Omnissiah be praised! The God-Machines Walk!
Warhammer Warhammer General discussion thread: Now with 100% more Space Marines
- Thread starter Battlegrinder
- Start date
Just got back from a match. Me vs a space wolf army, 1k point limit. The core of both armies was fairly similar, 5 man intercessors, cheap HQs, etc. We even both brought some inceptors. What differed was the rest of the army. My opponent opted for an ancient and an extra LT, bulking up one of the intercessor squads to ten men, and a small squad of reivers and hellblasters.
I brought my new grav-raider achilles.
For those of you who don't know, the achilles packs 4 multi-meltas and a quad mortar (a weapon that can only be the result of a drunken night of regret between a thunderfire cannon and a battle cannon). 355 points of tank melting hatred, wrapped in a 2+ armor save and 4+ invul, with a few more wounds over the stock land raider just to rub it in. VS a scattered handful of MEQs.
In my defense, I did not know precisely what I was up against when I made my list. That said, it still ended up being a brutal curbstomp, since after the hellblasters were melted on turn one by a combination of bolt rifle rifle and multi-meltas, all of the enemy anti-tank weapons were obliterated and the grav raider had free reign to park itself in the center of the board and methodically slaughter everything that dared get within two feet of it, and the combination of filling an army roster with MSU and then heavily dispersing them meant that there was nothing that could push through the raider's firepower and lock it in melee or otherwise engage it. The inceptors also dropped into the enemy backfield and flew around maunvering close to enemy characters and blowing them away with point blank assault bolter fire, which didn't help things (sending flyers over enemy lines to park them right next to hostile HQs has generally been fairly successful for me, as for some reason people keep putting HQs behind firendly units and not amoungst them, though they usually wise up after the first few stormraven drive-bys). We called it on turn 4, after several rounds of the space wolves running away from the invincible tan monster one-shoting them.
I brought my new grav-raider achilles.
For those of you who don't know, the achilles packs 4 multi-meltas and a quad mortar (a weapon that can only be the result of a drunken night of regret between a thunderfire cannon and a battle cannon). 355 points of tank melting hatred, wrapped in a 2+ armor save and 4+ invul, with a few more wounds over the stock land raider just to rub it in. VS a scattered handful of MEQs.
In my defense, I did not know precisely what I was up against when I made my list. That said, it still ended up being a brutal curbstomp, since after the hellblasters were melted on turn one by a combination of bolt rifle rifle and multi-meltas, all of the enemy anti-tank weapons were obliterated and the grav raider had free reign to park itself in the center of the board and methodically slaughter everything that dared get within two feet of it, and the combination of filling an army roster with MSU and then heavily dispersing them meant that there was nothing that could push through the raider's firepower and lock it in melee or otherwise engage it. The inceptors also dropped into the enemy backfield and flew around maunvering close to enemy characters and blowing them away with point blank assault bolter fire, which didn't help things (sending flyers over enemy lines to park them right next to hostile HQs has generally been fairly successful for me, as for some reason people keep putting HQs behind firendly units and not amoungst them, though they usually wise up after the first few stormraven drive-bys). We called it on turn 4, after several rounds of the space wolves running away from the invincible tan monster one-shoting them.
I'm writing a 40K fic involving a different heresy. The big change is that Lorgar gets sanctioned a'la the two Lost Primarchs (the Ultramarines are not involved in said sanction) and Roboute Guilliman is the first primarch to turn to Chaos.
I'm looking for suggestions on why he falls. My current thought is actually much like Horus's fall in that Chaos shows him the future and convinces him that said future is what will occur if the Emperor is left on the throne. It doesn't help that the Emperor ordered Exterminatus on every world that Lorgar brought into "compliance" and refuses to explain his reasons (the Emperor has become aware of the chaos taint in the Word Bearers rituals and in the faith being spread). So Roboute decides that he needs to get his father replaced and starts laying the groundwork for the Heresy.
Much like Lorgar this involves recruiting his brothers (or at least encouraging their falls) but it also includes building up the infrastructure and warmachine to pull off a proper rebellion.
So for those with a deeper understanding of 40K and its lore than I, does that seem sensible for Roboute's fall and do you have any other suggestions on that topic? Or suggestions for modifying Horus's fall to account for the differences between Lorgar and Roboute (and so that they don't both fall for virtually identical reasons)?
I'm looking for suggestions on why he falls. My current thought is actually much like Horus's fall in that Chaos shows him the future and convinces him that said future is what will occur if the Emperor is left on the throne. It doesn't help that the Emperor ordered Exterminatus on every world that Lorgar brought into "compliance" and refuses to explain his reasons (the Emperor has become aware of the chaos taint in the Word Bearers rituals and in the faith being spread). So Roboute decides that he needs to get his father replaced and starts laying the groundwork for the Heresy.
Much like Lorgar this involves recruiting his brothers (or at least encouraging their falls) but it also includes building up the infrastructure and warmachine to pull off a proper rebellion.
So for those with a deeper understanding of 40K and its lore than I, does that seem sensible for Roboute's fall and do you have any other suggestions on that topic? Or suggestions for modifying Horus's fall to account for the differences between Lorgar and Roboute (and so that they don't both fall for virtually identical reasons)?
What exactly do you mean by "sanctioned"? As far as I'm aware, we only have vague, contradictory hints about what happened to the lost primarchs, but they don't appear to have been erased from history as a punishment or something, whatever happened to them was much worse then merely being a chaos worshiper.
It doesn't entirely fit that the imperium would exterminate every planet the word bearers conquered, they didn't do that in canon and rarely do that with chaos tainted planets in general. That said, if you want to link Logar getting axed to Roboute's fall, perhaps have Roboute quietly investigate why he was executed, and discover some chaos lore or follow the trail of clues into the eye of terror?
Roboute did have a lot of infrastructure set up to support his legion in canon, that was why the realm of ultramar was so valuable and why his imperium secudunds plan was viable in the first place. So that's mostly done, all you might want to do is ramp that up a bit or have more of the traitor primarchs do the same.
As for changing Horus's fall, perhaps make it a more gradual process? Have Roboute play off his existing annoyance with the increasingly bureaucratic nature of the imperium as in canon, and convince him to start a revolt based on that and other, direct issues with the emperor, and then as that revolt goes on chaos corruption slowly seeps into the traitors, unlike in canon where most of them had already fallen pretty far by the time of the drop site massacre?
Hmm, thoughts on this (AU) backstory for a 40k fic?
Ye Olde Days:
8000 BC, the Emperor is born/created.
8000 BC to around 1950 AD: The Emperor spends the next several thousand years mastering his abilities, learning random shit, and generally just fucking around. Whether fucking around means being an Egyptian Pharaoh, a Roman General, a barbarian warlord, a trader, etc. depended entirely upon his mood of the day. During this period of fucking around, the Void Dragon emerges from a Webway point around 1000 AD or so and the Emperor manages to defeat it (this is also when the Emperor first learns of the webway, and it is his explorations of that and knowledge stolen from the Void Dragon that lets him visit Mars and imprison the void dragon there). The Emperor also makes a few acquaintances of a perpetual nature, including Malcador and Alivia, during those millenia of fucking around.
While Alivia was already fairly old at the time (a thousand or so) of their introduction, Malcador was born around 1900 and the Emperor came across him shortly (very shortly) after his birth.
1950+: When humanity develops nuclear and biological weapons they gain the ability to actually wipe themselves out and so the Emperor becomes a bit more proactive in trying to protect humanity. As part of that plan, he creates the Sigillite Order and tasks them with preserving history.
Most of the Cold War and 21st centuries were spent by the Emperor playing spy and assassin while subtly trying to push humanity into space (it being much harder for them to be wiped out if they have viable offworld populations). This is where Malcador gets his predilection for assassination, intrigue, and espionage (as it is basically his childhood and the Emperor was a big believer in take your child to work day).
3000 AD/M3: By this point humanity in Sol is pretty much at an idyllic height. O'Neill cylinders populate the Sol system, power is virtually limitless, life extension treatments have been developed, direct neural interfaces are a thing, automated infrastructure takes care of virtually any physical need, etc. Psykers became an acknowledged, if incredibly rare thing around 2800 and by the early centuries of M3 the genetic basis of psychic potential had been discovered and was written into the human genome on a near universal scale as part of the genetic engineering that was utterly common.
Every human born then was massively genetically enhanced.
Study of psykers lead to the Warp's existence being initially theorized.
4000 to 5000 AD: The Emperor spends most of this exploring the galaxy via the webway and gains a great deal of knowledge about souls, the warp, and psykers. Often by stealing it from the Eldar and/or other xenos.
5000 - 15000 AD: The Emperor is now fully aware that the galaxy is a dangerous place and that humanity could be wiped out at any time by any number of alien forces. He comes to the conclusion that humanity must be spread far and wide across the galaxy. He uses the genetics knowledge of humanity and the warp knowledge that he acquired to create the first of the Custodes (the Men of Gold) and with their aid creates the "Men of Stone". The Men of Stone are essentially automated terraforming and infrastructure construction ships, they are also the first servitors as the Emperor ties psykers body and soul to the vessels so that he can communicate with (and control) them across the galaxy.
The Men of Stone head off slower than light to start preparing the galaxy for human habitation.
The Men of Iron were the workforce (and guardians) created by the Men of Stone when they arrived at their destinations. Unlike the Men of Stone, they were wholly artificial and could only be controlled by the Emperor second hand; he was also unable to keep a close eye on their creation. The Ruinous powers used the psyker nature of the Men of Stone to very subtly corrupt the code of the Men of Iron at this point of their initial creation.
Over time, slow boat colonization of all types (generational ships, genetic samples and artificial wombs, cryostorage) spread humanity across the stars but there was no real means for them to communicate with one another. The Emperor would sneak the odd Custodes aboard the various colonization efforts and he could keep in contact with them psychically but no one save his own people knew about that.
M18: The first Warp drive has just been invented. Slow by modern standards (it was basically the same model as what the Tau use), it was still fast enough to allow humanity to begin to unify and create at least small to moderate sized interstellar empires. Humanity comes to the attention of the Eldar and they take amusement from fucking with (and torturing) humanity and, with the knowledge of humanity having spread across a great many worlds, the Eldar begin using the webway to really fuck with humanity on a species wide scale.
The Emperor finds that to be utterly intolerable and uses his knowledge to create the Navigators and improve Warp drives. He also uses the same idea as the Men of Stone to create a psyker/severitor based interstellar communications network.
The Emperor carries out the first human unification and creates the Terran Federation. The Emperor's role in this, or that he orchestrated the whole thing, is known only to his own close associates.
M18 - M22: The Terran Federation makes fairly rapid advances in warp related technology. Including the invention of computers that use warp effects to be acausal in nature, dump waste energy, and gain power. This is the period when machine spirits actually truly become a thing as human technology becomes, almost wholesale, partially warp based.
This advancing knowledge, and the fact that virtually the entirety of the Terran Federation's military and civilian assets/infrastructure were networked into one massive, decentralized, AI hive mind that the Emperor could control (he controlled the Men of Stone who in turn had admin access to all of the Men of Iron and through them virtually every bit of human tech) allowed humanity to fight the Eldar (at least the ones not tied up in torture orgies) pretty much to a standstill. This was a great affront to the Eldar and so they decided to murder fuck a new Warp god into existence to teach humanity their place (the Eldar being fully aware that creating new warp gods caused warp storms and the more powerful the god, the more numerous (and more powerful) the warp storms would be. Essentially, the Eldar were planning on doing a galaxy wide "Warp EMP" to wipe out the whole human tech base.
M23-M25: As a side effect of the Eldar agitating the warp, the number of psykers being born (and their power) increases by orders of magnitude. Said psykers are also mentally affected by the emotional taint the Eldar are spewing into the warp in their creation of Slaanesh. Basically, more psykers, more powerful psykers, and said psykers essentially have proto-Slaanesh in their brains constantly telling them to act on ever pleasurable impulse they may have. Then Men of Iron become more focused on internal policing and the psykers start psychically manipulating humanities warp based tech to their own advantage.
That, along with the corruption that got into the core programming of the Men of Iron, causes them to go rogue. The Cybernetic Result lasted only a matter of minutes but it killed more than 95% of the human population across the entire breadth of the galaxy in that time period. It ended when the Emperor sacrificed all of his Custodes (the Men of Gold) and used his connection to the Men of Stone to eradicate the entire entire communications network and everything Men of Iron related.
The Eldar also used that large scale death as the finale of their creation of Slaanesh and so the feather in the cap of humanity was that safe FTL travel was now a thing of the past as well.
M25-M30: The scattered survivors of humanity are suddenly befrit of technology and thrown back into the stone age. Religion comes back and the agitation of the Warp results in even more psy related phenomena. This means that warp related religions become incredibly prevalent. The Emperor and a handful of his agents (Malcador, for example) have methods of traveling between worlds (although the webway is a great deal more dangerous than it used to be) and can even forcibly calm the warp temporarily so as to allow a ship that they are on to travel safely.
They create, and spread, STC's across the galaxy but while they do what they can to preserve/help humanity the truth is that there is very little that they can do. Especially not when the Warp is now populated by incredibly powerful entities that are hostile to humanity and basically utterly anathema to the materium (this is when the Emperor becomes aware of the Chaos Gods as actual, conscious, things and discrete entities).
The Emperor finds an Old One lab related to the creation of warp entities, genetic engineering, and soul manipulation in his quest to find a solution. This is the warp rift on Moloch. It is here that he gains the knowledge needed to create the Primarchs, and when he leaves he asks Alivia to guard it from anyone else.
The Emperor creates the Primarchs after a millennia or so of concerted effort. The Ruinous Powers use the fact that some will become corrupted in the future to reach into the past and toss the lot of them across the galaxy. Where they arrive is mostly a matter of warp resonance across time; they arrived there because everyone in the future knew that they arrived there and they were shaped by the beliefs of humanity in them.
Magus, for example, was a red cyclops because countless trillions of people knew that Magus was a red cyclops.
With the Primarchs thrown across the Galaxy, the Emperor decides that he needs to greatly accelerate his plans as he can't afford to allow them to all independently do what they were programmed to do (conquer the galaxy). If he left them on their own then inevitably they would each be at the head of their own empire and war on one another, and the Emperor, when they eventually came in contact.
M30-M31: He creates the Thunder Warriors as his tool to conquer Terra and a test run of several ideas. Then he uses refinements on that process to create the Space Marines and, as a result of how they are created, kinda sorta soul bonds them to their primarchs. Largely to the same extent that the primarchs are soul bound to the Emperor.
Basically the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy.
Malcador and the Emperor wipe the Lost Primarchs from all record and memory in an attempt to alter the past. If they are unknown then the psychic weight behind them is lessened a great deal and the Emperor can use his own power to tweak where the Lost Primarchs arrive.
If the Emperor actually dies then he uses the power of his death (and the disruptions that it causes both forward and backwards in time) to tweak those arrival points. It is his final contingency plan and he will keep replaying history until he gets a result that is more satisfactory.
Ye Olde Days:
8000 BC, the Emperor is born/created.
8000 BC to around 1950 AD: The Emperor spends the next several thousand years mastering his abilities, learning random shit, and generally just fucking around. Whether fucking around means being an Egyptian Pharaoh, a Roman General, a barbarian warlord, a trader, etc. depended entirely upon his mood of the day. During this period of fucking around, the Void Dragon emerges from a Webway point around 1000 AD or so and the Emperor manages to defeat it (this is also when the Emperor first learns of the webway, and it is his explorations of that and knowledge stolen from the Void Dragon that lets him visit Mars and imprison the void dragon there). The Emperor also makes a few acquaintances of a perpetual nature, including Malcador and Alivia, during those millenia of fucking around.
While Alivia was already fairly old at the time (a thousand or so) of their introduction, Malcador was born around 1900 and the Emperor came across him shortly (very shortly) after his birth.
1950+: When humanity develops nuclear and biological weapons they gain the ability to actually wipe themselves out and so the Emperor becomes a bit more proactive in trying to protect humanity. As part of that plan, he creates the Sigillite Order and tasks them with preserving history.
Most of the Cold War and 21st centuries were spent by the Emperor playing spy and assassin while subtly trying to push humanity into space (it being much harder for them to be wiped out if they have viable offworld populations). This is where Malcador gets his predilection for assassination, intrigue, and espionage (as it is basically his childhood and the Emperor was a big believer in take your child to work day).
3000 AD/M3: By this point humanity in Sol is pretty much at an idyllic height. O'Neill cylinders populate the Sol system, power is virtually limitless, life extension treatments have been developed, direct neural interfaces are a thing, automated infrastructure takes care of virtually any physical need, etc. Psykers became an acknowledged, if incredibly rare thing around 2800 and by the early centuries of M3 the genetic basis of psychic potential had been discovered and was written into the human genome on a near universal scale as part of the genetic engineering that was utterly common.
Every human born then was massively genetically enhanced.
Study of psykers lead to the Warp's existence being initially theorized.
4000 to 5000 AD: The Emperor spends most of this exploring the galaxy via the webway and gains a great deal of knowledge about souls, the warp, and psykers. Often by stealing it from the Eldar and/or other xenos.
5000 - 15000 AD: The Emperor is now fully aware that the galaxy is a dangerous place and that humanity could be wiped out at any time by any number of alien forces. He comes to the conclusion that humanity must be spread far and wide across the galaxy. He uses the genetics knowledge of humanity and the warp knowledge that he acquired to create the first of the Custodes (the Men of Gold) and with their aid creates the "Men of Stone". The Men of Stone are essentially automated terraforming and infrastructure construction ships, they are also the first servitors as the Emperor ties psykers body and soul to the vessels so that he can communicate with (and control) them across the galaxy.
The Men of Stone head off slower than light to start preparing the galaxy for human habitation.
The Men of Iron were the workforce (and guardians) created by the Men of Stone when they arrived at their destinations. Unlike the Men of Stone, they were wholly artificial and could only be controlled by the Emperor second hand; he was also unable to keep a close eye on their creation. The Ruinous powers used the psyker nature of the Men of Stone to very subtly corrupt the code of the Men of Iron at this point of their initial creation.
Over time, slow boat colonization of all types (generational ships, genetic samples and artificial wombs, cryostorage) spread humanity across the stars but there was no real means for them to communicate with one another. The Emperor would sneak the odd Custodes aboard the various colonization efforts and he could keep in contact with them psychically but no one save his own people knew about that.
M18: The first Warp drive has just been invented. Slow by modern standards (it was basically the same model as what the Tau use), it was still fast enough to allow humanity to begin to unify and create at least small to moderate sized interstellar empires. Humanity comes to the attention of the Eldar and they take amusement from fucking with (and torturing) humanity and, with the knowledge of humanity having spread across a great many worlds, the Eldar begin using the webway to really fuck with humanity on a species wide scale.
The Emperor finds that to be utterly intolerable and uses his knowledge to create the Navigators and improve Warp drives. He also uses the same idea as the Men of Stone to create a psyker/severitor based interstellar communications network.
The Emperor carries out the first human unification and creates the Terran Federation. The Emperor's role in this, or that he orchestrated the whole thing, is known only to his own close associates.
M18 - M22: The Terran Federation makes fairly rapid advances in warp related technology. Including the invention of computers that use warp effects to be acausal in nature, dump waste energy, and gain power. This is the period when machine spirits actually truly become a thing as human technology becomes, almost wholesale, partially warp based.
This advancing knowledge, and the fact that virtually the entirety of the Terran Federation's military and civilian assets/infrastructure were networked into one massive, decentralized, AI hive mind that the Emperor could control (he controlled the Men of Stone who in turn had admin access to all of the Men of Iron and through them virtually every bit of human tech) allowed humanity to fight the Eldar (at least the ones not tied up in torture orgies) pretty much to a standstill. This was a great affront to the Eldar and so they decided to murder fuck a new Warp god into existence to teach humanity their place (the Eldar being fully aware that creating new warp gods caused warp storms and the more powerful the god, the more numerous (and more powerful) the warp storms would be. Essentially, the Eldar were planning on doing a galaxy wide "Warp EMP" to wipe out the whole human tech base.
M23-M25: As a side effect of the Eldar agitating the warp, the number of psykers being born (and their power) increases by orders of magnitude. Said psykers are also mentally affected by the emotional taint the Eldar are spewing into the warp in their creation of Slaanesh. Basically, more psykers, more powerful psykers, and said psykers essentially have proto-Slaanesh in their brains constantly telling them to act on ever pleasurable impulse they may have. Then Men of Iron become more focused on internal policing and the psykers start psychically manipulating humanities warp based tech to their own advantage.
That, along with the corruption that got into the core programming of the Men of Iron, causes them to go rogue. The Cybernetic Result lasted only a matter of minutes but it killed more than 95% of the human population across the entire breadth of the galaxy in that time period. It ended when the Emperor sacrificed all of his Custodes (the Men of Gold) and used his connection to the Men of Stone to eradicate the entire entire communications network and everything Men of Iron related.
The Eldar also used that large scale death as the finale of their creation of Slaanesh and so the feather in the cap of humanity was that safe FTL travel was now a thing of the past as well.
M25-M30: The scattered survivors of humanity are suddenly befrit of technology and thrown back into the stone age. Religion comes back and the agitation of the Warp results in even more psy related phenomena. This means that warp related religions become incredibly prevalent. The Emperor and a handful of his agents (Malcador, for example) have methods of traveling between worlds (although the webway is a great deal more dangerous than it used to be) and can even forcibly calm the warp temporarily so as to allow a ship that they are on to travel safely.
They create, and spread, STC's across the galaxy but while they do what they can to preserve/help humanity the truth is that there is very little that they can do. Especially not when the Warp is now populated by incredibly powerful entities that are hostile to humanity and basically utterly anathema to the materium (this is when the Emperor becomes aware of the Chaos Gods as actual, conscious, things and discrete entities).
The Emperor finds an Old One lab related to the creation of warp entities, genetic engineering, and soul manipulation in his quest to find a solution. This is the warp rift on Moloch. It is here that he gains the knowledge needed to create the Primarchs, and when he leaves he asks Alivia to guard it from anyone else.
The Emperor creates the Primarchs after a millennia or so of concerted effort. The Ruinous Powers use the fact that some will become corrupted in the future to reach into the past and toss the lot of them across the galaxy. Where they arrive is mostly a matter of warp resonance across time; they arrived there because everyone in the future knew that they arrived there and they were shaped by the beliefs of humanity in them.
Magus, for example, was a red cyclops because countless trillions of people knew that Magus was a red cyclops.
With the Primarchs thrown across the Galaxy, the Emperor decides that he needs to greatly accelerate his plans as he can't afford to allow them to all independently do what they were programmed to do (conquer the galaxy). If he left them on their own then inevitably they would each be at the head of their own empire and war on one another, and the Emperor, when they eventually came in contact.
M30-M31: He creates the Thunder Warriors as his tool to conquer Terra and a test run of several ideas. Then he uses refinements on that process to create the Space Marines and, as a result of how they are created, kinda sorta soul bonds them to their primarchs. Largely to the same extent that the primarchs are soul bound to the Emperor.
Basically the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy.
Malcador and the Emperor wipe the Lost Primarchs from all record and memory in an attempt to alter the past. If they are unknown then the psychic weight behind them is lessened a great deal and the Emperor can use his own power to tweak where the Lost Primarchs arrive.
If the Emperor actually dies then he uses the power of his death (and the disruptions that it causes both forward and backwards in time) to tweak those arrival points. It is his final contingency plan and he will keep replaying history until he gets a result that is more satisfactory.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
@Emperor Tippy
If much of humanity in its earlier space age was genetically enhanced
Why is it that their descendents look to have the same human lifespans as us?
Did something occur like in Isaac Asimov’s Robots/Galactic Empire/Foundation series wherein the resident “Spacers” made the Terrans or “Settler” equivalents, disgusted with having long lifespans and genetic enhancements
A period or mindset wherein a good portion of humanity ended up romanticising manual labor and short lifespans?
If much of humanity in its earlier space age was genetically enhanced
Why is it that their descendents look to have the same human lifespans as us?
Did something occur like in Isaac Asimov’s Robots/Galactic Empire/Foundation series wherein the resident “Spacers” made the Terrans or “Settler” equivalents, disgusted with having long lifespans and genetic enhancements
A period or mindset wherein a good portion of humanity ended up romanticising manual labor and short lifespans?
Everyone is genetically enhanced (well modified would be a better term) by the time humanity first leaves Sol. The thing is, way back when this was all done it was trivial to correct any errors that may arise; and most of humanity was born in artificial wombs.
Before the Terran Federation fell, gene tweaking or fixing flaws was literally as trivial as stepping into a first aid station and telling it what you wanted. A women wants bigger breasts for the night? Then she steps into her home medical station and tweaks her genetics so that she has bigger breasts.
If there was an issue between the genetic manipulations of the mother and father then a quick tweak could solve whatever the issue was.
And then, suddenly, the handful of human survivors are living in the stone age. A stone age where, on a great many worlds, people will think nothing of doing things like blood sacrifice to make themselves stronger. A universe where the Warp, and its mutagenic effects, are at their height.
Given the thousands of years where that state persisted, the human genome has degraded significantly.
Before the fall, for example, the average person would think nothing of genetweaks that would essentially sterilize them (or likely result in crippled children) in exchange for having, say, a less gassy digestion system. When they wanted to have kids, they would just alter themselves/the kids to solve the problem.
Now what happens when they are thrown back onto natural childbirth with literally no medical knowledge or technology?
The human genome of 30k/40k is a complete mess as it went from, metaphorically, a carefully tended garden inside a biodome to the natural result of tossing tens of thousands of seeds from every plant onto random patches of Earth a few thousand years in the past.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
So aside from warp mutations, much of their current mutations are due to too much casual genetic modifications?
More the repeated cross breeding of what were initially carefully designed and balanced genomes.
It didn't matter that, for example, genetically engineering someone for incredible reflexes resulted in a genome that was literally one minor mutation of one gene away from causing total paralysis. The nanites in the tweaked individual would prune any defective cells and practice constant error correction to prevent those mutations.
Now take that genome and remove the nanite error correction, remove the knowledge needed to understand human genetics, remove the ability to precisely manipulate human genes, and have the person breed with someone equally enhanced for strength.
What are the odds that you are going to get a viable offspring?
Now imagine that across an entire planet with millions of progenitors who were all genetically custom designed for whatever specific purpose they wanted at the exact moment of the collapse.
Now advance five thousand years in an environment that greatly increases mutation, where reality is somewhat mutable by belief, and where individuals regularly do things like eat the hearts of their enemies in a ritual manner to gain their enemies strength.
By the time of the Great Crusade, the average human's genome is an abomination of insanity. I mean the Federation thought nothing of splicing in animal, designer, and even xeno genetics.
So in 30k/40k any given random pairing could produce a child that, based on basically blind luck, could be anything from a Captain America level superhuman to some kind of monstrosity that would be at home in the Cthulhu Mythos.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
@Emperor Tippy
Sounds like they never really decided on a baseline Transhuman change like the Spacers
Sounds like they never really decided on a baseline Transhuman change like the Spacers
Pretty much. Well they had one at some point, but you are talking about ten thousand plus years where every single human was essentially a god in most respects.
The Terran Federation was literally so absurdly rich and vast that any random person could basically decide that they wanted an ISD and the automated factories would split one out for them to play with.
Or instead of going to visit another world, just have a clone of you made on that world, upload your mind into the interstellar internet, and then get downloaded on the other side of the galaxy in your shiny clone body. and yes, that was every bit as insane as one would think given the existence of the warp
So a baseline wouldn't really last. More, it would have to be enforced and the human government (what there was of one) had zero interest in enforcing things on its citizens. Not that the Federation government was really capable of doing so.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
@Emperor Tippy
I guess the only way for humanity having a longer lifespan is by being very powerful and stable psykers
Optionally with cybernetics and perfected rejuvenants and biomancy
I guess the only way for humanity having a longer lifespan is by being very powerful and stable psykers
Optionally with cybernetics and perfected rejuvenants and biomancy
Well the average human in 30k+ with a decent diet and in a safe environment (think something like modern earth) would probably live two hundred or so years without ever getting so much as cold, with a body that is physically fit despite minimal to no exercise, etc. The problem is that most people in 40k don't give to live in relatively healthy environments with sufficient nutrition.
In the Terran Federation they were for all practical purposes immortal (although the Emperor wiping out Space!Internet fried a lot of people's minds as their neural implants were connected at the time).
In the Great Crusade era, the Imperium is more than capable of keeping an individual alive in their physical prime pretty much forever if they decide it is worth the effort.
It's just that not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population has the needed access to benefit from those treatments/technologies.
Seriously, an entire hive world with a dozen trillion or so people on it might have a hundred thousand people on it at any given time that have even spoken to someone with access to proper anti-aging technology.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
That reminds me, speaking of the Great Crusade Era
What sort of enhancements went into making False Astartes like Luther and those other old men in the Dark Angels Legion that were originally from Caliban’s knightly orders?
Also Badass before it or not, feels pretty nepotistic
What sort of enhancements went into making False Astartes like Luther and those other old men in the Dark Angels Legion that were originally from Caliban’s knightly orders?
Also Badass before it or not, feels pretty nepotistic
My personal take, with like zero canon support, is that there is no direct difference between a False Astartes and a real one.
It's just that in the case of the False Astartes someone with access to the right knowledge and materials essentially tweaks the geneseed in question for that specific individual. And the right materials include things like the primarchs actual genetic material while the right knowledge is the kind of thing possessed by the Emperor and his personal lab assistants and the like.
So turning an adult into an Astartes (much less ensuring compatibility with a given Legion) was basically only done with the Emperors direct intervention and took far more time and effort than could ever be justified.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Yeah, really sounds nepotistic TBH
Though, I forgot the name of that False Astartes Dark Angel that Azrael and a White Scars legionnaire talked about, apparently he still worked his way to his rank anyhow
Well yes, why would you think that the Imperium has a problem with nepotism?
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Yeah, got a point there
So what do people think would happen with Chaos if Abaddon was permanently killed in one of the relatively early Black Crusaders? Like in the Third or Fourth?
Who would make a good replacement champion of Chaos to lead the war against Cadia/the Imperium?
Who would make a good replacement champion of Chaos to lead the war against Cadia/the Imperium?