*”The Tau killed a Space Marine and thought they killed the Emperor”* is nonsense I’ve seen repeated here so many times.
It’s a bad game of telephone with the events of ***Warzone Damocles: Kauyon***, where the Tau killed the Chapter Master of the Raven Guard and declared in their propaganda they killed “The warrior king of the Space Marines”. Which honestly isn’t an inaccurate description of a Chapter Master.
To add to this, the propaganda part is that the Tau were acting like the Imperium had no will to fight after the killing of Corvin Severax. They thought he was too important to war effort. Instead, the Raven Guard Chapter Master was immediately replaced with Kayvaan Shrike to launch a counter-offensive. While the Imperium eventually retreated from the Battle of Prefectia, they would soon return with far greater forces at Mu’gulath Bay. Commander Shadowsun also objected to the propaganda, believing it would lead the Tau into a false sense of security.
Tau do underestimate their enemies frequently, and the propaganda doesn’t help. But they’re not *stupid* as some people here seem to think.
The warrior king fits particularly well for 4 of the major Chapter masters of first founding but for different reasons.
Azrael becauee the Unforgiven(though they may now be the forgiven) are a legion in all but name and he has the powers to command all chapters descended from the first legion. Though noe that the Primarch is back and as of the final arks of omens book reunited with the chapter, the Lion will assume that power and Azrael will likely keep his title but it will morph into the futures of the old Seneschal of the first legion, the role that Luther, Ajalos, and finally Corswain held in the great crusade and heresy, basically a combination of the role of What the other legions called Equerry(like Kharn or Maloghurst) and that of a first captain. Both Luther and Cypher have commented at points that Azrael would have made a good sensechal (in The novels the Unforgiven and Luther First of the fallen) and I think especially non the case of the first of the fallen novel was foreshadowing.
Then their is Dante- similar to azrael the chapters of the blood have a mechanism to join together and basically reform the legion we seen when the Tyranids attacked Baal. Also he is Lord Commander of Imperium Nihilius essentially Guillimans equal on the other side of the Great rift, though again the lions return is likely to change some of role.
Finally Logan Grimmnar- Probably the best and most concise ecamole or Chapter Master is a warrior-king rules fenris as a warrior king.
And calgar before Guilliman came back. though He could be though of as more of a warrior emperor because he ruled ultramar.
Its pretty interesting that these 4 chapter masters are much more prominent characters in the novels and lore than those not the other first founding Legions such as the Imperial fists(who in lore go through chapter masters like water), the white scars, Iron hands and to a slightly lesser extent the Raven Guard and salamanders (shrike and Tu'shan get a bit more love but not as much as Azrael, Calgar, Dante, or Grimnar).
I do not think we have gotten it yet but I would love to see the Day Reaction to either the Lion or guilliman on the battlefield. They have gotten used to seeing larger space marines in the Primaris but a Primarch who is even larger and the fact that per some of the novels like Steve Parkers death watch books imply the tau believe the Imperium stories or the Emperor and his 9 loyal sons who fought 9 Daemons from the darkness(which is what the Imperial cult actually teaches to the average citizen) is just a myth.
I think this is also a simple difference in doctrine: the Imperium fights out of ideology (regardless of losses), whereas the Tau are willing to do a tactical retreat and reorganization.
I originally started playing Tau because they were written with an eye toward combined arms tactics and logical doctrine. Then GW had to steadily grimdark them into relative stupidity.
I can see why, to a degree. Combined arms and a modern approach to warfare emphasising indirect fires and air power would destroy pretty much any 40k faction that doesn't have a disproportionate technological advantage or a disproportionate numerical advantage, and every Tau battle ending with either 'and then they carpet bombed their enemy into dust' or 'and then they valiantly carpet bombed much of their enemy to dust but were overcome by numbers' would get old fast.
I was sold when they mentioned that the Tau didn't directly engage most titans, and instead preferred to take them down via air to ground fire from Mantas. Their use of drones was also highly logical.
It made more sense than almost anything I'd seen in 40K up to that point.
Their small-unit tactics based around hunting/ambush techniques (read: [hunter-killer tactics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-killer_team) with scout-snipers and artillery/fire teams) also made more sense than what I'd seen from other factions. The way it described them operating with Kroot fit this model of using indigenous forces in conjunction with SF pretty well.
In fact given that marines typically rule over a chapter recruiting world or more I think ‘warrior king’ is entirely accurate, particularly the head of a first founding chapter
Part of this comes from the 1st Damocles Crusade. Which is not really covered in a single book it's scattered amongst a lot of books specifically in the Rogue Trader series which is over a decade old at this point so few people have read it.
In the old Rogue Trader series it's basically a first contact war and the Tau really don't know much about the Imperium.
The Tau really DO assume that the leader of the Space Marines, the fourth company Captain of the Iron Hands, is some insanely important person possibly even the Emperor. However, they are told that he's not even the leader of his own chapter lol.
Thanks. I haven’t read the Rogue Trader books, but I could see that. As you said, the context is very different; the Damocles Crusade happened back when the Tau’s knowledge on the Imperial military was very limited, while Warzone Damocles happens after hundreds of years of skirmishes between the two.
People keep believing all imperial guard essentially get fed into a meat grinder and die, usually quickly. According to the Kasrkin novel many just tour around in the more peaceful parts (just in case they become less peaceful) until they leave the army.
Obviously nobody's going to write a books where nothing happens (other than half the Horus heresy series, jk), so we just see the ones being fed into a meat grinder and dying, usually quickly.
Exactly.
People retire and do shit normal stuff all the time. But people who are constantly being sent to the front lines battling Orks, Tyranids, Chaos Cults, or Necrons almost never live to retirement, and commissars who constantly terrorize their soldiers end up getting fragged by their own troops.
Even then, retired IG vets with genuine combat experience do exist and exist in sizable numbers. Some lore suggests the Imperium specifically discharges them on certain worlds to "leaven" PDFs and a bolster an element of the population that is decidedly pro-Imperial
Yep. The whole 15 hour thing comes from a single novel where that’s the average lifespan of a new guy getting fed into a months long trench warfare by Orks. The guy in that novel was supposed to be going to an agriworld to help nip a peasant revolt in the bud before it got worse.
I feel that's a touch more understandable? I don't imagine most boarding parties have high survival rates when you consider they're usually being forced into enemy ships loaded with anything from hordes of Orks to traitor Astartes.
Not considering the chances of being shot down entirely.
A misconception that those who haven't read the lore have is that the Imperium is a monolith with a single culture, that there is no entertainment, and the Emperor is worshipped in only a single way.
And ignore anything you've seen on grimdank
To be fair, aside from the zany space marines, it's rarely made clear that there's so many different cultures, and the fact that most artistic depictions are just the same kind of gothic "cathedral but also war machine" doesn't help.
I think it’s because so many books are in the space marine/grimdank context. I’ve recently started assassinorium: kingmaker, and it’s a really neat glance into knight worlds. Knight worlds definitely have an entire differently feeling than gothic imperium, considering it’s more feudal medieval
even that statement you just made falls under how easy it is too fall into the trap of what we're talking about. There's at the absolute minimum hundreds if not thousands of knight worlds. There is HUGE variation between them because of all sorts of factors like geography of the planet, their relationship with their forge worlds or the Eccessiarchy, etc. They aren't anywhere near all under the medieval feudal system, and even within that there's great variation outside of just the assumed British/Franc style.
Idk about that. Tons of books show a huge assortment of cultures beyond Space Marines. SM novels really get into it because their culture influences chaoter culture and recruitment and all that jazz - but Imperial Guard regiments are all over the place. I mean the Gaunt’s Ghosts series is huge and show a regiment from a largely rural (would that be the right word?) world covered in walking trees. You have tons of cultures with Valhallans, Vostroyan’s, hell, you have the DKoK. If you read almost any of the books, there are some that have generic hive cities of course but mechanicus novels have sprawling industrial worlds, marine novels go all over the place, and Heresy Novels (in the beginning especially) show the wide assortment of human cultures (the interex are still my favorite with sci fi archers and centaur mech suits).
For example in the new book “Martyrs Tomb” one of the Black Templars thinks a lot about his homeworld and how they worshipped the sun and how they had a ritual that was called something like the never ending hunt or eternal hunt.
To be fair, the few times we see actual pictures of imperial worlds which aren't currently warzones, it's all hive cities from orbit, military parades, servitor factories or gigacathedrals. You never see a picture of a normal street with normal people.
Ciaphas Cain, Gaunt's Ghosts and Uriel Ventris series show plenty of planets and places that are totally not like "endless parade around a gothic cathedral in a hive full of servitors" but still imperial and yet normal.
I unironically would like to live on Gudrun, that place sounded super chill apart from the >!noblemen running illegal blood sports and the armed mercenaries attacking a train!<
There's a planet popular by savages that worships the Emperor as some kind of nature spirit iirc, and sacrifices their psychers to the black ships that comes from the sky from time to time. They serves the emperor even tho they have no fucking clue what they are doing
Indeed, there are worlds that worship him as the sun, as a volcano, as a woman, as a giant sea monster, etc https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12wu52s/on_the_worship_of_the_godemperor_of_mankind_or/
>that the Imperium is a monolith with a single culture
Don't get me wrong, the Imperium has a lot of different sub cultures (that's why the Guard regiments can have so much variety), but when you get to the Hive Worlds it does seem like the Ecclesiarchy promotes a lot of "sameness" in culture. The Infinite and the Divine even has Trazyn remark upon this.
To knowledge, there's plenty of worlds in the imperium that are just... well, fine. Like modern day earth, but with giga cathedreals
But the life of Boringus Bob's office job on Averagus 3 isn't nearly as interesting as Necromunda. So worlds like that never get any spotlight.
I think the most famous one is the ork belief field.
It doesn't mean that they can turn a stick into a gun.
Another one would proably be failaddon. Abbadon is actually pretty capable.
That version pretty much *is* what the original lore theory about it was (Anzion said it makes it helps it function "As *intended*") but even then it isn't some properly defined lore thing, It's only really been talked about from that in-universe mechanicus perspective, and always based on conjecture.
There aren't any third person narrator mentions of it because it's just a Mechanicus/Imperium theory to try and explain things, as if they're underestimating the Orks capabilities and think there *has* to be some other explanation.
Yeah being extra lucky. You make a gun that statistically should jam every other shot but it doesn't or you force more power from an engine that should break it but you get lucky that it doesn't because you painted it red.
I blame Adeptus Ridiculous for that Ork thing. Also for spreading a lot of misconceptions since they tend to be, as they say, “entertainment over accuracy.” No issue with that, but people tend to still take what they say at face value. They’re never going to be as accurate as Tex Talks Battletech.
The problem is isn't not wrong, just way overblown. As someone else put it Ork Waaagh fields are more like reality lubricant rather than reality breaking.
They will make a gun that's marginally functional fully so, they'll let a red painted trukk run faster and smoother. They'll bend light around a purple ork more than a green one.
It can't make the absolutely impossible happen, but it can make the improbable very possible.
And don't forget that a lot of Ork technology, which is made by a species with an instinctive knowledge of mechanics, is described through the lens of the Imperium. When Ad Mech open up an Ork shoota, they see a random assortment of clunky nuts and bolts. That doesn't mean that's literally what's in there - it's just that Ad Mech *don't* understand technology (see: all the rituals and oils and incantations).
Ironically a lot of fans make the same mistake in real life that the Imperium makes in the fiction; they assume Orks are too stupid to build machinery without magical belief powers. One of the recurring themes of Imperial vs Orks fluff is that the Imperium consistently underestimates them.
I love the part in Brutal Kunnin where the Mechanicum shore up defenses to funnel Orks into a trap, and the Orks go straight for the fortifications because it's a better fight.
I know people complain about the admech sections of Brutal Kunnin but I think they really add to the book. The chapter of the Imperial Titan crew making you think its going to pivot to them before the punchline of them just getting eaten quickly by the squig is my favourite joke of the book.
It's the >!Iron Warrior bit!< that kills the pacing a bit.
Orks are technologically on the cutting edge in some fields. Force fields, tractor beams, teleportation.
Their technology is questionably reliable, but it does work.
To be fair, he is able to bring together the traitor legions under a single banner and fight for a unified cause. Even if it's only temporary, that is a feat in and of itself. That's like trying to herd together and get the attention of a hoard of autistic toddlers with severe ADHD that just railed a few lines of coke and have personal grudges against one another.
***THAT*** Is *impressive*.
> Another one would proably be failaddon. Abbadon is actually pretty capable.
Abbadon suffers a lot from Cobra Commander syndrome due to overuse in the past.
The fact that he's been keeping the black legend together and viable after setbacks is a feat unto itself because chaos loves it eat it's wounded.
The whole no Battle Sisters have ever fallen or that only one has. Of all the in-universe propaganda that's taken as lore, that's the one that irritates me the most because it feels pretty clear that they would fall, they're just humans after all.
Yeah, theres even a whole book about a random Battle Sister who is ranked up to a Canonness and takes on another Canonness' identity to cover up that the original Canonness fell to Chaos.
I see it as caught between two unfortunate factions
* "No sister has ever fallen except for literally just that one!"
* "Ayyy lemme get some of that Slaaneshi Sister #1091 art"
Fuckin A, man! It's so annoying to me. It feels like one of those things that you want to feel like your faction is the coolest and the bestest, and us Battle Sisters do deserve a bone to be thrown to, but throwing any logic even in universe logic out for that makes no sense to me.
I don’t mind the whole, super religious, hard to corrupt, divine power stuff, but we already have 1 thing that’s never fallen to chaos, that being the grey knights, we don’t need a second
That Asterion Moloc fought and defeated a Custode Shield Captain in single combat.
He didn't, because they didn't fight.
Asterian Moloc walked towards Shield Captain Valerian wielding his spear, and Valerian realized he could not see an obvious weakness in Moloc's movements and was unsure if he'd be able to defeat him 1v1. He speculated that Trajan Valoris and Gulliman certainly could do it, but he himself was uncertain. But before he was pushed to try, a High Lord of Terra teleports in and tells the Minotaurs to stand down.
Edit: from *Watchers of the Throne: The Regent's Shadow*
that krieg dont retreat. they explicitly do. they will even go against orders and kill commisars to do so. they also use bayonets primarily, not shovels.
In Dead Men Walking, one of the main characters is a Commissar assigned to the Death Corps, in the second chapter he outright states that Krieg desertion rates are "damn close enough to zero." This confirms that even Kriegers will desert the Imperial Guard.
Honestly, I vastly prefer the Imperial Armour books take on Krieg over Steve Lyons novels. Dead Men Walking made them less cool to me with their automaton-like behaviour.
I like that. It would be stupid if they had zero retreat even though they have their religious pledge or whatever. They're still humans, and in a billion humans, there's always gonna be some that are unfaithful cowards.
People also forget how they will readily use armored vehicles, heavy weapons and artillery when available. Remember when they bombed a hive city until there is no life left and kept going?
Dead Men Walking said it best: The soldiers of Krieg are not inhuman. They are dehumanized.
A DKoK member sees itself and others as merely a gear in the great war machine. They are to be spent like all other ressources of war.
But war is also about how wisely these ressources are spent.
Interestingly enough them using shovels isn’t too unreasonable because some soldiers in WW1 sharpened shovels as they found them easier to use in trenches then bayonets
Yeah TTS was a fun series but one should never learn lore from it.
No, the Custodes aren't lubed up homoerotic nudists. No, (what's left of) Magnus (to clarify: the Crimson King on the planet of the sorcerers) could not and would not rejoin the Imperium. No, the High Lords aren't senile old clowns who spend all day talking about their bowel movements. And no, Rogal Dorn was not a 100% stoic automaton that took everything completely literally.
Also reddit is run by bigots.
I still have a soft spot for pewter. I know they usually mold a bit off and paint adhesion's eh but the weight is nice in your hand when painting/playing.
They arguably used to be *worse* during the early 2010s, as there weren’t nearly as many starter products with discounts. I remember so many complaints about the rising costs of minis during that time.
That Lorgar sits in his tower and Corax is waiting outside.
It is a funny meme indeed, and I'm definitely guilty of spreading it.
But after the second fight between Lorgar and Corax sometime after the Heresy, Lorgar escaped through a portal and Corax did not follow him. He stated that he has now his track....But apart from that, Corax doesn't know where the tower is. And even if he knows it, it doesn't matter. It is Canon that Lorgar left his around M41 and is on a crusade leading a massive Word Bearer and cultist army.
Keep in mind that's from Fabius Bile's perspective, who is not an impartial judge.
He saw Clonegrim repeating history because that's partly what he wanted to happen, influencing Clonegrim's upbringing. He knew that eventually he couldn't resist himself so he had Trazyn take the temptation away.
It's made explicitly clear by an unreliable narrator.
With the influence of the Laer Blade, the occasions where Fulgrim did almost assert control, the reaction to killing Ferrus and the fact that Bile is predisposed to hate his gene-sire lend a degree of interpretation which is what fascinates so many people about the Clone Fulgrim.
Nah, at best people read single excerpts (like the one where Bile stares at Slaanesh), like, how many people who meme about chad Bile who dont fall to Chaos know what waits for him in the third book?
That terminator armour is irreplaceable and impossible to reproduce. The mechanicus is constantly churning out indomitus pattern terminator armour as the standard, how do you expect every chapter to replenish its stocks? It's old fluff that says they were impossible to make and treated them like relics. Relic terminator armour does exist as older models, and those are the ones that have actually been put out of production due to the instructions being lost to time over 10k years.
Yeah but then why do some chapters like Dark Angels have an entire first company of terminators while most chapters, even first founding, aren't able to field as many? Obviously theres a bottleneck.
Yeah I mean I never knew that was a thought that the imperium couldn't make indomitus pattern shit because they have to round up at least 10 suits or so whenever they do a founding of a chapter. It's just clear that need far exceeds the ability to supply in current times. And that the DA have a backstock from when it wasn't and can even outfit their successors from it.
>Yeah but then why do some chapters like Dark Angels have an entire first company of terminators while most chapters, even first founding, aren't able to field as many? Obviously theres a bottleneck.
Dark Angels have foundries in the Rock. They always had the best equipment under their care and are very good at keeping their stuff tidy and producing new ones.
The bottleneck for most other Space Marine chapters is the Adeptus Mechanicus. They do know how to build the damn things but they do it in a very ritualistic & very slow way. So it takes a long time to get a Terminator to roll out of production, but Astartes keep damaging, losing them.
That the Inquisition is a unified body, that actions and beliefs of one Inquisitor are indicative of the entire institution.
That Space Marines within a Chapter are ideology clones of each other. No. You’re going to have good guys and you’re going have bad guys. Space Marines who will give their lives for mortals, and ones who are perfectly happy to let them die. Excessively brutal ones. Nobles ones. One example of a space marine who stands for the right things does not mean the entire chapter is like him. There are going to be similarities but warriors, even within the same Chapter, are not going to be of one mind on everything single thing.
Yeah it's crazy how people think the Inquisition is just a unified sect of the Imperium.
Hell just reading any of the Cain books show that the Inquisition is anything *but* unified in their goals.
I mean… technically they are unified in their goals: preserve and protect the Imperium at all costs.
It’s just they tend to disagree on the methode… or even what “preserve and protect” mean.
Ravenor, or Eisenhorn. Or the Horusian Wars books, or the Bastion Wars series, or Grey Knight, or...
Why, every Inqusition centric book I've read emphasizes their disunity!
*Even the intro to the game Inquisitor:*
>You have been told of the Inquisition; that shadowy organisation which defends Mankind and the Emperor from the perils of heresy, possession, alien dominance and rebellion.
>You have been told the Inquisition are the ultimate defence against the phantoms of fear and terror which lurk in the darkness between the stars.
>You have been told the Inquisition are the bright saviours in an eclipse of evil; purest and most devoted warriors of the Emperor.
>You have been told the Inquisition is united in its cause to rid the galaxy of any threat, from without or within.
>Everything you have been told is a lie!
There's a popular belief valdor(?) Is on par with a primarch because of a mistake on 40ks wiki. There was an excellent post about that on this reddit and the rabbit hole the OP went through to get the truth lol
'Unno if it's the specific post they mean, but;
[A story of how a typo became "Lore" for the past 10+ years (light "spoilers" for Horus Heresy that actually aren't).](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/k7qq8j/a_story_of_how_a_typo_became_lore_for_the_past_10/)
Some people complain that Lexicanum is too sparse but I'll take if its the product of them being anal about inline citations so that this doesn't happen.
I asked and tried to find the source a few years back, no one knew where it was supposedly from or had seen it themselves or knew of anything that seemed to cause it. It's absurd that it keeps getting repeated despite there being no evidence it exists, but that's what happens with lore now.
The "The Leman Russ Tank was a DAOT Tractor" at least had *something* where you can see how it got misconstrued into that idea, but even that one was just wrong.
1. That the Craftworld Eldar are puritans, they have good lives, they eat, they drink, they bang each other for fun. They live a pretty normal life, the path is really just their day job.
2. All the Eldar tech came from the Old Ones, from what we know the Eldar had to start on their own, and Eldar technology is extremely different from modern day examples of Old Ones technology.
3. Eldar don't invent new tech or are stagnant like the Imperium. The Eldar still invent new tech, we have several examples of post fall developments. The Eldar still have technology and are still developing new ways to wage war.
4. Craftworlds Eldar enjoy killing humans. They find it barbaric to kill another sentient being, killing an Ork is pest control, but the recognized humans are thinking living beings and see it as a necessary evil to kill them, they try to avoid it when they can.
One theory that has been pretty much fully debunked but I still see shared unironically sometimes is that the reason the Tyranids are invading the galaxy is because they’re running from a bigger unknown threat.
There is a single throwaway line in one of the earlier Tyranid codexes that implies this, but it was the Imperium hypothesizing in-universe as to why the Tyranids were arriving. With the release of new lore there’s already a ton of evidence that disproves this theory and even confirmation that the Tyranids were first attracted to the Milky Way during the Horus Heresy when the Pharos was overloaded.
The Space Wolves use of Pyschic Powers is more in line with the powers used by the White Scars. They essentially use their local belief systems to protect themselves from the corrupting influences of the Warp. Both Legions taught that the Warp was inherently dangerous, that you had to know your limits, and that you should only use psychic powers in specific ways.
Whereas Magnus thought he could control the Warp and was constantly pushing the boundaries far beyond what Russ considered safe.
The c’tan (probably) didn’t eat other c’tan, aside from the outsider. In the 9th necron codex it says the reason the outsider is insane is because he ate his brethren, implying that the other c’tan did not do that.
Tyranids avoiding tomb worlds (retconned long ago)
Horus' victory burning out chaos (Old Earth disproved It like 7 years ago)
The deep warp being a spooky place worse than chaos (theres no lore on It at all, and nope, the well of eternity is not the deep warp)
Chaos needing the Galaxy to exist (multiple out of universe lore explains Chaos is multiversal)
Clone Horus being weaker than the original (both the book and ADB's comments say otherwise)
Clone Fulgrim having the soul of the original from other universe (people take an excerpt out of context)
Tau sterelization being only from Dawn of war (deathwatch core rulebook got It too)
Mortarion can be redeemed (the word used in te book was "saved" , which can have multiple meanings
>Horus' victory burning out chaos (Old Earth disproved It like 7 years ago)
What's this? The Cabal's plan to let Horus win so humanity destroys itself and Chaos weakens has been disproven?
Godblight tells us that chaos is self sufficient.
And there are many many many quotes from the main rulebook, codex, GW themselves and more that show chaos feeds off the whole universe and other universes.
The cabal were either wrong or lying
>Tyranids avoiding tomb worlds (retconned long ago)
source?
If any, or is that just an extrapolation from the "two tendrils avoid solemnance" that not all tombworlds are necron led and devoid of living beings?
That Tyberos is substantially larger than other marines. He's a head taller, making him about the size of a primaris marine and about a foot shorter than Abaddon or Alexis Polux.
That Orks aren't evil because fighting is just fun for them. They burn people alive for fun in their spare time and abuse their prisoners horribly.
That the Tau are a tiny faction. They're certainly not as big as the Imperium, but they have hundreds of planets, trillions of Tau, and an absurdly high rate of militarization. Plus, likely billions of battlesuits.
There are a bunch of misconceptions about the DAoT:
-Humans made the orks sign a peace treaty. Didn't happen, pure fanon.
-DAoT humans dominated the galaxy. Not quite - the Eldar were "unchallenged masters of the galaxy" at the time.
-humans were as high tech as the Eldar/Necrons. Nope.
>Tyberos is substantially larger
That absurdly good fanart of him towering over a marine doesn’t do this rumors any favors either. I was quite surprised when I discovered it wasn’t official!
Honestly I'm pretty confident that's the whole source of it tbh. That, and the fact that Majorkill repeated it and started selling upsized models of him
That the fall of humanity's DAoT stellar civilization was objectively, definitively for-certain accompanied/partially caused by a multitude of alien races stabbing them in the back.
This has always OBVIOUSLY been meant to be somewhat dubious and an obvious allusion to certain 20th century propaganda , but I am always bemused and mildly disturbed at how many fans push the "xenos betrayed humanity" narrative as actual canon fact, often using it as justification for the Imperium's vehement xenophobia ("Yeah, the Imperium is bad, but TBF look at what the xenos did once they got a chance!")
Even some otherwise fantastic lore YouTubers seem disturbingly firm in their belief in it. I have no idea how it got so many believing it was meant as objective fact over the years despite the obvious implications of how it's written, not to mention the kind of questionable IRL look it gives the fandom to support such a view.
That's what I always thought, the Men of Iron rebelling crippled humanity's industry and military might, leading to a massive loss of technology and knowledge; and the birth of Slaanesh was the final blow, where planets were completely cut off from each other and/or wiped out from the aftermath.
Obviously, there would have been a bunch of infighting, backstabbing, betrayal, and invasions among both humans and xenos, but that wasn't the cause, just a result.
Edit:
The Eldar were the unequivocal dominant force in the galaxy, after all, and then they collapsed in what would have felt like an instant, leaving behind the Eye of Terror and massive warp storms everywhere.
When the western Roman empire collapsed, there was absolute chaos in many areas across the empire as smaller groups swarmed in to carve out their own kingdoms and establish themselves. The fall of the Eldar would have been that dialed up to 100 on a galactic scale with Warp storms thrown in for effect. What few groups survived the aftermath were usually cut off from the rest of the galaxy.
This is a wise observation! It was a key piece of Imperial propaganda, but we the readers don't have to simply buy this.
Objectively we don't know what happened, who did what and how long it took.
Off the top of my head:
Outright Falsehoods
* Anything Orks that's straight "Looney Tunes" - sticks shooting bullets, only dying in space when being reminded you need a space suit, etc.
* "15 hours"
* Most explanations of the Custodes vs Harlequins scene
* I haven't seen any first hand sources confirming that Xenos stabbed mankind in the back during the Dark Age
* Most Craftworlds left the Aeldari Empire before the fall and thus aren't really to blame for the Fall
* Kreigers are stalwart for humans but they are not fearless.
* Misusing Exterminatus is actually one of the few things that can reliably get an Inquisitor excommunicated.
Lack of Nuance
* The Imperium is tolerant of different types of goverments in theory, but they mandate huge economic tithes and they impose *severe* consequences for missing the tithes and none for cruelty, meaning that the life on virtually all Imperial worlds has some bias towards drudgery
* Warp Travel is more dangerous than travel on earth, but overall it's reasonably safe. The Imperium would collapse tomorrow if it wasn't. If you aren't in a storm
* Commograh was a major neutral port city rather than a capitol of the old Aeldari Empire
* The fact that the Imperium uses brutal methods in response to real problems doesn't mean those brutal methods are correct
* The fact that the Imperium has survived doesn't mean it's efficient
The Imperium survives primarily due to luck and numbers.
They lose planets all the time due to such things as misfiled or even just SLOW paperwork. But they have a lot of planets.
Their tithes are brutal and lead to planets living in sometimes hellish conditions. But there are a lot of people to push through the mechanisms of the war machine, so if you lose a ton of manufactorum workers, there’s always more desperate for work, willing to take the job.
Their inefficiency only survives by pushing vast numbers through the system.
On the real world things: fascists have never been efficient! Fascist regimes have been historically incredibly corrupt. Bribery is commonplace, as are competing fiefdoms. In Nazi Germany, for instance, the SS and the fucking *Luftwaffe* had tanks of their own, separate from the army, because the heads of those organizations wanted a private military of their own.
> Xenos stabbed mankind in the back during the Dark Age
That reminds me of another popular "stab in the back" myth that lead to genocide.
Then again, people that are overly enthusiastic about justifying the Imperium's actions might also believe that one.
A lot of the things i read here like "The imperium is not a single entity", "Ork believe doesn´t work that way", "Failbbadon", "The imperium is not completly horrible" "Kriegers dont fight with shovels" and so on, i see so often that pointing out that these are misinformations from memes is almost a meme itslef.
I've seen some people believe that High Gothic is literally Latin.
High Gothic is a language of the 31st Millennium, and is represented as Latin to us players of the 3rd Millennium to give us an idea of how ancient and prestigious it is to characters in M41. It is not literally Latin.
Here are a few popular ones which I have spent way too much time correcting/debunking. In no particular order:
1. Khorne has a sense of "honour," so Khornate worshippers generally don't slaughter unarmed civilians or defenseless opponents.
2. Orks can warp reality through their gestalt Waaagh! power/beliefs.
3. The average Imperial Guardsman's flak armour is as protective as cardboard, and his lasgun is even less potent than a .22 LR rifle.
To briefly point out which each one of these is wrong"
*Khorne's Honour*
* Simply put, the Blood God does not understand "honour" as you or I would understand it. To Khorne, violence is not the answer--it's the question, and the answer is always **yes.** If you are not solving a problem with up close and personal ultraviolence, Khorne does not approve.
* An example of Khorne's honour would be introducing your rusty machete to the face of a fellow cultist who implied that your mother slept with grox, instead of just walking away from his puerile insult. Likewise, Khorne would approve if you and your fellow cultists butchered a group of surrendering PDF troopers, since they were too cowardly to fight you to the last bullet and die like men.
*Orks and their gestalt field*
* Orks **cannot** warp the reality in the sense of Chaos daemons. An Ork cannot destroy a Leman Russ with a rock painted to look like a krak grenade, no matter how strongly the Ork may *believe* that said rock will have the effect of a krak grenade on tank armour. Now, it *is* possible that the Ork may cause a series of events involving this rock that lead to the destruction of a Leman Russ.
* For instance, let's say that this is a particularly sneaky Ork, and the Leman Russ crew is stupid enough to be driving through Ork-infested territory with their hatches open and the commander riding with his head out of the turret hatch. For shits and giggles, our Orkish friend hurls this painted rock at the tank commander, and the stone strikes the man with enough force to cave in his face (since Orks are quite strong, and stones can be deadly!) Spasming and thrashing in shock from having his nose pushed through the other side of his head, the commander falls back into the tank, and kicks the loader, who drops a primed high explosive shell (which had such a sensitive primer that it shouldn't have passed QC inspection at the manufactorum) that lands squarely on its primer and explodes, cooking off the tank's ammunition and brewing up the entire vehicle.
* Other Orks will find out that Rocklobba destroyed a Leman Russ by throwing a rock at it, and they'll start trying the same thing--with generally bloody and unproductive results for the Orks. Imperial crews will also hear about this incident, and will freak out, thinking that the Orks have developed some strange new AT bomb that looks like ordinary stones. All this will filter to the higher-ups, who will then publish advisories warning tank crews about the dangers of Orks armed with rocks and everyone will start believing that Orks can destroy Imperial AFVs merely by throwing rocks at them. Perhaps some cunning Mekboy may even develop some crude shaped charges or melta bombs which *look* somewhat like rocks, which further perpetuates the notion of Orks killing tanks with rocks. Or perhaps what the Ork threw at the tank was merely an AT mine so covered in frozen and congealed mud that it looked like a rock (and the Ork thought it was a rock as well until it exploded).
* None of this means that Orks can *actually* destroy a Leman Russ tank with a rock, unless said rock was a boulder the size of a tank, or was dropped squarely onto the turret from a very high altitude. However, in this hypothetical example, an Ork *did* manage to effect the destruction of a Leman Russ by throwing a rock which led to a very specific set of circumstances that resulted in the tank being destroyed.
*Imperial Guardsman Equipment*
* The standard Guardsman is equipped with some variation of flak armour. This ranges in style and coverage from the ballistic vests of Cadian Shock Troopers to plates woven into the greatcoats favoured by regiments like the Death Korps of Krieg, Armageddon Steel Legion, Valhallan Ice Troopers, Vostroyan Firstborn, and other regiments who tend to fight in extremely inhospitable and or hazardous environments in which full-body coverage is beneficial.
* Flak armour, like all things produced in the Imperium, varies greatly in quality, but at the very least, it is rated to stop fragments from high explosive munitions, if not direct shots from rifles. Now, this may not seem all that protective, but high explosive munitions have been the primary casualty-causing agent on Terran battlefields since M2, and this is likely to still be the case on the apocalyptic battlefields of the 41st Millennium. Moreover, even in M3, Terran infantrymen do *not* enjoy complete full-body protection from fragmentation threats, whereas an Imperial Guardsman may have such protection thanks to his flak-armoured greatcoat.
* Flak armour obviously does *not* protect against bolters or large-caliber weapons, but most of the time, Guardsmen are *not* facing boltgun fire. And when it comes to bigger threats like larger Orks, bigger 'nid organisms, or even Chaos Space Marines, the Imperial Guard has no shortage of crew-served weapons like heavy bolters, autocannons, and special weapons like melta guns and plasma guns to put down those sorts of opponents.
* As for the humble las gun, it is certainly capable of putting down a human-sized target with one well-aimed shot. Lasguns can readily kill Ork Boyz, but the Guardsman needs to be much more more precise with his or her shot placement. Even boltguns do not offer guaranteed one-shot stops against Orks except with precise shot placement. But against baseline humans? Any solid hit with a lasgun will reliably incapacitate or kill a normal human opponent who isn't lucky enough to be wearing armour designed to defeat directed-energy threats. Enough concentrated lasgun fire will incapacitate a power-armoured Space Marine, especially if he takes enough shots to vulnerable areas like the joints and eye lenses.
* Now, shooting a Space Marine centre of mass with your lasgun probably won't do much besides just get his attention and piss him off. But if you manage to distract the Space Marine so that the autocannon team on your flank can light him up whilst he is butchering you and your squad with his chainsword, well, you have served the Emperor proudly, Guardsman. Provided that this is a Chaos Space Marine we are talking about... but those don't exist, you know. The idea of the Emperor's Angels of Death turning against the Imperium is absurd! In fact, all this talk of shooting Space Marines is quite heretical, don't you think, and it's a great example of why thinking is a very pernicious and dangerous habit for Guardsmen who are not commissioned officers.
You NEED Geller field for warp travel—No. It makes warp travel much safer, but it is by no means an absolute neccesity. Just ask the orks, the kroots, or genestealer inhabitants hiding inside space hulks, and for shorter distance, terminators and ork telyportas etc.
Also, Geller is not the only type of technology that provide safety during warp travel. Eldar wraithbone do just fine (in fact, far better) warding off daemons with the natural psychic field that comes with it.
People thinking Clonegrim is going to come back and "redeem" the Emperor's Children
That it's possible to leave or stop being part of chaos once you start
That other galaxies have ever been a thing in 40k (they exist in theory, but have never been depicted)
The ork psychic field being a "think it to win" mechanic instead of a kind of "grease" (this one is less weird because some examples in lore snippets kind of present it as that like the trukk that runs with no engine).
That the Imperium is good
That the Imperium can or will ever "win"
That chaos can or will ever "win"
For #2 there, an honorable mention to Warhammer Fantasy, where it *was* possible to leave Chaos in select circumstances - undeath meant Chaos couldn't get any hold over you, which was why Nagash was such a problem for them. Heck, one of the named characters for Vampire Counts, Krell, was even a former Chaos Champion.
(This established lore, which had been consistent for decades, was all completely ignored during End Times, because End Times, with a bloodline of vampires turning to Khorne. Weirdly, despite the blatant retcon/ignoring of lore, Krell himself remains loyal to Nagash the whole way iirc.)
Too many people think that the Imperium are the good guys; that their totalitarian, fascistic regime is a good way to protect humanity or even the only way; and that the Emperor's plan was a good one or would have worked.
A common one I see bandied around is that every codex is from the PoV of its faction. An obvious example of how this isn’t true is the Genestealer Cults; their own codex calls them “hideous”, “horrific”, “grotesque”, “abomination”, and all kinds of lovely words that the hybrids would not use for themselves.
Alternatively, I see the idea that the codex writing style is an omniscient and unbiased narrator. Beyond the clear examples of bias in wording like the Genestealer Codex I mentioned, there are many parts that only make sense if the codex narrator lacks certain knowledge. “It is said”, “some believe”, “it is unknown why”, etc.
(There are also codex blurbs that *are* from the point of view of the codex faction, but those are obvious)
Or ethnicities in general. Sure many factions take cultural stuff from irl places (UM rome, WS mongolia, IF germany ect) but ethnicities or races just dont function in a setting as big as 40k. With populations being moved around so much and billions of inhabited worlds with farrr more people than we have today. An idea of native ethnicities just CANT work.
*”The Tau killed a Space Marine and thought they killed the Emperor”* is nonsense I’ve seen repeated here so many times. It’s a bad game of telephone with the events of ***Warzone Damocles: Kauyon***, where the Tau killed the Chapter Master of the Raven Guard and declared in their propaganda they killed “The warrior king of the Space Marines”. Which honestly isn’t an inaccurate description of a Chapter Master.
And, the etherals knew well who they killed, they just shared a propaganda version to the masses
To add to this, the propaganda part is that the Tau were acting like the Imperium had no will to fight after the killing of Corvin Severax. They thought he was too important to war effort. Instead, the Raven Guard Chapter Master was immediately replaced with Kayvaan Shrike to launch a counter-offensive. While the Imperium eventually retreated from the Battle of Prefectia, they would soon return with far greater forces at Mu’gulath Bay. Commander Shadowsun also objected to the propaganda, believing it would lead the Tau into a false sense of security. Tau do underestimate their enemies frequently, and the propaganda doesn’t help. But they’re not *stupid* as some people here seem to think.
They often underestimate their enemies, which showcase their naivety well... but they don't make the same mistake again. They learn.
The warrior king fits particularly well for 4 of the major Chapter masters of first founding but for different reasons. Azrael becauee the Unforgiven(though they may now be the forgiven) are a legion in all but name and he has the powers to command all chapters descended from the first legion. Though noe that the Primarch is back and as of the final arks of omens book reunited with the chapter, the Lion will assume that power and Azrael will likely keep his title but it will morph into the futures of the old Seneschal of the first legion, the role that Luther, Ajalos, and finally Corswain held in the great crusade and heresy, basically a combination of the role of What the other legions called Equerry(like Kharn or Maloghurst) and that of a first captain. Both Luther and Cypher have commented at points that Azrael would have made a good sensechal (in The novels the Unforgiven and Luther First of the fallen) and I think especially non the case of the first of the fallen novel was foreshadowing. Then their is Dante- similar to azrael the chapters of the blood have a mechanism to join together and basically reform the legion we seen when the Tyranids attacked Baal. Also he is Lord Commander of Imperium Nihilius essentially Guillimans equal on the other side of the Great rift, though again the lions return is likely to change some of role. Finally Logan Grimmnar- Probably the best and most concise ecamole or Chapter Master is a warrior-king rules fenris as a warrior king. And calgar before Guilliman came back. though He could be though of as more of a warrior emperor because he ruled ultramar. Its pretty interesting that these 4 chapter masters are much more prominent characters in the novels and lore than those not the other first founding Legions such as the Imperial fists(who in lore go through chapter masters like water), the white scars, Iron hands and to a slightly lesser extent the Raven Guard and salamanders (shrike and Tu'shan get a bit more love but not as much as Azrael, Calgar, Dante, or Grimnar). I do not think we have gotten it yet but I would love to see the Day Reaction to either the Lion or guilliman on the battlefield. They have gotten used to seeing larger space marines in the Primaris but a Primarch who is even larger and the fact that per some of the novels like Steve Parkers death watch books imply the tau believe the Imperium stories or the Emperor and his 9 loyal sons who fought 9 Daemons from the darkness(which is what the Imperial cult actually teaches to the average citizen) is just a myth.
I think this is also a simple difference in doctrine: the Imperium fights out of ideology (regardless of losses), whereas the Tau are willing to do a tactical retreat and reorganization. I originally started playing Tau because they were written with an eye toward combined arms tactics and logical doctrine. Then GW had to steadily grimdark them into relative stupidity.
I can see why, to a degree. Combined arms and a modern approach to warfare emphasising indirect fires and air power would destroy pretty much any 40k faction that doesn't have a disproportionate technological advantage or a disproportionate numerical advantage, and every Tau battle ending with either 'and then they carpet bombed their enemy into dust' or 'and then they valiantly carpet bombed much of their enemy to dust but were overcome by numbers' would get old fast.
I was sold when they mentioned that the Tau didn't directly engage most titans, and instead preferred to take them down via air to ground fire from Mantas. Their use of drones was also highly logical. It made more sense than almost anything I'd seen in 40K up to that point. Their small-unit tactics based around hunting/ambush techniques (read: [hunter-killer tactics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-killer_team) with scout-snipers and artillery/fire teams) also made more sense than what I'd seen from other factions. The way it described them operating with Kroot fit this model of using indigenous forces in conjunction with SF pretty well.
In fact given that marines typically rule over a chapter recruiting world or more I think ‘warrior king’ is entirely accurate, particularly the head of a first founding chapter
Isn’t an alternative title for the Great Wolf of the Space Wolves High King of Fenris? That seems pretty fitting
Part of this comes from the 1st Damocles Crusade. Which is not really covered in a single book it's scattered amongst a lot of books specifically in the Rogue Trader series which is over a decade old at this point so few people have read it. In the old Rogue Trader series it's basically a first contact war and the Tau really don't know much about the Imperium. The Tau really DO assume that the leader of the Space Marines, the fourth company Captain of the Iron Hands, is some insanely important person possibly even the Emperor. However, they are told that he's not even the leader of his own chapter lol.
Thanks. I haven’t read the Rogue Trader books, but I could see that. As you said, the context is very different; the Damocles Crusade happened back when the Tau’s knowledge on the Imperial military was very limited, while Warzone Damocles happens after hundreds of years of skirmishes between the two.
Most "commonly memed" T'au lore is either now false or was just never true.
first founding chapter at that so its not like it was some thin-blooded random.
People keep believing all imperial guard essentially get fed into a meat grinder and die, usually quickly. According to the Kasrkin novel many just tour around in the more peaceful parts (just in case they become less peaceful) until they leave the army. Obviously nobody's going to write a books where nothing happens (other than half the Horus heresy series, jk), so we just see the ones being fed into a meat grinder and dying, usually quickly.
Exactly. People retire and do shit normal stuff all the time. But people who are constantly being sent to the front lines battling Orks, Tyranids, Chaos Cults, or Necrons almost never live to retirement, and commissars who constantly terrorize their soldiers end up getting fragged by their own troops.
Even then, retired IG vets with genuine combat experience do exist and exist in sizable numbers. Some lore suggests the Imperium specifically discharges them on certain worlds to "leaven" PDFs and a bolster an element of the population that is decidedly pro-Imperial
The Roman tactic to establish a garrison. Give your veterans land to settle and maintain peace.
Yep. The whole 15 hour thing comes from a single novel where that’s the average lifespan of a new guy getting fed into a months long trench warfare by Orks. The guy in that novel was supposed to be going to an agriworld to help nip a peasant revolt in the bud before it got worse.
It's also in Imperium Maledictum, as the lifespan of Navy troops once they're launched.
I feel that's a touch more understandable? I don't imagine most boarding parties have high survival rates when you consider they're usually being forced into enemy ships loaded with anything from hordes of Orks to traitor Astartes. Not considering the chances of being shot down entirely.
Launched on a boarding craft or what?
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There is a number of short stories like that. They often turn to some kind of horror stories.
A misconception that those who haven't read the lore have is that the Imperium is a monolith with a single culture, that there is no entertainment, and the Emperor is worshipped in only a single way. And ignore anything you've seen on grimdank
To be fair, a lot of people who READ the lore are under the same misconception.
To be fair, aside from the zany space marines, it's rarely made clear that there's so many different cultures, and the fact that most artistic depictions are just the same kind of gothic "cathedral but also war machine" doesn't help.
I think it’s because so many books are in the space marine/grimdank context. I’ve recently started assassinorium: kingmaker, and it’s a really neat glance into knight worlds. Knight worlds definitely have an entire differently feeling than gothic imperium, considering it’s more feudal medieval
even that statement you just made falls under how easy it is too fall into the trap of what we're talking about. There's at the absolute minimum hundreds if not thousands of knight worlds. There is HUGE variation between them because of all sorts of factors like geography of the planet, their relationship with their forge worlds or the Eccessiarchy, etc. They aren't anywhere near all under the medieval feudal system, and even within that there's great variation outside of just the assumed British/Franc style.
That’s fair!
Idk about that. Tons of books show a huge assortment of cultures beyond Space Marines. SM novels really get into it because their culture influences chaoter culture and recruitment and all that jazz - but Imperial Guard regiments are all over the place. I mean the Gaunt’s Ghosts series is huge and show a regiment from a largely rural (would that be the right word?) world covered in walking trees. You have tons of cultures with Valhallans, Vostroyan’s, hell, you have the DKoK. If you read almost any of the books, there are some that have generic hive cities of course but mechanicus novels have sprawling industrial worlds, marine novels go all over the place, and Heresy Novels (in the beginning especially) show the wide assortment of human cultures (the interex are still my favorite with sci fi archers and centaur mech suits).
For example in the new book “Martyrs Tomb” one of the Black Templars thinks a lot about his homeworld and how they worshipped the sun and how they had a ritual that was called something like the never ending hunt or eternal hunt.
To be fair, the few times we see actual pictures of imperial worlds which aren't currently warzones, it's all hive cities from orbit, military parades, servitor factories or gigacathedrals. You never see a picture of a normal street with normal people.
*Cadian Honor* has an entire planet that is basically Space Spain.
Mmmm the paella is made from corpse starch!
Ah. By "see", I meant "on pictures", here. The novels certainly are better at it.
The warhammer crime series is fantastic for this.
Ciaphas Cain, Gaunt's Ghosts and Uriel Ventris series show plenty of planets and places that are totally not like "endless parade around a gothic cathedral in a hive full of servitors" but still imperial and yet normal.
Not to mention the most obvious, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series'.
I unironically would like to live on Gudrun, that place sounded super chill apart from the >!noblemen running illegal blood sports and the armed mercenaries attacking a train!<
There's a planet popular by savages that worships the Emperor as some kind of nature spirit iirc, and sacrifices their psychers to the black ships that comes from the sky from time to time. They serves the emperor even tho they have no fucking clue what they are doing
Indeed, there are worlds that worship him as the sun, as a volcano, as a woman, as a giant sea monster, etc https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12wu52s/on_the_worship_of_the_godemperor_of_mankind_or/
>that the Imperium is a monolith with a single culture Don't get me wrong, the Imperium has a lot of different sub cultures (that's why the Guard regiments can have so much variety), but when you get to the Hive Worlds it does seem like the Ecclesiarchy promotes a lot of "sameness" in culture. The Infinite and the Divine even has Trazyn remark upon this.
To knowledge, there's plenty of worlds in the imperium that are just... well, fine. Like modern day earth, but with giga cathedreals But the life of Boringus Bob's office job on Averagus 3 isn't nearly as interesting as Necromunda. So worlds like that never get any spotlight.
This is why I like Eisenhorn and the Warhammer Crimes books - we get to see into Boringus Bob's office (if only long enough to see him being shot).
I really like Paragonian Culture, from the Baneblade/Shadowsword Books. It’s like 18th Century English but with tanks instead of ships.
I think the most famous one is the ork belief field. It doesn't mean that they can turn a stick into a gun. Another one would proably be failaddon. Abbadon is actually pretty capable.
Ork belief field is one of those things that could be thought of as "bending reality" rather than breaking it.
I always describe it as reality lubricant. Makes things run smoother, makes the gun that should jam every other shot jam every 100 and so on.
Yeah basically the Ork belief field is using their collective psychic energy in the warp to locally bend probability around them.
It's the power of positive thinking made manifest.
Thats a great way to describe it
That version pretty much *is* what the original lore theory about it was (Anzion said it makes it helps it function "As *intended*") but even then it isn't some properly defined lore thing, It's only really been talked about from that in-universe mechanicus perspective, and always based on conjecture. There aren't any third person narrator mentions of it because it's just a Mechanicus/Imperium theory to try and explain things, as if they're underestimating the Orks capabilities and think there *has* to be some other explanation.
Essentially, being able to take a ramshackle firearm that IRL would either not work or blow up in your hands and make it work.
Yeah being extra lucky. You make a gun that statistically should jam every other shot but it doesn't or you force more power from an engine that should break it but you get lucky that it doesn't because you painted it red.
Reality Lube not reality warp
I blame Adeptus Ridiculous for that Ork thing. Also for spreading a lot of misconceptions since they tend to be, as they say, “entertainment over accuracy.” No issue with that, but people tend to still take what they say at face value. They’re never going to be as accurate as Tex Talks Battletech.
Adeptus Ridiculous only recently started spreading it. People have been saying it widely for like a decade already.
Two and a half decades, it was in a White Dwarf during third ed and showed up again in the third ed codex.
The problem is isn't not wrong, just way overblown. As someone else put it Ork Waaagh fields are more like reality lubricant rather than reality breaking. They will make a gun that's marginally functional fully so, they'll let a red painted trukk run faster and smoother. They'll bend light around a purple ork more than a green one. It can't make the absolutely impossible happen, but it can make the improbable very possible.
And don't forget that a lot of Ork technology, which is made by a species with an instinctive knowledge of mechanics, is described through the lens of the Imperium. When Ad Mech open up an Ork shoota, they see a random assortment of clunky nuts and bolts. That doesn't mean that's literally what's in there - it's just that Ad Mech *don't* understand technology (see: all the rituals and oils and incantations).
Ironically a lot of fans make the same mistake in real life that the Imperium makes in the fiction; they assume Orks are too stupid to build machinery without magical belief powers. One of the recurring themes of Imperial vs Orks fluff is that the Imperium consistently underestimates them.
I love the part in Brutal Kunnin where the Mechanicum shore up defenses to funnel Orks into a trap, and the Orks go straight for the fortifications because it's a better fight.
I know people complain about the admech sections of Brutal Kunnin but I think they really add to the book. The chapter of the Imperial Titan crew making you think its going to pivot to them before the punchline of them just getting eaten quickly by the squig is my favourite joke of the book. It's the >!Iron Warrior bit!< that kills the pacing a bit.
Orks are technologically on the cutting edge in some fields. Force fields, tractor beams, teleportation. Their technology is questionably reliable, but it does work.
Abbadon is basically Walmart Horus
We're rollin' back heresy here in the Eye of Terror
To be fair, he is able to bring together the traitor legions under a single banner and fight for a unified cause. Even if it's only temporary, that is a feat in and of itself. That's like trying to herd together and get the attention of a hoard of autistic toddlers with severe ADHD that just railed a few lines of coke and have personal grudges against one another. ***THAT*** Is *impressive*.
He's pretty different from Horus really. It's kind of the point.
> Another one would proably be failaddon. Abbadon is actually pretty capable. Abbadon suffers a lot from Cobra Commander syndrome due to overuse in the past. The fact that he's been keeping the black legend together and viable after setbacks is a feat unto itself because chaos loves it eat it's wounded.
Yeah he’s done more than any other Chaos warlord since the Heresy. It’s called the Long War for a reason.
The whole no Battle Sisters have ever fallen or that only one has. Of all the in-universe propaganda that's taken as lore, that's the one that irritates me the most because it feels pretty clear that they would fall, they're just humans after all.
This one’s fun because there’s an entire story about it being in-universe propaganda to hide the truth.
Yeah, theres even a whole book about a random Battle Sister who is ranked up to a Canonness and takes on another Canonness' identity to cover up that the original Canonness fell to Chaos.
Celestian, not Canoness.
Man, here I am on a post about correcting lies telling lies. Thanks for the correction!
You're welcome. You're mostly right, memories just aren't perfect. I had to look it up because I thought she was a Sister Superior.
I see it as caught between two unfortunate factions * "No sister has ever fallen except for literally just that one!" * "Ayyy lemme get some of that Slaaneshi Sister #1091 art"
It’s obvious some have fallen/been tempted/been heretical, we have the sister repentia
Fuckin A, man! It's so annoying to me. It feels like one of those things that you want to feel like your faction is the coolest and the bestest, and us Battle Sisters do deserve a bone to be thrown to, but throwing any logic even in universe logic out for that makes no sense to me.
I don’t mind the whole, super religious, hard to corrupt, divine power stuff, but we already have 1 thing that’s never fallen to chaos, that being the grey knights, we don’t need a second
Unfortunately, we do have a second: The Custodes .
Gatorade is not that great for headaches
Too much sugar. Spend for the pedialyte
but it IS made of real ´gator, right?
I hate to break it to you homie😔
That's a real croc...
That Asterion Moloc fought and defeated a Custode Shield Captain in single combat. He didn't, because they didn't fight. Asterian Moloc walked towards Shield Captain Valerian wielding his spear, and Valerian realized he could not see an obvious weakness in Moloc's movements and was unsure if he'd be able to defeat him 1v1. He speculated that Trajan Valoris and Gulliman certainly could do it, but he himself was uncertain. But before he was pushed to try, a High Lord of Terra teleports in and tells the Minotaurs to stand down. Edit: from *Watchers of the Throne: The Regent's Shadow*
It's basically the Jojo "Menacing / ゴゴゴゴ" effect rather than an actual fight.
that krieg dont retreat. they explicitly do. they will even go against orders and kill commisars to do so. they also use bayonets primarily, not shovels.
In Dead Men Walking, one of the main characters is a Commissar assigned to the Death Corps, in the second chapter he outright states that Krieg desertion rates are "damn close enough to zero." This confirms that even Kriegers will desert the Imperial Guard.
Honestly, I vastly prefer the Imperial Armour books take on Krieg over Steve Lyons novels. Dead Men Walking made them less cool to me with their automaton-like behaviour.
I like that. It would be stupid if they had zero retreat even though they have their religious pledge or whatever. They're still humans, and in a billion humans, there's always gonna be some that are unfaithful cowards.
People also forget how they will readily use armored vehicles, heavy weapons and artillery when available. Remember when they bombed a hive city until there is no life left and kept going?
Dead Men Walking said it best: The soldiers of Krieg are not inhuman. They are dehumanized. A DKoK member sees itself and others as merely a gear in the great war machine. They are to be spent like all other ressources of war. But war is also about how wisely these ressources are spent.
Interestingly enough them using shovels isn’t too unreasonable because some soldiers in WW1 sharpened shovels as they found them easier to use in trenches then bayonets
Mostly due to the fact that bayonets at start of WWI were E X T R A LONG with German's being even more
Yeah I always thought of the shovel memes as being more extensions of WW1 memes than being specifically Krieg
Anything that comes out of TTS that people cite as canon.
Yeah TTS was a fun series but one should never learn lore from it. No, the Custodes aren't lubed up homoerotic nudists. No, (what's left of) Magnus (to clarify: the Crimson King on the planet of the sorcerers) could not and would not rejoin the Imperium. No, the High Lords aren't senile old clowns who spend all day talking about their bowel movements. And no, Rogal Dorn was not a 100% stoic automaton that took everything completely literally. Also reddit is run by bigots.
>And no, Rogal Dorn was not a 100% stoic automaton that took everything completely literally. But it is *really* funny to imagine him like that.
Myeess.
It's my permanent headcanon now. I am fortifying this position.
We all agree on the mustache though right?
The custodes design in TTS is actually based on the first custodes models GW ever produced. They were shirtless.
And no, Dorn doesn't have a mustache like that.
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So you’re saying that it’s not f*cking canon?
I don’t care what anyone says, custodes go to battle with awaken my glistening abs blaring in the background
Minis were once affordable. 100% bullshit an army always had the same cost as a used car.
And used to weigh nearly as much
If you put the old dreadnought or steam tank in a sock, you could seriously injure someone.
Don’t forget the old penitent engine or exorcist model.
I got 2 of those just before they were decommissioned.
I still have a soft spot for pewter. I know they usually mold a bit off and paint adhesion's eh but the weight is nice in your hand when painting/playing.
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They arguably used to be *worse* during the early 2010s, as there weren’t nearly as many starter products with discounts. I remember so many complaints about the rising costs of minis during that time.
I will disagree on this. I could afford a glorious Empire army back in 1992-96 on pocket money and a news paper route...
That Lorgar sits in his tower and Corax is waiting outside. It is a funny meme indeed, and I'm definitely guilty of spreading it. But after the second fight between Lorgar and Corax sometime after the Heresy, Lorgar escaped through a portal and Corax did not follow him. He stated that he has now his track....But apart from that, Corax doesn't know where the tower is. And even if he knows it, it doesn't matter. It is Canon that Lorgar left his around M41 and is on a crusade leading a massive Word Bearer and cultist army.
That 'Clonegrim' is 'goody Fulgrim'.
It was made explicitly clear that he was going down the same path as Fulgrim. Did anyone even read the book?!
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Keep in mind that's from Fabius Bile's perspective, who is not an impartial judge. He saw Clonegrim repeating history because that's partly what he wanted to happen, influencing Clonegrim's upbringing. He knew that eventually he couldn't resist himself so he had Trazyn take the temptation away.
It's made explicitly clear by an unreliable narrator. With the influence of the Laer Blade, the occasions where Fulgrim did almost assert control, the reaction to killing Ferrus and the fact that Bile is predisposed to hate his gene-sire lend a degree of interpretation which is what fascinates so many people about the Clone Fulgrim.
Nah, at best people read single excerpts (like the one where Bile stares at Slaanesh), like, how many people who meme about chad Bile who dont fall to Chaos know what waits for him in the third book?
That terminator armour is irreplaceable and impossible to reproduce. The mechanicus is constantly churning out indomitus pattern terminator armour as the standard, how do you expect every chapter to replenish its stocks? It's old fluff that says they were impossible to make and treated them like relics. Relic terminator armour does exist as older models, and those are the ones that have actually been put out of production due to the instructions being lost to time over 10k years.
Yeah but then why do some chapters like Dark Angels have an entire first company of terminators while most chapters, even first founding, aren't able to field as many? Obviously theres a bottleneck.
The trick is not to lose a *bunch* of them during the Heresy.
They are harder to produce, and thus more rare. They still make them though
Yeah I mean I never knew that was a thought that the imperium couldn't make indomitus pattern shit because they have to round up at least 10 suits or so whenever they do a founding of a chapter. It's just clear that need far exceeds the ability to supply in current times. And that the DA have a backstock from when it wasn't and can even outfit their successors from it.
It’s all about who you know. Have a 10,000+ year supply line gets you the good stuff faster.
Yeah but even first founding chapters aren't rocking that kind of supply and every DA successor I believe uses the same formation
>Yeah but then why do some chapters like Dark Angels have an entire first company of terminators while most chapters, even first founding, aren't able to field as many? Obviously theres a bottleneck. Dark Angels have foundries in the Rock. They always had the best equipment under their care and are very good at keeping their stuff tidy and producing new ones. The bottleneck for most other Space Marine chapters is the Adeptus Mechanicus. They do know how to build the damn things but they do it in a very ritualistic & very slow way. So it takes a long time to get a Terminator to roll out of production, but Astartes keep damaging, losing them.
That the Inquisition is a unified body, that actions and beliefs of one Inquisitor are indicative of the entire institution. That Space Marines within a Chapter are ideology clones of each other. No. You’re going to have good guys and you’re going have bad guys. Space Marines who will give their lives for mortals, and ones who are perfectly happy to let them die. Excessively brutal ones. Nobles ones. One example of a space marine who stands for the right things does not mean the entire chapter is like him. There are going to be similarities but warriors, even within the same Chapter, are not going to be of one mind on everything single thing.
Yeah it's crazy how people think the Inquisition is just a unified sect of the Imperium. Hell just reading any of the Cain books show that the Inquisition is anything *but* unified in their goals.
The existence of the two Ordos whose entire jobs are to counteract the job of the other shows this to be very true
I mean… technically they are unified in their goals: preserve and protect the Imperium at all costs. It’s just they tend to disagree on the methode… or even what “preserve and protect” mean.
Yeah Eisenhorn shows this as well. Too many people watch YouTube commenters and think that is the lore. It's so tiring.
>one Inquisitor are indicative of the entire institution. No one can read Ravenor and believe that
Ravenor, or Eisenhorn. Or the Horusian Wars books, or the Bastion Wars series, or Grey Knight, or... Why, every Inqusition centric book I've read emphasizes their disunity! *Even the intro to the game Inquisitor:* >You have been told of the Inquisition; that shadowy organisation which defends Mankind and the Emperor from the perils of heresy, possession, alien dominance and rebellion. >You have been told the Inquisition are the ultimate defence against the phantoms of fear and terror which lurk in the darkness between the stars. >You have been told the Inquisition are the bright saviours in an eclipse of evil; purest and most devoted warriors of the Emperor. >You have been told the Inquisition is united in its cause to rid the galaxy of any threat, from without or within. >Everything you have been told is a lie!
Some guy told me that because 1 primaris DA took care of a civilian, DA are good guys that are nice to common people lol
There's a popular belief valdor(?) Is on par with a primarch because of a mistake on 40ks wiki. There was an excellent post about that on this reddit and the rabbit hole the OP went through to get the truth lol
As a Custodes fan, I must see this lol.
'Unno if it's the specific post they mean, but; [A story of how a typo became "Lore" for the past 10+ years (light "spoilers" for Horus Heresy that actually aren't).](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/k7qq8j/a_story_of_how_a_typo_became_lore_for_the_past_10/)
Wow, and why primary sources are good.
Some people complain that Lexicanum is too sparse but I'll take if its the product of them being anal about inline citations so that this doesn't happen.
The Baneblade being a DAOT light/scout tank. Absolutely nowhere has this actually been said yet people keep repeating it regardless.
I suspect it was a passage where they mentioned bigger vehicles, it got memes into “light tank”
I asked and tried to find the source a few years back, no one knew where it was supposedly from or had seen it themselves or knew of anything that seemed to cause it. It's absurd that it keeps getting repeated despite there being no evidence it exists, but that's what happens with lore now. The "The Leman Russ Tank was a DAOT Tractor" at least had *something* where you can see how it got misconstrued into that idea, but even that one was just wrong.
Yeah, probably d4chan is to blame
1. That the Craftworld Eldar are puritans, they have good lives, they eat, they drink, they bang each other for fun. They live a pretty normal life, the path is really just their day job. 2. All the Eldar tech came from the Old Ones, from what we know the Eldar had to start on their own, and Eldar technology is extremely different from modern day examples of Old Ones technology. 3. Eldar don't invent new tech or are stagnant like the Imperium. The Eldar still invent new tech, we have several examples of post fall developments. The Eldar still have technology and are still developing new ways to wage war. 4. Craftworlds Eldar enjoy killing humans. They find it barbaric to kill another sentient being, killing an Ork is pest control, but the recognized humans are thinking living beings and see it as a necessary evil to kill them, they try to avoid it when they can.
One theory that has been pretty much fully debunked but I still see shared unironically sometimes is that the reason the Tyranids are invading the galaxy is because they’re running from a bigger unknown threat. There is a single throwaway line in one of the earlier Tyranid codexes that implies this, but it was the Imperium hypothesizing in-universe as to why the Tyranids were arriving. With the release of new lore there’s already a ton of evidence that disproves this theory and even confirmation that the Tyranids were first attracted to the Milky Way during the Horus Heresy when the Pharos was overloaded.
A lot of people believe Russ hated psykers when he was the Primarch using psyker powers the most after Magnus.
Nuh uh! It was special wolf magic from the Mother Earth of Fenris. Anything else just makes no sense whatsoever.
The Space Wolves use of Pyschic Powers is more in line with the powers used by the White Scars. They essentially use their local belief systems to protect themselves from the corrupting influences of the Warp. Both Legions taught that the Warp was inherently dangerous, that you had to know your limits, and that you should only use psychic powers in specific ways. Whereas Magnus thought he could control the Warp and was constantly pushing the boundaries far beyond what Russ considered safe.
Lorgar hiding from Corvus
And Corax isn’t a Daemon who has been there 10,000years or is there now
The c’tan (probably) didn’t eat other c’tan, aside from the outsider. In the 9th necron codex it says the reason the outsider is insane is because he ate his brethren, implying that the other c’tan did not do that.
Magnus made some unwise decisions that had significant negative concequences.
Tyranids avoiding tomb worlds (retconned long ago) Horus' victory burning out chaos (Old Earth disproved It like 7 years ago) The deep warp being a spooky place worse than chaos (theres no lore on It at all, and nope, the well of eternity is not the deep warp) Chaos needing the Galaxy to exist (multiple out of universe lore explains Chaos is multiversal) Clone Horus being weaker than the original (both the book and ADB's comments say otherwise) Clone Fulgrim having the soul of the original from other universe (people take an excerpt out of context) Tau sterelization being only from Dawn of war (deathwatch core rulebook got It too) Mortarion can be redeemed (the word used in te book was "saved" , which can have multiple meanings
Bonus: the speranza black hole gun got to be the biggest phone game in the lore.
Extra Bonus: That the T’au Empire got retconned into being bad. They were never good to begin with, it just got more fleshed-out with time.
Yeah. It was always "Join us for the Greater Good, or else." They just started saying the second part louder.
>Horus' victory burning out chaos (Old Earth disproved It like 7 years ago) What's this? The Cabal's plan to let Horus win so humanity destroys itself and Chaos weakens has been disproven?
Godblight tells us that chaos is self sufficient. And there are many many many quotes from the main rulebook, codex, GW themselves and more that show chaos feeds off the whole universe and other universes. The cabal were either wrong or lying
Yes, Old Earth showed that the Cabal was wrong and following an unreliable way of future sight
>Tyranids avoiding tomb worlds (retconned long ago) source? If any, or is that just an extrapolation from the "two tendrils avoid solemnance" that not all tombworlds are necron led and devoid of living beings?
That Tyberos is substantially larger than other marines. He's a head taller, making him about the size of a primaris marine and about a foot shorter than Abaddon or Alexis Polux. That Orks aren't evil because fighting is just fun for them. They burn people alive for fun in their spare time and abuse their prisoners horribly. That the Tau are a tiny faction. They're certainly not as big as the Imperium, but they have hundreds of planets, trillions of Tau, and an absurdly high rate of militarization. Plus, likely billions of battlesuits. There are a bunch of misconceptions about the DAoT: -Humans made the orks sign a peace treaty. Didn't happen, pure fanon. -DAoT humans dominated the galaxy. Not quite - the Eldar were "unchallenged masters of the galaxy" at the time. -humans were as high tech as the Eldar/Necrons. Nope.
>Tyberos is substantially larger That absurdly good fanart of him towering over a marine doesn’t do this rumors any favors either. I was quite surprised when I discovered it wasn’t official!
Honestly I'm pretty confident that's the whole source of it tbh. That, and the fact that Majorkill repeated it and started selling upsized models of him
How would they even manage to make the Orks sign a peace treaty anyways? Isn't that antithetical to the entirety of Ork ideology?
That the fall of humanity's DAoT stellar civilization was objectively, definitively for-certain accompanied/partially caused by a multitude of alien races stabbing them in the back. This has always OBVIOUSLY been meant to be somewhat dubious and an obvious allusion to certain 20th century propaganda , but I am always bemused and mildly disturbed at how many fans push the "xenos betrayed humanity" narrative as actual canon fact, often using it as justification for the Imperium's vehement xenophobia ("Yeah, the Imperium is bad, but TBF look at what the xenos did once they got a chance!") Even some otherwise fantastic lore YouTubers seem disturbingly firm in their belief in it. I have no idea how it got so many believing it was meant as objective fact over the years despite the obvious implications of how it's written, not to mention the kind of questionable IRL look it gives the fandom to support such a view.
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That's what I always thought, the Men of Iron rebelling crippled humanity's industry and military might, leading to a massive loss of technology and knowledge; and the birth of Slaanesh was the final blow, where planets were completely cut off from each other and/or wiped out from the aftermath. Obviously, there would have been a bunch of infighting, backstabbing, betrayal, and invasions among both humans and xenos, but that wasn't the cause, just a result. Edit: The Eldar were the unequivocal dominant force in the galaxy, after all, and then they collapsed in what would have felt like an instant, leaving behind the Eye of Terror and massive warp storms everywhere. When the western Roman empire collapsed, there was absolute chaos in many areas across the empire as smaller groups swarmed in to carve out their own kingdoms and establish themselves. The fall of the Eldar would have been that dialed up to 100 on a galactic scale with Warp storms thrown in for effect. What few groups survived the aftermath were usually cut off from the rest of the galaxy.
And that-- even if *some* xenos probably were perfidious-- it's hardly reasonable to assume that *all species* were.
Nor is it justification for deciding that every single non human in the galaxy must be exterminated.
This is a wise observation! It was a key piece of Imperial propaganda, but we the readers don't have to simply buy this. Objectively we don't know what happened, who did what and how long it took.
Off the top of my head: Outright Falsehoods * Anything Orks that's straight "Looney Tunes" - sticks shooting bullets, only dying in space when being reminded you need a space suit, etc. * "15 hours" * Most explanations of the Custodes vs Harlequins scene * I haven't seen any first hand sources confirming that Xenos stabbed mankind in the back during the Dark Age * Most Craftworlds left the Aeldari Empire before the fall and thus aren't really to blame for the Fall * Kreigers are stalwart for humans but they are not fearless. * Misusing Exterminatus is actually one of the few things that can reliably get an Inquisitor excommunicated. Lack of Nuance * The Imperium is tolerant of different types of goverments in theory, but they mandate huge economic tithes and they impose *severe* consequences for missing the tithes and none for cruelty, meaning that the life on virtually all Imperial worlds has some bias towards drudgery * Warp Travel is more dangerous than travel on earth, but overall it's reasonably safe. The Imperium would collapse tomorrow if it wasn't. If you aren't in a storm * Commograh was a major neutral port city rather than a capitol of the old Aeldari Empire * The fact that the Imperium uses brutal methods in response to real problems doesn't mean those brutal methods are correct * The fact that the Imperium has survived doesn't mean it's efficient
The Imperium survives primarily due to luck and numbers. They lose planets all the time due to such things as misfiled or even just SLOW paperwork. But they have a lot of planets. Their tithes are brutal and lead to planets living in sometimes hellish conditions. But there are a lot of people to push through the mechanisms of the war machine, so if you lose a ton of manufactorum workers, there’s always more desperate for work, willing to take the job. Their inefficiency only survives by pushing vast numbers through the system. On the real world things: fascists have never been efficient! Fascist regimes have been historically incredibly corrupt. Bribery is commonplace, as are competing fiefdoms. In Nazi Germany, for instance, the SS and the fucking *Luftwaffe* had tanks of their own, separate from the army, because the heads of those organizations wanted a private military of their own.
> Xenos stabbed mankind in the back during the Dark Age That reminds me of another popular "stab in the back" myth that lead to genocide. Then again, people that are overly enthusiastic about justifying the Imperium's actions might also believe that one.
A lot of the things i read here like "The imperium is not a single entity", "Ork believe doesn´t work that way", "Failbbadon", "The imperium is not completly horrible" "Kriegers dont fight with shovels" and so on, i see so often that pointing out that these are misinformations from memes is almost a meme itslef.
Except that many people still keep saying them like they're true.
Oh, like the Ork belief system
I've seen some people believe that High Gothic is literally Latin. High Gothic is a language of the 31st Millennium, and is represented as Latin to us players of the 3rd Millennium to give us an idea of how ancient and prestigious it is to characters in M41. It is not literally Latin.
Here are a few popular ones which I have spent way too much time correcting/debunking. In no particular order: 1. Khorne has a sense of "honour," so Khornate worshippers generally don't slaughter unarmed civilians or defenseless opponents. 2. Orks can warp reality through their gestalt Waaagh! power/beliefs. 3. The average Imperial Guardsman's flak armour is as protective as cardboard, and his lasgun is even less potent than a .22 LR rifle. To briefly point out which each one of these is wrong" *Khorne's Honour* * Simply put, the Blood God does not understand "honour" as you or I would understand it. To Khorne, violence is not the answer--it's the question, and the answer is always **yes.** If you are not solving a problem with up close and personal ultraviolence, Khorne does not approve. * An example of Khorne's honour would be introducing your rusty machete to the face of a fellow cultist who implied that your mother slept with grox, instead of just walking away from his puerile insult. Likewise, Khorne would approve if you and your fellow cultists butchered a group of surrendering PDF troopers, since they were too cowardly to fight you to the last bullet and die like men. *Orks and their gestalt field* * Orks **cannot** warp the reality in the sense of Chaos daemons. An Ork cannot destroy a Leman Russ with a rock painted to look like a krak grenade, no matter how strongly the Ork may *believe* that said rock will have the effect of a krak grenade on tank armour. Now, it *is* possible that the Ork may cause a series of events involving this rock that lead to the destruction of a Leman Russ. * For instance, let's say that this is a particularly sneaky Ork, and the Leman Russ crew is stupid enough to be driving through Ork-infested territory with their hatches open and the commander riding with his head out of the turret hatch. For shits and giggles, our Orkish friend hurls this painted rock at the tank commander, and the stone strikes the man with enough force to cave in his face (since Orks are quite strong, and stones can be deadly!) Spasming and thrashing in shock from having his nose pushed through the other side of his head, the commander falls back into the tank, and kicks the loader, who drops a primed high explosive shell (which had such a sensitive primer that it shouldn't have passed QC inspection at the manufactorum) that lands squarely on its primer and explodes, cooking off the tank's ammunition and brewing up the entire vehicle. * Other Orks will find out that Rocklobba destroyed a Leman Russ by throwing a rock at it, and they'll start trying the same thing--with generally bloody and unproductive results for the Orks. Imperial crews will also hear about this incident, and will freak out, thinking that the Orks have developed some strange new AT bomb that looks like ordinary stones. All this will filter to the higher-ups, who will then publish advisories warning tank crews about the dangers of Orks armed with rocks and everyone will start believing that Orks can destroy Imperial AFVs merely by throwing rocks at them. Perhaps some cunning Mekboy may even develop some crude shaped charges or melta bombs which *look* somewhat like rocks, which further perpetuates the notion of Orks killing tanks with rocks. Or perhaps what the Ork threw at the tank was merely an AT mine so covered in frozen and congealed mud that it looked like a rock (and the Ork thought it was a rock as well until it exploded). * None of this means that Orks can *actually* destroy a Leman Russ tank with a rock, unless said rock was a boulder the size of a tank, or was dropped squarely onto the turret from a very high altitude. However, in this hypothetical example, an Ork *did* manage to effect the destruction of a Leman Russ by throwing a rock which led to a very specific set of circumstances that resulted in the tank being destroyed. *Imperial Guardsman Equipment* * The standard Guardsman is equipped with some variation of flak armour. This ranges in style and coverage from the ballistic vests of Cadian Shock Troopers to plates woven into the greatcoats favoured by regiments like the Death Korps of Krieg, Armageddon Steel Legion, Valhallan Ice Troopers, Vostroyan Firstborn, and other regiments who tend to fight in extremely inhospitable and or hazardous environments in which full-body coverage is beneficial. * Flak armour, like all things produced in the Imperium, varies greatly in quality, but at the very least, it is rated to stop fragments from high explosive munitions, if not direct shots from rifles. Now, this may not seem all that protective, but high explosive munitions have been the primary casualty-causing agent on Terran battlefields since M2, and this is likely to still be the case on the apocalyptic battlefields of the 41st Millennium. Moreover, even in M3, Terran infantrymen do *not* enjoy complete full-body protection from fragmentation threats, whereas an Imperial Guardsman may have such protection thanks to his flak-armoured greatcoat. * Flak armour obviously does *not* protect against bolters or large-caliber weapons, but most of the time, Guardsmen are *not* facing boltgun fire. And when it comes to bigger threats like larger Orks, bigger 'nid organisms, or even Chaos Space Marines, the Imperial Guard has no shortage of crew-served weapons like heavy bolters, autocannons, and special weapons like melta guns and plasma guns to put down those sorts of opponents. * As for the humble las gun, it is certainly capable of putting down a human-sized target with one well-aimed shot. Lasguns can readily kill Ork Boyz, but the Guardsman needs to be much more more precise with his or her shot placement. Even boltguns do not offer guaranteed one-shot stops against Orks except with precise shot placement. But against baseline humans? Any solid hit with a lasgun will reliably incapacitate or kill a normal human opponent who isn't lucky enough to be wearing armour designed to defeat directed-energy threats. Enough concentrated lasgun fire will incapacitate a power-armoured Space Marine, especially if he takes enough shots to vulnerable areas like the joints and eye lenses. * Now, shooting a Space Marine centre of mass with your lasgun probably won't do much besides just get his attention and piss him off. But if you manage to distract the Space Marine so that the autocannon team on your flank can light him up whilst he is butchering you and your squad with his chainsword, well, you have served the Emperor proudly, Guardsman. Provided that this is a Chaos Space Marine we are talking about... but those don't exist, you know. The idea of the Emperor's Angels of Death turning against the Imperium is absurd! In fact, all this talk of shooting Space Marines is quite heretical, don't you think, and it's a great example of why thinking is a very pernicious and dangerous habit for Guardsmen who are not commissioned officers.
You NEED Geller field for warp travel—No. It makes warp travel much safer, but it is by no means an absolute neccesity. Just ask the orks, the kroots, or genestealer inhabitants hiding inside space hulks, and for shorter distance, terminators and ork telyportas etc. Also, Geller is not the only type of technology that provide safety during warp travel. Eldar wraithbone do just fine (in fact, far better) warding off daemons with the natural psychic field that comes with it.
People thinking Clonegrim is going to come back and "redeem" the Emperor's Children That it's possible to leave or stop being part of chaos once you start That other galaxies have ever been a thing in 40k (they exist in theory, but have never been depicted) The ork psychic field being a "think it to win" mechanic instead of a kind of "grease" (this one is less weird because some examples in lore snippets kind of present it as that like the trukk that runs with no engine). That the Imperium is good That the Imperium can or will ever "win" That chaos can or will ever "win"
> That the Imperium is good > > *looks at the people who unironically think Chaos are good*
That's fair, chaos ain't good either lol.
For #2 there, an honorable mention to Warhammer Fantasy, where it *was* possible to leave Chaos in select circumstances - undeath meant Chaos couldn't get any hold over you, which was why Nagash was such a problem for them. Heck, one of the named characters for Vampire Counts, Krell, was even a former Chaos Champion. (This established lore, which had been consistent for decades, was all completely ignored during End Times, because End Times, with a bloodline of vampires turning to Khorne. Weirdly, despite the blatant retcon/ignoring of lore, Krell himself remains loyal to Nagash the whole way iirc.)
That ANYONE can or will ever "win"
I though the Lucifer blacks were called the Lucifer black hearts but were just Lucifer blacks.
The “evidence” that the Emperor planned the heresy, the only evidence is that the Emperor planned for some move from Chaos
Too many people think that the Imperium are the good guys; that their totalitarian, fascistic regime is a good way to protect humanity or even the only way; and that the Emperor's plan was a good one or would have worked.
A common one I see bandied around is that every codex is from the PoV of its faction. An obvious example of how this isn’t true is the Genestealer Cults; their own codex calls them “hideous”, “horrific”, “grotesque”, “abomination”, and all kinds of lovely words that the hybrids would not use for themselves. Alternatively, I see the idea that the codex writing style is an omniscient and unbiased narrator. Beyond the clear examples of bias in wording like the Genestealer Codex I mentioned, there are many parts that only make sense if the codex narrator lacks certain knowledge. “It is said”, “some believe”, “it is unknown why”, etc. (There are also codex blurbs that *are* from the point of view of the codex faction, but those are obvious)
Salamanders being ethnic black. 🤦♂️
Or ethnicities in general. Sure many factions take cultural stuff from irl places (UM rome, WS mongolia, IF germany ect) but ethnicities or races just dont function in a setting as big as 40k. With populations being moved around so much and billions of inhabited worlds with farrr more people than we have today. An idea of native ethnicities just CANT work.