Arks of Omen - Tarot Cards

[Prot]

33 minutes ago, Bryan Blaire said:

While I’m willing to grant that these “prophetic cards” may not be about the Lion, the second part of your statement makes no sense.  These tarot reveals are specifically about the Arks of Omen - that’s even what they are titled.  It would make less sense for these big “end of an Edition” books that are introducing new characters and events to the 40K setting through these story changes to not have a big character revealed in their run up…

 

My logic is just coming from the books. Correct me if I'm wrong but is the 4th book not the end of the saga? And originally wasn't that 4th book first shown as the one with a 'redacted' cover? If I recall that had most people salivating at the prospect of them being clever about hiding the Lion on the cover. 

 

So if I understand it, the last book has a Tau dude on it instead (big bummer for me. I'd rather see 400 Primarchs come out rather than another Tau dude.)  

 

I guess he could be revealed in that book, but every other book has had the cool, hot new character portrayed on the cover of the book. 

 

I'm probably way off, but if what I'm saying above is accurate, it does make sense to me save him for later. Let's be honest Abaddon is going to fail hard on this, and him and Vashtorr look like they're just about to pull this whole devious plan off, then the Lion wakes up and spanks them back to the warp with their collective tail between their legs. 

 

But again I just started reading the series, and I haven't been keeping up with the Tarot Card thingy (it kind of wore on me like the sneak peaks). The main story I'm certainly enjoying though.

 

22 minutes ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

The primarchs sell and GW likes money, so the Lion, Sanguinor and Russ inevitably will come out first for Loyalists, as they're the most popular and thus will make the most in sales.

 

The Lion/DA look to be first, which makes sense, as without a new range there isn't much for them in the Primaris line, so there's a lot of money on the table.

 

I'm in the rare camp of enjoying seeing the Primarchs coming back. I've read almost every novel of the Horus Heresy, and I found once the authors stopped being afraid to write the words coming out of a Primarch's mouth, the series got a whole lot more interesting to me. Just my opinion here, but the Primarchs are the only ones that steer the ships here. Everything else has been incredibly static (background wise) for the last ... I dunno, 20 years? I have liked the story advancements the Primarchs bring to the table. I like hearing the talk and walk in this particular era of the Imperium's state.

[Bryan Blaire]

It would be very weird to me for them to end the series while they are still doing new cards for the series.  Each of the previous books has had four cards, and we’ve got one more to go in a set of four after that first 16, so unless they are using the Arks of Omen cards to “predict”/hint at things beyond the series, what’s in these four cards should still be revealed as part of that.

[Mjasghar]

Since they’ve already revealed farsight it would be strange for them to go backwards in the tarot cards to something already revealed. The Tarot didn’t go back and revisit Abaddon etc. just before the release of that book. 
Furthermore the Tarot is firmly linked to one character release in each set of 4, and this set is clearly Dark Angel related but also with major Lion motifs in terms of his HH armour etc. 

I wonder though. We know that Caliban is a set of floating rocks - could this also see the planet being resurrected? The whole Key turning being a mistake for Abaddon is reminiscent of the comments in the Dawn of Fire books about increasing the warp energy also empowering the Emperor and a general trend in Warhammer that a force for good returns alongside the release of evil. 

[TheMawr]

@Prot

nobody expected the 4th book to be the lion, as right under that redated picture in the announcement it said it was going to be xenos centric, in a white dwarf ( pre AoO 1) it was confirmed there are 5 books. All the speculation and rumors since then has been about book 5 being about the lion as even pre announcement it was likely that book 4 was farsight and (sadly) few people were interested in talking or speculating about it. 

It's likely you missed one or more of the above details and thus were under the assumption that people were talking about book 4.

[Karhedron]

22 hours ago, redmapa said:

If Hastings rumor remains then Russ is next and I'm sure GW already has a mini designed to go with the SW range update that will happen probably 11th ed is my guess, 10th seems to be packed already with potential BT style updates, Sanguinor+Primaris BA, Lion+Primaris DA and then Fulgrim and his noise boys. It's gonna be interesting to see how they bring Russ back, out of the three he's the only one who wasn't sleeping so will it be old man Russ now the wisest Primarch? 

 

Hastings is 4/5 at this point but the original rumour came out 6+ years ago so we should treat it with caution. Assuming it was accurate (which seems a fair assumption), 6 years is still plenty of time for GW to design new models and update their release schedule. I am a SW player myself so I would love for Russ to be imminent but all the signs point to the Lion rather than the Wolf currently.

[spessmarine]

On 3/10/2023 at 7:53 AM, WrathOfTheLion said:

This time we have The Knight. Not so subtle at this point.

 

definitely quite straightforward, you can see the winged helmet but at the edge of it you can also see the iron halo thing

 

[Karhedron]

I agree, the wings on the helmet are right, even down to the rivet just below where the wing is attached.

 

[INKS]

oh this one I thought was clear. It's the lion

[WrathOfTheLion]

4 hours ago, Prot said:

 

I'm in the rare camp of enjoying seeing the Primarchs coming back. I've read almost every novel of the Horus Heresy, and I found once the authors stopped being afraid to write the words coming out of a Primarch's mouth, the series got a whole lot more interesting to me. Just my opinion here, but the Primarchs are the only ones that steer the ships here. Everything else has been incredibly static (background wise) for the last ... I dunno, 20 years? I have liked the story advancements the Primarchs bring to the table. I like hearing the talk and walk in this particular era of the Imperium's state.

I do enjoy them as well, large centerpiece models and characters are nice to have in an army. Just from that perspective, they're nice to have, and GW themselves know this to be successful.

 

There are 5 books though for Arks, not 4, as was directly stated in the design interview in White Dwarf.

[jaxom]

I morbidly curious about what could happen. I haven't like 90% of how the Dark Angels lore/stories have turned out since after Angels of Darkness was released and it got to the point where I had to stop main-ing them.

[Mjasghar]

7 minutes ago, jaxom said:

I morbidly curious about what could happen. I haven't like 90% of how the Dark Angels lore/stories have turned out since after Angels of Darkness was released and it got to the point where I had to stop main-ing them.

With war of secrets and the Azrael novel it seems clear there’s a split developing between the gits like Asmodai and the Azrael faction. Look at the DA models that haven’t been updated and maybe we’ll see who the Lion will head punch when he wakes up

[phandaal]

2 hours ago, jaxom said:

I morbidly curious about what could happen. I haven't like 90% of how the Dark Angels lore/stories have turned out since after Angels of Darkness was released and it got to the point where I had to stop main-ing them.

 

Dark Angels have had some rough lore in recent times. Still not sure how War of Secrets was allowed to go to press with that horrendous Angels of Absolution subplot.

[spessmarine]

6 hours ago, jaxom said:

I morbidly curious about what could happen. I haven't like 90% of how the Dark Angels lore/stories have turned out since after Angels of Darkness was released and it got to the point where I had to stop main-ing them.

the more fallen the worse

[Gamiel]

11 hours ago, Karhedron said:

I agree, the wings on the helmet are right, even down to the rivet just below where the wing is attached.

 

Just want to point out that going by that logic so should the Young Warrior ment that instead of Farsight should we have gotten a human figure with a horse.

[Mjasghar]

The conceit is it’s a human Tarot so it’s human figures. The tau symbol on the the boarding was clear though. 

[WrathOfTheLion]

2 hours ago, Gamiel said:

Just want to point out that going by that logic so should the Young Warrior ment that instead of Farsight should we have gotten a human figure with a horse.

That's not quite the same, it would mean that if there's a model that looked like that young warrior, it would clearly refer to them instead. There is no such model, so no equivalent conclusion to be made.

[TheVoidDragon]

58 minutes ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

That's not quite the same, it would mean that if there's a model that looked like that young warrior, it would clearly refer to them instead. There is no such model, so no equivalent conclusion to be made.

 

The point is that what's shown on the card is not meant to be an accurate depiction of what they're referring to.

 

The despoiler card for Abaddon was a guy in elaborate gold armour and a flaming crown

The Hulk card for Arks of Omens was a giant castle

The Hound for Angron was an actual hound

The shattered world for a destroyed planet was an angel

Farsight is a black haired human warrior with a horse

 

With pretty much all the other cards what they've had for their images has barely been relevant to the actual thing, more depicting a concept than that model/character/whatever. While the things those cards have included to show the specific character haven't exactly been vague - The despoiler card has the symbol of chaos on the back and The Farsight cards have had the Dawn Blade. Not something that can be interpreted as being the Dawn Blade.....Just the actual Dawn Blade.

 

But suddenly, with the Knight card, it's meant to be a literal depiction enough to the point details on the card are meant to be whats on a specific model, even though they don't actually match what's on that model?

 

The helmet design is quite clearly meant to indicate it's a Dark Angels character. But beyond that it seems like over-analyzing it to me. None of the others have been in-depth and accurate enough to the point of matching up stuff like the the Iron Halo and the Sword design.

 

Edited March 12, 2023 by TheVoidDragon

[WrathOfTheLion]

20 minutes ago, TheVoidDragon said:

 

The point is that what's shown on the card is not meant to be an accurate depiction of what they're referring to.

 

The despoiler card for Abaddon was a guy in elaborate gold armour and a flaming crown

The Hulk card for Arks of Omens was a giant castle

The Hound for Angron was an actual hound

The shattered world for a destroyed planet was an angel

Farsight is a black haired human warrior with a horse

 

With pretty much all the other cards what they've had for their images has barely been relevant to the actual thing, more depicting a concept than that model/character/whatever. While the things those cards have included to show the specific character haven't exactly been vague - The despoiler card has the symbol of chaos on the back and The Farsight cards have had the Dawn Blade. Not something that can be interpreted as being the Dawn Blade.....Just the actual Dawn Blade.

 

But suddenly, with the Knight card, it's meant to be a literal depiction enough to the point details on the card are meant to be whats on a specific model, even though they don't actually match what's on that model?

 

The helmet design is quite clearly meant to indicate it's a Dark Angels character. But beyond that it seems like over-analyzing it to me. None of the others have been in-depth and accurate enough to the point of matching up stuff like the the Iron Halo and the Sword design.

 

There have been direct model references. Both <Astartes> and <The Lightning Tower> have direct elements of the Deathwing Ancient banner, and then that kit was even in the Wrath of the Soul Forge King box. They aren't quite exact, just as The Knight here isn't exact, but in a similar way the Knight is very much a caricature of the FW model.

 

I fail to see what your point is though. Are you trying to say anyone thinking it's Jonson are incorrect or are even groundless? 

Edited March 12, 2023 by WrathOfTheLion
grammar

[TheVoidDragon]

1 hour ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

There have been direct model references. Both <Astartes> and <The Lightning Tower> have direct elements of the Deathwing Ancient banner, and then that kit was even in the Wrath of the Soul Forge King box. They aren't quite exact, just as The Knight here isn't exact, but in a similar way the Knight is very much a caricature of the FW model.

 

I can't see any significant similarities between the Astartes card and that banner, and the Lightning tower card is a reference to the Tarot Card of The Tower - which, like that card, typically depicts a tower being struck by lightning.

 

1 hour ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

I fail to see what your point is though. Are you trying to say anyone thinking it's Jonson are incorrect or are even groundless? 

The way you've worded that sounds like a loaded question. No, I'm not saying it's definitely not the Lion. I'm saying that when the other cards have not been something that's been meant to be an accurate depiction overall, and when it has included elements meant to clearly show design elements of a character it's been quite unambiguous (like with the Dawn Blade and the Ethereal Honour Blade), that taking it as being meant to be the Lions sword and Iron halo just because he has them too and you can sort of kind of match up some parts (even though they're very noticeably different) sounds like looking too far into it as that isn't really in line with how things have been with the rest.

 

The cards are not accurate or literal with what they represent. They're figurative and ambiguous with their meaning, but and when they DO point to a more specific thing in a way you're meant to be able to figure it out from hints, they've been a lot less vague than that.

Edited March 12, 2023 by TheVoidDragon

[jaxom]

2 hours ago, TheVoidDragon said:

 

I can't see any significant similarities between the Astartes card and that banner, and the Lightning tower card is a reference to the Tarot Card of The Tower - which, like that card, typically depicts a tower being struck by lightning.

The only thing the Astartes card has in common with it is a broken sword, but there's also the use of the Tower imagery as part of the Deathwing banner. I always figured it represented the loyalist Dark Angel fleet bombarding Caliban and the sundering of the Tower of Angels from the rest of the (destroyed) planet.

Edited March 12, 2023 by jaxom
Spelling

[Rookitown]

That creature in the last tarot sure looks like how I'd depict a Calibanite Lion.

 

Therefore the only logical conclusion is that Zahariel is making a return

I suppose it could be that other guy that fought and killed one also...

Edited March 13, 2023 by Rookitown
clarity

[jaxom]

18 hours ago, Rookitown said:

That creature in the last tarot sure looks like how I'd depict a Calibanite Lion.

 

Therefore the only logical conclusion is that Zahariel is making a return

I suppose it could be that other guy that fought and killed one also...

Huh, maybe connecting the release of the Cypher book to AoO?

[Rookitown]

3 hours ago, jaxom said:

Huh, maybe connecting the release of the Cypher book to AoO?

Sorry, was more a bad joke. I think this tarot is teasing the Lion as AFAIK Zahariel and him are the only ones recorded to triumph over a Calibanite Lion. As much as I would love for Zahariel to be revealed as the modern Cypher I don't think he'll survive the destruction of Caliban, IMO Corswain is the better fit for 40k Cypher.

[jaxom]

My head canon is Corswain mortally wounds Zahariel who then psychically jumps into Corswain’s body. Cypher’s unusual behavior is based on who is currently controlling the body.

[TrawlingCleaner]

Today is the final Tarot:

 

So we should see the the last AoO book shown off next week at Adepticon with whatever that may bring

Edited March 17, 2023 by TrawlingCleaner