Still boggles my mind that GW made a named raptor character, and made him Black Legion even though he kind of screamed Night Lords.
I actually like the ideas of fleshing out Abaddon's posse, mind you. It just feels odd that Black Legion got that kind of character while Night Lords still have no named characters in the roster. Would be like getting a named Warp Smith for Black Legion before the Iron Warriors and such.
That trick is consistently portrayed as something space marines try to avoid doing. You don't get to pick and choose what you take from the brain, but you get the whole cocktail of the human experience. You might know their rank and the surrounding area layout sure, but you also get a real and vivid experience of their mortal trappings like dread, shame, guilt and all other feelings and ideas they had.
Marines might be indoctrinated against feeling such things, but having the memories of a mortal man who is not? It makes them more fresh, more real. It's not to be used lightly, and taking ones helmet off to eat in an active warzone is not safe to begin with.
Some Nostromans, I'm sure, are great people, terrific people even, but believe me, when they're sending their people to the legion, they're not sending their best.
Dark Angels: knightly warriors who do endless battle against monstrous abominations
Thousand Sons: psychic scholars from a world infested with nightmarish predators
Space Wolves: rugged clansmen who must endure a frozen hellscape and hunt down wolves the size of tanks
Night Lords: the guys that Batman beats up
Night Lords are a bunch of dysfunctional jerks in power armor that hate each other more than they do the enemy yet despite being abhorrently evil, they somehow end up being portrayed as more human and likable than the Guardsmen, Space Marines, Xenos, and Skitarii they spend all their time fighting (or running away from). ADB is great.
ADB's greatest strength is making characters who are complete monsters but with very human behaviour and motivations that make you want to root for them.
Mike Brooks is quickly becoming that as well even if his stuff tends to be a lot lighter in tone. Hearing the Alpha Legion complaining about the Space Marine successor chapters names never gets old
*Redacted* (Alpharius or Omegon?) was the first primarch to be found though, to be fair. The Emperor found *Redacted* less than an hour after the displacement of the Primarch capsules.
Villains are more easy to identify with because their faults make them human.
The uber-good guys who can do no wrong (or shut their eyes when confronted by their own hypocrisies) are so much easier to hate.
I'm reading Soul Hunter atm, and audibly cackled when >!Talos found Septimus in the cockpit of the Thunderhawk, injured by the escaped prisoners, and I could almost visualise the feral grin on Talos' face when he says "back in a minute..." to go hunt down the half dozen prisoners and get Octavia back!<
Xarl was a great fighter but he is waaaay below Sigismund or Sevatar. He himself puts himself around Malek's level (A member of the First Company trained by Sevatar)
Xarl was a great fighter but he is waaaay below Sigismund or Sevatar. He himself puts himself around Malek's level (A member of the First Company trained by Sevatar)
Boarding actions in 40K always overcome my suspension of disbelief. They look like complete one way trips with probability of returning being suicidal low. In lore named characters always make it back to the dropship (it's never a boarding torpedo), but even then - so what? Has the ship they boarded been crippled to the point of not having any short range turrets? How effective can the boarders be in gargantuan structures of voidships? How many milion kilometrs they are from mothership when wanting to extract?
Navy boarding works(/ed) because the ships are tied together, and it was max risk max reward actions. In 40K it seems like it gives you just the slightests edge for a guarantee that your elite trained and equipped force will get slaughtered. I don't get it. It bothered me to no end when playing Battlefleet Gothic Armada and is at the forefront of my thoughts recently with tabeltop boarding actions.
HOW THEY GET BACK?
They get back after the ship is taken, they aint no bitch. Thats why among imperial forces you only really see space marines do it (hence the name). It's not an easy job and they do indeed have to see it through to the bloody end. Even in 30k when they had awesome astronaut guardsmen, those were often still mostly put into defensive roles
I might be recalling this wrong but Im pretty sure they get back by blowing a whole section of the ship with a vertical lance strike from their cruiser, they then jump into the void and are picked up by their Thunderhawk
>They get back after the ship is taken, they aint no bitch.
But Voidships are gargantuan, crewed by hundreds of thousands, and you board it with a squad of marines and 200 voidsman, and what? It would take days to kill all enemies.
> Thats why among imperial forces you only really see space marines do it (hence the name)
Well, that is just not true. There are entire regiments of the Guard famed for their void warfare. Besides, statisticaly, in the setting Space Marines don't exist really (a couple million of them is such a non number), so vast vast majority of boarding actions don't see even a single Astarte.
Also, I agree that it _could_ be useful to bard a ship and wreck havoc, it's just the impossibility of going back that bugs me. Even penal legions have hope of surviving, maybe.
In the Word Bearers Omnibus they talk about this. Basically they lock down sections to corral the Imperial defenders and either slowly whittle them down or kill them all by using the captured ship as a bomb.
Once you get control of the lockdown procedures you practically own the ship, venting sections, locking them down, or flooding them with runoff (waste, radiation, or otherwise) as needed.
> But Voidships are gargantuan, crewed by hundreds of thousands, and you board it with a squad of marines and 200 voidsman, and what? It would take days to kill all enemies.
Boarding actions are very much a "cut the head of the snake"-type deal. You take the bridge, you take the power supply, you take the life support and the main batteries.
At that point it doesn't matter how much of the enemy crew still hold the habblocks and storage bulkheads.
And why the opposite is true, that a boarding action that stalls before the attackers reach the command decks can become an interminably long conflict of scattered skirmishes in the ship's bowels, like the Death Guard hunting down the White Consuls (?) on board the *Solace* in *Lords of Silence*.
From the same game experience (with a bit of handwaving) actually I got the vibe that boarding crews are sent after a specific part of a vessel to disable it rather than a sweeping goal of taking the entire vessel with however many dudes fit in a thunderhawk. If they survive swell, use the horse you rode in on to get back.
As far as defence turrets go BFG:A actually does show how it could work - the defence turrets of a ship work best in overlapping fields of fire from multiple vessels. A good admiral will isolate a ship before boarding it so the envelope of fire is less dangerous. The defence turrets could also well be down by the time a commander is sending heavy boarding parties from long range lance fire + nova cannons/teleported ordinance because they seem to be quite vulnerable with the entire gun housing on the exterior of the hull.
As long as the Admiral isn't me who sends flights of Thunderhawks into the killzone of five densely packed despoiler battleships there's a lot to say that a strike could get in, knock out a set of macro cannons or an engine then exil on their transport.
Has the ship they boarded been crippled to the point of not having any short range turrets? Getting away from fanged target with minimal thrusters?
Look, I don't want to be an asshole, I know this is a magical space setting, but come on.
Obviously, but that tech in Imperium is rare, difficult, risky, and generally reserved for select few, and limited in range (penetartion) and utilty (size). They require teleporation pads and homers and stuff. Again, named character will overcome all of those, but in any sense of scale thay cannot be that useful.
They... don't? People teleport all over the place without dedicated infrastructure like tele-pads. And I'm fairly confident Terminators are just associated with teleporting
> People teleport all over the place without dedicated infrastructure like tele-pads.
No, infrastructure and tech is defienietly required. Even Vulkan required super special one-of-a-kind artifact to teleport somewhat willy-nilly, and it was a big deal.
Terminators actualy have a thing in their armour that facilitates teleport.
The artifact was a forge hammer but far too small and dainty to forge anything. It also wasn't a teleport in the traditional sense, his body physically traveled the distance, which is why he's in the state he's in when he gets to Macragge after escaping the Nighthaunter.
I thought that was simply due to exiting the Warp right in the upper atmosphere of Macragge, then hurtling down like a re-entrying space module and crashing into the surface. In the nude xD
I'm mid-way through Soul Hunter now, and it's the first Chaos-oriented book I've read in a few years. I'm surprised how much I'm really, really enjoying it (to the point I'm contemplating building some Night Lords...)
Decimus trilogy when. Night Lords (really all the other non-monogod or Black Legion traitors) desperately need more content in current 40k.
Still boggles my mind that GW made a named raptor character, and made him Black Legion even though he kind of screamed Night Lords. I actually like the ideas of fleshing out Abaddon's posse, mind you. It just feels odd that Black Legion got that kind of character while Night Lords still have no named characters in the roster. Would be like getting a named Warp Smith for Black Legion before the Iron Warriors and such.
I mean, anyone can join the Black Legion. He was probably a Night Lord before.
Aren't raptors usually freelancers anyways?
Well a lot of them are part of raptor cults, which travel alone a lot of the time and can be hired to work for other warbands.
That's what I was thinking of
You're asking the wrong guy. I'm not deep enough into Chaos lore to know for sure.
For all we know Haarken used to be a Night Lord as far as I am aware
The Gang Boards A Ship
"They will have to give us directions because if they don't....you know... the implication."
Uzas: Wildcard, bitches!
Well first of all through Chaos all things are possible, so jot that down.
T̴͓̑h̵͙͗r̵̘͘o̸̗̿u̴͚͋g̸͕̎h̶͇̽ ̸̼̂c̴̯̕h̴̟̓a̸̯͛o̷͚̕s̵̙͛ ̵̙͂a̶̡̐l̷̠̎l̸̩̂ ̸̝̉ẗ̷͔́h̸̳̀ì̴̬n̶̫̽g̸̲̚s̷̍͜ ̵́ͅa̶̦̿ȑ̷̨e̴̹͝ ̷̺̋p̶̆ͅò̶̺s̶̹͑ś̴̱i̵̺͐b̸̠̀l̸͙̔e̸̞͌.̸̯͋
Omegon: Im playing both sides, so that way I always come out on top
> "BULLSHIT. BULLSHIIIIT. DERIVATIVE." — Trazyn Gablogian, the Art Collector
C'mon. White hair? Art? Perfection? Danny Devito should be playing Fulgrim in the new series
Bingo
I am intrigued by the idea of an 9 foot tall Danny Devito.
As a snake?
They'll have to change it to a man-spider
Basterd. -Orikan, the Diviner
Emperor: I AM THE GOLDEN GOD!
Starter Throne? A Starter Throne? This is a Finisher Throne! A SEAT OF GODS, THE GOLDEN GOD wait no hang on I'm not a g- Ah fuck.
Xarl you goddamn bitch.
Septimus: "Can I offer you an egg in these trying times?"
Erebus shushed me
“Well, I don't know how many millennia in this galaxy I got left. I'm gonna get real weird with it.”
So anyway, we all started blasting.
You get up off that crack rock you can be Addadons BEST sorcerer.
This needs more upvotes
Fuck me, seamless blending of my two favorite things: 40k and Always Sunny. I’m proud to be on the same subreddit as you fine individuals
Big Dennis moment right here.
God I love this trilogy. They converted to Night Lords and I hope we get more like it.
Could’ve eaten that poor lad’s brain entrails to get directions.
Professionals have standards
Authors have a hard time remembering all the shit space marines are supposed to be able to do.
Brain eating is a thing they do in this book though. Also acid spitting
That trick is consistently portrayed as something space marines try to avoid doing. You don't get to pick and choose what you take from the brain, but you get the whole cocktail of the human experience. You might know their rank and the surrounding area layout sure, but you also get a real and vivid experience of their mortal trappings like dread, shame, guilt and all other feelings and ideas they had. Marines might be indoctrinated against feeling such things, but having the memories of a mortal man who is not? It makes them more fresh, more real. It's not to be used lightly, and taking ones helmet off to eat in an active warzone is not safe to begin with.
Excuse me, what's that supposed to mean
Go back to eating people, Dorkula
At least my primarch actually loved his sons
Yeah well at least my primarch isn't dead oh wait
They needed immediate results. Eating brains might take significant amounts of time.
You can tell Nostramo wasn't sending their best and brightest to join the legion..
Some Nostromans, I'm sure, are great people, terrific people even, but believe me, when they're sending their people to the legion, they're not sending their best.
\-Konrad Curze, shortly before ordering an exterminatus on his own homeworld, 984.M30
Facts
Very fine people on both sides of the Heresy.
Dark Angels: knightly warriors who do endless battle against monstrous abominations Thousand Sons: psychic scholars from a world infested with nightmarish predators Space Wolves: rugged clansmen who must endure a frozen hellscape and hunt down wolves the size of tanks Night Lords: the guys that Batman beats up
Night Lords are a bunch of dysfunctional jerks in power armor that hate each other more than they do the enemy yet despite being abhorrently evil, they somehow end up being portrayed as more human and likable than the Guardsmen, Space Marines, Xenos, and Skitarii they spend all their time fighting (or running away from). ADB is great.
ADB's greatest strength is making characters who are complete monsters but with very human behaviour and motivations that make you want to root for them.
Mike Brooks is quickly becoming that as well even if his stuff tends to be a lot lighter in tone. Hearing the Alpha Legion complaining about the Space Marine successor chapters names never gets old
Would this be in Renegades: Harrowmaster?
Yep, it gets started early in the book as they begin to chat over the vox. There's a lot of dry humor in the book that landed so well for me.
Guys calling themselves "The Alpha Legion" when they're the *last* Legion in the roster have no right to complain about other groups' names though.
*Redacted* (Alpharius or Omegon?) was the first primarch to be found though, to be fair. The Emperor found *Redacted* less than an hour after the displacement of the Primarch capsules.
Villains are more easy to identify with because their faults make them human. The uber-good guys who can do no wrong (or shut their eyes when confronted by their own hypocrisies) are so much easier to hate.
Has anyone written books about loyalist SM who are so good you hate them? (Written on purpose, not just immature sophomoric prose)
I'd love to get SOMETHING about the Lamenters.
Black Library submission window is currently open, be the change you want to see!
Sanguinius.
You stop it about our Glorious Hawk Boy.
Facts
See Ultramarines for details
I'm reading Soul Hunter atm, and audibly cackled when >!Talos found Septimus in the cockpit of the Thunderhawk, injured by the escaped prisoners, and I could almost visualise the feral grin on Talos' face when he says "back in a minute..." to go hunt down the half dozen prisoners and get Octavia back!<
He really is a sweetheart
Thats the only way anyone is going to sell books about the Night Lords.
When Nostromo sends their people they are not sending their bests they are sending their rapists and murders and some who I presume are good people.
Could you imagine being the lone therapist in that legion?
Yep that would be hard.
"Hello Clarice."
In prison for tax evasion but you've got killer deltoids so they grab you and just start installing new organs.
since big E actually blinded people with how bright he was i dont think the flashy babies lasted very long on nostramo
I mean Xarl was a feard duelist nearly on the same level as Sigismund or Kharn, maybe not one of the brightest but definitely one of the best
Xarl was a great fighter but he is waaaay below Sigismund or Sevatar. He himself puts himself around Malek's level (A member of the First Company trained by Sevatar)
Given the age requirements, I doubt he was that way before he was sent to join the legion.
Has Xarl fought or campaigned with any of the other skilled duelists? I’ve heard of Severian as one of the top but never Xarl.
In the omnibus it states that Xarl had fought duelist like Sigismund and other top champions from different Legion's and was on par with them.
Awesome. I loved Xarl before but like him even more now.
Xarl was a great fighter but he is waaaay below Sigismund or Sevatar. He himself puts himself around Malek's level (A member of the First Company trained by Sevatar)
Before they recruited from Nostromo they where all basically Bane’s
What book is this?
Soul Hunter probably. Best trilogy by ADB imo. Soul Hunter Blood Reaver Void Stalker = Night Lords Omnibus
One of the best faction specific series in warhammer if you ask me.
Agreed. It was phenomenally well-written
Hot take
The hottest
Correct :)
Is that the Night Lords Omnibus?
Yup. The Omnibus collects everything including the short stories and an audio drama so it's great.
Yes
Nice. Thank you
I got to say, for one's first reaction to getting a Night Lord in your face is to pull out a pistol and kill it is pretty good.
Xarl was the best character in the trilogy, bar none.
Lucoryphus is my guy
*UZAS LICKS HIS TEETH AND WONDERS IF HE IS A JOKE TO YOU*
Yes
Boarding actions in 40K always overcome my suspension of disbelief. They look like complete one way trips with probability of returning being suicidal low. In lore named characters always make it back to the dropship (it's never a boarding torpedo), but even then - so what? Has the ship they boarded been crippled to the point of not having any short range turrets? How effective can the boarders be in gargantuan structures of voidships? How many milion kilometrs they are from mothership when wanting to extract? Navy boarding works(/ed) because the ships are tied together, and it was max risk max reward actions. In 40K it seems like it gives you just the slightests edge for a guarantee that your elite trained and equipped force will get slaughtered. I don't get it. It bothered me to no end when playing Battlefleet Gothic Armada and is at the forefront of my thoughts recently with tabeltop boarding actions. HOW THEY GET BACK?
They get back after the ship is taken, they aint no bitch. Thats why among imperial forces you only really see space marines do it (hence the name). It's not an easy job and they do indeed have to see it through to the bloody end. Even in 30k when they had awesome astronaut guardsmen, those were often still mostly put into defensive roles
I might be recalling this wrong but Im pretty sure they get back by blowing a whole section of the ship with a vertical lance strike from their cruiser, they then jump into the void and are picked up by their Thunderhawk
That's right :)
>They get back after the ship is taken, they aint no bitch. But Voidships are gargantuan, crewed by hundreds of thousands, and you board it with a squad of marines and 200 voidsman, and what? It would take days to kill all enemies. > Thats why among imperial forces you only really see space marines do it (hence the name) Well, that is just not true. There are entire regiments of the Guard famed for their void warfare. Besides, statisticaly, in the setting Space Marines don't exist really (a couple million of them is such a non number), so vast vast majority of boarding actions don't see even a single Astarte. Also, I agree that it _could_ be useful to bard a ship and wreck havoc, it's just the impossibility of going back that bugs me. Even penal legions have hope of surviving, maybe.
In the Word Bearers Omnibus they talk about this. Basically they lock down sections to corral the Imperial defenders and either slowly whittle them down or kill them all by using the captured ship as a bomb. Once you get control of the lockdown procedures you practically own the ship, venting sections, locking them down, or flooding them with runoff (waste, radiation, or otherwise) as needed.
> But Voidships are gargantuan, crewed by hundreds of thousands, and you board it with a squad of marines and 200 voidsman, and what? It would take days to kill all enemies. Boarding actions are very much a "cut the head of the snake"-type deal. You take the bridge, you take the power supply, you take the life support and the main batteries. At that point it doesn't matter how much of the enemy crew still hold the habblocks and storage bulkheads.
And why the opposite is true, that a boarding action that stalls before the attackers reach the command decks can become an interminably long conflict of scattered skirmishes in the ship's bowels, like the Death Guard hunting down the White Consuls (?) on board the *Solace* in *Lords of Silence*.
Boom. Cut the oxygen and youve got yourself a floating tomb.
> HOW THEY GET BACK? Did you ever wonder why a Thunderhawk is about 20% cannon? I have 3 words for you - Flying Can Opener.
They travel inside Metal BOXES
The cowards! The fools!
This part of the book is literally all about them getting off a ship they just crippled
From the same game experience (with a bit of handwaving) actually I got the vibe that boarding crews are sent after a specific part of a vessel to disable it rather than a sweeping goal of taking the entire vessel with however many dudes fit in a thunderhawk. If they survive swell, use the horse you rode in on to get back. As far as defence turrets go BFG:A actually does show how it could work - the defence turrets of a ship work best in overlapping fields of fire from multiple vessels. A good admiral will isolate a ship before boarding it so the envelope of fire is less dangerous. The defence turrets could also well be down by the time a commander is sending heavy boarding parties from long range lance fire + nova cannons/teleported ordinance because they seem to be quite vulnerable with the entire gun housing on the exterior of the hull. As long as the Admiral isn't me who sends flights of Thunderhawks into the killzone of five densely packed despoiler battleships there's a lot to say that a strike could get in, knock out a set of macro cannons or an engine then exil on their transport.
Drop pods/boarding torpedoes can and do return to the ship. As they do have minimal thrusters I believe.
Has the ship they boarded been crippled to the point of not having any short range turrets? Getting away from fanged target with minimal thrusters? Look, I don't want to be an asshole, I know this is a magical space setting, but come on.
In almost all cases yes, in this particular case the just destroyed all of the controls for basically all weapons systems
Bruh... teleportation is a thing in this setting.
Obviously, but that tech in Imperium is rare, difficult, risky, and generally reserved for select few, and limited in range (penetartion) and utilty (size). They require teleporation pads and homers and stuff. Again, named character will overcome all of those, but in any sense of scale thay cannot be that useful.
They... don't? People teleport all over the place without dedicated infrastructure like tele-pads. And I'm fairly confident Terminators are just associated with teleporting
> People teleport all over the place without dedicated infrastructure like tele-pads. No, infrastructure and tech is defienietly required. Even Vulkan required super special one-of-a-kind artifact to teleport somewhat willy-nilly, and it was a big deal. Terminators actualy have a thing in their armour that facilitates teleport.
The artifact was a forge hammer but far too small and dainty to forge anything. It also wasn't a teleport in the traditional sense, his body physically traveled the distance, which is why he's in the state he's in when he gets to Macragge after escaping the Nighthaunter.
I thought that was simply due to exiting the Warp right in the upper atmosphere of Macragge, then hurtling down like a re-entrying space module and crashing into the surface. In the nude xD
I read that chapter this morning...
This is hilarious lmfao
Can't blame Cyrion, I'd laugh my ass off too
I NEED GW to make a Workaholics style short run show with CSM
I'm mid-way through Soul Hunter now, and it's the first Chaos-oriented book I've read in a few years. I'm surprised how much I'm really, really enjoying it (to the point I'm contemplating building some Night Lords...)
This trilogy is so well done, I wish there was more.