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In The Grimdark of Fanfiction -40k

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I have a question for everyone here: is it ok for someone who has only read a fraction of 40k lore and stories to write a 40k fanfiction/quest? I ask because while I am an avid reader of both the Ciaphias Cain and Gaunts Ghost series, and have played most of the "good" 40k video games, I've never been able to get into the rest of the books and i haven't even played the tabletop game. I've attempted fanfiction of 40k before, but have quite often found myself worrying about the quality and canonicity of my writing on everything from Ecclesiarchy Doctrine to the effectiveness of a well-made stubber compared to a lasgun.

Is reading througe the Lexicanum and other sources enough? Or would it be better to buy and read througe the whole 40k literary package before writing fanfiction? Would the Codicies be better for lore? I don't really have the money to buy everything.
 
NottheCrabs! said:
I have a question for everyone here: is it ok for someone who has only read a fraction of 40k lore and stories to write a 40k fanfiction/quest? I ask because while I am an avid reader of both the Ciaphias Cain and Gaunts Ghost series, and have played most of the "good" 40k video games, I've never been able to get into the rest of the books and i haven't even played the tabletop game. I've attempted fanfiction of 40k before, but have quite often found myself worrying about the quality and canonicity of my writing on everything from Ecclesiarchy Doctrine to the effectiveness of a well-made stubber compared to a lasgun.

Is reading througe the Lexicanum and other sources enough? Or would it be better to buy and read througe the whole 40k literary package before writing fanfiction? Would the Codicies be better for lore? I don't really have the money to buy everything.
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Just write the fanfiction/quest.

There are enough unreliable narrators in WH40k that everything is debatable anyway. And while the quality of your writing is important, reading more books/sources isn't going to improve that.
 
NottheCrabs! said:
I have a question for everyone here: is it ok for someone who has only read a fraction of 40k lore and stories to write a 40k fanfiction/quest? I ask because while I am an avid reader of both the Ciaphias Cain and Gaunts Ghost series, and have played most of the "good" 40k video games, I've never been able to get into the rest of the books and i haven't even played the tabletop game. I've attempted fanfiction of 40k before, but have quite often found myself worrying about the quality and canonicity of my writing on everything from Ecclesiarchy Doctrine to the effectiveness of a well-made stubber compared to a lasgun.

Is reading througe the Lexicanum and other sources enough? Or would it be better to buy and read througe the whole 40k literary package before writing fanfiction? Would the Codicies be better for lore? I don't really have the money to buy everything.
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Most material already contradict each other. For the fine details i say it's perfectly inline with the flimsy canvas of canon to make up your own interpretations on suff like Ecclesiarchy doctrine and the comparative effectiveness of diffrent sidearms. There not being any canon is infact official Games Workshop policy.
 
NottheCrabs! said:
I have a question for everyone here: is it ok for someone who has only read a fraction of 40k lore and stories to write a 40k fanfiction/quest? I ask because while I am an avid reader of both the Ciaphias Cain and Gaunts Ghost series, and have played most of the "good" 40k video games, I've never been able to get into the rest of the books and i haven't even played the tabletop game. I've attempted fanfiction of 40k before, but have quite often found myself worrying about the quality and canonicity of my writing on everything from Ecclesiarchy Doctrine to the effectiveness of a well-made stubber compared to a lasgun.

Is reading througe the Lexicanum and other sources enough? Or would it be better to buy and read througe the whole 40k literary package before writing fanfiction? Would the Codicies be better for lore? I don't really have the money to buy everything.
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I've never read any of the official books or played the tabletop myself, but if you're concerned for getting the canon accurate then I highly recommend you check out the Warhammer 40k Wikia. There are plenty of articles that you can look up to get you well acquainted with the material. I've been making character profiles for a 40k fanfic that I plan to make and I've been using the Wikia to get a handle on how things work. Don't worry if it's not 100% accurate, just focus on writing a good story with the pieces that you feel would fit best.
 
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NottheCrabs! said:
I have a question for everyone here: is it ok for someone who has only read a fraction of 40k lore and stories to write a 40k fanfiction/quest? I ask because while I am an avid reader of both the Ciaphias Cain and Gaunts Ghost series, and have played most of the "good" 40k video games, I've never been able to get into the rest of the books and i haven't even played the tabletop game. I've attempted fanfiction of 40k before, but have quite often found myself worrying about the quality and canonicity of my writing on everything from Ecclesiarchy Doctrine to the effectiveness of a well-made stubber compared to a lasgun.

Is reading througe the Lexicanum and other sources enough? Or would it be better to buy and read througe the whole 40k literary package before writing fanfiction? Would the Codicies be better for lore? I don't really have the money to buy everything.
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You can make do. Just, ask if you aren't sure of anything; Lexicanum and the other 40k wikis are, being wikis, not always the best source, and it's not like anyone's going to be awkward about advice or the giving thereof if you're trying.
 
So here's an idea.

An SI primarch story, that takes place after you accomplished your goals. Saving all the primarchs or all but two. Since you're the 2nd or the 11th, then it would be the one you didn't choose and another dying. Or falling to chaos for that matter and surviving.

The point is that you maxed out the relationship meter with everyone, all the characters the different factions everything, you did their loyalty missions, you're considered an honorary Magos in the mechancius. Or you're a fabricator general for your forge world. You max'd your flagship, your legion weapons. You crafted legendary weapons for yourself. You collected all the raw resources.

Basically, at this point, you can literally rofl stomp everyone.


But then the war of the beast happens and you realize that you forgot about them, or you realize that they're the next big threat. The legions get ravaged, no one dies thankfully gets wounded yes but not dies. The webway gets damaged the amount depending on its level of course.

But Emps still gets interred in the golden throne and the imperial faith still happens, oh and that one brother who either went renegade or fell to chaos is back followed closely by a black crusade.

So the story is now the SI having to deal with how bad the imperium gets and try to control its fall.

You know like how you realize that the threat keeps escalating.
 
NottheCrabs! said:
I have a question for everyone here: is it ok for someone who has only read a fraction of 40k lore and stories to write a 40k fanfiction/quest? I ask because while I am an avid reader of both the Ciaphias Cain and Gaunts Ghost series, and have played most of the "good" 40k video games, I've never been able to get into the rest of the books and i haven't even played the tabletop game. I've attempted fanfiction of 40k before, but have quite often found myself worrying about the quality and canonicity of my writing on everything from Ecclesiarchy Doctrine to the effectiveness of a well-made stubber compared to a lasgun.

Is reading througe the Lexicanum and other sources enough? Or would it be better to buy and read through the whole 40k literary package before writing fanfiction? Would the Codicies be better for lore? I don't really have the money to buy everything.
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I am with the others here, I wouldn't worry all that much about that in general and 40k is in many ways more fluid than other settings anyway. Indeed, I am very doubtful that the official BL writers have read that much, especially outside of the area they are focused on, so it seems insane to me to expect a fanfiction writer to do that.

And with Wh40k you can really avoid clashing with "Canon" if you pick the scope of your project with some care, if you limit your story to for example a sector or even planet you can easily explain almost any divergence. Because WH40k is, or at least was, in the lore a setting with massive regional variation and differences. Take your idea of Ecclesiarchy Doctrine as an example, if you limit it to being the dominant interpretation of the local diocese instead of making a universal statement nobody is going to come and argue that you are wrong instead it will add flavour and possibilities to your world building.
 
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As long as you don't actually go overboard on some wide sweeping comments on the setting it is generally okay to write what you know. I was however very aggraveted when a writer in FFN insisted in his story that IoM has completely forgotten how to build starships and has been using same hulls since DaoT with no new hulls at all. IT is was such a stupid statement that showed that his ignorance I just couldn't take him seriously after that.

So keep vague on the stuff you don't know or atleast make sure to show that it is from unreliable narrator so you can fix stuff in the future if you make a mistake.
 
This right here is really good. The voice is damn amazing. I recommend going through the whole thing but that's 100 videos so maybe just check out some of the early videos to see how the character changed. It provides a look at the horror of the Imperium from the perspective of one who is in it. The roleplaying is great. Just check it out.
 
NOTE - These are the combined version of two of my posts on SB being crossposted here.

I've been thinking of writing a world where the Emperor decided to not create his own empire but manipulate the Mechanicum or something (referred to from now on as Mech), basically a universe where the Imperium never existed. The Mech would expand after the warp storms ended, though not Great Crusade-style or scale, they do have colonial interests evidenced by the fact that the Mech tried to expand during the Age of Strife by sending colony ships during lulls.


I also thought of an interesting societal/population issue that would drive this expansion. The thing is that Forge-Fanes and many in the hierarchy of the Mech are practically immortal so unless one dies which is rare, Forge-Fanes from the 26th Millenium are the same ones as in the 28th Millenium. This causes the promotion of new tech-priests to be practically impossible as a lot of the old guard is still there. This means that there are new tech priests being churned out with nowhere to go. I've also thought of what if they just stopped training new priests, this goes into the contract between the menials and the priests, that being one of the clauses is that they train smart menials into tech-priests. If they stopped training new priests, many tech-priests and menials would rise up in rebellion.


This issue is mostly being solved by conquering the solar system but as ground-space runs out, this is becoming more and more of an issue, by the 30th Millenium, there were a lot of tech-priests with not much to do causing a flourishing of philosophy and different political ideologies and it was almost coming to blows and internal warfare. However, the disappearance of warp-storms caused by Slaanesh's birth scream suddenly solved this issue by regular interstellar travel being possible again. Thus, the great diaspora of tech-priests began, with all sorts of differing tech-priest groups going and claiming planets for themselves. Some groups feigned a disappearance and split from the Mech as a whole.

"Mechanicum" worlds where they practiced reckless innovation, others where the priests attempted to merge with the warp (warp cyberization cults), worlds with civil and human rights for everybody, democracies, autocracies, theocracies, basically anything and everything you can think of. Of course, more traditional Mech worlds were the most numerous and they obeyed Mars in all things.

The Mech would also mostly take on a policy of diplomatic conquering taking worlds as vassals in exchange for tech from the Mech. Then slowly integrating them more and more into the Mechanicum until they're Mech worlds.

These are most of the coherent thoughts I've had about this, I've came up with this idea a couple of weeks ago and I've been very busy. Some less coherent ideas are the devastation and fracturing of the Mechanicum after they win a pyrrhic victory against the Ullanor Orks. An Ultramarian league in sort same vein as the second Athenian league, with Macragge having a lot of influence over the other planets and them uniting being partially for protection from the Mechanicum colonization and vassalization.

The Primarchs might never even come into existence, instead, Gene-enhanced diplomatic corps might be what he goes for. The military conquest of highly developed industrial worlds just seems extremely inefficient as they're going to want to rebel and the siege will be a meatgrinder. Combine that with the fact that many of these Technocratic states originated not too long ago from Mars, and most have a lot of cultural similarities making it easier for them to integrate with each other.

Imagine that, diplomats that can read a tech-priest's emotions and desires by the slightest twitch of a mechandrite, interpret binary without cybernetic augmentation, and have a lot of charisma, oratory skill, and a good understanding of the mindset of Tech-priests.. Using these diplomatic corps, the Emperor would probably begin to consolidate the Mechanicum Tech states, he would also use the external threat of the Ullanor Orks as a reason to least join together temporarily to oppose the Orks.

EDIT - I don't think the Emperor would make himself really known, instead using Agents like he did for most of his lifetime and if he did do something significant, he would do while disguised as a menial or techpriest or someone else then quietly disappear afterward. I think using agents and being subtle is his usual MO and that making the Imperium with him at his head is a deviation because of extraordinary circumstances, in my timeline, he continued to be subtle as per his usual strategy.
By the way, thank you for the feedback and add ons.

I want some criticism and feedback from y'all about this along with helping me flesh out this world I am building.
 
I thought that even the most heavily augmented tech priests died after 1000 years due to their few fleshy bits going caput.

Bile being the-heh- Deus Ex Machina exception for getting the Primaris.

Also.

What do you intend to do with the Iron Men rebbelions, the ban on AI, the Dark Mechanicus and the fact the Mech is sitting and worshipping the Void Dragon?
 
Eliar said:
I thought that even the most heavily augmented tech priests died after 1000 years due to their few fleshy bits going caput.

What do you intend to do with the Iron Men rebbelions, the ban on AI, the Dark Mechanicus and the fact the Mech is sitting and worshipping the Void Dragon?
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The Iron Men rebellions and the Ban on AI remain the same, there is no real reason for them to differ at all, the Mechanicum has always had a ban and hatred of AI. The Mech and the Void Dragon.. I believe a youtuber named Bricky put it best, just because 2 rats fucking caused a vase to fall over and you take it as a sign from God and start praying, does not mean that the 2 rats are god. In this analogy, the two rats are the Void Dragon. The Mech is forming a warp god of their own. This shard of the Void Dragon has been killed by the Emperor.

The Dark Mechanicus do exist in a much smaller form as an order of Chaos Tech-Priests that in-fight a lot. A lot of the radical warp cyberization cults went inadvertently and intentionally Chaos. The AI ban has been circumvented by several extremist (To the Mech) AI cults, although, these AI are not all-powerful DAOT AI and the Mech has defences towards them.
 
What of Xeno tech?

Is the reverence STs and the subsequent tech stagnation present or is this NuMech allowed to innovate and integrate Xeno tech?
 
BeeBadidoo said:
NOTE - These are the combined version of two of my posts on SB being crossposted here.

I've been thinking of writing a world where the Emperor decided to not create his own empire but manipulate the Mechanicum or something (referred to from now on as Mech), basically a universe where the Imperium never existed. The Mech would expand after the warp storms ended, though not Great Crusade-style or scale, they do have colonial interests evidenced by the fact that the Mech tried to expand during the Age of Strife by sending colony ships during lulls.


I also thought of an interesting societal/population issue that would drive this expansion. The thing is that Forge-Fanes and many in the hierarchy of the Mech are practically immortal so unless one dies which is rare, Forge-Fanes from the 26th Millenium are the same ones as in the 28th Millenium. This causes the promotion of new tech-priests to be practically impossible as a lot of the old guard is still there. This means that there are new tech priests being churned out with nowhere to go. I've also thought of what if they just stopped training new priests, this goes into the contract between the menials and the priests, that being one of the clauses is that they train smart menials into tech-priests. If they stopped training new priests, many tech-priests and menials would rise up in rebellion.


This issue is mostly being solved by conquering the solar system but as ground-space runs out, this is becoming more and more of an issue, by the 30th Millenium, there were a lot of tech-priests with not much to do causing a flourishing of philosophy and different political ideologies and it was almost coming to blows and internal warfare. However, the disappearance of warp-storms caused by Slaanesh's birth scream suddenly solved this issue by regular interstellar travel being possible again. Thus, the great diaspora of tech-priests began, with all sorts of differing tech-priest groups going and claiming planets for themselves. Some groups feigned a disappearance and split from the Mech as a whole.

"Mechanicum" worlds where they practiced reckless innovation, others where the priests attempted to merge with the warp (warp cyberization cults), worlds with civil and human rights for everybody, democracies, autocracies, theocracies, basically anything and everything you can think of. Of course, more traditional Mech worlds were the most numerous and they obeyed Mars in all things.

The Mech would also mostly take on a policy of diplomatic conquering taking worlds as vassals in exchange for tech from the Mech. Then slowly integrating them more and more into the Mechanicum until they're Mech worlds.

These are most of the coherent thoughts I've had about this, I've came up with this idea a couple of weeks ago and I've been very busy. Some less coherent ideas are the devastation and fracturing of the Mechanicum after they win a pyrrhic victory against the Ullanor Orks. An Ultramarian league in sort same vein as the second Athenian league, with Macragge having a lot of influence over the other planets and them uniting being partially for protection from the Mechanicum colonization and vassalization.

The Primarchs might never even come into existence, instead, Gene-enhanced diplomatic corps might be what he goes for. The military conquest of highly developed industrial worlds just seems extremely inefficient as they're going to want to rebel and the siege will be a meatgrinder. Combine that with the fact that many of these Technocratic states originated not too long ago from Mars, and most have a lot of cultural similarities making it easier for them to integrate with each other.

Imagine that, diplomats that can read a tech-priest's emotions and desires by the slightest twitch of a mechandrite, interpret binary without cybernetic augmentation, and have a lot of charisma, oratory skill, and a good understanding of the mindset of Tech-priests.. Using these diplomatic corps, the Emperor would probably begin to consolidate the Mechanicum Tech states, he would also use the external threat of the Ullanor Orks as a reason to least join together temporarily to oppose the Orks.

EDIT - I don't think the Emperor would make himself really known, instead using Agents like he did for most of his lifetime and if he did do something significant, he would do while disguised as a menial or techpriest or someone else then quietly disappear afterward. I think using agents and being subtle is his usual MO and that making the Imperium with him at his head is a deviation because of extraordinary circumstances, in my timeline, he continued to be subtle as per his usual strategy.
By the way, thank you for the feedback and add ons.

I want some criticism and feedback from y'all about this along with helping me flesh out this world I am building.
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Start with where you want to go. Then write a path that takes you there.

What you have right now is worldbuilding. Which is good! I like worldbuilding. But the world isn't the story. What's the goal? What's the conflict? What do your characters want and how do they try to get it and what kind of problems will they face along the way?
 
Eliar said:
What of Xeno tech?

Is the reverence STs and the subsequent tech stagnation present or is this NuMech allowed to innovate and integrate Xeno tech?
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This as in most things in 40k depends.

The Traditionalist Tech-Priests do not want Xeno tech and revere STC's and do not really innovate, these tech-priests are mostly on Mars which has the highest population and power. However, a lot of newly colonized planets hold progressive ideas as a result of their colonizers being Mar's unpopular tech-priests that were ostracized. There are also major portions of the Mech that want the restrictions of Xenos tech lifted and more innovation. It depends on what planet and tech-priests you're talking about. Overall, the Mech are slowly becoming more receptive towards Xenos tech and Innovation.


dptullos said:
Start with where you want to go. Then write a path that takes you there.

What you have right now is worldbuilding. Which is good! I like worldbuilding. But the world isn't the story. What's the goal? What's the conflict? What do your characters want and how do they try to get it and what kind of problems will they face along the way?
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I know, my goal isn't really to write a story, I prefer worldbuilding. Although this may change, I can think of some good story ideas.
 
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it is a bad thing I found this thread insomniac and in my lets check just one last thing phase.

Here's an add on for you, properly Grimdark.

One of the extremist sects decide to walk the Ork Way.

Or rather utilize Orks they have observed performing impossible fits of tech-wizardry by sheer power of faith.

The Mech way of.

Instead of Servitors, have them utilize captive/vat grown Orks and attempt to organize and exploit their Orkitry.

So you have various contraptions powered by sheer bolted on Ork willpower.

War crimy enough or should I keep going? :V
 
Eliar said:
SNIP
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Can I add that to my lore? I could absolutely see some of the Extremist Sects doing this, with.... differing results.

EDIT - Several Extremist sects see the power of the Waaagh field and try to exploit. Sometimes, it works with the Waaagh field being used to repair and make better factorums and weapons. Most of the time, this backfires and everyone ends up dead, Gork & Mork do not look kindly upon this attempted stealing of their domain.
 
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Some story ideas I have for my world are-

1) A ambitious young tech priest in the 29th Millenium struggles to advance up in the Mechanicum's hierarchy due to it being gridlocked by long-living priests. The story would follow his struggles to gain a high level position by assassinating, implicating the senior tech-priests in scandals that did or did not happen, and general scheming/plotting. His main opposition would be the stronger, more experienced tech-priests who know about this kinda thing.

2) A young naive Skitarii from a progressive colony ready to serve Mars in the war against the Ullanor Orks, slowly gets more and more cynical due to the horrors he'd seen on both sides and the horror of the war itself. (Would probably be more of a one-shot.)

3) A detective tech-priest must investigate the sudden rash of missing menials and low-ranking tech-priests that her uncaring inhuman superiors dismiss, while struggling with the ostracization from her peers due to her progressive view on menial rights. (The cause of the missing people would Necrons dragging people off to study them)

I'm sure I can come up with more given time. (Anybody can use these ideas by the way, although I am assuming these ideas are even good enough for people to use)
 
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