A few WH40K questions

[Lord Revan]

first would 2000-2999 be marked as 3M.000-3M.999 in the WH40K, with 1M.000-1M.999 meaning 0-999?

second how much would a relativly high ranking member of the imperium know about early Terran History?

third I assume it's possible for an imperial system/sector to have little to no involment in war beyond the compulsory duties of producing troops and material for extended periods?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

It is currently 013.M3

Very little. Not that much is even known about the Horus Heresy, to say nothing of the Age of Strife or Golden Age of Technology. Prior to that is practically pre-history.

The galaxy is a big place. It's certainly possible that a sector could go quite a long time without wars or even contact from the rest of the Imperium. This actually tends to breed wars, however, as locals get uppity and tend to start them of their own accord for various petty reasons (same as modern Earth, really). So it might be more accurate to say that a sector that doesn't have wars for a long time is a rare thing indeed, because the population must be saints.

[Connor MacLeod]

I suspect the vast majority of the Imperium at any given time is actually not embroiled in war. For one thing wars are expensive and the resources to prosecute them have to be procured from somewhere. But wars tend to also be disruptive of those things which make them possible, so you can't really have war everywhere.

What is probably the case is a combination of extensive propoganda, paranoia/xenophobia/etc., and the omnipresent threat of POSSIBLE attack from any source which contributes to that whole 'Galaxy full of war' atmosphere. The Imperium may not literally be UNDER attack in all cases, but they certianly act like they ARE, or could be at any minute.

But as Brother-Captain says, too much peace leads to internal strife, because war is also one of the major unifying elements of the Imperium (hard to be thinking sedition if you have an ork or tyranid trying to gnaw your ass off.) And the innate corruption and greed and general shortsightedness of the Imperium means that those peaceful places are also likely to be the least prepared for war... which is ironic when their relative vulnerability leads to them being attacked/invaded. Its sort of cyclical that way.

[Gunhead]

I doubt anyone would know a whole lot about the history of Terra unless he's stationed near enough for this to be somehow relevant and he has the time / access to right kind of information. Local history can be gathered and stored locally and considering it's usually is far more important to the local people of importance there's little impetus to go out of your way to study the history of other places. Of course you have you historians and the like who probably wander all over studying this type of stuff, but if we take your base average planetary governor, I doubt he has the time to do this.
The limiting factors would be the sheer amount of information and the difficulty of sending the information over distances. You can only get little soundbites from all over, which could give you a some kind of a general view of events but that's not the same as having accurate, verifiable data on something.
On top of that you can slap all the restrictions etc. they have in place regarding past events that could undermine the credibility of the IoM.

-Gunhead

[Kuja]

What is probably the case is a combination of extensive propoganda, paranoia/xenophobia/etc., and the omnipresent threat of POSSIBLE attack from any source which contributes to that whole 'Galaxy full of war' atmosphere. The Imperium may not literally be UNDER attack in all cases, but they certianly act like they ARE, or could be at any minute.

One thing to keep in mind is that, even by the standards of the setting, M41 really seems to exist just to say "fuck you, humanity"

For much of its history, the Imperium has traditionally had a handful of enemies:

-orks
-Chaos incursions
-the occasional slapfight with the eldar
-periodic bouts of internal upheaval (Vandire, the assassination of the High Lords, etc)

With what remains being the occasional spat with lesser races. However in M41 the Imperium's problems have suddenly ballooned into:

-Abaddon making two of his biggest plays in history (the Gothic War and the 13th Black Crusade)
-the greatest ork warlord seen probably since the days of Ullanor throwing waaaghs at Armaggeddon
-a gigantic swarm of bugs from the outer darkness attempting to much their way across the stars
-a massive army of terminators waking up from an aeon-long nap and punching things in the teeth
-a new alien empire taking slices out of the east end of the galaxy

So when we see the Imperium in M41, we're pretty much seeing them in their version of panic mode. Balls to the wall, fire ze missiles, they ARE out there and they ARE out to get you, game over man game over. There's so much coming through the door that they just can't handle it all. They're locked full-time into their equivalent of the SEVERE threat warning.

[Ahriman238]

Not only was so much history, technology and culture lost in the Age of Stife but what little they HAVE recovered has mostly been quietly buried by this or that organ of Imperial government. The AdMech are the prime offenders, but the Administratum, Ecclesiarchy, and Inquisition have all had a hand in suppressing history that might contradict the Imperial Creed, or simply be inconvenient.

So your "average" citizen may or may not know there was a time before the Imperium, and the proscription against robotics. A wealthy and well-educated citizen would know why they don't build robots, the early victories of the Emperor on Terra, and if he were unusually interested in early human history, that M3 was the period in which Man began the terraforming of Mars and spread across the solar system in "ohnyl (O'Neiil) cylinders." A really dedicated scholar of ancient Terra would recognize the names of Napoleon, Hitler, and Shakespeare, though he would know the Bard as author of only three plays.

[Sinewmire]

second how much would a relativly high ranking member of the imperium know about early Terran History?

I'd imagine that would depend on what sector of the Imperium you mean.

Your best bet would be a Lord Inquisitor's Savant, a man whose job it is to know absolutely shit-loads. He'd have decent clearance, as well as tools and time to delve into history.
Malcador the Sigillite was gathering Old Earth cultural artefacts inside the Imperial Palace with the intent to preserve man's history. I doubt we'll ever know what, if any, survived the Siege of Terra, but it's not impossible that a few may be intact.
He would probably know slightly less about modern earth than we know about, say, the city of Ur. He'd have some of the Heresy Era's surviving historical research. Lots of it was destroyed, deliberately and accentally, and more of it will have been filed with intent to hide by the Administratum, or misfiled by accident and lost.
I'd hazard an entirely unsupported guess that they'd know that earth was feral world of primitive kings and false religions, constantly warring amongst their small nation-states, utilizing nuclear power, at the mercy of weather and celestial phenomenon. That pretty much went on until spaceships happened. They'd be able to guess about the fauna and flora of earth from that which we took with us - dogs, hawks, cats, giant dinosaur lizards, that sort of thing.

Probably significantly less accurate than Futurama's moon theme park.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Even high-ranking officers would know bugger all. It's simply not necessary to understand ancient history of Terra when you are either being butt-raped by xenos/heretics/mutants or preparing to be butt-raped by xenos/mutants/heretics.

Incidentally, I have heard it said that the film Event Horizon[/i[ is considered to be set int he 40K universe, as is DOOM. Personally I think having DOOM in the 40K verse would be awesome, but that's just because I like smiting demons with plasma fire.

[Imperial Overlord]

Necromundia hasn't suffered war or invasion in a very long time, but sends soldiers and war material to every corner of the Imperium. The Calixus Sector has had a long stretch of piece, although it now has a war in one of its subsectors and is sending troops both to this war and the Imperial Crusade to take back the Jericho Sector. Much of the Imperium is not directly at war, but contributes fuel to the fire.

[Sinewmire]

Incidentally, I have heard it said that the film Event Horizon[/i[ is considered to be set int he 40K universe

Yeah, it might as well be labelled "First warp flight. memo: Invent Gellar Field"

Even high-ranking officers would know bugger all.

Yeah. Depends what you mean by "high ranking".

[Eternal_Freedom]

As I said, if you read the rest, even the highest ranking officers (the High Lords themselves), would know little. After all, they are concerned with there here and now, the immediate future, and the most recent history (perhaps the last few millennia). There is no need for them to be concernde with what is utterly ancient history. Moreso, I would think the Ecclisiarchy and the Inquisition would be worried about anyone paying too much attention to the distant past (It is called "The Dark Age of Technology," science is heretical, history might as well be). After all, why learn about how they did things back then when it clearly failed and The Emperor has shown us the One True Way?

It would be like a modern-day President or Prime Minister researching the Bronze Age. We woudl find it strange nowadays, the Inquisition would find it suspicious

[Cykeisme]

I'd basically agree with this:

I'd hazard an entirely unsupported guess that they'd know that earth was feral world of primitive kings and false religions, constantly warring amongst their small nation-states, utilizing nuclear power, at the mercy of weather and celestial phenomenon. That pretty much went on until spaceships happened. They'd be able to guess about the fauna and flora of earth from that which we took with us - dogs, hawks, cats, giant dinosaur lizards, that sort of thing.

Probably significantly less accurate than Futurama's moon theme park.

In the 41st millennium, even the events of M30, and what is now termed the "Unification War" in which the Emperor re-united Terra before embarking on the Great Crusade, is now considered partly shrouded in the mists of time.
I suppose this should come as no surprise, seeing as how it's been ten thousand years.

And even during M30 itself, tyrants held empires in regions with names like like Merica, Hy Brasil, Albyon and the Yndonesic Bloc; it seemed that the denizens of pre-Unification Terra had little to no knowledge of ancient history from the 28,000 years before them.

Thus, I'd say that by 40,000, even the best-informed historian only has scant information about our time, with a lot of erroneous assumptions thrown in.

Once again, like with so many other things, when it comes to ancient history, only the Emperor knows the truth.

[andrewgpaul]

One tenuous link with the present day in 40k is in the Imperial Fists' trophy room:

The 7th Legion had been formed on Terra as evidenced by its earliest battle honour 'Roma', now only discernable on a ceramite icon too precious even to be displayed in the Inner Reclusium.

Other than that, remember that 38,000 years is seven times as long as what Wikipedia calls recorded history (Invention of Writing claims 3200 BCE as the time writing was invented). It's about the same length of time as from the earliest cave paintings in southern Europe until now. I'm impressed they even remember Earth is the birthplace of humanity.

[Imperial Overlord]

Bits and pieces of history do survive. France and the French language, in some form or another, are referenced in Bequin. The Ahmad ibn Fadlan's account on spending time with the Rus is referenced several times in Prospero Burns. There are references to the Roman Empire that crop up occasionally and their are immortals other than the Emperor. Pieces at least of ancient history survive, even if they are mostly of concern to scholars.

[Eternal_Freedom]

What other Immortals are there?

[Kuja]

What other Immortals are there?

Hnnnnnnngggggghhhhhhh



God damn it why do you make me do this.

*chugs a shit load of bourbon*

WARNING SPOILERS FOR LATER HORUS HERESY BOOKS
Spoiler

So it turns out the immortal emperor isn't the only immortal mankind's ever produced in fact there's a few of them

that git Grammaticus from that atrocious Alpha Legion book is one of them

so is Ollianus Pius

yes that Pius

they even have a club name it's the Perpetuals. cute

anyway these fartknockers have all been kicking around since ancient times. Grammaticus keeps coming back to life whenever he buys it. Pius meanwhile is just an old as fuck soldier who did stuff like fight at Verdun and go on the quest with Jason and the Argonauts (no, yeah, seriously, he did) only now he's soooooo tired of fighting and goes by Ollianus Persson (get it Oll'person) only when the Word Bearers show up to kick the shit out of Calth Grammaticus gives him a psychic wake-up call and so steals a magic dagger to cut a hole in the air and vanish from the book planet presumably to show up and save the Emperor like he's supposed to

meanwhile Grammaticus is still an alien-fluffing asshole or something

but the real kicker is

i hope you're sittting down

Vulkan is a perpetual

Yeah, he got it from the Emperor

I am so not even joking you have no idea how far down this hole goes

Curze finds out post-Isstvan when he tries to torture Vulkan to death and cuts off Vulkan's fucking head only for Vulkan to GROW A NEW FUCKING HEAD. Only Vulkan can't fight worth shit so Curze keeps beating the shit out of him and starts doing stuff like digging Vulkan's heart out with a spork.

i need more booze

eventually vulkan escapes by duct-taping a teleporter and poofing himself off Curze's secret asteroid base. only the gum he used to hold the thing together fucks him over and he shows up in the atmosphere of some planet and burns up in reentry. Vulkan dies. (except not)

OH BUT WAIT

THERE'S MORE

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA THERE'S MORE

turns out there's a super-duper-double-secret-probation achilles heel to the perpetuals. they can be killed by a thing called fulgurite

yeah that's the name

i could not make this up if i were drunk stoned and on acid

grammaticus jacks the thing because the emperor left it fucking sitting around somewhere and APPARENTLY the rumor in the wind is that in one of the upcoming books someone is going to fucking kill Vulkan for good with it. probably curze is going to make a better fucking spork

jesus what happened to this series

when did it go off it's fucking meds or what

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

when did it go off it's fucking meds or what

Heh, I admit I stopped reading early on. After Flight of the Eisenstein, I was expecting maybe one or two connecting novels before getting to the Siege of Terra and wrapping up. I'm a little bewildered that 809423768 novels in the series later and we're still not there.

[fgalkin]

GW? Wrapping things up quickly when there's money to be made by milking the franchise?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Simon_Jester]

As I said, if you read the rest, even the highest ranking officers (the High Lords themselves), would know little. After all, they are concerned with there here and now, the immediate future, and the most recent history (perhaps the last few millennia). There is no need for them to be concernde with what is utterly ancient history. Moreso, I would think the Ecclisiarchy and the Inquisition would be worried about anyone paying too much attention to the distant past (It is called "The Dark Age of Technology," science is heretical, history might as well be). After all, why learn about how they did things back then when it clearly failed and The Emperor has shown us the One True Way?

It would be like a modern-day President or Prime Minister researching the Bronze Age. We woudl find it strange nowadays, the Inquisition would find it suspicious

To be fair, Dark Age technological relics are often weapons or tools of incredible power, and finding Dark Age relics can grant incredible power, so it's not quite that bad. One of the High Lords might reasonably take an interest in, say, procuring a rumored fleet of ships from the Dark Age that mount giant demon-exploding cannons or something.

[Connor MacLeod]

Kuja:
Spoiler

jesus what happened to this series

when did it go off it's fucking meds or what

There was also that one Perpetual who stole Cyrene in Betrayer, and the implication that she's one as well. So there's like 6 known Perpetuals so far, by my count, including Big E.


Anyhow, you dislike the Perpetuals angle? I thought it was kinda interesting, given how much obsession over Pius return the series has generated. Indeed it seems a return to the whole 'Shaman/reincarnation' angle for me in some ways. I'd be curious to hear the exact reasons you're disliking this direction the series is taking, considering they've done very little to introduce new mysteries or material to the HH layout in general.

[Connor MacLeod]

Bits and pieces of history do survive. France and the French language, in some form or another, are referenced in Bequin. The Ahmad ibn Fadlan's account on spending time with the Rus is referenced several times in Prospero Burns. There are references to the Roman Empire that crop up occasionally and their are immortals other than the Emperor. Pieces at least of ancient history survive, even if they are mostly of concern to scholars.

There was also Keeper Cripias up until 997.M41 in the 3rd edition rulebook. He seemed to have quite a few details of the 'secret history' of the Imperium at his knowledge, although what happened to it afterwards we don't know.

I should note that depending on your sources, the knowledge may not precisely be 'lost', but actually misplaced. People sometimes die without telling other people where important data is, catastrophes happen and block off access to vaults or such with data, passwords get forgotten locking out other data, etc. Indeed its noted in some cases that the problem is more in sorting/processing the data than whether data gets retained or lost.

In such cases its more the matter that the Administratum/AdMech/etc. needs a better organizational/bookkeeping system.

And of course there's always factionalism where faction a keeps back knowledge from faction B and vice versa, and keeps knowledge from everyone else in general. Both within specific organizations (AdMech, Inquisition, etc.) as well as from other organizations.

But that doesn't rule out cases where deliberate suppression or elimination of data happens (numerous and varied efforts by the Inquisition to destroy 'dangerous' material by physical and electronic/psychic means.)

[Tandrax218]

lol i do not buy what you guys have wrote in the spoiler windows about vulkan.

but since this is a "few wh40k questions" topic ...
i have some 2

1. How many ammo do Space Marines carry with them on a mission. If a bolter holds 20-30 per mag how many mags does a b brother carry???
Cuz if its like 3-4 mags they have to use swords and thats not wery efficient....

[Lord Revan]

IIRC no exact amount is ever stated but early HH books stated that Luna Wolves carried enough ammo on their person to deal with most missions, considering that IIRC modern soldiers don't carry more then 3 mags on their person (1 in the rifle+ 2 reloads) for a total of 60-90 shots depending on the magazine size you don't really need that much, especially when you consider that most threats space marines would face wouldn't have more then 1 bolter shot to kill (some xenos like orks could take more but still).

[Black Admiral]

1. How many ammo do Space Marines carry with them on a mission. If a bolter holds 20-30 per mag how many mags does a b brother carry???
Cuz if its like 3-4 mags they have to use swords and thats not wery efficient....

It depends on what they're doing. IA3 includes loadouts for two Raptors Astartes involved in an assault on a lightly defended surface-to-space missile silo. The first, a Tactical Marine, is carrying, in munitions terms, four 20-round magazines for his boltgun, two fragmentation grenades, two krak grenades, and, for two Astartes in each Tactical Squad, a demolition charge; the Assault Marine loadout given is four 10-round boltpistol magazines, two frag grenades, and two melta-bombs.

During a boarding action in Angels of Darkness, Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas is carrying, in the way of munitions, five spare 15-round boltpistol magazines, four fragmentation grenades, two blind grenades, a pair of melta-bombs and five proximity mines (plus various other bits of equipment, like an auspex & spare power cells for his Crozius and shield generator). The other five Astartes with him are carrying similar loadouts, modified as appropriate for their chosen weapons.

There are probably other breakdowns elsewhere, but those two are the only ones I recall offhand.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Deathwatch recommends a standard of three magazines (28 rounds each for a Godwyn-pattern bolter). Of course, load-outs can quite easily vary by mission. A Black Templar assaulting a lightly-defended heretic outpost is unlikely to worry much about ammo. An Imperial Fist assisting in the defence of a months-long siege is probably going to bring plenty of ammunition.