Terra in M30

[Balthamal]

Clue is in the title :) And there's not really many resources on the board with information in a handy place. What with tantalising hints in the BL novels and with FW expanding on the origins of the Legions and their initial recruitment pools from the population of Terra I thought it might now be a good time to start compiling what we know.

 

What do we know about Terra in the days of the Unification Wars? We've been given some broad hints around the more well known tyrants who ruled their little corner of old Earth such as:

 

Cardinal Tang in the Yndonesic Bloc and his pogroms of genetic perfection

Ullieam the Red, ruler of Albyion

Kallagann, Tyrant of Ursh (Present day Russia/Siberia)

The Unnamed Ethnarch of the Caucasus Wastes

Narthan Dume, Tyrant of Panpacifica (originally sentenced to eternal imprisonment in the Khangba Marwu but was killed by Damon Prytanis, either at the insinuation/on orders of Constantine Valdor

 

Hy Brasil, The Atlantic Platforms and the Nordrafrik Conclaves were also in existence during the time (although Nordafrik had been decimated by Ursh in the wars preceeding the Emperor's campaign of Unification.

 

When I get hold of all the books I'll make a list of recruitment centres of the Legions at the time as well although if anyone has got the BL novels to hand with the info please feel free to add it

[Marshal Rohr]

Hmm, I had a list somewhere. Lemme look for it.

[DuskRaider]

Dalmoth Kyn was ruler of Hy Brasil and one of the last independent rulers of the Unification Wars in general.

 

Further evidence that Albia / Albyion is based in modern day England / Scotland / Ireland... Ullieam the Red is a play on William the Lion, ruler of Scotland 1165 - 1214.

[JeffJedi]

Terrawatt Clan?

[Excessus]

The Achaemenid Empire is where Ahriman is from at least, their kings sided with the Emperor early and got spared destruction in the wars. I remember the Luna Wolf wannabe in Scars was from the Scandia region...which should be Scandinavia I'd think...

[Skalpynock]

From Betrayal:

 

Jutigran bowl (XVI stock)

Samsatian sub-plate slums (XVI stock)

Somon sub-orbital principalties and their Panarch

Old Albia (mainly XIV stock, secondary VIII and X stock) Possessed "steam-belching proto-dreadnoughts", Ironside warriors, and is described as having "towering, soot-blackened Castram-cities"

[jeremy1391]

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a148/jeremy1391/Mobile%20Uploads/80ED3265-ED38-4160-B186-BDB584DB7223_zpslusvtkwf.jpg

[Marshal Rohr]

While cool looking, that nap is neither accurate nor official.

[Brother Heinrich]

While cool looking, that nap is neither accurate nor official.

I know it's not official, but how far off is it in terms of accuracy? Just genuinely curious. 

[Marshal Rohr]

40,000 years isn't enough time for tectonic plates to restructure the continental shelves like that, if I remember my lessons correctly. Earth would look much the same as it does now, but the oceans are deserts.

 

Also, the way the plates are moving are backwards I think.

[Conn Eremon]

I dint think it is showing continental plates moving, but what a sever decrease in water level would leave the current map. Still might not be accurate though, since they leave a lot more water than there should be. Unfortunately, it's photobucket, so I can see the pretty colors, but I can only access the thumbnail version. Photobucket is terrible on mobile.

 

I've always envisioned xkcd's map:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/53/drain_ed.png

[Brother Heinrich]

Again, another geology/science question, but I was always under the impression that water couldn't be "burned" away permanently. Evaporated, sure, but I thought that the amount of water present on a planet remains the same. It can be frozen, temporarily evaporated until it condenses and becomes rainfall, or moved elsewhere. So unless the Techno-Barbarians are hoarding water, then the same stuff we're drinking and pooping in today should be around somewhere in M30, right?

[fool's idol]

Well, while I don't think they would cause such erosion, the multiple colonisation ships sent away must have carried a relatively big quantity of water which never returned, and maybe the polar casquets are bigger or something, but yeah, the water cycle isn't something that goes away after 28 000 years of atomic bombing and nuclear holocausts.

... maybe they didn't think about it.

[Petitioner's City]

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a148/jeremy1391/Mobile%20Uploads/80ED3265-ED38-4160-B186-BDB584DB7223_zpslusvtkwf.jpg

 

I'm no expert on geology, but that is a rather Euro-American map.... It perpeptuates ideas of European granularity and multi-culturalism, whilst erasing African, Asian, South American and Pacifican variation and condensing the vast scale of the geographied compared to miniature Europe. It kind of needs an encounter with Said, and much more so the geographical and cultural studies globalists ;) 

 

Anyway, loving thhe map, just wishing for more cultural variation everywhere outside of Europe :) It's also really cool to think of what the world is like sans water....perhaps (mostly) like Mars?

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a148/jeremy1391/Mobile%20Uploads/80ED3265-ED38-4160-B186-BDB584DB7223_zpslusvtkwf.jpg

I'm no expert on geology, but that is a rather Euro-American map.... It perpeptuates ideas of European granularity and multi-culturalism, whilst erasing African, Asian, South American and Pacifican variation and condensing the vast scale of the geographied compared to miniature Europe. It kind of needs an encounter with Said, and much more so the geographical and cultural studies globalists ;)

 

Anyway, loving thhe map, just wishing for more cultural variation everywhere outside of Europe :) It's also really cool to think of what the world is like sans water....perhaps (mostly) like Mars?

Orientalism in 30K. Said's magnum opus, left unfinished. He'd love the White Scars and Thousand Sons.

 

Edit: To be realistic, 30K is actually far more representative of non-AngloAmerican culture (which is almost completely ignored in the entire setting) than any other sci-fi setting. Most legions have been drawn from non-European and American locations, with only 4 to date having mentioned Europe (Hands, Death Guard, Fists, and EC). Every other legion has been drawn from places in the east or places currently underwater. For a company run by nerds (who nuances of culture of often lost on) FW has done a remarkably job of neither appropriating or caricaturing it's real world legion influences.

[DuskRaider]

Night Lords would also be drawn from (mostly) European stock.

[Petitioner's City]

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a148/jeremy1391/Mobile%20Uploads/80ED3265-ED38-4160-B186-BDB584DB7223_zpslusvtkwf.jpg

I'm no expert on geology, but that is a rather Euro-American map.... It perpeptuates ideas of European granularity and multi-culturalism, whilst erasing African, Asian, South American and Pacifican variation and condensing the vast scale of the geographied compared to miniature Europe. It kind of needs an encounter with Said, and much more so the geographical and cultural studies globalists

Anyway, loving thhe map, just wishing for more cultural variation everywhere outside of Europe It's also really cool to think of what the world is like sans water....perhaps (mostly) like Mars?

Orientalism in 30K. Said's magnum opus, left unfinished. He'd love the White Scars and Thousand Sons.

Edit: To be realistic, 30K is actually far more representative of non-AngloAmerican culture (which is almost completely ignored in the entire setting) than any other sci-fi setting. Most legions have been drawn from non-European and American locations, with only 4 to date having mentioned Europe (Hands, Death Guard, Fists, and EC). Every other legion has been drawn from places in the east or places currently underwater. For a company run by nerds (who nuances of culture of often lost on) FW has done a remarkably job of neither appropriating or caricaturing it's real world legion influences.

And probably Polynesian Raven Guard ;) But postcolonialism in science fiction is interesting, as is of course gendered, politicised and theoretical readings of the genre. And 30K and 40K are both ripe for it :D

I'd say you are right, but also that legions the Iron Warriors and Ultramarines draw on Roman and Greek Eurocentric ideas, and of course the Wolves draw on especially northern european ideas too. FW have done well to really expand the mythos, and BL has purposefully included many non-white or non-caucasian characters and origins in the period. But Africa and differing black heritage remains non-existent (apart from the again orientalising work of the Celestial Lions(?) on Armageddon), and a 'Latin American' identity, as conflicted as this is, also non-extant. 40K is a funny ethnography, but one that feels at its heart, very late 80s...and very much a product of its geographic origin. it's good FW & BL are changing this, but still, so much to be done!

Anyway, these maps are great!

[TennisBall]

Only way that map could be possible is land reclamation but where does the water go? Simple - dig the ocean floor and use the diggings to increase surface area. More land, deeper oceans. If the tech exists to flattene the tops of mountains then this is possible, especially after 30,000 years of such terraforming. Current surface area is 3/4 water, you can't evaporate that out of the planet's gravity. Stick it somehow into the atmostphere then good luck trying to reach space through it.

Ecology is a low point in a lot of sci fi. No water, blasted landscapes = no breathable air, no food.

[jeremy1391]

Land reclamation is what I think the likely reason the map looks the way it does. The tech is there. The imperium did make one of the continents on Ullanor completely flat and level for the coronation of Horus to war master. So during the golden age of technology before old night I could easily see the population of earth needing to find more room for people to live which would then cause the necessity for the expanding of continents.

 

Who knows the soil could have even been brought from off world to build up the land masses.

 

There is also fluff that states that there is not much water left on earth by the time of the unification war.

[Marshal Rohr]

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a148/jeremy1391/Mobile%20Uploads/80ED3265-ED38-4160-B186-BDB584DB7223_zpslusvtkwf.jpg

I'm no expert on geology, but that is a rather Euro-American map.... It perpeptuates ideas of European granularity and multi-culturalism, whilst erasing African, Asian, South American and Pacifican variation and condensing the vast scale of the geographied compared to miniature Europe. It kind of needs an encounter with Said, and much more so the geographical and cultural studies globalists

Anyway, loving thhe map, just wishing for more cultural variation everywhere outside of Europe It's also really cool to think of what the world is like sans water....perhaps (mostly) like Mars?

Orientalism in 30K. Said's magnum opus, left unfinished. He'd love the White Scars and Thousand Sons.

Edit: To be realistic, 30K is actually far more representative of non-AngloAmerican culture (which is almost completely ignored in the entire setting) than any other sci-fi setting. Most legions have been drawn from non-European and American locations, with only 4 to date having mentioned Europe (Hands, Death Guard, Fists, and EC). Every other legion has been drawn from places in the east or places currently underwater. For a company run by nerds (who nuances of culture of often lost on) FW has done a remarkably job of neither appropriating or caricaturing it's real world legion influences.

And probably Polynesian Raven Guard ;) But postcolonialism in science fiction is interesting, as is of course gendered, politicised and theoretical readings of the genre. And 30K and 40K are both ripe for it :D

I'd say you are right, but also that legions the Iron Warriors and Ultramarines draw on Roman and Greek Eurocentric ideas, and of course the Wolves draw on especially northern european ideas too. FW have done well to really expand the mythos, and BL has purposefully included many non-white or non-caucasian characters and origins in the period. But Africa and differing black heritage remains non-existent (apart from the again orientalising work of the Celestial Lions(?) on Armageddon), and a 'Latin American' identity, as conflicted as this is, also non-extant. 40K is a funny ethnography, but one that feels at its heart, very late 80s...and very much a product of its geographic origin. it's good FW & BL are changing this, but still, so much to be done!

Anyway, these maps are great!

Somebody should do a full postmodern critique of 30K as a guide to making characters and cultures deeper and more authentic.

[Kol Saresk]

Night Lords would also be drawn from (mostly) European stock.

With a good portion of that being the prison underneath Albion.

 

Although, on the whole note of cultural cross-pollenation, the Terran Raven Guard primarily recruited from tech-tribes located in the Middle East didn't they? And yet they have a Polynesian influence? That's one heck of a cultural influence.

[Kriegriss]

realistically by m30 interbreeding between ethnic groups will probably have rendered us down to a more or less standard physicality. And culturaly who knows there isn't a single human civilization that has lasted ten thousand years continuously so who is to say our current cultures would last into m30

[Marshal Rohr]

realistically by m30 interbreeding between ethnic groups will probably have rendered us down to a more or less standard physicality. And culturaly who knows there isn't a single human civilization that has lasted ten thousand years continuously so who is to say our current cultures would last into m30

Untrue, and interbreeding makes it sound old-timey racist. :P

[Marshal Rohr]

 

Night Lords would also be drawn from (mostly) European stock.

With a good portion of that being the prison underneath Albion.

 

Although, on the whole note of cultural cross-pollenation, the Terran Raven Guard primarily recruited from tech-tribes located in the Middle East didn't they? And yet they have a Polynesian influence? That's one heck of a cultural influence.

Ah, I'd have to look at it again. I thought the Night Lords came from the Marianas trench and the Raven Guard came from Central Asia.

[Petitioner's City]

 

realistically by m30 interbreeding between ethnic groups will probably have rendered us down to a more or less standard physicality. And culturaly who knows there isn't a single human civilization that has lasted ten thousand years continuously so who is to say our current cultures would last into m30

 

I think uniformity seems anything but true in the future; variation rather than singularity is suggested by 'ethnic' projections of a melting pot like America currently (see here and here). Obviously this is the near-future, but I think anything which projects onto 40k a single ethnic dimension which is 'white' or caucasoid is not what I think the franchise should be reaching for....

 

More so, my point isn't about race per se; it's rather that 40K reflects Eurocentric granularity (that europe has diverse, identifiable cultures that form archetypes for dozens of different future identities), whereas the rest of the world of collapsed into massive blank slates that provide single, bland, unified cultural-racial archetypes which are not true. Africa, Asia, Oceania and South+Central America are all as or are far more granulated in the present and the past than Europe (or Western Europe+North America). That's my main point, although race is tied very much to this.