Castellan Draco - Excommunicate Traitoris?

[Medjugorje]

 

 

 

I really doubt that an event that well established is only known to "one writer". The Ophidium Gulf Crusade (and the incident) was mentioned in the 4th Edition Codex Black Templars and further explained in White Dwarf 312.

Additionally, it was mentioned in the Codex Dark Angels (7th and 8th Edition) and even further fleshed out.

 

So I see no reason, why 'they' shouldn't be aware of this part of the lore.

 

I'd imagine he meant this latest Draco bit, not Ophidium Gulf. Still, they weren't aware enough of BT lore before to prevent them from going all monkeys-with-typewriters on it so I wouldn't put it past them to overlook well-established things.

 

 

According to Guy Haley they requested from him to do so :/ So sadly it was no matter of lacking awareness.

 

 

ADB confirmed this. It was a paradigm shift at GW to make the lore changes they did to us. 

 

But maybe they hear the fans now. I still have hope in here.

 

I mean in Black Legion the Templars seems to have a bit more then just 5.000 man at arms. (a number like a legion - it doesnt make the newer fluff doesnt count, but it could be that GW going in the direction the fans want their chapter to be).

 

In each Mail I send to GW, I told them what I think about the rules - I always complain about a lot of the fluff changes I (and a big part of the BT community) dont like.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Medjugorje

[Sword Brother Adelard]

They probably did have more at the outset. Otherwise, if there were only two second founding Fists successors, of pure codex size, plus the Fists themselves, that means that after the Heresy only about 3,000 Fists remained, considering the pre-heresy legions were numbered in the the tens, or hundreds of thousands, that's a terrifying amount of casualties. (It's not much better there being say 5-7,000, but it's something!)

 

The change that ADB confirmed, and someone can dig out the post or Reddit thread where it is, is the change of numbers to around 1,000 down from 6,000 around 4th edition, (this has now itself been re-retconned)

The other change was the worship of the Emperor as a God.

 

(Although, I agree with Reinhard's post a few months back, that it was always said, since early 3rd that, the Templars had a religious fervour for something, it was just never explicitly stated who, or what, that something was, when you look at it from that angle, it wasn't that much of a surprise.)

[Medjugorje]

 

Disappointingly, only a handful of Black Templars fans [that are participating in this discussion] appear to be willing to consider the possibility that Draco may actually have done something wrong to deserve excommunication. 

 

Okay, ...  but only if he has a cool story arc, like Lorgar shows him the truth. That would be great too. And at the end he get slained by an emperors champion when he offer his brothers what he had learned...

 

That would brings DRAMA baby^^

[Medjugorje]

They probably did have more at the outset. Otherwise, if there were only two second founding Fists successors, of pure codex size, plus the Fists themselves, that means that after the Heresy only about 3,000 Fists remained, considering the pre-heresy legions were numbered in the the tens, or hundreds of thousands, that's a terrifying amount of casualties. (It's not much better there being say 5-7,000, but it's something!)

 

The change that ADB confirmed, and someone can dig out the post or Reddit thread where it is, is the change of numbers to around 1,000 down from 6,000 around 4th edition, (this has now itself been re-retconned)

The other change was the worship of the Emperor as a God.

 

(Although, I agree with Reinhard's post a few months back, that it was always said, since early 3rd that, the Templars had a religious fervour for something, it was just never explicitly stated who, or what, that something was, when you look at it from that angle, it wasn't that much of a surprise.)

thats not true. Guy Haley said this in his blog in the year 2014 (or 2016)...

 

AND

 

The former fluff changed in more directions... especially that there have been more successor chapters in the secound founding. The Excoriators and the Fists Exemplar are very notable examples  (and I dont know if the soul drinkers still fluff)

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I'm getting confused now as to how many foundings there had been by TBA, it was definitely more than just the second, but you're right, The Fists Exemplar were definitely the third successor chapter formed in the second founding.

(I don't think there want more in THAT founding, because the explanation for the Fists Exemplar not being mentioned in the same context as the BT and the CF ever since is that they were excommunicated traitoris themselves. I think therefore that the Excoriators and others were third or later founding.)

 

Which bit do you think is wrong about what Haley changed? Is there a quote missing there?

[redmapa]

Regarding the Second founding it was never complete, everything of what we know came from in-universe studies of those foundings called Apocryphas which have always been incomplete and with enough holes for anyone to put their own chapter in any founding which is why BL authors can just make up their own second founding chapter but the codexes will always only mention Black Templars and Crimson Fists.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Having read around a bit, it seems there were 5 in total, which is a more sensible number of remaining Fists, we can always just blame the Apocrypha of Davos for getting it wrong all those years... Edited November 5, 2019 by Brother Adelard

[Medjugorje]

Regarding the Second founding it was never complete, everything of what we know came from in-universe studies of those foundings called Apocryphas which have always been incomplete and with enough holes for anyone to put their own chapter in any founding which is why BL authors can just make up their own second founding chapter but the codexes will always only mention Black Templars and Crimson Fists.

I think the two I mentioned before are inherent part of the lore now... (I think I ve read that in some GW rulebook). But yes,... as you said, CF and BT are always mentioned because they have rules so far.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. BT and CF have their rules because of their place in the fluff. Not the other way around. The CF were the cover boys for first edition, BT: Third, back then they had no rules and only one special character each, with no specific model for either. (EC and Sgt Cortez, as he then was.)

[Medjugorje]

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. BT and CF have their rules because of their place in the fluff. Not the other way around. The CF were the cover boys for first edition, BT: Third, back then they had no rules and only one special character each, with no specific model for either. (EC and Sgt Cortez, as he then was.)

yeah. thats correct but I think that in the current fluff these chapters are more important then just sidenotes. In the Horus Heresy were much new stuff integrated what just cant be easily ignored. I think that the Horus Heresy novels and the whole tabletop game with that many characters introduced are often taken as influence in the entire ruleset of the 40k itself.

[Brother Tyler]

The lore ever since GW gave us the new non-Codex Black Templars in 3rd edition has been that the overall size of the Black Templars has fluctuated. At times, the Chapter has been much smaller than a Codex Chapter, largely because of attrition (being a Space Marine isn't the safest job in the galaxy, after all ;) ). At other times, the Chapter has been much larger than a Codex Chapter. Too many players have obsessed about the one piece of lore that identified the possibility of the Chapter being at 5,000 battle-brothers and assumed that that number defined the Chapter's size. Moreover, the data that the lore cited clearly showed not a snapshot in time, but the Chapter over a period of time where earlier crusades became or were absorbed into later crusades; so that 5,000 number wasn't accurate (at that time). There may have been times when the Black Templars were at 5,000 in overall strength, or even more, but the lore has never said that 5,000 is the standard number for the Chapter. That's just an error in understanding on the part of the players.

 

The portrayal in AD-B's book would seem to indicate that the Black Templars Chapter was substantial when Abaddon first left the Eye of Terror, though their numbers were never even estimated in that book. Several thousand seems fair enough, though they could potentially have been larger. They suffered horrendous casualties in that engagement, not least of which was the loss of High Marshal Sigismund. Whether or not they have ever equaled that size subsequently is completely unknown, and no official lore has ever given us specific numbers at specific points in time.

 

All of this aside, and getting back on the topic of Castellan Draco, we should give Games Workshop the benefit of the doubt and assume that the new lore about Castellan Draco being declared Excommunicate Traitoris isn't a fluke. Games Workshop may give us more details in the future, in which case we can hem and haw over whether or not we accept whatever details they provide. In the absence of details, we know only that, as the Imperial Fists understand it, Castellan Draco did something so terrible that no one will speak of the details and that he is now Excommunicate Traitoris. We can speculate all we want (and that is what has been going on for most of this discussion), but we don't have any facts to refute. It could be exactly as the Imperial Fists codex supplement says. It could be something else (and we've identified a number of ideas). It could all be a cover story for something else.

 

Let's keep this discussion firmly on topic with Castellan Draco, though. If there is a desire to pursue other issues, those should be brought up in separate topics (and they can point back here, if desired).

[DranuTemplar]

The other change was the worship of the Emperor as a God.

 

(Although, I agree with Reinhard's post a few months back, that it was always said, since early 3rd that, the Templars had a religious fervour for something, it was just never explicitly stated who, or what, that something was, when you look at it from that angle, it wasn't that much of a surprise.)

Honestly it was often ambiguous if even the Ultramarines thought the Emperor was God in the 3rd and 4th due to the Black library and popular media. Some books spoke like they were likely right as well before ABD entered the HH series with "the Last Church" and "First Heretic". Before the mid HH series there was a lot more ambiguity in general. I preferred that mystery.

 

One of the reasons I'm a fan of the BT is because of their medieval zeal for some cause even greater than finite humanity itself. So I would abhor such a change to yet another in the melting pot of humanity worshiping marine chapters.

[tvih]

The psyker-lovin' is arguably an even worse change than God-worshipping. The latter was never outright denied in the Codex and such, only in Helsreach, but psyker-hatin' was flat out stated.

 

As for Draco, yeah. Only time will tell what's up - or not, if they choose not to elaborate, but that'd be pretty lame of them. I have the Draco fig, and he's certainly not getting hunted down regardless of whether or not he actually did do something truly bad (which is always possible)!

[DranuTemplar]

The psyker-lovin' is arguably an even worse change than God-worshipping. The latter was never outright denied in the Codex and such, only in Helsreach, but psyker-hatin' was flat out stated.

 

Not Hellsreach I believe, but in it's sequel he did so. He has a thing against his protagonists worshiping the emperor.

 

 

I thought in the last BT codex it actually confirmed worship. Unfortunately I do not have it on me though. At any rate, it was ABD's work that started to solidify the old traces of "merely respect the emperor" rather than worship. I was a fan of the ambiguity for all the chapters, also with the ambiguity of whether the Imperial Creed is an ironic lie or not, but between the two extremes I prefer at least some chapters to follow the Imperial Creed.

Edited November 6, 2019 by DranuTemplar

[tvih]

Ah, might've been the "sequel", I forget, it's been a while. At any rate the worship stuff only came when we got put into the SM codex. There was nothing of the sort in C:BT. But at any rate I reckon that's off-topic for this thread.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

The Imperium has always been safe due to the vast nigh uncountable Templar and Space Wolf Battle Barges patrolling the Solar system. I could give a :cuss regarding the retcons.

[Brother Tyler]

The posts about the Black Templars fighting the T'au on Warhammer Twitch and the Black Templars information from the Faith & Fury teaser had nothing whatsoever to do with Castellan Draco, so I split them from this topic (and the Faith & Fury posts were merged with another topic about the same issue).

[Medjugorje]

Someone who read PA2 already or knows something about the new lore? Maybe about Draco?

[Medjugorje]

for all people who want to know about this character:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20080417050516/uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/blacktemplars-draco/1/

[Brother Tyler]

for all people who want to know about this character:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20080417050516/uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/blacktemplars-draco/1/

That's the same text that I posted here.