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I'd like to see the recently returned characters get more fleshed out in the new world.

While we have a lot of interactions between Guilliman and the 40K world at large, we have very little interaction between him and Calgar etc.

I'd like to see some "interlude" type stories - longer than blurb, probably shorter than a full novel.

Calgar and Guilliman doing an in depth catch up - hopefully skipping Tigurius being the "mom" to tell Calgar his dad is proud of him even if it doesn't seem like it.

Lion and Guilliman doing a catch up over hologramatic tables. This would be great as both a restatement/roundup of the current narrative state, and a chance for a nice expansion of the "I'm alone. Oh! Hey Brother, I'm not AS alone now".

Either or both with Uldrad. Lion with Yvraine. Either or both with Arcadian Leontus. The Lion with Azrael. The Lion with any Fallen (and Asmodai/Ezekiel etc) currently incarcerated in The Rock then being judged by Lion - especially as a conceit to justify/hadn wave large numbers of Risen Fallen Inner Circle Companions.

A meeting between Lion and Cypher in a way that doesn't really resolve the mystery of Cypher (if they're doing that it should probably be in at least a full novel if not a campaign or three book trilogyish thing) but sets up whatever they are going to do with Cypher/Lion going forwards.
Some meetings and at least minor reconciliations between the returned Primarchs and their metaphorical "First Captain". If just to make it much less of a repetitive cliche as the favored son turns on the father thing.

Magnus and Ahriman should probably most bury the hatchet, with a common goal around a cure/successful rubric thing.

Angron and Kharn MAY not currently hate each other depending on how much Angron cares about Kharn "betraying" his other children balanced against the blood for the blood god. So maybe they hate each other less, and have less to make up.

Morty and Typhus makes sense to be the pair most likely to make up the least, but some sort of Come To Nurgle meeting after the Dark Imperium debacle to get them to play nicer if not exactly nice together.

At this point we have 5 - likely soon to be 7 - characters we think we know that need to be at least somewhat redefined in their place in the narrative universe (and the tabletop so Chaos Primarchs can do the Primarch+Chapter Master thing without tripping over the fluff)

In addition we have several new characters that should be matrixed in a little more, like Arcadian Leontus, Ursula J. Creed etc.


Some of this should probably be done in upcoming novels but there's too much "new" is out there to baseline all in a few novels.

More books where Xenos are the main characters and central focus. There are SOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many Imperial based books and that's fantastic in its own right; but I'd love to see more books that explore the Eldar; the Ork; the Tau. Heck I'd love them to have a few goes at doing Tyranid ones as well.

Even books where its Xenos vs Xenos!




For the Imperial side I'd welcome more "not big name hero" books. I feel like you can explore and do more with them sometimes than big named heroes that are tied to specific points in time; specific regions and events and so forth .

My favourites have been the Guardsman Uplifting Primer and both Xenology books. I'd like to see more of these.

 Overread wrote:
More books where Xenos are the main characters and central focus. There are SOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many Imperial based books and that's fantastic in its own right; but I'd love to see more books that explore the Eldar; the Ork; the Tau. Heck I'd love them to have a few goes at doing Tyranid ones as well.

Even books where its Xenos vs Xenos!




For the Imperial side I'd welcome more "not big name hero" books. I feel like you can explore and do more with them sometimes than big named heroes that are tied to specific points in time; specific regions and events and so forth .

Id like to see more Aeldari, Ork and Tau perspective books yeah, but I don't see much for Nid books. The others are somewhat easily "humanized" for understanding, but a Nid mind? Food Left. Run. Stop. Jump Food Right. I just don't see a lot of room for the Overmind's vast intelligence being conveyed by the perspective of most of the Nid bioforms. I think Nid Centric books should be more common, but I think they have to be expository from the other faction with a "realized too late" what the whatchamcallit plan was.

 Overread wrote:
More books where Xenos are the main characters and central focus. There are SOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many Imperial based books and that's fantastic in its own right; but I'd love to see more books that explore the Eldar; the Ork; the Tau. Heck I'd love them to have a few goes at doing Tyranid ones as well.

Even books where its Xenos vs Xenos!

This. The more books without the Imperium the better. I'd say especially xenos vs xenos and xenos vs Chaos is what I'd like to see.

Breton wrote:

Id like to see more Aeldari, Ork and Tau perspective books yeah, but I don't see much for Nid books. The others are somewhat easily "humanized" for understanding, but a Nid mind? Food Left. Run. Stop. Jump Food Right. I just don't see a lot of room for the Overmind's vast intelligence being conveyed by the perspective of most of the Nid bioforms. I think Nid Centric books should be more common, but I think they have to be expository from the other faction with a "realized too late" what the whatchamcallit plan was.

You an make Tyranids the focus you just have to change the way the story is written and not really focus on a "character" as such from the Tyranid point of view - though you could cover that with Genestealer Cults fairly well. Just have a Cult that's operating whilst a Tyranid Fleet invades and so forth - Tyranids will sometimes re-use cults or consume them. So you can easily have a Cult working alongside or even against them and so forth.

 Overread wrote:

Breton wrote:

Id like to see more Aeldari, Ork and Tau perspective books yeah, but I don't see much for Nid books. The others are somewhat easily "humanized" for understanding, but a Nid mind? Food Left. Run. Stop. Jump Food Right. I just don't see a lot of room for the Overmind's vast intelligence being conveyed by the perspective of most of the Nid bioforms. I think Nid Centric books should be more common, but I think they have to be expository from the other faction with a "realized too late" what the whatchamcallit plan was.

You an make Tyranids the focus you just have to change the way the story is written and not really focus on a "character" as such from the Tyranid point of view - though you could cover that with Genestealer Cults fairly well. Just have a Cult that's operating whilst a Tyranid Fleet invades and so forth - Tyranids will sometimes re-use cults or consume them. So you can easily have a Cult working alongside or even against them and so forth.

i think there's a pretty obvious narrative to be had with a cult being ecstatic when the tyranids arrive, and helping them in their conquest, then slowly coming to realize that they're going to die along with the rest of their planet, and turning back to help the humans fight them back (whether or not they win is another question). you can get a whole classical narrative arc there. (i haven't read any of the existing GSC novels/short stories yet so maybe this happens there)

re:Tyranids, i've seen it suggested that different hive fleets have their own hive minds, which could be interesting to explore in fiction. something like a set of short stories focusing on different hive fleets and how their omniscient minds focus on different things or go about their goals in different ways

Abnett once said he would like to do a Tyranids book so it is on my list of what I would like to see. More Xenology/Uplifting Primer/Badab Wars etc. ''in world'' documentary/historical books. Some novels about Kroot would be nice too.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Breton wrote:

Id like to see more Aeldari, Ork and Tau perspective books yeah, but I don't see much for Nid books. The others are somewhat easily "humanized" for understanding, but a Nid mind? Food Left. Run. Stop. Jump Food Right. I just don't see a lot of room for the Overmind's vast intelligence being conveyed by the perspective of most of the Nid bioforms. I think Nid Centric books should be more common, but I think they have to be expository from the other faction with a "realized too late" what the whatchamcallit plan was.

You an make Tyranids the focus you just have to change the way the story is written and not really focus on a "character" as such from the Tyranid point of view - though you could cover that with Genestealer Cults fairly well. Just have a Cult that's operating whilst a Tyranid Fleet invades and so forth - Tyranids will sometimes re-use cults or consume them. So you can easily have a Cult working alongside or even against them and so forth.

i think there's a pretty obvious narrative to be had with a cult being ecstatic when the tyranids arrive, and helping them in their conquest, then slowly coming to realize that they're going to die along with the rest of their planet, and turning back to help the humans fight them back (whether or not they win is another question). you can get a whole classical narrative arc there. (i haven't read any of the existing GSC novels/short stories yet so maybe this happens there)

re:Tyranids, i've seen it suggested that different hive fleets have their own hive minds, which could be interesting to explore in fiction. something like a set of short stories focusing on different hive fleets and how their omniscient minds focus on different things or go about their goals in different ways

Honestly we've never really had a solid understanding of how the Hive Mind of the Tyranids works

From the fact that different hive fleets have different evolutionary pathways this suggests that not all information the Tyranid Hive has can or does pass over the synaptic link between them.
Through to the fact that its possible to separate even synapse creatures from the greater swarm of the Tyranid forces.
And yet at the same time, with the exception of the lower ranks of Genestealer Cults (who we can argue are not fully in-tune or might not even be fully Tyranid), we've seen that when two different Fleets meet they are more likely to unite. Combat between different Tyranid groups appears to be, in lore, mostly a case of large scale weapons testing.

Another element that's curious is that whilst the Tyranids can appear to adjust their genetics on a very fine level and adapt at a hyper fast rate; they also appear to suffer from generic imperfections when they breed. Two Tyranids are not genetically identical and the Tyranids use this at a vastly accelerated rate to hyper evolve. Picking and re-using those that show the best result, but at the same time never creating a perfect clone copy.

This appears to also manifest in the creation of rare and near unique strains of Tyranid. Which might represent genetic pathways it has trouble faithfully reproducing. Or which require rare resources it doesn't have ready access too in order to create more.



One of the arguments I've seen is that the Tyranids are a bit like a body. There are LOTS of interconnected parts that work together and which create a greater whole that is capable of amazing things ;but the greater whole "Ergo the Hive Mind"; whilst its able to give general direction; it can't control every facet of itself. Just like we can control where we go and what we eat; but we can't directly control many of our body functions. We have to rely on them to do it themselves.

So the Tyranids might well be like that; a vast organism that exists to give it direction and wil (the Hive Mind); but its also slaved to the biology of itself and thus it can't just create a whole perfect army of Swarmlords to win every fight. OR share all the genetic info it has at once to all its fleets; or give them perfect overall direction etc...




The concept of individuality within the Swarm might also rear its head now. We know the Swarmlord is potentially as close to an individual as we might get to see; however we've no idea much beyond Hive Tyrants. We don't know if Norn Queens or vast Hive Fleet ships are capable of independent thinking and objectives. A bit like the Cerebrates of the Zerg from Starcraft. Never able to disobey the Hive Mind, but able to have their own will to follow directives in their own way. It might be the only time you get close to that are the upper ranks of a Genestealer Cult.


Finally there's the Warp which Tyranids clearly make use of. I've also theorized that the Warp is how the Hive Mind at least communicates with itself. That the Tyranids are half in the warp and half out which would explain a lot of their psy powers as well as how the Hive Mind can appear to operate over vast real world distances.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Breton wrote:

Id like to see more Aeldari, Ork and Tau perspective books yeah, but I don't see much for Nid books. The others are somewhat easily "humanized" for understanding, but a Nid mind? Food Left. Run. Stop. Jump Food Right. I just don't see a lot of room for the Overmind's vast intelligence being conveyed by the perspective of most of the Nid bioforms. I think Nid Centric books should be more common, but I think they have to be expository from the other faction with a "realized too late" what the whatchamcallit plan was.

You an make Tyranids the focus you just have to change the way the story is written and not really focus on a "character" as such from the Tyranid point of view - though you could cover that with Genestealer Cults fairly well. Just have a Cult that's operating whilst a Tyranid Fleet invades and so forth - Tyranids will sometimes re-use cults or consume them. So you can easily have a Cult working alongside or even against them and so forth.

i think there's a pretty obvious narrative to be had with a cult being ecstatic when the tyranids arrive, and helping them in their conquest, then slowly coming to realize that they're going to die along with the rest of their planet, and turning back to help the humans fight them back (whether or not they win is another question). you can get a whole classical narrative arc there. (i haven't read any of the existing GSC novels/short stories yet so maybe this happens there)

I'd hope any such boook would go a stage further. Lower ranks of the Cult going nuts that they are about to really be eaten and not happy; or even denying that these horrors are the Star Gods. Meanwhile upper ranks are more accepting and then higher still might even be taken off world by the Swarm (or allowed to escape) to spread the Cult to other worlds. They might even show remorse that they aren't being eaten!

I'd like to see the third instalment of the Knightsblade/Kingsblade trilogy that they've clearly forgotten about

I'm on board for Xenos more than any other subject...

But I'd also like some historical Sisters of Battle- some Age of Apostasy stuff- possibly extending into the related but somewhat separate Plague of Unbelief.

I've always wanted a novel about Katherine's Martyrdom- I want to know more about the Witch Cult of Mnestteus.

A new Gaunt's Ghosts book and books about The Scouring.