#it's mostly the warhammer and the military stuff

[minweber]

Musings on Custodes: Assorted Headcanons

Decided to get together some of the stuff that's been rattling around in my head for a while and which doesn't seem significant enough for a topic of its own. As usual, everything presented here is basically just my headcanons for Custodes, only some of which are supported, to varying degrees, by current lore:

Custodes don't communicate with each other in combat - as in, fight and perform complicated group maneuvers without talking to each other. This is barely a speculation, because the codex straight up says that they fight silently. There, however, it is used mostly to denote that they don't have a battlecry, and they do also use Thoughtmark, so can still very much communicate while staying silent. I think it would be very cool and fitting to push it further, and take it to mean that they actually don't communicate, as in don't pass any information to each other in battle. Instead, whenever they fight as a group, each of them just knows what each of them should do, and has an absolute certainty that everyone will do their part, perfection in all things and all that. They essentially operate like a reverse hive mind, with each individual thinking for every member of the group, and it all always syncing up through the magic of Posthuman Big Brains. It is very silly, but the exact kind of Dune-like super brain powers that 40k in general seems to find so irresistible.

Custodes despise the Minotaurs - like, as much as they can despise someone who is not an actual traitor... Maybe a bit a more. Have you ever noticed how High Lords of Terra, the mighty rulers of the Imperium of Man, are not in full control of the very world from which they rule? How there is an incredibly powerful military force, over which they can exert exactly zero influence, always lurking around their seat of power? And how they seem to have created for themselves an army spear-wielding superhumans with a hellenistic motif, armored in red and... bronze? Yeah, I have no idea how intentional this was on part of writers of old Imperial Armour, but Minotaurs are 100% poor man's (lord's?) Custodes, made to imitate control over something that was forever beyond their creators' reach. And I do oh so believe that Custodes themselves would see it, and man oh man would that grind their nuts. They aren't keen on Astartes in general, and the ones that are essentially parodies of them, bound in service to those they would certainly consider lesser men? Oooh, superhuman patience or no, there would be salt.

Most custodians are what we would call some variation of aroace - this one is a full on headcanon of mine, based on nothing save my quixotic quest for depiction of warhammer posthumans that is more than just "very smart and very scary when angry". Whenever we talk about "more evolved human beings" in sci-fi context (I genuinely hope that my slight obsession with this topic is viewed solely within it), it is worth remembering that evolution is not like, a scale. Nothing is just "overall better" than anything else, it is all about adaptation to circumstance and environment. So too custodians are not simply "humans, but better" - they are shaped specifically for their role as Emperor's companions. Which, I think, would have interesting effects on those parts of them that lie outside this purpose - like experiencing attraction very differently from most humans. Here I should hurry to add that I am using the term aroace incredibly broadly, more as a closest available analogue to something that maybe doesn't exist in observable human experience, rather than in all of its defined nuance. But yeah, I like to imagine that a lot of them don't experience romantic and sexual attraction at all, their brains and body chemistry just not wired for it anymore, and those that do, do so in ways that may be alien to us. For example - being more detached about it, their feelings blending the line between emotional and intellectual, their love or lust less... visceral than ours can be? Something that is not more or less, but instead just different.

They do not idolize the Emperor, and may actually be pretty critical of him - Wait, stop, I can explain! Yeah, we begin to really veer off now - but I do so love characterization rooted deeply in contradiction. I don't challenge the idea that they are unflinchingly, mind-numbingly loyal to him and would commit any heinous crime on his word. But I also like to imagine them having the same sort of "predisposed towards the same personality traits and flaws" thing that Astartes have with their primarchs. Having their unique personalities all grow around the same powerful inherited core. Basically, they all see him in themselves - and if they thought that he was infallible, then... Well, it's not as interesting as the opposite, is it? What if instead they see him as a deeply flawed figure, and see those flaws reflected in them, but at the same time are too much like him to admit either? Isn't it delicious - to be able to see how deeply flawed and toxic are the ideals that you follow, and yet be shaped by them to such an extent that you cannot help but desperately chase them?

Kind of flowing logically from the previous two - Custodes are capable of experiencing attraction, but never to each other. It's just all too easy for them to see all the parts of him, of themselves, that they don't like in others of their kind. In fact, maybe this goes beyond attraction - maybe this is the reason that they have trouble truly working together and trusting one another?

[vossprime]

Zlatko for the character quary: 6, 7, and 8!

Hi and thank you! <3

6. What was the thought process behind their appearance? Did you go mostly for the aesthetic or are there other reasons they look the way they do?

At the time I just got done reading Metro 2033 and seamlessly transitioned from one interest to another, so the idea was to make him look like someone you'd find in a dingy underground tunnel bar. He always was meant to look a bit out of it - the outgrown buzzcut, the overly casual clothing, just not what you'd expect from an Imperial commissar. The inspo was mostly military in kind for that reason.

One thing I really enjoy in character-making and worldbuilding is making choices and then finding justification for those choices after the fact & modifying them accordingly, because it leads you places you initially wouldn't have gone. So the visual basework for him was fashioned one random tuesday afternoon in the character creator - at that time there really wasn't much thought put into it, but the backstory-relevant expansion on aesthetic-based choices like his the meaning of his tattoos did come later. For augments I honestly just went with what appealed to me visually. His chest augment, for example, was just me going "Hey what if we replace a part that isn't the extremities?".

7. What is an aspect of their appearance that you like the most?

The missing eye. I love the whole bit of his youth that surrounds it - see Dog Days - and that it's essentially now modified into something better than what it used to be, but it also marks you as a tool forever. That shit was really just made with one single purpose in mind - to shoot a weapon as precise as possible with no care for comfort or aesthetics. Like hey, Congrats, your soul isn't the only thing you were selling. Also I like to exploit the body horror of something being plugged into the optic nerve in Commorragh :)

Side note that @mortallyperfecttimemachine once referred to the events of The Draw as "toxic couples with three eyes between them" so that's now forever stuck in my head.

Other honorable mentions: The fact he had long hair when he was younger (from the whole "hair holds memories" and "mental breakdown buzzcut" perspective), his tattoos (forever marked a backstabber <3) and the redesign of his chest augment I am working on.

8. What is the origin of their personality? And let's be honest - how much of it is projecting?

Much like the visual stuff, I started with a concept. The idea was always "doesn't talk much, kind of a bastard, tough" and we went from there. The rest came through gameplay and also inferring it from his backstory - it made sense for those events to have lasting consequences on his personality, but also a moderate amount of change to take place over time, leading to present-time him in the end.

The projection happened on accident. Warhammer often breeds repression just through the very fabric of the subject matter, and 90% of my own personality is repression, so that was certainly something we had in common from the start. The way he interacts with people is often the polar opposite of mine, but the baseline idea is the same: a fear of having people closeby. He was never intended to be a tool of projection, but by now he's contains a bit more of it than I had ever planned for him to be. He has enough of his own personality and his own stuff going on that I still see him as his own character though, and not just "me but Warhammer flavor"

[battle-sister-ames]

Hi. I'm Amy. I write on AO3 and thought making a new Tumblr would be a fun way to promote and share my stuff, since Twitter has been ratfucked. I'll post hobby and writing stuff here, among other things!

I write and paint Warhammer, mostly 40k, and 90% of the time it's wlw content. It tends to be canon-typically graphic, gorey, violent, foul-mouthed, and all military sci-fi, taking inspiration from the Black Library and a host of other sources. You can expect original Sisters of Battle, Imperial Guard, and Raven Guard characters all getting up to no good in a satirical view of the tyrannical Imperium and what it means to be a soldier within it (augmented or not). I don't really write smut unfortunately, though maybe one day.

A long, serialized novel from NaNoWriMo 2023 is currently being worked on and posted, with a new chapter every week whenever the hell it's done.

[dirgeforworms]

18+ MINORS BLOCKED ON SIGHT

Hello! My name is Dirge, I'm a 30+ year old dilophosaurus furry, budding gear kinkster, and resident freak. This is my sicko blog.

I sometimes make art! Mostly furry and monster content, with a heaping helping of really horny Warhammer 40k art and military stuff (with the alt sona Alek/x), because there's something gently wrong with me. Come say hi! I like to talk.

Personal posts are tagged #dirgeforworms

Art is tagged #my art

-

General content warning for:

Gore, body horror, blood

Kink, leather, tactical/gear/military, CNC, knives, BDSM, guns

Yiff, furry art, vore, feral, pred/prey

NSFT, general nudity, pinups and cheesecake, monsterfucking

Vents, I'm trying to figure out my sexuality. Ok actually no. I know my sexuality I'm trying to figure out how to apply that shit irl and sometimes I bitch about it.

-

KINKS ARE POORLY TAGGED since I'm trying to hide from the roving eye of being banned. Please do NOT follow me if any of this is triggering to you.

[curuniel]

I'm not surprised there's a range of opinions from people who've finished Exordia, but I am fascinated by the opinion that there's too much military running-around-shooting-people content. Mostly because I have been exposed to Warhammer 40k stories and literally, repeatedly, fallen asleep in the combat scenes because they are so much just for the sake of showing combat, whereas as someone who isn't a fan of modern military stuff at all I don't think I was ever bored by scenes in this book because the book is so very much about the characters, and every shooting engagement was definitely part of a character journey and/or horror experienced by a specific character in different ways to others.

Just interesting! Anyway I can't sum up this book it was fucking wild and I enjoyed it.

[silverspleen]

I have an OC question, any girls?

I mean yes, but I won't apologize for my blatant bias towards male characters. But it's very present.

You'll like Titan best I think. She's a Warhammer 40k OC, and the daughter of an Inquisitor who settled on an agri planet with a farmer lady he liked. Titan is his genestealer mutant daughter, she was born looking uncannily human and didn't develop her genestealer traits until she was older, in direct contrast to normal 1st gen genestealers. Basically this girl hit puberty and started growing extra limbs and weird armor and huge fangs. She's also significantly larger and smarter than normal, and has some mild psyker abilities. After her parents passed away she used her extensive knowledge of inquisition tactics (thanks dad!) combined with her genestealer canniness to take over her planet and start inserting her children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren into every aspect of planetary life.

Spooky South wise, the same setting Jake and basic bitch no AU Silas live in, I have Eliza, Friday, and Lillian.

Eliza is werecat James' ghost girlfriend/sugar baby. She helps both James and Silas out mostly for selfish reasons (they're hot and she want to bone them, also they get into SO much shit it's entertaining). Her attitude toward being dead is like "ooooh guess I can do what I want now >:3" and is a huge party girl and fashion diva. She's the brunette with branches and flowers growing out of her partially skeleton face that I've posted here a few times. She has notably powerful ghost abilities and can control plants to some degree as well.

Friday is the like, classic angsty monster hunter, her husband got killed by supernatural nonsense (James again) and she didn't handle it well and is basically in a very deep "dig two graves" revenge mindset. She spends basically all of her time prepping to hunt and hunting, mostly using surplus military gear, hunting gear, and sports equipment. She mellows out a little after she gets like... found family to hunt with.

Lillian, is the Found Family to hunt with that Friday gets, she was Silas' old cop partner but their paths almost completely diverged, he got so corrupt that he was bored with standard cop corruption and moved on the full criminal, and she got so bone-deep tired of official law enforcement corruption that she left the force completely. She's basically a private investigator now and works/lives with with Friday as her like... platonic life partner and they investigate supernatural stuff. Silas used to have a crush on her, but Lillian is very ace and he was savvy enough not to make it weird, it was just one more secret for the pile. Lillian (and their third team member Johnny) is the like "let's not be hasty and just randomly execute supernatural creatures" part of the team and basically took the knowledge of the supernatural existing with nothing but grace and patience.

Also I have various RP characters and character concepts that haven't been fully developed yet too so there's that.

Jennifer - RP character, a very normal teenage girl who's courier job basically got her involved in the supernatural and she cried into her iced coffee about it. </3

Ran - my Starbound character, a hylotl (alien amphibian people with a heavy japanese culture inspiration). I miss her and need to play again. She's very softspoken and kind and likes to stab things with the fart spear (toxic gas spear Q gave me that I adore).

"Mace" - in development, a mercenary who works escorts dinosaur embryos, she's got that "pathetic until she's super invested in a job and then becomes super efficient" thing going on. Ned to draw her more because I've been craving "dinosaurs and modern tech" stuff again.

Mother of Sin - big tiddy worm lady, a demon. Probably in the Spooky South setting if I can hammer her worm form down, though she's a little too fantasy leaning for the setting.

I keep trying to manifest another nasty trash dumpster girlfriend for Silas but so far nothing has stuck but it's always in the back of my mind.

I've also got monster lesbians but they're loose concepts and more just for drawing for fun. Plus some designs that need developing.

[dzthenerd490]

Not a request, just wanted your opinion on the following: Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Dune.

What do you think of these?

Dune - Honestly pretty good if not a little condensed. It just seems dumb to be having all this vast lore about different noble factions within a galactic wide empire when we're mostly going to be on a large desert planet.

They way everyone fight is cool though, also funny that they have futuristic guns that can blow up a large rock with a single shot, but they do all their fighting with swords. Though it makes sense and is smart if you think about it, each noble house and even the Fremen have their own fighting style they use to overwhelm their enemies. The Harkonen relies on numbers and muscle, the Atreides rely on teamwork and efficiency, The Emperor's Sardaukar rely on fast and precise strikes, and finally the Fremen rely on ambushes and planning ahead. If nothing else, it's the perfectly action packed.

Star Wars - I honestly don't know where I stand with this franchise anymore. I like the concept and idea but most of the time ideas just seems recycled even form the beginning. Then there are elements in the overall franchise that I feel aren't utilized enough like the Sith, Droids, and Ship Battles.

Though with the movies out of mind, I absolutely loved the Clone Wars show thought that's just because I like large battles. It did help me understand a little bit better the overall lore of Star Wars thought only by a little bit.

As for Video Games I LOVED the Star Wars: The Old Republic. I also loved that you could be a Sith and make Light Sided decisions that ultimately allowed you to become a Royal Sith Lord regardless. AND you could be a Jedi that makes Dark Sided decisions yet still saved the galaxy form the Sith. Also, in one of the expansions you could get a hot Sith girlfriend so that's a bonus. I honestly wished more Star Wars content was like that people making decisions but ultimately never giving up their overall morals. I always hated the darkness corrupts all clique or the bad guys becomes good after a few acts of kindness, I mean their neat and always warm my heart but sometimes they're so... blegh! So when SW:TOR didn't go that route I was amazed.

Star Trek - Really mad at myself for not getting into this franchise sooner. I'm more of a battle and war kind of person hence why I've recently gotten into Warhammer 40K but I do love how in almost every iteration of Star Trek I end up falling in love with all the crew members. Even Discovery one of the most hated Star Trek shows was entertaining in my opinion. Though even I felt the overall ended of that series was rushed. Though forever and always Lower Decks will be the best of Star Trek in that it is both a parody of the series as well as true to the overall franchise.

Stargate - I uh... I watched bit's and pieces here and there but not really enough to understand the series as a whole. I do love the original concept thought that the US military got a portal and used it to travel to different worlds and gain knowledge as well as technology to grow in strength. I love that concept of finding new things and making them or at least the knowledge of them your strength. Unfortunately, like I said I only watched bits and pieces of the show, so I don't know much besides that.

Dune - Honestly pretty good if not... Hey! You said Dune twice!

So yeah, that's my overall opinion on these. By the way don't ever be afraid to ask more about stuff like this, it's actually super entertaining to talk about Sci-Fi franchises.

Oh! Now that I think about it, I could have the Stargate fall into possession of either the GOC or PENTAGRAM within SCP: HMF. I'm not sure If I can make that work yet but I will try first.

[the-firebird69]

I do have a list of my own but he's still going to do his

Hera

I do have a list of things and a couple more it says he's running out of battery is 6%

-we have a huge number of things to talk about and he says we have 6%, there are people that are a nuisance here he says we've talked about that you can come back after she says her stuff actually I do hear what you're saying

-there's a few things I want to say we have a big list no but there's a couple things we are at each other a little because these people are so damned aggravating but he's not at me as much as it sounds and your people are losers he wants to put it out over and over until you're gone you're too hard to work with cuz you're so stupid we have to pass over to McDonald's or completely nuts and Biden will get it again the max have already said it

-also there are several other things happening Trump is on the grill and he's going to be indicted again this coming week and it's for treason in Colorado they tell him not to go there he's not wanted his people to keep trying to infiltrate a military base and he keeps on going there they're telling him to get lost and he won't now the preparing papers to file Monday in federal court in Colorado already they started proceedings and he saw in the news it says we don't want you here we're going to take you off the ballot on purpose and to get you out of the election you're an embarrassment and they meant it. Your program is a known Factor all of the code is known all of your modifications are known and your program doesn't work therefore you're an idiot he says why don't you have your men wear big fat helmets and people you try and outfit with it.

-and Garth chimes in and he's an idiot but he says it made the Spaceballs movie

-and we're watching them bother him now and we want people after it now and we're calling the right people

,-we have a few other things to talk about one of them is the attitude around here is very bad and sour and they don't really have great reasons they they sent themselves mostly they're doing the job for the max and attitude is horrible they're fighting each other and not even fighting the max they're not even lining up at the citadel and they're hardly going down after the ships got a few and stopped even bja they said we're encouraging cloning. And our son and daughter say they're closing anyways and other people are encouraging it going after the big ones and they smiled and said we know what to do.

-we're going to pull people from positions of power bja is a complete nuisance and he's generating the funniest stuff I've ever heard and it's ruining them and he continues doing it and he's an absurd idiot his stuff is very frustrating and constraining when you hear it and it's upsetting and our sun is always laughing at him he turns it up and it turns out guacamole and they get shot and it shot in the head and they lose all this stuff and he thinks it works for them

-there's a ton of stuff that our son gave them cuz he kept being an a****** it wasn't really aware it was him and it really is of productive stuff and it's not even CIA stuff it's counterproductive. He thinks you're an ass and knows you're an ass and he said you poison and you keep eating it and dying cuz you're a moron bja

-he's changing words and reissuing the statements but they go out on a different channel and a different machine and our son is deeming them to be love letters because they're fraudulent and you guys send out fraudulent love letters and he's upset but that's what everyone's going to call them maybe he'll stop doing it and wasting time tons of time he thinks he has Trump's computer program and he does and both of them have programs that don't work so he's saying that Brian if you put any layer of insulation under their face and head it might work Trump's going to try a big balls big helmets the space Marines suits in Warhammer starcraft you can put tons of insulation in that and signal blocking so he's going to try doing that. And the s*** is arguing next door and since it's aluminum it works better than anything he doesn't know that either you end up making aluminum helmets in the light they're light

-we also have some gripes with these people no we hate them all but we are going to move in Monday and do construction on a lot of apartments it's probably half of them in Charlotte county and we're building about 10% new by comparison to all of the apartments and we're looking at doing the major renovations others may want to do it once we do these we're also looking at taking over the trailer parks and we're going to do it here but surreptitiously and we there's a whole bunch of units that are open and we're going to take them over we're also moving into the hospitals and we're going to cut them and not one at a time we're going to fix it but we're going to be there taking the hospital over day in and day out with trucks going in and out all day and you better believe we're going to be loading them with your a****** bodies

-we have only 2% left so I have to say it we're going after the ships Monday and the big ones above I'm going to take little ones and use false flag they're fully loaded and they're going to try and invade today tomorrow and so on and we need to start doing it now so we're going to

-there's other things going on I will mention it shortly well after he charges we have a few problems with the cops and we're going to fix them now

Thor Freya

Zues Hera

Olympus

[greekbros]

(what I have learned from my Warhammer 40k brainrot)

(-its unpleasantly expensive)

(-you deadass can't actually love the space marines because they have poisonous saliva that kills you and they're mostly celibate AF)

(-space wolves and thousands sons are literally the same except one hates the other if you don't think about it too much lol)

(-bruh moments left and right)

(-i have a TERRIFIC prediction that the emperor is going to be the next chaos God)

(everyone is just so hateful it's actually boring. In fact it's probably the main reason why so many AUs and fan made things exist.)

(I've spent more money on this bs in 2 months than I did with my DND stuff in the past year.)

(on that note the world's universe is so strict and ridgid that you honestly can't do a lot of homebrewing without it just being a reskin of something already existing.)

(did I mention it's expensive?)

(if not boyfriend marital, why boyfriend shaped?)

(the bad side of the fandom is the closest thing to those incel "WW2 German Military History" fans and probably just as bad)

(apparently, what makes DND fun, whimsical and complex is basically the epitome of evil in Warhammer40k so no fun allowed.)

(speaking of no fun, the chaos gods are so ridiculously exaggerated and overpowered that it makes me even wonder what's the point in it all. Literally all four chaos gods are just hyper exaggerated yet literally the smolest smackerel of smanything will attract them to you and that's existentially exhausting from a world building perspective)

(you mean to tell me that not a single one of these factions can tolerate each other for more than a few seconds to go against a common enemy, even the most hateful of our real world equivalents have done something rather similar at some point in their histories.)

(yo wtf why is it so depressing, even the nice things are depressing)

[vineee2000]

It's worth noting that, at the time of writing of that book, wargames weren't a pure leisurely endeavour for regular folk the way they are today. At the time, wargames mostly were either related to, or directly used by the military, as a training tool.

In other words, it wasn't about you and me playing to have fun, it was two literal generals playing to hone their tactical skills.

That is precisely why simulation is of such concern - you want the players to think the way a person in that situation would because you are actively trying to teach them how to make decisions on a real battlefield.

That's also where such an amount of faith in the referee comes from. If you are refereeing a game between two actual officers, odds are you are either their direct teacher, or have been invited for being knowledgeable on the subject compared to other officers. In other words, the referee is likely to have a professional depth of expertise on the subject matter. At the same time, referee does not have to concern themselves with stuff like fun, or balance - only that their rulings are sensibly realistic as to facilitate learning.

I would not assume this tendency remained unbroken all the way to DnD based on this evidence alone, thought. Even though military legacy was striking showing in Korns' work, he was already trying to write for a hobby audience and was merely an early part of that shift. By the 80s, when Games Workshop releases their Warhammer game, there is no referee in it to be seen, and knowledge of game rules becomes essential for the players because they have nobody else to rely on but themselves. I do not think Gygax' Chainmail featured a referee either? Although I haven't positively confirmed that.

when people talk about D&D play culture discouraging players from knowing the rules, I pretty much understand what they're talking about, but in skimming through The Elusive Shift, I didn't realize that this idea has its roots in wargaming culture from like, 60 years ago.

Jon Peterson on Modern War In Minature (1966) and its centralizing of the "referee:"

not only is D&D not a rules-first game, it comes from a long line of games that are more interested in your reactions to situations than giving you tools to react

[mystery-moose]

Books - 5, 10, 11?

book asks!

Answered 5!

10: do you have a guilty fav?

Yeah, I got two particular flavors. The first is what I call "airport books," those potboiler doorstops that are usually about some Hard Dude doing Cool Things and being Right All The Time. In my mind these are like, the Jack Reacher genre. I don't read them often, though! Been a long time since I've been in an airport, y'know? But I do enjoy Dan Simmons' Hard Case series, or what I've read of them.

The other flavor, the one I indulge in more often, is licensed novels! Love me some licensed novels. I've read my fair share of Star Wars books, and I'll stand up for some of those Timothy Zahn and Matthew Stover books as having some genuinely great writing, but most of them are some kind of trash or another. I've read a few Star Trek novels, including some by the very good @dduane that I thought fit perfectly into the TNG episode mold (I really liked the one that included the dolphin scientist!) but frankly her work cannot touch the perfection that is the Star Trek/X-Men crossover novel, Planet X.

Look at it. Gaze upon its majesty.

...honestly I remember very little about it except that Worf and Wolverine were fight buds, and also I think there was a fun moment where they acknowledged that Picard and Xavier looked extremely similar? This was prior to the movies, too! Good stuff.

I've also got a list of Aliens novels that I intend to check out at some point, and I've started the dark journey of reading some Halo books as well, so y'know. I love me some trashy military sci-fi schlock as well. That's probably my "guiltiest" pleasure, given my feelings on the military as an institution? But hey, what're ya gonna do.

Let's be real, though. The first thing that always, always springs to my mind when someone asks me about a guilty pleasure should be obvious.

I love these fuckin' things, man. I can't help it! They're too cool!

Warhammer 40k is the biggest, dumbest, silliest universe that somehow creates this incredible cross-section of original-flavor grimdark, straight-faced absurdist parody, catholic-tinged deathmetal aesthetic, and genuinely compelling fantasy-adjacent space opera worldbuilding. At its absolute best, it's all of these things at once, managing to be evocative, interesting, and Totally Badical at the same time. That's rare! But it does happen!

Admittedly I've stuck pretty closely to the ones authored by Dan Abnett, who I genuinely believe to be a skilled author (and who is composed of forty percent Warhammer novels by volume) but even the ones he didn't write are usually entertaining in some way, shape, or form. One of these days I'm going to crack open my Kindle and dig right into the Eisenhorn trilogy and then get into Ravenor's whole thing, and slowly work my way through the Gaunt's Ghosts books, and then maybe at some point they'll eventually arrive at the big moment at the end of the Siege of Terra and I'll probably read that too.

Oh and also I hope Roboute Guilliman actually gets the Imperium's shit together. Moving the plot forward? An incredible development!

11: what non-fiction books do you like if any?

Non-fiction isn't really my thing, despite being a huge history nerd, so I don't dig into it as often as I should! Which is extra strange because I'm way into documentaries, too. Weird!

Of the ones I've read? I really enjoy the audiobook of The Lost City of Z, by David Grann, and Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein. I know there's at least some amount of conversation as to the technical accuracy of both of these, but they are both a ton of fun to read/listen to! (Maybe avoid the audiobook for Vice, Adelstein is a very compelling writer but a public speaker he is not.)

[quasitsqueeries]

Gender and Warhammer 40,000

Look I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I’ve played 40K but I still find the setting really interesting and also I have *opinions* (also I’m thinking it could be fun to play some Dark Heresy).

Dudes who play 40K love to point out that there can’t be any space marine women (they say female space marines) because of how you can only have like eight livers and two hearts if you’ve got XY chromosomes or something. Anyway it’s really difficult reading about this stuff because every post about it has this energy.

So why aren’t there space marine women? There were, back in 1st edition, this post from Bell of Lost Souls includes two models that were released of space marine women and talks about how retailers asked GW to stop sending them because they couldn’t sell them to their players, who in the 80′s were mostly men. As far as I can tell the stuff about only men being able to survive the space marine making process because of some chromosome rubbish was just post-facto justification for discontinuing those models.

Which is a shame because there’s a better justification. Someone on Twitter was pointing out that they’re basically children kidnapped by the Fascist empire and turned into supersoldiers. Of course the Catholic Fascist space Empire isn’t making space marine women. I think it’s pretty clear that the space marines were initially intended as a pastiche of Thatcherite militarism, just like Judge Dredd. In the Rogue Trader they’re depicted as thuggish, inhuman instruments of the state.

I also feel like there’s something about English boys’ public schools going on here. I’m not from the UK so I’m not sure I can quite make sense of it but there was a decision made to have the punk hive-ganger’s butt be really prominent in the image.

There aren’t women space marines for the same reason there weren’t women in the Sturmabteilung. Military organisations in Fascist states serve a double purpose, they don’t just fight, they also serve as propaganda. It’s clear from most 40K imagery and fiction that the image of the space marine is meant to communicate the strength of the Imperium. Imperial propaganda calls the Imperial Guard “the anvil” and the Adeptus Astartes “the hammer” in an empire that seems fixated on hammers, in a game that is largely about hammers (it’s called Warhammer).

But here’s the interesting bit, the image of the space marine *also* communicates the Imperium’s ideas about the role of men. The figure of the space marine represents the glorification of toxic masculinity, not just because it depicts men as warriors and protectors who are inherently violent, but also because these are men who are utterly disposable and who’s subjectivity and individualism have been completely erased for the sole purpose of making war. The primary role of a space marine apothecary isn’t to heal wounded marines, it’s to ensure that their gene-seed is harvested at the point of death so they can make more marines. It doesn’t matter that space marines die, only that hyper-masculine bodies can continue to make war.

I can imagine some Imperial Guard recruitment poster with a picture of a space marine saying “They put their bodies on the line to protect the Imperium, and you should too! Join the Imperial Guard!”

But, if we’re going to talk about what ideas the Imperium wants to engender about women, we need to talk about everyone’s favourite nuns with guns.

Okay that image probably doesn’t communicate what I’m trying to say but I had to include it, here’s Saint Celestine.

So the Adepta Sororitas, actualy first here’s a Reddit post with an extract from a Rogue Trader scenario including a chapter of space marine women called The Little Sisters of Purification (you know they’re carrying a lot of flamers). This is interesting because while Astartes are technically supposed to be monastic, their imagery (with the exception of the Dark Angels, and in that case the major theme is HERESY) rarely leans on that aspect. From the start, the Imperium’s women warriors have been explicitly coded as nuns.

The themes that come through with the sisters of battle are things like purity, innocence, piety, faith, martyrdom. They have a propaganda role, like the space marines do, but it’s a different message. While the Astartes’ singular military role communicates the idea that men are only good for violence, the Sororitas fill a bunch of different roles, the order hospitaller provides medical aid to Imperial citizens, the order dialogous are diplomats, and the order famulous are scholars. This communicates that the role of women in Imperial society is more diverse, and less dispensable, an idea that’s probably reinforced by the various orders’ integration into Imperial society. Sisters would be a much more familiar sight to Imperial citizens than marines, who are largely aloof on their fortress-monasteries. It’s likely that most Imperial citizens would be much more shocked by the idea of the nurse-nun they go to see every few months being killed than some armoured super-human with no personality other than anger who they’ve never met.

And that’s where the idea of martyrdom comes in. Toxic masculinity says that women must be protected, by men, because they’re not dispensable in the way men are. The Emperor, in all his masculine wisdom, will not countenance women to be killed in his grimdark future of only war, so Sisters of Battle aren’t killed, they’re martyred, and often when they are He brings them back in the form of living saints (See Saint Celestine, above). There are no resurrected space marines because the Imperium treats men’s bodies as expendable, and women’s bodies as sacred.

And then there’s the whole purity and innocence thing. Sosoritas are obedient to the one man in their life (Him on the Golden Throne). They take vows of chastity, they spend most of their time in prayer, they’re probably the faction in the game with the most number of abilities based around faith, piety and purity (I didn’t count or anything, but I think it’s a safe assumption). They play a propaganda role to demonstrate to Imperial citizens what a woman should be like, and also how men should enlist to protect them.

So when I see people modding their space marine armies to include women space marines I end up in two minds. On the one hand it makes me happy because it’s clear that it’s going to upset guys who are invested in the idea that women are inherently weak, but at the same time I worry that they’ve missed the bit where this is a sexist Fascist Empire and maybe they’re thinking the space marines are the good guys.

On the other hand, often when this topic comes up, people mention that the records of two of the 20 primarchs are expunged from all records. I kind of like the idea that while the Imperium still keeps records of the traitor primarchs, it’s the idea that there were two women primarchs that’s so horrific to the Imperium’s scribes that they had to destroy all records of them.

[deflare]

Day 8 means we’re back to successor chapters, and today is the first chapter I didn’t recognize on sight. Today I learned about: the Silver Templars!

Focus and Fury!

The Silver Templars are another Ultramarine successor (we’ll get to the Ultramarines next week, I promise). The reason I didn’t know about them is that they’re brand new--the Silver Templars are one of the first purely Primaris chapters.

See, Primaris Space Marines are the product of a mad genius named Belisarius Cawl, who’s spent thousands of years tinkering with the Emperor’s original supersoldier formula. Cawl had a bunch of test marines sealed in stasis, along with the tools to turn Firstborn marines into Primaris, and the tools to raise up new aspirants as Primaris right out of the box. The debut of these Primaris soldiers was the ‘Ultima Founding’. Many of the new marines went to already-existing chapters whose geneseed they used, filling out their ranks with a wave of new extra-big recruits. But many new chapters were founded around this time, made entirely of Primaris marines, and the Silver Templars are one of them.

The Templars’ main claim to fame is their focus on one-on-one duels. They believe in focus-firing down one opponent at a time, and on a broader strategic level, will often carve a bloody swath through the enemy army to murder their leader. Interestingly, this resembles the behavior of one of the lost traitor legions, the III Legion Emperor’s Children (who got so lost in their pursuit of military perfection that they fell to Slaanesh). Hopefully the Silver Templars don’t walk the same path.

The Silver Templars also have a culture of bonding with their weapons*. They’ll formally and ritually connect themselves to a particular weapon, mastering that particular tool’s use. Losing the bonded weapon is a Big No-No, and they’ll go through hell to get their bonded weapon back.

So that’s the Silver Templars. They don’t have a ton of lore, since they’re so new; as far as I can tell, their backstory is mostly told in some rulebooks and a single novella. But they’re kinda neat. I like their aesthetic, and being “the super duelist-focused chapter” is a cool distinctive trait while still mechanically being similar to others. Sometimes it’s nice to learn about a new thing.

*Hey, what weapons do Space Marines use, anyway?

All the little guys in my advent calendar are holding bolters. A bolter is a weapon designed based on cutting-edge speculative future tech... in the ‘80s. They’re gyrojet weapons (which means the bullets have their own little rockets that propel them once they’re fired) with giant explosive bullets. They’re designed to hit armor, punch through, and then detonate inside the target, turning their insides to soup. Bolters are the standard firearm of the Space Marines, and they come in a wide variety, including sniper, machine-gun, and super-fancy-rounds.

The next step up in power is plasma weaponry. These are glowy blue guns that shoot a lump of super-heated... well... plasma at the enemy, hitting enemies with star-stuff. Plasma weapons can be super-charged to shoot enemies real hard, but the Imperium is bad at making and maintaining plasma weapons, so there’s always a risk that they’ll get too hot and explode on their user.

Then there are specialized ranged weapons. Melta guns use the power of nuclear fusion to punch holes in any solid matter at close range (they’re used for tank-hunting). Flamers are flamethrowers, burninating large swathes of enemy nerds. Missile launchers shoot missiles, it’s not that complicated. Tanks and heavy weapons platforms will carry large auto-weapons (basically a regular gun) and laser weapons. They’re rare these days, but the Legions used to also use graviton weapons (gravity guns that use a target’s weight against them) and volkite weapons (basically heat rays, cooking people inside their armor). I’m probably missing a lot of other obvious weapon types; Space Marines are not short on ways to kill people.

Warhammer 40k is a world that loves its hand-to-hand combat, too, and Space Marines have options in spades. The standard close-combat weapon is a chainsword, which is exactly what it sounds like--a chainsaw stuck on a sword hilt, used to saw through enemy armor (no, this would not actually be effective). Chain weapons also come in axe and bayonet form. Then there are power weapons, which have an in-built force field that reacts violently to any matter they encounter and can thus cut through armor like it’s butter. There are normal-looking power weapons (swords, axes, clubs, Wolverine claws), then there’s thunder hammers (they go ‘boom’ when they hit something), and then there’s power fists. Power fists are giant gauntlets that Space Marines use to punch tanks to death. Some power fists come with a chain-blade attachment, and they’re called chainfists. This shit gets silly.

Last major weapon category is force weapons. A force weapon is basically a power weapon, but instead of having ancient super-tech juicing it up, force weapons are powered by the wielder’s own psychic power. Obviously, they’re only really usable by psykers; for anyone else, it’s just an overly-fancy normal weapon. They’re really good at fucking up daemons.

Again, I’m sure there are obvious weapons I’m forgetting. It gets hard to keep track of all the ways that Space Marines have to murder people. And when they’re in a pinch, they always have their acid spit.

Master post here

[dervamullrova]

In no particular order:

Only Villains Do That is a serial by the same author as The Gods are Bastards. A misanthrope gets isekai'd against his will and is cast as the Dark Lord. He proceeds to have a terrible time.

The Mother of Learning is a fantasy timeloop series. (complete)

Quod Olim Erat (and it's two sequels) follows a sentient spaceship that had its consciousness placed into a humanoid body after retiring. Except her captain's son is getting older, so she re-enlists in the military to rejoin the war against two alien species. (three books are complete, series doesn't have a definitive end but isn't a cliffhanger?)

Astielle is a serial-numbers-filed-off retelling of the Legend of Zelda where the Hero is a feral gremlin, the Prince is a depressed 30-year-old, and Ganon has a lot of trauma. (Contains quite a few sex scenes, but those are usually marked in the chapter header)

The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere is a fantasy murder mystery story.

This Used to be About Dungeons is a slice of life story following a group of dungeoneers. As you can tell from the title, it focuses more on the group dynamics and non-dungeon stuff.

12 Miles Below is about a group of tech-knights fighting against machine armies in the post-apocalypse.

Cosmosis is what you get when you mix superpowers with an alien abduction.

Millennial Mage is a mix of progression fantasy and slice of life, with more focus on the people than numbers-go-up.

The Simulacrum is a parody/deconstruction of harem tropes from the perspective of the harem protagonist's best friend.

The Path Unending is an original cultivation quest, following a charmcrafter in his first year at a sect.

The All Guardsmen Party is a novelization of a Dark Heresy campaign (Warhammer 40k TTRPG). These are not the stories of glorious men and women nobly accomplishing great tasks, these are the stories of fuckups and losers stumbling their way into (mostly) success.

Well I'm fresh out of web serials to read. Just finished The Gods are Bastards (well, not that it is finished) and I guess I'll catch up on Pale even though it's not fucking finished yet. Anyone have any suggestions?

[theseventhoffrostfall]

It is 0400 for me and I am tired so this will make not all total sense but I think one of the reasons I like the Alpha Legion is because they feel like Old Warhammer 40k still. Everything has gotten so extreme that other space marine chapters are basically superheros/anime characters now. What used to be culture/flavor for your chapter is literally their entire existence now. But the Alpha Legion still retain that "quirky but at their core a professional military organization" vibe.

For that I'd also like to see more practical astartes feats too where you can see how good they are at conventional warfare. Less punching demons and having le epic fights with marvel quips, and more marching across a continent with 0 sleep and 0 need to carry food/water to ambush the enemy, or being able to operate on planets with acidic atmospheres because their helmets and biology lets them breathe normally or even simply being used for a spearhead without needing to resupply or rest and using those abilities to keep the enemy fighting them while your conventional guard elements rest up. Small things like that IMO would make them fit in better in the setting

Yeah, that's the weird thing about SM in general. There's piles and piles of lore describing how their extra organs mostly do a bunch of stuff that would indeed make them fantastic super SF dudes even if they weren't huge and in power armor-operating in extreme environments, insane self-sustainment capability, hardiness, even odd shit like gathering intel by eating brains--but they don't operate like that. They operate like elite heavy infantry and for some reason also field a ton of vehicles a baseline human could operate just as easily. It's like the Deathwatch/Grey Knights dichotomy I mentioned a good while back, where half the writers were on board with SM being a semi-plausible space special forces group and the other half wanted superhero demigod knights in space that fought with nothing but melee weapons.

And yeah, alpha legion are cool because their "schemer" schtick revolves around redundant backup plans, advantageous failure-states, preparation, compartmentalization and so forth, whereas every other schemer faction are just wacky tricksters doing anime "just as planned" nonsense

[evilelitest2]

The 40K fandom filling with alt-righters was predictable because GW won't stop rimming the Imperium at the expense of everyone else, original themes included, but how was Warhammer Fantasy going down the same way?

Its a lot more obvious with 40K because its basically been playing footsie with the Alt Right for decades now by openly embracing Neo Nazi symbolizing and imagery (its more complicated than that but i’m bitter).  Warhammer fantasy doesn’t do that, it does draw on Germanic imagery but its more Holy Roman Empire than fascist/Imperial Germany.  But it still has some narratives which appeal to fascists, even though the setting was 100% not designed to appeal to fascists (in fact a lot of the fluff is anti fascist).  So its not deliberate but here are some default assumptions (I actually wrote a paper on this) 

1) The lack of positive Emotions.  Warhammer fantasy is a parody and is designed as a dark comedy, and lets admit that a lot of its fluff is very funny.  But one of the problems with creating a setting where everything sucks and everybody is a bastard, is that it actually encourages the sort of nihilistic understanding of humanity which Neo Fascism (opposed to classic fascism) relies on so much.  This is a world where diplomacy doesn’t work, kindness is foolish, and decency is unrewarded, all that matters is cruel war.  And as a cynic myself, I can appreciate the joke they are going for, but the longer that joke goes on, the more it makes caring about humanity seem foolish.  This also combines with the hatred of cute stuff (see also Doom).  The Entire world view is very adolescent boy, which is about the emotional state of fascism. 

2) For all of the games cynicism, it has a soft spot towards the glory of war.  The world is shitty, incompetent, stupid, cruel, unjust and random, but Warhammer Fantasy tends to depict war as the only transcendental and glorious experience.  This is most exemplified with the Chaos Warriors, who come off as rather noble despite being a faction whose entire existence is defined by war.  Warhammer fantasy mocks many things but never war

3) It very much buys into the “Warrior Culture” myth (Seen also Conan), where some cultures are defined macho and violent opposed to softer and more civilized cultures.  The Northern cultures near the Chaos wastes get this a lot.  These cultures have a very “noble savage” way of writing, especially regarding the Viking/mongol based ones.   

4) The background of the Empire of Man still buys into the conservative perspective of “Things were great in the past, but society steadily fell”.  It actually takes this further because it attributes the fall to decadence, hedonism, and sexual immorality.  I was just reading Historian and conservative shithead Niels Ferguston, who wrote 

“the real threat is posed not by the rise of China, Islam or CO2 emissions, but by our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors.” and that sort of view about what causes civilizations to fall fits into the Warhammer understanding of history.  In fact if you go unto fascit forums, they often describe the Queer movement, especially trans activism, as Slaanesh worshipers 

5) While Warhammer fantasy is not overtly sexist and I don’t think any of the writers have actual problems with women (though Games workshop is run by Satan) but the way female characters, especially female sexuality are depicted in the series is...telling.  the Dark Elves and Slaanesh worshipers have a very “Sex, especially kinky sex is evil” feel.  Now I don’t think the writers of Warhammer fantasy actually have a reactionary view towards sex and aren’t trying to make a fascist point, but I think that narrative supports the fascist narrative that decadence spiritually damages society.  The genre is super male coded very strongly and tends to buy into macho notions of aethetic (which Warhammer 40k will take much further) 

6) Because warhammer draws so much on real world societies, even by the standards of fantasy, its depiction of those societies is super telling.  The Holy Roman Empire as presented in Warhammer is actually both less complicated and less international than its real world counterpart.  Notably, the real holy Roman Empire actually controlled Spain and through it the New World, meaning it was by far the most ethnically diverse state in the world during the time of the Reformation.  Because its drawing its influence from the Holy Roman Empire rather than more fantastical element (which I will grant gives setting a distinct Aesthetic which I mostly like) it contributes to the warped understanding of “Medievalism” which the Far Right takes advantage of.  This is a problem with most fantasy and Warhamer is not alone here, but a lot of people’s default understanding of the Medieval/early modern Era is shaped more via fantasy than by an actual understanding of the era.  Notable the intellectual, cultural, artistic...really any non military part of history.  Which unfortunately is how a lot of people view the pre modern world, as just military history, which lends itself to conservatism.  

7) Its Euro Centric as fuck.  That is normal for most fantasy but because Warhammer is so balatant about its real life inspiration, the absence is notable.  You have Fantasy France and Fantasy Holy Roman Empire, but you are missing the North African states, the Caliphate, and probalby most important of all, the Ottoman Empire, the greatest Rival to the Holy Roman Empire.  The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire had a century long series of wars/rivarlys/hatefucking relationship which is just absent.  There is mention of a China based nation (Cathay really?) and some sort of Muslim power (Arabay) which the setting doesn’t care about and nobody ever visits.  The new World exists, but the native Americans have been replaced by Dark Elves and Lizard People.  You are even loss most of the real like ethnic diversity, their are new Jews and the Romani are confined to the Romania inspired vampire setting and basically exist as Bram Stoker people who dabble in dark magic.  And the ogres (one of my favorite factions btw) have a very oriental visual design, which would be fine if there were actual asians in the setting.  All of the non human races except the Chaos dwarves tend to look white or entirely alien which compounds this problem 

8) The notion of cults.  The Witch Hunters in Warhammer Fantasy play much the same role as the Inquisition who targeted Protestants, “Witches”  (and in Spain at least) Muslims and Jews.  Basically the inquisition was just an exercise in cruelty that just targeted entirely innocent people.  In the Warhammer world, Daemon cults are real and the brutal methods of the inquisitions are largely justified, they kill a lot of innocents but they also destroy a lot of cults.  This one is something I’m kinda mixed on, because the presence of evil cults dedicated the forces of hell is fun and it is a great plot for adventure, but it has the unintended side effect of making the notion of secret societies dedicated to profane rites seem less silly.  Look at how Alt Rightists talk about the supposed leaders of the left, its language that is used to describe the cults in warhammer, I mean the Pizzagate conspiracy theory/Qanon conspiracy theory feel like people talking about Slaanesh and Tzeentch cults 

9) Finally, the cynical nature of the setting, combined with its pro war narrative creates a world view where the world is corrupt, cruel, and unfair, the vast majority of people are ignorant morons and the nobles are decadent have weird sexual kinks.  the only things holding the forces of hell at bay are the thuggish sadistic cruel soldiers who regularly indulge in torture and murder of civilians, and it is with these people you must trust.  Its a brutal world where the only appropriate response is more brutality, which in addition to being ahistorical (the Early modern period was more than just war) but fits the fascist world view.  The world is terrible and the only thing you can have faith in is a bunch of German war criminals with a fetish for eagles and skulls.  Anybody trying to challenge that world view is either a Daemon Cultist or a naive idiot who is going to be taken over by a Daemon cultist.  

(very Wagner) 

Again, Warhammer Fantasy is not deliberate fascists, in fact there is a LOT in the material which rejects fascism but there is a lot of thoughtless assumptions that confirms their world view.  

Also I never played/read Age of Sigmar so i don’t know if this carries over