What is Even the Story in 10th Edition (aka Why Can't BL Do Better?)

[Urauloth]

14 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

I haven’t kept up with the plot at all. I know nothing about the psychic awakening, pariah nexus, Arks of Omen, Baal. Even Leviathan I don’t really know what’s going on except there’s another hive fleet turned up. I’m reading a ton of older books and HH series currently, but haven’t touched the newer stuff at all. There’s just a bit too much of it all to know where to start.

This is a real problem right now. If you want to know about War Zone X, where do you start? Is there a BL novel about it? Probably not. That means you need a hardback campaign book, and if you didn't buy it when it was available, that might be difficult, because they go back a couple of editions. I really wanted the lore, maps and artwork from the Charadon books and I was lucky enough to get both for £30 on ebay, but I'm late getting them because I didn't want to pay full price for new rulebooks when I'm not currently playing WH40k. Even these books don't give you a complete picture, though, because the Flashpoint articles from WD are pretty important companion pieces.

Psychic Awakening and Gathering Storm at least got put in the WH+ vault, but they stopped updating that over a year ago, so I doubt we'll ever see any of the 9th edition campaign books added to it.

 

It would make sense for GW to reprint the lore sections of their campaign books from past editions along with the relevant articles in edition-agnostic books. Or they could start putting stuff in the vault again, that was the point of it!

 

Anyway, for my money:
Psychic Awakening: You didn't miss a lot. There's more psykers than there used to be. Faith and Fury and Ritual of the Damned were the only memorable books in this series imo. Some of them (War of the Spider) have basically nothing happen at all. The short stories they put up on Warhammer Community to go with this series were more interesting, I think they're preserved on Reddit.

 

Pariah Nexus: If you read a summary of this you've got all you need. I think we're going back there at some point, hopefully something happens this time.

 

Arks of Omen: This is a really great series if you like Chaos and lore for renegade Astartes. Probably not so good if you like meaningful payoffs or resolutions or any of that stuff though because the series just kind of fizzles out. The Flashpoints in WD are essential here because they cover what the Iron Warriors get up to.

Baal: There actually is a BL book for this one. Devastation of Baal by Guy Haley covers almost all of it. There's Darkness in the Blood too, but it's not necessary.

 

Leviathan: No clue.

[SvenIronhand]

7 hours ago, Urauloth said:

It would make sense for GW to reprint the lore sections of their campaign books from past editions along with the relevant articles in edition-agnostic books. Or they could start putting stuff in the vault again, that was the point of it!

 

I'd definitely agree here.

 

7 hours ago, Urauloth said:

Leviathan: No clue.

I would suggest looking in the 4th Tyrannic War Crusade book, to start with.

[lansalt]

8 hours ago, Urauloth said:

Leviathan: No clue.

It got a tie-in novel: https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/novels/ebook-leviathan-eng-2023.html , but it's more of a side story.

 

[Gamiel]

17 hours ago, Urauloth said:

This is a real problem right now. If you want to know about War Zone X, where do you start? Is there a BL novel about it? Probably not.

But is that not how it has been for most of the time ? How many BL books did Armageddon get when it was happening, how many books did the 13th Black Crusade have back in the day?

 

Also, I would recommend starting with the White Dwarfs that's about that War Zone. 

[Tolmeus]

On 10/19/2024 at 2:20 PM, Urauloth said:

Arks of Omen: This is a really great series if you like Chaos and lore for renegade Astartes. Probably not so good if you like meaningful payoffs or resolutions or any of that stuff though because the series just kind of fizzles out. The Flashpoints in WD are essential here because they cover what the Iron Warriors get up to.

I can recommend Arbitor Ian on Youtube, who has made a video to each of the five campaign books, explaining what is happening:

 

 

[Tolmeus]

Nevertheless, a question from me:
Where are we with history in 40k right now?
I think the Arks of Omen campaign is our current starting/ending point, right?
In other words, the next thing we need to know is what the Lion is up to, or that he and Guilliman should finally meet. And on the Chaos side, we have Abbadon, who is happily working with Vashtorr on his Doomsday device.

Concerning actual BL books, we are left with "Genefather"/ "Darkness in the Blood" and "The Lion - Son of the Forrest", right?

[Matcap86]

Honestly the disconnect between book and mini/campaign releases is so weird.

 

They just annouced the Silent King book... you know, one of the main big character releases of the previous arc of 40k more than 4 yours ago? It would make SO much more sense to release the books beforehand, get people hyped about the characters and then release the models.

 

ATM I have 0 interest in almost any of the characters or current 40k setting mainly because it's just such a disjointed mess of releases. 

[Nagashsnee]

1 hour ago, Matcap86 said:

Honestly the disconnect between book and mini/campaign releases is so weird.

 

They just annouced the Silent King book... you know, one of the main big character releases of the previous arc of 40k more than 4 yours ago? It would make SO much more sense to release the books beforehand, get people hyped about the characters and then release the models.

 

ATM I have 0 interest in almost any of the characters or current 40k setting mainly because it's just such a disjointed mess of releases. 

 

Its worse then that, as this book is not about the current fight in the nexus (with the ad mech push), its the original imperial push, pre plague wars, so even in the confines of 'current' 40k pariah nexus lore its way way too late to the party. 

[Matcap86]

1 hour ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

Its worse then that, as this book is not about the current fight in the nexus (with the ad mech push), its the original imperial push, pre plague wars, so even in the confines of 'current' 40k pariah nexus lore its way way too late to the party. 

 

Ooofff. It remains absurd to me how bad they're at combining/coordinating releases to generate a proper hypecycle. Same with space marine 2, where they're floundering to get anything promotional off the ground for it. That's like marketing 101??

[Karhedron]

Our very own @Chapter Master Valrak has just published this video which gives a breakdown from Guy Haley as to where the timeline is currently.

 

 

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

Oof. There's not really anything new in Haley's comment, but then again confusion is Valrak's natural state...

 

The fact that all of Dawn of Fire would be set prior to and dovetail into the Plague War trilogy was confirmed by Haley years ago.

 

Also, I think Haley was expecting Valrak to actually remember what happened in Devastation of Baal when he talks about it taking place "out of sync." He's referring to the early events of that novel very obviously taking place just prior to the opening of the Great Rift and then Baal being swallowed up by the warp and then spit out at a later time... POST - Plague War, not DURING as Val has it slated in his timeline.

 

(Yes, it's true that even the latter part of the book was originally set BEFORE the Plague War but that was back during the original 8th-Ed timeline where the Plague War was set at the 112-year mark post-Rift, not the 12-year mark where it was retconned in Godblight.)

 

Haley obviously wrote not only Devastation, but even the followup Darkness in the Blood as taking place prior to Dark Imperium / Plague War and The Great Work, but by the time Darkness actually came out, he was aware he'd be changing the timeline with the retcon and he's been pretty consistent ever since.

 

The Cawl books were always set post - Plague War, this is obvious due to Felix only being named a Tetrarch in Dark Imperium and then actually BEING a Tetrarch in The Great Work. Prior to us actually getting to read the Godblight novel, the only question was whether The Great Work was somehow set in between Plague War and Godblight. Upon reading the latter, it's obvious the book sets up the events of The Great Work.

 

The Son of the Forest and Arks of Omen stuff SHOULDN'T take place as early as Val has them (setting Son during the Cawl trilogy) since The Red Angel takes place before Son and is explicitly set "decades" after the opening of the Rift while the Cawl books and Darkness in the Blood are at about the fourteen-year mark post-Rift. But I wouldn't put it past GW and/or Black Library to invalidate that reference so those books might indeed wind up getting pushed forward.

[darkhorse0607]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

Our very own @Chapter Master Valrak has just published this video which gives a breakdown from Guy Haley as to where the timeline is currently.

 

 

 

You shouldn't need a flow chart to keep track of things over the span of a handful of books. The fact that Haley doesn't even know when Arks of Omen is set is shows how badly GW is keeping track of things

 

Which wouldn't matter normally, but since every major event has to have the same 3 people in it, it's a little sad

[Indy Techwisp]

10th's story was meant to be the 4th Tyranic War, with the largest ever Tyranid assault on the Galaxy forcing the Imperium to focus their attention on it, thus letting other Factions who couldn't do stuff under Imperium pressure go off and actually have plot progression.

 

Instead, we got right up to the climax of that invasion before jumping halfway across the Galaxy to the Pariah Nexus AGAIN just so the Necrons and the AdMech could have the Saltiest Runback of all time.

Edited November 27 by Indy Techwisp

[DarkChaplain]

...I'm kinda baffled by the video because all of this is apparent if you actually read the books.

 

  

56 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

 

You shouldn't need a flow chart to keep track of things over the span of a handful of books. The fact that Haley doesn't even know when Arks of Omen is set is shows how badly GW is keeping track of things

 

And you don't, if you read at least the series synopsis/that of book 1. All books mentioned in that timeline are pretty obvious with when they're set, and Event B can't happen without Event A having occured.

 

It only gets complicated if you add in further books to the ones shown in the chart (which also didn't even feature the rest of the Blood Angels trilogy, mind, one of which connects back to The Lion, which is placed badly in the chart), which Valrak only alluded to (Chris Wraight's Watchers of the Throne, Vaults of Terra, Indomitus, Knights of Macragge, The Swords of Calth and so forth, and even those are all easily placed from what they tell us in the text).

 

Heck, this is all stuff we've had down years ago on here, and Track of Words even put up a primer in 2021 with the books out at the time, just to avoid potential confusion!

Edited November 27 by DarkChaplain

[Chapter Master Valrak]

1 hour ago, Lord Nord in Gravis Armour said:

Oof. There's not really anything new in Haley's comment, but then again confusion is Valrak's natural state...

 

This gave me a laugh, thanks, mate 

[Karhedron]

21 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

Heck, this is all stuff we've had down years ago on here, and Track of Words even put up a primer in 2021 with the books out at the time, just to avoid potential confusion!

 

Agreed. I think that some people are confused over the timeline and are assuming it is because BL themselves are confused whereas in fact it is down to issues such as not reading all the books etc.

 

The only real confusion was the retconning of the timeline from 112 years post-rift to just 12. This meant that the stories released in 8th edition took place in a much more compressed timeframe than people had thought but doesn't actually break anything continuity-wise.

[DarkChaplain]

And the Dawn of Fire Appendices also clear up a lot of the confusion directly, by mentioning stuff from campaign books and other novels, and placing them in relation to DoF/early Indomitus!

[caladancid]

10 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

...I'm kinda baffled by the video because all of this is apparent if you actually read the books.

 

  

 

And you don't, if you read at least the series synopsis/that of book 1. All books mentioned in that timeline are pretty obvious with when they're set, and Event B can't happen without Event A having occured.

 

It only gets complicated if you add in further books to the ones shown in the chart (which also didn't even feature the rest of the Blood Angels trilogy, mind, one of which connects back to The Lion, which is placed badly in the chart), which Valrak only alluded to (Chris Wraight's Watchers of the Throne, Vaults of Terra, Indomitus, Knights of Macragge, The Swords of Calth and so forth, and even those are all easily placed from what they tell us in the text).

 

Heck, this is all stuff we've had down years ago on here, and Track of Words even put up a primer in 2021 with the books out at the time, just to avoid potential confusion!

 

This is quite the ironic opening line. 

 

When one of the main authors themselves doesn't know where books fit...that's an issue. 

 

Also if I recall correctly this exact same topic has come up more than once and been debated because it actually does require thinking, and I think that some of the folks piling on here were expressing ideas in a far more welcoming and constructive tone back then.

[Karhedron]

6 hours ago, caladancid said:

When one of the main authors themselves doesn't know where books fit...that's an issue. 

 

Just remember that Valrak has reported a fairly brief converstaion over social media. You are assuming that the author does not know the order when it may simply be Valrak not quite translating the details correctly from conversation to video. Once again you are accusing BL of not knowing what they are doing based on 2nd or 3rd hand reporting of conversations. If you read all the books, there does not feel like any confusion.

 

More crucially, I cannot recall any moments in the books where you think "hang on, Character X should not be a Primaris yet because he doesn't cross the Rubicon until Book Y". Unless there are actual contradictions of the fluff within the books themselves, I don't think there is a problem. If anyone has spotted any, please feel free to highlight them but I haven't come across any myself.

[Orange Knight]

What is the obsession people have with an accurate timeline in terms of dates?

 

The official lore states that the Imperium calendar is flawed and all over the place. Depending on who you ask, the date can vary by over one thousand years. Also the Great Rift is messing with the flow of time even more.

 

It's entirely possible that the events in the Devastation of Baal took place on a date BEFORE Guilliman even woke up. We know this isn't the case, but it could be written as such. The actual dating of things accurately isn't vital in my opinion, and if you look into the subject of trying to date things across planets in perfect sync, this would present  substantial challenges in real life, even between planets that are relatively close (Earth and Mars as an example).

 

Stories being set "too early" in the timeline and not being mentioned elsewhere are easily explained by time dilation or errors with the calendar on those worlds or systems.

 

In general there seems to be, in my opinion, an unreasonable demand from certain circles in the community for everything to be perfetly explained and for nothing to happen without a thorough description of the events that lead up to it.

This is not how 40k lore was originally presented. When the setting was conceived and introduced, the backstory was not set in stone. People need to be reminded that the Horus Heresy was written AFTER 40k had been established, so the setting existed before the history that jutified it did.

 

This same outcry from the community is probably how we ended up with the dull "Dawn of Fire" novel series. They had to justify the state of the galaxy post Primaris, but a time skip and a returned Primarch were already enough justfication for things to have changed. We know that the Imperium was very different in M33, M36, etc etc. A few books released over the years that detailes certain events, like the brilliant "Watchers of the Throne" novels from Chris Wraight would have been enough for us to extrapolate what had happened.

Edited November 28 by Orange Knight

[Nagashsnee]

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

What is the obsession people have with an accurate timeline in terms of dates?

 

The official lore states that the Imperium calendar is flawed and all over the place. Depending on who you ask, the date can vary by over one thousand years. Also the Great Rift is messing with the flow of time even more.

 

It's entirely possible that the events in the Devastation of Baal took place on a date BEFORE Guilliman even woke up. We know this isn't the case, but it could be written as such. The actual dating of things accurately isn't vital in my opinion, and if you look into the subject of trying to date things across planets in perfect sync, this would present  substantial challenges in real life, even between planets that are relatively close (Earth and Mars as an example).

 

Stories being set "too early" in the timeline and not being mentioned elsewhere are easily explained by time dilation or errors with the calendar on those worlds or systems.

 

In general there seems to be, in my opinion, an unreasonable demand from certain circles in the community for everything to be perfetly explained and for nothing to happen without a thorough description of the events that lead up to it.

This is not how 40k lore was originally presented. When the setting was conceived and introduced, the backstory was not set in stone. People need to be reminded that the Horus Heresy was written AFTER 40k had been established, so the setting existed before the history that jutified it did.

 

This same outcry from the community is probably how we ended up with the dull "Dawn of Fire" novel series. They had to justify the state of the galaxy post Primaris, but a time skip and a returned Primarch were already enough justfication for things to have changed. We know that the Imperium was very different in M33, M36, etc etc. A few books released over the years that detailes certain events, like the brilliant "Watchers of the Throne" novels from Chris Wraight would have been enough for us to extrapolate what had happened.

This would be fantastic to do and great to have. Unfortunately BL doesn't do this.  Instead it sometimes goes out of its way to give us firm dates and a timeline, which people see and know, and then BL rips its own timeline to shreds. 

 

Now if this was done in a cool in universe way that would be swell, but it isnt. Its dont by laziness and incompetence, and THAT drives people crazy.  The imperium has methods for getting a general sense of how long has passed during travel/warp events.  It can be used as a cheat code when planned for, otherwise it just makes things worse. 

 

Some basic structure HAS to happen, for the stories to function and a narrative to happen.  In source books and codexs timelines are printed and give a general sense of a A-B-C of events. No amount of date uncertainty of time travel would change this. The imperial dating system even has a digit to signify how accurate the date is. 

 

People do not have a issue with well planned, thought out and executed time shenanigans. But these are simply almost never what happens, what happens is authors make misakes, editors snooze on the job and contradictions pile up. To a degree this is very 40k and fitting....to a degree. After a point it is detrimental to story telling .

 

This never use to be a huge issue but as 40k becomes more and more hyper focused on named characters and major events it becomes more noticeable and its effects more detrimental.  The outcry was not over changes, it was over the changes being told instead of shown. It was because nothing actually changed but paradoxically we kept getting told everything changed. It was because the changed went against key logic in the lore (note i aint even talking about lore changes here). Atfer 40 years of being told about marine life expectancy, average veterancy levels and the like, having 200 years go by without anyone dying as beyond stupid.  Anyhow this is not the place for that again. 

 

In summary people had a problem with quality of the execution. Not the ideas themselves in many cases. I dont care how timelines and timeskips COULD have been used. Only how BL used them, and it was poorly, so people took issue.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

In general there seems to be, in my opinion, an unreasonable demand from certain circles in the community for everything to be perfetly explained and for nothing to happen without a thorough description of the events that lead up to it.

 

The price of getting what you want is having what once you wanted, or so I've heard it said.

 

I completely agree. Much of the excellence of the setting has been founded on interpretations, perspectives, and simple mysteries that allow the reader/player to think, explore, debate and build within that setting. Whenever I see someone ask for a Unification Wars series, I actually manifest a small shadow creature to torment their slumber. Whenever I read people asking for more details on, say, the Men of Iron or the Dark Age, my skeleton crawls out of my flesh body and scurries off into the night, screaming wordlessly.

 

People talk about 'media literacy' a bit these days. Part of that literacy is, I think, understanding that things are fun because they don't have a 'proper' answer, and trying to give that 'proper' answer is inevitably alienating. 

[caladancid]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Just remember that Valrak has reported a fairly brief converstaion over social media. You are assuming that the author does not know the order when it may simply be Valrak not quite translating the details correctly from conversation to video. Once again you are accusing BL of not knowing what they are doing based on 2nd or 3rd hand reporting of conversations. If you read all the books, there does not feel like any confusion.

 

More crucially, I cannot recall any moments in the books where you think "hang on, Character X should not be a Primaris yet because he doesn't cross the Rubicon until Book Y". Unless there are actual contradictions of the fluff within the books themselves, I don't think there is a problem. If anyone has spotted any, please feel free to highlight them but I haven't come across any myself.

 

Its a direct response from the author? He says he does not know the order (as to one particular part).

 

This is all a bit wild, when the entire series of Plague Wars had its timeline changed from the original books because, presumably, it did not work. So I guess its fine to create a framework where you make it work in your head, but at some point BL//GW thought there was enough work needed that they made a huge change.

[Karhedron]

There was one change made after Dark Imperium where the Indomitus Crusade was supposed to have lasted 112 years. In this book, we see Calgar still as a Firstborn and feeling sidelined by the new intake of Primaris recruits. Then Warzone Nachmund came out and Calgar crossed the Rubicon. Now this was supposed to be fairly soon after the opening of the Great Rift. It was a one-off failure of communication  between BL and design Studio which was fixed with the retcon make the Indomitus Crusade 12 years long. This change only affected Dark Imperium. Both Plague War and Godblight were consistent with the new timeframe.

 

The problem was not that BL made a timeframe that did not work, it was that BL and the DS independently came up with their own timeframes are realized they were incompatible. So there was a small retcon and life moved on. Since the retcon, everything has been consistent.

 

To anyone claiming BL don't know what they are doing, please provide evidence in the form of continuity conflicts or anything else that happens after that single retcon. Otherwise you are claiming that BL have a problem without any actual evidence. It doesn't matter if one author makes a social media post that maybe gets a detail wrong, I don't keep all the details of my job in my head because I know my memory is fallible. If the dozen or so books that have been set post-Great Rift are all consistent then I would say that is proof BL does NOT have a problem. They have have reviews and processes in place to make sure that books that hit the shelves are consistent.

[Chapter Master Valrak]

The full thread is here, read it for yourselves, lots of answers to different things: