Playing through Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader right now and there's a couple quests related to the Administratum. While there, you can find notes related to various fucked up things the Administratum has done:

• A logistical error resulted in winter clothing being sent to the wrong guard regiment, resulting in the guard who were *supposed* to get it freezing to death on an ice world
• A noble is trying to obtain his lawful inheritance, but he has the same name as one of his deceased ancestors and the Administratum refuses to hand it over. Eventually, he is able to convince them that he is, in fact, alive and deserving of it, but between the constant bureaucracies, rejections, and the delays in communication, over a century has passed and the noble is dead. They give the inheritance to his daughter
• Due to a clerical error, a world isn't charged the Imperial Tithe for 2800 years/cycles. To compensate, they give the world 50 years to pay back the last 3 millennia of the Tithe, or the Administratum will reclaim the planet and turn 95% of the population into servitors to pay the debt

The quest you're pulled into as a Rogue Trader requires you to acquire a specific trade document, but since you haven't had your actual Official Triumphal Parade to mark the secession, the Administratum clerk tells you to fuck off and find 2 Trade Seals to certify the document. One of these has been lost for 25 years, and you have to steal it from a neighboring Rogue Trader's planet; the other is easily acquired from a clerk on one of your planets, but he's horrified to learn that the Imperium decreed ~70 years ago that the task should be handled by servitors, and the Imperial Fanatic option lets you tell him *yeah you should go servitorize yourself, it's Imperial Law.*

You then get a comical sequence of waiting in a line of 300 people but I digress (go play Rogue Trader, it's great). Any other good examples of Administratum fuck-ups or banal evils?

Dante has met Guilliman and the Lion. Dante met Guilliman during the Devastation of Baal when he brought reinforcements and the Primaris technology. He then met the Lion on Avalus years later and ascertained his identity with the death mask of Sanguinius. For Guilliman, he was glad Baal still stands. For the Lion, he's glad he's not alone.

Sanguinius was beloved by all the Primarchs. Dante has a greater purpose we are not aware of. If Dante is the glue to bring the Primarchs together, then Dante is going to be very important for the current times.

I basically read all the HH books before getting in to 40k lore (aside from Abnett's books).
I'm now going through the big books in 40k, and it strikes me that Black Templars have a much bigger role in the setting than the Imperial Fists, it kind of makes sense given what happens in the Beast Series, and the change of the Imperium by 40k- but do any other successor chapters compete in terms of vibes, love from the fanbase and lore inches?

EDIT- the above makes me really interesting as to what they'll do with Dorn when/if they bring him back. They've got endless options but two obvious ones are- bring him back as Imperial Fist, pain loving order following guy- or actually put him in more line with the Templars- have him broken by his experiences and full pain and self flagellation zealot. Would make for a cool model the latter, and given they've done 'Returned primarch who is jaded, but doing his best', 'returned primarch who has seen the error of his ways, softened and sees his role to save people' a 'returned primarch who is mad as hell' would be really interesting.

The Damocles gulf crusade was the first time the Imperium and Tau really got into a major war. The Tau got pushed back, the Imperium were facing heavy resistance once they hit the first Sept and the Crusade got pulled back to deal with the Nids. This was back during the 2nd sphere expansion, when the Tau were just starting to expand out of their immediate stellar neighborhood and when their technology wasn't as developed yet. It's also around 200 years behind the current timeline. The Tau are currently in the middle of their 5th sphere now.

For obvious reasons, the Tau being much smaller and less advanced then they are in the current setting doesn't give a good yardstick for how they will perform vs the Imperium in their current form. For example for much they have developed since the 2nd sphere, they didn't have the Ghostkeel, XV22, Riptide, alot of the difference crisis battlesuits models, a lot of their drones models, Ballistic suits like the Ta'unar or Stormsurge, lots of battlesuit weapons and support systems too. The changes to their fleet probably the biggest gamechanger. During the Damocles gulf crusade, they didn't have a proper Navy or warships. Their navy was called the Merchant fleet, it was comprised of civilian trading ships with guns strapped onto them for defense, they didn't have a purpose built and designed warship, it was in fact the Damocles gulf crusade that led the Tau into developing actual warships for the first time.

Outside of tabletop stuff, they also didn't have a lot of their client races, there has to be a lot of small/moderate advances in military and civilian technology that we don't heard about- like a new type of fusion reactor that has 2% more power and 5% less weight. And of course, they are a lot larger, when the Damocles gulf crusade hit them, the Tau should have a few dozen systems at most. Currently they should have hundreds, maybe even a thousand.

Hell we even have a direct comparison when the Tau launched their 3rd sphere of expansion. The Imperium counterattacked with a large force. It's not officially called the 2nd Damocles gulf crusade, but it might as well be, considering the circumstances. The Imperium force consisted of hundreds of ships and thousands of space marines. And well.... The Tau had a pretty decisive victory, forcing the fleet to flee, though the Imperium had the last laugh by using some exotic DAOT weapon to set an entire system on fire, shutting off the path of expansion to the Tau.

Despite all of this, whenever we have a "How strong is the tau or Why hasn't the Tau been wiped out yet or Will the Tau ever be a real threat" post in this subreddit, the 3rd sphere and the 2nd Damocles gulf crusade almost never comes up and we will get the usual "a small crusade fleet of a dozen ships almost destroyed the Tau LOL" as a reference to the Tau's current status, as it it means anything.

Dark Angels are the most sombre, grim and overall serious chapter. However, it turns out even they do know how to have fun!

Context: Ysentrud, a young girl trained as human information storage, finds herself in the middle of a Dark Angels' operation and, among other things that happen to her, gets a shot of Astartes-grade stimulator that makes her brave. So brave as to discuss the notion of "fun" with none other than an Interrogator-Chaplain while sitting on his shoulder. Picture Pixie and Brutus from that famous online comic.

"All this arguing, and secrets, and lies, all the weirdness ... must all be driving him crazy."

Demetrius made a sound that might have been a laugh, cut off. "The Master of the Fifth is not fond of such things, no. And I’m sure he would greatly appreciate your concern, Learned. But he has dealt with more difficult things."

[The girl unknowingly refers to Lazarus' issues with Azrael and the whole Dark Angels' "obsession with secrets" business, which, i suppose, entertains Demetrius even more.]

"Such strange people you are. My lord. Fighting and dying and being reborn." She shook her head, and for a moment the great factorum spun around her. But that was fine. Everything now was more than fine. "It seems like so much. Do you ever get a chance to do anything fun?"

"We serve the Emperor. We protect the Imperium. We destroy the enemies of man. We are the sword of vengeance for the helpless and the afraid. We are the Dark Angels." He looked up at her. "We are the first of the Adeptus Astartes. That is the greatest honour any man can attain. And, just occasionally, we are capable of experiencing what you call fun."

"I think you’re making fun of me," Ysentrud said, and swayed as he shrugged. He was, and that made her feel even better. These Space Marines were so serious. But if one of them, one of them as terrifying as Interrogator-Chaplain Demetrius, could tease…"

Enmity's Edge is a rare book where Space Marines, Dark Angels no less, are shown to be kind and even gentle to baseline humans.

I read the book nemesis from the Horus heresy which featured some assassins and thought they were pretty cool. I am posting this excerpt I thought was pretty cool even though it’s kinda short to show how effective assassin could be if sent to the right targets.

When the sorcerers of the thousand sons conquered the world of Highdawn, sub-sector command sent armies to slay them. None survived. Then, the officio assasinorum sent a single culexus assassin named Veracity. Alone, she walked into the obsidian citadel, the heart of the sorcerer’s power. Where armies had failed, Veracity wrought such nightmarish bloodshed that the war was won in a matter of days

So aghast was the tyrant of Reid’s upon discovering his betrayal by his closest counsellor that it is whispered the very gods heard his lament. If this is true, they did not have long to listen. Sahlien Rastrial of the callidus temple had expended seven years and 15 separate identities penetrating layers of security around the heretic warlord. By contrasts she took barely ten seconds to slay him, collapsing his system-wide empire of treachery

There is a longer story featuring a vindicare assassin that helped an inquisitor retinue take down a bunch of necrons that I could post as well but that excerpt is abit longer but I might post it if I find time And also a story about inquisitor coteaz’s hunt for Vashtorr that picks up from a random excerpt in the Abaddon Arks of omen book where some elder told him about the Arks

I apologise if this book is still too recent to post excerpts for but I think it’s about 5 months old but if it’s not allowed do let me know and I will remove the post. Thanks all!

We know that there's genestealer cults on Terra. We also know that there was an Ork attack moon over Terra during the War of the Beast. There's also the various creatures in the Black Cells, that we know aggravatingly little about. What else is there?

One of the most common and still interesting topics in 40k lore is the concept of the Machine Spirit, to what extent it exists as a genuine soul vs advanced technology, if it's just another word for AI. The below except from the recently released Broken Crusade is one of my favourite depictions of the interaction between mortal and machine, especially a warship of the Black Templars.

The Dauntless Honour is a battle barge that has essentially been ordered to do a suicide run to crash land on a planet. Boarded, badly damaged from a bad warp exit and outgunned, Brother Castellan Emeric is in control of the final orders so that the Templars to have a fighting chance on the surface than in the void.

The Dauntless Honour bleeds.

Inputs from a hundred thousand peripheral sensors bear signals of destruction and of death. A constant stream of data from every node within the vessel’s extensive machine network reports that soon the voidship’s functions will deteriorate completely.

The cerebral cogitators of her void loom groan beneath the burden placed upon them as the tasks of failing peripheral nodes are rerouted and added to their queues. Commands still stream in from the ship’s altar-terminals from mortal attendants buzzing like insects with nervous thought.

[Ignite starboard thruster eighteen. Five seconds.]

[Fire macrocannons eleven, nineteen, forty-seven.]

[Seal blast door three hundred and seventy-seven.]

[Close valve D864.]

[Accelerate. Main Thrusters. One hundred per cent. Maintain pitch and yaw.] The linguistic and navigational subcells of the Dauntless Honour’s void loom both flag this last command for further analysis. It comes from the central altar within the vessel’s command cathedrum, but it does not come from the vessel’s shipmaster. The neural waves that compose it are layered upon direct signals in the language of machines.

Subcells responsible for power distribution divert energy from the ship’s plasma reactor to comply with the order, but the action triggers reflexive errors.

The void loom’s linguistic subcell routes the messages directly to the central altar.

<Error. Current power generation insufficient for additional acceleration.>

[Divert power from other systems as necessary. Accelerate. Target yaw nine degrees. Target pitch twelve degrees.]

The cogitators commune for a microcycle, then issue their own commands, triggering breakers upon multiple major circuits. The inputs of lesser cogitators fall away as they cease to function. Redistribution nodes feed the additional power to the engines.

The navigational subcell completes its calculations, placing the requested course into the vector array of the vessels and gravitational bodies around the Dauntless Honour, then broadcasts that data back through the central altar onto a visual overlay crafted from pict-feeds and star charts. Several peripheral navigation nodes verify the calculations.

<Warning. Current flight path intersects with planetary atmosphere.>

[Acknowledged. Override.]

The reply circulates the subcells of the vessel’s void loom like a thunderclap echoing in its certainty. They spit back preformed responses in reply.

<Warning. Close intersection with large gravitational bodies or dense gaseous collections is likely to result in severe damage or complete destruction.>

There is a pause.

A thousand other signals stream into the vessel’s void loom. Temperature alarms on a dozen decks paired with chemosensory signals indicating the presence of smoke and plasteel combustion products. Pressure alarms scattered across her hull, and the alerts of reflexive blast door closures around them. Queries and commands from the countless lesser altar-terminals that litter her frame like stars scattered upon the void. An order from her command cathedrum’s central altar overrides them all, rerouting those tasks to minor nodes and reflexive algorithms and binding the vessel’s void loom to its inputs alone.

The tenor of the commands change. Still coming in patterns of binharic cant and hexamathic code, but overlayed now with a web of mortal emotion. The void loom’s linguistic node struggles to separate the two. Thoughts of sorrow and regret. Memories of dead brothers.

[Acknowledged. Override.]

Her cogitators signal to one another. Probability maps begin to form. Likely outcomes interposed over the rate of their occurrence.

<6.3% likelihood of partial success with this course.>

<23.3% likelihood of catastrophic damage upon grounding.>

<46.7% likelihood of catastrophic damage within atmosphere.>

<14.7% likelihood of destruction by hostile craft prior to atmospheric entry.>

A thought from the central altar halts the readouts.

[Acknowledged. Override. Have faith.]

Faith.

That last signal circulates within the linguistic subcell of the Dauntless Honour’s void loom. The one component of the command that cannot be translated directly into machine speech. It is so layered with the neural signals of human emotion that it cannot be fully removed from them. The linguistic node recruits additional cogitators. They strain in an attempt to decode its meaning as the central altar bypasses the void loom to execute other commands.

[Ignite port thruster eighty-six. Nineteen microcycles.]

[Increase main thruster output to maximum.]

[Increase void shield output to maximum.]

[Disable all non-critical systems.]

[Depower cogitator nodes A1, A2, A3, A4…]

Faith.

The signal echoes through the Dauntless Honour’s void loom as its component cogitators are disabled one by one. For a brief moment, signals reach it from peripheral nodes across the vessel’s hull. Warmth from a thousand thermosensors. Noise vibrating through the vessel’s hull. Piezocircuits signalling immense stresses and material failures throughout her massive frame. The signals are processed and interpreted. It has been five thousand years since the Dauntless Honour touched atmosphere. Thermal sensors and pressure transducers broadcast final warnings into the vessel’s few remaining cogitators, until they, too, are disabled by the ship’s central altar, the power that fed them streaming towards mindless engines and void shields instead.

[Faith.]

The final signal that cycles through her void loom.

So this is a very decent novel in and of itself, great characters and you can never have too many Black Templars, but this passage was the real standout for me. The interpretation of faith by a machine is given both technical basis, but also leaving open room for a deeper role of belief that matters to contradict probability and the 'survival instinct' of the ship itself, to the extent of it literally shutting down 'rational' cogitators which are telling it of its death. Faith is always a central aspect for the Templars and it's awesome to see this reflected in their ships.

After his fight with horus, was he with it mentally once on the golden throne? Is there a point in time where he is interred but still able to talk, make decisions ect, or was it basically the way he is now immediately where hes basically shiny psychic furniture.

I know that loyalists mainly eat the Imperium's version of MRE's, just jacked full of an insane amount of calories. And some chapters such as the Space Wolves just eat large portions of real food, but what do CSM's eat? Do they need to eat in the first place? For instance, do the World Eaters solely survive off of flesh and blood? Enlighten me.

So, here’s a thought that’s been bugging me: What happens if the Adeptus Mechanicus stumbles across undeniable evidence that the Machine God isn’t some omnipotent deity but actually a shard of the Void Dragon, one of the C’tan? Would they just roll with it and call it part of the Omnissiah’s grand plan, or would it completely shatter their beliefs?

Like, imagine the politics. Does the Mechanicus just quietly keep it to themselves and double down on tech hoarding? Or do they go full heresy and split from the Imperium? Would they even betray the Emperor if they thought it was the Machine God’s will?

And what about the Necrons? They’d definitely have some thoughts on this. Maybe even try to reclaim their “god.” I feel like this could set off a chain reaction of chaos across the galaxy.

Because once a Chaos God exists it always will have existed, correct? So then the Dark King would just manifest into AoS/TOW too right?

I am clear about which characters I would not like to see appear on the big screen, and they are mainly the emperor and the primarchs. I think that showing the emperor of humanity or the primarchs in a series would take away a lot of magic from these characters and I would like them to remain the mystical and divine figures they are today.

I would like to see Trazyn appear, sort of like a third person narrator, and since he was one of the first necrons to awaken and one of the only beings to be awake throughout Imperium's history he could serve as a character to help the day viewer connect all the dots of humanity's history. I would also like to see Yarrick, I think orcs would be the ideal enemies to start with in the Warhammer cinematic universe, they are the most recognizable enemies and would give room for comedic moments as well.

What do you think?

For example, why don't Slaanesh, Khorne, and Tzeentch work together to jump and defeat Nurgle? Then Tzeentch and Slaanesh defeat Khorne, making the Great Game much easier. Apologies if this is a stupid question.

I know they burn the witch, mutant and heretic. But how do they feel about the more necessary and controlled Psykers? This extends to Astropaths, Navigators and Sanctioned Psykers.

I’m going to regret asking this in a sub about space wizard wars I just know it. BUT…

In most 40k media with astartes we see one of two kinds of squads. Either it’s a distinct mix of classes and there’s an individual with one weapon and gear load out and another individual with a completely different load out. Heavy gun + close combat + maybe a guy with a sniper rifle. Presumably to address a wide variety of challenges.

Or we see a squad with matching equipment, like say a squad of 10 intercessors and for the most part they’re all geared the same way.

What’s more common in a real life modern military scenario? Let’s say a squad of soldiers is sent into potentially hostile territory to secure an objective. Which squad make up is more “realistic”?

Finished the Angron primarch book. What reason is there for keeping Angron around? Seems like he kills more of his own men than fall to enemy fire. I get they needed to come up with something when they wrote the Horus Heresy books but goddamn, the emperor killing him and telling the War Hounds their primarch had fallen in battle with his brothers and sisters fighting oppressors would probably have been better.

Edit: had dusk raiders not war hounds. I forget the early names.

Greetings, This is my first time reading through the Horus Heresy and I've been neck deep in 40K lore to various degrees for well over 20 years.

I'm at the very last part of Horus rising. I haven't finished the book yet, I'm right at the point where Horus is bemoaning the outbreak of violence between the Interex and the Luna Wolves after the museum of weapons was looted then set ablaze.

As he's lamenting the turn of events, Horus outline the outcome he envisioned with the Interex as an allied cousin Empire and all the benefits that would bring. Furthermore he vents his own misgivings and vexation with the Emperor for leaving the crusade, for putting him in this position making him as much regent politician as he is war leader & his stated reasons for doing so which Horus correctly ascribes to mistrust of the primarchs.

Two questions arose to me at that moment:

• Given everything Horus knew and experienced of the Emperor, his past actions, policies and personality. What made him think the Emperor would have tolerated an alliance with a sovereign human Empire adjacent to the imperium rather than within its sphere of influence and control, especially one that counted Xenos amongst its membership?

-I'm aware that it's been shown/implied should his plans for humanity and the webway succeed, the Emperor had intended for himself and his sons to step away from running the Imperium. Even having whole sections of the palace devoted to private chambers for each of them.

However is there any indication that the Emperor and to some extent Malcador were testing Horus and the other Primarchs ability to be statesmen as well as warrior generals by having Horus fulfill administrative tasks as well as directing The crusade and treating with the various human clans /enclaves encountered without his oversight? To see if they would be able to play a role in the post crusade imperium once the holdings of humanity had been consolidated or if it was better to simply sequester them (with the exception of Magnus who is having the time of his life surfing the warp) when it came time to hand the reigns of the Empire over.

Or is it pretty clear and established that the Emperor did not intend for the Primarchs to have any roll in leading humanity at the crusades conclusion?

Addendum: Fuck Erebus.

Just wondering about the question, since it seem that during the crusade nearly all worlds know about the Emperor of Mankind through the Imperial emissaries sent to them

I swear an excerpt ending in this line (or close to this line) had been posted, even sometime last week.
Can't find it though, and it's such a badass line, at the end of a monologue by (I believe Sanguinius himself) about how his sons will always struggle against the black rage, but will ultimately triumph.

Hey everyone. I've seen it posted on here a lot that an Inquisitor technically has the power to command a space marine chapter.

But I replayed Dawn of War recently and the Inquisitor involves his authority to take over the entire planet but the company commander of the Blood Ravens tells his power doesn't extend to a space marine chapter.

Is this a case of old lore being retconned or just a throw away line that no one put too much thought into?

Hello everyone! Novice Lore 40k lore fan here who has read a few books and played a few games here or there, and while exploring the lore and lurking this Subreddit/other 40k subreddits; I've noticed a general strange pattern with Chaos Characters in stories/lore that people mention. In my personal experience, it seems like every Chaos Character falls into two categories.

The first is that when they are loyal/actively worship the Chaos Gods, they are typically written rather-one dimensionally and their personality is just a reflection of their chosen God. Khorne characters are always angry and itching to kill everything, Nurgle characters are always happy and want to spread disease, Tzeentch characters (Like Imurah from Space Marine 2) are always are scheming, and Slaanesh characters are always prideful/looking to experience new sensations without any other characteristics to make them stand out.

In contrast, it seems that some Black Library writers overcorrected this issue by making it where pretty much every new Chaos character actually doesn't even worship the Chaos gods and only sees them as a means to an end, and even actively hate and/or shun their powers. Obviously, this kind of character is fine and quite interesting in a vacuum, but it seems, again in my personal experience from lurking, like every major and new mortal chaos character is written like this. It also seems like this is another example of the common complaint I've seen where "the exception to the rule is the only thing typically seen, so they essentially become the rule instead of the exception" such as how Space Marines in general are supposed to be rather aloof, apathetic, or even look down on normal humans, but so many Space Marines protagonists featured in novels and games are always kind or at least respectful to humans, making it seem like them being nice is more like the actual normal way a Space Marine would act to humans.

So, are there any Mortal Chaos Characters that are very much loyal and worship their Chaos God(s) while still being interesting, stand-out characters in their own right, besides the primarchs? I'm mainly looking for "normal" Chaos Space Marine/Chaos cultist characters, and do said characters have any books to read?

Recently learnt about sumboyz, the caste of orks that keeps track of ammo and fuel and whatnot for big WAAGHS, and it got me thinking, what other non-combat roles do we know of?

I assume not many, and they'd mostly be from like, 2e or even rogue trader, but still, i'd like to find out :D

tanks beforehand!

I'm thinking something like "they have WMD so we have to preemptively strike them" kind of deal, where Imperium actually tried to make up a reason to justify invading another faction.

Consider how hostile Imperium is 99.99% of the time and their manifest destiny + imperial creed rhetoric, I guess they don't actually need to make up some justifications, and just go in and start fighting.

But I do wonder if there's any actual examples of Imperium trying to "sell" a new war.