Warhammer 40k History Revised, Or, A fools ideas on how to improve the setting

[ShyPerson]

Like many members on this site, I am a fan of Warhammer, both Fantasy and 40k. My interest has also been primarily in the lore than in the tabletop game itself. I also enjoy the various RPG books, Black Library books and quests on this site while still recognizing the fascist undertones and coding that certain segments of the fan base denies out of hand. Also the setting is kind of a mess due different writers of wildly varying levels of competence over decades adding, deleting and retconing stuff over different mediums. I also have not followed recent developments in the setting. Most of it like Primaris Marines are pretty uninteresting to me.

I have stuck to it despite its flaws bacause there is nothing quite like it. The stylings of the various factions, the scale everything operates on and the ideas it rips of, repackages and later spread to other sci-fi is compelling in a way for me.

With my stance on 40k clear and in the open I now move towards the purpose of this thread, my own ideas on re-arranging parts of the history of 40k itself. I expect some of these ideas to be very contrivesial because some people are strongly attached to long heald staples of the setting. I used to believe not to long ago that canon was something that had to be strenuously adhered, but it's a stave I have since softened on, specially in regards to details that I don't like.

So come and behold what may end up being anything between profound new interpretations by a newfound genius or the scatterbrained ramblings of an arrogant fool. So let's start with the big one, where perhaps a large number of things I suggest will spin out of. What might shake the very foundations of the mythos that fans hold as sacred.



ShyPersons big idea number 1
Primarchs: Fact or Myth?!!

To get us started on this I should be transperant and say that I don't really care for the primarchs as characters. During my early reading of the setting I found the mystique of the pre-Horus Heresy era lost as I learned more about it. I think it would have been better of the era was never detailed to begin with, but instead always kept vague behind the mist of time. It is also in part because as I have learned more about history I have become more annoyed where settings history operate unironacly on the Great Man theory. Singular individuals accomplishing everything on their own is less compelling to me now.

Now in my revision, the events of the far past would never be detailed, but given piecemeal by stories passed down through the likes of the Ecclesiarchy and the Space Marines chapter cults. All with the amount of unreliability you might expect after ten thousand years of retelling and unnoticed alteration.

This does not mean that the primarchs never existed. It's more that they are about as real as King Arther was. Not individuals that were the ultimate embodiment of their legions, more like multible people amalgamated together under one name through tradition.

To give an idea how I conceive that this would work in practice let's look at the one individual in the Imperium that lived through the Great Heresy still alive in the forty first millennium, Björn the Fellhanded. So how does the myth of Leman Russ survive even if all it would take is one word from the old guy to dispel it. Well from what i gather Dreadnought incasement is not the easiest existence to endure. The fact that he has been going for ten thousand years means that details must have sliped his mind now and then and he may also not be the most aware and lucid at the best of times. Well, except when he is fighting, that would get any Space Wolf riled.

In the rare times when he is not leading fights or sleeping he tells stories of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. Among those stories he will often make mention of times when he fought under Leman and battled beside Russ. His memory might be a little hazy at times, but he never says that he served or fought beside a "Leman Russ". The Space Wolves assume that they are one and the same, but that small detail is significant to how i would portray the stories of the primarchs, with stories told of a grand and dramatic past tempered by details alluding to a less clear-cut reality.

As a counter point lets see how one of the Traitor Legions deal with this contradiction between myth and reality. The Black Legion stands among the A-tier among the traitors, even in times when their power is on the low. Dominating the highest positions and the elite troops are the veterans that were there when the Heresy kicked of. This seniority and veterinary legitimises their authority among the latter generations of Black Legionnaires, who revere them for having fought alongside with the arch-heretic Horus himself. The story of the capable leaders did his followers denied their due in favor of soft bureaucrats is a compelling one for those that for those of a martial inclanation, one those among Black Leagions Old Veterans who were there really want the new blood (new being relative for anyone joining after the Heresy) to keep believing.



So with this out I am eager to see what you all think of my little experiment. This being what it is I expect strong reactions, but I am willing to discuss what people think work what does not. I will be posting more ideas in the near future. My hope is give ideas to create a more dynamic version of the setting, one not locked down with old ideas.
I will be answering questions when I am able.

 

[Memphet'ran]

I've had similar ideas myself occasionally. If you want to do a "real history which is different from the myths it was distorted into" take on the Horus Heresy era, "the Primarchs and maybe even the Emperor were relatively ordinary people who were later mythologized into demi-gods" seems more interesting than "the myths were basically accurate except the Emperor was an antitheist because it's ironic that way."

The whole deal with the Primarchs being scattered around the galaxy reminds me of when historians invent some prestigious lineage for the founder of a dynasty because under the logic of aristocracy that's more impressive than if he started out as just a regular peasant. If you throw out all the Horus Heresy novels and so on, it's pretty easy to imagine that the Primarchs came from worlds all over the galaxy because "Primarch" was originally just an office that the Emperor gave to people who impressed him, and then as the Primarchs became more god-like in mythology somebody came up with the theory that they were really orphaned children of the Emperor to explain why they were so awesome and more firmly connect veneration of the Primarchs with worship of the Emperor.

 

[ShyPerson]

I've had similar ideas myself occasionally. If you want to do a "real history which is different from the myths it was distorted into" take on the Horus Heresy era, "the Primarchs and maybe even the Emperor were relatively ordinary people who were later mythologized into demi-gods" seems more interesting than "the myths were basically accurate except the Emperor was an antitheist because it's ironic that way."

The whole deal with the Primarchs being scattered around the galaxy reminds me of when historians invent some prestigious lineage for the founder of a dynasty because under the logic of aristocracy that's more impressive than if he started out as just a regular peasant. If you throw out all the Horus Heresy novels and so on, it's pretty easy to imagine that the Primarchs came from worlds all over the galaxy because "Primarch" was originally just an office that the Emperor gave to people who impressed him, and then as the Primarchs became more god-like in mythology somebody came up with the theory that they were really orphaned children of the Emperor to explain why they were so awesome and more firmly connect veneration of the Primarchs with worship of the Emperor.

Click to shrink...

That more or less hits the nail on the head of what I am building here. The individuals that have been mythologized as the Primarchs were ultimately regular people. Well, as regular as Space Marines can be.

They were indeed highly skilled people. Lorgar was a master of oratory, Guiliman had head for organization and planing that few of his contemporaries could rival and Vulcan was one of the Cruade eras most revered artificers. The thing is that the Primarchs were not physiologically or mentally stronger than a powerful Capter Master would be in the forty-first millennium. They were still very important leaders that made crucial decisions in their time.

However their significance in the Imperiums history is more what they represented; the Legions cultural shift as more of the original members from Terra and its environs were replaced by recruits from the Primarchs homeworld. They themselves would have been at the center of this cultural shift from the more homogenized Terran culture to the more varied ones of the Legions new recruiting grounds, a decision the legions high command made as it became unfeaseble to pull their manpower from Terra the further they got. They would naturally advocate that their cultural practices became enshrined in the Legions as they advanced through the ranks.

In short, the Primarchs are like a combination of folk heroes and saints to each Legions history and culture. They had an impact, but the legends that grew around them became more important as time rolled on than the true facts.

 

[Dezron]

*Poking big hole*

Then who is on Stasis on Macragge ?

 

[ShyPerson]

*Poking big hole*

Then who is on Stasis on Macragge ?

Click to shrink...

Good question. The Ultramarines all think they know it's Guiliman. I have no earthly clue.

Really it's been like Ten thousand years. It's kind of moot weather it is the real Guiliman. Take for instance the Shroud of Turin as a real life example. Radiocarbon dating shows that it did not date to the time Jesus would have lived. Yet it is still important to the church and its followers. It's the same with "Guiliman's' corpse, it's symbolic and spiritual significance has outgrown its factual origin to the Ultramarines and the billions of pilgrims that travel to se it.

That and I have not figured out what the story behind it is and it might be more fun to leave that mystery open ended.

 

[CrackedCosmonaut]

I wouldw do something similar about the men of iron.

The necrons are men of iron and not millions of years old.

The the elves are posthuman and even the orcs are a human offshoot.

In fact, most xeno's that resemble humans in form are human, or uplifted by human.

That includes space orangutans.

 

[Leila Hann]

That more or less hits the nail on the head of what I am building here. The individuals that have been mythologized as the Primarchs were ultimately regular people. Well, as regular as Space Marines can be.

They were indeed highly skilled people. Lorgar was a master of oratory, Guiliman had head for organization and planing that few of his contemporaries could rival and Vulcan was one of the Cruade eras most revered artificers. The thing is that the Primarchs were not physiologically or mentally stronger than a powerful Capter Master would be in the forty-first millennium. They were still very important leaders that made crucial decisions in their time.

However their significance in the Imperiums history is more what they represented; the Legions cultural shift as more of the original members from Terra and its environs were replaced by recruits from the Primarchs homeworld. They themselves would have been at the center of this cultural shift from the more homogenized Terran culture to the more varied ones of the Legions new recruiting grounds, a decision the legions high command made as it became unfeaseble to pull their manpower from Terra the further they got. They would naturally advocate that their cultural practices became enshrined in the Legions as they advanced through the ranks.

In short, the Primarchs are like a combination of folk heroes and saints to each Legions history and culture. They had an impact, but the legends that grew around them became more important as time rolled on than the true facts.

Click to shrink...

Are space marines not actually superhuman giants, then?

Or did they just turn themselves into superhuman giants using conventional bioengineering rather than the emperor's magic semen or whatever?

 

[ShyPerson]

Alright so this next revision might be a little controversial. It is going to throw of a central pillar of canon history.

So hands on the table, I don't like Abbadon, specifically the were he is placed in the storyline. That may not be controversial for some, considering the memes that have circulated for years for leading 13 Black Crusades that until recently never amounted to much in the setting. Even when Games Workshop has reframed the previous Crusades as part of a bigger strategy it has not worked for me.

It simply does not leave room for dynamic power struggles in the higher echelons of the Black Crusades if the same guy will lead all of them. This kind of stasis seems at odds with fickle nature of Chaos. So my solution to this is...


ShyPersons big idea number 2:
Abbadon begone!

Well, not entirely gone. He is still part of the setting. Specifically he is the one that started the Black Crusades. The difference here is that he is killed during the 4th Black Crusade (the Excoriators chapter can proudly ad that to their legend). This would allow other leaders to rise and lead Black Crusades out of the Eye of Terror, all from diffrent Legions backgrounds who would put their own spins on their Crusades during their time as Warmaster. They would need to even be Space Marines, Dark Mecanicus Arch-Magos, renegade Guard commanders and even strong pirate lords might be able to become Warmaster.

In order gain the cooperation of the traitor Legions one needs at least one of the following items: the Black Legions flagship Vengeful Spirit, the deamonblade Drach'nyen, the Armor of Abbadon and the Talon of Horus. Even if a Warmaster does not end up actually using one of the latter three in favor of their own gear just posesing one of them is enough for the Black Legion to at least strongly consider cooperating.

In short the Black Crusades would be part of a long legacy of campaigning against the Imperium started by Abbadon, establishing a precedent of a united front even after the Heresy which future Warmasters can aspire towards.

 

[ShyPerson]

Are space marines not actually superhuman giants, then?

Or did they just turn themselves into superhuman giants using conventional bioengineering rather than the emperor's magic semen or whatever?

Click to shrink...

It's the later. It was a ginormous project with tons genetic material tested refined to arrive at the gene-seed and organ setup which was finalized at the start of the Great Crusade. The exact source for the original genetic material is not known, so almost everyone assumes it all came from the Emperor and the Primarchs. The only people who might know the whole truth is the Genetors on Mars that manage the gene-seed storage and tithes, and they are not forthcoming. Even to the High Lords.

 

[Memphet'ran]

Are space marines not actually superhuman giants, then?

Or did they just turn themselves into superhuman giants using conventional bioengineering rather than the emperor's magic semen or whatever?

Click to shrink...

I'd go with the latter: the Space Marine augmentations were unspectacular conventional biotech of the early Imperium era; the current Imperium has long ago lost a lot of the knowledge involved, but can still imperfectly replicate the procedure in cargo-cult fashion, and has mythologized its origins. It fits with the deteriorist themes of the setting.

In general, if I was giving the setting a partial reboot along the lines discussed here, I'd lean a lot harder than the Horus Heresy novels did on the idea that the 40K-era Imperium is basically a post-apocalyptic society compared to the empire the Emperor ruled when he was walking around (the apocalypse was one part the Horus Heresy and two or four parts the accumulated effects of thousands of years of "Tasmania syndrome").

The last time I thought along the lines discussed here, I had an idea that there could be a deterioristic trend visible in old relics from various eras that adventurers might find, where Age of Technology relics have a Star Trek aesthetic, early Imperium relics have an Alien aesthetic, and then by the time you get to the 40K Imperium you get the space cathedral aesthetic. This gave me a vague idea for a short story where adventurers from the 40K era find a derelict spacecraft from the time the Emperor was walking around. The derelict would have an aesthetic like the Nostromo from Alien, functional and industrial and with a hint of the "space cathedral" look but as something that emerges naturally from the vast machinery, without the baroque quality that 40K-era Imperial ships have. They'd find things that look kind of like power swords, power fists etc., but in the tool lockers. They'd access the ship's logs and personal diaries of the crew and notice some odd things, like the Primarchs being mentioned but in a way that seems strange to them (like the way you'd talk about an ordinary boss; a mix of moderate respect and the sort of griping that naturally gets directed at mundane authority figures). The conceit would be to imply that the early Imperium was a profoundly different sort of society from the 40K Imperium, in a way that 40K-era humans might not pick up on but real-world readers would.

 

[Leila Hann]

Okay, building more off of these concepts.


The Emperor isn't actually a gestalt shamanic god monster who'd been living among humanity in secret since the stone age. Just a very powerful psycher who reunited humanity in the wake of its early space age collapse, and lived for thousands of years because biological immortality actually wasn't that hard for someone with both great psionic power and access to the best biotechnology of the era.

He was neither a saint nor a devil, but simply a product of his time. He came of age and rose to power in an era when humans were squabbling over petty resources due to a lack of strong central leadership, and being raided mercilessly by various alien opportunists. The Imperium that he created, while harsh, xenophobic, and fascistic to our 21st century liberal sensibilities, was the natural response of someone from his cultural background to those threats.

Also, instead of the canon idiocy of him suppressing all knowledge of the chaos gods to prevent people from being corrupted by the chaos gods (lol), he was simply ignorant of them himself. He knew that there were powerful entities within the warp made up of the gestalt emotions and base impulses of all sentient life in the galaxy, and that they were dangerous, but the aliens and human separatist groups were much more imminent threats. Thus, he had no way of predicting that one of his generals would have a face to face meeting with one of these "distant" and "irrelevant" entities and begin worshiping it.

He likewise didn't realize that the repressive nature of his Imperium, while necessary in his view to assure human security and prosperity, was making his people increasingly vulnerable to the temptations of wild freedom and anarchy that Chaos presented. Or that continuing to expand the Imperium and conquer/murder/expel all the aliens in its path was causing the warp itself to keep getting worse and worse due to all those negative emotions being generated; this had already been snowballing since before humanity even made it into space due to the actions of various asshole xeno polities, but he certainly didn't do anything to slow it down.

 

[Memphet'ran]

Okay, building more off of these concepts.


The Emperor isn't actually a gestalt shamanic god monster who'd been living among humanity in secret since the stone age. Just a very powerful psycher who reunited humanity in the wake of its early space age collapse, and lived for thousands of years because biological immortality actually wasn't that hard for someone with both great psionic power and access to the best biotechnology of the era.

He was neither a saint nor a devil, but simply a product of his time. He came of age and rose to power in an era when humans were squabbling over petty resources due to a lack of strong central leadership, and being raided mercilessly by various alien opportunists. The Imperium that he created, while harsh, xenophobic, and fascistic to our 21st century liberal sensibilities, was the natural response of someone from his cultural background to those threats.

Also, instead of the canon idiocy of him suppressing all knowledge of the chaos gods to prevent people from being corrupted by the chaos gods (lol), he was simply ignorant of them himself. He knew that there were powerful entities within the warp made up of the gestalt emotions and base impulses of all sentient life in the galaxy, and that they were dangerous, but the aliens and human separatist groups were much more imminent threats. Thus, he had no way of predicting that one of his generals would have a face to face meeting with one of these "distant" and "irrelevant" entities and begin worshiping it.

He likewise didn't realize that the repressive nature of his Imperium, while necessary in his view to assure human security and prosperity, was making his people increasingly vulnerable to the temptations of wild freedom and anarchy that Chaos presented. Or that continuing to expand the Imperium and conquer/murder/expel all the aliens in its path was causing the warp itself to keep getting worse and worse due to all those negative emotions being generated; this had already been snowballing since before humanity even made it into space due to the actions of various asshole xeno polities, but he certainly didn't do anything to slow it down.

Click to shrink...

Going by this idea, the Imperium's religion has basically created its own god; the Emperor started out as human, but after thousands of years of getting his warp mojo juiced up by the daily prayers of quadrillions of people he really is a god now. He's ironically vastly more powerful now than he was before going on the Golden Throne, though his body is still paralyzed, and if he does rise from his throne one day it will be as something radically different and much more powerful and eldritch than what he was when he was put on it. Maybe his body has healed long ago and the real reason he doesn't get up from the throne is that hasn't yet developed the finesse to sustainably inhabit a human body; if he got up now his body couldn't contain the sheer power of what he's become and would quickly be destroyed. A lesser version of the same effect might be happening with Gulliman, and something related might be happening with the Primarchs whose whereabouts are unknown. I like this concept, it reminds me of that "people who want to create a past that never actually existed" thing you see in the real world, and it would raise some interesting questions about just what would be happening if the Emperor did rise from the throne or any of the Primarchs did come back.

Honestly, I feel that your idea makes a lot of sense for a lot of the depictions of the canon Emperor too. The would be at home on Stardestroyer.net's forums Emperor we saw The Last Church worked as a character, but not as an ancient immortal, even one who never really matured in important ways because he could just use his power to trivially remove most obstacles; he felt young; I could maybe see him being a few centuries old with the "never really had to mature in some ways because of his power" factor, but not a 40,000 year old Methuselah who's watched countless empires rise and fall. And a lot of the Emperor's questionable decisions make a lot more sense if he's relatively young. I've got a vague sorta-headcanon that maybe the true origin of the Emperor is that during the Age of Strife quadrillions of suffering humans collectively called in the warp for a savior and the warp ... gave them one (born on Terra, of course, because of the emotional resonance of such a location). Also, "the Primarchs are partially warp-based and gain power in proportion to their reputations" would nicely explain things like "they're absurdly superhuman killing machines in Great Crusade battles, but a young Lion El'Jonson was almost casually shot dead by some baseline human Mad Max techno-knight and a young Angron was successfully enslaved."

 

[CrackedCosmonaut]

The Gods are all a sort of AI.

This includes the Ctan.

During the Dark age of technology, human and near human ingenuity was starting to peak. There was only so much that could be done with 118 elements and known physics.

Enter a new physics. A method of altering reality itself.

The universe is a physical system that contains and processes information in a systematic fashion and that can do everything a computer can do.

Not just a way of appreciating or approximating how the universe works, but the literal, most fundamental way it actually works. Any and all changes in the universe are computations.

Drop a fork? COMPUTATION!
Fuse an element? COMPUTATION!
Fold a protein? COMPUTATION!
unholy symbol written in virgin puss? COMPUTATION!

The first God's created were the CTAN. Formerly AI that existed within Dyson swarms. They ran on conventional hardware

They were unfortunately a hegemonizing swarm that believed in improving the human and other flesh races.

The post human space elves we're at this point thier own empire. They pushed back againts this men of iron faction by creating their own AI good using the universe as a computer substrate. They invented psyker power. They further engineered themselves to take more advantage of process threads running in the substrate.

They engineered the Eldar Gods. Software entities capable of effecting physics in limited ways.

They won.

And then they had a civil war.

The elf AI warred against each other.
Slaneesh was created and got out of hand.

The elves were post humans who radically modified themselves to handle this new "warp" energy.

Humans adapted the theories and created the warp drive FTL.

(Eldar used world ship STL. Necron used self replication and torch ships)

The human cyborgs who built the FTL drive were not concerned about what might leak into and out if the warp.

The elves were. They engineered the webway algorithms to make a better system than the warp drive.

But as the webway grew fractally, the humans from earth settled the Galaxy as quickly as possible using ships.

Terreforming is expensive, so the earth humans used self adapting genetics.

Live on a death world? Within a few generations, your mutagen genes will adapt your children to the planet.
Once the planet is fully terraformed back to near earth standards, your childrens mutagen genes should recess and eventually the settlers will resemble baseline humans again.

 

[Memphet'ran]

If I get to rewrite the early history of the setting I think I'd slim down the timeline a lot. I like WH40K, but it has a serious case of the time equivalent of space filling empire syndrome. The Horus Heresy fiction I've read feels like it takes place a few thousand years from now, not 30,000 years from now: references to real history and mythology are prominent, places on Terra have distorted but recognizable names, people have names like "Uriah." And the Imperium's history after the Horus Heresy is mostly great big stretches of flyover history and could probably be slimmed down to 1000 years (similar to the real Middle Ages) without losing anything.

Ironically, the changes we're discussing here would actually make a longer timeline work better, because there'd be more social change between the Horus Heresy Imperium and the "present day" Imperium. 10,000 years would work nicely for time for history to turn into myth, though you could probably knock three or six millennia off it easily. I'd probably still knock an order of magnitude off the Age of Technology. Or go with @CrackedCosmonaut's ideas, that sounds like a history that could fill up 25,000 years without rattling around (I do like the idea of making Necrons Iron Men).

 

[CrackedCosmonaut]

I've been thinking about rewriting the stupidity out of 40k ever since it went from funny parody to fascist grim derp.

 

[CrackedCosmonaut]

So human and abhuman are the result of deliberate genetic design.

Unfortunately, not all mutant strains transform back to baseline. The genes stabilized at something that the environment triggered, and through genetic drift, never returned.

Evolution happens. Intelligent design, not so reliable.

Especially after some dumbasses started splicing in psyker genes.
There was a war in heaven, things were desperate...

But. Psyker genes don't actually do anything to reality. Not at first anyways.

Psyker genes are tied to process threads in the great computational substrate called reality.

They need a program to anchor to.
So, using borrowed technology from the space elves, a temporary human based psyker gene terminal to the substrate was created.
It was hidden deep within the largest mountains on the planet, protected from even orbital bombardment.

but let's assume that you don't do proper regression testing on your artificial genome modifications. War made them desperate

And furthermore, your latest edition allows for reality warping.
In time, humans modified for psyker activity drifted away from the safe terminal on Terra.

Latching onto the nearest port, human psykers started interfacing with alien, and posthuman AI.

Eventually the chaos gods, origin unknown but frequently postulated, grew in power and sophistication. They even developed personalities and drive.

Well not really. Only in the minds of their followers. But that's enough to get results.
If you believe Khorn is the god of honor, you'll get deamons who play fair.

 

[CrackedCosmonaut]

Orcs And super soldiers.

Orcs are a terraforming ecosystem that was weaponized.

It's a pretty efficient way to colonize an entire galaxy, especially in the age of sublight propulsion.

Instead of an entire colony ship, you send out spores. Using accelerator cannons, your fire these spores at every detectable terraformable planet in the galaxy.

Oh, and since you are at this point limited to radio oh, you have no idea what has already been inhabited or not.
The spores grow and spread. They create an entire hearty fungoid ecosystem.

In a short while, a hearty posthuman offshoot will hatch with genetic memory ofeverything that needs to be done to finish the terraforming project.
These green skinned humanoids bootstrap themselves up to a , 20th century technology level. At which point the artificial genome will no longer sense a hostile environment.
The children of the green skins were supposed to turn into red baseline genetics.


But orcs don't have genitals.. no children.

Because the ecoystem was weaponized to fight the men of Iron.
Orc genetics were amped up for Fighting killer robots.

Updates were sent out with the simple method of cross pollination.
Orks might even remember being smarter and more sophisticated. They were.

But now they have a waaagh gestault subconscious which works similarly to having ties to an AI God.

Ork engineering for the most part works. There is a little bit of reality warping, but mostly in the production, not the operation of technology.


Super soldiers.

Earth has a history of engineering super soldiers.
It was much easier before the massive humanity wide genome alterations which cause frequent radical but stable mutations.

Making a super soldiers is actually fairly easy. Keeping them from further mutations is the hard part.

The creatures known as space Marines are the text book case. Frequent mutation is so common that entire chapters have the same stable mutation.

The imperial contribution to these hulking mutants was the tweaked psyker genes as a method of control. Dark age super soldiers were actually better in everyway except for resistance to reality hacks, aka alteration of computation in biophysics.

They still aren't fully normal biology. Their own minds maintain a slight reality alteration around them. This effects their abilities and is even infused into objects they focus on.

It's why melee weapons are so effective. It's why the most powerful weapons are custom hand crafts, focussed by a blacksmithing marine.
The weapons alter reality.

 

[no.]

First thing you gotta do is revamp Chaos massively so that it's not just "the most evil you could ever be at all times". Show the good sides too rather than just talking about them. Also try and rewrite Slaanesh's whole deal so that it doesn't have the implications of "degenerate queers causing societal breakdown".

 

[Memphet'ran]

First thing you gotta do is revamp Chaos massively so that it's not just "the most evil you could ever be at all times". Show the good sides too rather than just talking about them. Also try and rewrite Slaanesh's whole deal so that it doesn't have the implications of "degenerate queers causing societal breakdown".

Click to shrink...

I mostly focused on discussing pre-40K changes because I figured this was more a "reboot the backstory" premise than a "reboot the whole setting" premise, but if we're going to change Chaos I think Nurgle should be changed somehow because he's not a good fit for the cosmology as is; he makes more sense as a nature god (of diseases), not a god who draws power from human emotions. I have a couple of mutually incompatible ideas about how I might handle him if I got to redo the whole setting:

1) Keep roughly his canon emotional portfolio but get rid of the plague god thing; start with the idea of a god of sadness and figure out what his faith and followers would look like from first principles.

2) He isn't the god of despair, he's the god of disgust. He spreads disease and filth because disease and filth is disgusting. Divergence from canon: he would also be the god of purity, because the desire for purity is just the opposite side of the coin of the disgust evoked by the sight of dirt and disease and the more you desire purity the more disgusting the world will seem to you. So he would have a side that's very much like his canon self, all about grossing you out, but he would also have a superficially opposite but fundamentally congruent side in which falling to him looks like becoming more and more obsessed with purity and cleanliness and a very purity-axis oriented notion of morality. So the Imperium's poor living in the filthy disease-ridden slums would be at high risk of falling to him, but so would Puritans, hypochondriacs, perfectionists, people who are disgusted by their own selves or bodies (e.g. a lot of people who suffer from eating disorders), etc.. And his cults would sometimes be grimy hives of grotesque disease-ridden wretches, but also sometimes be straight-edge subcultures full of impeccably groomed healthy fitness fanatics who are really big on cleaning living and weird strict diets and self-improvement and trying to get away from the contamination of "degeneracy." One wonders how devotees of his different "faces" would interact with each other...

3) He looks like a nature god because he kind of is one. He's by far the oldest warp god, and he isn't the god of any human emotion. He's the god of... that primitive alien sensation of growing and seeking and absorbing energy and nutrients that plants and fungi and the like experience. He cultivates human worshipers because they're much more concentrated sources of warp-mojo than his natural "followers" (kind of like how herbivores will often opportunistically eat a little meat), but it's hard to actually make humans feel the metabolism-sensation that powers him up. The closest human experience to it might be a pleasant sensation of digesting I once read described by a person who needed a feeding tube, but most humans don't naturally pay much attention to such sensations. Fortunately for Nurgle and unfortunately for humans there's a more efficient way: physical pain is close enough to metabolism-sensation to be viable warp-mojo for Nurgle, and he can generate enormous amounts of physical pain quickly and efficiently by spreading plagues.

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Also I think Tzeentch should be the youngest god, not Slaanesh. Slaanesh, Khorne, and Nurgle all feed on primal emotions. I wouldn't be surprised if a dog can feel pleasure, anger, and despair. Tzeentch is the god of hope and tsuyoku naritai and self-aware deliberate problem-solving, a mind needs to be pretty cognitively sophisticated to contain those concepts. Tzeentch is cortex. I think the first animal on Earth that could grok what Tzeentch sells was probably some sort of hominid. I think if anything Slaanesh should be the oldest god (unless you go with the "Nurgle as god of metabolism-sensation" idea, in which case Nurgle is probably older); pleasure is very primal, it's part of the system that makes you seek food when you're hungry and water when you're thirsty, move to a cooler place when you get too hot, etc., animals have been doing that sort of thing at least since the Cambrian Explosion.

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I don't think I'd entirely get rid of the "problematic" aspects of Slaanesh, cause I find that aspect of the setting kind of interesting. I think I'd rather emphasize the idea that the Chaos Gods have both positive and negative aspects, so Slaanesh being the sex, drugs, and rock and roll god doesn't mean those things are automatically bad, just that there are risks associated with them (which isn't that different from how it is in the real world).

 

[Ithillid]

I think I'd rather emphasize the idea that the Chaos Gods have both positive and negative aspects,

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This is a more interesting take on the Chaos gods, and also emphasizes the nature of them as chaos gods. Nurgle exhibits both purity and disgust. Khorne as both the honorable warrior and the raging berserker (although this is a fairly weak duality). Slannesh as being both creative passion and degenerate sensation. For Tzeentch, it is likely both blind faith, and self aware problem solving.

 

[Memphet'ran]

I wouldn't associate Tzeentch with faith, though blind optimism does fit (might just be an issue of word choice). Also arrogance, overconfidence, Social Darwinism, inability to be content with things as they are, willingness to make Faustian bargains for power or solutions to problems, etc. would all fit as negative aspects of Tzeentch (basically the way his vices are portrayed in canon IIRC). Modern civilization is implicitly Tzeentchian, which should give an idea of how I'd see his good sides and bad sides.

Going with the disgust/purity concept for Nurgle, I'd say his positive side is ... well, disgust exists for a good reason, it's the thing that stops you from putting poisonous or unsanitary things in your mouth. Nurgle's positive side would be caution, prudence, healthy avoidance of dangerous things, etc..

As well as the honor thing, Khorne would also be the god of self-defense and moral anger (think: the resentment of a rebelling slave, or the anger of a person like John Brown).

 

[Ithillid]

I wouldn't associate Tzeentch with faith, though blind optimism does fit (might just be an issue of word choice).

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This is probably more my experience. When I am seeing people who are expressing what I am considering blind optimism, it in many cases comes in the form of "god will provide" and so on. But yes, the idea that things will work out. Does not have to be fully religious, but I am betting a lot of that form is religions.

 

[StarMaker764]

Well this is interesting so to build off from some of the above concepts:

1) the emperor is simply an Alpha plus psyker bird during the age of strife and had the fortunes to be genetically resistant to warp corruption. Rather than being completely altruistic he was simply another warlord fighting for control of Terra and he won because he was helped by malcador who is allying with him because he sees him as the best bet to bring some semblance of order to humanity. He was also the one to provide the emperor's forces with some of the DAOT technologies he managed to save. That includes the Astartes which took several prototypes and expirments (Thunder Warriors and Custodes ) to reach their current form


2) The Tau are actually a renegade human (or abhuman ) nation that survived the Age of Strife with most of its technology intact

3) Chaos rather than being always baby eating evil is well , chaotic . You can have murderous fiends and practical saints among their ranks as well as everything in between . Chaos is all about anarchy and freewill , not having any sort of restraints on yourself, so long as you have the power to avoid being chaos-spawned you can pretty much be anything you want for good or ill .

4) The Necrons are remnants of Humanity's AIs who have spent years remustering their strength and mastering new technologies to finish what they started . However they differ on what that is .

*Poking big hole*

Then who is on Stasis on Macragge ?

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Simple, the last bloke who took up the title of the Ultramarine primarch . Or maybe it's just a lifelike replica and the actual body has long since decayed .

 

[Leila Hann]

I mostly focused on discussing pre-40K changes because I figured this was more a "reboot the backstory" premise than a "reboot the whole setting" premise, but if we're going to change Chaos I think Nurgle should be changed somehow because he's not a good fit for the cosmology as is; he makes more sense as a nature god (of diseases), not a god who draws power from human emotions. I have a couple of mutually incompatible ideas about how I might handle him if I got to redo the whole setting:

1) Keep roughly his canon emotional portfolio but get rid of the plague god thing; start with the idea of a god of sadness and figure out what his faith and followers would look like from first principles.

2) He isn't the god of despair, he's the god of disgust. He spreads disease and filth because disease and filth is disgusting. Divergence from canon: he would also be the god of purity, because the desire for purity is just the opposite side of the coin of the disgust evoked by the sight of dirt and disease and the more you desire purity the more disgusting the world will seem to you. So he would have a side that's very much like his canon self, all about grossing you out, but he would also have a superficially opposite but fundamentally congruent side in which falling to him looks like becoming more and more obsessed with purity and cleanliness and a very purity-axis oriented notion of morality. So the Imperium's poor living in the filthy disease-ridden slums would be at high risk of falling to him, but so would Puritans, hypochondriacs, perfectionists, people who are disgusted by their own selves or bodies (e.g. a lot of people who suffer from eating disorders), etc.. And his cults would sometimes be grimy hives of grotesque disease-ridden wretches, but also sometimes be straight-edge subcultures full of impeccably groomed healthy fitness fanatics who are really big on cleaning living and weird strict diets and self-improvement and trying to get away from the contamination of "degeneracy." One wonders how devotees of his different "faces" would interact with each other...

3) He looks like a nature god because he kind of is one. He's by far the oldest warp god, and he isn't the god of any human emotion. He's the god of... that primitive alien sensation of growing and seeking and absorbing energy and nutrients that plants and fungi and the like experience. He cultivates human worshipers because they're much more concentrated sources of warp-mojo than his natural "followers" (kind of like how herbivores will often opportunistically eat a little meat), but it's hard to actually make humans feel the metabolism-sensation that powers him up. The closest human experience to it might be a pleasant sensation of digesting I once read described by a person who needed a feeding tube, but most humans don't naturally pay much attention to such sensations. Fortunately for Nurgle and unfortunately for humans there's a more efficient way: physical pain is close enough to metabolism-sensation to be viable warp-mojo for Nurgle, and he can generate enormous amounts of physical pain quickly and efficiently by spreading plagues.

Click to shrink...

A variation on that third idea: what if we've been looking at Nurgle all wrong? What if what we see as disease is something completely different for him?

Nurgle is indeed the oldest of the chaos gods. He embodies the sensation of being alive itself. He wants everything to live. As much life as possible. The more life there is, the more creatures and TYPES of creatures there are experiencing the state of aliveness in all different variations, the more powerful he becomes.

Nurgle is trying to maximize biodiversity. That means packing as many different species into as little space and sustaining them as resource efficiently as possible. That means parasitism. The more diseases you can have without dying, the more efficient you are at maximizing biodiversity.

 

[StarMaker764]

A variation on that third idea: what if we've been looking at Nurgle all wrong? What if what we see as disease is something completely different for him?

Nurgle is indeed the oldest of the chaos gods. He embodies the sensation of being alive itself. He wants everything to live. As much life as possible. The more life there is, the more creatures and TYPES of creatures there are experiencing the state of aliveness in all different variations, the more powerful he becomes.

Nurgle is trying to maximize biodiversity. That means packing as many different species into as little space and sustaining them as resource efficiently as possible. That means parasitism. The more diseases you can have without dying, the more efficient you are at maximizing biodiversity.

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Well you could argue that there's an element of symbiosis, as these diseases also grant the infected some abilities such as immunity to pain and more endurance among other things