legio mortis wrote:I've found another synopsis of the background, and it doesn't seem so doom n' gloom after all.
Comments following:
Robert Frazer from Relicnews Forums wrote:Thanks to indulgent staff at my local Hobby Centre judiciously accepting that I was only planning out my new army's background in advance of the release (which is true... just the whole truth...), I had the opportunity to spend some time with the new rulebook this afternoon and naturally roved over the background section.
Everyone who's filling sandbags, stockpiling tins of Spam and bombing up magazines in preparation for the coming cataclysm that's going to sweep over and smash through the bleaguered Imperium like the Mongol hordes over Asia - stand down from action stations. The actuality isn't nearly as bad as the distilled alarmism being ground by the rumour mill is making out.
I wasn't worried about this at all.
Most of the new fluff introduced into the rulebook isn't related to the fall of the Imperium at all, but rather her rise. One of the problems with Warhammer 40,000's background is that, while deep, it's nonetheless still quite patchy and sporadic - ten thousand years is an awful lot of time to fill, and you could dump a hundred swimming pools of dye off the coast and you wouldn't colour the whole ocean. Previously we had the Horus Heresy, followed by a yawing gulf of utter impregnable inscrutability, then the Age of Apostasy, then another few vague millenia of "heer bei dragunz", then the Macharian Crusade and the Fourth Quadrant Rebellion at the beginning of .M41, then another deep dark puddle of unknown centuries until we reach Hive Fleet Behemoth and the Sabbat Worlds and Damocles Crusades and some semblance of a continuous timeline... and even then nine-tenths of the galaxy's events are crammed into the last two decades . While the brush is still painted quite broadly - by necessity, as the background remains only one section of a larger book - much is dedicated to colouring in the white, blank, empty space in the Imperium's history with the lashings of black, grimy, streaking mucky suffering that we cherish so much.
Which would be welcome, actually. I'd just about given up on the potential for any real creativity from them.
The peril of the "Time of Ending" can also be exaggerated. The tagline of Warhammer 40,00 has been from its earliest days "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war", and this particular epoch has been conceived in order to hold true to that, emphasising by means of a spicing of disaster and desperation how Mankind is beset on all sides - I doubt that it's a coincidence that the timeline of the "Time of Ending" included in the background section opens in 744.M41, one year before the First Tyrannic War and the aforementioned opening of the continuous history of the modern Imperium; the "Time of Ending" is very much just the here and the now, as it's always been in all past editions. The struggle is just beginning, and the Imperium isn't yet in unarrestable decline; the game is in no danger of falling into an endgame scenario. The announcement of damage to the Golden Throne mentioned in previous posts is there, but it's not a great tempestuous and dramatic declaration that throws everything into alarm and confusion. It's given the barest minimum of focus - buried as a brief passing note in the timeline and not so much as mentioned anywhere else. It's plain to see that Games Workshop is leaving a plot hook to hang an expansion from if need be, but it has no bearing on the galaxy as it stands today. It remains business as usual.
Again, this doesn't seem surprising.
Each race has its own two-page section explaining their general theme and motivation, accompanied by a further two or three pages describing a short campaign which demonstrates their racial character and way of war but is entirely self-contained and has no bearing on the wider balance of power.
Hopefully it will contain some new interesting tidbits rather than rehashing old stuff. I was rather disappointed in the minimal fluff in 4th edition.
-For nine centuries over .M34, Segmentum Pacificus was independent from the wider Imperium and took policy from the Ur-Council of Nova Terra, which existed in opposition to the Adeptus Ministorum. This time of two empires is known as the "Nova Terra Interregnum".
Now this would be interesting to look at, especially how it occured and how they managed to retain autonomy for so long, since a Segmentum is not exactly a "minor" sector, and the Imperium's decentralized nature should help to prevent such things from happening.
It will also be interesting to see how the Imperium ended this without devastating the entire Segmentum.
-With reference to the decline of the Imperium in the "Time of Ending", it is said that more worlds are being given over to the direct control of the Space Marines for the sake of stability, but no explanation of this situation or further information is provided.
Which as I noted makes sense, and is merely the Imperium delegating more authority to its component parts - a logical course given what is happening with the Astronomican. I imagine this isn't much worse than allocating Warmasters or such, or the sector level commands taking charge of things as a locla crisis erupts or grows. And giving it to Space Marines is probably sensible because they're far more fanatical and loyal (and harder to corrupt) than a normal human is (but, not incorruptible - this leaves there potential for some dangerous new twists on the CSM front.)
-Space is rife with the vicious and the selfish, and minor alien races are no different in their bellicose temperaments: Despite their aspirations to harmony, the Tau Empire has to fight to subdue a vassal race more often than not.
We've known this for awhile now. We know that the tau even Exterminatus worlds that prove troublesome (stated flat out in the Codex.) And even their "harmonious" conquests tend to involve some degrree of subertfuge or manipulation via trade and diplomacy.
-There's an interesting revision of the quality of the Necron consciousness. Apparently Necrons first emerge from the conversion process entirely sentient and self-aware - repeated phasing-out and rebuilding gradually corrupts and degrades their memory engrams until they're left as mindless automatons. Necron Lords benefit from advanced phase-streams and reconstruction suites which avoid this problem.
Make sense. It also helps explain some of the inconsistencies in Necron behaviour (why some seem more oblivious/machine like than others.)
-Necron Lords also benefit from a great deal of autonomy - a lot of the raids Necrons have been launching are not actually in the direct service of the C'tan at all, but Lords literally venting their spleen and working out their boundless rage against the offensive nature of life and existence by means of punitive slaughter.
This is something that has been hinted at in Apocalypse when they outlined the command and operational structure of Necron forces/tomb worlds (which also hinted at varying "levels" of Necron Lords.) What IS new and still interesting is that not all active Necrons are under C'tan control. It will be interesting to see whether they will willingly submit to someone like hte Deceiver or Nightbringer or whether we might see renegade Necrons. I imagine the Necron Lords "venting spleen" are the higher elvel ones (gold or Platinum level, as outlined in Apocalypse.)
-Serenedipitously, a couple of new campaigns mentioned in the Imperial history section actually tie in to topics that have recently been discussed right here at Backstory and Fluff. The thread on weapons of mass destruction can be augmented by the rebellion of the Occlusiad: a faction of renegade tech-priests led by the prescient "Blind King", they held that all fleshkind was insulting to the Machine God and led a ten-year campaign of destruction from 550.M37; one of their tactics, using STC lore, was to drive stars to supernovae.
will be interesting to read, but I wouldn't neccesarily start touting the Imperium having star-busting weaponry yet, either, since we don't hear the circumstances or mechanism behind it. And this also assumes we can take "supernova" at face value, ,since that term (like black hole) can be frequently abused in sci fi.
For the thread on extra-galactic travel, the very thing is performed during the "Last Voyage of Admiral Usurs": Usurs is "cast down" by the High Lords for a reason the background doesn't specify; he's a powerful figure, and so rather than risk the sympathy revolts that might occur if he's executed, in 265.M33 Usurs and his flotilla are pointed beyond the galactic fringe and told not to come back. Usurs sends messages back for two decades reporting about new worlds discovered and conquered for the Imperium (although none are ever visited by the Imperium herself) before falling silent.
That has interesting implications for the ability of Imperial Naval ships to operate independently, (at least if they can find supplies and resources.. I doubt they lasted two decades on stuff they were carrying with them.)
-After the Age of Apostasy comes the Age of Redemption - long millenia where Makind expurgates its sins by the atonement of good works: constant labour to expand. One of the reasons why the Imperium is in relatively poor shape nowadays is not necessarily a relentless dirge of doleful defeats, but by ironically being too successful - these protracted crusades inflicted considerable overstretch.
That wouldn't be surprising either, at least on the more "frontier" worlds. We've known long that the Imperium tends to have a fair bit of "wilderness space" even within its own demains that remains unexplored or uncolonized/conquered. This just merely means the Imperium is far more spread out than it needs to be.
-There are three new and separate Hive Fleets entering the galaxy: Hydra from the south, and Moloch & Jormungadr from the north-east. A map also includes Hive Fleet Colossus, but if you refer to your Codex Tyranids you'll understand that this is its own separate issue (the retconning of the Zoats out of the fluff) and not part of the new wave portended by the aforementioned three.
Sounds like the Tyranids are gearing up to become a bigger threat once again. I wonder if the Imperium will actually start the recommended mobilization needed to fight them outlined in one of the Tyranid codexes (something like a 500% increase in military power in at least two segmentums) And there are sitll probably all manner of splinter fleets remaining as well..
) If so, then they're still useless beyond system-scale ranges (light hours/light days range at most.) Though even then some of those are at least partly warp based.