What influences the Blood Angels

[disciple]

Several of the original space marine legions draw parallels both aesthetically and in terms of inspiration for their culture and background to several historical civilizations.

 

This can be seen blatantly in some:

• Dark Angels [Medieval England]
• White Scars [Mongols]
• Space Wolves [Vikings

And less so in others:

• Imperial Fists [Prussian Germany]
• Ultramarines [Classical Antiquity]

 

Does anybody here think there is an equivalent civilization for the Blood Angels?

I considered Classical Rome or Renaissance Italy but they don't seem to quite fit. 

[Terrahawk]

The short answer: Reneissance-era Italy, angels and vampires (proper vampires, none of this Twilight glittering in the sun crap).

[Lord Commander Scrymgeour]

Belle Dame sans Merci by Frank Dicksee looks so much like a death company marine it's untrue (just imaging that the other figure in the painting is a vision of sanguinius and you'll see it!)

I see the newest blood angels minis as being inspired by pre raphaelite paintings and the Victorian gothic movement . Their names are mostly biblical / talmudic in nature

[SnorriSnorrison]

 

And less so in others:

• Imperial Fists [Prussian Germany

 

Where do you see that? I kinda thought some regiments from the imperial guard were influenced more by the Prussian armies. ;)

 

Anyway, many agree that italian renassaince(ish) stuff fits the Blood Angels mostly, add in some proper vampires of yore and some angelic lore as well and you're good to go. Dante's Inferno seems like a good point to start, as well as the artisans of the time period associated with renassaince. I, for one, see a very strong germanic influence in the Death Company, for they appear to me like the berserkr that are mentioned and mystified in old scripts regarding the heathen germanic tribes. But that might be just me. ;)

 

Snorri

[Dolchiate Remembrancer]

what others have said.

 

I just wanted to add: when designing my DIY Chapter off the BA, the renaissance Italy aspects are what inspired me to go Discovery Era Portugal/Roman Era Lusitania for inspiration.

[Plague Angel]

Fairly early Renaissance though. I'm always surprised there aren't more references to Dante in the BA then there actually are, but maybe that's a mercy. Note that we also have a captain named after Machiavelli.

 

While we may be vampires, there isn't really a Transylvania-style bent to our theme. Going through the Vampire Counts range offers far less conversion options then I might have hoped for. So we're Renaissance Italian Space Vampires compared to the Space Romans, Space Mongols, and Space Vikings.

[Marshal Rohr]

Carthage. Phoenicia. Classical era stuff. 

[GrunTeufel]

BA are also really into art. They carve statues and paint in their freetime for meditative purposes. A group of flesh tearers mock the hell out of the blood angels  for their artistic side, who are giving them the tour of their fortress monastry in one of the novels.

[Xenith]

Renaissance Italian Catholicism.

 

From one place or another, I've read that vampirism came about as the subversion of Catholic practices, to make them appear sinister: the ritual consumption of the 'body and blood' of Christ being an obvious target to claim that Catholics are cannibals, engage in heathen ritual etc.

[GrunTeufel]

Renaissance Italian Catholicism.

 

From one place or another, I've read that vampirism came about as the subversion of Catholic practices, to make them appear sinister: the ritual consumption of the 'body and blood' of Christ being an obvious target to claim that Catholics are cannibals, engage in heathen ritual etc.

 

Sanguinius being an expy of jesus helps too. He died for our sins after all.

[knife&fork]

 

Renaissance Italian Catholicism.

 

From one place or another, I've read that vampirism came about as the subversion of Catholic practices, to make them appear sinister: the ritual consumption of the 'body and blood' of Christ being an obvious target to claim that Catholics are cannibals, engage in heathen ritual etc.

 

Sanguinius being an expy of jesus helps too. He died for our sins after all.

 

As did the Emperor... double-Jesus!

[Blindhamster]

no... the emperor isn't ever described as expecting to lose or anything like that.

 

Sanguinius is states as seeing in a vision that he would lose, and yet going anyway.

 

The latter draws neat parallels with Jesus, the former, does not.

[Tabgoi]

I'm sorry, but you mean for the current edition correct?  In which case, no clue since they do not have a dex yet.  The BAs get retconned every edition in terms of influences and history.  The last codex Matt Ward had a hard on for the Italians and otherwise wiping out fluff related to the Death Company and giving the BAs close ties to the Inquisition where before they avoided them.  Previous edition was more of a Victorian view, but really it all boils down to the greeks.  The first fluff and art was all based on the greek tragedies.  It held strong for a while, but they like to play with things. The Renaissance was just a revival of Greek art an philosophy, which may be why people tend to credit it more than the Greeks, but the Greeks have to be pretty used to people stealing their ideas, doing it better, and taking credit.  I could describe it a bit more in depth, but last time we went that in depth on this board on this topic there was a big scrum, better than three quarters of a very long thread got removed, things went a bit haywire.

[Blindhamster]

Tabgoi, no idea which person you're speaking to lol

[Plague Angel]

People really overstate how much Ward added to the fluff. The only thing that changed was Lemartes' rank with the introduction of Astorath. The Sanguinary Guard and Sanguinor were added, but they added and don't change anything that was previously written.

 

All the Italian influences cited have been present since Codex: Angels of Death in second edition. It isn't true that the White Dwarf codex's scant fluff had a more Victorian bent, and there isn't anything especially Greek about the Blood Angels that isn't common across the Imperium, especially when you look over at the Minotaurs for comparison.

 

 

Added:

 

We have Italian influences, but really, the core of our chapter identity is in Sanguinius, our tie to him, and our vampirism. The Death Company represents all of those things, and so they always stand out when you try to compare us to someone else. Real-world cultural influences are there, but they're softer because the Blood Angel identity is much more entrenched in the 41st millenium and its setting and history (I believe the same is true of the Dark Angels). With no offense meant to other chapters beyond some friendly teasing, it means the Blood Angels character can be developed more without having to plunder existing cultures, which tends to result in little beyond "idk they're basically Mongols or Norse in space lol."

[Jakbal]

no... the emperor isn't ever described as expecting to lose or anything like that.

 

Sanguinius is states as seeing in a vision that he would lose, and yet going anyway.

 

The latter draws neat parallels with Jesus, the former, does not.

 

In the Horus Heresy "The Outcast Dead" it seems that The Emperor realizes he is not going to last out the rebellion.

[ElectricPaladin]

 

no... the emperor isn't ever described as expecting to lose or anything like that.

 

Sanguinius is states as seeing in a vision that he would lose, and yet going anyway.

 

The latter draws neat parallels with Jesus, the former, does not.

 

In the Horus Heresy "The Outcast Dead" it seems that The Emperor realizes he is not going to last out the rebellion.

 

Big E suspects it. Sanguinius knows. There's a world of difference.

[knife&fork]

The latter draws neat parallels with Jesus, the former, does not.

I too remember that part from the bible where jesus goes off to do mortal kombat on a space ship with his evil brother!

Just messing with ya, when I said the Emepror I was more thinking about the whole sacrifice and suffering for the salvation of humanity angle (like being entombed in the golden throne, super crucifiction!). It's all very classic story elements.

Lol, I just realized that I capitalized Emperor but not Jesus.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Blood Angels are renaissance Italian Catholics, as mentioned. Dante, Mephiston, Astorath, Tycho, Aphael, Castigon and Lemartes are all, to varying extents, based on either figures from Catholic 'fluff' or renowned Catholics (predominately Italian but Mephisto is German in origin and Castigon was Spanish) of that era.

 

They're not vampires. They may, once, half-heartedly have been, but the Red Thirst is a reference to transubstantiation and the Black Rage is a reference to the so-called Jerusalem Syndrome.

 

In the alternative, if they are Vampires, they're still Catholics as much of what forms the modern vampire legend is a ragtag of chinese whispers told about Catholic rituals. 

[ElectricPaladin]

Blood Angels are renaissance Italian Catholics, as mentioned. Dante, Mephiston, Astorath, Tycho, Aphael, Castigon and Lemartes are all, to varying extents, based on either figures from Catholic 'fluff' or renowned Catholics of that era.

 

They're not vampires. They may, once, half-heartedly have been, but the Red Thirst is a reference to transubstantiation and the Black Rage is a reference to the so-called Jerusalem Syndrome.

 

I think saying that they are not vampires is about as limited and inaccurate as saying that they are. They are influenced by Catholic imagery, but they are also influenced by vampiric imagery. I think it's fair to say that they are not "just" space vampires, in the same way that the Space Wolves are not "just" space werewolves. This game has been building layer after layer of fluff since 1984. There's a lot there.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I would still argue that what people see as allusions to vampirism are in fact grossly sensationalised and extreme references to transubstantiation and religious mania and are just another facet of their 40kified Catholicism rather than distinct and separate trait.

 

Take out references to physically being in Jerusalem from the Jerusalem Syndrome and it's almost an exact match for the Black Rage.

[ElectricPaladin]

There are references in the Blood Angels novels to vampirism being the thing that Blood Angels spend a lot of their time actively not thinking about, because the connections between that mythical state and their own condition are too horrifying to contemplate. While I agree that the Blood Angels are not vampires, I think that they are meant to seem like vampires, to establish some intentional ambiguity. They don't want to be vampires. They insist they aren't vampires. Most of the time, they don't act like vampires. They have all sorts of great evidence for how they're not, from the transubstantiation of their blood into the Blood of Sanguinius to the Black Rage as a sort of psychic throwback Jerusalem Syndrome...

 

And then they catch some poor death company marine ripping a traitor guardsman to pieces and bringing handfuls of blood and gobbets of bloody flesh to his mouth, feasting on the body, again and again, compulsively, sating his impossible, horrifying thirst at the same time that he screams out Horus's name and promises vengeance... and they just aren't sure anymore. They give him the Emperor's Rest, but they just don't know. What are they? What are they, really?

[Black_Sky]

The Black Rage is the psychic backlash of Sanguinius' death, and the reason why Blood Angels are inducted into the Death Company.

 

The Red Thirst is the other flaw, giving Angels an unnatural appetite for the blood of living beings. Marines fallen to the Red Thirst are not inducted into the Death Company, they are instead interred in the tower of amareo, where their cries for blood echo down the halls.

 

The Red Thirst was already present at the time of the Great Crusade, it presence a great burden to Sanguinius. Horus dangled the hope of a cure in front of Sanguinius in order to lure him and his legion into a trap, to make the legion fall to this bloodlust.

 

And by the way, Blood Angels are very much influenced by vampires:

 

 

Upon the seed of the Blood Angels lies the most ancient curse of mutation, a foulness that cannot be seen, which is covered by the grace, intelligence, and high achievenemts which are the proud boast of this most noble of Chapters. Yet the fire that burns behind the eyes of these sons of Sanguinius is bright with a thirst which only the blood of a man can slake. Aye, it would be wise to but whisper the name that comes from times heavy with age and fear, a name which echoes in the march of the Blood Angels... The name of Vampire"

- Codex Imperialis

[Plague Angel]

People, again, really overstate the amount of fluff that was "changed" in the new Codex. Half of it is copy-pasted from older fluff.

 

Dark gothic towers where Blood Angels shriek for "the blood of the living", golden coffins that Blood Angels sleep in during the day, civilians being discovered with neck wounds and drained of blood after the Blood Angels leave a planet -- all of that's still in. They're vampires.

 

Yes, there's a lot of Eucharistic imagery, but that same imagery is in Dracula. Taking that Eucharistic imagery and playing it up to the extent the BA have works really well to blend the Italian Catholicism and vampirism into a coherent whole. As an Anglo-Catholic myself, I confess it's a part of the fluff that attracts me a lot.

 

 

I've never thought of comparing the Black Rage to Jerusalem syndrome! That's a really cool connection.

[Nomus Sardauk]

The latter draws neat parallels with Jesus, the former, does not.

I too remember that part from the bible where jesus goes off to do mortal kombat on a space ship with his evil brother!

Just messing with ya, when I said the Emepror I was more thinking about the whole sacrifice and suffering for the salvation of humanity angle (like being entombed in the golden throne, super crucifiction!). It's all very classic story elements.

Lol, I just realized that I capitalized Emperor but not Jesus.

It's not just Jesus Sanguinius fulfills the role of, he also plays a role similar to the Archangel Michael by attempting to defend the Emperor (God) from Horus (Lucifer), but in classic grimdark fashion gets martyred for his trouble.

Aside from Lucifer's rebellion the Heresy also seems to be inspired by Arthurian myth, more specifically Sir Mordred (Horus) turning to the darkness and fatally wounding his father King Arthur (the Emperor) with the other Primarchs filling the grimdarkified role of the Knights of the Round Table torn asunder by such treachery.