FW Book 9 "Crusade": Fluff Discussion

[bluntblade]

I always thought DA were very stable indeed.

[jaxom]

Median performance, median implantation rate, excellent stability. The upside was that it stored and replicated very well so the Dark Angels never suffered gene-seed shortages and could transport gene-seed almost indefinitely.

[bluntblade]

That's one thing I had no issue with, as it's always been in effect.

[RedFurioso]

The Dark Angels fracture, hunt, kill, sabotage and lie their way through 10k years - and the reason for that is not half the legion falling. The White Scars had that as well and it worked out fine.

Well, Traitor White Scars just irrelevant at this point. How many Traitor White Scars in 40k can you recall?

Meanwhile the Fallen outright attacked the Rock and stole Luther. They are the real threat to Imperium and Dark Angels.

[b1soul]

Really feel Thramas should have been covers in the HH series proper. As that didn't happen, hope they revisit it as a mini-series within the HH setting.

[Nomadic Thunder]

I am enjoying reading both sides of the coin to this discussion and quite a few discrepancies can be viewed as questionable, or simply false, information.

The high number roving fleets in the south west of the imperium can also just be rumours and hearsay. The 1st being given credit for others work for example, black shields looking appropriately dark and menacing creeping in, destroying a supply line and disappearing with the spoils could easily be attributed to the 1st when they’ve got such a grim reaper reputation among mortals to the point of imperial assets believing the end is nigh when the 1st take to battle alongside them.

 

Also the notion of the sum being greater than its parts comes to mind and is in my mind appropriate and believable to a certain extent where a force of ravenwing/firewing strike and fade tactics can make them seem more numerous, far reaching and more powerful than they actually are.

Couple that with multiple facets of warfighting coming together in one theatre and you’ve got a very dynamic and efficient force which may seem both larger and more powerful than it is.

 

I am however, an unashamed 1st legion fan and have been waiting since forever to read about the glorious 1st. I am also not finished reading crusade yet so maybe some of the more skewed parts are yet to come.

 

On a different note. The ravenwing being described as using a white corvid as their emblem: can I use mor deythan and ravenguard symbols to represent 1st legion recon assets? I love the models and it seems they shared the same emblem which is not unheard of. There are two wolf legions for example.

 

Edit to add:

Marginal gains philosophy seems to be applied when considering the legions recovery rates from losses. As others have pointed out. If you’re just above average for every aspect of geneseed acceptance, stability and compatibility then your recruitment is going to Be significantly more efficient than simple having a very robust gene-seed

Edited October 3, 2020 by Nomadic Thunder

[bluntblade]

Does anyone else feel like the Rangdan Wars come off... smaller than they ought to? Edited October 10, 2020 by bluntblade

[jaxom]

Does anyone else feel like the Rangdan Wars come off... smaller than they ought to?

 

Here's my opinion: the Rangdan Wars are not part of the Great Crusade in the same way that the earliest battles on Terra are not part of Unification. What does this mean? Some challenges are meant to show the abilities of the challenged. They overcome because they have the skill, strength, etc. The challenge is almost more of display; the question not being whether it will be overcome, but how far will it push the challenger. What reserves, resources, time will have to be committed. These are the sort that tend to make good propaganda or nationalist histories. Other challenges are more raw, for lack of a better word. They're the ones where failure can kill progress in its crib; where even to succeed will cripple. 

 

The Great Crusade, what we're shown of it, is the former (I think primarily because of the nature of the narrative's presentation). The Rangdan Xenocides have always been hinted at as the latter with a thin paint of the former. "Look, this was a true threat to the Imperium, but we managed to overcome it at great cost and the Great Crusade continued!" All the while, what would have happened if the Rangan Wars required more resources? Every Astartes, every Titan, possibly Primarch, fighting the Rangda is one that isn't securing the other borders. Every lose is on that isn't expanding the nascent Imperium, bringing in more resources to continue securing new and future conquests. Every battle without progress is another blow to its ideological foundation.

 

Thus, I see the Xenocides as the sort of thing were one perspective is never going to be enough to convey anything near a full story, especially one with a bias towards establishing the legitimacy of the Imperium (even more important post-Heresy - how many other people besides Dorn had a, "what does he know that I don't?" moment about Horus's rebellion only not to have to think about it because Chaos is a catch-all for "Oh, never mind, the rebellion is madness and insanity," perhaps to start thinking again once the entire ruling class of the Imperium has been shown to be very fallible).

[bluntblade]

Maybe, but with an Imperium that encompasses thousands upon thousands of words, the exact numbers we're given for systems lost in the Rangdan Wars (I'm not a fan of that exactitude anyway given how shrouded the conflict is meant to be) seem to fall well short of what I was imagining in terms of a truly existential threat. I expected rather more, or at least enough vagueness for me to continue picturing that.

 

For comparison, Horus describes the outer defences of Segmentum Solar in the Heresy, "arraigned on a hundred worlds".

Edited October 11, 2020 by bluntblade

[jaxom]

I totally forgot this was a different thread; 

 

 

 

 Space marine logistics have always been at the whim of authorial mandate and never shackled to reason.

 

Applies to pretty much everything that comes out of GW/FW. To paraphrase the MST3K Mantra, "It's just a grimdark narrative; I should accept logistics and economics to get handwaved."

[jaxom]

I was re-reading Crusade last night and a thought occurred to me. I think the Dark Angels have more in common with the XIIth legion than any other legion in terms of their mindset - the absolute ruination of the enemy as an inevitability for the foes of mankind. They don't see themselves as soldiers, warriors, or conquerors, but as destroyers. It was this description of the Lion that really got to me:

 

 

He was the first of all the Primarchs, war distilled into its rawest and most fundamental essence, death that walked like a man

[WrathOfTheLion]

I think they end up embodying aspects of quite a few legions. One of the things I liked and found interesting was how certain wings, etc. ended up as prototypes that combined aspects of seemingly dissimilar legions. For example, the Firewing embodies many aspects of the Raven Guard and the Alpha Legion, but crosses that back with strong aspects of the Emperor's Children with its duelist elements.