Warhammer 40,000 (Lore & Discussion on related books & stories)

Cafe Society
61

Oh no. No, no, no.

The Imperium of Man is not nice. Not nice at all and it has no objectively desirable goal for mankind whatsoever.

The Emperor wanted good things and had a grand vision for mankind and then…well, I guess I should avoid spoilers. Let’s just say things got a bit off the rails.

I think Roboute Guilliman, since his resurrection, is struggling with this. He knows the Emperor’s vision and he wants to get things back on track again but, despite his demi-god genius, is not seeing a way to do it. I think the Ecclesiarchy genuinely scares him and that is saying something because he really does not have the capacity to be scared of anything.

62

Spoilers are okay. I know a lot from watching Luetin09’s videos now (I think I’ve watched close to 13 hours of his stuff) and from this discussion, and there’s really no way to avoid them. For instance: I don’t yet know who or what Primaris is, or the Omnissiah (although that name kind of telegraphs a lot) nor have I heard of Roboute Guilliman before. (Wow; autocorrect fucking hates that name.)

Mind, you don’t have to explain who or what they are in great detail, but knowing that characters exist or things or factions or whatnot won’t bother me, I don’t think.

I mean, I’m about to start reading a book with 37 different & presumably unrelated short stories in it. I’m bound to get fragments of things here and there. Part of the fun (for me) is piecing it all together as I get more information. :smiley:

63

Roboute Guilliman is the Primarch of the UltraMarines (one of the more famous Astartes legions in 40k…some say a writer had a real hard-on for them so they got way too much love but here we are).

Primarchs are to Astartes what Astartes are to humans. Where Astartes are super human soldiers Primarchs are even more. Near demi-gods.

There were 20 Primarchs which were scattered by chaos across the galaxy just before they were born. Each landed on a different planet and grew-up in very different circumstances but, being near super human, they all excelled. The Emperor embarked on a mission to find all of them and there are stories about those that read like Greek mythology.

Each Primarch founded their own legion of Astarte warriors and they each had their own character and things they specialized in (all superb warriors though). I think the exceptions are the Grey Knights and the Adeptus Custodes (each more superb than all the others…especially the Adeptus).

After the Horus Heresy (Horus was a Primarch turned to chaos that mortally wounded the Emperor…and then the Emperor nuked Horus) various Primarchs died or disappeared or (from the heresy) many had been turned to Chaos.

Fast forward to present times and there are no Primarchs left (except maybe chaos ones) but their legions still exist.

Long story short Roboute Guilliman has been resurrected and is the only “good” (read not chaos) Primarch currently toddling about.

But he has been gone for thousands of years and the universe is a very different place.

I think GamesWorkshop is, as mentioned above, seeing a need to shake things loose a bit and move along. Sooner or later customers will tire of endless war which is just a repeat of last week’s installment. So Guilliman is back

And the Omnissiah is like it sounds. It is the machine spirit to the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars and they very, very, very much worship it. The Mechanicus was the one part of the empire that the Emperor forged that was outside of it. The Emperor made a pact with them to leave them be if they built warships and stuff for him and they agreed.

Know that the Emperor was very much NOT religious and wanted a completely secular empire. He was all about that. And pretty much the exact opposite happened after he (kinda) died (he just mostly dead).

64

De Emprah wanted the things HE wanted for mankind. They only count as good if you assume ipso facto that he was a totally good guy. For pretty much everyone else, they’re horrifyingly awful. For all that he liked to pretend to be beyond mere mortal conceptions of morality, he was very little more than another tyrant with delusions of Godhood even if he claimed not to be, which eventually blew up in his face. His endless death atop the Golden Throne is, frankly, a far less awful fate than he deserved.

65

WH40K is basically the Rule 34 of science fiction. If it exists at all, it also exists in the 40k universe.

You want vikings? We got space vikings. You want halflings? We got space halflings. You want vampires? We got em, but in space. You want bureaucracy? We got red tape for light years. Orcs and elves and goblins and dwarves and ogres and elder gods and rogue AIs? Sure, all that. Swords and sorcery? Rambo but in space? Bruh, there is literally an entire planet of Rambos. You want a gigantic mobile cathedral bristling with weapons? We got that in space but there’s also tank versions. You like space marines but would prefer them in pink armor and fighting with electric guitars? DUDE I GOT YOU COVERED.

On and on and on. There is no end to the wacky, glorious ridiculousness of 40k.

And honestly, the wackiness is integral to the universe because the grimdark stuff is so unrelentingly grim and dark. Humanity **is **doomed. Even if the various Crusades manage to hold the infinite line against its infinite enemies, the Emperor is eventually going to die. The spaceways will collapse. And that will be the end. If the Tyranids don’t consume everything, the Necrons will conquer what’s left. If the Necrons don’t conquer what’s left, the Chaos gods will corrupt it. If the Chaos gods don’t corrupt it, the orks will… the Eldar will… the Tau will… on and on and on.

66

I knew about the Primarchs but smiling bandit used the word Primaris and I assumed that was a person’s name; is it a plural instead?

Thanks for the introduction to Guilliman! And for clarifying that the UltraMarines are a legion of Astartes; I was a little unclear on that. A lot of what I was hearing/reading made it sound like UltraMarine was just a synonym for Space Marine.

Speaking of: is Astartes just a synonym for Space Marines?

That totally fucking rocks! What the fuck is it?? :stuck_out_tongue:

ETA: And why is he standing on a blue helmet? Is that another legion of Space Marines? Why would the pink guy kill a blue guy?

Well that’s a large part of the appeal, innit? It’s huge and complicated and whack and it almost sorta kinda makes sense and is almost sorta kinda cohesive but I know that if I look too closely, it won’t make sense at all… which is true internally for the creatures, human and otherwise, who live in that place too. And that makes it even more interesting and (IMO) fun!

67

I’m not so keen on the Primaris either but that’s from a war game perspective. I’m coming back to the game and my Imperial Fists predate the Primaris. On one hand it’s kind of nice to having a bunch of new models to paint but on the other hand now I’m going to have a bunch of new models to paint and they’re a bit expensive.

All those Space Marine repulsors had to come from somewhere! Someone’s been hoarding knowledge.

68

Ahhh; I think I get it: Primaris is Guilliman’s title; aye?

69

No.

Primaris are a new breed of Space Marines. Even bigger and tougher than regular Astartes (and I am pretty sure Astartes and Space Marine are interchangeable…Astartes was the name of a woman who was crucial in helping the Emperor design the first space marines).

Think like roided up Space Marines (and a bit more).

Guilliman ordered these new marines be created in the 31st millenium (about 10,000 years ago) and he was their Primarch (I think). It took about 10,000 years to create them all so they only really popped on the scene after Guilliman was resurrected.

I am a bit fuzzy on all that so take with a grain of salt.

70

So Thunder Warriors > Astartes > Primaris?

71

Pretty much. I’d add a bit of detail:

Imperial Guard (human army) > Thunder Warriors (Emperor had them all killed) > Astartes > Grey Knights (special unit of Astartes) > Primaris > Adeptus Custodes (unique Astartes…made differently) > Primarchs (only 20 ever existed…most are gone now) > Emperor (when he was more alive and walking around)

Grey Knights might be better in a fight against Chaos than Primaris (not sure) because no Grey Knight has ever converted to Chaos (only Astartes unit that can say that…Adeptus too but they are not technically Astartes I don’t think). They act as the military arm of the Inquisition mostly and are super holier-than-thou. If you have seen one, even if completely innocent, there is a good chance you are dead.

Adeptus Custodes are the Emperor’s personal guard. They will not leave the palace unless they perceive an actual, immediate threat to the Emperor and need to go out to deal with it. For fun they have various monsters and whatnot let loose in the palace to chase down and hunt to keep sharp. Their geneseed comes directly from the Emperor and they are created differently. They are on a whole other level and get the best equipment there is. They also are functionally immortal (they will not die of old age but they can be killed by other means).

72

Not really. I mean, if you are Pat Robertson then yeah, you probably do not buy into the Emperor’s secular plans, but mostly the Emperor wanted to get back to a Golden Age of mankind.

Remember, when the Emperor finally showed himself and started taking an active role in events the world had gone all Mad Max with dozens or hundreds of warlords fucking shit up everywhere. The Emperor came in and laid the smackdown on them all then embarked on his crusades to re-unite the Imperium.

After that he perceived the threat from Chaos and so worked diligently on a plan to protect humankind from them. Magnus the Red inadvertently fucked that up for him and pissed off the Emperor to no end. The heresy was already in full swing, the Emperor (mostly) died and things went to shit.

I think it is a safe bet the Imperium would be a lot more pleasant had the Emperor managed to keep going.

73

Cool. I wasn’t going for an order of strength, just an order of appearance/creation but your info is welcome.

I hadn’t gotten around to learning about the Grey Knights yet altho I had seen the name. I’m still trying to get a handle on things in general; I’m not quite ready to drill down into each Legion of Astartes or specifics about the Mechanicus, etc. yet.

I really like “If you have seen one, even if completely innocent, there is a good chance you are dead” tho; that’s hilariously harsh.

I thought all of the Astartes were functionally immortal tho.

Others too: didn’t Eisenhorn live for millennia?

74

The Emperor had no problem whatsoever with tyranny, slavery, and crushing of trillions of human lives to achieve petty goals whenever it suited him. He had no more consideration for a given life than he did for a flea. True, he would happily create a golden age, for it would not be for men for for the abstract of “Mankind”. All those warlords he killed? (Or not as he was happy to recruit any bastard into the Imperium if it helped.) Well, one man’s warlord is another champion. The Emperor destroyed all independent human cultures many of which were far more stable, or even had a better understanding of technology and a stronger culture than his Imperium.

More to the point, he did not understand Chaos and in fact inadvertently strengthened it greatly, partly by his wars and partly because he evidently thought they needed worship, which is not correct.

75

He’s a Noise Marine - part of the corrupted legions of marines. So he’s a bad guy.

76

Astartes can live a really, really long time (thousands of years) but, IIRC, the few we find who managed to live to that ripe old age were pretty much insane. Given that they live for battle most never make it to extreme old age though so there are not many examples. Barely a handful, if that, make it past 1,000 years old.

Adeptus on the other hand I think are not ravaged by age at all. They just keep doing their thing as always and 10,000 years is not a problem since they rarely battle anything except for sport these days.

The Grey Knights fight demons. The Inquisition is so bent on stopping Chaos from breaking out that once a city has been cleansed of a Chaos outbreak they will often have the whole city wiped out (sometimes even a whole planet) just because the population learned about the existence of Chaos. There have been occasions of Astartes legions fighting each other when such orders have been given because it is so extreme.

Eisenhorn is just a human. I forget how old he got…something like 200 (very vague memory).

77

Once the world went Mad Max there was really no hugging it out around the campfire. Kinda like Genghis Khan first had to smash local warlords before he could unite the lot. Not nice but given how humanity operates really the only solution.

As for the rest of the Imperium the Emperor would rock-up, invite them back in and if they said no he’d pound on them. Not nice but he knew the Imperium could not survive against the threats that were out there unless united.

Was president Lincoln horrible for starting a war to preserve the union?

And again, what the Emperor was working towards was less bad than the alternative (one of which we see now).

If you foresaw a dozen horrible choices does picking the least horrible one make you a bad person because horrible things are still happening?

78

I’ve always seen it as the Order vs. Chaos dichotomy taken to its extreme. The Imperium is Order, but at the very most authoritarian, conformist and brutal extreme, and Chaos is basically the same thing in the opposite direction.

Reading between the lines, I always felt like the Emperor had more in mind than just an interplanetary authoritarian police state, but that events overtook him and a lot of bad stuff happened that wasn’t necessarily in his grand plan.

79

The Warhammer multiverse has always been strongly influenced by the works of Michael Moorcock, IMHO.

80

Well that’s cool! I was a big fan of both Elric of Melnibone and Blue Öyster Cult back in the day.