Heresy Era Librarians

[Noserenda]

As im sure i mentioned earlier in this thread, if you want to use the logo, go for it, it feels perfectly on brief for the Blood Angels in this period, though id suspect the symbol itself came from the White scars as it feels closer to them or the KSons, obviously the three legions worked closely together.

Id also note trying to "rivet count" a hilariously un-historic setting like 30k is always going to be a self defeating cycle, Games Workshop/Forge world do not care overmuch about consistency so there will always be wriggle room to make your toy soldiers as cool as you want.

[OttoVonAwesome]

On 9/10/2023 at 2:31 PM, General Zodd said:

To be fair, the background of any GW game, even Heresy which is pseudo-historical, isn’t a cast iron complete picture. They hardly ever give absolute statements about things like this because they don’t want to invalidate people’s creativity. The background is there as a sandbox for us to create our armies, fight our battles and tell our own stories in.

 

Obviously, if you paint your whole Imperial Fist army ultramarines blue with only the left pauldron as yellow, then you’re going to get some funny looks, and I wouldn’t suggest anyone go that far away from established archetypes. But at the end of the day, we’re talking about an epically enormous civil war with many different phases, 100s of major battle zones in an unimaginably vast galaxy. There’s plenty of room for most things people want to create.

 

And don’t get me started on people being angry about a slightly different look for the new MkIII armour, as if every thing is being made exactly the same across every single Forgeworld across the entire galaxy. They can’t even decide what a Warlord Titan looks like! And what drove that divergence? The desire to redesign and modernise the look of the models. The desire for continuity is understandable, but I think we can take it too far.

They def didn't want to stifle anyone's creativity and even gave examples of divergent colour schemes for different companies (The black armoured assualt company of the fists, the Blood Angels with a silver hand and helmet). If you painted blue Fists with a yellow pad first I apreciate you kept the yellow pad to make them easily identifiable as fists and then I'd be like cool scheme what's thier story. One of the best armies I saw on here for heresy 1.0 was the Black One Hundred wich was an Ultramarines project of dudes with one blue pualdron and black armour representing them being an entire company under censure.

 

Can't agree more about the mark 3 haters too. If anything the new designs are far closer to the actual original ones and the FW 1.0 designs are divergent and wierd. lol

[BrainGhostStudios]

I know Mortarion loathed sorcery and thereby Librarians, but I read that there were still Librarians within the Death Guard. Typhon had a secret cabal  of librarians named The Burried Dagger or something like that. I am making a librarian for my Death Guard and I think I will have him in the same color as the rest of the grunts of the army but with a Force Sword and a psychic hood - in order to hide better when papa Mort comes visiting. But maybe some blue could be fun? Still unsure!

 

 

[Marshal Mittens]

Morty: I hate the witch and the xenos!

 

Meanwhile his first Captian is a Xenos (Half Xenos?) Sorcerer. He was conflicted!

 

It seems most of the legions had some justification about using librarians. Except maybe the world eatters. 

Edited September 28, 2023 by Marshal Mittens

[lansalt]

On 9/21/2023 at 5:42 AM, BrainGhostStudios said:

I know Mortarion loathed sorcery and thereby Librarians, but I read that there were still Librarians within the Death Guard. Typhon had a secret cabal  of librarians named The Burried Dagger or something like that. I am making a librarian for my Death Guard and I think I will have him in the same color as the rest of the grunts of the army but with a Force Sword and a psychic hood - in order to hide better when papa Mort comes visiting. But maybe some blue could be fun? Still unsure!

 

 

The DG never had "Librarians", as in the members of the Librarius using their ranks and icons. However they had what Typhon called his "specialists" that were basically sorcerers (Esoterists /Librarians in game terms). They were undercover until the events of The Buried Dagger when the legion was finally corrupted by Nurgle.
I think DG psykers shouldn't look like typical librarians with psychic hoods and force blades, but more like Necrosius the Undying or the Malignant Plague Caster: a naked/hooded head, a few nurgle trinkets, and a staff

[Noserenda]

Werent they just starting one which Mortarion shut down? Its linked to Typhon extremely murky background though, so lord knows...

The World eaters did have a librarius, unfortunately the butchers nails kinda kill psykers dead...

[Brother Kraskor]

I understand the EC's lack of Librarius is meant to have contributed to the ease of their fall to Chaos (they literally had no awareness of the dark forces circling them). But I wonder about after they fell, especially once Fulgrim became aware of the Warp when he was possessed? Presumably as they fell deeper and began dabbling more and more, they must've booted up some sort of psyker programme at some stage (even if it was totally disorded/unrecogniseable as a Librarius)?

[Xin Ceithan]

33 minutes ago, Brother Kraskor said:

I understand the EC's lack of Librarius is meant to have contributed to the ease of their fall to Chaos (they literally had no awareness of the dark forces circling them). But I wonder about after they fell, especially once Fulgrim became aware of the Warp when he was possessed? Presumably as they fell deeper and began dabbling more and more, they must've booted up some sort of psyker programme at some stage (even if it was totally disorded/unrecogniseable as a Librarius)?

IMO even if the EC lacked a dedicated Librarius initially, I think they would sort of jumpstart something like it  then or even especially once they fall. They fall HARD  and given their creed of “ Excellence in Everything”  going to “Excess in everything” would have them strive to close the gap on that reason alone. 
Fabius Bile might dream of the NuMen, but here is on opportunity to go beyond mere flesh, non? 

And there is all that new stuff to experience with the Warp involved.

 

Though they might technically ( ruleswise ) be closer to Demologist / Arcanist types vs the more structured Librarius of other Legions, I might guess? 
 

At any rate, I imagine their upper tier Librarius is probably then turning ito a literal snake out of individual research and derisional peer review where everyone is intend of being the one to make  the next  great breakthrough. 
 

And the opportunity to become obsessed with gaining even more knowledge and secrets, to be literally on the cutting edge is so EC 

[No Foes Remain]

I was always somewhat confused about the EC's lack of psykers. Don't they aspire to be as 'perfect' as the Emperor and He's a psyker, yet they declare the psykic talent as 'impure' and I think in one of the books it was suggested that any marines who developed psykic powers offed themselves in battle or otherwise.

[Brother Kraskor]

1 hour ago, Xin Ceithan said:

IMO even if the EC lacked a dedicated Librarius initially, I think they would sort of jumpstart something like it  then or even especially once they fall. They fall HARD  and given their creed of “ Excellence in Everything”  going to “Excess in everything” would have them strive to close the gap on that reason alone. 
Fabius Bile might dream of the NuMen, but here is on opportunity to go beyond mere flesh, non? 

And there is all that new stuff to experience with the Warp involved.

 

Though they might technically ( ruleswise ) be closer to Demologist / Arcanist types vs the more structured Librarius of other Legions, I might guess? 
 

At any rate, I imagine their upper tier Librarius is probably then turning ito a literal snake out of individual research and derisional peer review where everyone is intend of being the one to make  the next  great breakthrough. 
 

And the opportunity to become obsessed with gaining even more knowledge and secrets, to be literally on the cutting edge is so EC 

 

Yeah that all makes sense to me. I think there's an opportunity for some cool fluff around a cabal of EC psykers taking their first steps into Warpcraft - like you say, a highly individualistic association more than a Librarius. Demologists or even Biomancers (leaning into the physical perfection/sensation). 

 

 

39 minutes ago, No Foes Remain said:

I was always somewhat confused about the EC's lack of psykers. Don't they aspire to be as 'perfect' as the Emperor and He's a psyker, yet they declare the psykic talent as 'impure' and I think in one of the books it was suggested that any marines who developed psykic powers offed themselves in battle or otherwise.

 

Do they aspire to be "Emperor-perfect" or "human-perfect" though (or perhaps even "Fulgrim-perfect")? Psykers are mutants of a kind and an aberration on the more puritanical view of the perfect human. It's twisted really to think that even when the EC were considered good and loyal, they are aspiring to this almost fanatical pursuit of an ideal which is totally divorced from any normal 31ist millennium human experience. 

[Urauloth]

On 9/28/2023 at 6:54 PM, Noserenda said:

Werent they just starting one which Mortarion shut down? Its linked to Typhon extremely murky background though, so lord knows...

 

According to Mortarion in A Thousand Sons they never had one, so I'm pretty sure anything they had in that vein was Typhon's pet project. That meshes thematically with the way sorcerers still aren't officially integrated into the legion today (outside the 4th company, of course).

[Noserenda]

I cant imagine the Emperors children managing anything even remotely formal after they fell, after all they had an extremely rapid collapse of discipline and were already a barely coherent force by mid heresy. Im sure some of them became sorcerors or otherwise invested in warp lore, but thats pretty different to the librarius.

[Gamiel]

10 hours ago, Urauloth said:

 

According to Mortarion in A Thousand Sons they never had one, so I'm pretty sure anything they had in that vein was Typhon's pet project. That meshes thematically with the way sorcerers still aren't officially integrated into the legion today (outside the 4th company, of course).

But since the Legions were so spread out, either alone or together with other Legion's forces, is it possible that one or more of these far flung groups had Librarians because they had missed that Mortarion said no to the idéa.

 

Also, contradicting information is part of the setting. What is stated in one book is different from what another book says.

 

There is also that if GW have in practice said it's OK to use Librarians in Legions that supposedly lacked them as long as there is no rule that say you can't.

 

And remember: "everything you have been told is a lie".

[lansalt]

On 9/30/2023 at 8:00 AM, Gamiel said:

Also, contradicting information is part of the setting. What is stated in one book is different from what another book says.

Just because some books contradict or retcon others about specific points doesn't mean that there's no a continuity or settled plot points, or we wouldn't have a setting to speak of in the first place. Some things definitely did exist and did happen, and others did not. In the case of the DG,  the whole legion met their primarch and spent a time reorganizing things to his liking. That happened more than a century before the Heresy, so there's no room for DG "Librarians" unless we talk about a Dusk Raiders force lost in the warp or something.

The rules of the game prioritize gameplay and player freedom and do not necessarily reflect accurately the fluff. So a player can field a DG Librarian, sure. But fluff-wise he could not  be anything more than one of Typhon's sorcerers, and he certainly wouln't use any of the typical space marine Librarian iconography.

[Astartes Consul]

IIRC, the only time the rules for Heresy have reflected lore in terms of a certain legion lacking a formation or unit was when Salamanders were banned from taking Destroyer Squads in 1.0.

 

Which was removed as a restriction from 2.0.

 

 

[corvus.calvariam]

5 hours ago, Astartes Consul said:

IIRC, the only time the rules for Heresy have reflected lore in terms of a certain legion lacking a formation or unit was when Salamanders were banned from taking Destroyer Squads in 1.0.

 

Which was removed as a restriction from 2.0.

 

 

 

Just a note, Salamanders weren't even fully banned from using Destroyer Squads in 1.0, the restriction only applied to their primary detachments.  You could freely take Salamander Destroyers in allied detachments.

 

The also never were completely devoid of Destroyers in the black book fluff, the Pyroclasts blurb makes reference to the small Cadre the Legion maintained.

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

On 9/28/2023 at 3:32 PM, Marshal Mittens said:

Morty: I hate the witch and the xenos!

 

Meanwhile his first Captian is a Xenos (Half Xenos?) Sorcerer. He was conflicted!

 

It seems most of the legions had some justification about using librarians. Except maybe the world eatters. 

WE had a librarius detachment. They were few, but the last members endured until Angron's elevation to Daemon Primarch (Betrayer). They used as another war tool, like artillery or tanks,  but Angron wasn't very interested in use them or recruiting/training more. And they couldn't use Butcher's Nails (they were all killed when they recived the implant), so they were like outcast in the legion. But still useful, when Angron losed control and they needed to bring him back to the flock.

[Gamiel]

2 hours ago, AGRAMAR said:

the last members 

That we know of...

[WrathOfTheLion]

On 10/9/2023 at 12:52 PM, Gamiel said:

That we know of...

That must be the true lineage of the Blood Ravens 

[MegaVolt87]

I can imagine younger recruits in command being more open minded about psykers. Seeing the changing nature of the HH battlefield, that librarians are an asset/ nessacary evil. While older sergeants grumble about it, believing that the Emperor was right in banning them. 

[Gamiel]

For reference sake would I like to mention that in Warhammer Visions #10 do they show an HH Iron Hands army with a Librerain on a bike who is fully blue even both his pauldrons.

 

 

[lansalt]

That army also included a Stalker and many other 40k units and bits, as was made to be used in both games. And as the private army of a staff member is not supposed to be used as a reference.

[Gamiel]

23 minutes ago, lansalt said:

That army also included a Stalker and many other 40k units and bits, as was made to be used in both games. And as the private army of a staff member is not supposed to be used as a reference.

If it is shown in one of GW's offical magazines, why not? 

[Lord_Caerolion]

They’ve shown random peoples armies in White Dwarf before too, doesn’t mean they’re all 100% canon now. 

[Noserenda]

They are as canon as anything else, remember GW deliberately don't have a canon.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Noserenda