Relativistic accounts of truth in 40k lore

[Ascanius]

 

 

My response to your post, Ascanius, is to say that I do need objective facts to be nailed down, in order to feel that the setting isn't just going to fall apart because there is nothing that can be considered absolutely true (in the setting, not outside of the game) for fear of destroying someone's creativity.

 

If I pick, Space Marines but ignore Primaris, don't think Tau really exist and say that warp daemons don't really physically manifest then am I still playing or engaging in 40k?  It doesn't feel like it. 

 

So, then, don't take it that far. Only accept as mutable that which doesn't bother you to consider mutable.

 

The idea I'm driving at is that you don't need GW to declare a concrete canon.* Decide it for yourself. Creativity isn't football, you don't need a defined goal area and sidelines and player positions.

 

Actually, football is a good metaphor, specifically soccer - there's a FIFA set of rules and regulations defining how the game is played, yeah? But there's also what happens when you take a ball to the park and put down four schoolbags as goal markers. You might prefer to play on a "proper" tended and marked-out pitch with a regulation ball and uniforms for all the players, but that doesn't mean kids running around 20-a-side in the park aren't playing basically the same game, just looser.

 

I would say that the thing about 40K is that the right approach is to only consider or include the things that you want to be true, not try to definitively refute things you don't want to be true. To use your examples: if you want to ignore Primaris Space Marines, your story can take place before they show up or can involve Space Marines that don't have Primaris reinforcements for whatever reason, and make no mention of Primaris anywhere, but it shouldn't involve Ultramarines on Macragge in 200.M42 with no Primaris in sight. If you don't like the addition of the T'au to the setting, come up with a story in which the T'au never appear and no-one mentions them. If your daemons manifest as incorporeal entities, that's fine, but don't have someone in the story talk about how it's impossible for empyreal entities to have a physical form (unless they're supposed to be dangerously ignorant!).

 

There are plenty of Space Marine players who aren't adding Primaris to their armies, plenty of Black Templars who reject the retcon that the chapter is devoted to the Imperial Creed and has been since the days of Sigismund, maybe one or two Novamarines players who came up with their own reason for the quartered scheme and chapter symbol and ignore the idea that it was Lucretius Corvo's mortal family heraldry. T'au players who don't like the "evil Ethereals" development, Necron players who stick to the mindless Terminator horde aesthetic, whatever.

 

* If you'll indulge a second metaphor, it's more like a packed-earth canon; much of it is pretty damn firm and not going anywhere, it's more crumbly and loose at the edges, but it's also much more mutable when it needs to be changed. I mean, GW prints the same explanation of Space Marine gene-seed organs in every Codex, so you can pretty much rely on that - but it also doesn't stop you from coming up with a story about a Dark Founding chapter whose gene-seed was messed with to give them extra organs, maybe even early and flawed versions of Cawl's work on the extra Primaris organs, if you want. Maybe Cawl was involved himself, or maybe one of his assistants stole samples and went off to pursue their own researches. Et cetera.

[Lexington]

In short, for GW to claim that "everything is canon, but nothing everything is true" makes it so open as to be not a cohesive thing.

Is it really a good idea for 40K to be a cohesive thing, tho? The real world isn't particularly cohesive, and we're still not really sure how most of its rules work. I feel like we should give 40K the same freedoms.

[Volt]

Variable canon is a silly idea when we can use basic deductive reasoning to tell what's in-universe propaganda and not, such as the fact that some books contain unknowable information or would never be written in 40k because the mere knowledge involving their production would be suppressed. So off the bat we can quickly cross things such as Grey Knights novels, Dark Angel novels, and some of the third person Inquisition novels from existing in universe because it doesn't make logical sense, their mere existence would result in both their destruction and the author's.

 

Meanwhile some things certainly do exist in universe, and their status as propaganda is fairly obvious. Point and case being Dan Abnett's Inquisition novel series, Ciaphus Cain, the Guardsmen's Primer, GW's Guardsmen weekly blog, and other first person novels told from a clear in-universe perspective. There is also other examples such as codices, the Space Marines Codice for example claimed that Marneus Calgar held a gate from an entire Ork army for days- a Space Marines Battle novel showed that to be very generous hyperbole. 

 

That and when new material is produced that quite clearly contradictory in nature and it isn't in-universe in nature, it's clear there's simply been a retcon by GW. Such as with much of the HH Book series, or the minor changes from edition to edition. 

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

<snip>

Meanwhile some things certainly do exist in universe, and their status as propaganda is fairly obvious. Point and case being Dan Abnett's Inquisition novel series, Ciaphus Cain, the Guardsmen's Primer, GW's Guardsmen weekly blog, and other first person novels told from a clear in-universe perspective. There is also other examples such as codices, the Space Marines Codice for example claimed that Marneus Calgar held a gate from an entire Ork army for days- a Space Marines Battle novel showed that to be very generous hyperbole.

 

<snip>

 

I will point out that the Ciaphas Cain novels are edited (by an in-universe inquisitor) to include in-universe ‘facts’ and propoganda, but that the novels themselves (those parts told in 1st person) are the complete and utter truth—as far as Cain himself knows. They are a first person account, unedited by him. The propaganda he published as a memoir, however, that’s another story right there.

[Evil Eye]

I've always greatly liked the relativistic/"Everything is canon, not everything is true" elements of 40K. For one, it allows for far greater freedom with "your dudes" and allows one to fairly easily ignore minor continuity errors (assuming the fluff is well written enough in the first place). The "your dudes" factor is particularly important IMO, as it allows for creative freedom that is impossible with more "defined" wargames backgrounds.

 

The other thing that I think works in its favour is the almost mythical, "epic" nature it adds to the story. Quite often, a story is enhanced not by what you show/tell, but what you don't. The combination of the inherent intrigue of the unknown, with the sheer grand scale of 40K, makes for something that's less a straightforward continuity and more a historical account clouded with myth, legend and bias. I personally much prefer stories that leave something to the imagination, and find excessive demystification to be unnecessary.

 

It also must be said that the "We just don't know what happened, this is an approximation of the events" method is definitely preferable to the "Every single variation on events is an alternate universe" approach that, say, Marvel comics is so overly fond of.