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

[The_son_of_Dorn]

Dawn of war references the fighting between the ultramarines and WB on kronus but doesn't specify the BR coming from WB heritage.

 

I would lean towards Magnus purely because of the amount of Librarians but this is something video game lore has managed poorly in terms of confirming authenticity let alone speculation in relation to BR Novels.

 

Personally I'd be stoked if they were loyalist TSon but like the 2nd and 11th primarch, i guess well never know for sure.

[Knight of the Raven]

When it comes to the Blood Ravens and the Word Bearers, I believe Eliphas the Inheritor played a great role in the fans' belief that the former come from a traitorous bloodline; though I don't think I've seen people link them to Lorgar before, precisely because Magnus is a better fit.

The Eliphas business shows two serious lapses in judgement though: assuming that he's telling the truth in the first place—he's a dark apostle of the Word Bearers Legion—, and assuming that he doesn't pull the "WE MEET AGAIN, BROOOOOTHEEEEERRR" thing on every single loyalist he meets.

[mawhis]

After Laurie Said that it wasn't Magnus, I got it into my head to make a list of the legions, make a list of their respective geneseed mutations/quirks and see where that got me and I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit-hole if I'm honest (Its actually quite difficult to find a complete list of geneseed mutations!)

 

There's actually relatively few Legions that it could be - The list that I came up with was The Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Alpha Legion and Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus, plus maybe the White Scars and the World Eaters, depending on how you read their geneseed fluff. You could probably make an argument for any of them.

 

Anyway - the Word Bearers geneseed supposedly causes an extreme need to believe in Something, eventually resulting in "Zealotry, bordering on Insanity". I suppose that they could have faith in knowledge, or planning or something like that, in the same way that Sor Talgron believes in tactics in "The Purge" by Anthony Reynolds, but it didn't really seem to fit to me.

 

The Dark Angels would be a pretty good thematic fit in my opinion - the Blood Ravens theme is Ancient Secrets and Ancient Relics, and the First Legion has plenty of both. Also, the Blood Ravens seem to be governed by a group called the "Secret Masters", which sounds alot like an Inner Circle, though their exact role has never been revealed. 

 

The Luna Wolves geneseed has the "Sons of Horus" thing, where some marines look like the Primarch, but I overlooked it, as I figure that its only a few marines, and that there aren't many loyalists in the 40k timeline who would know what Horus looked like well enough to recognise it.

 

White Scars geneseed is refereneced as causing Savagery, though this seems to have been caused by the introduction of DNA from the tribes of Chogoris, so its not really clear to me how this would work in a successor.

 

World Eater geneseed has never been credited with causing increased aggression, as far as I'm aware, but there have been a few hints "We've always been a hot-headed legion" etc.

[mawhis]

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.

 

 

I agree completely - the Quest for their origins is what drives the Blood Ravens, and they're kind of purposeless without it.

[Blood Shadow]

 

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).

 

 

It is shown that Tzeentch has control of the flesh change though, which suggests (to me at least) that the Thousand Son's geneseed may not be as unstable as we are led to believe. They were afflicted until Magnus made his deal with Tzeentch which is what he wanted. Then it returns as the wolves attack Prospero which leads Ahriman to create his Cabal and cast the Rubric which I believe Tzeentch also wanted as he stopped Magnus from killing Ahriman after it. By this time Tzeentch had Magnus, Ahriman and the majority of the Legion, he probably didn't care (or has future plans for them) about a small group of survivors if we go with the Corvidae theory. Tzeentch stopped the flesh change after the Rubric, which was supposed to make them immune to mutation but we saw in Battle of the Fang that it didn't as one of the sorcerer's was growing feathers and got stuck in his armour (also the current exalted sorcerer models have mutated parts, extra arms, bird heads, bird feet and a mutant arm with feathers growing on it). So with this in mind I see no reason why the Blood Ravens couldn't be descendants of the Thousand Sons just because of the flesh change 

[mawhis]

 

 

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).

 

 

It is shown that Tzeentch has control of the flesh change though, which suggests (to me at least) that the Thousand Son's geneseed may not be as unstable as we are led to believe. They were afflicted until Magnus made his deal with Tzeentch which is what he wanted. Then it returns as the wolves attack Prospero which leads Ahriman to create his Cabal and cast the Rubric which I believe Tzeentch also wanted as he stopped Magnus from killing Ahriman after it. By this time Tzeentch had Magnus, Ahriman and the majority of the Legion, he probably didn't care (or has future plans for them) about a small group of survivors if we go with the Corvidae theory. Tzeentch stopped the flesh change after the Rubric, which was supposed to make them immune to mutation but we saw in Battle of the Fang that it didn't as one of the sorcerer's was growing feathers and got stuck in his armour (also the current exalted sorcerer models have mutated parts, extra arms, bird heads, bird feet and a mutant arm with feathers growing on it). So with this in mind I see no reason why the Blood Ravens couldn't be descendants of the Thousand Sons just because of the flesh change 

 

 

I was really just using the Flesh change as a possible motivation for what is, at this point, a pretty clear retcon, at least to me. Though I'd also point out that there aren't any more loyal Corvidae left after Arvida became Janus, and also that the Flesh change remains as a Stratagem in the current Thousand Sons codex, implying that the Rubric didn't leave them completely immune to it. Tzeentch was holding back the flesh-change during the crusade as a way of ensnaring Magnus - I don't see any real reason that he'd be going easy on one chapter now.

 

Ultimately, Tzeentch or no, Flesh-Change or No, Magnus was the most heavily mutated of the Primarchs - more so than Leman Russ, whose geneseed causes the Wulfen Curse, moreso than Sanguinius, whose geneseed causes the Red Thirst and Black Rage - it just doesn't make any real sense to me that his geneseed would ever be "Relatively Stable" with "little evidence of mutation" to quote the Index Astartes Article in White Dwarf.

[Blood Shadow]

What makes Magnus the most heavily mutated? he was big and red skinned only, his powers are a result of design not mutation as his purpose was to sit on the throne so humanity could use the webway.

This is part of my theory though as Tzeentch doesn't do things straight forward and his motivations cant be guessed at. he could have spared some of the thousand sons for reasons we dont know, it cant be proven either way but still to me makes more sense to me than a lot of the other theories i've heard

[b1soul]

not TSon descendants (of course they might be), what is the strongest alternative theory?

 

Also, on a general note, can a chapter unaware of its own lineage petition the gene-seed repositories to issue an answer? Like genetic testing for people interested in their heritage. Has this ever been touched upon?

[Bryan Blaire]

They might be able to, but if the records were destroyed/rendered irretrievable, then what?