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Imperial Truth vs. Prayers to Armour's Machine Spirits


Candleshoes

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Was reading Soul Hunter again, and it mentions a few things that raise questions about the great crusade and the extent Imperial Truth is held.

 

It mentions Talos praying to the souls of his weapons and armour, or uses words like benediction in describing a prayer to the machine spirit regarding warplate. Later, while fighting a titan, a comment is made from Talos about the mechanicus arming the god-machine, and their prayers to the Emperor in his guise as the machine God. 

 

The question/Issue is did legionaries "pray" to the spirits of their arms/armour, and does this go against the truth they were spreading? I'm sure the answer is simple and infront of me, but I thought it was worth asking.

Well, given the differing belief systems of the Legion (Promethean Cult, Space Wolves' spirituality/wyrd, how long it took anyone to notice what was wrong with Lorgar) it's possible that the Imperial Truth was never as endemic as the iterators would have you believe. Plus the whole 'separate Mechanicum mini empire' thing, where there's always been a Machine God.

 

Also didn't the timeline for Talos' story change while the trilogy was being written? So when Soul Hunter was written more than the two centuries since Curze's death (stated in the third book) were meant to have passed. So there would have been plenty of time for any remnant of the Imperial truth to be eroded by the 'present' in the original timeline.

Praying that one's weapons and armor is essentially no different that hoping this dice roll will be in your favor. Sometimes you blow on it for luck. Sometimes you will say something like "Come on baby, give me a 6!" It will take various forms an very few of them will we ever consider to be "prayers", but if written in a style that is reminiscent of the Gothic style, it could certainly be seen as a prayer, or some form of benediction.

 

For example, "faith" is a word that is thrown around quite a bit in the 40K universe. Stripped to its most basic definition, faith is the belief in something that can neither be empirically proven, nor disproven. Only the Imperium can have faith as they do not know if the God-Emperor is a God-Emperor. On the flip side, the Word Bearers, proud preachers of the Dark Faith, in reality have no faith. Because their gods are real. It is an empirically proven fact.

 

But the Gothic style has a serious religious implication to it. And when combined with the modern belief "faith is only religious belief", the two concepts combine together and every belief in the 40K universe is faith, and every practice, no matter how insignificant, rings with religious connotations.

Well, given the differing belief systems of the Legion (Promethean Cult, Space Wolves' spirituality/wyrd, how long it took anyone to notice what was wrong with Lorgar) it's possible that the Imperial Truth was never as endemic as the iterators would have you believe. Plus the whole 'separate Mechanicum mini empire' thing, where there's always been a Machine God.

 

Also didn't the timeline for Talos' story change while the trilogy was being written? So when Soul Hunter was written more than the two centuries since Curze's death (stated in the third book) were meant to have passed. So there would have been plenty of time for any remnant of the Imperial truth to be eroded by the 'present' in the original timeline.

No. That was explained in the pre-word. Since the Warband of the Exalted/Broken Aquila left Tsalgualsa(something that was assumed to have happened immediately after Curze's death, pre-Void Stalker), two hundred years had passed from their viewpoint. But there was a period of one hundred years after Curze's death that occurred before they left Tsalgualsa and ceased to be the Tenth Company, becoming the Warband of the Exalted. That's why A D-B put it in there, to explain the misconceptions that would arise due to our previous assumptions.

 

Well, given the differing belief systems of the Legion (Promethean Cult, Space Wolves' spirituality/wyrd, how long it took anyone to notice what was wrong with Lorgar) it's possible that the Imperial Truth was never as endemic as the iterators would have you believe. Plus the whole 'separate Mechanicum mini empire' thing, where there's always been a Machine God.

 

Also didn't the timeline for Talos' story change while the trilogy was being written? So when Soul Hunter was written more than the two centuries since Curze's death (stated in the third book) were meant to have passed. So there would have been plenty of time for any remnant of the Imperial truth to be eroded by the 'present' in the original timeline.

No. That was explained in the pre-word. Since the Warband of the Exalted/Broken Aquila left Tsalgualsa(something that was assumed to have happened immediately after Curze's death, pre-Void Stalker), two hundred years had passed from their viewpoint. But there was a period of one hundred years after Curze's death that occurred before they left Tsalgualsa and ceased to be the Tenth Company, becoming the Warband of the Exalted. That's why A D-B put it in there, to explain the misconceptions that would arise due to our previous assumptions.

 

Right, my bad. So from Talos' perspective three centuries have passed since Curze was killed? Does that mean it took a hundred years after M'shen killed Curze for the Ultramarines to turn up and shatter the Night Lords?

Yes. After all, the whole time the Night Lords are farting around in the Eastern Fringe, the Imperium is dealing with trying to rebuild itself, the Scouring, the Codex Reformations, the First Black crusade and who knows what else. When compared to war, raiders fall pretty low on the priority list.

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