Permanent death of heroes and villains in Warhammer 40K lore. We need it.

[jokaero weaponsmith]

A universe where there is only war, but not death of named characters?

It’s a universe without finality, without grit, without anguish, without hopelessness, without true hero’s and well not very Grimdark.

Let there be death, let there be last stands, let be gore, let there be loss, let there be corpses. ( dang if I don’t sound like one of those chaos worshipers)

 

Let there be grim in the darkness

 

Let there be some better story telling  

 

[crimsondave]

On 9/9/2025 at 12:21 PM, Evil Eye said:

"Well Guilliman is really good and the top tourney players recommend I use him so I guess they're Ultramarines today. No, there isn't a tournament coming up and my FLGS is mostly a friendly environment, why do you ask?"

 

"You don't run your army as a proxy for the New Hotness? Ugh, you must be a terrible opponent!"

I feel you.  This is why I just collect and paint.  I was getting migraines from the non stop eye rolling.

[phandaal]

On 8/30/2025 at 7:20 AM, Evil Eye said:

Characters actually dying would be absolutely fine. The problem is GW trying to lock the game into "the present" of 40K and retiring any characters who do die from the rules and model range. As mentioned above, prior to this we had plenty of characters who were dead by the then-present on their introduction; more a thing in WHFB admittedly but it still existed in 40K. Nowadays GW seems to have taken a leaf out of 1980s Hasbro's book and decided that death is only to be used to get rid of a character they don't sell anymore.

 

Admittedly this would be far less of an issue if 40K hadn't become so absurdly focused on named characters in the first place but there we go.

 

100% this. We used to have dead characters, and people were totally OK with that.

 

As you say, part of the problem nowadays is if a character dies in the Current Moment of the story, their rules and model go away. Anybody remember Captain Balthazar of the Dark Angels? GW sure doesn't.

 

Another big problem, which I think is going to get more pronounced, is the 30k and 40k settings are basically getting merged via characters and themes and plots being carried forward from 30k into 40k. Anything that needs to be brought in from the past is hand waved via bull:cuss: warp space magic or stasis tech or whatever. The setting is basically losing 10,000 years.

 

So not only do characters come and go in the current range/rules based on whatever today's story is, but historical characters from any time period between 30k and 40k might as well not exist.

[OnePaulMurray]

Lots of people make points that mirror my own thoughts on this.

 

GW has always been able to balance itself finely between the setting and story, in part because they've had 10,000 years of a sandbox to play in so they could choose their moments. With the condensing of the narrative into such a narrow timeline though, they have lost some of the ability to tell interesting stories elsewhere. We know where  the major players are. We know where the major chapters are, and so on.

 

With regards to character death; I think it is necessary to maintaining anything like an interesting narrative. You can't make good stories when there is no jeopardy and we are rapidly approaching that stage now. Everytime a new Primaris version of a classic character is released you know that you're locked into him being alive for the next four or five years, which means that there is also a major glass ceiling for any new characters you might invent in the established chapters. All very dull and predictable.

 

I skipped almost all of the Dawn of Fire series because of this. Advertising explosive storytelling when the overarching plot is going nowhere, is very difficult.

 

The other thing that I feel personally, is that Imperium Nihilus has tipped into too grim, too dark and hence a bit daft.

 

Every other ship disappears? Well they just wouldn't carry on flying, they couldn't. Chaos emerge on every world stronger than ever and conquer literal planets in about a week... that's just not reasonable. They have lost a bit of the creeping dread aspect that used to make the best writing stand-out.

 

I could go on, you get my drift. Dante should have died after Baal, Calgar should have died fighting Abaddon. But then Abaddon should get close to his goal and end up dead too. Have an epiphany to manifest Sigismund's doom and then get ganked by Huron or someone like that. He always was a boring lad anyway.

[HeadlessCross]

On 9/17/2025 at 12:22 AM, Antarius said:

e.g. Yarrick could just not be active anymore and people can decide for themselves what happened to him

Yarrick retiring is FAR worse than him dying in combat seeing as he kinda wants to, ya know, fight?

[Antarius]

I don't necessarily think characters need to die left and right, but I will say this for death: it makes it more difficult to maintain the feeling that this is a grim, uncaring universe when no one important ever dies. I know it's a bit old hat to complain about Loken, but he really was a good example of a cool character with a nice arc that got ruined by bringing him back (and in a super ham-handed way too); heroic tragedies need tragedy to work, after all.

I also don't think it needs to be about liking/disliking characters. I mean, I like Calgar, but I absolutely wouldn't mind if Abaddon had killed him, especially if they wanted to bring Guilliman back, because it could have been a cool storyline and it could actually enhance Calgar's appeal in many ways. For example, I liked AD-B's rendition of Sigismund's death, because it managed to both convey, expand and enhance both Abaddon and Sigismund and their respective storylines. By contrast, moving away from Abaddon's role as the prophesied doom of the Imperium means he might as well be dead, but good luck writing that story, because it can only fall flat when you dismantle decades of build up like that - kinda like when Cypher finally made it to Earth and... nothing happened.

In a similar vein, I think moving away from the "last days of humanity" theme was a mistake, especially since they go about it in such a wishy-washy fashion - it's an obvious case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, from a storytelling perspective.

[OnePaulMurray]

1 hour ago, Antarius said:

I don't necessarily think characters need to die left and right, but I will say this for death: it makes it more difficult to maintain the feeling that this is a grim, uncaring universe when no one important ever dies. I know it's a bit old hat to complain about Loken, but he really was a good example of a cool character with a nice arc that got ruined by bringing him back (and in a super ham-handed way too); heroic tragedies need tragedy to work, after all.

I also don't think it needs to be about liking/disliking characters. I mean, I like Calgar, but I absolutely wouldn't mind if Abaddon had killed him, especially if they wanted to bring Guilliman back, because it could have been a cool storyline and it could actually enhance Calgar's appeal in many ways. For example, I liked AD-B's rendition of Sigismund's death, because it managed to both convey, expand and enhance both Abaddon and Sigismund and their respective storylines. By contrast, moving away from Abaddon's role as the prophesied doom of the Imperium means he might as well be dead, but good luck writing that story, because it can only fall flat when you dismantle decades of build up like that - kinda like when Cypher finally made it to Earth and... nothing happened.

In a similar vein, I think moving away from the "last days of humanity" theme was a mistake, especially since they go about it in such a wishy-washy fashion - it's an obvious case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, from a storytelling perspective.

I agree with this I think, and it definitely isn't about not liking characters.

 

There's lots behind it that others have touched on, but it is the old Star Trek problem where Kirk, Bones and Ensign Dave went down to the planet... the story has practically written itself already.

 

There are also a finite number of stories that you can tell with some of these characters before they become dull.

 

I really enjoyed Bile outwitting the Eldar and his fellows to board a craft world and heist-movie a macguffin from it. I also enjoyed him outwitting the Necrons and his fellows on Solemnace to heist-movie a macguffin. By the time he is going to outwit Cawl to heist-movie another macguffin, I was pretty much done. He needs to lose and suffer consequences or it isn't interesting. 

 

Same issue with Abaddon and his perpetual failing Black Crusades and their retcon into glorious incremental successes. Every story for him is now told unless you are going to reach a crescendo.

[phandaal]

Reading these posts reminded me that one of GW's most enduringly popular characters was dead before his story even started - Ciaphas Cain. The whole premise of his story is that Amberly is going through Ciaphas' secret memoirs posthumously.

 

Side note - this is who Henry Cavill should play in 40k live action. He could 100% pull off that combo of heroic (how everyone else sees Ciaphas) and self deprecating (how Ciaphas sees himself).

[Evil Eye]

7 hours ago, Antarius said:

it makes it more difficult to maintain the feeling that this is a grim, uncaring universe when no one important ever dies.

I both agree and sort of disagree, but only sort of. I agree that having important characters be functionally immortal is a really, really bad way of doing things and having them meet satisfying ends is not a bad thing (Tycho going out in a blaze of glory on Armageddon, or as you say Sigismund, whose last words might be some of the coolest words put to pen in a 40K book). I think the biggest problem- and this is where I disagree a little- is that the named characters are too important to the overall setting, especially given how active and borderline omnipresent they are, not to mention how seriously powerful.

 

"Lesser" characters like Yarrick or Telion are mostly hamstrung by the whole "if they die we can't sell them" nonsense discussed earlier, but there's a much bigger issue. Big "head honcho" characters like Abaddon, Ghazghkull etc present an awkward conundrum in that they are supposed to not only be very, very powerful warriors but also the leaders of the poster-boy army of their respective faction, but also have to be playable on the tabletop. Realistically, Abaddon is still the head of the Black Legion, and the most powerful, influential and feared (post)human enemy of the Imperium in the entire galaxy, because he is that much of a monster, not only in terms of combat finesse but also charisma and wits. If he died, the entire Black Legion would collapse on account of there not being another of his ilk alive, and it's not like nobody's tried to bump him off. He's a legendary demigod of a character who's been waging war for ten thousand years and isn't planning on stopping any time soon- to represent such a character in the game and do him justice, he'd singlehandedly make the 5th Edition Grey Knight codex look modestly powerful and difficult to win with, and the main reasons he hasn't steamrolled the entire galaxy are the presence of similarly epic (in the truest sense of the word, not the meme sense) heroes in other opposing factions, along with the logistical nightmare of wrangling the forces of Chaos for Black Crusades and getting them to stop backstabbing each other for five seconds.

 

Obviously if Abaddon is bumped off, as mentioned before the Black Legion- and Chaos as a unified threat- would be pretty much neutralized; he's the keystone stopping the archway of the realspace forces of Chaos from crumbling, and without mortal worshippers the Dark Gods would not only be drastically limited in their ability to encroach on realspace, they'd possibly shrivel and die from not having believers. Chaos suddenly not being a major problem anymore isn't really a very good thing for the setting (unless the Imperium is so horrifically mauled that it ceases to exist as a state and becomes scattered, balkanized remnants trying to keep the flame of humanity alive amongst the stars as the vengeful but similarly ragged vestiges of their destroyers try and enact futile vengeance by finishing the job...which actually sounds much cooler than it has any right to...) so Abaddon has to stay alive. The issue being he keeps getting into fights with similar "lynchpin" characters whose own deaths would write GW into a corner. So they march up to each other, slap each other around a bit until they both get tired, go "Alright, that'll do for now, see you next Tuesday!" and go home until the next "big event" when the exact same thing happens. In all honesty, the best thing for such characters would for them to be "very important background characters" whose actions are referred to, but seldom witnessed first-hand- we know Abaddon was present at the Battle of Saint Mediocritus' Redoubt, and we know he killed a lot of guys, but that's all we know.

 

...Unfortunately, being playable in the game with their own models and everything, such characters are bloody everywhere, as GW wants to show off Abaddon fighting the next BIG SHOCKING TWIST RETURN named character to advertise both Abaddon and whoever the next big seller is...resulting in Abaddon getting Worfed and the new character's appearance coming across oddly like the latest new toy to appear in a merch-driven cartoon. This leads to a perpetuation of the problem, where BIG EPIC CHARACTERS CLASH AND NOTHING IN PARTICULAR HAPPENS OF ANY CONSEQUENCE and the characters go from nigh-mythical heroes (or villains) to something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. And on top of this, said characters can't be too powerful in the game, because if they were accurate to what they're supposed to be like in the fluff, they'd throw the already-tenuous balance of the game completely out the window, and GW wants as many people buying big expensive characters on too-large bases as possible. The upshot of this being Abaddon is powerful enough that he shows up in way more battles than he realistically should and can certainly bully non-named characters into a paste, but due to both the overly "gamey" mechanics of the current ruleset and the expectation that he should be fieldable and counterable in any game at all, he certainly doesn't feel like the absolute delete-button that he's supposed to be.

 

So to condense that a lot, using Abaddon as an example (replace with Ghazghkull, Guilliman, Cawl or whoever), he's too important to die but appears in battle (both in fluff and on the tabletop) way too often and never gets anything realistically done in the fluff, because if he or his inevitable opponent ever did do anything of consequence the setting would break, and because of the need to have him sell but not completely break the game, he appears with the frequency and potency that the average Chaos Lord should.

 

So what's the solution? To me, there's two main things that need doing, bearing in mind that "lynchpin" characters have to stay alive or else the setting either falls apart completely or has to be moved forward in such a way it makes Warhammer Fantasy to Age of Sigmar look like the 40K 3.5E to 4E transition in terms of smoothness and not ruining everything.

 

The first is pretty obvious- move these characters into the background where they belong. By all means, have them appear on occasion in the fluff, and have them be absolute forces of nature when they do, but for the most part their stories are up to the player to tell. Write stories from the perspective of more (relatively) minor characters, ones not intended to sell a big fancy model, and thus ones that can die. And for the love of the Emperor, no more lynchpin duels.

 

The second is more related to the game, and that's to make said characters more representative of what they're supposed to be, but put actual restrictions on their use. Only with opponent's permission ala 2E, only above certain points limits, only in certain scenarios, whatever; Abaddon does not belong on a minor conflict between a small Chaos cult and a regiment of Guard on a backwater agri-world. By all means make them useable but make getting Abaddon or whoever onto the tabletop feel like a big deal, rather than just something you do because you want to win the game.

 

Of course this will never happen, because the fluff turning into a never ending slog of MCU-tier anticlimatic "duels" and the game becoming a tabletop MOBA with seasonal patches makes GW too much money. But hey, I can dream.