What's your headcanon?

[Doghouse]

I personally think that the universe is so expansive I don't need to head canon. If I didn't like Primaris I can make pre-cataclysm Astartes or set my army in a sector that is isolated or during the Badab war, the Scouring or even make up a conflict from the past.

 

We've got ten thousand years as a sand pit at the end of the day and there is no way the Imperium has accurate records of it all.

 

There are probably Badab War scale events that have long since been lost to time, armour variants or vehicles that never made it into mass production, Chapters or even entire races or empires that fought and died without a trace.

 

The setting is truly huge and I genuinely mean it when I say you are only limited by your imagination.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I believe there are good guys (so to speak)… it’s not just all victims and bad guys. :)

[WARMASTER_]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also and I actually think this one is more important males and provable more aggressive and murderous than woman [just look any crime statistic from any point in time]

 

Doesnt help that people fanboi/gurl over male killers, yet you never really hear about female killy types, I have had many a talk over the years and a lot of people (including English people) know of Ian Brady and have never heard of Myra Hindley.

he mentioned crime statistics, which have nothing to do with notoriety.

^^ This I mean raw data nothing else and it’s overwhelmingly one sided

and I was agreeing with you, I was just adding my own thoughts to what you said. Some people just seem to disagree with me here for the sake of it just for an argument, even though there is no argument to be had in the first place.

Sorry mate I wasn’t meaning to be argumentative really at all maybe I miss understood you’re point

I believe there are good guys (so to speak)… it’s not just all victims and bad guys. :)

This is definitely the most controversial opinion so far hahaa

[Hrvat]

I sort of started shaping my own 40K lore around the time average warp speed travel times were abandoned and armies and characters were allowed to basically instant travel across the galaxy in order to ensure customers can have their chosen favourite character/army present at most major events in the galaxy.

 

For those that came in the hobby since then this is what I am talking about:

 

Light Years[table=''][/table]

Minimum Warp Time

Minimum Warp Time

Minimum Real Time

Maximum Real Time

1

2 mins

6 mins

43 mins

4.5 hrs

5

7 mins

30 mins

3.5 hrs

1 day

10

14 mins

1 hr

7 hrs

2 days

50

1.25 hrs

4.75 hrs

1.5 days

9 days

100

2.5 hrs

9.5 hrs

3 days

3 weeks

500

12 hrs

2 days

2 weeks

3 months

1000

1 day

4 days

1 month

6 months

5000

5 days

3 weeks

5 months

3 years

 

 

Back then warp jumps up to 5 ly could be done without Navigators so while things would go much slower interstellar travel without Navigators wasn't impossible. Various major time shifts during warp travel were a thing but a far greater oddity than what I feel has been happening in the more recent years. 

 

 

So for my own setting of 40K I try and keep the above alive as ignoring pretty much anything after the freeze of the initial 3rd invasion of Armageddon when the fire season forced an end to the fighting. 

 

I tried since 2017 a couple of time to immerse myself into the updated background but I just find it unenjoyable for the most part. 

 

 

 

p.s. how does one make a table?

Edited May 21, 2022 by Hrvat

[Magos Takatus]

Angron was intended as the diplomat among the Primarchs

Ooh, that would be an apocalyptic level of tragedy if that became official canon. Angron was given so much wasted potential, it hits me right in the feels when I think what he could have been. That book (Betrayer I guess?) was amazing. I never thought I'd be able to empathise with the big bad rage-monster but it was excellently woven.

[Karhedron]

I have been playing 40K for so long and read so much fiction and fan-fiction (along with my own) that I can't really disginguish my head-canon from everything else I have read anymore. Is an idea I have something I read in an old codex, a piece of fanfic or just something I imagined as a cool idea?

 

And does it really matter as long as I am having fun?

[Slave to Darkness]

 

Sorry mate I wasn’t meaning to be argumentative really at all maybe I miss understood you’re point

 

Yeah its cool no worries lol. Ive always said meaning can get lost when typing, face to face is a much better way of communicating, facial expressions and tone of voice actually add a lot to how we communicate. So now thats sorted out tell me... 

[Slave to Darkness]

I personally think that the universe is so expansive I don't need to head canon. If I didn't like Primaris I can make pre-cataclysm Astartes or set my army in a sector that is isolated or during the Badab war, the Scouring or even make up a conflict from the past.

 

 

My wolf lord took one look at them and laughed his ass off. My Hereticus Inquisitor and the brown nosing chapter that follow them around have openly called out Papa Smurf as a Heretic Xenos lover and dont believe he has had an audience with the Emperor. My Guard will just fight anyone the Inquisitor points them at. That way I get around the current lore and I have a valid reason to fight Primaris marines. 

[Bryan Blaire]

My wolf lord took one look at them and laughed his ass off. My Hereticus Inquisitor and the brown nosing chapter that follow them around have openly called out Papa Smurf as a Heretic Xenos lover and dont believe he has had an audience with the Emperor. My Guard will just fight anyone the Inquisitor points them at. That way I get around the current lore and I have a valid reason to fight Primaris marines. 

Heck, I’m okay with Primaris Marines (not necessarily all their fluff, but the models & their existence), and all of that is good stuff.  I even wish that GW had done a little more with the Space Wolves and some internal conflict about the Primaris even - there would probably be at least one Great Lord of the Wolves that would have been a traditionalist/hold out about them and had none in his forces, while others would take to them whole hog, with many in between.

 

Oh - yeah, the above highlights another of my deviations from the GW canon - I think it’s goofy that each named Wolf Lord only leads “about 100 men” and so in my view, each of them is a Great Lord under the Great Wolf, leading approximately 500-1000 Wolves, with lesser Wolf Lords beneath them.

[WARMASTER_]

I personally think that the universe is so expansive I don't need to head canon. If I didn't like Primaris I can make pre-cataclysm Astartes or set my army in a sector that is isolated or during the Badab war, the Scouring or even make up a conflict from the past.

 

We've got ten thousand years as a sand pit at the end of the day and there is no way the Imperium has accurate records of it all.

 

There are probably Badab War scale events that have long since been lost to time, armour variants or vehicles that never made it into mass production, Chapters or even entire races or empires that fought and died without a trace.

 

The setting is truly huge and I genuinely mean it when I say you are only limited by your imagination.

I agree with everything you said 10000%

[WARMASTER_]

Now to actually write my head cannon - mines always pretty much been to accept all the madness of the setting because it’s Future Fantasy rather than SCFI

 

I also love the human factions in the settings because are just that… insane! they’re ignorant zealots with technology they don’t understand, the mind sets of a 11th century crusaders or dark age warriors but with the added knowledge of hells real and demons can eat your face! and I think if you start looking at the mind set of people in universe rather than our own it all slips into place … it’s the Dark Ages again … WITH GUNS

 

The original poster says he has trouble with SM bringing standards to war and I get that as a person it 2022 looking at a military engagement they’re completely impractical….

 

BUT if we look at it through the eyes of an indoctrinated, psycho scoured, Mono maniacal brotherhood of future dark ages warriors.. not soldiers .. warriors it starts to become much easier to see why they’d take them into war. It’s a rallying point in the storm of battle! A mark of pride that your enemy knows who’s killing them .. a taunt to say “try and take it” and the fact they’re priceless heirlooms means nothing in regards to keeping them clean the blood of traitors blesses it the bullet holes and burns are marks of honour from wars won etc the restoring of it is equally as much a ritual. Nothing is new in 40K and it’s venerated because of its age [Just like Anglo saxon society]

 

Any way long story long I try to more than anything try to place my view point [Head cannon] into the character or faction I’m either playing, reading or writing lore about because to give 40K it’s due it’s an incredibly well researched, thought through and fleshed out universe in such a way that I can always see why a faction would do the thing it’s doing if I know it well enough

Edited May 22, 2022 by BladeOfVengeance

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

IDK if this is headcanon exactly cos of the 'everything is canon not everything is true' stipulation, but it's been on my mind lately: Szarekh did in fact meet Sanguinius, which is why he had a Sanguinary death mask when he met Dante. (I'm currently trying to convert a Sanguinary Guard head to fit Szarekh.)

[Red_Shift]

Old Man Yarrick cannot die, because the Orks believe he cannot die, and as we have seen their psychic consciousness can make things happen.

 

The remains of one of the lost legions were merged with the Imperial Fists, and later became known as the Soul Snakes. That’s why Lysander couldn’t use the Soul Spear.

[DukeLeto69]

I am a scientist by training and work at a lab for molecular biology.

Most of the fluff for creating super soldiers and space marines frankly is made up by people who had no clue (and maybe a bit of an inferiority complex?) and is complete BS.

Alone the rule that no females cannot be made into Space Marines...

we are talking about a tiny mostly useless Y chromosome, which is the only genetic difference between genders, and someone is telling me, the mighty Emperor was not able to supplement that?

Let alone the fact that with enough hormone treatments you can very well make any sex into a buff male,if started soon enough (and this is what Space Marine creation is about).

Plus, female bodies are more resistant to the trials and challenges of space and low gravity (as was found out since they use female astronauts).

Plus, the Imperium of Man is never wasteful and does not care where the bodies and raw materials come from.

 

So yeah, I am pretty sure that half of the Space Marines out there basically started out as female raw material, changed and transformed into the image decreed by the Emperor.

Most of the Marines will not even remember this fact after indoctrination.

THAT is the huge big secret the Imperium is hiding.

:p

 

So yeah, that is my own (VERY controversial!) personal head canon that I can justify with my scientific knowledge.

You’re not the only one. I am not remotely fussed by scientific logic when applied to W40k, which is a fantasy setting after all, but I prefer the idea that...

 

Space Marines are literally “Transhuman” and are neither male humans or female humans but are in fact just “other” or a third “gender” or “homo astartes” (albeit one that cannot reproduce and therefore pose a genetic threat to homo sapiens).

[DukeLeto69]

Not sure this counts as Head Canon, especially with the way the setting narrative is now heading, but...

 

1. The God Emperor is very much alive but is operating in the Warp rather than directly in realspace.

2. TGE is operating in a concurrent multi-faceted way so can manifest in realspace through avatars or enact His will through others (who end up being called Saints) - very influenced by first Jaq Draco novel here.

3. The Pantheon is not only made up of (bad) chaos Gods but Gods who are manifested by all types of emotions from sentient beings (and no “God” would consider themselves as “evil” or “good” they just are the thing they are due to the emotions that create them)

4. TGE IS a God by the very fact that he is worshipped and people have faith in Him - self perpetuating/self fulfilling prophecy.

5. TGE knew he needed to be a God to go toe-to-toe with the other Gods, so his suppression of religion and rejection of his own divinity was all deliberate to force a situation where this in fact aided his apotheosis (Life of Brian - He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy, and only the true messiah would deny he is the messiah).

6. TGE foresaw the need for and orchestrated the Horus Heresy to ensure his apotheosis.

7. TGE used genetic material from himself to create Custodes, Primarchs and Astartes. They are his Greater Daemon and Daemon equivalents but are Arch Angels and Angels - literally “Angels of Death” - to take the fight into the Warp against the Pantheon...

8...However, the Eternal War in the Warp is exactly that, eternal. It will not and cannot cease. The struggle is all that matters to maintain a status quo between the Gods because otherwise if one gets the upper hand, it could impact on realspace and destroy a sentient race (such as humanity) and if that happens the Gods cease to exist as they have no emotions or faith/worship to nourish them and maintain their existance.

 

Edit...

 

Oh and ORKS are actually manmade bio weapons from the DAoT that spread across the Galaxy unchecked during Old Night. Actually OrKS which stands for Organic Kill Squads.

 

Edit 2...

 

There was no Astronomicon until the Emperor ascended. The Astronomicon was the secret project that his apotheosis enabled by providing the “guiding light” in the Warp that makes Astrotelepathy possible and longer warp jumps possible.

 

Prior to that (Great Crusade and HH era) only short warp jumps are possible and all interstellar communication requires “couriers” or “heralds” travelling on ships. Means knowledge of the reality of what was happening during the HH is limited to ability to carry the news onboard a ship. If the Ruinstorm stops travel, then Terra would have virtually no idea what was happening or who to trust!

Edited May 22, 2022 by DukeLeto69

[Viridovix]

My headcanon is: Chaplains harness power by faith and discipline, therefore auras and chants and whatnot in the tabletop game and books are nothing but pure force of will and/or unqestionable faith and loyalty.

 

Same goes for Living Saints.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Viridovix

[Felix Antipodes]

I don’t usually ignore established canon if it doesn’t suit what I envision 30K/40K to be, but I do run with some head-canon until it is officially disproven in the law.

 

For instance, until it is stated unequivocally that the two missing legions were destroyed/absorbed into another legion, i will treat them as being out there somewhere.

 

Why were they erased from Imperial records?  Only the Amazon & Hellion Legions can answer that 

[Cyrox]

Some head canon of mine: 

 

1. Iron Hands didn’t become obsessed with bionics and the ‘weakness of the flesh’ until AFTER Ferrus rushed into battle at the dropsite massacre (how it used to be)

2. Blood Angels do not have vampire fangs that slide out of gums. They can have the Red thirst just fine without that childish gimmick.

3. Space Wolves are not drunken Viking idiots, and not all of them have long hair and beards - in 2nd edition the wolf/viking thing was dialled down a little bit which was much better IMO

4. Cypher is a good guy

5. 2nd edition was awesome

 

Bear in mind this is just my personal head canon, don’t take any of it as fact

[Isengrin]

I'm not sure if any of my headcanon views are that unique or already more or less accepted into the mainstream, but here we go.

 

Ork technology doesn't consist of just a chunk of steel, some screws, a band aid and the believe of a billion orks that it's somehow going to work. They are fairly advanced but they don't care much what their technology looks like. Great usability, very intuitive, terrible aesthetics. Oh, and Orkimedes lives.

 

Orks, again. While depicted as basically space hooligans, I consider them well organized, not only competent on a tactical and operative level but also strategically smart, as well as culturally diverse; just very rough around the edges. They are single-minded, not simple-minded; focused exclusively on war and how to support that effort (tech, organizational structures, leadership, etc.). It's mostly their infighting that keeps them from forming a universe-spanning empire.

 

Economically, their teeth bartering system doesn't make any sense to me so I don't care for it. What are the reserves, the collateral? Cross-planetary trading with that kind of monetary system doesn't sound plausible to me and that's why I see them as digital currency bros. Grorkcoin or something (they've got a few competing currencies).. Yeah I know, talking about reserves and then e-coins in the same breath is a bit contradictory, but those Orks have...something in place for that. 

 

Coming to the human side of the setting, machine spirits are wonky operating systems. A few fratres have expounded this point already and eloquently so, which is why I don't have to say more about this topic.

 

Mechanicus prayers are manuals. Think about how difficult it is to transport meaningful instructions over thousands of years. Languages change. So does our understanding of our environment. Technology changes drastically. I'm sure it's well known that efforts to protect nuclear waste in the far, far future (or protecting humans from waste, actually) included proposals like nuclear cats and atomic priesthoods. Wrapping the instructions into a rigid top-to-bottom recitation was an effective way to communicate how certain systems could be operated by laymen. Over the course of time, this was codified and turned into a religious exercise but it also decayed and was embellished with lots of unnecessary text attached rendering it almost useless.

 

The daemon primarchs never fully returned from the warp. Only inconsequent, fragmented mental manifestations (I'm looking for a better word than mental...) turn up irregularly and then dissipate like smoke after a fire.

 

The emperor is dead and all that's left are dying ripples in the noospheric sea. Nobody except the custodes is aware because everybody else is too afraid to check in on him.

 

I've never thought about this before, but female custodes make a lot of sense...I may have to snatch that idea for conversion purposes.

 

Very important EDIT: Primaris are the same height and size as regular and chaos marines. It's a new armour mark, nothing more.

 

Second, even more important EDIT: Myriads of chaos "gods" exist. The big four are only the most powerful ones. They vary immensly in relevance and prominence, are known under all kinds of different names (really liked the tiny snippets in old books from the POV of chaos world natives who had their own names for them), and they are more akin to strong currents in a sea than emotions appearing in anthropomorphic form.

 

Third edit: And they are all terrified of Malal.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Isengrin

[MARK0SIAN]

I tend to headcannon most inquisition stuff to be more like the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series. By that I mean that whilst inquisitors technically do have unlimited power they’re not totally free from procedures, evidence gathering and oversight. I think their versions of how the inquisition functions just works better at a more realistic/practical point of view than an all powerful guy going where he wants and demanding everything.

[tychobi]

My headcannon is simply to view all 40k lore as Imperial propaganda written by ill informed and biased authors . Through this lens inconsistency is blurred by agenda it all gets even grimmer and darker as humanity struggles to feed itself the half truths it needs to hold for hope to flicker on in a galaxy where innovative thought invites disaster.  Keeps me interested by allowing my headcannon to rewrite the truths behind the conspiracy to suit me.

[Valkyrion]

I like to imagine that the novel Rynn's World didn't exist.

[TheVoidDragon]

Old Man Yarrick cannot die, because the Orks believe he cannot die, and as we have seen their psychic consciousness can make things happen.

We haven't seen the gestalt field modify reality based on what the Orks just want to happen/believe though, that's meme lore that isn't really based on anything substantial - the lore doesn't actually establish anything like "They believe it so its true" as the memes claim. The only piece of lore even slightly hinting at that idea is an In-universe theory from the Mechanicus originating from a Magos who was said to speculate far too much, was guessing outside of area of expertise, and was basing his assumptions on two Orks vehicles being the same, when they aren't. 

 

Yarrick is even the one character who shows it's not a thing, because the Orks believed that he was so tough he could kill them with a stare - yet they didn't start dropping dead when he stared at them because that's not how it works, so he went and got a laser eye fitted.

Edited May 22, 2022 by TheVoidDragon

[Evil Eye]

Regarding the female Marines discussion, I actually had an idea on how that could work without massive retcons or blatant fluff-heresy. TLDR: Cawl has the idea of making female Astartes to try and increase the amount of Marines overall (and also because he's an arrogant fool with a god complex). So he tries to do it and technically succeeds, but in such small numbers compared to the cost in human life that had he been anyone other than Cawl he would have been declared a heretic and assassinated with extreme prejudice.

 

Other headcanons I have:
>Traitor Sororitas do exist, but are heavily covered up by the Inquisition because of the devastating effect on morale that the knowledge that the most faithful servants of the Emperor could fall to Chaos would have.

>Speaking of Sororitas, I like the idea that there's some degree of variety/diversity in precise teachings and subcultures, and resultant aesthetics, between Orders. Similar to Space Marine chapters but a bit less extreme.

>The Genestealers were originally a race from another galaxy that were devoured by the Tyranids, but their (possibly sentient) DNA and genetic infection powers were so aggressive that the Hive Mind essentially had to find a way to make them work for the Tyranids, as by absorbing the genetic material of the Genestealers the fleet in question had effectively become infected themselves, and were permanently altered by it. Fortunately for the Hive Mind, it was able to properly utilize the Genestealer genome as a mainstay in their arsenal, to the point other Hive Fleets adopted it until by the time they arrived in our galaxy they were already a standard part of the Fleets.

[Slave to Darkness]

 he would have been declared a heretic and assassinated with extreme prejudice.

 

 

He should be anyway for daring to 'improve' on the Emperors work.