r/40kLore

I notice most dates for when the Necron great sleep happened is 60 million years ago (including in the novel). Yet in the book Orikan states it has been 70 million years since he wore clothes, implying this was when biotransferrence took place. So this would imply that the time between biotransferrence and the acceleration of the war against the Old Ones and the great sleep (after the defeat of the Old Ones) was 10 million years.

I don't think GW understands how long a period of time that is.

I feel like despite being the militant arm of the bloodiest regime imaginable, Guardsmen are often portrayed in the narrative and the collective conscience as victims of the Imperium, sent to fight and die in untold billions in hopeless battles.

So, what are the worst atrocities that were ordered and carried out by boots-on-the-ground guardsmen?

To clarify, I'm not really talking about 'They were sent to quell rebellion on this peacefully protesting planet', because Guardsmen don't generally get a choice in what and where they're deployed to fight. More interested in the smaller, unnecessary moments in which they demonstrate that they are, after all, sons of the Imperium.

Be'lakor gained his power by playing the chaos gods against each other, playing off their egos and need to one up eatchother to basically say, "hey if your really so much better than that guy you should give me more power than he did to prove it."

Isn't that exactly what Abaddon is doing? I'll admit I'm not big on black legion lore, and I know he sees chaos as a tool to be used and mastered insteadof worshipped, but isn't he still basically doing exactly what caused Be'lakor to lose his favor with the big 4?

I am posting this excerpt because it provides valuable insight into one of the most iconic weapons wielded in the 40k universe. This excerpt also shows the profound effect that the warp and echoes of deaths can have on psykers.

This excerpt is from the point of view of Iskandor Khayon, a Psyker of the Thousand Sons

Separate from the armour, an immense lightning claw rested on a plinth of its own. Its fingers were silver blades, subtly curved, each one a monstrous scythe in its own right. Adding to the weapon’s bulk was an ornate double-barrelled bolter mounted upon the back of the gauntlet. Its ammunition feed ports were sculpted as the wide mouths of hungering brass daemons. Scratches and dents marked the claw’s black surface,

The Talon of Horus. In stasis, it looked almost mundane. Lethal, vicious, deadly, but just a lightning claw. Just a weapon. Telemachon’s shiver of pleasure was the strongest emotion I had felt from his mind since rewriting it. I sensed him salivating behind the burial mask. Then I saw why. Blood marked the Talon’s blades – dried patches of blood, smeared across the bright metal claws. Telemachon’s hand rested against the stasis field’s repressor aura, as though he could simply push through it and touch the Talon it protected.

He had seen his primarch father bearing the Talon into battle a thousand times, lending the relic an air of familiarity, but he had been the one to tear the claw from his father’s cooling corpse while its blades were still wet with the blood of... of... I exhaled softly, feeling the stasis field’s misty warmth against my face. ‘When did you lock it in stasis?’ I asked Abaddon. ‘Within hours of taking it.’ Abaddon was staring as well, though I could not say what emotion curdled behind his golden eyes. ‘I never wore it in battle.’ He started to key in a deactivation code to shut down the stasis cloud. My hand gripped his wrist with punishing force, but too late, too late. The restraining field quivered and failed. Weapons have souls. The Martian Mechanicum has always known this, with their rituals to honour and appease the machine-spirits of their guns, blades and war engines. But a weapon’s soul reflects in the warp, as well.

The very moment the stasis field collapsed and allowed the Talon back into reality, the weapon’s spirit – a thing of inconceivable predation – clawed at my mind. The Talon’s murderous, shrieking closeness threatened me, from the killing blades to the fat-mouthed gun barrels parasitically bolted to its back. Corpse-stink, thick and hot and choking, emanated from the bloodstained blades in a choking aura. The dried, rich redness on the curving scythes pressed at my eyes with oily, liquid pressure. The weeping lament of a mourning father and a dying god was a screaming roar in my ears, sinking into my skull. Every single cut, scrape and dent upon the weapon had been earned on a battlefield where brother fought brother. I was half a dozen steps back before I even realised I was moving, one hand pressed to the side of my head to contain the stabs of pressure pulping my brain meat. My vision swam, blurring into uselessness. I gagged on the reek of genetically purified blood. Its taste drowned my tongue. My axe clattered to the deck without me remembering I had drawn it.

‘Well, now.’ Abaddon’s voice came to me from a great distance. ‘What a sensitive creature you are, Khayon. Much more attuned than I realised.’ Mercy came, but not swiftly. The assault against my senses retreated, going grudgingly back like an ocean’s tide. I pulled breath into my lungs, feeling them expand in my chest. The air still carried that gene-forged death scent, but it was no longer ravaging me. So many times in the years to come we would face the Blood Angels and their Successors, and each time the descendants of Sanguinius would suffer their own breed of madness in the presence of the weapon that crippled the Emperor and murdered their primarch forefather. I believe I felt a sliver of their pain that night aboard the Vengeful Spirit.

No Fallen/Dark Angels. What Traitor Warbands have come out of the Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Iron Hands, Salamanders, White Scars, Space Wolves, and Raven Guard?

I imagine there may be squads or part an of companies.

Context: During the course of their misadventures, Trazyn and Orikan find themselves on a downed human ship (which seems to be a troop transport, from context). Trazyn asks Orikan if they've recovered from recent damage, and Orikan reacts entirely predictably...

Excerpt:

Ah… but surely it is better to be on a vessel than not. Are you reassembled? We should move presently. I would not like to be cornered here when the humans and their lasguns arrive.

‘Lasers?’ Orikan crowed aloud, breaking the silence. He stood, joint actuators creaking, and stretched his lower spine. ‘That is why we are cowering here? You’re afraid of a few lasers?’

‘But…’

Orikan staggered upright, shoving him to the side.

‘Corralled and left whimpering by a few low-wattage lasers. Incredible. And I mean that in the classic sense – I do not find it credible. Move fast enough, and in the correct pattern, and there is no danger from a few lasers.’

‘Orikan…’

The astromancer crouched down on all fours, limbs out like a crustacean, or some form of insect. His tail curled up to sting, like a desert insect. He opened his mouth, and crackles of energy formed within his saw-toothed maw. The raw energies of reality coalesced around him.

He bolted out of the hatch, scuttling up its side and leaping into the chamber beyond, the click-clatter sound of his limbs speaking of the evasive path he was taking.

A howl of las fire covered the contact sound of his limbs. First an irregular splintering of fire, then a kettle-drum cacophony of shots that drummed into the open doorway in an almost solid pulse of red light.

A creature scuttled back through the opening, its carapace blackened and smoking. Carbonised in places so that it was little more than spongy, charred metal. Its tail hung by a cable.

It grabbed a hatchway door, slammed it shut with a scream of rusting hinges, and screwed the locking wheel tight.

‘How did it go?’ Trazyn asked.

‘It was in fact a great many lasers.’ Orikan reached up and bent one of his hood vanes forward. ‘It turns out your assessment was accurate. Thankfully, they largely were not.’

‘One can fault the humans with many things. They are brutish, ignorant and self-defeating. But none can fault their utter commitment to the maximalisation of firepower.’

(And a little further along)

‘Did you provoke them? Are they coming?’

Orikan gave a performative sigh. ‘Once they work up the courage. I atomised several and fixed a countertemporal hex on the mouth of the corridor. I expect the strangeness of the anomaly will delay any pursuit through fear as much as time distortion.’

‘Surprising that you took so much damage, given your divinatory ability–’

‘It was many lasers. We should quit this place.’ He pointed down the corridor, casting a basic scry. ‘That way, away from them.’

Again spoilers as the book just released, but I'll still keep said spoilers quite vague.

In the novels Twice Dead King: Ruin & Reign by Nate Crowley, the term "dysphorakh" is used to describe when Necrons have moments of realization that they are no longer living beings with no living organs, thus causing them to start disassociating and mentally panic. Thinking they need air but they have no lungs to breathe, requiring food but having no mouth nor stomach. Your mind basically screaming that you should, by all definitions, be dead/non-living but you still are somehow alive.

You can read a great scene of the dysphorakh happening from Ruin here: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1bya66d/book_excerpt_the_horror_of_the_dysporakh_twice/

Anyway, Robert Rath actually has Trazyn directly mention & very briefly suffer from flashs of the dysphorakh a couple times in The Wicked And the Warped. When I heard the word (I listened to the Audio book), I legitimately smiled & thought to myself "Oooh, I know that reference!" 👀

It's of course not surprising to see two authors writing for the same setting under the same publishing company reference and stay consistent with each other's depictions of the same race, but it's still cool to see the dysphorakh concept used by other writers when depicting the Necrons.

Obviously this won't ever happen, but what do you think each faction would need to become "good"? (Or at least on its way to seeing "good" on the horizon). For each faction, what fundamental internal systemic or external factors are preventing it from breaking out of its own grim darkness?

Some examples:

For the Imperium, I'd suggest the religious dogmas and power systems which reward/incentivize inhumanity. Put together, these create a self-reinforcing grim darkness.

For the Necrons, I'd suggest they'd need to first get their souls back, and then second learn humility, in that order.

For me, it’s the theory that the Old Ones created the Tyranids; I prefer the idea of ​​Mother Nature completely losing the plot amidst everything going on, and the Tyranids just being the result of that whole mess

It’s also almost certain that the Old Ones created humanity (though I’m not sure if that’s confirmed or just strongly implied by the lore).

But I prefer the idea that humanity is just a race much like the Necrontyr that should never have survived; yet, the human spirit is so resilient that, despite all the horrors, this seemingly weak and insignificant race has survived the Rangdan, Chaos, Orks, and Tyranids, proving everyone wrong not because their are weapon created by someone but because humanity herself

Idk if he actually looks that old in lore but every art depiction shows him with grey hair and a much older face, like all the other primarchs look like they're in their mid 40s while Dorn has always looked like he's in his 60's or something

I have recently got into warhammer and i literally can not stop listening to Rylanor's speech on repeat there is something about it that just makes you feel some kind of way, what an absolute legend i love Rylanor. Fulgrim I REJECT YOU NOW AND ALWAYS!!!

Personally, I love the Deep Warp and its mysteries.

Some theorize that it’s where gods go when they die which is why the Dark Pantheon is terrified of the place.

I hope GW tells us more about it someday without ruining the mystery.

Another fun theory is that the Emperor is actually just a Techno-Barbarian who happened to be in the right place at the right time; he stumbled upon some piece of high-tech ancient Earth relic that granted him immense power and knowledge. That would explain why he acted so strangely during the Great Crusade making poor Angron life miserable, failing to spot Mortarion betrayal even though it was right under his nose, being surprised by the sudden outbreak of the Heresy, or not having a contingency plan in case Magnus did something stupid.

It’s not that he’s a heartless god or anything; he’s just an old guy trying his best with what he’s got basically a total fraud. I find that hilarious

GW established that Vashtorr is a timeless being who witnessed and was empowered by technological progress and atrocities such as the Necron Biotransference, the rise of the DAoT, etc.

But GW is dropping hints that he wasn't merely a passive observer. Here is text from WD issue 495, a report from a Grey Knight marine, from one of the two articles expanding Vashtorr's background:

>My Lord, the oldest of the data-crystals and neo-parchment within the Sanctum Sanctorum portray legends that support the suspicion that the daemon Vashtorr was responsible for aeons-old disasters. There are patterns of rapid technological advancement, every one followed by falls into darkness and silence. Entire ages of Humanity have vanished. The Moire Schism, the Age of Strife and whatever whispers still echo of Old Night are surely a sequence into which I cannot help but suspect we have been locked.

>I fear we are now upon the precipice of such an abyss. I know the Chapter Council have dispatched a number of strike forces on the advice of the Augurium against incursions believed to represent manifestations of Vashtorr or those in his servitude, but I believe more is required. We have not turned away in the past when action has had to be taken to petrify the Imperium's progress, and I believe now is a time to consider such a response again.

Currently, it's just hints. But if it were confirmed that Vashtorr was behind the collapse of the DAoT, what would be your opinions on it?

New 40k enjoyer here, trying to learn some lore. The more I learn about the Imperium, the less I see how can it keep so many population with how bad the life at the hive cities is and a state of constant war all over the place. For a human civilization to keep its population equal it needs around 2.1 kids per women, but idk how they manage to get to that point with millions of astra militarum dying weekly (plus all the other jobs that are a fancy death sentence), and I don't think life expectancy is that high in the Imperium. Is there any reason I'm missing out or is the Imperium really fucked in the long run?

Edit: Holy shi I'm getting slimed here

Just look at all this nonsense over the mention of the 'Praetorian Seventh' in The Wicked And The Warped, and people misinterpreting that as a reference to Rogal Dorn. It isn't. It's a reference to a regiment.

Simply block any YouTuber that's trying to claim that it refers to Dorn. None of them have read the book, or have a clue what they're talking about.

It's typical clickbait idiocy from people who care more about their earnings that they do the actual lore.

EDIT: as others have suggested, Arbitor Ian and Leutin09 are the ones to follow. They are more interested in being lore accurate and informative, than how much cash they can squeeze out of newbie 40k fans.

soo if you confuse the questin is like this: 2 chaos cultist are in a thealogical argument. both of them make a very good points soo the argument ends in stalemate. but they still want a awnser soo they spawn a deamon of whatever god they were arguning over hopening deamon they spawned will awnser their questin. did anything like this happen in the lore ı am just wondering

I get told a lot and shown a lot of memes of the guard being the equivalent of the Halo grunts. I read however that guard training on average was several weeks. I’m not sure how long exactly that is but my basic for the Canadian military was 13 weeks I think.

So at least on a purely time based measurement it sounds like their training takes a similar time. Mind you I was no sof person and I’m comparing to the average Guardsmen.

So are they actually trained to a decent level for a military force and just horribly outmatched? Or is their training really as bad as the memes would make me think? Although they do die in droves, the guard seems to win more than it loses.

I'm a relative know-nothing to the 40k setting, and was wondering if there have ever been cases where humans (guardsmen, astartes, or other) have ever had romantic relationships with alien races? I mean I've seen plenty of reels, art, and other media depict it, but let's be honest; those aren't exactly credible sources.

Edit: Thank you all for informing me on this matter. It was just a thought I had and I'm happy with just how many of you indulged it. Once again, thank you.

Are there any mega corporations in 40k? And I mean like cyberpunk/modern style mega corporations, rather than Rogue Trader houses.