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Could the death of holy Terra be good for the setting?


slitth

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Would it be good for 40K to destroy of Terra?

 

With the loss of humanity's cradle, the Imperium will need to reset and rebuild.

Would this be good for future 40K story ?

 

I think so, it would be a something that we would not expect and would make a excellent campaign for us to play.

 

Edit: thanks for the Title update, it really improved context of the topic.

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Would it be good for 40K to destroy of Terra?

 

With the loss of humanity's cradle, the Imperium will need to reset and rebuild.

Would this be good for future 40K story ?

 

I think so, it would be a something that we would not expect and would make a excellent campaign for us to play.

if terra got destroyed humanity would be little more than a slave race for a vast moajority in the galaxy. a few spots would still survive. but without the imperium and terra the galaxy would probably fall.

 

The imperium is the main force destroying the extra galtic nid fleets, and with out them keeping the nids and orks in check the galaxy now has a countdown timer on it

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Terra is just too important for the setting. Not just practically but also because it still holds many possible secrets just by its nature. Also you can't really destroy Terra without destroying Mars and Titan so it would have way bigger consequences there as well.

There's also no need to destroy Terra. The Imperium already gets properly re-build in Ultramar now that Guilliman is back and tells people how to do things right in his realm and we know that he told Dante to get his :censored: together and properly re-build Baal and its moons so the people there don't live like cockroaches anymore and so it can serve as center for the northern part of the imperium with Dante as leader (Guilliman basically wants it to be Terra/Ultramar but for the northern part of the galaxy).

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Well our sun is set to expand past the orbit of earth and then explode, so...

 

Terra has a natural countdown clock already, regardless whether or not chaos destroys it.

 

Well yeah we also already know since forever that humanity is doomed regardless of what they do anyway. That's literally the setting. Luckily for us that's something for the future that doesn't matter for the narrative right now. ;)

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The problem with having something that is to important for the setting, is that you can have no real suspense if it is included in a conflict

Tyranids attacks Terra? who cares it's Terra, it will be fine.

A new siege of Terra by all the daemon primarchs? it will be fine.

 

But if GW allows Terra to fall, then all hell break loose and the Imperium will have to recenter itself.

Maybe to Ultramar.

 

And the Astronomican can be replaced. We have seen this in the lore.

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The problem with having something that is to important for the setting, is that you can have no real suspense if it is included in a conflict

Tyranids attacks Terra? who cares it's Terra, it will be fine.

A new siege of Terra by all the daemon primarchs? it will be fine.

 

But if GW allows Terra to fall, then all hell break loose and the Imperium will have to recenter itself.

Maybe to Ultramar.

 

And the Astronomican can be replaced. We have seen this in the lore.

 

That's no real problem here because Terra is the goal. It's where all the Tyranids are heading to and it's Abaddons big goal. Sanguinius had a vision written down (only Dante knows about that one currently) where Tyranids and the forces of Chaos have basically consumed the whole galaxy and meet at Terra where the big clash happens, the Emperor ascends (or something like that) and something new begins (or not, who knows). It's the goal of the setting that no narrative should ever reach.

Basically the same thing as the end of the old world that GW used to start AoS. Something that luckily won't happen to 40k since 40k is way too successful and they learned their lesson with AoS and the backlash from the community.

 

GW can still have stuff happening on and around Terra and have it mean something, like Magnus and the TSons appearing on the moon to try and stop Guilliman just to get engaged by the Custodes and Sisters of Silence which ultimately lead to the Custodes being more active in the galaxy again.

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Nothing important and suspenseful can happen at Terra?

 

So the suspense and thrill I experienced in reading "The Carrion Throne", "Watchers of the Throne", and the entirety of "The Beast Arises" must have been entirely imagined?

 

Nope. Speaks more, to my mind, of a child seeing someone else's sandcastle and trying to rationalise why it would be a favour if they went over to start kicking it.

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The problem with having something that is to important for the setting, is that you can have no real suspense if it is included in a conflict

Tyranids attacks Terra? who cares it's Terra, it will be fine.

A new siege of Terra by all the daemon primarchs? it will be fine.

 

I can kinda see what you're getting at here. However, that goes both ways. Sometimes to many 'knowns' can hurt a story. Pandorax is especially bad for this, with Draigo, Azreal, Abby and Huron all being major players in the plot, but of course none of them can die, and the book suffers for that (among other reasons). At the same time, we all know Horus turns Traitor, yet the initial HH trilogy are extremely well regarded.

 

The real issue comes in that the 40k setting has built Terra as a 'lode bearing feature'. It's the single most important location to the Imperium and the setting. If it falls, you've just 'End Times-ed' 40k. Now there are way to build around the idea of 'no more Terra', but it would take more proper world building and planning than GW have seemed willing to do recently (and would have a lot of retcons and :censored:pulls). You'd need to add elements first, giving the Imperium more redundancy in its institutions before dropping the hammer. And even then it'd probably be jarring and bad, arguably changing the setting to the point it isn't '40k' any more.

 

 

 

But if GW allows Terra to fall, then all hell break loose and the Imperium will have to recenter itself.

Maybe to Ultramar.

How does it do that though? You've lost your central bureaucracy (as much as the feudal Imperium has), interstellar communications (no more Empy, so no more Astropaths) and practical interstellar travel (no Astronomican), all at once. Look at the results of just a temporary cut off (the Noctis Aeterna) on the Imperium. Not to mention the effects losing the Emperor would have on the morale of the surviving Imperium, and the state religion. How do you rebuild and 'recenter' when the entire machine has broken?

 

Also why? We've recently seen a massive lore shake up, and none of it good for the Imperium. Why isn't that enough for at least a while? Let some other faction get spanked in the lore for a change.

 

 

And the Astronomican can be replaced. We have seen this in the lore.

Where have we seen this? Do you mean that Pharos beacon thing from HH? Which was specifically not of human manufacture, not as good as the Astronomican and was destroyed 10,000 years ago? Hardly a fitting 'replacement'. There's also a world of difference between something that 'can' be done, and something that 'can be done in m41/2, with the backdrop of no more Terra'. It's possible to make Primarchs, because the Emperor did. But if the next 'big plot reveal' is that a new 20 (not even clones or any of that :censored:, 20 completely new individuals) have been made on Luna since the Great Rift spawned, do you really think that would fly and just be accepted?

 

 

it would be a something that we would not expect

We also wouldn't expect the conflict between the Imperium and Chaos to be settled by Gullimand and Abby having a dance off, that doesn't mean it would be a good development. Plot events need to be more than just 'It's unexpected'. That's how you get M Night Shymalan and his twists for the sake of twists. Whereas something like The Departed takes a very unexpected turn at the finale, but it does the work beforehand so the surprise works as part of the whole. Now, films are something of a different beast to Sci Fi world building, but I hope the principle behind the example holds.

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The problem with having something that is to important for the setting, is that you can have no real suspense if it is included in a conflict

 

This seems like a good reason to not include it in a conflict, doesn't it?

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On the point of the Astronomican being replaced: it was built before, it could be built again.

 

The loss of Terra would, in some sense, be of only particular consequences at the very edges of Imperial Infrastructure.

 

Look at the Imperium Nihilus, until ol' Roboute appoints Dante, that half of the Imperium has effectively lost Terra. The consequences therein are *indistinguishable* from what would happen if Terra were lost (except when scattered plot actions arrive from Terra, later).

 

But the gulf between the Cicatrix Maledictum breaking, and most Imperial action arriving from 'the other side' - that's literally what happens when Terra's lost.

 

Indeed, one might describe Dark Imperium 40k as... having your cake and eating it, in terms of this thread.

 

Anything that happens in Imperium Nihilus can be attributed to Terra being lost. It's only not lost when Plot retracts the assertion. Imperium Nihilus, by definition, is isolated and ignorant.

 

The two contradictory conditions exist. It might not be quite how GW typically portray it, but given the nature of the warp and GW's ability to happily discard or dismiss things that are impediments to whatever new thing they're doing, it's not an unreasonable reading of the various lore pieces.

 

Perhaps a bit ambitious, and certainly isn't in keeping with Magos Occam's Transonic Razor, but it has an attractive plausibility.

 

(E.g. People in IN cannot know that Terra isn't lost, unless someone from Terra makes their way there. And even then, to what are you selling your soul when some Xenarite Techno-Heresy turns up and offers you Primaris, claiming to be the Emperor's son? You're probably in no position to refuse, so it's a choice between something indistinguishable from sophisticated Heresy or death.)

 

Indeed, taking that to its logical conclusion, and imagining that Guilliman had not explicitly appeared in the Imperium Nihilus, all of the IN could be read as Terra having fallen - either to the invasion of the Phalanx during the Fall of Cadia, or due to some unspecified catastrophe, or due to the demonic invasion encompassed by some of the events of "Watchers of the Throne", or to Magnus being *successful* during the culmination of the Rise of the Primarch.

 

That is: from IN's perspective, all or any of those could have happened, and the consequences could be mostly the same.

 

Indeed, you could even write in that Guilliman-Dante didn't happen to Guilliman, but did for Dante. And Dante finds out he accepted support from a Warp Phenomena echo. Stuff that lines up with reality, save for none who were there from Imperium proper having any knowledge of it.

 

To that extent, from the pragmatic viewpoint, its a wasted opportunity. We know (assuming no major retcons) what has happened, and the IN is as it is with some knowledge of what happened outside, that Terra hasn't fallen.

 

So the question then becomes: why kill Terra now?

 

The royal we have already destroyed Cadia and sort of got half of the benefits of destroying Terra. Those exist and we already have them.

 

What do we gain from retreading that and 'completing the job'?

 

Better, I think, to cultivate a rival 'Nova Terra' or two in the IN.

 

Much more interesting and less stamping on folks' lovely sandcastles.

 

The End Times, by my reckoning, was very unsatisfying, even if you accept its premise as desirable or 'necessary' . It's a bad (overly simplistic, I suppose) understanding of why something is good, like a 'high body count in named characters' being the reason that A Song of Ice and Fire is good and enduring and money-making. Just kill everything off and you can reap the big money rewards!

 

It's cargo-cult story telling, approximating the twists and turns without catching the actual substance people are enjoying. (I'm aware, of course, that various people enjoy various distinct and ill-defined substances/aspects from the same single thing. I'm sure some enjoy high body count, but that's not the only thing at work in ASoIaF that wasn't there in WHFB.)

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It doesn’t matter whether the astronomicon could be rebuilt though, you could make a thousand of them, they could be so easy to make that children make them in the local scholam!

 

It’s mentioned several times in various sources that the Emperor is the only one powerful enough to direct it. If Terra falls and he goes then no more astronomicon :(

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On the topic of an Astronomican replacement read "Shroud of Night"

 

As for the death of Holy Terra, that does not mean it has be obliterated completely.

It could also just become a cursed world where the faction fight over something.

 

Let for a minute assume that the golden throne fails and the Emperor "dies"

Chaos is released and the light of the Astronomican is gone

The holy shrine that Terra it, becomes a ruined playground of laughing demons.

 

But on the 21 day of the death of holy Terra the light of the Astronomican returns.

And a rumour of the Emperor reborn start.

Armies flock to the Sol system to join or kill the Emperor.

 

That could be a new start of a new rulebook update set in the far future.

Holy Terra is dead and the crusade to recapture the cradle of mankind start anew.

 

Of course this would be best executed it there the Imperium loses a future campaign set on Terra.

Until then Terra should stand unmolested

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If Terra is destroyed it would create a Warp Rift that would envelope the entire Solar System

 

So many dangerous prisoners or artifacts will be released (Each capable of wiping out the Imperium several times over)

 

(The Custodes captures and guards them, but they would die with Terra)

 

 

Mars either gets rip apart by the Awakening Void Dragon, dragged into the Warp or be forced to teleport somewhere else less defended with no way to decide the location

 

If the destruction of Terra and the Throne doesn't kill the God-Emperor, being dragged into the Warp by Daemons will

 

Constructing another Astronomican would take countless years

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If Terra is destroyed it would create a Warp Rift that would envelope the entire Solar System

 

So many dangerous prisoners or artifacts will be released (Each capable of wiping out the Imperium several times over)

 

(The Custodes captures and guards them, but they would die with Terra)

 

 

Mars either gets rip apart by the Awakening Void Dragon, dragged into the Warp or be forced to teleport somewhere else less defended with no way to decide the location

 

If the destruction of Terra and the Throne doesn't kill the God-Emperor, being dragged into the Warp by Daemons will

 

Constructing another Astronomican would take countless years

None of that is true.

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In all likelyhood, my guess is that if Terra truly falls, that'll be when the big E goes full Starchild and ends up giving us a new Eye of Terror as he becomes a god of the Imperium. Mars would likely be swallowed into this new domain and the galaxy would likely fracture into a warp rift leading to something like the Sigmar bubble worlds thing.

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The problem with having something that is to important for the setting, is that you can have no real suspense if it is included in a conflict

Tyranids attacks Terra? who cares it's Terra, it will be fine.

A new siege of Terra by all the daemon primarchs? it will be fine.

 

But if GW allows Terra to fall, then all hell break loose and the Imperium will have to recenter itself.

Maybe to Ultramar.

 

And the Astronomican can be replaced. We have seen this in the lore.

Yeah, wasn't Magnus on the moon and got into a fist fight with Guilliman and his merry band of Black Templars, grey knights, eldar, ynarri etc?

 

When we say "destroy Terra" are we talking Alderan and Nostromo style? Or Calth style?

 

Because Terra has been nuked...and probably more, several times. I imagine things have played out like the Fallout games many times between now and then (kinda sad).

 

But as a major spiritual and tactical center (birthplace of humanity, where the Emperor's throne is, the seat of the bureaucracy, the High Lords etc) sending a few ships on a Jihadhuackbaritsatrapbestmosteffectivewaytotakeoutsuperiorshipswhydidntthereblesdothisallthetime with a few big ships.

 

The rock of the planet will still be there, but everything on it will be dead or pretty bad off.

 

Arrogance and probably chaotic influence stopped Horus and his gang from just shooting cyclonic torpedos into the faults near the imperial capital. Plate tectonics do what orbital bombardment can't, and unless it's some kind of structural integrity field,

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We still have to see how cut off they exactly are. GW has barely touched it and only talked about it a little bit but we've seen an entire Crusade cross the rift without much of a problem, there are stable passages through the rift and we haven't heard about Blood Angels having any problem with navigating or whatsoever despite them being on the other side of the rift.

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It doesn’t matter whether the astronomicon could be rebuilt though, you could make a thousand of them, they could be so easy to make that children make them in the local scholam!

 

It’s mentioned several times in various sources that the Emperor is the only one powerful enough to direct it. If Terra falls and he goes then no more astronomicon :(

The alpha legion have a human astronomicon in their possession post great rift. He is powered by his faith in the emperor as God with the destruction of terra there is a narrative option to have more of these appear and form a navigation web rather than a single beacon

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