r/40kLore

Founding Legions I know usually can get away with most stuff because they simply got prestige and other narrative excuses but what about Successor Chapters?

At what point would they get "negative" attention from any other Imperial factions from the way they conduct stuff, like as long as you don't act like mass-murdering psychopaths, worship not-chaos idols, not aggravate any Chapter you come across etc will you just not get scrutinized and draw the eye of Imperial institutes or do Successors need to watch any action they do in the fear of being persecuted and not get sniped to near-extinction like the Celestial Lions?

Any good examples of this in the lore at all?

I say this with every ounce of love and respect for the Cain Series but to love the best of it you must decide on the worst…

And for me it has to be Last Ditch

The premise sounds simple and recognizable, Cain is sent to deal with some orks and ends up finding a larger threat th the never could’ve think of…except he could. All the hallmarks were there but for some reason it took Cain far too long to recognize the signs.

I’m sorry but I feel with Cain’s natural ability to connect dots most don’t see and his fear/heroism I feel he should’ve connected far more of what was happening rather than going along with it

I've read around 30-ish black library novels that heavily involve space marines.

There has been quite a few times where soace marines on long campaigns, or essentially standard aren't able to resupply and rely on whatever melee weapon they have.

Have there been any examples of soace marines using guardsman weapons? Ive seen a few examples of soace marines attempting it, but they usually give up, like in Betrayer, when a World Eater attempts to use a laguna, but quickly realises it would be pointless.

We think of guardaman and lasguns, but they have a wide variety of weaponry. Couldn't a space marine use sound like a heavy stuber or human sized melta?

I do not tolerate this disrespect towards our gobbo friends. Fantasy has guys like Skarsnik and Grom the Paunch and the best they could come up with for 40k is Ghazkhull's banner holder and The Red Gobbo, who isn't even a single character but many assuming the same identity?

Mildly disappointing I tell you, mildly disappointing.

I’ve read many times that the Drukhari are the representation of how dark the vast majority of Eldars had fallen before the birth of Slaanesh, but is it really true ?

Are the Drukhari a controlled version of the pre-Fall Eldars or did they manage to surpass them in their depravity ?

I'm wondering if there are any chapters that focuses more on naval warfare than being a typical ground pounding marine. Ink ow there are fleet based chapters and most chapters have at least some ships, but I'm talking more of a space marine chapter that embraces full naval combat as crew and command more than being the shock troops they usually are.

In the short story The Sixth Cult Denied during the course of the great crusade Captain Aqhet Hakoris is attempting to start a brand new Cult of Prospero after discovering that warp entities are intelligent. Attempting to share his discovery with the Legion he gets tricked by Magnus the Red into being put on trial in a mini Nikaea during which his father ends up threatening and intimidating him into silence. Throughout the story there are sections where we are shown someone who we initially are meant to believe is Aqhet Hakoris but turns out to be Magnus making is famous faustian bargain:

No one knew how deep the Great Ocean went. No one had ever tried to gauge how far into the unknown its outer limits might extend. There were those who believed the Ocean to be infinite. Others argued that it did not exist at all outside of metaphor.

Neither interpretation satisfied the seeker of knowledge.

They were intellectually lazy, and functionally meaningless. The knowable universe, too, was often said to be infinite – but what did that mean? What mysteries might be discovered as one approached its non-existent edge? All questions had their answers in the Great Ocean, if one was prepared to risk all to seek them.

He knew that, and had deemed the price of his enlightenment fair.

Only a promise, made to his father, had kept him from shedding his body of flesh and voyaging in the Ocean as long as he had.

But then, revelation always resides in the last place one looks…

.....

The Great Ocean was almost impossible to study directly. In the same way that a quantum particle could not be explained until it was assayed, the Ocean did not exist until it was observed, and it was defined by its observer. He sought knowledge, and so knowledge was what it gave him. Knowledge made corporeal. A maze of it. A labyrinth.

A translation cypher for the infamous Voynich Codex.

An entire missing row of periods for the table of elements.

Thirty-five unknown plays by the Shakspire.

The secrets of the Aeldari Fall.

The knowledge of the Old Ones, lost to the War in Heaven.

The nature of reality itself.

All he had to do was dive into that trove and the knowledge would be his. He could have explored that cavern of wonders forever, but he forced his spirit to look beyond it. There was one treasure that he sought to the exclusion of all others.

Days, weeks, years, endless quanta of infinity, he spent in increasing frustration, discarding lore that would have altered the path of galaxies had it but been known. But the one jewel of wisdom he sought was not there.

The beacon set by his acolytes in the universe of the physical grew faint already, but even as he heeded it he gathered his body of light to go deeper still…

.....

Deeper into the Great Ocean than he had ever gone in the company of his father, a new kind of predator lurked. They looked like nothing at all until he drew close, formless threats until he arrived at the conscious decision to enter their waters. They circled like the sharks of Terra’s prehistoric seas, and more, a protean blending of primeval terrors from the deepest reaches of Old Earth and a hostile cosmos with an inborn antipathy to intelligent life. The seeker of knowledge had studied broadly and travelled widely in coming this far, and few minds were as open to the true nature of the universe as his: he could conceive of horrors that few others would dare apprehend, and the weird plasticity of the Ocean readily obliged the Domains of Life conjured by his imaginings.

Teeth. Frills. Suckers. Barbs.

Spots. Stripes. Exotic chromatophores. Mimetic displays.

There were saurid giants. Club-wielding primates with murderous grins. Carnivorous swarms of insects, piranhas, and psychneuein.

Without the power of his father to repel them, they did not hesitate long before making their attack. The seeker did not command the mastery of his father, but he was not without some might of his own.

Anger rose in his thoughts, and he shaped it into a sword of crimson fire that he swept through a manifestation of hunger with the head and body of a shark and the limbs of a wolf. A squid-like malfeasance spread to envelop him with its tendrils. It was of an order beneath him, and with a thought he made it literally so, reworking their relative dimensions until it was insignificant enough for him to crush in one hand. Like air towards a vacuum the denizens of the Great Ocean rushed at him. Too many to destroy. He roared his frustration into the Ocean, and destruction rolled from him in waves.

Where was the answer that he sought?

He felt the tug on his astral cord as his acolytes, sensing his peril, sought to recall him. His body of light had never spent so long abroad of its physical host, ventured so far or fought so hard.

But to retreat now would be to surrender the knowledge he sought forever. This was a fact that he understood without any grounding in logic or facts. Such was the nature of the Great Ocean. It answered to symbolism, ritual and sacrifice. It rewarded peril.

Brandishing his sword of anger, he armoured himself in hard plates of determination.

He would sooner lose everything than fail here.

.....

Beyond the shoals of carnivorous thought and predatory dreams, the seeker of knowledge found a thing he had not expected – calm. An endless expanse of flat, colourless aether extended out from him in all directions towards eternity’s end. He had braved the hunger and tumult of the Ocean, rejected its false promises, and he had found… nothing. The sputtering fires of determination became the ash of dejection. His body of light flickered, like a candle glimpsed from across light years of fog as he cried out in despair.

And the Ocean rippled.

.....

‘I would have my answer,’ he cried, in a voice manifested by golden will and conveyed by the medium of thought.

The Ocean responded like water in a container when that container had been disturbed.

‘How far must I search? What more must I do?’

Ripples became eddies, eddies became currents, and currents, before one could understand it or convince oneself otherwise, became directed motions.

‘What more must I give?’

The question echoed back to him from the stirring Ocean. The seeker was learned enough to recognise the challenge for what it was, unwise enough to accept it as given.

‘Anything!’ he replied. ‘I would give anything for this knowledge!’

Thunder rolled across the Ocean.

‘Granted,’ it said.

Pain welled up from the position of his right eye, and he screamed, drawing his hand to his face, but immediately after the pain came knowledge. The slow burn of understanding. He gasped in wonder, and the Ocean responded, although not as the usual, passive mirror of his joy. He did not understand it, but past, present and future were all one place in the Great Ocean. Even in the throes of enlightenment, on some level he knew – it was a question that would plague him forevermore.

.....

Sergeant Aqhet Hakoris, warrior of the fire deserts of Oaus and a legionary of the Thousand Sons, awoke aboard the Photep. Medicae equipment blinked and chirped, but in futility, for they had played no role in his awakening. A primarch greeted his return, a demigod whom he had never before encountered except in astral vision, and yet the first thing he looked to was his own hands.

Magnus smiled, the indulgent smile of a proud father watching their child for the first time employ a Palmar grasp on a coloured pencil.

‘My hands,’ said Hakoris. ‘They are my own.’

‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘You have been cured of the Flesh Change.’

The warrior lowered his hands, and for the first time looked in awe upon his sire and saviour.

‘How?’

There were many questions he might have asked, but he was a brother of the Thousand Sons – this was the only one that mattered.

‘Rest now, my son.’

‘I must know how,’ said Hakoris. ‘Tell me.’

Magnus rose without answering. He had defied his father in order to pass His test and seek His answers, but he was Magnus the Red of Prospero, and he knew his limits.

His own sons he expected to be more obedient.

• The Sixth Cult Denied

After reading Magnus' description of believing he got the better of the entity in his bargain in A Thousand Sons I think it's fascinating to get to see the reality. There was no battle of wits over the contract or examining the "fine print" just Magnus in his desperation for answers accepting any cost and fully believing an eye was the only thing that was taken. That or he convinced himself that was all that was lost.

I know most memories are scrapped during Hypno-indoctrination but what about the original name? I know most squads are named after their sergeant so imagine if your OG name was something like Barry and you become a sergeant and then you hear on the vox "Squad Barry, you are authorised to assault the enemy fortress, for the Emperor"

With the caveat being that I'm not really interested in read heresy era books, mostly interested in strictly 40k (time period wise). I've read the lion and the arks of omen excerpts so I wanted to keep going further into modern DA

Honestly curious. Administratum might be "just" be the paperwork side of the Imperium but it would collapse without people making sure things are going where they need to. And we've heard stories before about Administratum clerks causing untold damage by sabotaging reports to weaken the Imperium.

But what if there was an Administratum worker who not only was 100% loyal to the Imperium but went above and beyond the regular duties expected of them? Someone who was able to double the tithes for an entire sector while keeping things running efficiently or discovered dozens of planets that had been lost in the records. They might not have been fighting directly in the wars but through their actions might have helped the Imperium win on many different fronts.

Is it legitimately possible for them to become Living Saints? Or do you have to fight in direct combat to become one?

The simplest answer would be that they source them from the Craftworlds & Drukhari but then in Battlefleet Gothic they have their own distinct fleet. Do any books explain where those ships come from?

Planning on painting up some Primaris loyalist Luna Wolves. While I'm aware you don't need to justify everything, I thought it'd be fun to at least try.

Current ideas:

Pre-Heresy Luna Wolves company

They arrived at their intended destination 10,000 years in the future via warp fuckery

They operate in the extreme reaches of Imperium Nihilus to avoid detection by the greater Imperium, like the Carcharadons or Ashen Claws.

They avoid other Space Marine chapters and the Inquisition so that they aren't immediately exterminated.

Need to find a way for them to find the tools necessary for Primaris.

Everyone talks about who's the tallest or biggest Space Marine, but who's the shortest king in lore?

>>!The Guild did what it could to look after its members, and protect the interests of all Neg toilbonds. Respectable members and representatives, like old Bella, were sometimes allowed to attend Low Council meetings or civic assembles, to request more water allowances, or an air flush, or better wages. Such things were tolerated by the Hive councils, regarded as a necessary expression of social complaint, but such requests were seldom honored.!<

>!We get a little more info about the various groups arrayed against these workers’ communes below:!<

>>!The rallies, the rabble-rousing, the toilhalt (strike) actions, and, occasionally, acts of vandalism and sabotage. All were put down hard by the reeves, the ORPO grueks, and the HiveDef militia, but the councils and the Lowhabbers and the Overdwellers and most of all, the Administratum, knew that the Guild seethed below, a mounting pressure that gathered in the vents. Sometimes, it had to be slacked off and eased. Sometimes, it lit, and rushburned.!<

It is worth mentioning that ORPO is the same acronym used by Nazi Germany to refer to their Ordnungspolizei, or their uniformed, domestic police force, so the political subtext is about as heavy as a brick through a cop car‘s window.

Context: In the aftermath of the closing of the Imperial Webway, a figure walks through desert ruins.

>The sun was a hammer, the desert its scorched anvil. Here the world laboured under the draconic swelter of seething heat, the wind slow-whipping in outraged howls across the dune sea. The barren sky offered no shadow. The lifeless landscape offered no hope of shade.

>A lone traveller walked this realm, his boots scuffing the powdery grit, his cloak rippling in the alkali gusts. He trudged onwards, leaving tracks that marked his passage across the featureless expanse. He never looked back. There would be nothing to see even if he did.

>His journey brought him to the edge of a chasm, a riven slice of the planet’s skin where the world’s tectonics had once pulled apart after warring in grinding uproar. The traveller descended the ravine’s cliffside while the high sun remained in vigil.

>Soon enough, blessedly, he entered a realm of shadow where the sun no longer stared.

>Within the ravine lay the broken bones of a dead city. Silent for so long, free from the ravages of the dusty wind, it echoed only with the sound of the traveller’s footsteps. He passed through this place of mournful memory, careful not to touch the ashen smears that its fleeing people had become.

>He walked through time-eaten cathedrals to forgotten gods, through firefallen palaces that once housed dynasties of kings and queens who laid claim to whole worlds. He walked with no purpose beyond seeing what lay there in the abandoned shadows.

>In the deepest lightless reaches of that slain civilisation, the traveller halted at last. He stood within a cavern several days’ journey below the surface, where the stone walls showed precious few remaining signs of the culture that once thrived here. It wasn’t from here that those ancient monarchs had ruled their realm, but it was the core-place, the heart of their power, that had allowed them to do so.

>Thunder rolled. A week away, far above him, a storm tore across the desert. Dust clattered from the cavern roof, clattering soft melodies of desecration upon dead machines.

>The traveller turned in the darkness, raising an illumination globe clutched in a rag-gloved hand.

>‘Hello, Diocletian,’ he said.

>The warrior stood in the dark, his spear held in a loose fist. He was helmless, breathing in the earthy smell of a million memories.

>‘My liege,’ he said. Somehow, his voice was a gunshot in the nothingness, breaking the silence in a way the Emperor’s had not. Things moved in the shadows, crawling away from the defiling sound of speech.

>The Emperor walked among the stilled enginery – the sand had blighted everything, even down here – running His gauntleted touch along the fire-blackened metal.

>‘Sire? What is happening? Why am I here?’

>‘Do you recognise any of this machinery?’

>Diocletian let his gaze roam over the cavern’s wreckages. ‘No, my liege.’

>The Emperor kept walking, moving from structure to structure the way a man might browse the aisles of librarium. The thunder that shouldn’t be audible this deep in the earth rumbled louder than before.

>‘There are those in the Cult Mechanicum, among the Unifiers, that surmise I found the core of the Golden Throne here, beneath the sands of Terra. A relic, they venture, of the Dark Age.’

>Diocletian wasn’t sure what to say. He had witnessed uncountable hours of the Golden Throne’s planning and construction processes. Yet, as he said, he recognised nothing here. He didn’t know if that was a flaw in his understanding of the Throne’s genesis among these machines, or simply because this machine crypt had nothing to do with the Emperor’s greatest work at all.

>‘Perhaps there was merely inspiration to be found here,’ the Emperor mused softly. ‘The idea taking form, based not on the successes of an ancient race but the failures of our own.’ He exhaled a rueful sound, not quite a sigh, not quite a chuckle. ‘Did I see these machines, how they fell short of their intended purpose, and resolve to create a far superior incarnation? There is a certain poetry to that, isn’t there, Diocletian? The belief that we know better than those who came before us. That we will suit a throne better than they did.’

>‘Sire, I… Are you well?’

>‘Or perhaps the idea was mine in its entirety. Any relics of lost ages that have proven useful for their parts being the legacies of dead species that had the same idea, millennia before my birth. In such an instance, each race envisions its own salvation independent of the others, only to discover that other species, other empires, have already failed to save themselves.’

>Diocletian breathed slowly in the dark. ‘Does it matter, sire?’

>The Emperor turned to him, His eyes focusing on the Custodian for the first time. ‘The war is over, Diocletian. Win or lose, Horus has damned us all. Mankind will share in his ignorance until the last man or woman draws the species’ last breath. The warp will forever be a cancer in the heart of all humans. The Imperium may last a hundred years, or a thousand, or ten thousand. But it will fall, Diocletian. It will fall. The shining path is lost to us. Now we rage against the dying of the light.’

>‘It cannot be this way.’ Diocletian stepped forwards, teeth clenched. ‘It cannot.’

>The Emperor tilted His head. ‘No? What then do you intend to do, Custodian? How will you – with your spear and your fury and your loyalty – pull fate itself from its repeating path?’

>‘We will kill Horus.’ Diocletian stared at his defeated monarch, illuminated in emberish light of the lumoglobe in his hand. ‘And after the war, we can begin anew. We can purge the webway. The Unifiers can rebuild all that was lost, even if it takes centuries. We will strike Horus down and–’

>‘I will face the Sixteenth,’ the Emperor interrupted, distracted once more by the machine graveyard. ‘But there will come another to take his place. I see that now. It is the way of things. The enemy will never abate. Another will come, one who will doubtless learn from Horus’ errors of faith and judgement.’

>‘Who, my king?’

>The Emperor shook His head. ‘There is no way to know. And for now it is meaningless. But remember it well – we are not the only ones learning from this conflict. Our enemies grow wiser, as well.’

>Diocletian refused to concede. ‘You are the Emperor of Mankind. We will conquer any who come against us. After the war, we will rebuild under your guidance.’

>The Emperor stared at him. He spoke a question that wasn’t a question, one that brooked no answer.

>‘And what if I am gone, Diocletian.’

>The Custodian had no answer. Thunder pealed above them, shaking the cavern and jarring loose a rattling hail of falling pebble-dust.

>‘My king, what now? What comes next?’

>The Emperor turned away, walking into the darkness of the cavern while the storm hammered the dead city so far above. He spoke three words that no Custodian had ever heard Him speak before.

>‘I don’t know.’

This excerpt has a lot going on. Obviously, there are hints regarding the origin of the Golden Throne and how the Emperor came up with his plan, as well as the Emperor demonstrating knowledge of the ending of the Horus Heresy and the rise of Abaddon. It's also a clear example of a Custode showing emotion.

You all remember that time when a DA strike team sneaked into the Imperial Palace to retrieve the captured Cypher, got caught by a Shadowkeeper who proceeded to kill half of the team before being put down by a DA elite librarian

It made me wonder if they could have tried to talk it out before things went to shit

It's the exact kind of moment trazyn would want, Dorn frozen in time in the middle of being dragged down by hundreds of cultists. Him trading for the fulgrim clone shows his interest in having the primarchs on display and he probably wouldn't have gotten a better opportunity to grab any of them than the last scene we currently have of Dorn. It would also explain the utter disappearance of any sort of body or relics. His body, armor, and weapons would have been paraded around to demoralize or would have been given to someone like Fabius if any chaos faction still had them, similar to Ferrus.

Why can’t they bump it up to say 2000-4000 each day?

A squad is 10 Marines, and presumably they stay together as a formation when they're re-equipped for different tasks - going from basic Intercessors to Hellblasters or Infernus squads just means they take a different gun, being deployed as Heavy Intercessors or Reivers means they get different armor, etc. Even being promoted to Veteran or Terminator squads means they just get different kit.

Some squad types are deployed in groups of 6, however - Aggressors, Inceptors, Centurions and Eradicators all deploy in these under-strength squads.

When the commander decides their order of battle (IE who will be doing what and with what gear) and assigns a squad to be armed as Eradicators, where do the other 4 Marines go? Are they assigned to the vehicle pool as drivers or gunners? Are they left on the ship as crew?