Artificial "depth" in lore affecting immersion?

[Ficinus]

However for some reason she needs to be acknowledged by the Custodes themselves for some reason which is odd considering the Custodes don't really like the religious nutters of the universe (their closet thing to any mythos is their misercordias).

 

 

The Custodes may not like the religious nutters, but they did respect Alicia Dominica enough to take her and her closest followers to stand before the Emperor to end the Age of Apostasy.  It shows, at the very least, some deep respect for the founder of the Adepta Sororitas.

[sitnam]

 

However for some reason she needs to be acknowledged by the Custodes themselves for some reason which is odd considering the Custodes don't really like the religious nutters of the universe (their closet thing to any mythos is their misercordias).

 

There is a bit of fluff precedence. The Custodes used the Sisters to end Goge Vandires reign, and one interacted with Celestine and Greyfax when they went to find San Leor. I have this head canon that the Custodes (or at least some Custodes) see the Sororitas as useful tools. Custodes might not like religious types, but the Custodes don't care for much of the Imperium anyways.

[Kastor Krieg]

Introducing something new, giving it a history out of nowhere and then having other people treat it as important is the definition of world building.

I'm not saying they aren't world building, I'm saying this is shoddy, sloppy, shallow world building. It's a ten-year old's fanfic level world building to spring something out of nowhere and have it be THE FABLED WHATEVER.

 

A good, mature world builder plants the seeds beforehand, interweaves and connects the new item/person/event with the story, inserts premonition and hints at something greater and only then makes a reveal.

 

Telling me "it's important!" is not good world building. Good world building is entrenching that thing in the lore / story deeply, so that when it's shown to me I gasp, because by myself I suddenly realize it's importance.

 

The difference cannot be overstated.

[Karhedron]

I do find it amusing you could read this as her being Guilliman's lapdog, handed trinkets as a political measure...

The truth depends on your point of view.

[Felix Antipodes]

When it was mentioned recently that the design team and BL authors were working more closely on the background fluff (Dawn of Fire I believe it was) I was hoping this sort of thing would soon be a thing of the past. Silly me, the first step on the road to disappointment, etc... If anything it seems worse.

 

Edit: Just to make it clear (which I didn't above) I wasn't objecting to the characters weapon. It was the rise of a previously unknown character to a position already occupied and made a HLoT to boot without any foreshadowing.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Felix Antipodes

[Rik Lightstar]

The entire concept of the Custodes is that EVERY single warrior is a consummate hero of skill, experience , capability and knowledge in excess of any other the Imperium can produce except for the Primarchs. Their equipment is equally exceptional.

 

There is no such thing within the lore as "Generic Custodian 5". Nor is there such a thing as "Standard Guardian Spear". Each warrior has his weapons and armour crafter especially for him. Given that this is explicitly stated and their equipment doesn't seem to typically get handed down there must surely be a collection of especially venerated items from Custodians who have fallen. I'm sure some are gifted to particularly honoured members of the Custodes but that doesn't appear to be a regular thing.

 

Some quotes from the Codex:

 

 

Along with their name, ascension to the ranks of the Adeptus Custodes earns each individual their own armour and weapons. Entire bloodlines of exceptionally skilled artisans dwell within gilded towers on Terra, their purpose to fashion the auramite armour and perfectly balanced weapons for each new Custodian.

 

 

The tools of war wielded by the Emperor’s guardians never fail or falter, for they are handmade by the Imperium’s most skilled smiths and maintained to the most painstaking standards imaginable.

 

They are also a warrior brotherhood with all of the histories associated with that, I'm sure there is a list "fabled" weapons and heroes of the Custodes as long as you'd care for it to be.

 

 

 

This seems a better way to build her character out than "She's got a stick with a sharp bit at one end, it's nuffin special though", which would be pretty dull.

 

Rik

[TrawlingCleaner]

To make a comparison to LoTR, Sting is an Elvish Dagger mostly used for decorative purposes. It means nothing to anyone, it's in the bottom of Troll Horde. We've all read The Hobbit, we know how it goes, Sting means something to Bilbo and it gets passed down as such. The Spear could have gotten it's name back in the DAoT or any time up until current day in 40k. Maybe it doesn't live up to it's name in current day, but it meant something to the person who named it (assumably), taken by the Imperium and left in the care of the Custodes (Troll Horde-esque)

 

However, I do understand that it's not been built up to or even mentioned before, even if it'd just been mentioned once in the 8th ed codex. They've got to start somewhere though right?

[Matcap86]

To make a comparison to LoTR, Sting is an Elvish Dagger mostly used for decorative purposes. It means nothing to anyone, it's in the bottom of Troll Horde. We've all read The Hobbit, we know how it goes, Sting means something to Bilbo and it gets passed down as such. The Spear could have gotten it's name back in the DAoT or any time up until current day in 40k. Maybe it doesn't live up to it's name in current day, but it meant something to the person who named it (assumably), taken by the Imperium and left in the care of the Custodes (Troll Horde-esque)

 

However, I do understand that it's not been built up to or even mentioned before, even if it'd just been mentioned once in the 8th ed codex. They've got to start somewhere though right?

 

Yeah but you'd think they'd maybe get something from one of the literally 500+ books that preceded this release. It's not as if they started building this world now, which was the case with LOTR. 

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

Introducing something new, giving it a history out of nowhere and then having other people treat it as important is the definition of world building.

I'm not saying they aren't world building, I'm saying this is shoddy, sloppy, shallow world building. It's a ten-year old's fanfic level world building to spring something out of nowhere and have it be THE FABLED WHATEVER.

 

A good, mature world builder plants the seeds beforehand, interweaves and connects the new item/person/event with the story, inserts premonition and hints at something greater and only then makes a reveal.

 

Telling me "it's important!" is not good world building. Good world building is entrenching that thing in the lore / story deeply, so that when it's shown to me I gasp, because by myself I suddenly realize it's importance.

 

The difference cannot be overstated.

Regardless of your personal feelings about if it’s cool or good world building, it’s still world building. Getting hung up over a special spear, which has zero impact on the universe or immersion at all, and not the baby carrier suit or Guilliman being alive is a waste of time.

[Ishagu]

Could this be the spear that Russ was granted by the Emperor?

[Blindhamster]

you do remember that most 40k relics started the same way.

 

Most special characters have fabled legendary weapons with no real lore to explain how or why they are what they are.

 

Just as an example:

In my beloved blood angels, most special characters have fabled weapons of renown, none of those weapons have come up in the horus heresy, either as notes in novels or in the HH rules. Keep in mind most of those characters were established long before blood angels really got a nod of any real note in HH.

Axe Mortalis is an obvious one, even things like the sword the sanguinor uses isn't referenced as being an existing weapon in HH.

 

It's just how it is. The world building on the relevance of this new spear will no doubt be entirely covered within the new codex.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Blindhamster

[Rik Lightstar]

 

 

Yeah but you'd think they'd maybe get something from one of the literally 500+ books that preceded this release. It's not as if they started building this world now, which was the case with LOTR. 

 

 

To the rest of the Imperium EVERY SINGLE Custodian is a *Legendary Hero* and EVERY SINGLE weapon wielded by a Custodian is a *Fabled Relic*.

 

There's a rough number of 10,000 of them at any time, so even to have covered just the current crop of Legendary Heroes and their Fabled Relics would mean detail on 200 Custodians in each of those books.

 

To me the entire thing reads as "The Adeptus Custodes granted her a Guardian Spear as a mark of respect", yeah it's got a name and a history but ALL of their weapons have names  and histories.

 

That's the entire point of the Custodes. Any one of them if dropped into another time could have been Jason, Hector, Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus, Perseus, Beowulf, King Arthur, Lancelot, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, the list goes on. They're meant to be the most exceptional examples of humanity.

 

Rik

[Ishagu]

I think a bigger issue with the fluff is... why is a High Lord of Terra a unit that can be put on a battlefield? That seems super weird. I know it's 40k and authority often equals asskicking, but still. Shouldn't she be off organizing vast swathes of the Imperium rather than piloting her ugly decapitated dreadnought? It's only a matter of time until the Master of the Astronomican is running down heretics with his psi-grav-scooter and the Paternal Envoy of the Navigators is exploding people's brains.

 

Trajan Valoris is a High Lord and no one had any issues with it.

[apologist]

Off-hand references are how lore gets built. The 'quiescent perils of the C'tan', the 'Gauntlets of Ultramar', the 'Howling' – all were new once – hell, even the Horus Heresy was introduced as a one-liner. The seeds grow over time; and if you want to harvest in the future, you've got to plant them.

 

Not all come to fruition; and some are better planted than others. I really disliked the concept of the Ruinstorm when I first heard about it, but that was nicely developed over time. I was prepared to give the Maledictum Cicatrix the benefit of the doubt on that basis, too – and am glad I did. Some I quietly ignore, like orks being flanderised from animals with an algal element to being fungus-men, or the perpetual motion mechanicus walkers.

 

Just as big events can appear jarring, so can small things like the Lance of (checks page 1) Illumination. Perhaps GW will develop this idea, perhaps it'll just be left as a colourful description. More importantly, it's certainly got potential for players and writers to do something with it. You could play a whole campaign set in M37, trying to recover the lance from enemy forces. You could simply use it as the name for the Relic objective in a game. It could be the macguffin in an Inq28 story.  Point is that it's up to you to use GW's raw materials to spark your imagination.

 

Rogue Trader was hugely atmospheric, but beyond the top level description of the Imperium (RT), the orks (Waaagh the Orks) and Chaos (Realm of Chaos), it was mostly brought across via colour text – short snippets that were intended to evoke the atmosphere more than inform anything practical. Having too much explained spoils the magic a little, I think. It's enough to know that the names of the fallen are inscribed on the Monolith of Despair on Mordant XII – I don't necessarily need to have a full list.

 

As to using something from within the existing canon, that's something that I think should be used carefully. There are only so many old seeds, and I wouldn't want the mind-bogglingly deep and wide 40k galaxy to turn into a reductive place of unlikely coincidences and half a dozen superheroes for each faction. That diminishes things. There's a reason the Hobbit has more affection amongst the population than the Silmarillion.

Edited May 5, 2021 by apologist

[Matcap86]

 

 

 

Yeah but you'd think they'd maybe get something from one of the literally 500+ books that preceded this release. It's not as if they started building this world now, which was the case with LOTR. 

 

 

To the rest of the Imperium EVERY SINGLE Custodian is a *Legendary Hero* and EVERY SINGLE weapon wielded by a Custodian is a *Fabled Relic*.

 

There's a rough number of 10,000 of them at any time, so even to have covered just the current crop of Legendary Heroes and their Fabled Relics would mean detail on 200 Custodians in each of those books.

 

To me the entire thing reads as "The Adeptus Custodes granted her a Guardian Spear as a mark of respect", yeah it's got a name and a history but ALL of their weapons have names  and histories.

 

That's the entire point of the Custodes. Any one of them if dropped into another time could have been Jason, Hector, Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus, Perseus, Beowulf, King Arthur, Lancelot, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, the list goes on. They're meant to be the most exceptional examples of humanity.

 

Rik

 

 

I know? I've collected custodes ever since they were available, I'm kinda up to date about their lore. That's kind of beside the point.

 

I agree with the premise that currently most of 40k (and AoS for that matter) has a tell don't show attitude. Once in a while this isn't troublesome but currently almost everything gets framed as "the most important thing ever" why? Because we told you it's important.

 

I'd like them to frame characters, events and even equipment (though less so) in established lore, because there is so much to choose from. Need an important planet to fight over in a campaign supplement? Get one from the books we've seen in the past, don't keep on starting from scratch with everything. It widens the lore, without ever making it particularly interesting. Introduce new things now, so in 2-3 years you can flesh them out when you want to use them in world shattering campaigns. 

 

An example would be to use the current new SoB special character in one of the dawn of fire novels, or the 8th edition codex or one of the other SoB novels we had lately in a lower position. Then add her into the mix as a new high lord would give her some basis in the world, instead of just apperating out of nowhere. 

Edited May 5, 2021 by matcap86

[Rik Lightstar]

We've seen so many threads over the last few years along the lines of:

 

"Why is it always the same handful of Characters and Forces in every story, why Marneus, Roboute, Dante, Ragnar, Eldrad...... etc always on the same handful of planets. The Imperium and Galaxy are so big, why can't we get more detail on all the other stuff?"

 

We get a new addition to the lore and that's not right either.

 

They're clearly never going to please all the people all of the time.

 

Rik

[Matcap86]

We've seen so many threads over the last few years along the lines of:

 

"Why is it always the same handful of Characters and Forces in every story, why Marneus, Roboute, Dante, Ragnar, Eldrad...... etc always on the same handful of planets. The Imperium and Galaxy are so big, why can't we get more detail on all the other stuff?"

 

We get a new addition to the lore and that's not right either.

 

They're clearly never going to please all the people all of the time.

 

Rik

 

Yeah that people want a more expanded universe does not preclude them from also wanting that expanded universe to feel coherent and based on established lore. Connect them, don't make them pop up out of nowhere.

 

The reason the characters you name are constantly front and center in peoples minds, is because they are the ones with tangible connections to the wider universe. 

 

Meanwhile recent additions like Haarken Worldclaimer get added and forgotten again like that. 

 

An example of them doing things right is Adrax Agatone. A relatively minor new character that nonetheless gets some notes and connections to the wider Salamander lore so he fits in instead of "Look this is the biggest baddest Salamander that was ever there. He is amazing! Why? Because of this 1 paragraph where we say that he is one of the bestest Salamanders ever."

Edited May 5, 2021 by matcap86

[Bryan Blaire]

 

An example of them doing things right is Adrax Agatone. A relatively minor new character that nonetheless gets some notes and connections to the wider Salamander lore so he fits in instead of "Look this is the biggest baddest Salamander that was ever there. He is amazing! Why? Because of this 1 paragraph where we say that he is one of the bestest Salamanders ever."

That’s an example of them doing it right?  I don’t know anything about him at all, and from what you said he’s also completely uninteresting to pursue knowledge about.  Sounds like the opposite of “the right way to do it” in a galaxy full of demigods  - so this guy is the equivalent of one of the Argonauts, and that’s supposed to be interesting and make me want to go read more about him.  “Yeah, he went along with a lot more important folks, and we probably never heard of him again.”

 

Yeah, sounds like fantastic world-building.

 

The reason that those characters are front and center in everyone’s mind is because GW overuses them in the setting.  The reason they have “tangible connections” is because GW won’t quit playing with their favorite toys and write about some new ones (well, they’ve tried, but people complained and panned them).

 

Overall, this concern over a statement that something is a “fabled relic” that you’ve never heard of before in an entire galaxy of worlds constantly at war over 10K+ years seems pretty goofy to say that breaks your immersion.  Immersion breaking is the same 35 relics and characters making an appearance at many major events over a span of a 400 year period or less.  That is immersion breaking for a galaxy-spanning story with a 11Kish year known period.

 

Rik is correct, they are never going to please everyone, and in turn, GW will never do things right, to someone.

 

I think the longevity of the stories is really more of the issue to things like this than whether something has been heard of before.  There are probably thousands of major heroes out in the 40K universe right now that GW will never even write about, and those gals and guys all have fabled relics.

[Matcap86]

 

 

An example of them doing things right is Adrax Agatone. A relatively minor new character that nonetheless gets some notes and connections to the wider Salamander lore so he fits in instead of "Look this is the biggest baddest Salamander that was ever there. He is amazing! Why? Because of this 1 paragraph where we say that he is one of the bestest Salamanders ever."

That’s an example of them doing it right?  I don’t know anything about him at all, and from what you said he’s also completely uninteresting to pursue knowledge about.  Sounds like the opposite of “the right way to do it” in a galaxy full of demigods  - so this guy is the equivalent of one of the Argonauts, and that’s supposed to be interesting and make me want to go read more about him.  “Yeah, he went along with a lot more important folks, and we probably never heard of him again.”

 

Yeah, sounds like fantastic world-building.

 

 

 

Yeah, because even if you don't especially care about it, the character has lore going back to 2008 so it feels part of the universe. Not every single character needs to be the top-dog or interesting to every single player.

He's not a chapter master but a captain, nevertheless he has connections to earlier lore and that makes the world deeper instead of wider. If they just made up a completely new character on the spot, they'd make the lore wider, which is my point. Not that Adrax is suddenly super important or interesting a character, he doesn't need to be.

 

Also your example of the Argonauts. Most of them were characters in their own right, who had adventures and connections in the broader world besides Jason. That's good world building. 

 

Another example: If they go and introduce a new special character for Custodes. I hope that they pick some of the new Custodes characters introduced in gate of bones or dawn of fire instead of again making up a new character to go with the new model. 

Edited May 5, 2021 by matcap86

[Ishagu]

The truth is that everyone in 40k was suddenly written in at one point. People often forget this because we've had 20 years of lore or longer for certain characters, but the truth is that they were formed over time from initial ideas to icons of the setting after many lore expansions and revisions.

 

Cawl is a recent example of a character done effectively. Yes, it's still jarring in some ways but he's a well known character in the setting. 5-10 years from now he'll be as established and entrenched as someone like Calgar or Dante.#

 

The same applies to relic, planets, etc. If a Battleship called "The Illustrious Lance" was suddenly mentioned in a story, and it was an iconic ship that had battled against the forces of Mortarion as well as several Hive Fleets, it would be much the same thing.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Ishagu

[Bryan Blaire]

I didn’t even know Adrax had a history in 40K - I assumed that they HAD just made him up. So yeah, I don’t consider that a great example of world building. I guess if you care about the faction you consider it that, but how do you even get people to care if there’s not something there to grab attention, and like Marines, there’s got to be more to the faction than just a few characters.

 

So worrying about overuse of the word “Fabled” or “Legendary” (and it is fatiguing, yes, but you can get past that) to the point of claiming its immersion breaking - bridge too far going to nowhere.

 

And on the Argonauts - some of them were interesting characters in their own right. But like the Argonauts, 40K characters are part of the larger 40K mythology - and that seems to be the tack GW is taking in writing it too. So unless people want to claim they know every single fable, fabled item, or possible relic from every mythology just on planet Earth, there’s some ridiculousness going on here. Even the most well-versed world historian or world religion expert doesn’t likely know ALL of them right now (much less the ones that might be claimed in the future - oh look, we found famous person X’s toothpick - let me out that in a museum).

 

Let’s face it - this is fiction and people are getting silly over a new relic being introduced in a galaxy spanning setting. There’s no reason to get your knickers in a twist over that.

[Matcap86]

I didn’t even know Adrax had a history in 40K - I assumed that they HAD just made him up. So yeah, I don’t consider that a great example of world building.

 

And on the Argonauts - some of them were interesting characters in their own right.

 

Let’s face it - this is fiction and people are getting silly over a new relic being introduced in a galaxy spanning setting. It’s dumb to get your knickers in a twist over that.

 

Well then we disagree on what makes good world building. I love the fact you can have a character where you don't know everything about them and can figure out their connections to the rest of the lore. If I'd know everything about every character in the world it would feel kind of shallow to me. 

 

Fair enough that not every Argonaut is the most interesting character, but almost every one of them has connections to other characters and events in the broader mythology.

 

I also don't really care about this single artifact, just an observation that the universe would become more immersive and the models more interesting (to me) if they connected stuff more. 

[Bryan Blaire]

Meanwhile connecting too much in a galaxy makes it supremely smaller and ignores the fact that it’s a galaxy... right now, GW is on the “too much is connected” side of that line.

[Matcap86]

Meanwhile connecting too much in a galaxy makes it supremely smaller and ignores the fact that it’s a galaxy... right now, GW is on the “too much is connected” side of that line.

 

Yeah that's also true, they do both extremes too much to my liking. Overuse of established golden oldies and dropping new characters in from nowhere. 

[sitnam]

We already have a version of Warhammer that’s much more interconnected. It’s called the Horus Heresy, and I hate it. 40k works much better as a setting and not a story IMO. Interconnecting stuff just makes everything seem smaller. I prefer standalone stories that happen independent of events across the galaxy.

 

It’d of been cool to see a Soroitas that pops up in a story with Guilliman get the job, but at the same time inventing a character out of nothing works fine because the setting is so big. For every story written, we get a ton of untold stories about Guilliman