Is GW making not-so-subtle hints at Blood Raven heritage?

[Kastor Krieg]

This month's WD has Blood Raven rules and Magnus the Red is the miniature of the month.

The last time Blood Ravens were featured in the WD, the Burning of Prospero box was the main dish.

I mean... teasing or just as planned? :P

[Brother Casman]

I would say that, if there's anything intentional about the juxtaposition of the Blood Ravens articles and the Magnus/Burning of Prospero bits, it's just someone at GW teasing.

[GreenScorpion]

To be honest, my head-cannon has always been that they were made based on one of those 2 primarchs whose names and stories were utterly erased.

It would make sense to hide really well if a chapter was based out of a primarch that has certainly done or went through something far worse than insurrection/heresy (the stories of the traitors were not erased from the records).

Obviously the origins of the Blood Ravens could be linked to one of the traitor primarchs.

Afterall, paraphrasing Inquisitor Toth: "It takes either steel or rot to put your own world, your own family to the torch".

The Blood Ravens destroyed much of the planets where they supposedly were recruiting, was it the steel or the rot? :)

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

It's a popular theory that their genefather is Magnus so I'm sure this is an Easter egg, but I wouldn't read to much into it.

[SkimaskMohawk]

There's been hints and teases over the years in a variety of mediums; McNeil had the most obvious one in A Thousand Sons, but idk if it was retconned

[Kastor Krieg]

Oh, I'm by all means in the "Corvydae fleet sent away from Prospero before the battle with Russ" camp. Just wondering because of the nuGW propensity towards marketing and customer communication shenanigans. It'd fit the bill of something they'd do, a non-confirmation confirmation like that :D

[templargdt]

"Just as Planned."

Heh.

[Knight of the Raven]

They're either confirming they themselves consider that theory true in their own canon or that they don't mind the fans believing this specific piece of headcanon to be the truth, yes, at least from where I'm standing.

The debacles over the Word Bearers' lies and slanders of the Ultramarines and the Space Wolves talking themselves up with the lost Legions leads me to believe Games Workshop are now very careful about including things intended to be absolutely false in their unreliable narration.

[GreenScorpion]

While the Thousand Sons heritage would make sense, with the search for knowledge and the high number of psykers, wouldn't the Blood Ravens suffer the same curse that led to the rubric situation?

[Tyriks]

To be honest, my head-cannon has always been that they were made based on one of those 2 primarchs whose names and stories were utterly erased.

It would make sense to hide really well if a chapter was based out of a primarch that has certainly done or went through something far worse than insurrection/heresy (the stories of the traitors were not erased from the records).

Obviously the origins of the Blood Ravens could be linked to one of the traitor primarchs.

Afterall, paraphrasing Inquisitor Toth: "It takes either steel or rot to put your own world, your own family to the torch".

The Blood Ravens destroyed much of the planets where they supposedly were recruiting, was it the steel or the rot? :)

The crimes of the erased Primarchs need not be worse than the traitors. It's more an issue of scale. Those Primarchs were hardly known, newly introduced, and alone in their situation. The Heresy was on a scale they couldn't hide, it was half the Primarchs at once, and Horus would've been among the best known people in the galaxy. There's just no suppressing that.

[GreenScorpion]

 

To be honest, my head-cannon has always been that they were made based on one of those 2 primarchs whose names and stories were utterly erased.

It would make sense to hide really well if a chapter was based out of a primarch that has certainly done or went through something far worse than insurrection/heresy (the stories of the traitors were not erased from the records).

The crimes of the erased Primarchs need not be worse than the traitors. It's more an issue of scale. Those Primarchs were hardly known, newly introduced, and alone in their situation. The Heresy was on a scale they couldn't hide, it was half the Primarchs at once, and Horus would've been among the best known people in the galaxy. There's just no suppressing that.

 

I know the Heresy is something that can't be erased, but erasing the entire identity of two Primarchs indicates that what they did was too dangerous for them to be used as an example, being erased completely instead. For all it is worth, Horus serves as an example, not even the most able of the Primarchs can expect to defy the Emperor and survive. Obviously Chaos sees it a bit differently...

Still, History has proved that since victors write down History, no event is too big to be erased, given enough time, if they really wanted, everything could have been slowly removed from the records in a few thousand years. Humans tend to remember what they want to remember, or what they are told that they want to remember, that is why History keeps repeating itself. You can always silence those that want to remember the truth... :)

[SkimaskMohawk]

But they did erase the heresy, or traitor primarchs from it. Read Vaults of Terra and theres only 9 primarchs in the god-emperors pantheon. That's all that were made and that's the way most people perceive it; the main character sees imagery of jaghatai fighting mortar and doesn't recognize that mortarion is a traitor primarch or even one of the "devils" the primarchs were made to fight against. And he's an inquisitor stationed on terra.

[Kastor Krieg]

But they did erase the heresy, or traitor primarchs from it. Read Vaults of Terra and theres only 9 primarchs in the god-emperors pantheon. That's all that were made and that's the way most people perceive it; the main character sees imagery of jaghatai fighting mortar and doesn't recognize that mortarion is a traitor primarch or even one of the "devils" the primarchs were made to fight against. And he's an inquisitor stationed on terra.

That's classic GW setting awareness discrepancy. We have regular Joe characters aware of Horus and his rebellion.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Do we have regular examples too?

[MegaVolt87]

I think Cawl was surprised when he saw the Blood Ravens geneseed was the same as the Thousand Sons geneseed he definitely was not using to make primaris marines. 

[bluntblade]

And how recent were those examples? Wraight has stuck hard to the Heresy being restricted knowledge, known only to Astartes and the very highest echelons of the Imperium.

 

There is a clue, I suspect, in a short where the Emperor obliterated an almost Prime-Ork in such a way that it's very memory would be gone forever. The same could have been done to the Lost and Forgotten. The Heresy, meanwhile, scars the collective psyche of Mankind on several levels - even though Horus is destroyed, it can't be entirely done away with.

[Kastor Krieg]

Do we have regular examples too?

I can't be bothered to dig for quotes, as I've definitely read too many random 40k books but basic Marines, Abnett's Inquisitorial henchmen, some villagers on a planet somewhere (one of the early AdMech books?), etc.; stuff gets mentioned, there's a gamut between "completely forgotten myth >> hush-hush eyes-only confidential >> shameful past barely mentioned >> common knowledge".

[SkimaskMohawk]

Yea that's not what I said.

 

The official religion has managed to cover up the majority of the heresy. Marines are noted not to follow the religion in almost every source.

[Kastor Krieg]

Not sure what you're asking then. I gave you "regular joe" examples.

[MillionsSons]

To be honest, my head-cannon has always been that they were made based on one of those 2 primarchs whose names and stories were utterly erased.

It would make sense to hide really well if a chapter was based out of a primarch that has certainly done or went through something far worse than insurrection/heresy (the stories of the traitors were not erased from the records).

Obviously the origins of the Blood Ravens could be linked to one of the traitor primarchs.

Afterall, paraphrasing Inquisitor Toth: "It takes either steel or rot to put your own world, your own family to the torch".

The Blood Ravens destroyed much of the planets where they supposedly were recruiting, was it the steel or the rot?

 

It's a fun theory but then how do you explain that no one heard of them during the great crusade / horus heresy ?

[GreenScorpion]

 

To be honest, my head-cannon has always been that they were made based on one of those 2 primarchs whose names and stories were utterly erased.

It would make sense to hide really well if a chapter was based out of a primarch that has certainly done or went through something far worse than insurrection/heresy (the stories of the traitors were not erased from the records).

 

It's a fun theory but then how do you explain that no one heard of them during the great crusade / horus heresy ?

 

The records of the 2 primarchs and their legions were erased, if my headcannon was true, it would just mean that their presence was also erased, either they changed names or heraldry, or were integrated into another legion when their primarch was removed and only later were "founded" again as the Blood Ravens.

Obviously this is just my theory, I don't expect this to be cannon, especially because mysterious origins is something GW will want to keep for the Blood Ravens.

[Brother Tyler]

I only read a couple of the Blood Ravens books, though, so there may be official bits of lore that I'm missing. I've read both Index Astartes articles and the Horus Heresy short story about the Thousand Sons guys that missed the Burning of Prospero. The latest article used interesting wording:

...The majority of the records on the Chapter date back no further than early M37, though references to their service in the litanies of other Chapters and Imperial organisations prove that they existed and fought the enemies of the Emperor for centuries before this...

"Centuries" is telling, though by no means definitive. What that wording allows is for the Chapter to have been born as late as M36, though it could easily have been created prior to that. The Blood Ravens could just as easily be a later founding Chapter descended from one of the 9 loyalist legions. Interestingly, the Cursed Founding allowed for the (remote?) possibility of traitor Legion gene-seed to have been used. So even if the fan theory about survivors of the Thousand Sons from the time of the Horus Heresy turns out to be false, the lineage itself is still possible via the Cursed Founding.

 

GW has dropped some tantalizing hints over the years that they might be descended from the Thousand Sons Legion, but never anything concrete. The Dawn of War books were just snippets here and there. The Horus Heresy short story was a bit more substantial (though by no means definitive). From what I've heard (apocryphal stuff posted by members here at the B&C, so always questionable), GW was steering away from that lore (much the way the Legion of the Damned shifted from definitely being the survivors of the Fire Hawks to a number of possible origin theories).

 

At first I didn't like the notion of the Thousand Sons lineage, thinking it a cheap way to make the Chapter special for the Dawn of War game. With later additions to the lore via the Badab War books and the Horus Heresy (both the BL novels and the Forge World books), the idea grew on me - the plausibility increased with those other additions to the lore (much is owed to the late Alan Bligh, I think). At this point, regardless of the veracity (or lack thereof) of the Chapter's lineage, the fact that Cawl created Primaris gene-seed for the Chapter means that their lineage isn't a complete mystery. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Cursed Founding was part of Cawl's efforts over the millennia. If the timing I mentioned previously is considered, for all we know, the Blood Ravens may have been created by Cawl as part of the Cursed Founding. Cawl isn't under any obligation to inform them of their lineage (just as other Chapters with questionable lineage might never learn of their predecessors). The mystery about their lineage is really the central aspect of the lore, in my opinion, and there's no reason for GW to shed any light on that mystery.

 

As for any correspondence with other elements of the July 2019 White Dwarf issue, I'd take it as coincidence and nothing more. It might even be a deliberate effort, not necessarily to shed any light on the mystery, but to fan the flames of the rumor. GW knows how much we like to gossip about things, and this is one of the most popular of the juicy rumors. Ultimately, any Thousand Sons miniatures in the issue would have generated similar rumor-mongering (the fact that Magnus the Red was in the issue just made it easier for the "connection" to be drawn). I think, though, that it would be better for GW to keep it as a mystery. There's never a guarantee that the fans will enjoy getting the things they ask for (the Gathering Storm/Dark Millennium is a perfect example of this).

[mawhis]

Along with Laurie Goulding outright stating that the Blood Ravens are not Thousand Sons descedants, ADB said in a previous thread on this topic that "there's a specific point the novels all went silent on this" (This being the Blood Ravens/Thousand Sons Link). Revuel Arvida, who many thought would be the first Blood Raven, became Ianus, and started down the Grey Knights path in "The Last Son of Prospero" (Published December 2016), so I'd say that its logical to assume that the connection was retconned during the writing of Horus Heresy Book Seven: Inferno (Released March 2017), which covers the Thousand Sons.

 

It would fit if CS Goto's Blood Ravens Trilogy (which is where most of the Thousand Sons Connections come from) and the early part of Revuel Arvida's story arc were written with the Thousand Sons in mind, only for a decision to be made that it didn't really fit with what they wanted to do with the Thousand Sons later on (e.g. it doesn't really make sense for a loyalist chapter with stable geneseed to be descended from a Legion which suffers from the Flesh Change, a plot point with didn't exist when Dawn of War debuted).

 

There are actually a couple of pointers towards the Alpha Legion in Andy Clark's "Shroud of Night" - where variants of the Blood Raven's Battle Cry "Knowledge is Power, Guard it Well" shows up as a doctrine of Alpharius':

 

: It was an old tenet of the Alpha Legion, and a good one. Knowledge is power. Gather all that you can, and give none to your enemies.

 

 

: Remember the teachings of the primarchs. Information is power, gather as much as you can and give none to the foe.

 

 

Also, this description of the Alpha Legion's preparations for war from the same book seem to fit with the Blood Ravens, who are described as using extensive planning and preparation before battle:

 

: ‘That’s not our way,’ said Kassar. ‘The Alpha Legion prize initiative at every level. As a collective, we formulate our attack plans, utilising all available information to ensure that we have a counter to every eventuality. Once an attack strategy is chosen, it is questioned and tested before being put into action.’

 

 

[MillionsSons]

 

 

To be honest, my head-cannon has always been that they were made based on one of those 2 primarchs whose names and stories were utterly erased.

It would make sense to hide really well if a chapter was based out of a primarch that has certainly done or went through something far worse than insurrection/heresy (the stories of the traitors were not erased from the records).

 

It's a fun theory but then how do you explain that no one heard of them during the great crusade / horus heresy ?

 

The records of the 2 primarchs and their legions were erased, if my headcannon was true, it would just mean that their presence was also erased, either they changed names or heraldry, or were integrated into another legion when their primarch was removed and only later were "founded" again as the Blood Ravens.

Obviously this is just my theory, I don't expect this to be cannon, especially because mysterious origins is something GW will want to keep for the Blood Ravens.

 

 

It is said in a HH book that Ultramarines got the Spaces marines from these 2 legions, explaining why they are way more in umbers than others

So that could actually make sense, they would have been one of the chapter of the ultramarines

[Knight of the Raven]

Nice pointers you've provided, mawhis. 'Keep a tight leash on your knowledge' and 'plan your attacks carefully and thoroughly' aren't the sole privilege of the Alpha Legion, however. The Raven Guard do the same as well as every Eldar in the galaxy. In fact, they strike me as very obvious requirements as far as waging warfare is concerned, unversed though I may be in the art of war in the real world.

 

Yes, the wording is suspiciously close to the Blood Ravens' old motto. But perhaps Captain Diomedes shouldn't have used it almost as liberally as Axel did his "Got it memorized?" catchphrase in Kingdom Hearts II either.

 

The more I look at the Blood Ravens, though, the more I wonder if who their primogenitor is even matters.

 

Not knowing which primarch they descend from is certainly important, seeing as it's the reason they're so obsessed with tracking down every little bit of knowledge they hear about. Or at least one of the reasons, since apparently Azariah Vidya kicked that tendency into high gear as well. But I don't consider it remotely important to learn the answer to their question. And I might as well shorten that word to 'quest' while I'm at it.

 

This obsession with archeology is very useful for the chapter that was going to be the first look of many into the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Regardless of whether you think they're genuine thieves, compulsive gravediggers who scour forgotten battlefields clean of relics or simply that everyone else in the Imperium uses Calderis as a landfill planet for all their toys that went out of fashion last week, having access to gear ranging from one corner of the galaxy to the other gives a very good window into the setting.

 

A player new to the setting can loot a specific flamer and learn about the Sisters of Battle, then get more curious about them when Avitus comments about Administrator Derosa missing a promising career in the Adepta Sororitas. (That's also the closest thing to a compliment he ever says, if I recall correctly—Avitus is kind of a jerk.)

 

True, considering the state of Sisters of Battle when Dawn of War II came out, that's an example that'll just lead to disappointment for the new player. But that's the only one coming to mind right now.

 

It is said in a HH book that Ultramarines got the Spaces marines from these 2 legions, explaining why they are way more in umbers than others

So that could actually make sense, they would have been one of the chapter of the ultramarines

I wouldn't take the Word Bearers' bitter, jealous slander about a Legion they loathe at face value if I were you.