Salvete, fellow WH40K fans

[MarqFJA87]

Greetings and salutations to you all. I, Militaris-Frater Marqius Furioso Justinian Auricor, have prevailed against the Shadow in the Warp and arrived!

 

... OK, that's as far as I could go with the in-universe roleplay; hopefully it's not too cringeworthy of an attempt to make a distinct introduction.

 

I've been a fan of WH40K for nearly 20 years now; it may surprise you to know that my first contact with the franchise was through a crossover fanfic I had encountered in 2006, where WH40K was actually secondary in prominence as a setting aspect (the main one was Ranma 1/2, of all things). That said, I've stayed on the outskirts of the fan base for over a decade, content to slowly absorb bits of lore while I focused on other IPs that held my attention; it's only in the last handful of years that WH40K managed to secure a significantly higher portion of my attention, and since then I've gradually began interacting with other fans. I've actually been aware of this forum since at least early 2010, but never had the impulse to join until now.

 

Some fair warnings:

• My main interest in WH40K is its lore; I have practically no interest in playing the tabletop wargame or owning any of its miniatures (too much work to paint them, for one). The video games, however, are another matter; once I get my screwed up life in order, I'll be looking into them (especially the RTS ones).
• I have quite a few hot takes, chief among them and probably the most controversial one (off the top of my head, at least) being my rejection of the modern official interpretation of the Emperor as "self-righteously arrogant ubermensch wannabe who actually made things net worse for humanity in his attempts to save it"; my impression of him before I learned of how the Horus Heresy series depicts him is that he's genuinely benevolent at his core, but is grappling with a suboptimal amount of heraclean tasks, cruelly stringent time constraints, the ambiguities and seeming incongruities of what his foresight is telling him is the path to his goal (this one in particular had been my personal explanation for his uncharacteristically cold way of handling Angron upon discovering him), and ultimately being just one individual who is far from omnipotent or omniscient, and you cannot convince that this take is not more fittingly tragic than the canon one, which I find to be a boringly uncreative cop-out.

 

... I think that covers everything that I wanted to say about myself. I hope that I can be a productive contributor to the discussions here, but don't be surprised if I spend much of my time just lurking silently; it's more or less the norm for me in almost every online community that I join.

[Brother Tyler]

Welcome to the Bolter & Chainsword community!

 

What motivated you to finally join the site? Was it simply to engage with other hobby enthusiasts?

 

Your take on the Emperor is sure to stir up discussion, especially from those who subscribe to the "official" interpretation that you describe. That might be an interesting topic to take up in the forum for the lore (either that of the Age of Darkness or the Age of the Imperium, depending upon where you prefer).

[W.A.Rorie]

Welcome to the B&C, @MarqFJA87

[FabiusV4lcoran]

Welcome!

[Kommisar_K]

Welcome Frater! Nice hot take I actually prefer that one to the official. The one guy who's really trying to be good becomes the only thing preserving a horrible empire, but for him to stop would be completely evil. Very WH40K

[Captain Idaho]

You know what, I totally agree with the narrative that the Emperor wasn't the evil sociopath the Internet meme makes out. What totally makes me scoff is the way people say he was a bad parent and the Primarchs often turned because of him.

 

Really, super human, super intellects, grown adults and they turn into babies because the Emperor said no to them or whatever?

 

Nah.

 

Welcome! 

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

Welcome to B&C, frater!

[Shard of Magnus]

Welcome to the B&C! You’ve peaked my curiosity on what your other hot takes are given that the view of the emperor was ‘probably’ the most controversial.
 

The impression you had of the emperor was stated as being prior to the seeing the Horus Heresy series depiction.  Did that series alter or reinforce your view? 

[MarqFJA87]

21 hours ago, Brother Tyler said:

What motivated you to finally join the site? Was it simply to engage with other hobby enthusiasts?

Well, that certainly was a reason, but the final straw for me was seeing an issue on a certain member's personal site and not being sure how to contact him, since it seemed said site was not touched for a long time (turns out I hadn't looked closely enough in the right places, otherwise I would've seen him replying to recent comments). Seeing that he's a member here, I figured this was my most reliable course of action.

 

Of course, I had also happened to leave a comment on his site about the issue first, if only to make sure I don't have to remember what I wanted to say... and he replied and addressed the issue by the next day, while I was waiting for my registration to be accepted.  Well, what's done is done; I was thinking of joining anyway, it just happened sooner than I would've otherwise have done.

 

20 hours ago, Kommisar_K said:

Welcome Frater! Nice hot take I actually prefer that one to the official. The one guy who's really trying to be good becomes the only thing preserving a horrible empire, but for him to stop would be completely evil. Very WH40K

 

I also like the idea of him mentally gnashing his teeth while doing the worse parts of being the autocratic dictator of a galaxy-spanning empire that is on a rapid spree of conquests and is secretly running on a very tight timeline and with absolutely non-negotiable objectives, from hypocritically condoning the Cult Mechanicus alongside his secular Imperial Truth, to genocidally enforcing Imperial rule upon any part of the human domain that insists on remaining independent (and thus free to accidentally fall into the arms of a Chaos God), all because his mental calculations and psychic scrying have repeatedly pointed him towards that path as being the "best" possible one he could take in terms of odds of succeeding in saving Mankind from suffering the fate of the Aeldari or otherwise finish off what the Men of Iron had started and the Age of Strife had further exacerbated.

 

Extra points for him paranoidly (or rightly) wondering if the Chaos Gods were messing with his visions of the future despite his and Malcador's efforts to winnow out any potential interference.

 

7 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

You know what, I totally agree with the narrative that the Emperor wasn't the evil sociopath the Internet meme makes out. What totally makes me scoff is the way people say he was a bad parent and the Primarchs often turned because of him.

 

Really, super human, super intellects, grown adults and they turn into babies because the Emperor said no to them or whatever?

 

Nah.

 

Welcome! 

 

To be fair, the Primarchs were all at best raised by humans or wild animals, and a few even spent their entire childhoods with only deadly beasts and monsters out for their blood for company. Even in old lore, it's stated that such upbringing is responsible for them possessing fallible mentalities, which were just as larger-than-life as their physiques are.

 

Then you get stuff like the Emperor's seeming callousness in not bothering to send his Custodes or whatever Astartes or other military forces he had to aid Angron in his last stand with his gladiator brethren, and instead teleport him to his flagship just before their last stand would begin (thereby making it seem like he betrayed his comrades to save his own skin), and virulent resentment and disloyalty towards the Emperor should become understandable.

 

5 hours ago, Shard of Magnus said:

Welcome to the B&C! You’ve peaked my curiosity on what your other hot takes are given that the view of the emperor was ‘probably’ the most controversial.
 

The impression you had of the emperor was stated as being prior to the seeing the Horus Heresy series depiction.  Did that series alter or reinforce your view? 

 

Like I said, it's the most controversial take that I could think of off the top of my head. And the series... well, helped refine my view a little with the extra detail given to his interactions with the Primarchs, but ultimately it just left me greatly disappointed in the Black Library's writers and cling to my headcanon even harder.

[Lathe Biosas]

Welcome aboard.

 

Don't worry about not playing the game or painting miniatures. There's a lot of fun to be had in 40k that's beyond the tabletop game.

 

Have you read any of the 40k RPGs? There's lots of cool lore in those too.

[MarqFJA87]

1 hour ago, Lathe Biosas said:

Welcome aboard.

 

Don't worry about not playing the game or painting miniatures. There's a lot of fun to be had in 40k that's beyond the tabletop game.

 

Have you read any of the 40k RPGs? There's lots of cool lore in those too.

 

Are you referring to the RPG lines by FFG? Yeah, I read those extensively.