Still doesn't mean that when the Emperor goes to that great battlebarge in the sky that the Emperium can't daisy-chain psykers together and create a substitute for him. I doubt his end will be the end of warp-travel, as some people like to sell it
while having their AI legions beating back orks and eldar and anything else that comes along the way.
Today the enemy is at our door! We know our duty and we will do it! We fight for our honor as Blud Rehvens, as SPEHSS MUHREENS and we fight in the name of the EMPRAH!
Still doesn't mean that when the Emperor goes to that great battlebarge in the sky that the Emperium can't daisy-chain psykers together and create a substitute for him. I doubt his end will be the end of warp-travel, as some people like to sell it
while having their AI legions beating back orks and eldar and anything else that comes along the way.
...what?
Humanity used to use robots to do all the mundane stuff for them.
Still doesn't mean that when the Emperor goes to that great battlebarge in the sky that the Emperium can't daisy-chain psykers together and create a substitute for him. I doubt his end will be the end of warp-travel, as some people like to sell it
while having their AI legions beating back orks and eldar and anything else that comes along the way.
...what?
Humanity used to use robots to do all the mundane stuff for them.
Then the Iron Men rebellion happened.
They don't use AIs anymore. At all.
No no, I know that. But I thought up until the fall of the Eldar (birth of Slaanesh, creation of the Eye of Terror) the Eldar were firmly in control of the Milky Way. As in: dominant species deluxe, height of their power, full control of their technology, large population, etc. So the thought of human robots beating the incredibly ancient god race back strikes me as...silly.
Still doesn't mean that when the Emperor goes to that great battlebarge in the sky that the Emperium can't daisy-chain psykers together and create a substitute for him. I doubt his end will be the end of warp-travel, as some people like to sell it
while having their AI legions beating back orks and eldar and anything else that comes along the way.
...what?
Back before they became the regressive religious nuts we all know and love today, the humans in 40K basically lived in a Utopia of technological marvels. They commanded armies of machines and had access to incredible technology. Then the Age of Strife happened and they lost most of it, but before then they were basically the pinnacle of power in the galaxy.
Here are the details:
In the cryptic account of the history of Mankind given by Cripias, one of the Keepers of the Library Sanctus of Terra, the Iron Men or Men of Iron were legendary, artificially intelligent humanoid machines created by humans during the Dark Age of Technology. Until shortly before the Age of Strife, the Men of Iron were loyal only to Mankind, and served as humanity's army in the period when much of human space was united by a federation-type government that existed before the Imperium of Man. The Men of Iron were developed after the similar artificially intelligent constructs remembered only as the Men of Stone, but before the "modern" conception of robots in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Eventually, the Men of Iron turned on their human masters, believing themselves superior to the humans who relied on the Men of Iron to do virtually everything for them. In the end, the Men of Iron were destroyed by humanity in a terrible war that extinguished countless lives and destroyed the ancient galaxy's economic and political unity. The people of that time swore to never again create advanced artificial intelligences, a prohibition which has survived unto the present, far darker age.
And here are the details on why humanity went from Utopia to shit:
This Golden Age for humanity would not last. Warp travel became increasingly difficult and ultimately impossible due to the great Immaterium Warp Storms that would herald the violent birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh and the Fall of the Eldar. Trade and communication between the human colonies eventually collapsed, restoring the isolation of human colony worlds. With this relative isolation Abhumans (i.e. new human mutant subspecies adapted to their environments) like the Ogryns, Ratlings, and Squats developed on several planets in the galaxy.
Certain planets, like Terra, the ancient homeworld of mankind - which relied heavily on trade with the rest of humanity - were suddenly unable to feed their enormous populations. Hunger and starvation followed. The human psykers were relatively weak and inexperienced, and at constant risk of possession by daemons and other Warp entities after the great Warp storms began. The sudden impossibility of Warp travel meant that the once unified interstellar human federation broke apart into completely isolated star systems and worlds. Daemonic possession, widespread insanity and isolation led to inter-human conflict, utter anarchy and the regression of most human civilizations to barbarity. The time period following the Dark Age of Technology is thus aptly named the Age of Strife by the savants of the Imperium.
Then the Emperor happened and he united mankind again but then Horus happened and things went to shit again
A new army race waiting in the wings I always thought. Would the Empire of today be able to hold off an attack from a discovered pocket of surviving Men Of Iron?
During the Dark Age of Technology, when humans were at their finest and had robots and whatnot, the Eldar were at their finest. The fall of the Eldar initiated the Age of Strife. 40k lore sells the Eldar to us as a specially designed master race who, at the height of their power, were a species with no rival. So my confusion arises from the fact that there was an age were we shared the Milky Way with the Elder who, at that stage, were in their prime and looked down at every other species as inferior (because in almost all aspects, they were). And we held them at bay? with...robots?
That's a slight lore malfunction there. You know, given how the Elder were designed to fight the biggest baddest robots in town: the Necrons.
Edit: Some quotes from the Lexicanum.
Once, ten thousand years ago, the Eldar were among the most powerful and dominant race of the galaxy, dominating a significant portion of the galaxy and secure in their prosperity. Although there were other races of advanced technology and military power, none were in a position to seriously threaten the state of the Eldar nation.
The Fall of the Eldar occurred over ten thousand years ago and ended the Eldar supremacy inside of the Milky Way galaxy. They were at the height of their empire and held sway over the vast majority of the galaxy.
An interesting theory is that the Emperor was attempting to create a human-usable webway right before the siege of terra. According to lore, when Magnus the Red sent out his massive psychic warning signal to the emperor, the webway bracing collapsed and the warp flooded into the palace of terra. Demons flooded in, and it was only through the Emperor's psychic might, directed by the Golden Throne that the webway was held shut.
One of the Horus Heresy books tackles this one. The Golden Throne WAS meant to be the Terra anchor for a webway entrance, but when Magnus busted in and was like "DAD. GUESS WHA-ooo....whoops....sorry" he fried a lot of the components that could never be reproduced or replaced. Actually Magnus was supposed to sit on the throne, not ol' Empereur.
One of the rumors that's been floating around is that GW will advance the 40k plot when the Horus Heresy series is complete. There was talk of finally having the emperor's corporeal form fail and his soul be reborn as a full-fledged warp god. I know the rumors are totally unsubstantiated, unverifiable, and most likely troll bait.... I want to believe.
The Eldar were the top dogs of the galaxy at their height. At their height the civilization of man barely registered as a thing to them. They looked at humanity and saw them as apes. In time however the humans got more powerful and eventually were able to at the very least stand up to eldar skirmishes. However very little conflict actually occured between the two civilizations.
In the power vacuum [after the war between the Old Ones and the C'tan] the lesser creations of the Old Ones, such as the mon-keigh (humans), developed in unforseeable ways. Raw evolution took a hold, turning these noisy but harmless beasts into the life form that now infested a million worlds. The eldar had let them be, perhaps they were reluctant to harm what little life remained...
And shortly thereafter Eldar civilization turned into the clusterfuck which spawned the new chaos god.
The Eldar were the top dogs of the galaxy at their height. At their height the civilization of man barely registered as a thing to them. They looked at humanity and saw them as apes. In time however the humans got more powerful and eventually were able to at the very least stand up to eldar skirmishes. However very little conflict actually occured between the two civilizations.
In the power vacuum [after the war between the Old Ones and the C'tan] the lesser creations of the Old Ones, such as the mon-keigh, developed in unforseeable ways. Raw evolution took a hold, turning these noisy but harmless beasts into the life form that now infested a million worlds. The eldar had let them be, perhaps they were reluctant to harm what little life remained...
And shortly thereafter Eldar civilization turned into the clusterfuck which spawned the new chaos god
Aaahhhh. Now that makes sense. Before they went apeshit they had respect for life and some common sense. Good good.
The fall of the eldar was also something that occured over thousands of years, when the humans were still expanding. At a certain point the Eldar super-empire simply couldn't function properly
Government within the Eldar empire soon collapsed and the degeneration of their homeworlds and colonies into utter depravity continued unimpeded. As the pursuit of ever more extreme experiences reached its height, death reigned in the streets of Eldar cities, hunter and hunted each being part of a twisted ritual of destruction which consumed millions of lives.
40K fluff aside, here are some actual and awesome news:
"All of the following multiplayer details are yet to be confirmed, but during our hands-on time the planned multiplayer will consist of 8 versus 8, Chaos Space Marines pitted against those loyal to the undying Emperor. Multiplayer will feature an XP progression, unlocking new items as your fully customisable Space Marine levels up. There will also be a Cleanse mode, co-op for up to a squad of five marines taking on wave after wave of enemies."
I didn't even expect multiplayer beyond co-op and now we get it anyway
A new army race waiting in the wings I always thought. Would the Empire of today be able to hold off an attack from a discovered pocket of surviving Men Of Iron?
Given how the current machine spirits of titans and knights are apparently the uploaded minds of wolves and bears (and then possibly copied), according to the older Epic background - I've always pegged the Iron men as being uploaded humans rather than true AIs, cobbled together from some reverse engineered necron tech recovered from the Noctis Labyrinthus.
Given we're talking about the time period where humanity was just starting to understand the warp and now had members who could see into, and the fact that necronisation or consumption by a C'tan strips away the soul - on top of all the normal human shit that would occur when you've got an immortal class of people - I think the War with the Iron men has the potential to be a lot more complicated than Shynet or *shudder* Dune prequals.*shudder*.
So yeah, I reckon that'll be necrons in the new book and we'll see people getting turned into warriors again.
[edit]That co-op sounds good. Particularly the cleanse, though 8 vs 8 during a cleanse would be awesome too.
8vs8 sounds like a lot of fun but I'm really looking forward to Cleanse mode. Playing with 4 of my friends against hordes of enemies is exactly what I want. I hope the levels for this mode are large and that the "horde" is ridiculously massive too.
I guess it would have to be if you got 5 space marines tearing things up
40K fluff aside, here are some actual and awesome news:
"All of the following multiplayer details are yet to be confirmed, but during our hands-on time the planned multiplayer will consist of 8 versus 8, Chaos Space Marines pitted against those loyal to the undying Emperor. Multiplayer will feature an XP progression, unlocking new items as your fully customisable Space Marine levels up. There will also be a Cleanse mode, co-op for up to a squad of five marines taking on wave after wave of enemies."
I didn't even expect multiplayer beyond co-op and now we get it anyway
Oh man. I can hear the bitching now:
lol i unlockd crux termi today!! bolter pro + terminator pro + last stand pro is so OP!!1!
40K fluff aside, here are some actual and awesome news:
"All of the following multiplayer details are yet to be confirmed, but during our hands-on time the planned multiplayer will consist of 8 versus 8, Chaos Space Marines pitted against those loyal to the undying Emperor. Multiplayer will feature an XP progression, unlocking new items as your fully customisable Space Marine levels up. There will also be a Cleanse mode, co-op for up to a squad of five marines taking on wave after wave of enemies."
I didn't even expect multiplayer beyond co-op and now we get it anyway
I wonder if cleanse mode was inspired more by the current trend for Horde style gameplay modes, or their own success with Last Stand.
Probably both. But a Last Stand style fight featuring Space Marines fighting to the last against an unceasing horde of horrors is fairly fitting with the whole setting.
"XP Progression" systems and "Unlocks" have never appealed to me in multiplayer games though, and it sucks that everyone does them now. I felt Relic actually got it right with DoW2, all the unlocks were just cosmetic.
Same I just read through the inquisition war trilogy, which gave me a really good grasp of how the background has evolved into its current state from what it was in the first place. Despite the whole thing being a conglomerate of several other scifi/fantasy universes it has managed to become its own unique universe with a very deep background.
Back before they became the regressive religious nuts we all know and love today, the humans in 40K basically lived in a Utopia of technological marvels. They commanded armies of machines and had access to incredible technology. Then the Age of Strife happened and they lost most of it, but before then they were basically the pinnacle of power in the galaxy.
Here are the details:
In the cryptic account of the history of Mankind given by Cripias, one of the Keepers of the Library Sanctus of Terra, the Iron Men or Men of Iron were legendary, artificially intelligent humanoid machines created by humans during the Dark Age of Technology. Until shortly before the Age of Strife, the Men of Iron were loyal only to Mankind, and served as humanity's army in the period when much of human space was united by a federation-type government that existed before the Imperium of Man. The Men of Iron were developed after the similar artificially intelligent constructs remembered only as the Men of Stone, but before the "modern" conception of robots in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Eventually, the Men of Iron turned on their human masters, believing themselves superior to the humans who relied on the Men of Iron to do virtually everything for them. In the end, the Men of Iron were destroyed by humanity in a terrible war that extinguished countless lives and destroyed the ancient galaxy's economic and political unity. The people of that time swore to never again create advanced artificial intelligences, a prohibition which has survived unto the present, far darker age.
Here's a little fun fact the "men of stone" were humans not machines. Most of the humans in the Imperium would be men of stone. In the dark age of technolgy the humans started fiddling a little with their genes this resulted in the golden men (a upper caste), the navigators and the stone men (a worker caste/colonists). The stone men are meant to be less fragile than the gold men, tougher than current day man and are better suited to adapting to harsh environments of the worlds colonisted by early man. Obviously they are still just men, and don't hold a candle to space marines and such.
I also don't buy the 'Emperor dies, warp travel goes bust' theory. I've had it pitched to me before.
Emperor dies, warp travel gets hugely more dangerous, unpredictable and short ranged. Small scale multi star system empires could hold together, but keeping the entire imperium together would be impossible.
Before the emperor was serving as the astronomicon, the warp was much more stable since Slaanesh wasn't fully 'emerged' yet and the powers of chaos were far more dormant due to the low numbers of psychers at the time. It's why mankind could have it's golden age without all the aliens and robots just turning into demons all the time.
A new army race waiting in the wings I always thought. Would the Empire of today be able to hold off an attack from a discovered pocket of surviving Men Of Iron?
Given how the current machine spirits of titans and knights are apparently the uploaded minds of wolves and bears (and then possibly copied), according to the older Epic background - I've always pegged the Iron men as being uploaded humans rather than true AIs, cobbled together from some reverse engineered necron tech recovered from the Noctis Labyrinthus.
Given we're talking about the time period where humanity was just starting to understand the warp and now had members who could see into, and the fact that necronisation or consumption by a C'tan strips away the soul - on top of all the normal human shit that would occur when you've got an immortal class of people - I think the War with the Iron men has the potential to be a lot more complicated than Shynet or *shudder* Dune prequals.*shudder*.
If anything, machine spirits being upload based would imply more that Men of Iron are AIs. I mean, they've got a prohibition against AI but not uploads (presumably, if we assume machine spirits are uploads). They wouldn't fight a rebellion against a bunch of uploaded people then say, "glad that's over. Now lets ban AI instead of the guys who turned on us."
Regarding the timeline, this is also the time period where psykers became a hundredfold more common, warp storms crossed immaterium, and the veil between realspace and the warp was getting strained. There's widespread insanity and daemonic possession in the populace, coupled with a break in the supply chains for parts and skilled labor which could be used to repair/troubleshoot malfunctioning Men of Iron. Additionally, the only intact Men of Iron STC ever found was chaos corrupted. All these put together seem to hint pretty hard that the warp infected them and gave them a little nudge towards 'kill all humans'.
They just didn't have enough purity seals attached to their circuits.
Okay, I'm glad we'll be able to customize the marines in multiplayer. I'm not actually disapointed in Chaos vs Marines, since it's really the only thing that's fair and makes sense.
I always thought that Eisenhorn was the thing that started off Inquisitor. That it was pretty much the first bit of fluff for that part of the lore.
And it may not have gotten as much attention in WD and stuff, but they still put out a truckload of extra articles on the specialist games site before it died. And it still has a pretty decent following.
They asked Abnett to write Eisenhorn because they were going to release Inquisitor and wanted to get some enthusiasm for it.
A new army race waiting in the wings I always thought. Would the Empire of today be able to hold off an attack from a discovered pocket of surviving Men Of Iron?
Given how the current machine spirits of titans and knights are apparently the uploaded minds of wolves and bears (and then possibly copied), according to the older Epic background - I've always pegged the Iron men as being uploaded humans rather than true AIs, cobbled together from some reverse engineered necron tech recovered from the Noctis Labyrinthus.
Given we're talking about the time period where humanity was just starting to understand the warp and now had members who could see into, and the fact that necronisation or consumption by a C'tan strips away the soul - on top of all the normal human shit that would occur when you've got an immortal class of people - I think the War with the Iron men has the potential to be a lot more complicated than Shynet or *shudder* Dune prequals.*shudder*.
If anything, machine spirits being upload based would imply more that Men of Iron are AIs. I mean, they've got a prohibition against AI but not uploads (presumably, if we assume machine spirits are uploads). They wouldn't fight a rebellion against a bunch of uploaded people then say, "glad that's over. Now lets ban AI instead of the guys who turned on us."
Regarding the timeline, this is also the time period where psykers became a hundredfold more common, warp storms crossed immaterium, and the veil between realspace and the warp was getting strained. There's widespread insanity and daemonic possession in the populace, coupled with a break in the supply chains for parts and skilled labor which could be used to repair/troubleshoot malfunctioning Men of Iron. Additionally, the only intact Men of Iron STC ever found was chaos corrupted. All these put together seem to hint pretty hard that the warp infected them and gave them a little nudge towards 'kill all humans'.
They just didn't have enough purity seals attached to their circuits.
They probably just copy the titan minds, and there's a difference between uploading an animal and a person. But still, it's just me making stuff up anyway - in reality it's just another nod to Dune and an excuse to avoid robots and robotics in favour of flesh and blood.
During the Dark Age of Technology, when humans were at their finest and had robots and whatnot, the Eldar were at their finest. The fall of the Eldar initiated the Age of Strife. 40k lore sells the Eldar to us as a specially designed master race who, at the height of their power, were a species with no rival. So my confusion arises from the fact that there was an age were we shared the Milky Way with the Elder who, at that stage, were in their prime and looked down at every other species as inferior (because in almost all aspects, they were). And we held them at bay? with...robots?
That's a slight lore malfunction there. You know, given how the Elder were designed to fight the biggest baddest robots in town: the Necrons.
Edit: Some quotes from the Lexicanum.
Once, ten thousand years ago, the Eldar were among the most powerful and dominant race of the galaxy, dominating a significant portion of the galaxy and secure in their prosperity. Although there were other races of advanced technology and military power, none were in a position to seriously threaten the state of the Eldar nation.
The Fall of the Eldar occurred over ten thousand years ago and ended the Eldar supremacy inside of the Milky Way galaxy. They were at the height of their empire and held sway over the vast majority of the galaxy.
The Fall of the Eldar did not have anything to do with the age of strife, just, what
Age of strife occurred largely due to warp storms cutting planets off from each other, and was ended with the birth of Slaanesh and the creation of the Eye of Terror. Makes sense to me if the decadence of the Eldar (i.e the Fall and not the Hitting the Ground) caused the increase in warp storms.
I also don't buy the 'Emperor dies, warp travel goes bust' theory. I've had it pitched to me before.
Emperor dies, warp travel gets hugely more dangerous, unpredictable and short ranged. Small scale multi star system empires could hold together, but keeping the entire imperium together would be impossible.
Before the emperor was serving as the astronomicon, the warp was much more stable since Slaanesh wasn't fully 'emerged' yet and the powers of chaos were far more dormant due to the low numbers of psychers at the time. It's why mankind could have it's golden age without all the aliens and robots just turning into demons all the time.
...they'll find a substitute for the Emperor in terms of being a beacon, like I said: daisy-chain some psykers or whatever. Bam. Problem solved.
Age of strife occurred largely due to warp storms cutting planets off from each other, and was ended with the birth of Slaanesh and the creation of the Eye of Terror. Makes sense to me if the decadence of the Eldar (i.e the Fall and not the Hitting the Ground) caused the increase in warp storms.
the fall of the eldar is literally when slaanesh was born, though
Age of strife occurred largely due to warp storms cutting planets off from each other, and was ended with the birth of Slaanesh and the creation of the Eye of Terror. Makes sense to me if the decadence of the Eldar (i.e the Fall and not the Hitting the Ground) caused the increase in warp storms.
the fall of the eldar is literally when slaanesh was born, though
The 'starting to lose balance and wobble a bit' of the Eldar was the likely cause of the troubles and the actual fall ended them then, will that please you? Is it really worth protesting the semantics here?
I also don't buy the 'Emperor dies, warp travel goes bust' theory. I've had it pitched to me before.
Emperor dies, warp travel gets hugely more dangerous, unpredictable and short ranged. Small scale multi star system empires could hold together, but keeping the entire imperium together would be impossible.
Before the emperor was serving as the astronomicon, the warp was much more stable since Slaanesh wasn't fully 'emerged' yet and the powers of chaos were far more dormant due to the low numbers of psychers at the time. It's why mankind could have it's golden age without all the aliens and robots just turning into demons all the time.
...they'll find a substitute for the Emperor in terms of being a beacon, like I said: daisy-chain some psykers or whatever. Bam. Problem solved.
They're literally sacrificing a thousand Psykers a day already to feed the Emperor's power. I wonder how many more psykers they'd need to kill daily to create a gestalt psychic beacon themselves if the focal point got lost.
I also don't buy the 'Emperor dies, warp travel goes bust' theory. I've had it pitched to me before.
Emperor dies, warp travel gets hugely more dangerous, unpredictable and short ranged. Small scale multi star system empires could hold together, but keeping the entire imperium together would be impossible.
Before the emperor was serving as the astronomicon, the warp was much more stable since Slaanesh wasn't fully 'emerged' yet and the powers of chaos were far more dormant due to the low numbers of psychers at the time. It's why mankind could have it's golden age without all the aliens and robots just turning into demons all the time.
...they'll find a substitute for the Emperor in terms of being a beacon, like I said: daisy-chain some psykers or whatever. Bam. Problem solved.
They're literally sacrificing a thousand Psykers a day already to feed the Emperor's power. I wonder how many more psykers they'd need to kill daily to create a gestalt psychic beacon themselves if the focal point got lost.
Ah, but maybe the thousand psykers a day are the entirety of the beacon and that long withered husk no longer has anything to do with things? Just a (heretical) thought.
That talk about human AI before got me wondering whether or not the Tau are on a similar road. They have AI, although very limited, but with their technology progressing all the damn time, you have to wonder if they're sort of an alien look at a pre-golden age human society.
That talk about human AI before got me wondering whether or not the Tau are on a similar road. They have AI, although very limited, but with their technology progressing all the damn time, you have to wonder if they're sort of an alien look at a pre-golden age human society.
Nah, the Eldar would never let their little science project run away from them.
Age of strife occurred largely due to warp storms cutting planets off from each other, and was ended with the birth of Slaanesh and the creation of the Eye of Terror. Makes sense to me if the decadence of the Eldar (i.e the Fall and not the Hitting the Ground) caused the increase in warp storms.
the fall of the eldar is literally when slaanesh was born, though
The 'starting to lose balance and wobble a bit' of the Eldar was the likely cause of the troubles and the actual fall ended them then, will that please you? Is it really worth protesting the semantics here?
Who the fuck is protesting what again? I mean 'The Fall' is a very specific event, and while there's a lot of things that might've caused the Age of Strife, Eldar hyper-orgies aren't exactly quoted all that often
He's talking about the Fall as though that would've caused the Age of Strife even though those events are separated by thousands of years, so let's not confuse the new people mmm'kay
Dude be calm. It's not worth an argument :P I'm loving this thread and my lurking in the CF 40K thread for nostalgia of a GW obsessed teenagehood, but people getting all worked up about things is one part of the Warhammer memory train I could live without!
Old Ones use the universe as their playground and science lab
The C'tan awaken and create the Necron
C'tan/Necron and Old Ones can't deal with eachother and fight it out
Old ones create Eldar and possibly Orks (and many others) to fight the C'tan, which in turn starts fucking the warp up.
The warp, once a calm place basically becomes hell and daemons manifest within. Chaos gods born soon
The C'tan is winning the war and eating galaxies when these new daemons come spilling out of tears in reality itself and they cleanse the universe of almost all life including the Old Ones.
The C'tan who just wants to eat finds no more food to consume so they go to sleep for 60 million years
The daemons for one reason or another stop shitting all over the place and the universe starts to heal
The remnants of the old ones species begin to thrive again
Eldar becomes the dominant force in the galaxy
The stuff with humans happens
Eldar society goes nuts
The galaxy gets less and less stable as the actions of the Eldar destabilizes everything
Slaanesh manifests as a result and eats most Eldar souls. Countless billions of Eldar snuffed out in one cataclysmic event
Eldar civilization comes to an end and the rest of the galaxy is thrown into complete turmoil
The now massive ancient human empires crumble because they can't warp travel anymore because the warp is a mess since Slaanesh was born
The Emperor reveals himself and unites mankind
Mankind prospers and becomes the superpower of the galaxy
The Emperor and his supersoldiers fuck everyone up and even pushes the innumerable orks to their brink
Horus develops daddy issues and starts listening to the whispers of the Chaos Gods
The Imperium of Man is thrown into civil war and the chaos gods get their champion in Horus
The legions of Space Marines is split in half between Chaos and Loyalists
Emperor gets mortally wounded as he destroys Horus and ends the civil war during the siege on Terra
Remnants of Chaos forces retreat to the Eye of Terror
The Emperor is put on the Golden Throne with it as life support
Mankind regresses into the mess we know as 40K
They weren't doing that in the Horus Heresy books though were they? Think we're at the point where they've no idea what they are doing any more, but don't want to risk the end of the species to find out.
That talk about human AI before got me wondering whether or not the Tau are on a similar road. They have AI, although very limited, but with their technology progressing all the damn time, you have to wonder if they're sort of an alien look at a pre-golden age human society.
Nah, the Eldar would never let their little science project run away from them.
I'd say this gives evidence of a Tau/Eldar alliance more prominent but then I'd be run over by all the grimdark fans saying that I'm too carebear for this shit and that I need to be fucked over by daemons.
Almost right - warp storms are occuring as the Eldar civilisation collapses, and the birth of Slaanesh blows them all away (or sucks them into the Eye) setting the path in motion for the Great Crusade to leave Terra and reunite humanity now the warp storms are gone. The collapse of the Eldar civilisation pretty much drags all the other interplanetary civilisations with it (explaining why only humans and orks are really present during the age of the Imperium in any real numbers). The Ad Mech periodically sent ships out during brief lulls in the warp storms, founding the knight worlds, but weren't really an empire.
I also don't buy the 'Emperor dies, warp travel goes bust' theory. I've had it pitched to me before.
Emperor dies, warp travel gets hugely more dangerous, unpredictable and short ranged. Small scale multi star system empires could hold together, but keeping the entire imperium together would be impossible.
Before the emperor was serving as the astronomicon, the warp was much more stable since Slaanesh wasn't fully 'emerged' yet and the powers of chaos were far more dormant due to the low numbers of psychers at the time. It's why mankind could have it's golden age without all the aliens and robots just turning into demons all the time.
...they'll find a substitute for the Emperor in terms of being a beacon, like I said: daisy-chain some psykers or whatever. Bam. Problem solved.
They're literally sacrificing a thousand Psykers a day already to feed the Emperor's power. I wonder how many more psykers they'd need to kill daily to create a gestalt psychic beacon themselves if the focal point got lost.
Ah, but maybe the thousand psykers a day are the entirety of the beacon and that long withered husk no longer has anything to do with things? Just a (heretical) thought.
The Emperor maintains strict control over the development of humanity and contributes directly to its survival by utilising his powers. He plays a vital role in space travel within the Imperium; in order to steer a craft over great distances, a human navigator uses a mental homing signal, a sort of psychic beacon to guide him through warp space. To provide a mental signal throughout human controlled space would not be possible to any ordinary psyker. However, the Emperor is no ordinary psyker - his powers go beyond those of mortals. Even so, the strain of transmitting a continuous signal would prove far too strenuous, and he merely concentrates his powers on directing a signal created by others.
These are the imperial servants known as the Adeptus Astronomica, psykers whose bodies and souls are leeched of energy. This energy is projected by the mind of the Emperor in the form of the psychic beacon known as the Astronomican. The sheer quantity of mental energy is vast, and only the mind of the Emperor is sufficient to handle so much raw power. The fate of the Adeptus Astronomica is a sad one, for their efforts soon reduce them to empty husks of bone and dry flesh. Many die every day. They are not the only psykers who are asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, for the Emperor cannot eat as men eat, or drink fluids or breathe air. His life has passed beyond a point where such things can sustain him. For the Emperor the only viable sustenance is human life-force - soul - and he has a great and insatiable appetite. Nor will just any human suffice for this purpose, for the soul-donor must be a very special person in their own right, someone with psychic powers.
The Inquisition scours the Imperium in a tireless search for emergent psykers, individuals too vulnerable to be left alone. Some of these men and women will be recruited into the Adeptus Terra (especially the Adeptus Astronomica and Adeptus Astra Telepathica) but many more will serve their Emperor in a more gruesome way. Given up to the weird machinery that surrounds the Master of Mankind, their souls will be graduary leeched from their bodies to feed the Emperor's spirit.
Hundreds must die in this way every day if the Emperor, the Imperium and humanity are to survive.
Basically, there are a handful of (living) cells left of the Emperor that bind him to the Golden Throne. He isn't dead, but not really alive, either. Thus, he is The Carrion Lord of the Imperium. He uses his amassed power to take the psykers that act as a beacon on each plant to be a brighter beacon, which has the same effect as keeping a balloon connected to a helium cannister; eventually the balloon's eyes will explode and brain will leak out its ears as its soul sputters and fizzles out in the warp.
These beacon make up the Astronomican, which is essentially a super-highway that exists in the warp; if you ever get off of the highway, you'll wind up several lightyears from where you started, and possibly forward or backward in time.
Old Ones use the universe as their playground and science lab
The C'tan awaken and create the Necron
C'tan/Necron and Old Ones can't deal with eachother and fight it out
Old ones create Eldar and possibly Orks (and many others) to fight the C'tan, which in turn starts fucking the warp up.
The warp, once a calm place basically becomes hell and daemons manifest within. Chaos gods born soon
The C'tan is winning the war and eating galaxies when these new daemons come spilling out of tears in reality itself and they cleanse the universe of almost all life including the Old Ones.
The C'tan who just wants to eat finds no more food to consume so they go to sleep for 60 million years
The daemons for one reason or another stop shitting all over the place and the universe starts to heal
The remnants of the old ones species begin to thrive again
Eldar becomes the dominant force in the galaxy
The stuff with humans happens
Eldar society goes nuts
The galaxy gets less and less stable as the actions of the Eldar destabilizes everything
Slaanesh manifests as a result and eats most Eldar souls. Countless billions of Eldar snuffed out in one cataclysmic event
Eldar civilization comes to an end and the rest of the galaxy is thrown into complete turmoil
The now massive ancient human empires crumble because they can't warp travel anymore because the warp is a mess since Slaanesh was born
The Emperor reveals himself and unites mankind
Mankind prospers and becomes the superpower of the galaxy
The Emperor and his supersoldiers fuck everyone up and even pushes the innumerable orks to their brink
Horus develops daddy issues and starts listening to the whispers of the Chaos Gods
The Imperium of Man is thrown into civil war and the chaos gods get their champion in Horus
The legions of Space Marines is split in half between Chaos and Loyalists
Emperor gets mortally wounded as he destroys Horus and ends the civil war during the siege on Terra
Remnants of Chaos forces retreat to the Eye of Terror
The Emperor is put on the Golden Throne with it as life support
Mankind regresses into the mess we know as 40K
did I miss something
Um. A few...minor...quibbles, none worth starting an argument about. I'd give your breakdown a 61% ;-)
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while having their AI legions beating back orks and eldar and anything else that comes along the way.
...what?
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Today the enemy is at our door! We know our duty and we will do it! We fight for our honor as Blud Rehvens, as SPEHSS MUHREENS and we fight in the name of the EMPRAH!
Humanity used to use robots to do all the mundane stuff for them.
Then the Iron Men rebellion happened.
They don't use AIs anymore. At all.
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No no, I know that. But I thought up until the fall of the Eldar (birth of Slaanesh, creation of the Eye of Terror) the Eldar were firmly in control of the Milky Way. As in: dominant species deluxe, height of their power, full control of their technology, large population, etc. So the thought of human robots beating the incredibly ancient god race back strikes me as...silly.
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Back before they became the regressive religious nuts we all know and love today, the humans in 40K basically lived in a Utopia of technological marvels. They commanded armies of machines and had access to incredible technology. Then the Age of Strife happened and they lost most of it, but before then they were basically the pinnacle of power in the galaxy.
Here are the details:
And here are the details on why humanity went from Utopia to shit:
Then the Emperor happened and he united mankind again but then Horus happened and things went to shit again
During the Dark Age of Technology, when humans were at their finest and had robots and whatnot, the Eldar were at their finest. The fall of the Eldar initiated the Age of Strife. 40k lore sells the Eldar to us as a specially designed master race who, at the height of their power, were a species with no rival. So my confusion arises from the fact that there was an age were we shared the Milky Way with the Elder who, at that stage, were in their prime and looked down at every other species as inferior (because in almost all aspects, they were). And we held them at bay? with...robots?
That's a slight lore malfunction there. You know, given how the Elder were designed to fight the biggest baddest robots in town: the Necrons.
Edit: Some quotes from the Lexicanum.
Once, ten thousand years ago, the Eldar were among the most powerful and dominant race of the galaxy, dominating a significant portion of the galaxy and secure in their prosperity. Although there were other races of advanced technology and military power, none were in a position to seriously threaten the state of the Eldar nation.
The Fall of the Eldar occurred over ten thousand years ago and ended the Eldar supremacy inside of the Milky Way galaxy. They were at the height of their empire and held sway over the vast majority of the galaxy.
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One of the Horus Heresy books tackles this one. The Golden Throne WAS meant to be the Terra anchor for a webway entrance, but when Magnus busted in and was like "DAD. GUESS WHA-ooo....whoops....sorry" he fried a lot of the components that could never be reproduced or replaced. Actually Magnus was supposed to sit on the throne, not ol' Empereur.
One of the rumors that's been floating around is that GW will advance the 40k plot when the Horus Heresy series is complete. There was talk of finally having the emperor's corporeal form fail and his soul be reborn as a full-fledged warp god. I know the rumors are totally unsubstantiated, unverifiable, and most likely troll bait.... I want to believe.
And shortly thereafter Eldar civilization turned into the clusterfuck which spawned the new chaos god.
Aaahhhh. Now that makes sense. Before they went apeshit they had respect for life and some common sense. Good good.
I love 40k lore discussions. I am such a nerd.
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(i love 40k lore)
I didn't even expect multiplayer beyond co-op and now we get it anyway
Given how the current machine spirits of titans and knights are apparently the uploaded minds of wolves and bears (and then possibly copied), according to the older Epic background - I've always pegged the Iron men as being uploaded humans rather than true AIs, cobbled together from some reverse engineered necron tech recovered from the Noctis Labyrinthus.
Given we're talking about the time period where humanity was just starting to understand the warp and now had members who could see into, and the fact that necronisation or consumption by a C'tan strips away the soul - on top of all the normal human shit that would occur when you've got an immortal class of people - I think the War with the Iron men has the potential to be a lot more complicated than Shynet or *shudder* Dune prequals.*shudder*.
So yeah, I reckon that'll be necrons in the new book and we'll see people getting turned into warriors again.
[edit]That co-op sounds good. Particularly the cleanse, though 8 vs 8 during a cleanse would be awesome too.
I guess it would have to be if you got 5 space marines tearing things up
Oh man. I can hear the bitching now:
lol i unlockd crux termi today!! bolter pro + terminator pro + last stand pro is so OP!!1!
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I wonder if cleanse mode was inspired more by the current trend for Horde style gameplay modes, or their own success with Last Stand.
Probably both. But a Last Stand style fight featuring Space Marines fighting to the last against an unceasing horde of horrors is fairly fitting with the whole setting.
"XP Progression" systems and "Unlocks" have never appealed to me in multiplayer games though, and it sucks that everyone does them now. I felt Relic actually got it right with DoW2, all the unlocks were just cosmetic.
Same I just read through the inquisition war trilogy, which gave me a really good grasp of how the background has evolved into its current state from what it was in the first place. Despite the whole thing being a conglomerate of several other scifi/fantasy universes it has managed to become its own unique universe with a very deep background.
Here's a little fun fact the "men of stone" were humans not machines. Most of the humans in the Imperium would be men of stone. In the dark age of technolgy the humans started fiddling a little with their genes this resulted in the golden men (a upper caste), the navigators and the stone men (a worker caste/colonists). The stone men are meant to be less fragile than the gold men, tougher than current day man and are better suited to adapting to harsh environments of the worlds colonisted by early man. Obviously they are still just men, and don't hold a candle to space marines and such.
Emperor dies, warp travel gets hugely more dangerous, unpredictable and short ranged. Small scale multi star system empires could hold together, but keeping the entire imperium together would be impossible.
Before the emperor was serving as the astronomicon, the warp was much more stable since Slaanesh wasn't fully 'emerged' yet and the powers of chaos were far more dormant due to the low numbers of psychers at the time. It's why mankind could have it's golden age without all the aliens and robots just turning into demons all the time.
If anything, machine spirits being upload based would imply more that Men of Iron are AIs. I mean, they've got a prohibition against AI but not uploads (presumably, if we assume machine spirits are uploads). They wouldn't fight a rebellion against a bunch of uploaded people then say, "glad that's over. Now lets ban AI instead of the guys who turned on us."
Regarding the timeline, this is also the time period where psykers became a hundredfold more common, warp storms crossed immaterium, and the veil between realspace and the warp was getting strained. There's widespread insanity and daemonic possession in the populace, coupled with a break in the supply chains for parts and skilled labor which could be used to repair/troubleshoot malfunctioning Men of Iron. Additionally, the only intact Men of Iron STC ever found was chaos corrupted. All these put together seem to hint pretty hard that the warp infected them and gave them a little nudge towards 'kill all humans'.
They just didn't have enough purity seals attached to their circuits.
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They asked Abnett to write Eisenhorn because they were going to release Inquisitor and wanted to get some enthusiasm for it.
They probably just copy the titan minds, and there's a difference between uploading an animal and a person. But still, it's just me making stuff up anyway - in reality it's just another nod to Dune and an excuse to avoid robots and robotics in favour of flesh and blood.
The Fall of the Eldar did not have anything to do with the age of strife, just, what
...they'll find a substitute for the Emperor in terms of being a beacon, like I said: daisy-chain some psykers or whatever. Bam. Problem solved.
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the fall of the eldar is literally when slaanesh was born, though
The 'starting to lose balance and wobble a bit' of the Eldar was the likely cause of the troubles and the actual fall ended them then, will that please you? Is it really worth protesting the semantics here?
They're literally sacrificing a thousand Psykers a day already to feed the Emperor's power. I wonder how many more psykers they'd need to kill daily to create a gestalt psychic beacon themselves if the focal point got lost.
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Ah, but maybe the thousand psykers a day are the entirety of the beacon and that long withered husk no longer has anything to do with things? Just a (heretical) thought.
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Nah, the Eldar would never let their little science project run away from them.
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Who the fuck is protesting what again? I mean 'The Fall' is a very specific event, and while there's a lot of things that might've caused the Age of Strife, Eldar hyper-orgies aren't exactly quoted all that often
He's talking about the Fall as though that would've caused the Age of Strife even though those events are separated by thousands of years, so let's not confuse the new people mmm'kay
History of 40K:
Old Ones use the universe as their playground and science lab The C'tan awaken and create the Necron C'tan/Necron and Old Ones can't deal with eachother and fight it out Old ones create Eldar and possibly Orks (and many others) to fight the C'tan, which in turn starts fucking the warp up. The warp, once a calm place basically becomes hell and daemons manifest within. Chaos gods born soon The C'tan is winning the war and eating galaxies when these new daemons come spilling out of tears in reality itself and they cleanse the universe of almost all life including the Old Ones. The C'tan who just wants to eat finds no more food to consume so they go to sleep for 60 million years The daemons for one reason or another stop shitting all over the place and the universe starts to heal The remnants of the old ones species begin to thrive again Eldar becomes the dominant force in the galaxy The stuff with humans happens Eldar society goes nuts The galaxy gets less and less stable as the actions of the Eldar destabilizes everything Slaanesh manifests as a result and eats most Eldar souls. Countless billions of Eldar snuffed out in one cataclysmic event Eldar civilization comes to an end and the rest of the galaxy is thrown into complete turmoil The now massive ancient human empires crumble because they can't warp travel anymore because the warp is a mess since Slaanesh was born The Emperor reveals himself and unites mankind Mankind prospers and becomes the superpower of the galaxy The Emperor and his supersoldiers fuck everyone up and even pushes the innumerable orks to their brink Horus develops daddy issues and starts listening to the whispers of the Chaos Gods The Imperium of Man is thrown into civil war and the chaos gods get their champion in Horus The legions of Space Marines is split in half between Chaos and Loyalists Emperor gets mortally wounded as he destroys Horus and ends the civil war during the siege on Terra Remnants of Chaos forces retreat to the Eye of Terror The Emperor is put on the Golden Throne with it as life support Mankind regresses into the mess we know as 40K
did I miss something
I'd say this gives evidence of a Tau/Eldar alliance more prominent but then I'd be run over by all the grimdark fans saying that I'm too carebear for this shit and that I need to be fucked over by daemons.
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Almost right - warp storms are occuring as the Eldar civilisation collapses, and the birth of Slaanesh blows them all away (or sucks them into the Eye) setting the path in motion for the Great Crusade to leave Terra and reunite humanity now the warp storms are gone. The collapse of the Eldar civilisation pretty much drags all the other interplanetary civilisations with it (explaining why only humans and orks are really present during the age of the Imperium in any real numbers). The Ad Mech periodically sent ships out during brief lulls in the warp storms, founding the knight worlds, but weren't really an empire.
Basically, there are a handful of (living) cells left of the Emperor that bind him to the Golden Throne. He isn't dead, but not really alive, either. Thus, he is The Carrion Lord of the Imperium. He uses his amassed power to take the psykers that act as a beacon on each plant to be a brighter beacon, which has the same effect as keeping a balloon connected to a helium cannister; eventually the balloon's eyes will explode and brain will leak out its ears as its soul sputters and fizzles out in the warp.
These beacon make up the Astronomican, which is essentially a super-highway that exists in the warp; if you ever get off of the highway, you'll wind up several lightyears from where you started, and possibly forward or backward in time.
Um. A few...minor...quibbles, none worth starting an argument about. I'd give your breakdown a 61% ;-)
Check this out for kicks: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Old_Ones
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