Your thoughts on the Primaris and lore progression

[Blindhamster]

I'm in my 30s and perfectly fine with the Primaris and GS

 

I really welcomed it

 

I too am in my 30s and likewise for the most part have enjoyed their addition.

 

I feel like in lore they aren't as much better as some people make out, they're larger and stronger, and general degradation has been reset so they're basically physically stronger (and maybe tougher) great crusade marines in terms of quality.

 

They aren't more skilled, they aren't smarter, they aren't necessarily more agile.

 

They are more inexperienced and more naive to the universe they found themselves in.

 

Devastation of Baal makes a point of showing that they're almost under the wing of more experienced Astartes, because well... they need to be. Dark Imperium shows the very real risk of them falling to chaos because they simply do not know the risks in the same way that Astartes do.

 

They're also trained via data upload (more or less) which means they may well know how to do something but not necessarily have the experience, and are potentially able to have more gaps.

 

We also know from hints in recent codexes that they are not as "perfect" as some would have you believe in lore either - for example, it sounds like the red thirst (which was non existent in them when they first rejoined their fellow blood angels) seems to have shown a very extreme case in some in the very last entry for Blood Angels, enough so that Corbulo himself is worried about them.

 

They also follow a more rigid mode of warfare which may well hearken back to the great crusade but doesn't change the fact they become less flexible and chapters are typically fewer than 1000, let alone legion size.

[BitsHammer]

While I don't want to invalidate other people's opinions on the new stuff I do feel like we're upholding the old lore with a rather frank disregard for all the horrible stuff that had been slipped in over the years (C.S. 'Multilaster' Goto excluded actually, because he's just a symptom, not the problem).

 

Take the Sisters novel Hammer and Anvil for instance (and before I get burned at the stake, I actually like this book, but it does some things wrong). In the book the Sisters, after hundreds of years, are allowed to finally return to Sanctuary 101 and try and set things right (they still can't reclaim the bodies of their fallen Sisters though since they're important research material into Necron weapons), only this return just cheeses off the Necrons who begin to deploy from the hollow moon they have in orbit (yes, that is no moon, it's a Necron battle station) to wipe out the Sisters again. And while I absolutely adore parts of this book, basically almost everything about the Necrons in the book seems to be written to sell all the new 5th edition Necron stuff. It's like James Swallow was handed the new Necron codex and told to put everything into the book. So yes, the "Buy Now" button could have been written right into that story as well.

 

Basically it's a problem everytime something new comes out and the author is asked to work it into their story because the author gets rather excited about how shiny the new toys are and everything feels like a sales pitch for the models.

 

Let's list a bunch of more studio driven silliness in the old lore as well:

• Wolf of the Wolfing Wolf Wolf
• The Bloodtide
• Spiritual Leige
• Ultramarines originally being a 2nd founding chapter made to replace a traitor legion being promoted to an actual founding chapter and becoming GW's blue and yellow (later gold due to rules of heraldry meaning those are interchangable) poster boys
• *deep breathe* Black Templar naming convention of having a fully initiated Battle Brother being called an Initiate (a term for one being initiated), or the fact that an army that already has a very nice boat called the Eternal Crusade and Crusader Squads needed to also name a Land Raider pattern the "Crusader" just to further confuse people (let's not even get into the fact that Neophytes really should just be called Squires, or that Squires are a kind of smaller super heavy just under an Imperial Knight)
• Draigo surviving in the Warp unharmed and apparently able to walk around and kill stuff. Also he's apparently running low on ammo because he never gets a resupply when he falls back into reality.
• Speaking of Draigo, having him beat Mortarion, a Daemon Primarch, in hand to hand combat alone was asinine as well. It took Mortarion's Heart to salvage that story line without breaking it completely.
• Squats being eaten despite being on the opposite end of the galaxy as the hive fleets when it happened.
• Squats existing actually.
• 30 years of lore produced and the repeated retconning of the deaths of named characters. If you have a name, chances are you're not allowed to die inside your own codex anymore, even if it adds dramatic weight to the setting and your character as a whole. Heck, in some cases you weren't even allowed to lose inside your own codex (unless you were Tyranids of course).
• Deus Ex Machina basically being used to save the Imperium time and time again for 10k years
• The Emperor being saved not by a lone Guardsman who highlights the monstrosity of what Horus had become then becoming a Space Marine who became a Terminator who then became a Custodes. If the story was allowed to change the missiing Primarchs would likely be the ones to save the Emperor, thus redeeming themselves.

Give me enough time and I could probably keep listing stuff all day.

 

Basically my point is that the old lore is not perfect. It's full of a lot of the same problems I see people complaining about with the new lore. Some of these problems dating back to the days of Rogue Trader. It's why I've taken a stance of looking at broad strokes and the intent behind the lore rather than the lore's fine details when I decide if I like a story or not. I mean I'll get in the weeds just like anyone else does, but I don't dislike stuff just because of less impressive stuff that crops up in the lore.

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

 

I'm in my 30s and perfectly fine with the Primaris and GS

 

I really welcomed it

 

I too am in my 30s and likewise for the most part have enjoyed their addition.

 

I feel like in lore they aren't as much better as some people make out, they're larger and stronger, and general degradation has been reset so they're basically physically stronger (and maybe tougher) great crusade marines in terms of quality.

 

They aren't more skilled, they aren't smarter, they aren't necessarily more agile.

 

They are more inexperienced and more naive to the universe they found themselves in.

 

Devastation of Baal makes a point of showing that they're almost under the wing of more experienced Astartes, because well... they need to be. Dark Imperium shows the very real risk of them falling to chaos because they simply do not know the risks in the same way that Astartes do.

 

They're also trained via data upload (more or less) which means they may well know how to do something but not necessarily have the experience, and are potentially able to have more gaps.

 

We also know from hints in recent codexes that they are not as "perfect" as some would have you believe in lore either - for example, it sounds like the red thirst (which was non existent in them when they first rejoined their fellow blood angels) seems to have shown a very extreme case in some in the very last entry for Blood Angels, enough so that Corbulo himself is worried about them.

 

They also follow a more rigid mode of warfare which may well hearken back to the great crusade but doesn't change the fact they become less flexible and chapters are typically fewer than 1000, let alone legion size.

 

hitting 30 myself, been in 40k since the great 3rd/4th edition change. I tell you what, playing GK in 4th/5th edition when they only had their 3rd ed codex was the Dark Souls of 40k. at least psycannons didn't suck back then.

 

Anyways, I am happy with the Primaris addition to the universe and game. And its nice to see the Imperium actually going on the offensive, instead of always being reactive. Always in response to a tau expansion, or another tyranid invasion, or another necron tomb world awakening. It gives us more toys to buy and more lore to play with. You dont have to play with primaris, and you could say that your chapter's primaris reinforcements were destroyed by a chaos fleet, if your chapter was even on the list for primaris reinforcement.

 

I went with the idea that the primaris reinforcement fleet for my chapter was mostly destroyed in a breakout of a chaos fleet blocakade of Port Maw. Only 2 companies of primaris arrived to reinforce my chapter. And I am going with the idea that Primaris use a very strict interpretation of codex approved tactics, which my chapter only loosely following the Codex. The Codex is more of a war of attrition doctrine, while my chapter prefer's shock & awe and hit and run tactics. Trying not to get bogged down.

 

The addition of Primaris to the lore allows for a lot of narrative freedom. Not only for those who are astartes players, but also for people new to the hobby making primaris chapters. And it lets players who use both astartes and primaris have a narrative twist, or more toys to play with.

 

 

 

 

• 30 years of lore produced and the repeated retconning of the deaths of named characters. If you have a name, chances are you're not allowed to die inside your own codex anymore, even if it adds dramatic weight to the setting and your character as a whole. Heck, in some cases you weren't even allowed to lose inside your own codex (unless you were Tyranids of course).
• Deus Ex Machina basically being used to save the Imperium time and time again for 10k years

 

Basically my point is that the old lore is not perfect. It's full of a lot of the same problems I see people complaining about with the new lore. Some of these problems dating back to the days of Rogue Trader. It's why I've taken a stance of looking at broad strokes and the intent behind the lore rather than the lore's fine details when I decide if I like a story or not. I mean I'll get in the weeds just like anyone else does, but I don't dislike stuff just because of less impressive stuff that crops up in the lore.

Hey, Warcraft is almost as old, AND THEY ARE STILL RETCONNING EVERYTHING. What do you think the Chronicle books are for? to fix and correct bad writing, poorly thought out idea's, and correcting a lot of mistakes they made. They have retconned so much that its difficult for lore buffs like me to keep track of and correct our memory. The warcraft wiki's have been updated so much with all the ret-cons that so little old lore is even correct anymore.

[Claws and Effect]

No one is claiming the old lore is perfect. I think a good chunk of it is dumb.

 

My only real complaint with the new lore is how they dropped Cawl into the story and had him instantly become the most important character in the Imperium.

 

Yes, other characters appeared just as suddenly. But none of them were as immediately important to the setting as Cawl. You HAVE to have more build up when a character is going to have that much of an impact.

[Marshal Rohr]

No one is claiming the old lore is perfect. I think a good chunk of it is dumb.

 

My only real complaint with the new lore is how they dropped Cawl into the story and had him instantly become the most important character in the Imperium.

 

Yes, other characters appeared just as suddenly. But none of them were as immediately important to the setting as Cawl. You HAVE to have more build up when a character is going to have that much of an impact.

It was the 5th edition codexes onwards that most lore focused fans have disliked. Anything by Mat Ward was substandard. Robin Cruddace would frequently write things that scaled poorly, like single guard regiments of 4000 besieging entire hive cities of billions. Phil Kelly gave us the Wolfy Wolfs. So I would argue lorefiends have been on the outs for almost a decade. Primaris arent the first things we’ve been upset about.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

40k fluff is generally great in theory, bad in practise. They're good at themes, bad at details. When their fluff is too egregious to accept, I just substitute my own, acceptably bad, fluff in.

 

FWIW, the focus on personal dramas and 'celebrities' is hardly baffling. Look at western society. It is utterly obsessed with the most trivial details of the lives of the famous. When was the last time you took a guided tour of a miner's cottage? There are hundreds and thousands of stately homes replete with glitzy and gaudy baubles preserved 'for history' across the world while the history of the working classes is quietly erased and forgotten.

 

There's no use in blaming a mirror because the image it reflects displeases you.

[Bryan Blaire]

Marshal Rohr is correct about that - most of the things that people get pretty frustrated with regarding changes in tone and the multi-repeat names of things like the Studio couldn't come up with alternate ways to name things all gained full force in most of the 5th Edition Codexes, including a lot of the examples that Fulkes wrote up.

 

It's like Rogue Trader was a mix of dystopian, dark and silly satire, and the lore was slowly developed. 2nd was more "serious", 3rd was when the grim-dark concept fully solidified, 3rd-4th were pretty seriously dark over all - not a lot of silly or satirical , and then things started to shift in 5th. It wasn't a complete shift, but over-the-top shenanigans with the stories in the Codexes seemed to become more the norm.

 

It wasn't like all the lore in 2nd - 4th was completely perfect, didn't have its own p(l)ot holes, etc., but it is what is looked at as a more serious, darker period of the lore that built the game up to what it is.

 

Something else that might be influencing the lore view is the amount of time the editions have existed has shifted. Rogue Trader lasted 6 years (published in 1987), 2nd Edition lasted 4.5 years (published late 1993), 3rd Edition lasted 6 years (published 1998), 4th Edition lasted 4 years (published 2004), 5th edition lasted 4 years (published 2008), 6th Edition lasted 2 years (published 2012), 7th Edition lasted 3 years (published 2014), and 8th Edition has been around a year (published 2017).

 

So we have 6 years of the darker, but still satirical and sometimes silly, joking setting, then around 15 or so years of the darker, generally more serious tone to the setting. Then we have about 9 years of what seems like a tonal shift to people that played through the older 15-21 years. As the amount of time between tonal shifts gets smaller (even if you don't agree and it is only "perceived"), it tends to be more noticeable for folks that do agree. Similar things have happened with comic books and movies as well, and tend to get similar responses.

[Marshal Rohr]

40k fluff is generally great in theory, bad in practise. They're good at themes, bad at details. When their fluff is too egregious to accept, I just substitute my own, acceptably bad, fluff in.

 

FWIW, the focus on personal dramas and 'celebrities' is hardly baffling. Look at western society. It is utterly obsessed with the most trivial details of the lives of the famous. When was the last time you took a guided tour of a miner's cottage? There are hundreds and thousands of stately homes replete with glitzy and gaudy baubles preserved 'for history' across the world while the history of the working classes is quietly erased and forgotten.

 

There's no use in blaming a mirror because the image it reflects displeases you.

That’s not entirely accurate since poverty porn is a huge market in its own right. The insistence on telling the stories of powerful people isn’t what’s going on in 40k, since every imperial governor or chapter master would be exponentially richer or more influential than a Kardashian. It’s model driven. They have a Guilliman model, so we get a Guilliman story.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

The existence of so-called poverty porn and the size of its market alters nothing of what I said, if we even credit poverty porn being borne of the same mechanism. I'm spurious personally.

 

We are obsessed with individuals and cannot cope with masses. Dunbar's Number, innit? Further, we are obsessed with exalting allegedly exceptional individuals because of arbitrarily selected qualities that bear no relevance to the real world so why would our fiction, our lore, be any different?

[b1soul]

Like it or not...Primaris, Guilliman, the Great Rift, Imperium Nihilus are all here to stay.

 

I wonder if Primaris are the chief irritant. I'm OK with them...but I think the other developments are absolutely fantastic.

 

To me, the setting was getting very stale (I think a distinction should be drawn between the motif of Imperial decay versus meta-plot stagnancy). I applaud GW for having the guts to advance the plot in such a significant way.

 

I don't think any of the new developments stray from the core of 40K. I do think the GS books could have been better written. The Dark Imperium novel could have been released later.

 

I would have preferred for the Rift, Guilliman, Primaris to have been introduced through a proper novel series.

 

Perhaps I'm not as resistant to change as I only really started getting into 40K around 4th Edition.

[Marshal Rohr]

I just said it wasn’t entirely accurate, not that you were wrong ;). The poverty porn market is probably represented in the lore by the squalor and horrifying conditions of the average citizen. You see countless words spilled to describe how awful or ugly or ignorant the baseline Imperial citizen is in many of the lore books. I would also argue that space marines and high lords and inquisitors are empirically exceptional, hence there usefulness as protagonists, whether or not their exceptionalism is fair or warranted is an entirely separate matter probably better suited to a new thread about criticisms for the novels in the BL sub forum.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I agree. The working classes are depicted as set dressing or as a useful mechanism to establish a scene, just as they are in real human history. They are rarely, if ever, protagonists.

 

I would argue that Astartes, Inquisitors and the like are exalted and held in lofty esteem because of arbitrarily selected qualities that bear no overall relevance to the reality of that universe, but which they have conditioned their peers to exalt. They make war and we are told that war is both good and inevitable.

 

But you're right, this is going wildly tangential so... /Gramsci.

[sturguard]

I have to admit, I ignore most of the new fluff and the Primaris. I understand that sooner or later GW was going to have to redo the SM line. After what happened to fantasy, we know they are not afraid to invalidate anything in either line if it means long term profit for them. They are a business, I kind of expect them to do so. I also like the original poster am older, heck I'm almost 49 and as a company GW knows my spending is probably not what it was when I was 25.

 

To be fair I'm not sure if my views are governed by my age, by GW's decisions or what. I know once Age of Sigmar came about I was willing (not even grudgingly) to sell off all my fantasy models. I didn't play much anyways, I wish I had more notice as the prices of my models pretty much bottomed out with AoS so in that sense GW did me a disservice- along with all the folks who belittled those folks claiming GW was going to invalidate their models.

 

As far as 40k goes, 8th edition is nothing new. Its not easier to learn. It's not faster, list building certainly isn't. When I set my models down to play, I honestly have no more fun playing 7th or 8th. Again, GW has made things very easy for me. I have moved over to HH and am so overjoyed they have decided to stick with 7th edition. To be honest, I hope HH becomes more of a specialist game and keeps the same 7th edition rules to be fair, they don't need to upgrade, its marine on marine.

 

I do play 8th edition occasionally so I can still play my eldar (but again, I have sold most of my collection and just kept around 2500-3000 pts). My Space Wolves I can play 8th or HH, honestly, as long as folks have no problem with my marines being Primas marines rulewise I have no issues with them. I prefer my models, other folks like the bigger models. If I have 5 space marines with plasmaguns, there is no reason you cant use them as primaris with their plasma. If folks can remember the 8,000 rules involved in 8th, from the psychic powers, to the 30 stratagems, to the point values of every piece of wargear, there is no way someone can't simply look at 5 marines with plasmaguns and simply acknowledge they are primaris. Now, I understand that in a tournament that can't fly for obvious reasons, but I don't play in tournaments so there are no issues.

 

Maybe its ignorance, but I just pretend the fluff hasnt changed since it doesnt affect my gaming (and no one that I play with has Primaris marines- so perhaps I am lucky too!).

 

Each to their own, I don't think its a vocal minority that dislikes the changes, I would say its more a 50/50 split with the younger folks liking the new stuff and the older guys liking what they grew up with.

[Lay]

It's like Rogue Trader was a mix of dystopian, dark and silly satire, and the lore was slowly developed. 2nd was more "serious", 3rd was when the grim-dark concept fully solidified, 3rd-4th were pretty seriously dark over all - not a lot of silly or satirical , and then things started to shift in 5th. It wasn't a complete shift, but over-the-top shenanigans with the stories in the Codexes seemed to become more part of the norm.

 

Based on that, you can group editions into continuity bubbles of sorts:

- Rogue Trader was obviously it's own thing

- 3rd to 4th edition had the Eye of Terror and Medusa Campaigns to push the timeline forward and contained older versions of certain factions from Oldcrons to old Templars and Iron Hands.

- 8th edition and onwards are the result of a "transition period" from 5th to 7th where GW gradually revamped factions (DE, Newcrons) and rolled back the events at the end of the timeline.

Granted it's rather antithetical to GW's approach to canon and a lot of fluff actually can't be pidgeonholed like that, but I imagine it can help contextualize older background material.

[Robbienw]

So according to some fluff in the new Custodes codex, apparently if you don't accept the Primaris reinforcements gulliman sends to your chapter and be happy about, you are going against the emperors will and are as good as a traitor 

 

There are a small sub-group of Custodes called the Emissaries Imperatus, the heralds of the emperor who 'claim' that they hear the emperors voice when they meditate and 'feel' the emperors hand guiding them.  When Guilliman was telling the Custodes at large his primaris plans, they were resistant to the idea because they didn't want to strengthen the space marines further because they don't trust them due to the heresy and other betrayals.  But the Emissary Custodes come forward and say nope, the emperor has told us he wants the primaris reinforcements to go to the space marines so its all ok.  

 

The Emissary custodes have since being going to marine chapters to deliver news of the reinforcements, basically telling any chapter who have reservations about them that they must take them with no questions asked or they are going against the emperors will and are equivalent to traitor marines.  

 

Yep so your chapter has been loyally fighting xenos and traitors for 10,000 years, but you have a few reservations about taking primaris marines so you a traitor.  Ok then 

 

Just when you thought the fluff behind the primaris couldn't get any worse, the studio fluff guys say hold my beer, i got this...

[Commander Dawnstar]

So I finally got around to building the Hellblasters I've had lying around since Christmas ... and I think I'm going to have to buy more Primaris. For all my misgivings about the lore, and usual ambivalence towards Space Marines, these are really nice models.

[BitsHammer]

I've seen some comments about marketability, but I feel like it's less an issue of marketing but rather the very lore shoving Marines into a little box. How many things have we seen where GW rolls out a kit and has to go "nope, these were totally there, but we've never talked about it, hinted at it or otherwise even given it a nod until now"?

 

I'm not claiming that that method is completely wrong, but when that is the foundation of basically every release you give something, it bothers me a bit. Sure, it works for Craftworld Eldar as they are prone to not dusting off the really big toys until they have too, but for the Imperium they've got such a large history of having lost everything multiple times and having not much to go back to that the constant "we always had these and always used them but you weren't told about it" has become a meme so overplayed that it's basically a trope at this point.

 

So yeah, I feel like the Primaris, in addition to trying to open Marines up to sales again (by making units unique from each other so we can't just shuffle models around to represent things), were created as a tool for addressing the issues of Marines on the table top, addressing how they can't have new things basically ever, and giving the design team more freedom on how to approach the faction.

[Wargamer]

Except the Space Marines could always have new things - you just had to make them NEW, not "this really was always here!"

 

Want to give Space Marines a new unit with new armour and uber Bolters we've never seen before? Write a campaign where the Imperial Fists rediscovered lost STC templates and, instead of hording them, sent copies to every major Forgeworld and Chapter they could. As long as you set it in the "present" then there's no problem.

 

But GW long ago abandoned the idea of any kind of progress in their setting, so they have no idea how to reintroduce it properly.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

There are a small sub-group of Custodes called the Emissaries Imperatus, the heralds of the emperor who 'claim' that they hear the emperors voice when they meditate and 'feel' the emperors hand guiding them. When Guilliman was telling the Custodes at large his primaris plans, they were resistant to the idea because they didn't want to strengthen the space marines further because they don't trust them due to the heresy and other betrayals. But the Emissary Custodes come forward and say nope, the emperor has told us he wants the primaris reinforcements to go to the space marines so its all ok.

 

The Emissary custodes have since being going to marine chapters to deliver news of the reinforcements, basically telling any chapter who have reservations about them that they must take them with no questions asked or they are going against the emperors will and are equivalent to traitor marines.

 

Yep so your chapter has been loyally fighting xenos and traitors for 10,000 years, but you have a few reservations about taking primaris marines so you a traitor. Ok then

 

Just when you thought the fluff behind the primaris couldn't get any worse, the studio fluff guys say hold my beer, i got this...

That seems entirely in line with how the Imperium works. This is how it is, accept it or die.

 

Plato o plomo.

[Jarl Caldersson]

So according to some fluff in the new Custodes codex, apparently if you don't accept the Primaris reinforcements gulliman sends to your chapter and be happy about, you are going against the emperors will and are as good as a traitor :rolleyes:

 

There are a small sub-group of Custodes called the Emissaries Imperatus, the heralds of the emperor who 'claim' that they hear the emperors voice when they meditate and 'feel' the emperors hand guiding them.  When Guilliman was telling the Custodes at large his primaris plans, they were resistant to the idea because they didn't want to strengthen the space marines further because they don't trust them due to the heresy and other betrayals.  But the Emissary Custodes come forward and say nope, the emperor has told us he wants the primaris reinforcements to go to the space marines so its all ok.  

 

The Emissary custodes have since being going to marine chapters to deliver news of the reinforcements, basically telling any chapter who have reservations about them that they must take them with no questions asked or they are going against the emperors will and are equivalent to traitor marines.  

 

Yep so your chapter has been loyally fighting xenos and traitors for 10,000 years, but you have a few reservations about taking primaris marines so you a traitor.  Ok then :rolleyes:

 

Just when you thought the fluff behind the primaris couldn't get any worse, the studio fluff guys say hold my beer, i got this...

Not saying your lying but can I get a reference. I haven't read anything about this.

[Lexington]

So, like totbegoren before me (what a nice post), I'd like to take a swing at this one, even if it's pretty far back in the thread:

Why is the old lore so sacred that any sort of new lore is instantly unappealing to you?

I guess the easy answer here is that I do like quite a few of the new things, or at least the things that have been new to me over the years. The 3rd Edition rulebook and its redefining take of the Imperium as an oppressive religious state. The haunting magnitude and celestial horror of the original Necron Codex. The change in Orks to something a little simpler and more brutal (though I do miss the Kultur). The Index Astartes fleshing out every Legion's background, introduction of flyers to the game and the background, the novels of Dan Abnett and the B&C's own A D-B. The 3rd War for Armageddon, the 13th Black Crusade and even the oft-forgotten Medusa campaign were all high points. Even recently, the addition of the Mechanicus, the Genestealer Cults and the Deathwatch have been great. I didn't always like all these things when they were introduced, and I won't say that I think they're all perfectly done now, but I wouldn't have ever denied that they're worthy additions to the setting.

 

The Primaris, and the Dark Imperium generally, are in a different class. As the ever-observant Marshall Rohr has pointed out above, however, they're not the first.

 

Some posters have previously noted shortcomings in the pre-8th Ed background, and a majority of them come from, or at least started in a particular time that we can probably call the Ward Era. Not everything was Ward's doing, of course, but he was and remains the poster boy of a set of ugly tendencies in GW's fiction writing, ones that are still, unfortunately, largely still present in the Studio's output. There's a digression there that's large and undeniable, but it's very difficult to define. I've been trying to describe it thoroughly and conclusively for ages now, and still feel unequipped for the task, but it feels necessary to keep trying.

 

To digress for a little bit, I'm currently re-reading an old favorite novel of mine called Warday, by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka. It's a travelogue that follows the two (real!) authors on a fictional trek through America in the aftermath of a limited but devastating twenty-minute nuclear war with the USSR in the late 80's. It consists of Streiber and Kunetka's own narratives about the journey, documents they've collected - polls, surveys, fallout reports and medical procedures to name a few - and interviews with people from all levels of the strange new society that's formed in this quasi-post apocalyptic setting. This book paints a world, and it's just as real and vivid as anything I've ever encountered in fiction. It's not just the painstaking research that clearly went into it, but the variety and verisimilitude that emanates from every detail. The horror of seeing population centers blasted to nothing but ash and the bodies of dead birds that flew through invisible clouds of radiation. California, the lone area of American civilization not sent back to the 1700's by EMP detonations, becoming a virtual police state walled off from the rest of the country. New diseases like Non-Specific Sclerosing Disorder and the Cincinnati Flu ripping through the population, huge dust storms of irradiated soil blasting through the abandoned Midwest and the surreal disassembly of New York by salvage team and the otherwise useless remnants of the Army. It makes for a great setting on its own, but then there's the people, trying and striving and doing and scheming like people do. They all have different stories, different ideas that connect and diverge at all sorts of points. Some people welcome the European and Japanese aid that flows into the country, while some resent it as de-facto colonization. Information is scarce, rumors run rampant, and nearly everyone's point of view comes off as valid. There's a huge variety of existence covered here, and that variety gives it a feeling of something very real.

 

Reading through it, I'm struck by how much it reminds me of the very best of 40K, because 40K used to have that real, lived-in feeling, or something like it. People talk about how we don't hear of the "common man" anymore, and other catechisms when they talk about what's missing in 40K, but those are the kind of broad and simple concepts that've degraded the setting already. It's not that there's one side of the galaxy that's being shown while the downtrodden are being ignored, but the fact that there's no gradient between the two being presented, or things that live outside of that two-dimensional spectrum. The Imperium and the space beyond used to feel unending, not because we got a detailed view of every lifestyle, profession and habitat available, but because we got enough variety to bridge the gap between what we did see. There were hints and scraps and whole sections of the setting given over to things that were never meant to see the tabletop, but their existence gave the setting context and depth that's simply missing in the modern age. Now everything is simple, small and compartmentalized for easier categorization on a shelving unit. War was always the focus of 40K, but now it's the whole thing - if it doesn't get a model, it doesn't get talked about, and that's harmful both to what we used to have, and what's there now.

 

Why the focus on Primaris and the Dark Imperium, then? What about that crosses the line? I guess for a lot of people - me included - it was that the worst parts of 40K as it once was were, at least, suggested to co-exist with the better parts. They were all part of the same universe, the same time, the same whole. The Dark Imperium is the new Studio and the new philosophy making their own 40K for the first time, and it's magnified all their failings. Everything is such a grasping, obvious ploy for sales, and little else beyond. Even if the old 40K just existed to sell models, it did so by creating something that felt real and big and weird and fun. That 40K still exists, I guess, but it's very much the setting's past now. The Dark Imperium is supposed to be the full galaxy, but it's a galaxy that feels hollow and small and insincere. I don't know if the old 40K was ever sacred, but the new one is definitely unappealing.

[sturguard]

Well said.

[Robbienw]

 

So according to some fluff in the new Custodes codex, apparently if you don't accept the Primaris reinforcements gulliman sends to your chapter and be happy about, you are going against the emperors will and are as good as a traitor :rolleyes:

 

There are a small sub-group of Custodes called the Emissaries Imperatus, the heralds of the emperor who 'claim' that they hear the emperors voice when they meditate and 'feel' the emperors hand guiding them. When Guilliman was telling the Custodes at large his primaris plans, they were resistant to the idea because they didn't want to strengthen the space marines further because they don't trust them due to the heresy and other betrayals. But the Emissary Custodes come forward and say nope, the emperor has told us he wants the primaris reinforcements to go to the space marines so its all ok.

 

The Emissary custodes have since being going to marine chapters to deliver news of the reinforcements, basically telling any chapter who have reservations about them that they must take them with no questions asked or they are going against the emperors will and are equivalent to traitor marines.

 

Yep so your chapter has been loyally fighting xenos and traitors for 10,000 years, but you have a few reservations about taking primaris marines so you a traitor. Ok then :rolleyes:

 

Just when you thought the fluff behind the primaris couldn't get any worse, the studio fluff guys say hold my beer, i got this...

Not saying your lying but can I get a reference. I haven't read anything about this.

There is a picture of the page in question, from the winters seo preview, on page 48 of the Custodes new releases thread in the news and rumours section of this forum, have a look there.

[totgeboren]

 

Reading through it, I'm struck by how much it reminds me of the very best of 40K, because 40K used to have that real, lived-in feeling, or something like it. People talk about how we don't hear of the "common man" anymore, and other catechisms when they talk about what's missing in 40K, but those are the kind of broad and simple concepts that've degraded the setting already. It's not that there's one side of the galaxy that's being shown while the downtrodden are being ignored, but the fact that there's no gradient between the two being presented, or things that live outside of that two-dimensional spectrum. The Imperium and the space beyond used to feel unending, not because we got a detailed view of every lifestyle, profession and habitat available, but because we got enough variety to bridge the gap between what we did see. There were hints and scraps and whole sections of the setting given over to things that were never meant to see the tabletop, but their existence gave the setting context and depth that's simply missing in the modern age. Now everything is simple, small and compartmentalized for easier categorization on a shelving unit. War was always the focus of 40K, but now it's the whole thing - if it doesn't get a model, it doesn't get talked about, and that's harmful both to what we used to have, and what's there now.

 

Why the focus on Primaris and the Dark Imperium, then? What about that crosses the line? I guess for a lot of people - me included - it was that the worst parts of 40K as it once was were, at least, suggested to co-exist with the better parts. They were all part of the same universe, the same time, the same whole. The Dark Imperium is the new Studio and the new philosophy making their own 40K for the first time, and it's magnified all their failings. Everything is such a grasping, obvious ploy for sales, and little else beyond. Even if the old 40K just existed to sell models, it did so by creating something that felt real and big and weird and fun. That 40K still exists, I guess, but it's very much the setting's past now. The Dark Imperium is supposed to be the full galaxy, but it's a galaxy that feels hollow and small and insincere. I don't know if the old 40K was ever sacred, but the new one is definitely unappealing.

 

Great post! I also think you hit on an important thing here (also the previous discussion of poor masses and so on). Something that really set the tone of previous editions was all the short stories of regular people in the setting. It could be a pressed-ganged naval crewman being told tales by an old grissled navy rating aboad a ship, or a single guardsman trying to survive a few more hours fighting horrible things, or the reports by AdMec personnel (long before they had any models!)

 

In many cases, the very fact that the protaganists in the story were either a really crappy model on the table-top, or did not have models/rules at all made the universe feel bigger than what was available on the shelf in your local GW store. That we had specialist games such as Epic, giving us a lot of extra stuff and units that were not available in 40k games made "40k-the-game" feel like just one part of a larger whole.

The "Buy Now!" theme that has come to define some of the feel of the Dark Imperium setting makes everything feel so small, and all the actors on stage feel too important as individuals. 

 

"... the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed."

 

Except during the End Times, because everyone is now super important.

[chapter master 454]

I will stand against in opposition to those who defend the old for any reason other than 'grim dark' alone. I will state I enjoy it, one of my favourite books in 40k is Titanicus where it shows something a lot of people here would enjoy: a Princeps maximus concerned for his humanity, a run of the mill PDF trooper, a tank commander and a few more all set to the back-drop of a titan war. A book that even broke me when it ended for some as some would managed to delay their fate a little longer or another would of been through hell to only come back to the worst fate possible beyond even death. A great book. However the new fluff does lose this however for a good reason, 40k has been grim dark for so long that it would have to eventually shift. GW is a business that sells models, so saying it's bad they are trying to sell models is like saying that you drinking water is going to condemn the water supply.

 

The new fluff in some regards is not great. However it shows there were more than issues with the rules of the game but also in lore. How long can the Imperium get kicked down before it doesn't get back up? How grim dark do you want it? By the seems, so grim dark that chaos won to only be eaten by the tyranids who then only get killed by the necrons who then just go back to sleep and the universe is laid out barren, no life left. I get it, the little snippets of the dire guardsman are great as they show how merciless the universe is, in fact I remember one which told it from the perspective of a gaurdsman during a tyranid invasion who managed to find shelter and then proceed to commit suicide with his own lasgun after seeing the Angels of Death get destroyed by the Xenos. He was given hope then ripped away. Great stuff.

 

But that stuff can only exist if there is an imperium to eat, kick and shoot at. There is only so much imperium before you have to start kicking the Emperor's shins. The shift is now to larger characters, it shifts because we now need to rebuild the Imperium and for once have them knocking on the door of the enemy for once. Why is that so bad? Or is the issue with the questionable insertion of Cawl which I agree with. I even agree Gulliman came back too easy. But on the whole, having the Imperium being on the attack for once is a good break from the usual and to be fair, far more fun imo as now instead of being kicked around we can now get something done.