ruptured, the warp pours in and, of course, the daemons. Because, of course, they're allows everywhere in the warp. < rolleyes > This is fine by me, but my alterations are thus: Turning off the Geller Field in the upper-most reaches of the warp is not immediately disastrous. Crew do not go instantly blotto, the laws of physics do not break down, people are not melted through the deck or bulkheads---the basic nightmare of The Philadelphia Experiment merged with Escher and Lovecraft is not inherently a thing. This is for the same reason that warp sensors and cogitators can interpret the upper layers of the warp---it's mostly "real". Ish. Real-ish adjacent. The other reason that you don't want to turn off the Geller Field is that it is a cross between the aforementioned "reality bubble", but also the sails of the ship; the motive force. Add "etheric" in front of Age of Sail terminology and it will work. Etheric sails. Etheric rudder. Etheric middenmast, or whatever. Physical or field structures that make the ship go forwards and which are controlled by the computer (calculated warp jumps) or the Navigator (err, navigated warp jumps). So, turning off the Geller Field in the uppermost layers of the warp (henceforth, The Shallows) is not insta-death. It also means that you've lost the wind from your sails and are becalmed. You're no longer a moving target, now you're a stationary target. Oopsie. GETTING INTO THE WARP---The "Warp Zone" This is the "safe" distance at which the "warp density" reduces to make it possible to open up a gateway to the warp. This is a section that I'm going to have to come back to because I've forgotten the formulae that I used (oops). IIRC it was based upon a gravitational calculated derived from the TTRPG 2300AD: Man's Battle for the Stars (i.e. when the stutterwarp drive would activate) from the central star of a system and/or nearest astronomical body, but also modified by the population of an astronominal body (e.g. the more people, the closer to said body the "warp zone" was). The "Warp Zone" also serves at the point that natural warp gates may occur (as they did in the old background), which would potentially be a huge economic benefit even while simultaneously being a strategic nightmare (i.e. a point in-system that you can enter the warp and your potential enemies can exit it). More later. THE STRUCTURE OF THE WARP Just like the ocean is divided into different zones, so too is the warp. Here's some quick borrowed terminology from oceanography to help out: Coastal aka "The Shallows". The uppermost layers of the warp and/or those closer to the minimum distance 'warp zone' (stable/safe, but potentially dangerous to jump into the warp from). Pelagic aka "The Deeps". The point at which you stop wading in The Shallows and start going into the realm of the ocean proper (aka the Warp Threshold, as it were): Epipelagic [re-name]. The shallow areas of the warp further away from the Warp Threshold. Bathypelagic [re-name]. The realm of the Navigator. This is where you dive beneath the Shallows of relative reality into the increasing "pressure" of unreality. Abyssopelagic ["The Realms of Chaos"]. The Realms of Chaos and Unreality. Doh! Hadopelagic ["Hades"]. The specific Realm of a Chaos God!? I just wanted to dive back into those warp sensors and what they would "see", and represent on-screen, at the various points: The Shallows. A vibrant see of shifting colours representing the tides and eddies of the deeper warp. Occasionally you'll see areas of black---either fast moving shears shifting parallel to the Conjunction Manifold (the Veil), or subducting currents that drive "reality fragments" deeper into the warp (the coloured bits) and see riptides and upwellings of the deeper warp. For calculated warp jumps, and for relative safety, you want to avoid the black. (Insert warp-sailor terminology about "The Black" etc.). The Deeps. The deeper you go into the warp, the more useless the sensors will be in that they will just show... black with the occasional colour flashes representing "reality fragments" that have been driven or sucked down into the depths. This is the province of the Navigator's Eye. Turn off the Geller Field and its "Etheric Sails" here and your SouttaL. The warp will come pouring in. Unreality will break down reality and, with the inrush of the warp, come the entities of the warp---natural (warp flora and fauna) and the unnatural gribblies that are daemons. WHY NAVIGATED JUMPS? So why Navigated Jumps over Calculated Jumps? Here you're going to have to get your geometry head on and imagine the arcs of circles of different radii: Nothing new with the above, but the only "new" thing to consider would link to the terminology: A-B. A Calculated warp jump. The Shallows. A1-B1. Epipalagic. A2-B2. Bathypelagic. A3-B3. Abyssopelagic. A4-B4. Hadopelagic. Better names are required (as above), but if you want to get from point A to point B real fast, you might have to travel through the actual Realm of Khorne---not for the feint of hearted, but potentially something that Yvraine and others did in Gathering Storm. Heck, you may even be able to go back and forward in time, here, because the Ruinous Powers are thought to exist at all points in time at once. So, in real space you go from points A and B in interstellar place and it takes a godawful period of time (sans relativity of not). As you dive deeper into the warp (downward arrows), you travel between A1 --> B1, A2 --> B2, and so on. As you go deeper into the warp, the distance between A' and B' (and A'' and B'' etc.) gets commensurately smaller, so the spatio-temporal "distance" between the points gets smaller. In short, you go faster. Woot. The warp is probably red like hyperspace from Babylon 5 because, as we are all given to understand, "Red wunz go fasta!" This means that the higher the skill of the Navigator, the deeper they can go into the warp but the more dangerous it is. Of course, the danger ramps up increasingly as you go deeper into the warp---the "currents" of unreality that much stronger. So in any given trip you're going to be weighing the odds of the local conditions of the warp (calm or stormy) versus how fast you want to get there versus how likely it is that you're going to get there (to your destination). :) You can actually calculate this using the distance table from WD 139/140. I'm going to do that later because it's something else that I've lost and I seem to remember that it took a little bit of calculation! :D

40K player here who is not too familiar with the comings and goings of the Horus Heresy and am hoping that you guys might be able to help. Anyway, I've built a 40K Emperor's Children character who has a Heresy era helmet as a trophy (see here for pictures of the mini: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/346143-the-judgment-on-kadeth-dr-ruminahuis-emperors-children/?p=5737714) Are there any legions with which the Emperor's Children had a particular rivalry or hatred for - like the ones between the Thousand Suns and Space Wolves, or the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists? Asking because, if there is one I thought it would make sense to paint the helmet in the rival legion's colours. Thanks.

Hi folks, A quick background question on the Drukhari/Dark Eldar during the Great Crusade. We know that the birth of Slaanesh and the destruction of the Eldar caused the warp storms around the galaxy to abate and the Emperor to embark on the Great Crusade. The Eldar that had seen that the excrement was about to hit the fan had embarked on their craftworlds (we have some description of these in Fulgrim). My question is what form/appearance would the Dark Eldar have had around that time? Their 'fall' had been relatively recent - would they have already had their full 40k-mode of spikes and slave girls? Or would they have been more recognisably equivalent to their Craftworld Cousins, with warrior aspects still existing in some form (perhaps with some initial 'mark' with trophies and adornments of their armour?) Am thinking of recreating miniature wise and very grateful for any thoughts!

Slowly returning to the hobby after a bit of a break and was wondering if anyone could tell me what the Iron Warriors are up to in the current fluff?

The thing I like about Space Marines is the character creation you can go through. It's where the real customisation lies in our otherwise uniform army. Our character choices, particularly our Warlord choices, affect our army playstyle and build in particular. What sorts of flavour do you like to use with your characters? Who's your Warlord and what's his character? How do you use him? Show us a picture! I'm out the country at the moment so can't take a photo but I will do soon as I get home! **** My army is themed on a Victrix Guard style of Ultramarines, hence why they use a Horus Heresy era style that would be Guilliman approved. MK4 abound, with a few exceptions in the specialist squads (my Vanguard had such great options for heads) and a classic gold and blue colour scheme, my army looks more inspiring than any I had painted before. My army is lead by Captain Aetheleous: Formly of the 5th Company; wielding a plasma pistol and Relic Blade, an ancient power sword of unknown providence. Atheleous is known for being a no-nonsense and fairly humorousless commander among those under his command, though this is perhaps somewhat unfair. Those who get to know him, reserved for only a select individuals, could pick out wry comments many would miss or even assume were serious, such is the subtlety of the expression of his mirth. As befits a Captain of such character, I usually grant Atheleous the Adept of the Codex Warlord trait to simulate his commanding presence. However, I have toyed with the idea of Storm of Fire since it makes sense he would organise a firing line expertly. What do people think of that? I also give him the Sanctic Halo. It's absurdly good and means he's very survivable no matter the modifier he's up against. In fact, against anything with a modifier he's almost as survivable as a Cataphractii Captain (minus the wound). Tactically he rolls up the table in a Rhino along with solid line infantry - either Sternguard or Tactical Marines. Usually the Sternguard. He hits a particular part of the enemy line calculated to rip a hole that can't be easily filled. The way I do this is utilise Vanguard and Cataphractii Terminators (along with another Captain) to provide severe pressure on the opponent so they completely lose the initiative. Taking on the Sternguard isn't always easy in this circumstance.