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The problem is the 40k writers are in a corner of "well we can't keep destroying important places otherwise the Imperium can't slowly die" and "none of these other places are important enough that it matters if there is a clear winner".

 Gert wrote:
The problem is the 40k writers are in a corner of "well we can't keep destroying important places otherwise the Imperium can't slowly die" and "none of these other places are important enough that it matters if there is a clear winner".

I don't agree with the 2nd part. A place can be important on a local or regional level without being of galaxy changing importance immediately (or ever). Even if some place like Vigilus got truly taken out by Chaos or some other faction, would it really change that much? Sure in the short to medium term it might cause disruption in the Imperium Nihilus and make that a greater playground for all non-Imperial factions. Eventually GW could write themselves out as they seem to have hinted Cawl may be trying to use Blackstone to suppress the Rift, or at least enough to create a new channel of navigation. Maybe he succeeds and a new status quo emerges, even though Vigilus might well and truly be done. In turn, then Chaos could maybe turn to trying to sabotage Cawl's devices.

They sort of seem to be doing something similar to this for the Pariah Nexus. Cawl seems to be using blackstone to create devices that bring the warp closer, to counteract the Necrons. The Silent King gets distracted by Imotekh launching a Necron civil war, etc... However the problem is GW's style of writing, which has become so vague and impressionistic, with so little nailed down in terms of detail of what, where, with how many forces, that there is little sense of a coherent story even within the book except in the broadest strokes. Every faction splinters up immediately (probably so that players can create their own stories), but then what you have then are random vignettes that are difficult to piece together into an actual story.

The sensible thing to do with the "narrative"?

Rewind it back to pre-Gathering Storm, and remember that it is a setting, not a story.

Simples.

 Dysartes wrote:
The sensible thing to do with the "narrative"?

Rewind it back to pre-Gathering Storm, and remember that it is a setting, not a story.

Simples.

I support this, but sadly that ship has sailed...

40k has always been a story. In the 1990's it advanced at a ratio of 1 year IRL to 1 year in-universe. That is how many of the characters and stories that we take for granted now came about. Tycho was a nameless character in a battle report that as a result of being felled by a Weirdboy in that battle report, gained a story arc of his own.

The key thing is such stories advance things on a local level even as the larger picture remains more or less the same. Individual local wars and characters get resolution instead of everything being "stalemate 1 second from midnight" which is what happened when the clock was frozen at 999.M41. Story never necessarily meant everything in the setting needed to be upended. Having timeline movement allows factions to get more detail added over time, again not necessarily meaning everything needs to be overturned. Not all factions have the previous 10k years to play with as some were not active until near the end of M41.

Another thing is that people want to see their faction do things not just endlessly grind in the story for 30-40years. They want to feel that things have changed and happened even if the grander narrative will always be a constant state of stalemates and war.

No one is ever going to win. In fact the only time anyone changes the status is if a faction is outright removed or the game ends.

The other thing is the lore always serves the models. So we are very unlikely to see GW push into the 50K era because there's 40 years of marketing behind 40K and as their biggest cash-cow they are NOT throwing that out.

What we MIGHT see is what they are already doing some of which is a shift in marketing. Already we've seen them shift somewhat from Games Workshop to Warhammer as a marketing term and we might see them spend 10 years or more pushing Warhammer as the term rather than 40K so that they could move into 50K without losing a huge amount of marketing impact.

As Iracundus and others have mentioned, the trick is to have stories that are interesting without having to blow up the status quo entirely. I'm not looking for plotlines that end with, "And then all the primarchs came back, and the imperium collapsed." I'm just looking for subfactions to get a bit of new, interesting history added to their wiki articles. Let some named characters have a little character development. Maybe have some events transpire that adds a new unit to the roster if you're feeling spicy.

Instead, GW has taken this weird approach of all these warzones having arguably too-high of stakes, but then they just sort of blue ball us on any sort of resolution/payoff/advancement.

Like, it can be something simple. "The pariah nexus thing gets shattered by character X. The Silent King is peeved about it, and other dynasties are trying to earn his favor by gunning for character X. Oh, but it sure does seem like a lot of psychic nulls are starting to be born in the previously affected region..."

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, I’m hoping for something regarding the Ynnari. They’re a loose thread that’s been flopping around for much too long, and I’d welcome more info and maybe even a dedicated Codex.

Definitely. I don't need them to kill Slaanesh or anything, but an update on what they're actually doing would be nice. Last time we saw them, they were just kind of bouncing around in a cycle of recruitment drives followed by getting all those recruits killed treasure hunting relics. Which isn't an awful state of affairs (it certainly makes it easy to justify them showing up), but you want the faction that's all about making a desperate attempt to change the status quo to feel like it has some amount of momentum.

Lore wise. Whilst likely not a popular one? I want to see the death of Abaddon. Whilst central to many events, he’s a bit boring these days. Have him bumped off, Chaos scatter, and become a mess of multiple threats all doing their own thing. Let Chaos be actually chaotic for a change, rather than suspiciously well organised. Or at least have him removed from the galactic arena for a good while.

Nah, I agree that Abaddon is a bit boring, but we can have our cake and eat it too here. The Black Legion is a barely-connected mess of mostly-temporary alliances between characters who are extremely prone to getting sidetracked by their own goals. You can have the "main fleet" still slowly advancing or whatever and also have huge chunks of the Legion flying off to do their own thing with minimal justification.

So chaos can still be chaotic, and you can focus on those stories when you want to, but we can leave the big blob of black in tact along with its leader for people who like the guy.

That said, it would be nice to get an update on how that main thrust is going. Did the Black Legion get stuck, or is it moving toward Terra, or...?

 Overread wrote:
Another thing is that people want to see their faction do things not just endlessly grind in the story for 30-40years. They want to feel that things have changed and happened even if the grander narrative will always be a constant state of stalemates and war.

Sounds pretty grimdark to me....something something "endless billions" something something you'll not be missed"...



But to actually contribute, Huron should be the natural foil to Abba-dabba-don.

I think what Abbadon needs is a confrontation with guilliman where we find out what Abbadon really thinks and is trying to do and some clever dialogue and some good action and Abbadon vs guilliman is the new war that drags in the whole galaxy

Otherwise Abbadon has torn the imperium in half just for the sake of it, just cos it hurts the imperium. But he doesn’t like the chaos gods, doesn’t like the primarchs, doesn’t like the imperium - so whats this dude game? Just trying to prove a point?

Except Guilliman would fold Abaddon like an omelette.

mrFickle wrote:
I think what Abbadon needs is a confrontation with guilliman where we find out what Abbadon really thinks and is trying to do and some clever dialogue and some good action and Abbadon vs guilliman is the new war that drags in the whole galaxy

Otherwise Abbadon has torn the imperium in half just for the sake of it, just cos it hurts the imperium. But he doesn’t like the chaos gods, doesn’t like the primarchs, doesn’t like the imperium - so whats this dude game? Just trying to prove a point?

From the Black Library novels featuring him, that seems to pretty much be it, yeah. He got his re(start) by appealing to CSM trapped in the Eye who wanted to stick it to the imperium. The BL are basically the hardcore "vengeance for its own sake" crowd with a mishmash of opportunists/coerced allies hanging onto the edges. My take-away from Talon of Horus and Black Legion was that he basically sees kicking the imperium in the shins (with an end goal of destroying the imperium entirely) as preferable to eternally wollowing in angst in the Eye. Destroying the imperium is tantamount to destroying all the work the traitors were "tricked" into performing during the Great Crusade. To varying degrees, they want to tear down what the Emperor/the primarchs built as a giant, "This is what you get for mistreating and misleading us."

But I don't get the impression that Abaddon has any particular plans for once the Imperium is destroyed. He seemed fairly content just being a loaner who goes on hunting trips when they found him in the Eye. Maybe he'll go the Thanos route and become a farmer or something.

On the Ynarri front, I believe that they were questing the five Croneswords. They had 3; the 4rth is sort of the thing players are supposed to use a story hook in Crusade or narrative campaign play. But it was revealed that the fifth had been swept away to Slaanesh's palace by Shelaxi Helbane, rending retrieval of the 4th pyrrhic.

During the conflict, both Lelith Hesperax and Jain Zar work with Yvraine; units based-on but somewhat different from both Wyches and Banshees have a place as core Ynarri units. I also think that Ynarri are a great way to bring Exodites and additional Corsair units to the game.

What GW CAN'T do is force entire existing factions to declare alliance with Ynarri. So a dedicated Ynarri unit inspired by Banshees, while regular Banshees remain available? No problem. GW declaring that ALL Banshees are now Ynarri, and the only way to play them is in a Ynarri army? Not okay.

Finally, it's also known that Lelith did her Ynarri work with Vect's approval, though if I'm not mistaken, Vect is holding that card close to the chest so he can claim plausible deniability if it doesn't work out.

If Fulgrim manifests as the 4th daemon Primarch, Vect will come. There can be no greater victory for the Blackheart than Fulgrim. Meanwhile, if Fulgrim pulls enough daemons into realspace with him, Yvraine might actually try to steal back Shelxi's Cronesword.

Now the Cronesword duel HAS to stalemate- if Yvraine gets all five, they think they can pull another ritual and wake Ynnead- which is supposed to mean the end of Slaanesh...

But I suppose it doesn't have to. Like maybe Ynead wakes up, but his armies still have to fight in order to get rid of Slaanesh because the awakening alone didn't have the impact the Ynnari had hoped.

 Gert wrote:
The problem is the 40k writers are in a corner of "well we can't keep destroying important places otherwise the Imperium can't slowly die" and "none of these other places are important enough that it matters if there is a clear winner".

The writers aren't in a corner. They just act like they're in one.

The galaxy is big. Like, really REALLY big. The Imperium is tiny compared to a galaxy of 200 billion stars, because the Imperium is roughly "a million worlds". How many potential worlds are in the galaxy? Billions. Hundreds of billions, even.

But even with that tiny million Imperial worlds, a catastrophic event can still be miniscule. For example, a Tyranid invasion could devour a thousand worlds a year, and it would still take a thousand years to consume the Imperium if it somehow didn't decide to reconquer territory or expand to new worlds.

The problem isn't that the authors don't have any room. The problem is that they don't use the potential that they have. There should be thousands of "Armageddons" for example, even if they were only a few percent of Imperial worlds. The problem is that you only hear about a few names and a few places over, and over, and over, and over again. There's a HUGE canvas to paint on, they just don't.

 Gert wrote:
Except Guilliman would fold Abaddon like an omelette.

I thought that abaddon, being the chosen champion of chaos, was given so much warp strength that he was as powerful as a primarch.

When it looked like Luther was going to be their number 1 he held his ground with the lion

Abaddon has the Mark of Chaos Undivided which means he has the blessing of the Four but they've never again done a Horus/Luther where they empowered an Undivided follower to be able to 1-on-1 a Primarch level being.

Abaddon is good, very good. He's probably the greatest living Astartes warrior but Guilliman is still a Primarch.

Drach'nyen is the trump card here, that weapon can kill a primarch if he gets a hit in.

A slow resetting of the narrative around the imperium of man

Predictions:

Great Calamity followed by a Primarch returning:

Repeat Formulae until all primarchs have returned: (Which will each be a model)

The Emperor returns in human form: Also a Model.

Then reset the narrative like Warhammer Old World.

Interesting AoS inspired suggestion for Ynnead and Slaanesh.

In AoS, after the fall of the Old World, Slaanesh was glutted on Elven Souls. The new Elven Gods (Tyrion, Teclis, Malerion and Morathi) kidnapped Slaanesh, and extracted the souls of their fallen kin, which were shaped into the modern Aelven races.

What if Ynnead rising does only have a partial effect? Not subduing Slaanesh entirely, on account She Who Thirsts has been preying on Humanity and other species as well, but instead recovers Aeldari Souls, which end up reincarnating? That would arguably put a dent in Slaanesh’s power, and help revive the Eldar race?

 Formosa wrote:
Drach'nyen is the trump card here, that weapon can kill a primarch if he gets a hit in.

Drachnyen got yeeted at a Custodes and that guy had enough time to run into the Warp.

Are Primarchs stupid powerful? Yeah but we still have to acknowledge the fact that they are even if we don't like it.

A Cain book reveals that he accidentally kills Abbadon, or Jurgen does, but Cain the Hero gets the credit.

Robby Goes native and becomes one of the Na'avi Eldar.

Eisenhorne is captured, interrogated, and executed for extreme heresy, only to be saved at the last second, by Cypher.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Interesting AoS inspired suggestion for Ynnead and Slaanesh.

In AoS, after the fall of the Old World, Slaanesh was glutted on Elven Souls. The new Elven Gods (Tyrion, Teclis, Malerion and Morathi) kidnapped Slaanesh, and extracted the souls of their fallen kin, which were shaped into the modern Aelven races.

What if Ynnead rising does only have a partial effect? Not subduing Slaanesh entirely, on account She Who Thirsts has been preying on Humanity and other species as well, but instead recovers Aeldari Souls, which end up reincarnating? That would arguably put a dent in Slaanesh’s power, and help revive the Eldar race?

One of my pet theories is that Ynnead ends up being the woodsman to Slaanesh's Big Bad Wolf. That is, Ynnead is born and metaphorically (literally?) slices Slaanesh's gut open freeing the old pantheon. Bonus points for lobbing off the eldar part of Slaanesh that joins the pantheon as essentially the goddess of obsession/what Slaanesh might have been if she hadn't gone super saiyan during her birth. The main part of Slaanesh is either "slain" but starts regenerating because you can't truly kill an idea, or else opts to start going by a new name as the no-longer-tied-to-eldar chaos god. Either way, Slaanesh's servants/remaining daemons all start competing for scraps of Slaanesh's power or for Slaanesh 2.0's favor, thus giving Slaanesh as a faction a way to stand out a bit from the other chaos gods.

But all that seemed more likely pre-Slaanesh refresh when it looked like she might get squatted.

Gert wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Drach'nyen is the trump card here, that weapon can kill a primarch if he gets a hit in.

Drachnyen got yeeted at a Custodes and that guy had enough time to run into the Warp.

Are Primarchs stupid powerful? Yeah but we still have to acknowledge the fact that they are even if we don't like it.

How stupid powerful are primarchs exactly? Like, I know writing with them is inconsistent, but they generally seem to dislike getting shot, and Magnus (at least his daemon form) has been smacked around on multiple occassions. Corax seems to kind of get the snot beaten out of him by some obliterators in an HH book (though he ultimately ends up fine.)

I was sort of under the impression that primarchs had some amount of in-universe plot armor stemming from their semi-supernatural natures that explained a lot of how they managed to pull off their nonsense. Like, it's not that they're lascannon-proof. They're just plot armored against taking too many direct hits from lascannons.

^Drachnyen rolled a 1 to wound.

And yeah, Primarchs shouldn't be tanking lots of firepower, ultimately. Plotwise I think it's just assumed that they aren't in the same situations that players put them in on the tabletop, because by golly I've killed an awful lot of Primarchs.

this would be more of something to replace Heresy as GW's "endless novel series" rather than something advancing the 40k narrative, but i wanna see BL tackle the two missing legions. at this point, every other point of mystery of vagueness from the early days of the game has been thoroughly explored, and the setting has well moved beyond "they left these two blank so that players could make their own primarchs", so the classical reasons for avoiding the topic just don't feel relevant anymore

As a Chaos player, I actually want to see a bit more Xenos. We're the big bad and we've had a few good years what with the rift and Arks of Omen, but it would be nice to see the new Necrons, Tyranids and even Kroot releases mean something a bit more.

I'm not looking at galactic level campaigns as, honestly, I think they often fall flat because any major advancements will change the setting too much and so GW writes the results off or they don't and start to risk the setting (Primaris). I think the top level lore should sit static again for a while once Fulgrium is released.

What I do think they should do is go smaller. Start to pick out a region or system in the galaxy for X reasons within the settings and start to break the setting down into these warzones. They've already started to do it (Pariah Nexus, Nachmund etc etc) but I think there's real opportunity to keep pushing this.

As a sand box, we all have access to fights almost anywhere in the galaxy. However, they could start to use small systems/regions as settings for more focused conflicts that can then later inform the lore. They could even release limited run special characters for the campaigns as rule sets or rule sets and models - it could even be used as a vehicle to bring back or introduce significant lore characters. Have community competitions, postal campaigns, constant planet wrestling (think helldivers 2 or previous GW campaigns).

For example, you've got the Regas Minor System in the Easter Fringe that's newly discovered and revealed to be a source of Blackstone but also some sublime, resource rich worlds. The Tau want it for colonies, the Necrons have a tomb world there, the Orks are knocking about and both the Imperium (of all shades and sizes) and Drukhari want to harvest it for Blackstone and necessary resources to continue the greater fight in and around the rift. There can be a hastily made imperial outpost which would allow there to be a growing GSC presence.

Then you have the Ugreo Region, a collection of five systems recently released from Warp Storms. Who knows what treasures they hold? Chaos and Daemons have a presence, it's right in the path of Hive Fleet of the week, Imperium want in, some are former Aeldari worlds, Votaan miners and treasure hunters are intrigued and Drukhari have an interest in the old worlds as well as the new slave opportunities.

Both areas could be great at forging narrative without needing to have the entire galaxy's fate being decided in one single lore dump.

Then a new edition comes around, and they introduce some new regions or systems.

Always more Xenos. I don’t see a whole Xenos army coming out as much as I’d love it but more Xenos kill teams should be possible.

Unless kroot get their own codex

I hadn’t heard of black stone rich planets but that should be an easy way to get all factions getting stuck into a royal rumble. Abaddon would want it destroyed so it can be used to suppress the warp.

It would be cool if black stone made orks evolve into Krorks

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Gert wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Drach'nyen is the trump card here, that weapon can kill a primarch if he gets a hit in.

Drachnyen got yeeted at a Custodes and that guy had enough time to run into the Warp.

Are Primarchs stupid powerful? Yeah but we still have to acknowledge the fact that they are even if we don't like it.

How stupid powerful are primarchs exactly? Like, I know writing with them is inconsistent, but they generally seem to dislike getting shot, and Magnus (at least his daemon form) has been smacked around on multiple occassions. Corax seems to kind of get the snot beaten out of him by some obliterators in an HH book (though he ultimately ends up fine.)

I was sort of under the impression that primarchs had some amount of in-universe plot armor stemming from their semi-supernatural natures that explained a lot of how they managed to pull off their nonsense. Like, it's not that they're lascannon-proof. They're just plot armored against taking too many direct hits from lascannons.

Eh, it is a bit mixed. I think there are two aspects to this, and only one of them appears on the tabletop.

The first is that turning a Primarch into a casualty does happen on the battlefield. It is generally through the application of heavy firepower, and They only seem to have been downed in melee by other Primarch-level threats or greater (Emperor, Ork superbosses etc.). Even the Avatar of Khaine is generally weaker in melee. I can't personally recall any Primarchs overpowered through weight of numbers in melee, but the Obliterator example seems plausible and Alexis Polux at least thought it was possible with massed terminators (this remains untested as the Imperial Fists withdrew from Phall and the terminator assault lost reinforcements and petered out. Perturabo certainly didn't like the projections of how the battle was going though). This is what we see on the tabletop.

However, a casualty is not the same as dead, and Primarchs show an amazing ability to recover from being absolutely savaged in combat. Generally, a downed Primarch is not a dead Primarch if their body is recoverable. Then their is Vulkan, who is apparently fully immortal to realspace means. We don't see this effect on the tabletop but it is a big advantage of Primarchs in the lore. To a lesser extent, it is also part of what makes Space Marines such effective troops- many of the tabletop casualties will be combat ready again in the near future.

Daemon Primarchs are a different kettle of fish- they gain true immortality and much power from their patron, but it is not a straightforward upgrade, more of a sidegrade really. There are costs to daemonhood, and they lose purchase on realspace and take on traits in line with their patron god they are now an aspect of. So Daemon-Mortarian is going to be more limited in his strategic repetoire because he now sees everything through the lense of Nurgle, even if he doesn't realise it. These can be exploited to banish Daemon Primarchs back to the Warp, especially by forces experienced in fighting Daemons (in particular the Grey Knights and Ordo Malleus). Someone like Roboute or the Lion, on the other hand, has a much less tenuous grasp on realspace and cannot be cast into the Warp as easily.

Re. Abaddon vs Guilliman. I think Guilliman would win that comfortably most of the time, but agree that Drach'n'yen does introduce a wildcard that could allow an avenue for Abaddon to achieve victory with a lucky blow. Powerful Warp magicks are one of the few things proven to be able to overcome Primarch healing, most notably in Horus with an anathame and in Roboute himself when fighting Daemon-Fulgrim.

More likely is that Abaddon manages to escape by the skin of his teeth after taking a beating, as he has the fortune of Dark Fates on his side. Probably by sacrificing some Chosen and teleporting out of there or equivalent.

Daemon Princes and Daemon Primarchs also face an uncertain period of banishment if their physical form is defeated.

Thanks to the oddity of time in the warp, they might be back to pick up where they left off. But equally, it could be centuries before they’re able to return. And if they’ve been taken down, it seems more likely than not their entire force got a right shoeing, either immediately before or after they were cast back into the warp.

Given many Chaos forces are cults of personality, such a loss might completely scupper whatever they were up to.

This stands in contrast to Loyalist Marines who have proven they don’t need a Primarch to carry on. Yes the loss, however temporary, throws a spanner in the works. But there’s at least a clear and uncontested chain of command in such circumstances to pick things up.

Add in that provided the Primarch isn’t mortally wounded, they’ll quite likely be back on the field before a Daemon Primarch would return from banishment.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Daemon Princes and Daemon Primarchs also face an uncertain period of banishment if their physical form is defeated.

Thanks to the oddity of time in the warp, they might be back to pick up where they left off. But equally, it could be centuries before they’re able to return. And if they’ve been taken down, it seems more likely than not their entire force got a right shoeing, either immediately before or after they were cast back into the warp.

Given many Chaos forces are cults of personality, such a loss might completely scupper whatever they were up to.

This stands in contrast to Loyalist Marines who have proven they don’t need a Primarch to carry on. Yes the loss, however temporary, throws a spanner in the works. But there’s at least a clear and uncontested chain of command in such circumstances to pick things up.

Add in that provided the Primarch isn’t mortally wounded, they’ll quite likely be back on the field before a Daemon Primarch would return from banishment.

I'm confused, the Blood Angels still to this day bear the effects of losing their primarch, and the Space Wolves basically went feral and dialed it up to 11. It's not nothing. Did I misunderstand your point?

Yet the Blood Angels and Space Woofs remain coherent and effective fighting forces. Iron Hands too.

But I’m meaning during a given campaign. Chaos is a bit like Orks, in that there’s not always a clear line of succession should the High Heedyin get themselves dead. Whilst there are exceptions with Chaos, where a given force is a coalition of warbands, slaying the Head Honcho is still going to impact them more than Loyalists losing say, a Chapter Master.