Passages from Ashes of Prospero (spoilers)

[MaveriK]

My shield maiden models are NOT superhuman space marines. They are more like Casper. Rebuilt and enhanced. I can understand why some would want female marines but that thinking also invalidates and takes away from both Sisters of Battle and Silence. You can’t have our cake and eat it too...

 

Back on topic? cause I really want more quotes from the book already!

[Fang_Guard23]

Thing is though. There wouldn't be an issue if GW had any sense of the scope of their own setting. I've commented before that, even with the whole 'deathworld' thing, the stated population of Fenris is laughably small. Even with the losses from Warzone Fenris, it's been a century, the Wolves should have no shortage of aspirants and be up to strength by now. Hell, it only took the Crimson Fists a decade to get back to something like half strength (assuming that's still canon, either way, they'd recovered enough that they needed their   wrecked again on Rynn's World so Gulliman and Co could do their cavalry thing). A hundred years shoud've been more than enough for the Wolves to fully recover.

 

This whole 'the predators aren't being hunted' thing reeks of bad retcon to further justify why the Wolves are still up the proverbial creek despite the 100 year time jump. Trolls, bears etc never used to be a serious threat to the tribes. Because the beasties, being terrestrial were stuck on Asaheim, the only permanent landmass. At no point have we seen 'thin out their numbers' being an important part of Fenrisian tribe life. And if it's such an issue, why can't the Wolves do it, with a couple of gunships? After all Fenris and the Aett must be garrisoned, and I don't care how gribbly the native fauna is, if feral tribemen can take it with spears and axes, a Thunderhawk or two should be able to do a Passenger Pigeon level cull with relative ease. If the Wolves care as much as they're supposed to, then this shouldn't be an issue.

 

Afraid I've got to be the dissenting voice here. The concept of female Marines is an abomination imo. It just doesn't make any sense from an in universe perspective (both theoretically, from what we've been told, and practically), and has been one of the very few immutable rules in the studio's 'loose canon' approach. Breaking that would be terrible for the setting, and probably kill all my interest. Whatever they did with the concept, it wouldn't be 40k any more. You want power armoured women? That's what the Sororitas are for. Depending on how they deal with the disconnect between the Ecclesiarchy and returning Primarchs, I could certainly see the potential to spin into new Orders founded with closer ties to the returned sons of the Emperor, so you could well have Sisters with a more Fenrsian/Norse/DerpWolf aesthetic (probably as part of a move towards greater integration of the Marines with other arms of the Imperial military). But by all that's sacred, don't go sticking gene-seed in them and calling them Marines.

fenrisian born children have to grasp an axe from birth or they get cast into the sea. surviving the cold isn't just enough, it's also surviving the summer and other warring tribes.  the result of Magnus' incursion onto fenris has left many things. a number of animals have been horribly mutated and have become more lethal than their un-mutated species; deveating from their natural instincts. Beasts such as the Fenrisian Kraken go on rampages and wipe out entire fleets. The population growth isn't halted, it just slowed down. Daemons had a more prolonged effect that hit the population pretty hard. fenrisian population was 3.5 million before the siege. the numbers fluctuate even with population increase

[Fang_Guard23]

Now it's starting to make sense. this book takes place not after the indomitus crusade, but during, 

 

In beginning of the book Logan is speaking with a tithe-warden of the astra militarum, who says that orks have taken the opportunity to overrun 3 star systems while they are beset on Gathalamor. 

 

Gathalamor was attacked by a Daemon invasion during the Indomitus Crusade

[Jarl Caldersson]

Ulrik is mentioned in the book and has he always been so angry? Am I reading about Ulrik who laughed and joked with Ragnar, or am I reading about Asmodai?

[Karhedron]

SHIELD MAIDENS enough said

Better yet, give them jump packs or jetbikes and you have Valkyries!  

 

Karack, back in the day fluff indicated that marines are essentially eunuchs. Or at least couldn't have children.

 

The fluff on this has been vague and inconsistent. Back in Ian Watson's "Chaos Child" (circa mid-2nd edition), some Emperor's Children were shown to be "fully functional" in that regard. However the EC fluff has been changed anyway in the HH novels to make them more PG-13 friendly. Also, even if that fluff is still considered canon, it could just have been that warband who had been specially "blessed" by Slaanesh.

 

At the start of Horus Rising, a female Remembrancer meets Loken and seems to quite like the look of him. Her inner monologue reflects that turning him into a Marine was a "waste". In GW's fluff covering 10,000 years of Astartes existence, there has never been an incident of a loyalist Marine and a human having a romantic encounter. My personal feeling is that Marines are probably a bit like Action Man in the underpants-department with just a chapter-approved logo.

 

Having said that, GW have never explicitly stated that Marines can't, only that the ones we have seen don't. That means GW could introduce such a thing without really violating existing fluff. From a logical point of view, the direction the HH fluff seems to be heading implies that the Emperor viewed the Marines as tools for the task of the Great Crusade and he planned for the Legions to be either disbanded or greatly reduced once the Imperium was fully established. With that in mind, he probably didn't want Astartes genes getting into the regular genepool and escaping from control. Making Marines sterile by design would make sense and be the sort of thing the Emperor would likely do.

 

As for FeMarines, part of me wants to see GW do it just to enjoy the salty tears of nerd-rage that would inevitably flow from certain parts of the net. Flippancy aside, the fluff is clearer here that the geneseed is keyed to male growth hormones since the Primarchs were male. It would take a reworking of the geneseed an order of magnitude greater than Cawl's Primaris tinkering to produce Women Asartes.

 

Lastly, let's finish with Malcador the Sigilite's thoughts on the matter.

 

You brothers - such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilised. He thought I was joking - I was not.

[TheWolfLord]

Ulrik is mentioned in the book and has he always been so angry? Am I reading about Ulrik who laughed and joked with Ragnar, or am I reading about Asmodai?

Given the circumstances and his role within the Chapter I think his anger is justified to be honest.

 

I really struggled with the writers portrayal of Njal to be honest, nothing like the character from Stormcaller. He's one of the most powerful psykers in the Imperium, one of the most powerful Rune Priests in the history of the Chapter, vastly experienced and wise but there was little of that in the book. Far too much indecision and questioning of himself even given the circumstances.

 

The end of the book and what it means for the Chapter and Codex is very exciting though.

 

I think this book will be slated by a lot of Wolves fans, there are so many lore mistakes throughout the book that at times I was left shaking my head.

[Leif Bearclaw]

 

fenrisian born children have to grasp an axe from birth or they get cast into the sea. surviving the cold isn't just enough, it's also surviving the summer and other warring tribes.  the result of Magnus' incursion onto fenris has left many things. a number of animals have been horribly mutated and have become more lethal than their un-mutated species; deveating from their natural instincts. Beasts such as the Fenrisian Kraken go on rampages and wipe out entire fleets. The population growth isn't halted, it just slowed down. Daemons had a more prolonged effect that hit the population pretty hard. fenrisian population was 3.5 million before the siege. the numbers fluctuate even with population increase

 

See, imo that kinda makes my point about 'why don't the Wolves do something' even more pertinent. Unless they've mutated a flak cannon on their back the native fauna isn't going to be a threat to Wolves aircraft. Again, it seems weird that the supposedly caring Wolves do nothing when mutated (so you can't even clam a 'it's the natural order' type thing) gribbly fauna is further endangering their recruitment pool.

 

Okay, Leif; why?

 

I'm being fully serious here, I am curious as to your line of thinking on this one, same as ever.

 

Why I don't think Female Marines make sense?

 

OK. Firstly theoretically. It's been part of the lore since seemingly forever that the gene-seed, for whatever reason, doesn't work on female biology. But, the inevitable counter comes, Deus Ex Cawl can do anything, look at the Primaris, he's already improved the basic Marine design. To which I'd counter that upgrading an established process (which in and of itself, took him how long?) is a far cry from reworking the entire process to work from a different baseline. This isn't (or at least, shouldn't) be a matter of 'give female aspirant serum X, then continue as normal'. We'd be looking at a ground up redesign of the Astartes process.

 

Practically? Why bother using scarce resources on running 2 different Marine production lines? Just run the standard Marine one, less production redundancy, greater efficiency. Then there's the issue of 'what would be the point'? What is a Marine for, at the end of the day? Marines don't practice modern warfighting (hoping to avoid the 'women in the military' rl argument here), they're a mad hodge podge of beyond modern spec ops, medieval Holy Order and an archaic melee focus. At it's heart, the Marine is 'meant' to shoulder charge through a wall like the Kool Aid man and take on some horrible xenos gribbly, far beyond the abilities of regular humans. With a sword. And win. They operate at a physical level beyond the peak level we see today (like in top level sport) where the sexual dimorphism of the human species becomes readily apparent. Men are fundamentally stronger and faster, and hence are more suitable as a starting point for taking that physicality up to 12 in the Marine process. Even if you got the gene-seed working with female anatomy, it has 'less' to work with, so the end result would be a slower, weaker Marine than the male equivalent. To get true parity of outcome, you'd need 'gene-seed +1' to give the female Marines an additional boost. Which then would raise the issue of 'why not just do that to the male recruits and have even better Marines?'. Or just use all these resources to make more regular, male Marines.

 

If you're that worried about Marine numbers, recruiting females isn't the answer. Just use a more relaxed recruitment system, like the 30k Legion did. Fenris alone could support a Legion 100 times the size (approximately) of the current Chapter, aspirants shouldn't be in short supply, even with the population loss. I understand the 'lowering the standards' argument. But it's kinda BS. Who's going to tell Bjorn that a bunch of his old comrades (maybe even Bjorn himself), plus the returning 13th, weren't up to snuff and didn't really deserve to be Astartes?

 

Hope that made sense and didn't stray into verboten territory.

 

 

Yes, Sisters are a great concept. On that note, please read Faith and Fire; I will not spoil the story, but, if you pay close attention, there is a certain, "P," word, in there somewhere, at least according to what I have been told by those that have read the story for themselves.

Is that the one on the shrine world or Sanctuary 101? I did read them years ago, but can't remember all that much beyond broad strokes. So I'm a bit lost and don't really know what you're referring to.

[TheWolfLord]

Wolves are stretched painfully thin at the minute. There protectorate is under threat and they are receiving constant requests for aid.

 

Even the previous rule of always having a GC in the Fang has been dispensed of as they need every Space Wolf to answer the calls for help and there still isn't enough.

 

I think it's perfectly reasonably to assume an increase in the numbers of predators if they are not being culled by natives and there are less Wolves around going on hunts.

 

Given that many of these creatures are intelligent, don't just roam around aimlessly and will be difficult to spot simply saying 'why don't the Space Wolves do more?' is unrealistic.

 

How many craft and patrols would you need to be running across Fenris to actually spot a dangerous mutated animal? How many more would you need to run to actually make a meaningful difference to the numbers?

 

The population is recovering and the Wolves do help where they can and when they are asked but it'll take generations for the population to fully recover and Fenris may take far longer before the corruption disappears.

 

Ashes of Prospero is after Cadia but is still decades before the current time line. We may see a larger recovery for both Fenris and the Wolves in the Codex.

 

Whatever state Fenris is in there are going to be big changes and ramifications due to the events in Ashes of Prospero. I don't want to spoil anything but it has to be mentioned in the lore and should impact our rules to some degree too.

[Jarl Caldersson]

So a few issues with this book. This is definitely after Cadia, Egil is mentioned as alive, Ironwolves are a company still, and another company called nightwolves? I think Gav Thorpe has not done his research.

[Triszin]

These books were probably written around the same time, but it did give me an idea. Ironwolves could be a constant, and they could say that the new wolflord takes the mantel of egil and also take his name to iron out more discrepancies.

 

Night wolves sounds like a replacement for the fire howlers

[TheWolfLord]

So a few issues with this book. This is definitely after Cadia, Egil is mentioned as alive, Ironwolves are a company still, and another company called nightwolves? I think Gav Thorpe has not done his research.

Nightwolves is what Logan's Great Company call themselves. His sigil is the Night Runner and Logan refers to the Nightwolves as his and Arjac is the leader of the Nightwolves Wolf Guard.

[Fang_Guard23]

So a few issues with this book. This is definitely after Cadia, Egil is mentioned as alive, Ironwolves are a company still, and another company called nightwolves? I think Gav Thorpe has not done his research.

Actually I tweeted Gav Thorp on the Egil thing and he replied 

 

yeah, a slip up with what was meant to be a throwaway reference - of all the Wolf Lord names to toss in there...

[TiguriusX]

Given that our chapter pulls strongly from Norse culture I would gladly welcome shield maidens

 

http://mythologian.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/lagertha-1024x640.jpg

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Ulrik is mentioned in the book and has he always been so angry? Am I reading about Ulrik who laughed and joked with Ragnar, or am I reading about Asmodai?

Are you referring to the Wolf Priest who recruited Ragnar in William King's novels? He's Ranek Icewalker.

[sturguard]

 

 

fenrisian born children have to grasp an axe from birth or they get cast into the sea. surviving the cold isn't just enough, it's also surviving the summer and other warring tribes.  the result of Magnus' incursion onto fenris has left many things. a number of animals have been horribly mutated and have become more lethal than their un-mutated species; deveating from their natural instincts. Beasts such as the Fenrisian Kraken go on rampages and wipe out entire fleets. The population growth isn't halted, it just slowed down. Daemons had a more prolonged effect that hit the population pretty hard. fenrisian population was 3.5 million before the siege. the numbers fluctuate even with population increase

 

See, imo that kinda makes my point about 'why don't the Wolves do something' even more pertinent. Unless they've mutated a flak cannon on their back the native fauna isn't going to be a threat to Wolves aircraft. Again, it seems weird that the supposedly caring Wolves do nothing when mutated (so you can't even clam a 'it's the natural order' type thing) gribbly fauna is further endangering their recruitment pool.

 

Okay, Leif; why?

 

I'm being fully serious here, I am curious as to your line of thinking on this one, same as ever.

 

Why I don't think Female Marines make sense?

 

OK. Firstly theoretically. It's been part of the lore since seemingly forever that the gene-seed, for whatever reason, doesn't work on female biology. But, the inevitable counter comes, Deus Ex Cawl can do anything, look at the Primaris, he's already improved the basic Marine design. To which I'd counter that upgrading an established process (which in and of itself, took him how long?) is a far cry from reworking the entire process to work from a different baseline. This isn't (or at least, shouldn't) be a matter of 'give female aspirant serum X, then continue as normal'. We'd be looking at a ground up redesign of the Astartes process.

 

Practically? Why bother using scarce resources on running 2 different Marine production lines? Just run the standard Marine one, less production redundancy, greater efficiency. Then there's the issue of 'what would be the point'? What is a Marine for, at the end of the day? Marines don't practice modern warfighting (hoping to avoid the 'women in the military' rl argument here), they're a mad hodge podge of beyond modern spec ops, medieval Holy Order and an archaic melee focus. At it's heart, the Marine is 'meant' to shoulder charge through a wall like the Kool Aid man and take on some horrible xenos gribbly, far beyond the abilities of regular humans. With a sword. And win. They operate at a physical level beyond the peak level we see today (like in top level sport) where the sexual dimorphism of the human species becomes readily apparent. Men are fundamentally stronger and faster, and hence are more suitable as a starting point for taking that physicality up to 12 in the Marine process. Even if you got the gene-seed working with female anatomy, it has 'less' to work with, so the end result would be a slower, weaker Marine than the male equivalent. To get true parity of outcome, you'd need 'gene-seed +1' to give the female Marines an additional boost. Which then would raise the issue of 'why not just do that to the male recruits and have even better Marines?'. Or just use all these resources to make more regular, male Marines.

 

If you're that worried about Marine numbers, recruiting females isn't the answer. Just use a more relaxed recruitment system, like the 30k Legion did. Fenris alone could support a Legion 100 times the size (approximately) of the current Chapter, aspirants shouldn't be in short supply, even with the population loss. I understand the 'lowering the standards' argument. But it's kinda BS. Who's going to tell Bjorn that a bunch of his old comrades (maybe even Bjorn himself), plus the returning 13th, weren't up to snuff and didn't really deserve to be Astartes?

 

Hope that made sense and didn't stray into verboten territory.

 

 

Yes, Sisters are a great concept. On that note, please read Faith and Fire; I will not spoil the story, but, if you pay close attention, there is a certain, "P," word, in there somewhere, at least according to what I have been told by those that have read the story for themselves.

Is that the one on the shrine world or Sanctuary 101? I did read them years ago, but can't remember all that much beyond broad strokes. So I'm a bit lost and don't really know what you're referring to.

 

Well said Leif and I agree.

[Triszin]

The only thing I'll add is this;

 

Other chapters aren't Fenrisians**. When non fenrisians are used, they go full bore wulfen.

 

** Pre fenris space wolves did not have the canis helix.

 

Other chapter don't have the Canis helix; One could argue that the canis helix does something at a base gentic level, if say a female would drink from it, what would happen. Would she too have to fight the Inner wolf and win or become a Wulfen beast?

 

If she won, perhaps the genetic alterations done by the Canis helix would allow for females to become Marines, whereas every other marine chapter can't because they lack the canis helix.

[Jarl Caldersson]

 

Ulrik is mentioned in the book and has he always been so angry? Am I reading about Ulrik who laughed and joked with Ragnar, or am I reading about Asmodai?

Are you referring to the Wolf Priest who recruited Ragnar in William King's novels? He's Ranek Icewalker.

Nope the one that was with him in the Ragnar novel.

 

He seemed to be quiet and brooding in it but not a complete raging bull. This one makes it seem he is just the embodiment of hate. Unless he just really hates Stormcaller.

[mactire]

Have to agree with Maverick on this. I have 2 female "marines" in my Great Company, Valgrim and Fytharin, but they are rebuilt female warriors like Hawser as this sits okay in my head Canon. Again I'll say it, I pray to the god-emperor that we get returning 13th company rather than Primaries. These could be 2 wound models to represent their original genetic purety and be costed as per Primaris, this would make my year.

[Jarl Caldersson]

Added a passage about Lukas last night only because I know you all love Lukas and this passage was perfect.

[TheWolfLord]

Added a passage about Lukas last night only because I know you all love Lukas and this passage was perfect.

Lukas is great in this book. His last major scene is outstanding and will bring a smile to any Space Wolves player.

Have to agree with Maverick on this. I have 2 female "marines" in my Great Company, Valgrim and Fytharin, but they are rebuilt female warriors like Hawser as this sits okay in my head Canon. Again I'll say it, I pray to the god-emperor that we get returning 13th company rather than Primaries. These could be 2 wound models to represent their original genetic purety and be costed as per Primaris, this would make my year.

While I think it's a certainty that we'll have Primaris there's a reasonable chance that you'll get your wish in one form or another.

[Triszin]

Added a passage about Lukas last night only because I know you all love Lukas and this passage was perfect.

oh dont worry, the stuff lukas does in this.... when you get to it.

 

Lets just say Lukas is one of my favorite characters atm. I'm serious about wanting him to get command of a pseudo great company composed of Reivers and scouts, that can be commandeered by any wolf lord

[Jarl Caldersson]

 

Added a passage about Lukas last night only because I know you all love Lukas and this passage was perfect.

Lukas is great in this book. His last major scene is outstanding and will bring a smile to any Space Wolves player.

Have to agree with Maverick on this. I have 2 female "marines" in my Great Company, Valgrim and Fytharin, but they are rebuilt female warriors like Hawser as this sits okay in my head Canon. Again I'll say it, I pray to the god-emperor that we get returning 13th company rather than Primaries. These could be 2 wound models to represent their original genetic purety and be costed as per Primaris, this would make my year.

While I think it's a certainty that we'll have Primaris there's a reasonable chance that you'll get your wish in one form or another.

I can see a 13th going to a wolf guard and going " what do you mean you can't carry a bolter, axe, and shield. Here hold the bolter in this hand and the shield in that hand. Now when you get close you put that bolter into that leather hold, that's called a holster. Now take your hand and grab your axe. There you go, you can carry a bolter and axe! What did they teach you in 10k years of fighting!?"

[Splog]

Re population: the Space Wolves Fleet seems to be crewed by Fenrisians. Given crew populations for imperial ships that could be around 0.5-1 million shipborne Fenrisians.

[Jarl Caldersson]

"A ship was found, improving Njal’s mood considerably. The Longclaw was a rapid strike vessel that had been left in orbit over Fenris for a lack of suitable crew following the invasion by the Thousand Sons."

 

There is ships in orbit unmanned due to low numbers of thrall. Not only that but most thralls are failed recruits.

 

"Yet these thrallfolk were, like the veterans, those whose failure during their initiations had not slain them but had otherwise left them incapable of serving in the combat zones, or simply those too young or old to be of use manning a strike cruiser’s torpedo bays or working the gun decks of a battle barge."

[Morovir]

Space Wolves do have Primaris in this book, with Grimnar commenting on them, and voicing his concerns about the Curse of the Wulfen.