Games Workshop announces Warhammer 40k book series for kids
81 replies, posted
I think you're sorta stretching the point here.
Thinking of the Emperor as the savior of humanity is pretty much just the status-quo, and unless you're an Inquisitor, you pretty much just assume everyone around you thinks that way as well, and you do it as naturally as breathing.
Generally speaking most standard IG troops (not commissars) and most standard SM chapter members except for like, some Chaplains and Champions, see Inquisitors and Black Templars as sort of annoying in terms of how suspicious they are of HERESY
Just because someone doesn't spout stuff about the emperor 24/7 doesn't mean a SM or IG is gonna put a bolt round into them
IDK I sorta despise this whole "EVERYONE IN 40K IS A TERRIBLE PERSON" meme, that's pretty much not how it is
Most chapters are pretty all off into the imperial cult, battle brothers is not a boot camp slogan, it's how shit works. Chaplains have the same rights and rites as the Inquistion, they just rarely need to invoke them. There are maines alive when the emperor was moble and sdid stuff with his gently flowing locks and granite hewed abs and girded loins. They don't need to worry about the Ecclesiarchy rules when they were there to begin with.
I mean, yeah, religious zealotry is kind of the status quo in the 40k universe. If a dude is like 'eh, I don't know about this whole faith in the emperor thing' that's typically considered a criminal offense potentially worthy of execution.
Marines may be a little more devout in their faith, but sure, they're not all intensely 'religious' for what that means in the 40k universe. All the same, they really are the enforcers of a theocratic, xenocidal, dogmatic fascist state as Mr. Scorpious put it, and that's a weird thing to whitewash. They're essentially Space Nazis in a setting deliberately constructed to make you think Space Nazis might be the closest thing the universe has to protagonists. That's kind of 40k's shtick and it's really weird to see an ostensible kids' series compromise on that fundamental style.
I didn't say that though; I think an important part of the style of the setting is that every institution is terrible. Like, the Imperium itself is a vast and uncaring brutal bureaucracy that only functions through autocratic repression; the Guard is an involuntary conscription force, the Astartes are inducted militant zealots used to fight until they die, the Inquisition is a repressive and paranoid agency, etc. That doesn't mean there aren't good people and heroes within those institutions, but none of the institutions as a whole are particularly positive or appealing organizations.
Most chapters follow their own cult which may or may not venerate the Emperor as a divine or as just a father figure. Considering they often have ties and records going back to when the Imperial Truth was still being preached it's hard to see the Imperial Cult being standard.
What's more sad is that it's a Primaris Marine, it's adding insult to injury.
I mean relatively speaking they aren't all as zealous as the Templars, but they are definitely all zealots to some degree, by design.
Space marines are heavily indoctrinated, their religion and their duty are one and the same. You really think the imperium is going to continue producing super soldiers without brainwashing the ever living fuck out of them after what happened last time?
A lot of that actually has to do with Guilliman being a dipshit.
it is absolutely not safe to assume this at all, because it is flat out incorrect.
consider the following:
roughly half of all Marines are said to be descended from the Ultramarines, a Chapter/Legion founded and shaped by principles of honest practicality, good intel, discipline and pragmatism. their doctrines were set in stone by a primarch who had little concern for anything that wasn't tangible and couldn't get him real-world results, and their Heresy-era war with the Word Bearers would certainly hammer home the impression that faith and religion are bad shit in the extreme. only few of these Chapters are likely to engage in any kind of ritualistic worship of the Emperor as a deity, because guess who started that?
the Blood Angels, despite their name and imagery, and their successors, would know better than to put any hope in the Emperor as an omnipotent god figure - the fact that Sanguinius is fucking dead and their heritage being cursed with the Rage and the Thirst are lessons enough
the Dark Angels and their offshoots are too busy hiding ten millenia old skeletons in their gothic closets and being dark and mysterious to give a shit about religious practices.
the Iron Hands? religion doesn't keep your bionics running, the superiority of metal does. unless you're into the dogma mechanicus, that shit is probably fine with them. still, no flat-out Emperor worship as far as anyone can tell
the White Scars never gave a crap about what anyone else thought and we can make the safe guess that they still stick to the spiritual traditions of their homeworld. they were always too down-to-earth to ever fall into the Emperor worship business anyway, if you tried to convert them they'd just laugh and call it a nice little story for the evening's feast.
the Raven Guard were always way too practical, and we can leave it at that. let's not even get started on the Raptors Chapter.
the Salamanders stick to their Promethean Cult, spiritual ideas built around fire and smithing.
and then you have the Imperial Fists, who spawned the maniacs we know as the Black Templars. and even they have left more reasonable descendants, like the Crimson Fists, whose primogenitor Alexis Polux would've scoffed at the suggestion that the Emperor was a divine being. hell, Dorn himself most
likely would not stomach the notion, and we know how much the Fist descendants venerate the guy and his memory.
and of course there's a myriad Chapters of unknown family and founding, but considering the odds of them having descended from the 9 first ones without adopting any religious traits along the way, well...
At any rate, the books are being written by two authors who've apparently been fairly successful writing basically the same types of books for Star Wars, so at least they aren't just a couple of brand new writers.
the space marines are absolutely drenched in religious iconography, ritual, faith, and zealotry
saying that space marines aren't religious zealots is like saying the imperial guard place great importance on the value of human life
The Matt Ward is strong with this one.
Although having read through part of Know No Fear, I kinda like the Ultramarines and Guilliman. Salamanders will always be my boys, though (who am I kidding, I don't even play 40k).
Space Marine Chapters are like monks or knightly orders, hence why their bases are literally called fortress monasteries. That being said: religion in the Imperium as a whole is much more varied than you'd think. The only common thread across all the millions of different sects of the Imperial Church is the divinity of the Emperor, specific practices of worship, and the significance placed on active worship, varies widely depending on the planet; on more zealous worlds it can involve regular flagellation and human sacrifice, while on more frontier worlds it often comes down to little more than carrying an Aquila charm and praying in times of need.
40k is one of the most self-contradictory franchises that exists, arguing about setting details or lore tidbits is literally useless as there's probably just as much evidence to prove it as there is in the contrary.
The official GW stance on the 40k lore is that "Everything you read is true in-setting, even if it is contradictory," which essentially means that everything you read could be propaganda which would explain why the Space Marines can kick the ass of pretty much anything through the power of plot armour or just old tales and legends.
tl;dr stop arguing about lore than even the writers/franchise owners don't give a shit about
I'll be honest, I'm more weirded out by this then outraged.
It doesn't effect the tabletop in *any* way that I can possibly see. It's just fucking weird. What the fuck are the Hardy Boys doing in Warhammer 40k? This really seems like it'd be an april fools thing but well
I mean there's already a more sanitized version of the tabletop with an even simplified version of the rules for this age demographic. I played it with this kid I chaperone. Honestly even there, I think the appeal of 40k - both for a kid and a grown ass manchild - is the idea of *commanding* either an army or a squad or two rather then any kind of self insert thing.
This is totally going to crash and burn and it'll be a funny forgotten thing then.
What about ASMR audiobooks?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnzuRnKnO7E
This seems kinda dumb though, like I got into Warhammer when I was 8, I was hooked by how not kid friendly it was compared to Star Wars.
I didn't understand most of it but the artwork around it blew my mind back then.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/207608/72212454-762b-4f67-b329-ea4b9930b542/image.png
Not mine, Source unknown
yes, but they do not worship the Emperor as a god. these two concepts can most definitely be mutually exclusive, which seems to be something most people fail to get, and the one thing that is consistent across modern interpretations is that apart from wackos like the Templars, they do not worship Easy-E as a deity.
Idk man, I think that a lot of this relies on information about the character and traits of the legions pre-heresy, forgetting just how far the imperium has fallen since then.
It doesn't really make sense to argue that certain chapters would shun the notion of a god emperor because they should remember it was Lorgar who started that shit, when the entire Imperium hasn't managed to do the same? That's like saying nobody would worship the emperor as a god because they should remember he crusaded against religion. It's literally the cruel irony surrounding the place of humanity in 40k.
Like it or not, the imperial creed is the dominant religion of humanity- unlike the traitor legions who literally are the same warriors who fought in the heresy, the loyalist legions have been divided and diluted by ten thousand years of attrition and recruitment. Recruitment from the current terrified and ignorant imperium as opposed to the enlightened one from before.
It's all well and good saying, well Row-row-row-your-boat Gilligan wouldn't stand for that shit in his legion, but he "died" thousands and thousands of years ago- and even now that he's been brought back, it's on record that Roblox Spikemiligan is actually super depressed at the state of the Imperium, his former legion included, even suggesting that it might have been better if Horus had wiped the lot of them out rather than have them limp on in such a state.
Warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy might as well be completely different settings for how far the imperium fell- yeah the former legions and their descendants still retain strong traces of their former identities, but ten thousand years of enforced dogma and decay will have certainly have taken it's toll on that sense of identity.
Again, the imperium is a vast and diverse place, there will always be exceptions to any rule, and tbh these exceptions are often far cooler- but imo saying "oh well this legion was particularly enlightened so their successor chapters wouldn't fall to religious fanaticism!" misses the entire premise of the setting.
Everyone fell. All was lost, never to be rediscovered. There is no peace or progress, only decay and war.
Yeah, that felt pretty stupid to me, too.
In the Mechanicum, "fixing" a gimpy arm constitutes replacing it with superior steel.
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