Blood Ravens - questions, questions...apples... apples...

[Tenebris]

Greetings, you seldom see me here but here I come before you with some questions. I have been playing DoW recently and suddenly a question popped in my mind. Here it goes.

 

I start with the assumption that the Blood Ravens are indeed of Magnus geneseed. The proofs are aplenty, the minor tributes in a whole lot of books and indications are ever more distinct as the HH books advance in their story line.

 

We know that the lineage of Magnus provides for a powerful psychic potential, a very strong scholar inclination and a stunningly potent geneline. But it also imparted on the scions of the Thousand Sons the dread curse of the Fleshchange.

 

The ahem Ravens of Blood sport all those distinct traits, we speak of warrior scholars, powerful psykers and astartes prone to questionable if not heretical activities by the standards of the M41 Imperium as it was so common for the Thousand Sons in M31. 

 

The known gene deviancy of the Blood Ravens is the malfunction of the Catalepsean Node which grants them perfect recall but prevents them from experiencing the REM sleep. So far so good, it is only logical that the geneline mutated and evolved in all those hundreds upon hundreds of years yet...what about the Fleshchange.

 

We know that the Fleshchange was a sort of accelerated spawnhood which had some very specific traits, first when the change occurred the marine was able to call upon unseen heights of psychic power, like he was drinking deep from the well of the Warp. We also know that talented individuals and potent psykers like Ahriman were able to "contain" the Fleshchange with the sheer amount of admanatium will they possessed. We know also that the Fleshchange was halted by the spell of the Rubic but this spell had the side effects we all know and love.

 

 

Now what happened to the Blood Ravens? I dare say that the Fleshchange is still present in them for I doubt that the Rubic was that potent. Limited to the Thousands Sons in the Warp I say for if it was a spell that included their entire legion than by logic the stranded companies of the Thousands Sons which escaped Prospero should have suffered the consequences too, yet they didn't.

 

What is preventing the Blood Ravens to turn into powerful psychic spawn, what blocks this malignant power in their core, why did it not reveal in the events of the Warp Storm over their homeworld subsector?

 

Indeed, the Blood Ravens are still classified as geneseed "unknown" but trully that has been many a hint too many to dispute their origins as the stranded faction of the Thousand Sons.

 

 

 

[Brother Captain Sirus]

Perhaps it isn't a technological advance that suppresses these changes but yet a again the will of a well designed plot of everyone's favourite scheming daemon waiting for the right time to inflict flesh change upon them, this is pure speculation btw.

[NuclearMessiah]

The Blood Ravens also don't have as high of a percentage of Psykers as the Thousand Sons did at their height.  Not to mention Prospero was settled by a large community of psychically talented and often physically mutated humans who could find no refuge elsewhere in the galaxy.

 

So when the Thousand Sons started using the local populace for the legion they were already tainted, the Blood Ravens recruit from a genetically purer stock and thus would likely see less negative effects.

[Xenith]

Thousans Sons' Geneseed made them powerful psykers, but not all of them.

 

The Blood Ravens have high numbers of psykers, because they specifically recruit psykers.

 

Magnus sacrificed his eye to halt the mutation rampant in the legion, leaving it in the rare fleshchange.

 

Maybe he sacrificed what remained of his soul to cure the last vestiges of fleshchange in marines descended from his geneseed.

 

TBH, The BR exhibit activity closer to the Consecrators or the Relictors than the Thousand Sons.

[Tenebris]

Nah, the hints are quite many and while the truth about their origin will never be "officially" revealed we have good hints that they are the remains of loyalist Thousand Sons. 

 

The thing with the Fleshchange is that it was a rampant thing across the legion, halted but not eliminated by Magnus, reinforced by Tzeentch to teach his pupil a lesson and finally stopped by the Rubic. But the Rubic, I presume worked only on the Thousand Sons in the Eye. Still it could work also on the Thousand Sons seeded across the galaxy due to the orders before the fall of Prospero...but that is merly speculation.

 

I think that the Blood Ravens are a very dark chapter, with indeed a very dark and shameful history. In their books one of their novices is quite mutated due to the implant of the chapter geneseed and I presume that part of this dark and shameful history, and the dire secrets shrouding the Omnis Arcanum could very well have something to do with possible Fleshchange problems.

 

On the other side we speak of master psykers and all readers who have read the Thousand Sons well we know what Biomancy can do when mastered by a psyker. I think that the manipulation of ones geneseed to cover the traces is well within the reach of such powerful practitioners of the many psychic disciplines.

[The_son_of_Dorn]

Could they not be a spyker element of another traitor legion? I know its been heavily hinted towards 1K Sons but I'd still like to think they are the joint of spring of loyalist elements within the word bearers and Thousand sons.

[Jareddm]

We don't know for certain that the fleshchange is something inherent in the geneseed.  For all we know it was something Tzeentch can turn on and off at will, and after Magnus's acceptance of Daemon Primarch-hood and the casting on the rubric, it was simply turned off at Tzeentch's will, his plans concerning the TS having come to fruition.

 

Now I'm much more of the belief that the Blood Ravens are not the survivors of the legion but are instead a chapter, created whole-cloth, from TS geneseed at a later time.  I feel it's far more likely for an enterprising force within the Imperium to have attempted to harness the psychic potential of the available TS geneseed, rather than for TS loyalists to have received any sort of pardon.  After all, the chapter is still being supplied regularly by forge worlds as noted by their regular use of modern equipment such as Mk 7 armor.

[Zero_2005]

I'm not entirely sold on Blood Ravens being created from Thousand Son geneseed. It is highly probable, but not sure. I see Blood Ravens as definitely being on the wrong side of the heresy though, which is why their history is under Inquisition seal. Could they be the survivors of renegade legions that didn't themselves go renegade? (I mean more than the 7 or so well known renegade survivors that became the Inquisition/Grey Knights) I think that outcome far more likely.

 

It bothers me that Blood Ravens don't know their primarch though. Which is why I came to the conclusion they are of mixed decent.

[Brother Captain Sirus]

They could even be the 2nd or 11th legion as those primachs were expunged/taken care of by the emperor and the other primachs but as they only had the terrain born in their ranks at the time they were rerecorded during the 2nd founding as new chapters, just an idea no solid fact at all in this.

[Bannus]

I'm thinking that all the breadcrumbs that GW has dropped surrounding the BRs geneseed are trying to point us in the wrong direction.

 

If GW was smart, they would never truly let us know who their Primarch really is.