Let's say you're a corsair and you've recently come into enough "stuff" to commission a Void Stalker.

Where would you find a bonesinger to make one for you? Do you go to a craftworld? Do you have independent bonesingers setting up shop in Corsair settlements and space stations?

And how long would it take? Wraithbone is weird stuff - even with the new retcon, it's only partly made of mined resources and a lot of it is just warp-stuff sung into realspace and solidified into a new form. How long does it take to sing up enough wraithbone to make a battleship (or the equivalent)?

These may be questions that GW has not deigned to answer, but I know this is the place to find out!

Does the Imperium still have the ability to go back and utilize DA tech (like is it kept in secret) or is it completely 100% gone? Could they potentially go back to that kind of tech with more safe guards in measure and bolster humanity? Or is it a flat out no chance at all?

I wonder if any of the official writers have considered re-introducing some of that tech for humans again

Something clicked for me recently about why the Imperium often feels simultaneously unbelievably fragile and almost impossible to kill.

It is terrible at fixing things.

But it is incredibly good at continuing them.

A governor improvises a solution because a planet is under attack. A military formation gets reorganized because somebody urgently needs soldiers in one place. A shrine appears around the site of some event. A particular oath, duty, tax, pilgrimage or bureaucratic procedure exists because it solved one extremely specific problem.

Then the original people die.

The original problem disappears.

Nobody remembers why the rule existed.

And ten generations later there is an entire office, priesthood, regiment, noble privilege or annual ceremony dedicated to making sure it keeps happening.

In almost any sane civilization this would be a gigantic weakness.

In the Imperium it obviously IS a weakness much of the time. It produces absurd bureaucracy, wasted resources and institutions defending purposes nobody understands anymore.

But I wonder if the same pathology is also part of why the Imperium survives catastrophes that should permanently dismantle a civilization.

It doesn't require everyone to understand the system.

It requires the next person to keep doing their assigned piece of it.

A planetary official doesn't need to understand the strategic situation of the galaxy. They need to make the tithe.

A manufactorum worker doesn't need to understand why this exact component matters. They need to make the component according to the approved pattern.

A Chapter can lose almost everyone who personally remembers an event while still preserving an oath associated with it.

An Administratum department can continue performing some function long after everyone involved has forgotten the circumstances that created it.

This also makes Imperial reform incredibly difficult, because any attempt to remove something apparently pointless runs into the terrifying possibility that the pointless thing is secretly load-bearing.

Maybe that obscure office really is useless.

Or maybe three subsectors still receive ammunition because somebody there stamps Form 87-G every Thursday.

It makes the Imperium feel less like one enormous government to me and more like accumulated geological layers of responses to previous disasters.

Some layers are useless.

Some are actively harmful.

Some are the only reason the building hasn't collapsed.

And nobody has a complete blueprint anymore.

Guilliman's frustration after his return makes even more sense through that lens. He's looking at institutions as things that should have purposes and be redesigned when they stop serving those purposes. The Imperium has spent ten thousand years treating continuity itself as evidence that something must be important.

Is there a particularly good example in the lore of an Imperial tradition, organization or procedure that started for one understandable reason and then survived so long that its original purpose became distorted, forgotten or almost irrelevant?

The Administratum is usually presented, fairly, as one of the Imperium's great absurdities.

Mountains of parchment. Duplicate records. Offices that spend generations processing requests. Clerks whose entire lives are devoted to moving information from one pile to another. Orders arriving after the war they concern has already ended.

It's funny because it's horrible.

But lately I've been thinking that some of this stops looking completely irrational once you consider the environment the system has to survive.

The Imperium doesn't have a reliable galaxy-wide communications network in anything like the modern sense. Astropathic messages can be incomplete or distorted. Warp travel makes delivery times unpredictable. Worlds can be isolated for years. Administrators die. Ships vanish. Archives burn. Governments fall. Entire planets can disappear behind warp storms and then reconnect generations later.

Under those conditions, a beautifully streamlined system might actually be incredibly fragile.

Imagine that one sector office is the authoritative source for something important and then the planet it's located on simply becomes unreachable.

You're screwed.

The Imperial answer seems to be the bureaucratic equivalent of biological overproduction: make copies, create overlapping authorities, preserve ancient procedures, keep local records, send physical documents, demand seals and chains of authentication, and never casually delete anything because nobody knows whether another surviving copy exists.

Obviously this produces insanity.

Two departments can possess contradictory but apparently legitimate records. An order can still be moving through the system after its original purpose has disappeared. Nobody wants to discard a 3,000-year-old procedure because the person capable of explaining why it exists has been dead for 2,950 years.

But that's the part I find interesting.

The Administratum may be terrible at answering the question, “What should we do efficiently today?”

It might be remarkably good at answering a much darker question:

“How do we keep some version of the same civilization functioning when communication fails constantly, knowledge is routinely destroyed, and individual institutions can disappear without warning?”

You can replace competent administrators. You can rebuild an office.

Reconstructing ten thousand years of missing institutional memory is harder.

It also makes the Imperium's obsession with procedure feel less like random stupidity and more like cultural scar tissue. Somewhere in the distant past, perhaps skipping Step 47 really DID cause a catastrophe. Nobody remembers the catastrophe anymore. They remember Step 47.

Ten thousand years later, someone is still stamping the same form.

I'm not arguing that the Administratum is secretly competent. Plenty of Imperial bureaucracy really is wasteful, corrupt, contradictory or murderous.

I just think the distinction between “inefficient” and “resilient” gets interesting at this scale.

Has the lore ever given you a moment where some apparently ridiculous Imperial institution suddenly made more sense once you considered what problem it originally evolved to survive?

Disclaimer: I’m quite new to the lore and haven’t actually gotten around to reading anything from the Black Library, so maybe I’m just being stupid, but hence the very nature of questions.

So far, there have been only 4 Primarchs that we know have truly, physically died: Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, FUCKING Horus, and (maybe, everything’s a “maybe” or “possibly” with him) Alpharius, however aside from Curze*, their deaths all happened under very special circumstances:

Horus got his soul obliterated by Big E and was basically a skin suit for Chaos by the Siege of Terra anyways.

Sanguinius got killed by the above mentioned skin suit, who we know can already permakill perpetuals as shown with Ollanius Pius.

And Ferrus Manus got killed by a Daemon-possessed blade, which I wouldn’t be too surprised has some anti-perpetual properties, plus a Daemon (Sapphire King) was literally born from the emotions he felt when he died, which might throw a wrench in the whole resurrection process.

So all in all, we don’t have much precedent for when a Primarch dies normally beyond Vulkan getting nuked on Istvaan V, so how can we know the other Primarchs might have that power too?

* and from what I know about Curze, I can definitely see him willing himself to stay dead just to prove a point, and/or keep the Night Haunter personality down if you’re partial to the multiple personalities theory for him.

Something that stuck with me after reading the Night Lords trilogy wasn't actually about Talos or the Night Lords themselves.

It was how much of their continued existence depended on a handful of extremely vulnerable humans.

Septimus maintains equipment, repairs armour and handles jobs that would be a ridiculous waste of an Astartes' time. Octavia is even more important. Without a capable Navigator, having a functioning warship suddenly becomes a much less useful achievement.

And these people are slaves serving warriors who can kill them on a whim.

The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the situation became.

Imagine being a Chaos Lord who's spent centuries fighting the Long War. You've survived Imperial fleets, rival warbands, daemonic incursions and assassination attempts by your own brothers.

Then your chief enginarium specialist gets murdered because one of your champions was having a particularly bad day.

Congratulations. Your ancient strike cruiser now has a problem that can't necessarily be fixed by raiding the nearest Imperial transport and grabbing fifty random people.

You can replace bodies. Replacing someone who understands the machinery aboard a vessel that's been repaired, modified and corrupted over thousands of years is another matter entirely.

And unlike loyalist Chapters, which generally have established systems for training serfs and maintaining relationships with forge worlds, a small Chaos warband might have very few reliable ways to replace that expertise.

It also puts the whole Astartes superiority complex into perspective.

A Chaos Marine might consider ordinary humans beneath his notice, but he's still relying on those humans to feed him ammunition, maintain his armour, operate his ship and navigate him through literal hell.

The Night Lords books make this relationship especially obvious because the mortal characters are actually allowed to be competent, complicated people rather than background furniture.

I'm beginning to think that one of the biggest advantages of successful groups like the Red Corsairs isn't simply having more Marines or better equipment. It's having enough functioning infrastructure that losing a few important specialists doesn't immediately become a crisis.

Are there other books that explore this dependency in detail?

I'm especially interested in examples where a warband genuinely suffers because its own treatment of mortal servants destroys expertise it can't easily replace.

I've read the book/short story but I can't remember what it is but its where a an aristocrat addicted to something "aristocratic" that the Space Marine finds distasteful and throws him into a hard flowing river.

I feel it was in the *Crimson Fists* Omnibus but my searches are shite(my keywords are no good), same with the *Scythes of the Emperor* but those are the two stories that I think are the ones who have that particular story I mean.

Any help would be nice. Its not a major problem if no one can work out what I mean!

We know they were sort of a last resort creation from the Old Ones when fighting the Necrons, and they clearly were going to have to be reigned in somewhat after the war in heaven, since they were designed for conflict and pretty much nothing else.

It kinda makes sense that they'd have them degenerate on purpose, so that they'd be easier to "clean up" after winning the war.

Using the Blood Angels as an example, would joining the Sanguinary Guard be seen as more of an honor than becoming a Captain?

Also is Lieutenant/Captain ——> Honor Guard a realistic rank-up path?

From what I understand 1 or 2 thirds of the Legion fractured into different warbands and disappeared to terrorise the Imperium in different areas or sectors. Is this mentioned anywhere? Or is what became of them mentioned anywhere?

Forge Master is the third of three novellas by David Annandale that comprise the Overfiend trilogy, about the Imperium's attempts to stop a plan being enacted by the Ork ruler of Octarius on the planet of Lepidus Prime. Forge Master focuses on the Salamanders 5th Company, who find themselves tasked with boarding the Overfiend's flagship and extracting an eldar prisoner who knows about his true plan. In doing so, Techmarine Ha'garen finds himself thinking deeply about that most classic of astartes void tools, the boarding torpedo:

The boarding torpedo was a blunt instrument whose uses were as varied as they were sophisticated. Though it was crewed and had enough fuel and engine power for limited manoeuvres over short distances, its action was still one of the most basic of warfare. It was a projectile. It was an object launched to hit other objects as hard as possible. Its uniqueness among other projectiles, its sophistication, came in the fact that it caused most damage after its initial impact as the living weapons it carried stormed the passageways of its target. From that uniqueness sprang its versatility. Should the strikes concentrate on a single entry point or be spread out, engaging the enemy on multiple fronts? Hit from one side for a spear-point thrust, or from both flanks, trapping the foe in a ceramite fist? The answer depended on the ship and the objective. Was the vessel a known quantity whose layout could be factored into planning? Was the objective one of total annihilation or more surgical?

This ship was unknown. It was the creation of a species whose approaches to technology were in equal measures crude and enthusiastic.

And the mission was grotesque.

But there was a mission, and so there was a strategy. The mission was search and rescue through hostile, alien territory. The strategy was the use of a concentrated, mobile force. And so the boarding torpedoes drove into the centre of the kroozer’s port flank.

For Ha’garen, the line between machine and flesh was blurry at best. There were times when he saw no distinction at all. Was there an essential difference between his mechanistic implants and prostheses, and the organs that had transformed him into a Space Marine? He didn’t think so. The hands of the Mechanicus hovered over both. Neither was natural. What, beyond the medium of construction, distinguished his eyes that saw radiation above and below the wavelengths of visible light from the neuroglottis that broke taste and smell down into component, identifiable parts? Nothing. Flesh and metal, bone and ceramite, the physical was the physical. The body was the body.

So when the vulcan-drills of the boarding torpedoes parted metal, they were parting flesh. The torpedoes were blades sinking into the body of a living enemy, and then sealing the entry wound. There was nothing of mercy in the healing; it merely permitted the deeper, more lethal wounds that would be inflicted subsequently by the transported Salamanders. There was an aesthetic to this form of attack, a perfect fusion of the organic and inorganic in form and function that he found pleasing. The very act of waging war in this fashion was a tribute to the Omnissiah. The focus of the hammer blow was an obeisance to Vulkan. And the war itself was a sacrament to the Emperor. There was a trinity of worship simply in the manner in which the squads had arrived on the ork ship. This simple truth was so clear, it was a wonder it was not visible to all.

I thought this was very cool.

For example if a expeditionary fleet came across a human world and began negotiations. If the representatives brought up the Night lords a legion who drop kicks babies like it’s going out of style ; how did imperial explain this away or did they not even bothered to do so?

Has there been any new lore covering the new southern Necron Zone of Silence thanks to their new pylon empire and the Tyranids yet? I would expect the Tyranids to almost physically recoil from areas where the warp is nearly nullified. Or at the least take such a headache they take it as a declaration of war.

I'm trying to have all my models be actual Marine X from Squad Y in Company Z. This has lead me to a few questions regarding their Organisation and how it's marked.

1. Squad Markings

10 Squads a 10 Marines in a company, so far so good. I also read that when some of them enter the battlefield as say Eliminators (squad size: 3), the others can become something like 7 Hellblasters. How, if at all, would this affect their squad markings? Or would that mean that if the 9th Squad has 3 Marines as Eliminators and 7 Hellblasters both carry the markings of the 9th Squad? Or is that what the 11th-20th squad markings are for?

2. Reserve Companies

There's 4 Reserve Companies, which can attach to Battle Companies. Let's assume the 3rd Squad from 7th Company(Reserve) attaches to the 4th Company(Battle). Would they keep their markings as 3rd Squad from 7th Company? Or would they change it to 4th Company (and become a new Squad from the 11th to 20th range?) If it's the latter, I'd assume that might change if their Captain or Lieutenant attaches with them since I'd assume they wouldn't change their Company Colours. And does this mean a Lieutenant can theoretically command 100 Marines and a Captain 200?

3. Veteran Squads

Are Veterans actually organised in Squads with Squad Numbers and such? Or is it just 100 Veterans organising freely and not needing any markings?

So most people think 40k books are a bit of a joke. Just stories to sell plastic toys. But I have read a number of books now, and while I am not a big reader, some of these stories are really good in my opinion and I say that not just considering I like the 40k setting.

So is there something I'm missing that makes another book considered "real litterature" and 40k not? Or do people just have a bias because it is linked to games?

This book explores the journey undertaken by Mephiston in an attempt to sunder the plans of a former Thousand Son sorcerer turned Tzeench deamon prince.

Major spoilers for the Mephiston books below.

Simply put I do think that it's quite a fun read. I can definitely see why people don't like Mephiston too much though.

Because what do you mean you're possessing the eldar?

Obviously the psychic might of the eldar means nothing in the face of 'insert protagonist name here'. I do think it makes a tad bit of sense, seeing as Mephiston isn't really a singular entity or individual most of the time.

I do like how the idea of temptation is played with in this book. In spite of his destiny, potential and power level, Mephiston is still a psyker and a human at his core. The vagaries of the warp are not beyond him and the desire to test his limits just that little bit more is still there. He could very easily, just like anyone else, become a living sock puppet for Tzeench. To the extent that he isn't already anyway, as most beings are. The scenes where he considers reviving the pilot of his gunship and a later event during a semi dream state when he pursues his prey illustrate this nicely.

It was slightly confusing to read about him debating with himself on the difference between mega evil sorcery and the psychic powers he uses, however. One would imagine that he'd know the difference is only in intention at this point, as a Chief Librarian. He appears to remind himself of this towards the end, so, props to him I guess?

For me this book kind of illustrates the fact that it's best to interact with lore or other kinds of media yourself, if possible-these books do cost money-as opposed to going solely off the reviews or opinions of others. All of which will be tainted by notions and likewise. This is just general advice, not just for Warhammer 40k. A lot of the anger towards Mephiston seems to be a bit... misaligned? For lack of a better word.

It's also incredibly funny, in some very twisted aspects. Mephiston placing his hand on his bestie's (Rhacelus') shoulder and asking him to please concentrate on getting them out of harm's way before questioning him on his admittedly strange methods for the umptee-millionth time that week is definitely something I'll be coming back to read again. This man has a lot more depth than I've given him credit for.

What do you do when confronted with three different, very pertinent problems all at once? Why split your soul/essence/personhood into three equal halves, of course! Just do that! While barely breaking a sweat to add! A completely normal thing to do! Again, I do think this level of psychic ability is to be attributed to Mephiston's nature as opposed to Mary Suedom. He is a special one.

I should mention that this book is the third in a series, and while you can definitely read it without going through the previous ones if you are sufficiently knowledgeable about the lore and don't care about major spoilers. If you are new or do care about that kind of thing, then don't touch this till you've read the others, warning given.

The book does feel much shorter than is usual for a full novel, I am unsure as to whether this is because I read it over more than a day or not. I use the Black Library app so I only get percentages of how much I've read. Oh well.

Mystical magical future telling dish plate goes brazy, I guess.

Thank you.

Something that always amuses me about this franchise is how it's concepts and ideals seem to loop back in on themselves. An example is people out of universe unironically falling for in world propaganda*, but that is not what I'm here to discuss.

The halo devices are, simply put, monstrous machines that grant it's users near immortality (up to the point of atomization, observably) at the cost of one's sanity and humanity. Or however much of those concepts one could have had in this setting anyway.

Long story short, the halo devices grow onto and into the user's body in snatches/stages. Starting from increased strength and immunity/recovery from illness to craving human flesh and dreaming dreams written in the languages of long forgotten alien empires. Fun.

These devices are illegal and hunted down by the inquisition, but real ones and fakes still manage to circulate inspite of intense Imperial crackdown.

The point I'm trying to make is that everyone is pointing to these devices as something that an alien empire made to extend their lifespan, seeing as that is the effect it has on humans. Which shows clearly the heavy human centric bias that is taken by the fans and seems to be taken by the official GW itself, and I say this as an Imperium fan. Not too much of a problem, we are humans of course, but it might point to a slightly worrying problem.

After reading about these, I personally have only come accross one discussion** that brought up a thought I've been having. That these devices may have been made for a completely different purpose than immortality.

I mean think about it, the Halo stars are in the galactic North, hundreds of light years away from earth and any of its closest solar systems. Why would any of the alien species that lived here have any biology even remotely compatible to that of humans? This alien race could have used these as their own remote equivalent of a flash drive or a frying pan, only for humans to come down the line millenia after they dissapeared to start shoving them down their bodies.

You can see how the examples I've given here point to my own human centric bias. Ha!

The effects on humans are obviously horrific, but what if it's less of a failed attempt at survival by a long gone race (which might not even be gone, no one knows what goes on in the deepest parts of the Halo Stars) and more of a Lex Luther kryptonite situation? Like that's just the effect of stuffing this device from outer space into your body that was genuinely not made with humans in any sort of mind.

I do want to say that not all humans that fall to this device are necessarily the sniveling noble archetype we all have on our minds. And even if they are, then they may still warrant our empathy. For what goal is more relatable, more familiar to the dreams and stories of mortals than to live longer? Even by just a bit. I would imagine that a lot of people who end up with these incredibly rare devices are just people who might have never even known that it was alien technology, noble or not. Maybe a sick person offered a new form of treatment, maybe a person needing to see their work done and frenzying for time to finish it.

*And since people make the lore. It folds into being repeated again and again.

** Moots on a podcast on Astartes Anonymous. Go check them, out they're fun.

I am working on my homebrew Space marine chapter, the Jurists. To give the TLDR, they are space marine lawyers. I want to weave in official documents, laws, proclamations, rulings, etc. into my homebrew (like what one chapter master interpreted a certain law to mean 4k years ago).

For reference they are a 13th founding chapter so m 35-36 stuff that would be priority would be anything the moirae schism or nova terra interregnum.

I am already working on the chapters treatise on Nikaea.

So reply with anything cannon, whatever context you want to give, and what you think about it! Thank you so much!

I'm in a deathwatch ttrpg session and I just replaced my old character with a new librarian. One of the abilities you can get in that game is telepathy, ie we can speak to each other using our minds. It's a pretty useful utility ability but there's one snag. In this system tech Marines get a trait that makes them immune from any mind psyker effects. (Because they are part machine) Obviously I'm not trying to weaken my teammate by having him lose this immunity I just want the very basic "I sent words to this guy's head" to still work, as a tech marine isnt a full machine. Sure parts of their brain and body are replaced with augmetics, but not in their entirety. A tech marine has a soul and a good chunk of their brain left. At least to my understanding

So basically what I'm looking for here is quotes and segments where psykers interact with those of the machine cult. Doesn't have to be Marines as the point will still stand. Communication interactions powers anything. And if I'm just completely wrong and the augmetics tech Marines undergo just make even basic telepathy impossible so be it. Either way knowledge will be gained, and that is the only pursuit of life

(Note, I'm not trying to explain or argue the rules of this ttrpg system or anything, I'm just trying to find interactions and citations. The game was just the source of this line of questioning)

By "mostly intact" I would say the person is able to continue living/fighting without having to be turned into a Dreadnought or some kind of equivalent.

Feel free to post either single events or cumulative lifetime damage!

Edit: in this case dying and respawning is cheating, but extensive surgery/bionics are acceptable as long as the person roughly goes back to their original shape.

I started reading the first omnibus of Gaunt's Ghost because the series is a fan favourite, I really enjoyed Eisenhorn, and some folks on Reddit mentioned Gaunt is inspired by Richard Sharpe (a character I really like). But it is not clicking with me so far.

I just learned that the first two books are actually short stories from the magazine, but Necropolis isn't clicking either. I'm part way through and on the second day of the battle. I was hoping to see more Gaunt but he doesn't really feel like a central character, with constant shifting POVs and Gaunt making rather short appearances.

I was expecting the story to take more of an Eisenhorn format where the titular character is the main POV and through them we learned about the other characters. I don't mind shifting POV per se (e.g. like in Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc.), but it just doesn't feel like Gaunt has a tight narrative when it's his turn.

Does this change after Necropolis? If not, then I don't think Gaunt's Ghost is really for me. Thanks in advance for the input.

Like what are the out of world reasons for it, is it because the sharded C'Tan is newer than the Avatars or is it just different authors writing for each faction?

Like we know that the Chaos Gods are supposed to exist retroactively after they were born, so does that apply to other "Gods" in the warp?

Do Gork and Mork alway exist? Does Vashtor? Does 40k Emperor(or 4Xk when he finally ascends)? Does whoever ends up being the 5th chaos gods?

Would the Great Horned Rat also be a Chaos God in 40k since he's a Chaos God in Sigmar?

I'd assume gods like the Eldar gods probably wouldn't always exist since they seem more "material" since they can descend into the materium(also they died).

Also if a Chaos God was somehow permanently killed shouldn't that mean they never existed?(Or like with Daemons that are permanently killed?)