FW Book 9 "Crusade": Fluff Discussion

[Scribe]

The only point we missed, is the fact that BL and FW cannot keep their :cuss together, and we are fools for hoping otherwise. ;)

[b1soul]

Some would say the conflicting accounts spice up the setting.

 

I give BL less credit, but I wonder how much of it is deliberate by FW

[Scribe]

Some would say the conflicting accounts spice up the setting.

 

I give BL less credit, but I wonder how much of it is deliberate by FW

 

Who but a dodgy former editor says that. 

[StrangerOrders]

I do tend to think 'multiple sources' is a really weak excuse, brutally so, unless you have alot of hints that lampshade. 

 

Otherwise it just because the ultimate 'well, you shouldnt believe anything I say but please buy this book anyway' line, which I dont like. 

 

I mean, why am I paying alot of money for a book which is functionally worthless then? If the fluff is not at all true insetting then what is its value? And why does BL reference stuff in it so often from the PoVs of the characters who lived these apparently false events? Why would Guilliman even directly lampshade them and praise their accuracy?

 

Frankly, an honest slip up is better than a poor excuse any day. And I actually really liked Malevolence and thought its changes were largely for the better, so dont take that to mean 'it isn't Bligh so its bad' which is what seems to be what any critique folks dont like gets pinned as. 

 

I am repeating the questions I previously mentioned though, and let us please just accept the premise of what the book says as 'the new fact' rather than debate the credibility of the book we just got.

 

What do folks think of the enlarged window for Unity activity? Especially if two centuries back is described as a 'Mid-Point', does it open interesting possibilities or do you disapprove?

 

What do folks think of us knowing that the Lion could have been on Caliban for perhaps 150 years before Luther found him? Does it open interesting avenues for expanding on him and possibly other Primarchs pasts?

 

For my part, it has just furthered the thirst FW has been cultivating for a long time in me to see more stories of Legions Pre-Primarch. And for more stuff touching on the really weird and interesting things that the Crusade dealt with.

Edited September 15, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[b1soul]

This all goes back to the everything/nothing is canon policy. Unless continuity blunders demonstrably suppress sales, I doubt FW or BL would have the commercial incentive to heighten their editorial efforts.

 

Being very meticulous in this area is, admittedly, a bit of a pain in the arse for the teams charged with executing, so there has to be significant commercial upside to justify increasing these efforts. Are any of us going to stop buying from BL or FW because of these hiccups (intentional or not)? Probably not...most of us are already lore "addicts", so to speak. More casual fans won't care too much either.

 

I generally prefer all the expanded lore FW has given us, even the stuff contradicting simpler BL events. Ideally, just wish FW would try to delve into those events without contradicting.

 

I haven't read the Thramas part in Book 9 yet...but a possible theory is that a lot of the information is false because the DA likely provided Imperial historians with a record of how the DA won with little to no mention of the Tchulcha factor? So they essentially doctored the narrative to be conventionally tilted in favour of the DA?

[bluntblade]

I do tend to think 'multiple sources' is a really weak excuse, brutally so, unless you have alot of hints that lampshade.

 

Otherwise it just because the ultimate 'well, you shouldnt believe anything I say but please buy this book anyway' line, which I dont like.

 

I mean, why am I paying alot of money for a book which is functionally worthless then? If the fluff is not at all true insetting then what is its value? And why does BL reference stuff in it so often from the PoVs of the characters who lived these apparently false events? Why would Guilliman even directly lampshade them and praise their accuracy?

 

Frankly, an honest slip up is better than a poor excuse any day. And I actually really liked Malevolence and thought its changes were largely for the better, so dont take that to mean 'it isn't Bligh so its bad' which is what seems to be what any critique folks dont like gets pinned as.

 

I am repeating the questions I previously mentioned though, and let us please just accept the premise of what the book says as 'the new fact' rather than debate the credibility of the book we just got.

 

What do folks think of the enlarged window for Unity activity? Especially if two centuries back is described as a 'Mid-Point', does it open interesting possibilities or do you disapprove?

 

What do folks think of us knowing that the Lion could have been on Caliban for perhaps 150 years before Luther found him? Does it open interesting avenues for expanding on him and possibly other Primarchs pasts?

 

For my part, it has just furthered the thirst FW has been cultivating for a long time in me to see more stories of Legions Pre-Primarch. And for more stuff touching on the really weird and interesting things that the Crusade dealt with.

It's also irksome when it gets in the way of other stories they could be telling. Admittedly reframing Thramas doesn't seem as egregious as retconning Chondax instead of doing anything with the more thematically fertile territory of the Scars' subsequent campaigns.

[Brother-Captain Gilead]

To me the crucial difference is whether it adds or detracts from the universe and the characters that inhabit it. The Dark Angels being all secretive and obfuscating their records of both Rangda and the horrible actions that they needed to take with the Space Wolves against the Rangda (and I think it is heavily implied against a lot of humans that were either enslaved by the Rangda or collaborating with them (also if you think about it, we have no factual information whether the Rangda really enslaved humans or whether it was more like the Interex)) adds to their characterization as the stoic and silent guardians of humanity who are willing to dirty their hands to protect it (or as the horribly paranoid and dangerously secretive and autonomous ends justify the means secret police / army, depending on how you see them). Same with them papering over how their glorious victory over the Night Lords in the Thramas campaign first of all might not have been a glorious victory but rather a brutal war of attrition that they won simply because there were more of them and second of all was something that they won because they got lucky and got possession of a sentient and probably heretical warp engine.

[SchultzChaos]

So... what about Night Lords?

[SkimaskMohawk]

@b1soul AK actually does do some digging and finds out that the DA acquired a daemon. It doesn't disqualify that there could be a good amount of obfuscation to try and cover for that.

[Marshal Rohr]

The passage even acknowledges how covered up it is because he’s gotta go digging through archives and finds like one reference to it.

[b1soul]

I do think the DA, even sans Tchulcha, would eventually gain the upper hand against the NL in a protracted campaign. Both Curze and the Lion are geniuses...but only the latter is a stable genius. And the NL had taken in too many gutter hoodlums by that time.

[helterskelter]

I do think the DA, even sans Tchulcha, would eventually gain the upper hand against the NL in a protracted campaign. Both Curze and the Lion are geniuses...but only the latter is a stable genius. And the NL had taken in too many gutter hoodlums by that time.

Eventually. It had already taken 2 years at the point mr daemon friend bailed the lion out, it could've easily been another 2 before someone got bored, in fact i imagine it would've swung in Curzes favour because winding the Lion up could force him into mistakes. As it is, we'll never know

[WrathOfTheLion]

That is what I got out of the victory at Crucible. Although the DA were on the path to victory after that, it was still going to take way too long. What they needed to do was escape from being bogged down in the Eastern Fringe in a timely manner, a protracted war would still be a strategic loss in the grand scheme of the war.

[Brother-Captain Gilead]

I think that is good writing also in the sense that it avoids giving either side of the conflict the idiot ball. The Night Lords might be unruly and fixated on the wrong things, but they are still Astartes with decades / centuries of successful conflict under their belts, the idea that they would melt when facing the Dark Angels would be stupid. On the other hand the Lion was supposedly the better strategist / tactician between the two of them so having him recognize that he was being drawn into a morass by the Night Lords (essentially falling into their trap) while still being able to get the upper hand in that situation is I think an appropriate way to depict that advantage (while also illustrating how Curze was able to take full advantage of the Lion's pride that led him to springing that trap wilfully instead of focusing on the even bigger picture). I think neither side comes out looking bad, even if the trump card that is the Tuchulcha led to the Night Lords being defeated a few years ahead of schedule.

[b1soul]

I'd give the Lion the commander's edge. Add on top of that...Curze is losing his sanity and his legion their discipline after years of shoddy recruiting practices, and I think it's pretty plausible that the DA had gained a moderate[?] advantage by the time of Tchulcha.

 

Nothing is over until it's over, so there's no telling whether the NL could never have mounted a comeback without any Tchulcha shenanigans in the mix.

 

Calling odds between two legions is always tricky, but you'd typically go with the legion with the saner primarch and less fractious dynamics. That said, I'm not sure whether Curze's precog benefits his strategic decision-making. It helps him in close combat (seeing a second or two into the future) and he sees the end of the Emperor's Imperium (years into the future)...but does it help his "mid-term" strategic planning? If so, that's a pretty big ace up his sleeve and might more than compensate for his mental instability.

[WrathOfTheLion]

I think it seems clear that the DA would eventually win, but the DA needed to be elsewhere instead of fighting the NL.

 

I am now into the DA lore section though, giving that a read.

 

It is interesting to see the Khrave show up on Terra, it would mean that the DA had been performing operations against them for centuries before the final confrontation in the Lion primarch novel. I do like to see them show up more, I quite like them as a dangerous xenos race predating on humanity.

[MegaVolt87]

I always found it interesting how Konrad so easily brings out the worst character traits from his brothers every time he interacts with them. Do we see more of this with the Lion in this black book? 

[Lucerne]

I do find it amusing that between Guilliman's radical cabal of daemon-summoning librarians that blew themselves up and the Lion, we're now 2 for 2 with the loyalist "bigshots" going full Radical Inquisitor.

[Chaoself]

Have you found anything more than scarce Informations on grammarye? Is that a second homeworld of the dark angels?

[DINOthedinosauer]

 

 

I do find it amusing that between Guilliman's radical cabal of daemon-summoning librarians that blew themselves up

 

Where was that mentioned?

Edited September 16, 2020 by DINOthedinosauer

[Xin Ceithan]

So, about those Titan Legions ? ;)

 

And the Night Lords?

 

Also... any info on the Forgeworld(s) would be appreciated!

[Beren]

 

So both 1 and 3 are the Foe Slayers?

 

 

Whoops, 3 should be Foe Breakers, my bad. 1 keeps the original name from old Adeptus Titanicus.

 

 

Also, the Legio Victorum thing is interesting. Do we know their colour scheme? What's their connection to the Dark Angels? (I'm assuming there's one since they're in the book...)

 

 

Very similar to the old one, sort of a dark ultraviolet blue with silver trim, at least for Victorum I.

 

Their connection to the DA was purely through the crusade, the vagaries of war and forge world politics. It's fiddly. Victorum I and II both fought against the DA, III were always loyalists. The legion being based around three forge worlds also sort of sews up what was apparently a canon conflict about where their homeworld was, Phall or Galatia.

• Victorum I were battered and surrendered to the Lion in return for their forge world, Triplex Phall, being spared, fighting at his orders for the rest of the war.
• II, the biggest portion, were ride-or-die for Horus and the Night Haunter, and were basically wiped out by the DA. Triplex Galatia was destroyed. A handful of maniples survived and escaped to be absorbed into other traitor or blackshield legions.
• III were never traitor and were almost totally wiped out in a sudden by Victorum III on their forge world, Triplex Thule, at the war's outset before the DA arrived. Three remote maniples survived and fought for the Lion. They were granted some of the engines taken as spoils from Victorum II and were happy to install the vengeful cores of fallen Victorum III engines into them.

Towards the end of the Thramas crusade you effectively had one consolidated loyalist legion operating in any significant strength, going by Victorum I's colours and Victorum II's name, the Foe Hammers.

 

From the other thread.

 

The most salient detail about the Night Lords that I can recall from elsewhere is that they ended up with two internal factions, the Cross of Bone - those who wanted to build their own empires and kingdoms without restraint, and those loyal to Sevetar and the old ideals of the Legion.

[Brother-Captain Gilead]

 

You mean the competent NL babysitting the gutter-trash, Skraivok-like NL?

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, does the book explain why the DA call their assassination division the "Firewing"?

*snip*

 

Idk, obviously I'm a night lord fan, but I like consistency more. Thramas was supposed to be unwinnable as long as a primarch lived according to the Lion. But it seemed pretty winnable as soon as they won at crucible to me.

 

 

I read that statement from the Lion in two ways:

 

1) First reading is that the Lion did not mean that as a definitive statement, but rather that was him setting out what his objective was. I mean obviously if the Dark Angels destroyed every single fleet asset the Night Lords have and decimated their legion to a fraction of their original strength, Curze being dead or alive wouldn't make a factual difference. The Lion would know that, but for the Lion as the First and the most senior primarch, he was duty-bound to discipline his wayward brothers like any elder sibling and thus he would consider that a critical objective even if the successful completion of the Thramas campaign would be possible even if Curze was alive.

 

2) Second reading is that the Lion recognized that if he removed Curze from the equation (either killing him or capturing him, didn't really matter), the Night Lords would collapse into infighting and warring bands instead of having a predetermined chain of succession which would lead to a new / interim leader for the legion and the legion being able to maintain their cohesion as a fighting force. If the Night Lords legion splintered in this manner, from the point of view of the Dark Angels the strategic objective of defeating the Night Lords legion would be completed, even if the roving warbands would be causing issues in the neighboring sectors for some time afterwards. In this way getting rid of Curze would actually be a way to avoid the war of attrition that Astartes versus Astartes conflicts usually became and it was important to be aware of the fact that getting rid of him could cut down the length of the campaign dramatically.

 

In neither reading I don't really think that the Lion was considering it possible that he might be the one primarch that would be removed. He seemed to be prideful and confident to a fault during the Thramas campaign and it was only later that he would realize how badly he had been led off-track due to his pride and confidence and he started second-guessing himself a lot more.

[Cactus]

Have you found anything more than scarce Informations on grammarye? Is that a second homeworld of the dark angels?

There are some off-hand mentions and a box-out of planetary info on page 97 with an illustration.

 

the First Legion's great Hall of Council at Gramarye

 

Within a few short years, the Lion had gathered the vast majority of his Legion together, near 100,000 warriors, and led them to the ancient stronghold of the First Legion on Gramarye.

 

The old grand chantry on Gramarye was torn down, replaced with a more modest fortress to secure the industrial sprawl of that world... [the Legion's] true heart and seat of power would be the sanctum of the Primarch aboard his flagship

 

Name: Gramarye

Classification: Legiones Astartes Fortress World [industrial/Primitive World]

System Data: [Classified Ageisine/Black]

Stellar Grid: 11-GU-4903/Sigma

Segmentum: Solar/Sinistre

Notation: [Classified Ageisine/Black]

++[Fiefdom of the Dark Angels Legion]++

++[Prior 846.M30 served as legion home world]++

++[Dispensation in the purview of the 1st Legion]++

 

Within the sealed vaults of Caliban and Gramarye, as well as a number of secret caches scattered across the Imperium and guarded by dedicated Orders, were vast stores of weaponry long since proscribed to the other military arms of the Imperium.

 

Indeed there are only two large outposts held by the Dark Angels, the ancient fortress of Gramarye which played host to the halls of the Council of Masters and the vast industrial facilities that produced many of the Legion's more esoteric weapons and had long been concealed from the scrutiny of the Mechanicum, and the more recently acquired fortress of the Order on Caliban. These two worlds saw the largest concentration of the Legion's infrastructure, and were both heavily fortified and defended.

[Chaoself]

@cactus thanks a lot. :)