What's your favorite piece of lore that's often forgotten?

[Kinstryfe]

Hello brethren. It's evident that almost everyone here loves the three decades of background of the 40K-verse, and with that much lore work like written, what's everyone's favorite little moments in the lore that were significant, but which people tend to forget about or overlook?

 

Some of my favorite bits that seem to often be forgotten:

 

The Chaos Gods marked "fully half" of the Primarchs to be their eventual servants, and for a long time people assumed that it was probably one of the lost who fell to chaos. The First Heretic shows the ten though, and it was the usual nine plus The Lion, who was sent to a world that harbored massive warp taint. For all the tongue in cheek taunts of the Dark Angels as traitors, the truth isn't that they were a Legion which half succumbed to chaos. They were a Legion that had been marked by chaos from the get go, and half the Legion and their Primarch resisted the best attempts of the warp powers. If The Lion hadn't been loyal enough to resist any corrupting influence and things had went as the warp intended, the Heresy would likely have had a very different outcome.

 

For all the technological sophistication and knowledge the Imperium and Mechanicum possess, most knowledge is highly incomplete due to millennia of war and suffering on Terra. Shakespeare is renowned for his three plays, the Thousand Sons regard Shelley's Frankenstein as a cautionary accounting of chaos-fueled necromancy on ancient Terra, and Arkhan Land, one of the most gifted and intelligent biologists to have ever lived, doesn't even know what a monkey looks like or what it does, thinking that they obviously possessed poisoned tails like scorpions. People tend to overlook the fact that at their core, the Imperium is populated by people who are not as smart as they think they are.

 

Primaris marines seem to be a brand new addition to the fluff, but an old piece about Fabius Bile had him discovering and raiding a facility and discovering (and I believe taking) a test subject who appeared to be a much larger than normal Marine (or smallish Primarch). While the fine details are new, experiments to create giant marines have existed in the lore for years.

 

So, anyone else have any interesting bits of lore they like that for some reason don't seem to be brought up very often? I'm curious what we all may have missed or glossed over.

[Wargamer]

The fact that aspiring Space Marines can be rejected simply because the Gene Seed won't take. When the lore says only one in a hundred people can become Space Marines, it doesn't mean that only 1% of people are strong enough - it means only 1% of the population can survive the process and come out as a Space Marine!

[Marshal Rohr]

The Battle of Vogen was the perfect encapsulation of how 40k felt Before 5th Edition.

[The Yncarne]

Does this include ret-conned stuff like Captain Oblonsky beginning the Death Wing during an invasion to retake an ark held planet or the Ultramarines being a 22nd founding chapter? Or does it mean things more subtle things like the evolution of Craftworld Lugganoth history? Where exactly does one draw the line for "forgotten lore" in a setting that constantly changes, blessed be Tzeentch?

[Lay]

Primaris marines seem to be a brand new addition to the fluff, but an old piece about Fabius Bile had him discovering and raiding a facility and discovering (and I believe taking) a test subject who appeared to be a much larger than normal Marine (or smallish Primarch). While the fine details are new, experiments to create giant marines have existed in the lore for years.

 

I remember that! Iirc it was an Index Astartes article that shed light on the Cursed Founding and the crazy experiments behind it. It was written in the form of reports from a spy who was part of an expedition. He chronicled how they investigated the facility where a bunch of fake Primarchs were bred and pieced together what happened.

It was one of the coolest in-universe fluff pieces I ever read.

[Marshal Rohr]

Primaris are a reboot of the marine range, not hidden in the lore and we’ve never noticed.

[Mileposter]

Many seem to forget - even a writer or two - that for most of the Imperium, and even a good chunk of Space Marines, using technology is a Religious experience.

[Grotsmasha]

Primaris are a reboot of the marine range, not hidden in the lore and we’ve never noticed.

 

=] Let's not have THAT debate here [=

[N1SB]

Squats.

[Atia]

Daemonworld armies.

[No Foes Remain]

War of the False Primarch and the Nova Terra Interregnum. Such cool little tidbits written about them and are ripe for expansion just as the Badab War and the Horus Heresy were fluffed up.

[Shockmaster]

Obviously it is becoming less forgotten in recent times with the release of Tzaangors & Gor Half-Horn but for years my favourite piece of forgotten background material was Beastmen in 40k. 

[Scribe]

Impossible to have a 'favorite' for me. There are just too many things which I appreciate.

 

The bits about Chaos Eldar though have never been explored, and I think thats a shame.

[Damo1701]

Bolter rounds are caseless...

[Marshal Rohr]

Bolter rounds have literally never been caseless in any depiction ever.

[karden00]

THere was a great short story, I believe in either the IA:BA, or maybe from an Armageddon piece, that showed Captain Tycho succumbing to the Black Rage. He was fighting off hordes of orks, all the while thinking they were Chaos Marines or daemons, and when he met up with a big warboss, he saw it as Horus and you realized he was seeing himself as Sanguinius. I remember loving that bit.

 

I also remember thinking how cool it was when the Necrons (NOT Newcrons - no Matt Ward fluff for me, thanks) first got fleshed out a bit, and there was a several page long account in a WD about their war with the Eldar and the swords of Vaul.

[Brother Sefiel]

Greetings

​The Space Wolves fortress-monastery.

[Shockmaster]

The huge & powerfully muscled Cardinal Armandus Helfire guarding the Eye of Terror and the Frateris Militia sometimes armed with nothing but a bow or musket. 

[jeremy1391]

The fact that Rogal Dorn only had his hand recovered.... and the fact that the novel Space Marine has been completely retconed.

 

#rogallives

[SickSix]

That Magnus punched out one of Russ' hearts.

[Lexington]

"The Lion and the Wolf" - a Bill King-penned bit of short background from early 3rd Edition that was, to my knowledge, only ever printed in a single White Dwarf issue. It details Johnson and Russ' feud and then reconciliation in the aftermath of the Heresy, and has that legendary feel that the best old Heresy background did. Stories of friendship and forgiveness are almost unheard of in 40K anymore, and I'm sad this one's not really seen more exposure.

 

THere was a great short story, I believe in either the IA:BA, or maybe from an Armageddon piece, that showed Captain Tycho succumbing to the Black Rage. He was fighting off hordes of orks, all the while thinking they were Chaos Marines or daemons, and when he met up with a big warboss, he saw it as Horus and you realized he was seeing himself as Sanguinius. I remember loving that bit.

I love this piece so much. It's from a White Dwarf at the end of the Armageddon campaign, IIRC, and was collected into the very first Chapter Approved book during 3rd Edition. Poor ol' Lemartes, realizing his friend is really lost to the Rage and trying to send him out to the best end he can - that still gets me.

[Honda]

Goge Vandire and the Wars of Apostasy.

 

I would love to see a "Vraks/Badab-like" treatment of that topic, i.e. 2-3 books.

[Red_Shift]

@Honda the whole Jake Thornton sisters of battle codex in second edition was the coolest fluff ever.

 

My vote is an Andy Chambers short story where a new sailor joins an imperial navy vessel and meets an old timer who it seems has been possessed by his bionics. He describes lots of events from imperial and pre imperial history. Great read.

[Knight of the Raven]

I don't know if this is a favorite of mine, but it's the only piece of lore I remember that fits "never seen or heard anyone mention it since I read it."

 

French White Dwarf 130, February 2005. The Heroes and Anti-Heroes article, which I can only assume is Heroes and Villains in English because my language doesn't have a translation of 'villain' that fits or can be taken seriously. The backgrounds of captains Shrike and Lysander. Like I said, I've never seen it mentioned ever during all my years on the internet.

 

Who'd have guessed Lysander was a pilgrim whose determination led him through the horrors of orks and heretics to Terra where he was welcomed as a hero or that what caused the chaplains of the Raven Guard to deem the young Kayvaan worthy of joining the chapter was, along with his certain skills in stealth, his refusal to be broken by the torture of rival gang members in retaliation to his sabotage?

 

Browsing this issue reminded me of two other articles that are so very rarely mentioned. The two Index Xenos articles on Biel-Tan and Dark Eldar. They make you realize how alien Eldar actually are, what with being able to have a deep, philosophical conversation with each other doing nothing but slight movements, and being so fast Imperials need to slow down videos of kabalites slaughtering their citizens by several magnitudes before the Dark Eldar become something that's not a ridiculously quick blur.

[Servant of Dante]

Goge Vandire and the Wars of Apostasy.

 

I would love to see a "Vraks/Badab-like" treatment of that topic, i.e. 2-3 books.

Age of Apostasy. And Vandire’s 70-odd year reign as both lord of the Administratum and Ecclesiarch (and he had most of the High Lords of Terra executed) is the Reign of Blood :D

 

Personally, I like the bits about Saint Lucia. After Dominica beheaded Vandire she flensed his skull and carved litanies into it (since then it’s been where she put it in the Ecclesiarchal vaults on Terra). She was martyred by a group of recidivists (seems like a rather vague term and I don’t know of an expanded in-universe definition) who put out her eyes then tortured 1000 of the faithful to death while she listened. It is said that some of the Sisters under her command were among that thousand and they refused to make any noise as they died (to avoid adding to Lucia’s suffering). Then they killed her.

 

Another is Mina, a bunch of sanguinary cultusts (no relation to Blood Angels I don’t think) ambushed her as she was praying alone in a chapel on Hydraphur. When her body was found it was drained of blood but the chapel was covered in the blood of her attackers (and a score of their bodies).

 

Ah, Saint Lucia is the founding saint of the Order of the Valorous Heart, and Saint Mina is the founding saint of the Order of the Bloody Rose (though the Order was formed centuries after her death). Both were among Dominica’s 5 “companions” who went with her to the Sanctum Imperialis to see the Emperor :D (this would have been probably in the 35th millennium? Correct me if I’m wrong).