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

[Knight of the Raven]

a group of recidivists (seems like a rather vague term and I don’t know of an expanded in-universe definition)

A recidivist is a repeat offender, but yeah, that term alone doesn't say much. Could be serial necromancers as much as it could be regular LARPers. Because roleplaying as xenos is heresy.

 

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).

Thorgrim Grudgebearer, High King of the Dwarves: goes to pray alone and gets offed like a punk.

 

Mina, Saint of the Imperium: goes to pray alone and gets offed like a bawss.

 

Checkmate, stunties.

 

More seriously, this reminded of a little bit of lore from Hammer and Anvil which I'm apparently the only one to ever mention;

 

'These words and thoughts are mine. Know me. I am Sister Katherine Elysius, Daughter of the God-Emperor.'

 

"Written in her own hand, her own words laid down for her Sisters to come."

 

'Fear is the enemy of hope. Hope is the foundation of faith. Faith is the weapon to kill fear.'

[Lord_Caerolion]

Recidivist in 40k tends to be used to refer to planets/populations that have seceded from the Imperium, rather than individual criminals repeating their crimes.

[Knight of the Raven]

Good to know. Thanks for the info.

 

Here's the whole confrontation over Saint Katherine's book for context (spoiler for Hammer and Anvil):

 

Tegas had expected a pistol, a skull, an orb of gold, a crown made of crystal. He had expected something xenos and inhuman, or daemon-made and unholy. A hundred possibilities. But nothing like this.

In his hands he held a book. Thick, secured by dense bindings and a latch that held it shut. There, on the hide cover, etched in gold, the title: The Hammer and Anvil.

His driving curiosity, the one human emotion he had never been able to fully purge from his persona, faded away and was replaced by something else, something rare. Confusion.

The questor carefully opened the book at its first page and coiled his mechadentrites around it, scanning the tome across every possible perceptive range. The form could be illusory, he told himself. There were files on Mars that described things that resembled books, such as the Malus Codicium, the Ravonicum Rex or the Epistles of Lorgar, things that were so much more. Pages encoded with telepathic matrices, subspace memes, even possessed by daemonic energy from the warp. There could be nanoforms within the ink itself, the paper could be psychoactive, even the spine might hide data needles that led to other riches.

He detected nothing, only the great age of the pages. The book was old, on the scale of hundreds of centuries. Tegas blink-transcribed the text into his personal data pool, dragging it through counter-encryption programs, layering it one image atop another, sifting for patterns. He created a disarray of meaningless information, the rational words on the paper rendered into recurring gibberish by his attempts to read something into them.

In his hands he held a book, pages of verses and observations on faith and duty, penned in pious manner but with no sense of focus or aim. It was not a disguise for something else, it was not imbued with preternatural power on any scale that Tegas could detect.

As he scanned it, and scanned it again, the questor's confusion deepened. There was no secret message lurking in these words, no code embedded in the patterns of the text. No blueprints for a weapon so powerful that it could burn a world of heretics. No ethereal powers lying dormant, no binding made of daemon's skin or ink drained from the blood of aliens.

All he held in his hands was a book. Ink and paper and binding.

'This is... nothing else!' Tegas bit out the words, trembling. He shook the container, but only particles of dust fell from it. The questor brandished the tome in his claw grip. 'What is this? What is this?'

'Read the name.' Tegas spun in place and found the woman Miriya standing in the entrance to the chamber. He had been so invested in the relic he had not heard approaching. She was panting, her face bloody, but her manner was reverent. 'The author's name,' she demanded. In her hand she held a smoke-blackened bolter.

Tegas looked down at the title page and read aloud what was written there, scratched in a careful and deliberate hand. 'These words and thoughts are mine. Know me. I am Sister Katherine Elysius, Daughter of the God-Emperor.'

'Blessed be her name, mother of my Order and first among the companions of Alicia Dominica.' Miriya completed the ritual phrase and bobbed her head. She hoped that Saint Katherine could forgive her for failing to make the sign of the aquila, but under the circumstances she did not trust Tegas enough to take her eyes off him. 'You opened it. You have no right to touch it, cog! You dirty the words of my mistress with your presence!'

'Words...' The questor shook his hooded head. 'In the name of Terra, tell me that there is more to this than just words on a page!'

He waved the ancient tome at her and Miriya felt a jolt of fright. She was furious at him for his desecration of the relic, but at the same moment terrified he might damage it. 'Give it to me, or I will kill you where you stand.'

Tegas didn't seem to hear her. 'There is nothing in this, is there? No secret but the one you have invented to surround it!' he shouted. 'How can this worthless text be so highly valued? There is no new knowledge here, no insight that unlocks the universe! It is just a book! I risked everything for the doggerel of a dead nun!'

'You blaspheme my Saint.' Miriya took aim at his head. 'It is her book, you maggot! Written in her own hand, her own words laid down for her Sisters to come. For me! It is faith, in its purest form!'

'I know faith!' Tegas shot back at her. 'I have conviction enough for the Imperial Cult and the Omnissiah!'

'Your only faith is in your own arrogance,' Miriya said coldly. 'You have no understanding of what it is to believe in something bigger than yourself.' The words seemed to come from somewhere far away, as if they were spoken by a part of the Battle Sister that had been silent for many months. 'The Hammer and Anvil is Katherine's soul poured out on paper. You hold the only copy still in existence. The physical matter of it, the pages, the binding... Those things have no value at all. But the inscriptions within, questor... The Martyred Lady herself wrote them. In this, that book is beyond any material worth to the Adepta Sororitas. It is our secret prize, carried from convent to convent to bless each outpost of our Order with Katherine's memory. I wondered why Seraphina fought so hard to return to Sanctuary 101... I did not fully understand fully until she told me of the book.' Miriya glared at him. 'Do you understand now, Tegas? The coin with which you measure the value of the world does not carry to all of us! What you think worthless I see as priceless.'

...don't ask me why a book penned somewhen during M36 is described as being at least twice older than the Imperium...

[battle captain corpus]

Bolter link. Just bolter link.

 

BCC

[Skalpynock]

The first Praevian ever mentioned, a Desert Lion by the name of Saul Lliamson, leading a cohort of Legio Cybernetica robots in the purging of Istvaan V during the Scouring.

[Knight of the Raven]

So I translated the article about Kayvaan Shrike I mentioned. I'll work on Lysander's own once I've recovered from All-Nighter #15362.

 

Captain Kayvaan Shrike of the Raven Guard

Born among the millions of hard-working souls teeming over Kiavahr's surface, the young Shrike was a hive runner for the Tarkal Guild, one of the gangs that fought over the domination of this polluted world's reeking factories. Owing his survival only to his cunning and his natural resources, Shrike could spend entire weeks spying on rival gangs, sabotaging their supply lines disturbing their plans in a general way. A hive runner's life was often short and violent, as capture by the enemy inevitable meant death.

Shrike possessed a natural talent for sabotage and he was capable of spending days upon days in enemy territory carefully installing explosives to cut off their power sources or destroy their stocks. But unbeknownst to him, as he escaped after an audacious raid, his career as runner was about to know a brutal end.

Tirelessly chased by the rival gang's killers, he managed to avoid capture for six days, feeding exclusively on the acrid fungus growing in the shadows of smokestacks and the foul water stagnating on roofs. But his foes weren't the only ones that took an interest in him. Far above, in the shadow of spires decorated with gargoyles, the Raven Guard's chaplains, who regularly prowled in the darkness in search of potential recruits, followed the young boy's progresses.

As the sixth day ended, Shrike's forces finally abandoned him. Trapped in a ruined habitation district, he turned about and fought like a lion, killing four of his attackers before being overcome. Impressed with the young man's determination, the chaplains followed his jailers down to their base, where Shrike was beaten and tortured as punishment for his sabotages.

If Shrike's enemies thought they could break him, they were wrong, as he didn't only endure their tortures without batting an eyelid, he also managed to escape, killing three more of his foes. Understanding they were dealing with a choice recruit, the chaplains went out of hiding, spiriting Shrike away just as his jailers were about to catch him.

New beginning

Shrike tried to fight the Raven Guard's chaplains, believing them to be also be his enemies, but the weakened young man couldn't hope to match space marines, and they brought him upon their ship and from there to their fortress-monastery, the Ravenspire. It stands atop one of the tallest summits of the Deliverance moon and used to house the headquarters of the brutal supervisors who ruled Kiavahr1. It is now the Raven Guard's mysterious home, perceived with a combination of fear, curiosity and suspicion by the inhabitants of the world it orbits.

Down in the dark caves beneath the Ravenspire, Shrike was initiated to the chapter's secrets by the chaplains and the drill sergeants. But he wasn't an obedient pupil and tried to escape several times, even succeeding in shaking off his pursuers for a whole week beneath Deliverance's ground. However, the more he understood his duties to the Emperor, the better he managed to channel his energy and he became one of the most promising recruits in centuries. His mastery over the art of evasion made him a born leader when he was integrated into the chapter's scout company. It was during this induction that he rescued a number of Imperial Guard officers held captive on the gulag-world of Sauten Helios. Virtually every prisoner was handed back to the Imperial Guard, who had them executed for letting themselves be captured.

The rainy world of Urlon V saw the young Shrike earn his power armor at last. The besieged² hive city had finally been taken by Morthrax the Sadist's Cult of Suffering and its inhabitants were methodically slaughtered in manners most horrible, for motives still unknown today. Regiments of the Imperial Guard and detachments from two chapters were trying to break the siege², all the while having to defend themselves from the swarms of deformed creatures that the inhabitants became in the hands of Morthrax's insane surgeons. Shrike was part of one of the strike forces sent behind enemy lines by way of drop pods³. The mission started badly when the sergeant was hacked apart by the blades of one of the Sadist's monsters, nearly as soon as they had landed. Shrike assumed command and led his scout squad to the hive's heart. Over the following month, he and his men attacked and destroyed tens of flesh forges, before taking the Sadist down with a volley of sniper shots. Once the siege was lifted, Shrike had the honor to be established a fellow battle brother of the Raven Guard by receiving his black carapace. With this last implant in place, he was given his power armor, which had belonged to the heroic captain Hidao of Pterios.

Hero of shadows

Shrike fought for the Raven Guard with courage, audacity and skill, nipping potential uprisings and invasions in the bud. He kept catching his superiors' attention, until captain Alerin was interned into a dreadnought, Shrike then being given the 3rd Company's commandment. It was soon called Shrike's Wing, fought many battles and defeated several enemies. However, captain Shrike earned his legendary reputation during the campaign aiming to destroy the ork warbosses of Targus VIII, a hive-world plunged in eternal night, located on the rim of the Halo Stars and which had fallen prey to their Waaagh!

This world's reconquest was entrusted to the Raven Guard and ten regiments of the Imperial Guard accompanied with the Navy. Meticulously chosen targets were assigned to the Raven Guard to be destroyed before the Imperial invasion. Shrike led a space marine strike force whose objective was a gigantic cannon, behind enemy lines. The raid was violent and quick, but once the target was no more, Shrike and his men found themselves trapped when the thunderhawk tasked with extracting them was shot down.

Not discouraged by the incident, they hid for two years in ork territory before they could rejoin their chapter. Over this period, they supplied precious information to the Navy's gunners all the while they performed guerrilla operations against the orks' fuel and ammunition stocks, as well as against their vehicles, before retreating back into the hive's ruins.

Shrike was honoured with the Imperial Laurels upon his triumphant return among his own, and he was put forward as a paragon of the chapter's virtues. Partly dues to his efforts, the campaign ended tens of years before the date planned by Imperial strategists. Shrike kept leading his company to battle, combining skill and courage, pinpointing the enemy's weak point in an instant and strking it with all of the forces at his disposal in as much time. His mastery over infiltration techniques and the psychological effects born of this type of operations are efficient beyond compare, and the foes capable of continuing the fight with such a daemon amidst their lines are rare indeed...

¹ They were mere overseers working for Kiavahr's technoguilds according to Index Astartes: Claws of the Raven.
² It's unclear in the French version whether the hive-city was taken by the Cult of Suffering after a siege and then besieged in turn by the Imperium or if it was still resisting and the Imperials started besieging the Cult's own siege lines.
³ Turns out space marines are hardy enough to survive drop pod landing even as scouts without the black carapace.

[gideon stargreave]

"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."

FYI, they can still be just as smart as they think they are. Herodotus got all sorts of stuff wrong, he is still smart

[Bulwyf]

I know this has been reconned but the whole Star Child of the Emperor dying (finally) and being reborn. The sensei? I think that was the name of the actual blood relative descendants of the Emperor. Also retconned out.

[Eddie Orlock]

Also retconned out.

When and where exactly did they contradict this? Deprecated and sadly never mentioned openly perhaps, but I don't recall seeing anything that specifically refutes it yet.

 

I mean, the Sensei were originally fluffed as being really good at hiding, so of course they don't tend to show up in the official histories published for audience consumption.

 

IIRC, the gathering storm contained some references to things that could be interpreted as the Star Child.

 

Which bleeds into my favourite bit of suppressed fluff, The Emperor defeated the Horus gambit by dividing his own soul between his compassionate nature, the part of him that would be irrevocably tainted by the slaying of his own beloved son and refused to do it, and his dutiful aspects that knew that Horus must be prevented from a physical ultimate triumph. Thus he spared himself the trauma and found a third option that allowed him some further opportunity to shelter mankind and watch over their psychic apotheosis.

 

It also means, that to feed the star child, and achieve mankind's ultimate victory over the fell powers, all they need to do is be nice to one another.

 

At least this'll likely remain true until Dang Nabbit gets his fingers on it at the end of the heresy series and 'for the lulz' it into something less meaningful.

[Scribe]

I know this has been reconned but the whole Star Child of the Emperor dying (finally) and being reborn. The sensei? I think that was the name of the actual blood relative descendants of the Emperor. Also retconned out.

 

The Star Child fluff is some of my favorite stuff too, and with the whole Emperor, God-Emperor, Astronomicon, and all that...

 

I think the Sensai stuff has been superseded by the Perpetuals (and what a shame...) but who knows.

[Laughingman]

That the Great crusade was not just fought be space marines, Large portions of the great crusade were fought by Imperial Army regiments, solar auxilia, mechanicum taghmata, etc with minimal  support of space marine legionaries. Millions if not billions of humans fought and died for the dream of human unity.

[m0nolith]

The Badab War.

[Marshal Rohr]

That the Great crusade was not just fought be space marines, Large portions of the great crusade were fought by Imperial Army regiments, solar auxilia, mechanicum taghmata, etc with minimal support of space marine legionaries. Millions if not billions of humans fought and died for the dream of human unity.

. That hasn’t been retconned or forgotten. It’s featured heavily in Conquest and Tempest.

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

A throw-away line from Deliverance Lost.

 

 

You still fail to understand the full possibility. At present, only the smallest percentage of candidates are suitable for gene-seed implantation. If we can use the primarch material properly, that will no longer be the case. We could take any child, from the earliest age, and accelerate their development, as mine was hastened. Any child. Our recruitment pool would expand from a few tens of thousands to millions-

Couple that with Primaris Marines, and there are endless vistas open, if the writers are only willing to go down the various routes open.

[40Kcollector]

When Iron Hands Squad Sgts wore Terminator armour

[No Foes Remain]

The Badab War.

This^

 

 

I am an idiot. How did I forget that!

[Mileposter]

The Badab War.

The Badab War is currently my favorite fluff era.

[Brother Tyler]

I'm not sure how the Badab War, an event that spawned two of the most popular non-Horus Heresy books from Forge World's Imperial Armour series, can be considered "often forgotten."

 

My own personal favorite bit of obscure lore is the fact that "Relictors" isn't the Chapter's real name, and that the current grey is not their Chapter Approved livery. They are in fact the "Fire Claws" and their Chapter Approved livery is orange and black. Oh, and they were founded around M36, so any "Relictors" that existed prior to that were someone else (or else the authors either forgot/didn't know/changed the origins of the Fire Claws).

[Iron Father Ferrum]

When Iron Hands Squad Sgts wore Terminator armour

 

All of the old 3rd Edition-era Iron Hands fluff, really.

 

 

Edit:  Actually, something else that I haven't seen mentioned in a looooong time?  The time, pre-Heresy, when Curze had a visionary fit and almost killed Rogal Dorn.  One of the earliest Horus Heresy audio dramas recounted his escape from an Imperial Fist prison in the aftermath of that event, and it's even mentioned during the Lightning Tower, another one of the first audio dramas.

[Legionnaire of the VIIth]

 

That the Great crusade was not just fought be space marines, Large portions of the great crusade were fought by Imperial Army regiments, solar auxilia, mechanicum taghmata, etc with minimal support of space marine legionaries. Millions if not billions of humans fought and died for the dream of human unity.

. That hasn’t been retconned or forgotten. It’s featured heavily in Conquest and Tempest.

 

This depends on who you talk to, many marine players I've had discussions with seem to play it off like only the Legions had any impact or importance and that those other elements didn't play any real role. So yes your statement is correct but that doesn't change that some people out there choose to ignore these things and over emphasize the Legions.

[BrotherJim]

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

 

Could you elaborate please? I missed 3rd and forth. I stared with second and Necromunda, came back for 5th edition. I liked 5th edition well enough, but I know i missed the glory days of old, would love to hear your thought and musing brother!

[Laughingman]

 

 

That the Great crusade was not just fought be space marines, Large portions of the great crusade were fought by Imperial Army regiments, solar auxilia, mechanicum taghmata, etc with minimal support of space marine legionaries. Millions if not billions of humans fought and died for the dream of human unity.

. That hasn’t been retconned or forgotten. It’s featured heavily in Conquest and Tempest.

 

This depends on who you talk to, many marine players I've had discussions with seem to play it off like only the Legions had any impact or importance and that those other elements didn't play any real role. So yes your statement is correct but that doesn't change that some people out there choose to ignore these things and over emphasize the Legions.

 

Indeed, the HH novels don't really help, Solar auxilia and Imperial army regiments are not very prominent, outside of the therion cohort and the Geno Five-Two Chiliad. 

[NovemberIX]

I think Malal is a pretty good piece of "forgotten" lore, especially the bit about him being the reason for Nids.

[old git]

In the very early days, ie early Rogue Trader, and I can't remember the name of the chapter, but thanks to their valour in battle a company of robots (FWs battle automata thesedays) were inducted into the chapter.

[Jamafore]

In the very early days, ie early Rogue Trader, and I can't remember the name of the chapter, but thanks to their valour in battle a company of robots (FWs battle automata thesedays) were inducted into the chapter.

 

 

Wasn't that halfway mentioned in First Heretic? At least one of the Automata was more or less "recruited" into the Word Bearers? Iirc it caused some "odd and annoying" quirks to appear in the machine spirit that it's Admech handler noticed. It was enough to allude that the machine had an idea of the honor it was granted.

 

For me, though admittedly this appears to be before my time since I started mid-5th and probably retconned, the chaos gods each having a positive quality attached to them, most notably, in my mind, Khorne who was less "It's blood, don't care where you get it" and more, "Give me blood and skulls you earned. If your tribute couldn't fight back, you won't be able to against my puppies." If/when I start a Khornate army, I'm gonna use that angle.