Why can't it be a DIY Legion?

[Brother Tolstoy]

I've read the guide buy now. Thats some piece of work and I'm pretty much obliged to the authors as it gave alot to think about and made me tweak few things in my DIY idea. I've read all the books proposed by the guide and I call it the time to start my DIY project. I'm not a big table-top player. I'm useless in painting and converting, tho I try it every now and then. I'm just the one devoted to the 40k universe and what I realy enjoy about 40k are all these talks and chats about being true to the fluff.

 

The question I wanted to ask may seem very stupid and the answer to it may seem obvious but I still don't get it and I truly expect a clear answer.

 

The guide, above all the useful propositions it gives states as follows:

 

Don’t claim your chapter is one of the missing legions

Keeping the two missing legions unknown is part of the greatest charm of the 40k universe, not everything is known. We don’t what happened to them, we don’t know why they were expunged from the records and we don’t want to know.

 

Here goes the fovourite question of the Liber section: Why?

 

Why can't I start a Legion Project with the conspiracy of 10k years covering it's existance? I mean, it is charmful that there are missing legions but the most charming fact is that there is always room for a DIY Legion, is there not?. And what if I'm pretty much sure I can make a charmful DIY Legion? You say I'd better didn't do that and I don't realy understand why.

[Ecritter]

Yes why?

 

Firstly, you can ... if you're willing to do all the work involved. Coming up with a Primarch, his entire background, why him and his legion was found to be so terrible that the Emperor himself had all records of them deleted from Imperial records ... and thats just a start.

 

Second, there's no reason to. It adds nothing to a Chapter that you can't get from using an already established Primarch.

 

Hope that helps.

[Marshal Rohr]

Don't make a DIY Legion. The minute you do you cross over from carving out your own little corner of the 40K universe to filling in the remaining 20% of the warriors who conquered the Imperium.

 

Think about it like this.

 

The traitor legions turned against the Emperor, and the records of them still exist. Two Legions were obliterated from memory. What crime was so heinous that the Emperor removed them from memory?

 

There is nothing you could come up with that would justify it.

 

Instead why not focus on writing a rock hard DIY that inspires and pushes other to make one as well?

[Brother Tolstoy]

Answers read. I'd like to read more answers before I answer the questions asked above in a proper thread. None of the reasons given beat my idea.

[Espada Azul]

Aside from the fact that the background and lore of the universe is overwhelmingly against the idea? Isn't that already good enough a reason for you? Or do we need to add in that the new lore revealed with the Horus Heresy novels, which despite being BL are considered canon, already is hinting to what exactly happened to the soldiers of those Legions?

[Apothete]

Answers read. I'd like to read more answers before I answer the questions asked above in a proper thread. None of the reasons given beat my idea.

 

You do realize that the crime they were expunged for, the heinous offense that had the two missing Primarchs struck from the record was to write about their Legions, do you not? If you go so far as to follow in their footsteps, what do you think He'll do with you?

[Chapter Master Ignis Domus]

Apothete, that may be quote worthy.

 

Anyways, first, the Horus Heresy books are starting to reveal the fate of the two legions, and I suspect that their full fate will be revealed by the end. Second, it would be a massive undertaking, and you would get very few people to accept what you had written. Third, what is your gain compared to the loss of the support and knowledge of the Liber community?

[StGene]

I think it's more that the Liber has seen so many half-assed attempts at a DIY Legion written with the grammar and coherency of a five-year-old that it has decided that nothing could be written by the denizens of the internet about the Space Marine Legions that could measure up to the rest of the universe. It just wouldn't have the same...feel, I guess. But, by all means, if you think you have a chance, go for it. The Liber will let you know very quickly whether you have something workable.

[Ace Debonair]

Why can't I start a Legion Project with the conspiracy of 10k years covering it's existance? I mean, it is charmful that there are missing legions but the most charming fact is that there is always room for a DIY Legion, is there not?. And what if I'm pretty much sure I can make a charmful DIY Legion? You say I'd better didn't do that and I don't realy understand why.

 

Oh no, you can make up a lost legion if you want. I mean, why not?

 

But I'd strongly advise writing a regular chapter or two first, because writing about a legion without previous IA writing experience is basically a really bad idea.

[Darrell]

Why can't I start a Legion Project with the conspiracy of 10k years covering it's existance?

 

EDIT:

 

Forgive me if I come across as a bity heavy-handed with this. I do not post often these days and, in my old age, I don't always sound as helpful as I intend. This is only meant to represent my experiences as a whole with this sort of concept, not necessarily directed at anyone in particular, while still answering the question as honestly as I can.

 

As others have already suggested, there is nothing physically stopping you from making your own DIY Legion. Liberites will not show up at your door with books of fluff in hand to take vengeance upon you. Lightning will not fall from the sky and the smell of brimstone will not emerge from your computer. However, what will happen is that you will have a hard time finding people who will take the idea seriously, at least on this specific forum. There are a few reasons for this.

 

1) The Liber Astartes forum exists with a very simple purpose in mind; to help foster the growth of user-created Chapters. The goal is usually to help make the Chapters interesting in their own right but, one of the biggest jobs done here is to help your Chapter make its history in the 40K universe without rocking the boat, so to speak. There are millions of little nooks and crannies where your Chapter can find room to make its mark, multiple times even, while simultaneously not disturbing the 40K universe as we know it. The Liber can function as well as it does because, for the most part, the community of authors comes to a consensus on the 40K universe. This is necessary because we all need to share a frame of reference to provide useful feedback. The Liber, long ago, decided that the missing Legions should be left missing. That, more than any other, is the best reason for ideas such as this to be left alone; the vast majority of people from whom you'd be seeking feedback are happy to leave them as is.

 

2) Missing Legion concepts, and some others, tend to be crutches. By this, I mean it usually means that the author has an idea for a Chapter that, while it may be interesting on some level, is simply not enough to really make a Chapter. The core concept, whatever it may be, simply lacks the driving umph that successful DIY Chapters have. In a desire to simulate this umph, an author may try to force intrigue into the reader by pulling upon some painfully obvious element of mystery. Mixed geneseeds tend to fall into this category as well. If the inspiration for a Chapter truly needs augmentation of this magnitude to generate interest, my suggestion would instead be to rethink the inspiration itself. There are a lot of ways to make a Chapter interesting. Certainly, there are a lot of ways to make a Chapter interesting which will not immediately step on the toes of Liberites and the way they see the 40K universe (See 1).

 

3) Similar to 2, Missing Legion concepts also tend to represent a temptation to be lazy. Now, I can already hear people saying, "But how could someone who wants to do a Missing Legion be lazy? They'd have to totally work their butts off to justify this thing and that thing, and they'd have to come up with all this history of what's been going on and make their own Primarch and..."

 

Yes, this is true. However, what a Missing Legion provides in the way of saving effort is the simple fact that the Chapter is established in 40K lore (Albeit in a very indirect way).

 

Most of the work that comes from creating your own Chapter is not in coming up with a concept, because concepts are easy enough to come by. It's not in coming up with geneseed, because you could pretty much throw a dart and settle on whatever it hits. It's not even in writing the article, really, because that's mostly a matter of refining your grammar and the pacing of information which are mostly technical skills and are more demanding in time than anything else. In my opinion, the real elbow grease is spent on establishing your Chapter in the 40K lore. Why were they founded? What have they done? Where have they been? Who do they fight for? You will almost certainly have to create, at least in the briefest way, battles that no one has heard of in campaigns that were unknown until you wrote them down. Because, in the end, we are all working to make Chapters that are just as interesting, perhaps even more so, than the ones Games Workshop has provided. Picking a Legion as your DIY saves you that trouble because, hey, you're already up there with the likes of the Ultramarines and Imperial Fists because you were around back then too.

 

4) It is the first step on a slippery slope. This is generally because with a Missing Legion, you are going to be forced to explain why they have been missing for ten thousand years. There are only so many options available to explain this, if you are going to say they are still around, and most of those can also be found on that guide. Time travel, Deus Ex Inquisition, Mixed Geneseed, Female Astartes and some others are the most common examples. The first three are also fine examples of 2 and 3, since they require little explanation on the author's part.

 

5) The easiest reason I could offer, however, is the simple fact that any Chapter concept that attempts to be done as a Missing Legion could be done as a "typical" DIY Chapter. A Chapter of Space Marines based on the concept of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table does not need to be 10,000 years old and have a Primarch to be interesting. A Chapter based on epic characters like Samson or Hercules or Odysseus does not need to have fought at the Siege of Terra to be cool. We could say similar things of the Cursed Founding or the Dark Founding. These add-ons are almost universally unnecessary and will ultimately cause more aggravation than anything else, in the case of the Liber, and could be totally abandoned with just a little more creative exercise or twisting the original concept just slightly. This allows the Chapter to be interesting in their own right, rather than relying on tropes, and I think is more rewarding once the idea of the Chapter has fully matured.

 

Again, though, there is nothing inherently wrong with doing a Missing Legion and what people choose to do with their creativity and free time is certainly up to them. However, if the goal is to receive feedback from the Liber and to develop the initial DIY concept into a full-fledged Chapter with a colorful backstory then there are definitely better roads that could be taken. Ultimately, the Liber Guide is not to be taken as "Things you should never use for your Chapter ideas, ever, even in the privacy of your own mind". Rather, it should be taken as "Things you should probably avoid if you want solid feedback from the Liberites". Which, ultimately, is what any Liber poster would be after; otherwise, why post the idea on the Liber at all?

[Marshal Rohr]

Whoa, it's Darrell!

 

Stick around, kick up your feet, knock out an IA or two :)

[NightrawenII]

The guide, above all the useful propositions it gives states as follows:

 

Don’t claim your chapter is one of the missing legions

Keeping the two missing legions unknown is part of the greatest charm of the 40k universe, not everything is known. We don’t what happened to them, we don’t know why they were expunged from the records and we don’t want to know.

 

Here goes the fovourite question of the Liber section: Why?

Because by doing so, you are creating paradox. How could something, which is unknown, to be known? :)

 

Why can't I start a Legion Project with the conspiracy of 10k years covering it's existance?

What the Espada Azul said... It's the same reason, why are the female SM bad idea.

 

I mean, it is charmful that there are missing legions but the most charming fact is that there is always room for a DIY Legion, is there not?

NO, the missing Legions are charming, because they are missing. By writing about them, you are destroying this charm.

 

And what if I'm pretty much sure I can make a charmful DIY Legion?

... and that's the crux of the problem. :) The Liber has already seen several attempts and all failed miserably. The guides are simply voice of the experience.

 

 

 

Edit: Grrr, Darell ninja'd me. But he is more elegant than me in his reasoning, so I'm going to forgive him. :)

[Espada Azul]

When Darell posts, Liberites young and old listen.

 

The gist to all this really is that a DIY Legion is too much trouble for its worth. In a shared universe like the Warhammer 40000 universe, there's a LOT of things an author can get away with (or else we wouldn't have so much fun referencing media of all sorts), but the Lost Legions are one of those things that stretches disbelief so much that it just breaks. The awkward and clunky previous attempts did not help the idea's case at all too.

[Darrell]

When Darell posts, Liberites young and old listen.

 

To be fair, this is mainly because my posts tend to take up half the visible screen and leave people with little choice. :)

 

I do get the IA bug every now and then. However, I fear that if I give in then I'll never clean up all the rust that's sure to fall on my keyboard in the process!

[Brother Tolstoy]

Darrel, thanks for your answer. I needed an answer just like that. Very comprehensive!

 

I guess, I should rethink the Legion idea indeed.

[Brother Nathan]

also thres things like the legion of the dammed that throws a spanner into the works, cause theres some of us belive the likes of them are the missing. and theres strong argument for the likes of them, where as a made up legion would have little going for them with whichto contend. diy succesor, even shrouded in dought as to its beginnings would be fare more acceptable to your arguments and as to how theyh even survived.

[Brother-chaplain Astador]

Considering the Legion of the Damned were previously the Firehawks chapter (cursed founding), that isn't possible.

[Heru]

Anyways, first, the Horus Heresy books are starting to reveal the fate of the two legions, and I suspect that their full fate will be revealed by the end.

Unlikely. From what A D-B (B+C resident Black Library author) says, they aren't actually allowed to do anything with the missing Legions beyond Horus Heresy characters commenting on them being missing, and not actually discussing why, when, where etc.

[Brother Nathan]

Considering the Legion of the Damned were previously the Firehawks chapter (cursed founding), that isn't possible.

that is only rumoured, not confirmed. and their apparent curse would be enough for me to see them being 'wiped out' and it would explain why theydont hang around. plus imagine a primarch for them... droolss...

[Darrell]

Darrel, thanks for your answer. I needed an answer just like that. Very comprehensive!

 

I guess, I should rethink the Legion idea indeed.

 

Always happy to be of service. And, you probably wouldn't have to change the idea very much to take it from a Legion to a Chapter. Later founding, Heresy-era battles exchanged for later ones, a Primarch concept toned down slightly to fit a first Chapter Master, et cetera.

[Grey Hunter Ydalir]

To me the reasons are twofold.

 

Firstly, by attempting to have your legion accepted by everyone here in the Liber you are essentially trying to crowbar your own ideas into the shared universe over everyone elses. It's not right and while everyone has does and will continue to do so until the end of time to varying degrees, it's a rather selfish route to take, even if that's not your intent.

 

Secondly, a DIY Astartes force is for me, at it's most basic level about the chapters core character. Who they are and why they are. The number of marines in the force and the effort you must go to in order to make it believable ultimately detracts from this core. It muddies the water and throws multiple, explosive spanners into the works when they needn't be there in the first place.

 

Also, NightwaranII said it most succinctly:

 

NO, the missing Legions are charming, because they are missing. By writing about them, you are destroying this charm.

 

Though before I go I must point to something with disapproval.

 

Answers read. I'd like to read more answers before I answer the questions asked above in a proper thread. None of the reasons given beat my idea.

 

This comes off as rather high-minded. None of the reasons beat your idea so you won't even begin to explain why you think so? Reasoned discussion is one of the key elements that holds the Liber together and makes it such a great place to interact and share information. People spend their spare time here hoping to help advise other authors in their work and in doing so, vicariously become part of the production of a well written piece of work that everyone can look up to.

 

That said, at least this thread didn't go down the same route I've seen others go and turn into a train wreck whereby the OP will argue his point despite the full weight of popular consensus in the form of most of the Liber giving their opinion in opposition to the authors idea.

 

Also what did you mean by 'a proper thread'?

[Brother Tolstoy]

This comes off as rather high-minded. None of the reasons beat your idea so you won't even begin to explain why you think so?

...

Also what did you mean by 'a proper thread'?

 

No-no-no! I'm cool with Darrels answer cause I really needed the reasons that deep. It's going to be a chapter now, in a proper thread with all those charachteristics from the guide. I mean homeworld, beliefs, organisation etc.

[Grey Hunter Ydalir]

No-no-no! I'm cool with Darrels answer cause I really needed the reasons that deep. It's going to be a chapter now, in a proper thread with all those charachteristics from the guide. I mean homeworld, beliefs, organisation etc.

 

Well that's fair enough. In that case I look forward to seeing your chapter gracing the halls of the Liber sometime soon. :tu: