Depiction of Konrad Kurze in HH books.

[Conn Eremon]

The Index Astartes article also makes a point in describing how with the later recruits from Nostramo the Legion would be infused with ruthless criminals, all without Curze noticing. Like... the Legion hadn't already consisted mainly of ruthless criminals.

I don't think that has changed. Massacre didn't have anything about it. The whole Penal Colony thing was more of a political prison, and the recruits were those born and raised there. Actual criminals weren't introduced until Nostromo.

[Unintentional Batman]

 

Are some of the changes for the better? Yes. Are some of them the most cringe inducing idiocy ever committed to paper? Also yes.

 

Of course.

 

But Legatus here, while I love him as a brother Ultramarine player, presents his case in a way that all retcons are inherently bad - that the act of rectonning itself is the bad thing. Not what gets changed, or how. And then he fails to remember that almost all of the fluff he holds sacred is, infact, a retcon. That's just something I don't find codex compliant and have to point out in order to keep him true to our spiritual liege.

[Conn Eremon]

 

 

Are some of the changes for the better? Yes. Are some of them the most cringe inducing idiocy ever committed to paper? Also yes.

Of course.

 

But Legatus here, while I love him as a brother Ultramarine player, presents his case in a way that all retcons are inherently bad - that the act of rectonning itself is the bad thing. Not what gets changed, or how. And then he fails to remember that almost all of the fluff he holds sacred is, infact, a retcon. That's just something I don't find codex compliant and have to point out in order to keep him true to our spiritual liege.

While you are not wrong on the nature of the fluff, his view of it is no less valid than anyone else's.

[Unintentional Batman]

 

 

 

Are some of the changes for the better? Yes. Are some of them the most cringe inducing idiocy ever committed to paper? Also yes.

Of course.

 

But Legatus here, while I love him as a brother Ultramarine player, presents his case in a way that all retcons are inherently bad - that the act of rectonning itself is the bad thing. Not what gets changed, or how. And then he fails to remember that almost all of the fluff he holds sacred is, infact, a retcon. That's just something I don't find codex compliant and have to point out in order to keep him true to our spiritual liege.

While you are not wrong on the nature of the fluff, his view of it is no less valid than anyone else's.

Eh? Are you really suggesting that the view "all retcons, ever! are BAD!" while completely disregarding the fact that the baseline for "2nd to 5th edition" era of fluff is very heavily a retcon of the Rogue Trader era is valid? I am not saying he should not gripe about what Black Library/Forge World/6th Ed. is doing with the fluff. I am saying he should drop the holier than thou "ALL RETCONS BAD!" rethoric, cause he follows fluff built on retcons.

[Conn Eremon]

Why is it not valid? Because he likes a certain period of the fluff that you don't? Because he doesn't like seeing that period retconned away, even though his favored period is a retcon of that which you favor?

 

That's diving into the deep end of the hypocrisy pool, ain't it?

[Unintentional Batman]

 

Because he likes a certain period of the fluff that you don't? Because he doesn't like seeing that period retconned away, even though his favored period is a retcon of that which you favor?

 

Heck, no. Because he has explicitly stated that every retcon, ever, in history of anything is inherently bad. And yet he loves a piece of fluff that is a recton of older material. If all retcons are inherently evil, as Legatus says, then what are the rectons that gave birth to his favouritests version of 40K fluff? Like I said, I would wholeheartedly embrace Legatus hatin' on Rogue Trader and Black Library eras of the fluff, if he just acknowledged the fact that he can't judge the act of retconning in itself.

[Conn Eremon]

That all sounds like a lot of unnecessary nonsense to clog the forum with. Have fun with that.

 

Nnnnnnight Lords! Yeah, I don't believe that the new fluff for them is an outright change of anything in the IA, but I would agree that it does change the image it gave in everyone's mind. Stuck to the letter, but not quite entirely the spirit, though as far as I'm concerned it has only added to their charm.

[Scribe]

 

The Index Astartes article also makes a point in describing how with the later recruits from Nostramo the Legion would be infused with ruthless criminals, all without Curze noticing. Like... the Legion hadn't already consisted mainly of ruthless criminals.

I don't think that has changed. Massacre didn't have anything about it. The whole Penal Colony thing was more of a political prison, and the recruits were those born and raised there. Actual criminals weren't introduced until Nostromo.

 

Hardened criminals avoided 'the nights children' do you think its because of how virtuous they where? How pious and upstanding these children born into a lightless, lawless pit where?

 

I've made my peace with this addition, I really have, but it does make Curze out to be even more misguided and deluded that he already was, and it puts into question things written recently (Night Lord series, the HH shorts).

 

It, and the WB stuff, are glaring examples of someone not getting the memo, and just adding stuff to add stuff.

[Conn Eremon]

Edit: It's more like someone got the memo, and ran with it until they got something that was still faithful to the original bit, but didn't match up to how our minds ran with it, as before it left this kind of detail to our imagination.

[Legatus]

 

I am saying he should drop the holier than thou "ALL RETCONS BAD!" rethoric, cause he follows fluff built on retcons.

 

Of course all retcons are bad. When they happen to something that is cherished. And to those people who cherish it. Things they liked are suddenly invalidated. How is that a good thing? Retcons are not so bad to people who are not aware of them, who only encounter just one, perhaps the most recent, version of the story.

 

I got into 40K during 2nd Edition, and had been heavily invested in the lore for a decade, before GW suddenly started screwing around with the background again. That kinda sorta justifies a bit of nerdrage, no? Greedo shooting first?

 

I wasn't around when Rogue Trader fluff was retconned, so I was not affected by that. I understand if contemporary fans were upset. (Surely the "retcons" were not welcome by a lot of fans back then as well?) But Rogue Trader lore was rewritten during the run of Rogue Trader, not just with the release of 2nd Edition (1993). So the "original" lore from the core rulebook and the initial White Dwarfs did not even last for the entire 5 year period of 1st Edition. (For example, the "third founding" Ultramarines were changed to a first founding for the 1991 version of Epic, two years prior to 2nd Edition 40K) Then we had 15 years (until 5th Edition in 2008) of relatively "stable" lore, with most new material being chronologically new developments (like Hive Fleet Leviathan, the Third War for Armageddon, the 13th Black Crusade) or previously undescribed factions (like the Necrons or the Tau). And I was an avid fan for most of those 15 years. And then GW started to change things around more and more.

 

I hope that being upset at that development is not an entirely unreasonable position to have.

 

 

And just to give some reference to the threat we are posting in here: I did start playing Night Lords back in 2nd Edition. (Back then they were the "poster" Chaos army, with more model images and box covers devoted to them.)

[Kol Saresk]

 

The Index Astartes article also makes a point in describing how with the later recruits from Nostramo the Legion would be infused with ruthless criminals, all without Curze noticing. Like... the Legion hadn't already consisted mainly of ruthless criminals.

So everyone in Australia is a ruthless criminal because they come from a penal colony?

[Wade Garrett]

 

 

 

 

The Index Astartes article also makes a point in describing how with the later recruits from Nostramo the Legion would be infused with ruthless criminals, all without Curze noticing. Like... the Legion hadn't already consisted mainly of ruthless criminals.

So everyone in Australia is a ruthless criminal because they come from a penal colony?

You actually have to a question mark on the end of that sentence? From Ned Kelly to now, the whole continent is a wretched hive of scum and villany on the bottom of the world.

[Conn Eremon]

Great, now Han Solo is a Night Lord.

 

THANKS WADE.

[Scribe]

When savage killers (thats a quote) give them a wide berth, is it REALLY that much of a leap to imply that these folks where less than pleasant?

 

Remove law.

Add nothing but criminals, political or otherwise, as your immigrants.

Leave people to fend for themselves.

 

And the progeny of this environment are then not messed with out of, given the themes at play, FEAR.

 

Really now, I must just be taking crazy pills.

[Conn Eremon]

. . . Has any of that been disputed? I seem to remember even agreeing with that.

[Scribe]

heh crazy pills it is. :p

[Kol Saresk]

But there's still the fact that we don't know just how big of a recruiting the penal colony is. At the moment, we have two Terran recruitment centers mentioned for the VIII: Albia and the penal colony. The penal colony is the biggest drive, but all that would take is being 50.001% while Albia is 49.999%. True, there is a criminal element, but we don't know how large or how widespread and we also don't know if it would have survived any kind of hypno-indoctrination. The description of the 500 shows a very calm fighting force. What we see later on does not share that resemblance.

[Brother Sanvael]

 

 

 

The Index Astartes article also makes a point in describing how with the later recruits from Nostramo the Legion would be infused with ruthless criminals, all without Curze noticing. Like... the Legion hadn't already consisted mainly of ruthless criminals.

So everyone in Australia is a ruthless criminal because they come from a penal colony?

You actually have to a question mark on the end of that sentence? From Ned Kelly to now, the whole continent is a wretched hive of scum and villany on the bottom of the world.

Further enhanced with a flora and fauna that would have a Catachan feeling right at home.

[Legatus]

 

The whole Penal Colony thing was more of a political prison, and the recruits were those born and raised there. Actual criminals weren't introduced until Nostromo.

 

"Only the strongest and the most ruthless survived in the subterranean warrens, and those who did grew in cruelty and cunning. Fed by a constant influx from the hives above, the prison sinks were an ever hungering gate to madness and murder. (...) Amongst the bloodshed and fear, children were born. (...) 'The night children' the prisoners called them, and even the most savage of killers would not seek them out by choice.

It was from these pale children that the Emperor would make the first warriors of the VIIIth Legion."

The Horus Heresy: Massacre, p. 93

 

That is almost a 1/1 paraphrasing of how the later recruiting from Nostramo would "poison" the Night Lords Legion.

 

"As his Space Marines fell in the front lines of battle, Night Haunter ordered new recruits from his home world of Nostramo. (...) What Night Haunter did not know was that Nostramo had spiralled into the corrupt and decadent society it had been before he arrived. Only the most ruthless, hardy criminals remained healthy and strong on the cut-throat world of Nostramo, and it was these men, possessed of strength and vicious nerve but absolutely no scruples, that ended up populating the Night Lords' ranks."

Index Astartes Volume 2, 'Night Lords', p. 24

 

That is kinda put into a einterly different perspective if the original members of the Legion had been of the exactly same ilk. WHat I got from the Index Astartes description was that the introduction of the ruthless members was not on purpose. And that the Legion had not already consisted of a large number of such subjects.

[Conn Eremon]

 

Edit: It's more like someone got the memo, and ran with it until they got something that was still faithful to the original bit, but didn't match up to how our minds ran with it, as before it left this kind of detail to our imagination.

[Scribe]

Cormac, can you expand upon what you are trying to say here?

 

My thought process ran completely along the lines of what Legatus is saying. You cannot corrupt with new recruits, what is already FILLED with such recruits, intentionally, and by apparent design.

 

The Legion was poison. You can talk about other recruitment centers and all that jazz, but the emphasis is clearly on these prison progeny and the fact that they where just as bad if not worse, than the Nostraman recruits that Curze would lament as poison to his seemingly ideal Legion.

 

---

 

Now, are we going to assume that Curze meant his Legion was ALWAYS poison, and the punishment on Nostramo was just due to his particular cause and effect? "You slid back, so say goodnight."

 

We ran with it as you say, because that is what it said, for years. This is being changed, not a misinterpretation, otherwise I can say with 99% surety that ADB would have caught and mentioned this during his previous works, because thats the kind of guy he is.

[Conn Eremon]

There is nothing that says they were as bad or as worse. What we have is a Terran recruitment center that went a long way to creating the Legion the Emperor apparently wanted as a terror weapon, that, with Nostromo pumping it full of post-Curze Nostromans, turned into a Legion that didn't use terror as a weapon but as a release of their own dark urges.

 

What I'm saying is that the IA made many of us, myself included, assume that the Legion prior to its corruption of Nostroman recruits was completely different from what it becomes, without actually saying that it was. What Massacre did was take the IA's description and run with it in a way that did not contradict the IA, but did run counter to our assumptions of what the IA hinted at.

 

Which is being done a lot, and I can understand people not liking it. But in cases like this, it is not contradicting the letter of the IA, just the spirit of it as perceived by us.

[Legatus]

Nah, you can't have your cake and eat it too. The influx of criminals was clearly presented as a new development for the Night Lords in the Index Astartes article, and not just "more of the usual".

 

Before, it was

 

"Eventually the Night Lords started getting recruits from Nostramo. Unbeknowst to Night Haunter, a lot of the new recruits were criminals."

 

Now it is

 

"A lot of the original recruits of the Legion were criminals. Eventually the Night Lords started getting recruits from Nostramo. Unbeknownst to Night Haunter, a lot of the new recruits were criminals."

 

Doesn't work.

[Conn Eremon]

Except the first is still true, and the second is not . . .

[Legatus]

How so?