July 2019 White Dwarf: Indomitus Crusade Lore!

[Dagoth Ur]

Bitter?

In the grim-darkness of the 42nd Millennium, there exists only poor bait.

[Sete]

 

 

Bitter?

In the grim-darkness of the 42nd Millennium, there exists only poor bait.

I think I have a good enough relationship with blindhamster to joke with him. ;)

Deep down we both only want 1 thing, Intercessors with chainswords! :D

No bait intended.

And I ,in fact, have been getting better :)

[Doctor Perils]

First people complain that there was a 100 year jump (which allowed people to play in a setting where Primaris were established), now people complain that some of the gaps are getting filled.

 

Some things just never change

As Sete and Redmapa say, we're not complaining about the gaps being filled, more we are commenting about the fact that the lore has been allowed to languish in the 2 years since 8th was released. In that time we've had nearly all the codexes released (including two releases for Chaos), with some pretty new models and rules... But hardly anything about the setting's fluff. For instance:

• How has Ynnead's birth affected the Eldar factions since Gathering Storm?
• How has the complete disappearance of the 4th sphere expansion affected the Tau, and how is their 5th sphere advancing?
• Have the Necrons and Tyranids had anything to do in the last century appart from twiddling their thumbs (quite a complicated feat for most tyranids, won't anyone think of the Hormagants?!)
• How have the different Chaos factions been affected by their failed assault on Terra, on Macragge, on Fenris, and on Vigilus (damn... wasn't the whole point of the Gathering Storm to make Chaos appear threatening again? ^^)
• How has Imperium Nihilus adjusted to life on the other side of the Rift?
• And most importantly of all: is Sly Marbo actually a perpetual?!?!

With this article on the Indomitus Crusade, it looks like they may finally be making a move on answering some of these questions, but to me it now feels like a cop-out to not have answered them in their respective codices rather than waiting months for a White Dwarf - these questions are integral to the new setting, but I've definitely lost a good deal of the excitement I felt at the beginning of the edition, and that's primarily due to a leap forward of a hundred years that was meant to break the status quo... only to not have anything to show how the status quo has actually changed.

 

yes, yes, the great rift fundamentally changed the fabric of the imperium and the galaxy... But for the moment, that plot line has not followed the adage of "show, don't tell".

 

 

I will caveat this wall'o'text - I like most of the new fluff. I like the fact they jumped a hundred years into the future. I just don't like how they expected us to accept the minimal amount of fluff they actually gave us to understand the new paradigm.

 

 

 

 

(Medrengard remains the first galactic exporter of salt, mind you.)

(IW player btw)

[Blindhamster]

 

 

 

Bitter?

In the grim-darkness of the 42nd Millennium, there exists only poor bait.

I think I have a good enough relationship with blindhamster to joke with him. ;)

Deep down we both only want 1 thing, Intercessors with chainswords! :D

No bait intended.

And I ,in fact, have been getting better :)

Absolutely brother! Chainswords and some nice power swords would go a long way to making us both happy

[Marshal Reinhard]

I'd like power axes, mauls, lances, fists, thunder hammers, lightning claws and relic blades too :P

[Panzer]

Regular chainswords are too underwhelming on the board to tickle my fancy ... but Eviscerators, now we're talking! :P

[Knight of the Raven]

I started a thread about Primaris and close combat weapons, to give us a place to discuss the best part of Imperial diplomacy and to let this topic run its due course.

(I apologize if I stepped on the moderators' toes in doing so.)

[Sword Brother Adelard]

[*]How has Imperium Nihilus adjusted to life on the other side of the Rift?

 

I haven't finished listening to it yet, (work has kept me strangely close to home this past few weeks and I'm missing out on my audible time.) But Spear of the Emperor deals with how things have progressed on the Nihilus side. So far, bleak.

[RipOffProductions]

Honestly I've never heard anyone complain about the 100 year jump, most complains I've seen here and elsewhere (and my own) are that the lore for Primaris, Cawl and Guilliman's return have been poorly handled (With the exception of Guy Hayley's work) because they are just thrown into setting with no lore to back it up but one big Deus Ex Machina thrown our way and despite GW attempts at making them accepted we still dont know how a full Primaris force works, how they are accepted into the less compliant chapters (Primaris Grey Hunters? Crusader squads?) or what exactly is going on with the tension between the Firstborn Marines and the Primaris. There's literally zero development on this and we get an insight on the Indomitus Crusade YEARS after it happened.

 

I love the models but the lore has been an absolute crap show.

one thing about Primaris that I feel hasn't gotten enough attention is that some of the ones Crawl had in cryo are from the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy era, so why aren't we getting stories about their culture shock, not unlike some of what we've seen from Guilliman, but focusing on the specific chapter/legion they belong to(and vice versa from modern marines interacting with them); Marines who knew their Primarchs and how modern interpretations of them are wrong to one degree or another, who partook in now legendary battles and how the important lessens learned in them have been forgotten, if not outright discarded as wrong, and so on.

 

why there aren't named Primaris characters who were originally some throw-away background character from the Horus Heresy books is beyond me.

[Blindhamster]

 

Honestly I've never heard anyone complain about the 100 year jump, most complains I've seen here and elsewhere (and my own) are that the lore for Primaris, Cawl and Guilliman's return have been poorly handled (With the exception of Guy Hayley's work) because they are just thrown into setting with no lore to back it up but one big Deus Ex Machina thrown our way and despite GW attempts at making them accepted we still dont know how a full Primaris force works, how they are accepted into the less compliant chapters (Primaris Grey Hunters? Crusader squads?) or what exactly is going on with the tension between the Firstborn Marines and the Primaris. There's literally zero development on this and we get an insight on the Indomitus Crusade YEARS after it happened.

 

I love the models but the lore has been an absolute crap show.

one thing about Primaris that I feel hasn't gotten enough attention is that some of the ones Crawl had in cryo are from the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy era, so why aren't we getting stories about their culture shock, not unlike some of what we've seen from Guilliman, but focusing on the specific chapter/legion they belong to(and vice versa from modern marines interacting with them); Marines who knew their Primarchs and how modern interpretations of them are wrong to one degree or another, who partook in now legendary battles and how the important lessens learned in them have been forgotten, if not outright discarded as wrong, and so on.

 

why there aren't named Primaris characters who were originally some throw-away background character from the Horus Heresy books is beyond me.

 

 

None of them have been called out as being "marines" during the heresy. A lot are described as being recruited after the heresy, usually they didn't even know they were going to be made into part of Cawls project and assumed they were being recruited into the chapters.

[RandomMarine]

The seventh fleet thing is interesting.

 

But I agree this is all stuff that should have been in the Codex

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

Honestly I've never heard anyone complain about the 100 year jump, most complains I've seen here and elsewhere (and my own) are that the lore for Primaris, Cawl and Guilliman's return have been poorly handled (With the exception of Guy Hayley's work) because they are just thrown into setting with no lore to back it up but one big Deus Ex Machina thrown our way and despite GW attempts at making them accepted we still dont know how a full Primaris force works, how they are accepted into the less compliant chapters (Primaris Grey Hunters? Crusader squads?) or what exactly is going on with the tension between the Firstborn Marines and the Primaris. There's literally zero development on this and we get an insight on the Indomitus Crusade YEARS after it happened.

 

I love the models but the lore has been an absolute crap show.

one thing about Primaris that I feel hasn't gotten enough attention is that some of the ones Crawl had in cryo are from the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy era, so why aren't we getting stories about their culture shock, not unlike some of what we've seen from Guilliman, but focusing on the specific chapter/legion they belong to(and vice versa from modern marines interacting with them); Marines who knew their Primarchs and how modern interpretations of them are wrong to one degree or another, who partook in now legendary battles and how the important lessens learned in them have been forgotten, if not outright discarded as wrong, and so on.

 

why there aren't named Primaris characters who were originally some throw-away background character from the Horus Heresy books is beyond me.

I would definitely love to see some culture shock stories and I think this is definitely an area they should’ve explored more.

 

However, personally, I don’t believe the lore writers for 8th have demonstrated the quality to deserve access to any characters from the HH series, even throw away ones.

[Subtleknife]

I wonder if the 7th fleet is primaris grey knights. Total guess but could be a lore reason why they haven't released primaris grey knights. They got lost in the warp at the start and suddenly appear.

[Doctor Perils]

 

[*]How has Imperium Nihilus adjusted to life on the other side of the Rift?

I haven't finished listening to it yet, (work has kept me strangely close to home this past few weeks and I'm missing out on my audible time.) But Spear of the Emperor deals with how things have progressed on the Nihilus side. So far, bleak.

 

See, in my view, the description of the setting shouldn't be made only in the BL books, as it's more complicated to access that information; and if the description of the large questions of the setting were expanded in the BRB and codices, then the BL would be free to focus on the plot and the details that bring the setting to life (for instance, Abnett doesn't have to go about explaining at length what the Inquisition and its history is in Eisenhorn and Ravenor, because these elements are already described in the main setting books)

 

Still... Tbh I wasn't aware that Spear of the Emperor had already made it to audiobook, so now I know what's next on my download list :D

[Irbis]

For instance:

• How has Ynnead's birth affected the Eldar factions since Gathering Storm?
• How has the complete disappearance of the 4th sphere expansion affected the Tau, and how is their 5th sphere advancing?
• Have the Necrons and Tyranids had anything to do in the last century appart from twiddling their thumbs (quite a complicated feat for most tyranids, won't anyone think of the Hormagants?!)
• How have the different Chaos factions been affected by their failed assault on Terra, on Macragge, on Fenris, and on Vigilus (damn... wasn't the whole point of the Gathering Storm to make Chaos appear threatening again? ^^)
• How has Imperium Nihilus adjusted to life on the other side of the Rift?
• And most importantly of all: is Sly Marbo actually a perpetual?!?!

With this article on the Indomitus Crusade, it looks like they may finally be making a move on answering some of these questions, but to me it now feels like a cop-out to not have answered them in their respective codices rather than waiting months for a White Dwarf - these questions are integral to the new setting, but I've definitely lost a good deal of the excitement I felt at the beginning of the edition, and that's primarily due to a leap forward of a hundred years that was meant to break the status quo... only to not have anything to show how the status quo has actually changed.

 

 

Um, you know a lot of this was explained in BL books? There is a book on DA inner chapter conflict primaris vs oldmarines (though it's by Phil Kelly, so it's rather bad) which also deals with Tau and their warp problems, whole Ynnari series (that also touches on Necrons), two books on Imperium Nihilus, several books on chaos, etc, etc. In fact, I'd argue there is kind of too much information on some things to fit into army books...

 

However, personally, I don’t believe the lore writers for 8th have demonstrated the quality to deserve access to any characters from the HH series, even throw away ones.

 

Seeing it's hard to go in quality below a lot of HH books, putting these characters in 8th can only be improvement

[Kelborn]

Well, where to start?

 

Could GW have made a better entrance of the new setting, including Primaris, Guiliman, the setting itself, etc.? - Hell yeah

 

Is GW trying to make it better by releasing such stuff, which allows us as hobbyists to work/ play with and engage this new environment more? - Apparently

 

Does that please everyone? - Ha! Never

 

What GW is focusing on these days is to deliver lore and all that background info via different medias: codices, such articles as we have it here and BL stories.

 

On one hand, you can focus each type of media to a certain topic, like

 

- codices for old lore and a slight implementation of the new

- WD for adjustments/ additional stuff

- stories for diving into the setting and bringing it to live

 

This CAN work properly hand in hand but it can also backfire horribly. Not everyone is willing to commit time and money to catch everything. Reading a review or summary will NEVER give you the same important insight as reading the novel itself, for example Spears of the Emperor.

 

Another prominent company/ product, which has nearly the same issues is Blizzard and WoW. Here we got tons of very important lore spread across novels, quest texts and so on. Most people are just missing some crucial info due to skipping everything besides ingame events, cutscenes and so on. They might feel lost, not knowing what is going on these days.

 

Back to topic.

IMHO!!!!! this article is a nice addition to the new setting. It gives us some nice new details and tons of bits to work with for our own projects like chapter indexes. I for one gonna use this for my take in the Umbral Knights, for example.

 

I can absolutely understand why there are many of us being mad with GW. But let's be honest, it is what it is.

Maybe this has been there schedule all along, maybe they're trying to undo their mistakes from near 2 years earlier. Who knows?

 

Yes, they could've done that earlier.

Way earlier.

But all this complaining won't change it or the past.

[Trench]

Looking forward to reading more lore content, the stories in WD are always my favourite part.

 

I will echo others too in my desire for primaris to get some chainswords, I would start a loyalist army of all primaris marines if they got a unit wielding massive two handed chainswords in the style of the awesome Gabriel Seth model. 

[Panzer]

For instance:

• How has Ynnead's birth affected the Eldar factions since Gathering Storm?
• How has the complete disappearance of the 4th sphere expansion affected the Tau, and how is their 5th sphere advancing?
• Have the Necrons and Tyranids had anything to do in the last century appart from twiddling their thumbs (quite a complicated feat for most tyranids, won't anyone think of the Hormagants?!)
• How have the different Chaos factions been affected by their failed assault on Terra, on Macragge, on Fenris, and on Vigilus (damn... wasn't the whole point of the Gathering Storm to make Chaos appear threatening again? ^^)
• How has Imperium Nihilus adjusted to life on the other side of the Rift?
• And most importantly of all: is Sly Marbo actually a perpetual?!?!

With this article on the Indomitus Crusade, it looks like they may finally be making a move on answering some of these questions, but to me it now feels like a cop-out to not have answered them in their respective codices rather than waiting months for a White Dwarf - these questions are integral to the new setting, but I've definitely lost a good deal of the excitement I felt at the beginning of the edition, and that's primarily due to a leap forward of a hundred years that was meant to break the status quo... only to not have anything to show how the status quo has actually changed.

 

 

As Irbis has said, we already got lots of informations about those things. However to give you a short summary of the T'au stuff:

• They discovered a Drone transmitting a message from the 4th sphere expansion near the hole they ripped into space
• Said hole in space is now a stable warp tunnel with open entrances created by a warp being that is described as deity of the Greater Good created by the psychic potential of the humans and other auxiliary races and the teachings of the T'au (don't ask, Kelly writes horrible T'au fluff most of the time)
• Meeting such a being was absolutely disturbing for the T'au themselves (no, religion is still not a thing for the T'au. They still believe in the Greater Good like before regardless of such a being existing or not)
• The T'au of the 4th sphere expansion are rather xenophobe now, to a degree that the Ethereals had to tell them to not kill their allies
• They've build a HUGE spacestation array around those entrances to the warp tunnel, called Startide Nexus
• They conquered a bunch of planets on the other side of the rift until they got pushed back by the Blood Angels and the Flesh Tearers
• They are currently engaged with the Death Guard who want to get hold of the Startide Nexus

[Doctor Perils]

 

For instance:

 

Um, you know a lot of this was explained in BL books? There is a book on DA inner chapter conflict primaris vs oldmarines (though it's by Phil Kelly, so it's rather bad) which also deals with Tau and their warp problems, whole Ynnari series (that also touches on Necrons), two books on Imperium Nihilus, several books on chaos, etc, etc. In fact, I'd argue there is kind of too much information on some things to fit into army books...

See post immediately prior to yours :P

Look, I can understand wanting to explain some details about the current setting in the BL books, but these aren't details and concern the time between the old setting and the new one. Plus, I don't understand why a Tau player should have to read a DA book if they want to get a snippet of information about their faction.

 

Plus, I don't have time to read all of the Black Library books (especially when many of them are the kind of Bolter Porn that just doesn't interest me); but I do have the time to read, reference, and go back to read stuff that's in a codex - that is the appropriate format to give the information to know the setting as a whole.

 

What GW is focusing on these days is to deliver lore and all that background info via different medias: codices, such articles as we have it here and BL stories.

 

On one hand, you can focus each type of media to a certain topic, like

 

- codices for old lore and a slight implementation of the new

- WD for adjustments/ additional stuff

- stories for diving into the setting and bringing it to live

 

This CAN work properly hand in hand but it can also backfire horribly. Not everyone is willing to commit time and money to catch everything. Reading a review or summary will NEVER give you the same important insight as reading the novel itself, for example Spears of the Emperor.

Precisely. My problem is is they seem to be focusing on giving the important insight dispersed thoughout the BL books, but they don't give us the fundamental big picture abridged in the rulebooks.

And, to be honest, you need to see the big picture before you can grasp the detailed insight (especially when considering there's sections of the lore that don't interest such and such a hobbyist)

 

Back to topic.

IMHO!!!!! this article is a nice addition to the new setting.

[snip]

But all this complaining won't change it or the past.

Yes, it is a nice addition, and yes it will no-doubt help out with new DIYs :D

Unfortunately, some of the stuff presented

 

However, expressing our critiques and frustrations of the format as it has been in the last two years can help - in the recent survey, they had quite a few questions about the lore/fiction/BL books. Always kept indissociate, never considering DIYs - of course little old me won't have made any difference when I mentionned these kinds of grievances in my response to the survey, but if we as a community grasp how much better it could be and respond to their market research accordingly, then that does have the power to change stuff.

[Matt_149]

 

 

 

 

 

Honestly I've never heard anyone complain about the 100 year jump, most complains I've seen here and elsewhere (and my own) are that the lore for Primaris, Cawl and Guilliman's return have been poorly handled (With the exception of Guy Hayley's work) because they are just thrown into setting with no lore to back it up but one big Deus Ex Machina thrown our way and despite GW attempts at making them accepted we still dont know how a full Primaris force works, how they are accepted into the less compliant chapters (Primaris Grey Hunters? Crusader squads?) or what exactly is going on with the tension between the Firstborn Marines and the Primaris. There's literally zero development on this and we get an insight on the Indomitus Crusade YEARS after it happened.

 

I love the models but the lore has been an absolute crap show.

one thing about Primaris that I feel hasn't gotten enough attention is that some of the ones Crawl had in cryo are from the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy era, so why aren't we getting stories about their culture shock, not unlike some of what we've seen from Guilliman, but focusing on the specific chapter/legion they belong to(and vice versa from modern marines interacting with them); Marines who knew their Primarchs and how modern interpretations of them are wrong to one degree or another, who partook in now legendary battles and how the important lessens learned in them have been forgotten, if not outright discarded as wrong, and so on.

 

why there aren't named Primaris characters who were originally some throw-away background character from the Horus Heresy books is beyond me.

I would definitely love to see some culture shock stories and I think this is definitely an area they should’ve explored more.

 

However, personally, I don’t believe the lore writers for 8th have demonstrated the quality to deserve access to any characters from the HH series, even throw away ones.

In the new Apocalypse book the imperial fist lieutenant who is a Primaris marine talks about meeting Dorn before he went into stasis and was recreated as well as being a child in terra during the assault on the emperor's palace. It's an ok book, listened to it on audible.

[Kelborn]

Thing is that, if you want to include that in codices only, then those would get larger and larger. Though I'd love to have gigantic codices like FWs black books, I doubt that the community would afford the higher prices. Or they'd need to cut old fluff, which isn't an option as it's the past, which defines chapters like the Dark Angels.

 

Codices give a rough but important overview of each factions fluff. The current WD features an interview with Andy Clark, who's an author for both, GW and BL. He said the same thing.

Novels are there to dive into the world.

 

Regarding T'au: that novel was written by Kelly, the master behind T'au fluff. That's why.

 

Most of BLs novels aren't pure bolter porn, anymore. ;)

 

And yes, we as a community have / should have the power to change something.

[Lay]

The sheer number of novels makes it hard to determine what kind and how much world building is covered in each book.

It'd be more convenient if they explored the setting in ongoing article series like Index Astartes did.

[Trevak Dal]

I would think if you had enough silent sisters to stabilize the warp they would affect the navigator even more so...

[Panzer]

I would think if you had enough silent sisters to stabilize the warp they would affect the navigator even more so...

 

Impossible to say without knowing the details. Perhaps they got strapped into some machinery or the navigatory got blocked off from their presence or whatever.

[MARK0SIAN]

The black ships have been around for over 10,000 years. They must’ve worked out a way to insulate their navigators from the sisters effects a long time ago.

 

To be honest it seems a bit more far fetched that the sisters pacified the warp because:

 

1) The null zone around blanks/pariahs etc has always (canonically) been very short ranged, a matter of metres in most cases. Not even enough to reach past the armour of a warship.

 

2) There is no prior evidence of the sisters being able to amplify this ability simply by gathering in large numbers (or the war in the webway would’ve gone very differently).

 

3) If they could do that then it would’ve been done before whenever the Imperium needed to counter warpstorms.

 

This bit of the story sounds more like a writer using them as a convenient way around a problem.