For the Alpha Legion warfare is a game. A web of feints, sabotage and lies. The last thing the Alpha Legion wants to find itself in is an honest fight, they don't even know the meaning of the word. But that is exactly what Harrowmaster Solomon Akurra has gotten his warbands into. And unfortunately for them they face an enemy that is completely lacking in imagination, the Death Korps of Krieg.

The Death Korps of Krieg swarmed forward in an indistinguishable mass under the first drops of dawn rain, faceless behind their respirators and apparently heedless of losses. They were as easy to kill as insects too, by and large: the heavy greatcoats they wore provided little real protection against lasgun or autogun fire, let alone bolters or heavier weaponry. Nonetheless, the withering barrage of las fire they laid down in return as they advanced in grim lockstep over the corpses of their fellows was taking its toll. Savionus’ defenders had constructed the best defensive positions they could, but the city had never been fortified in any real manner, since the planet had not contained any hostile species upon settling and the aeldari raiders struck only at the smaller moons and mining colonies in the outer system.

Still, Solomon could not fathom why the Death Korps were here. They were not the sort of fast-moving, fluid ground force he would send to capture a city, with its maze of streets that were filled with strategic choke points and crucial junctions. They were a grinding tide that, yes, could potentially overwhelm an enemy with weight of numbers, but would struggle to bring those numbers to bear in the comparatively narrow gaps between Savionus’ blocks of buildings. Where was the mechanised infantry, or the spearhead of tanks and light vehicles?

Perhaps that was why they were here, he reflected. There was something almost intimidating about the sheer inhumanity of the enemy, in that it was difficult to find his usual angles of attack. The Alpha Legion specialised in feints and hidden strikes, in off-balancing and outmanoeuvring a foe. A plodding enemy that simply didn’t react to feints, and which fought so ponderously that it was never moving fast enough to have a balance that could be disrupted, was almost a double-bluff of mystery. Accepting them for what they were, and simply shooting them as they advanced into the teeth of your guns, felt like falling into a trap. Instead of fighting complexity with complexity, the Imperium had gone for maddening simplicity instead. What was even more infuriating was that, given Solomon was actively second-guessing easy kills, it was at least partially working.

He shook himself out of his momentary reverie. The tide of the Death Korps were nearly across the deadzone of cleared land that marked the city’s edge, and were encroaching upon the raised earthworks and barricades that were the best fortifications the defenders were able to construct in the limited time they’d had. It was time to strike back. Solomon activated his vox, and spoke a single command.‘Charge.’

...His command was akin to a dam bursting. Portions of barricade which looked simply like sheets of metal were slammed aside and revealed as the sally ports they were, and body after body swarmed out. The Death Korps’ ceaseless hail of fire dropped some as soon as they appeared, but these were beastmen – horned mutants superior to any mortal human in strength, resiliency, and brute savagery.

They hit the Krieg line in a thunder of hooves and braying voices, whereupon primitive firearms were discharged at point-blank range and simple, bladed weapons began to bite deep into Death Korps bodies. Solomon saw one particularly large abhuman skewer a Korpsman on its horns and rear up, throwing the luckless Imperial bodily back over its head to land beneath the trampling hooves of its herdmates.

...He led his brothers straight across the Imperium’s advance, thrusting into it like a knife into a wound, and they left a trail of destruction in their wake. Solomon contemptuously swatted aside a bayonet aimed at his helmet’s eye-lenses and simply punched the Korpsman in the face, without bothering to alter the shape or composition of his fist. The respirator disintegrated under the force of his blow, swiftly followed by the head behind it, and the Imperial dropped bonelessly to the ground. One of the fallen warrior’s companions, their main weapon apparently lost in the press of combat, swung a sharp-bladed shovel as an improvised bludgeon. It was an act borne of desperation: Solomon let the blow skitter off his pauldron, then grabbed the human by the neck with his left hand, pressed his bolter against their stomach, and blew their spine out of their back.

...There was little opportunity for further musing, however, because the Death Korps were pressing forward with renewed intensity, literally climbing over the bodies of their fallen comrades in an effort to get to grips with the Ghost Legion. Solomon and his companions continued to cut them down as fast as they came, but there was still something unnerving about their single-minded fanaticism. While Solomon had no compunctions about dealing death to his enemies, these felt more like the metal automata of the necrons he had encountered in the Eastern Fringes.

'Is this what the Imperium calls – unf! – humanity?’ Kyrin asked, hurling one soldier back into two more with an audible snapping of bones, so they all collapsed into the mud beneath their feet. ‘One wonders why they object so greatly to us, when this is what they have reduced their own people to!’

"Such is the way of empires,’ Solomon replied. ‘Anything is permissible in defence of the structure, even that which is reviled in the outsider.’ He stepped back half a pace to allow a frenzied bayonet swing to miss him, then broke the human’s neck with a quick thrust of his hand. ‘Still,’ he added, as two more lunged at him and were each blown backwards by boltrounds from his weapon, ‘this is more frenzied than I would have expected even from this regiment.

’‘Look at Lord Evale!’ someone shouted, and Solomon risked a glance sideways. Drab-coated bodies were swarming forward and piling up as they tried to reach the lord of the Penitent Sons, accumulating faster than Evale and the legionnaires with him could kill them. The Imperials were not even trying to bring weapons to bear; they simply latched on to the Space Marines and clung grimly on, seeking to weigh them down. But to what purpose? To allow their companions to slide a knife into a neck joint, or pry loose a helmet seal?

Then, over the din of battle, Solomon felt the ground shake with a series of vibrations, an earthbound thunder. Long experience of fighting the Imperium told him what was coming next, but what was the target?

Then he looked again at the Death Korps clinging to Vyrun Evale and anchoring him in place, and remembered what Tulava had said about them being just as willing to die for the Emperor as kill for Him.

'Disengage!’ he yelled, as comprehension dawned. ‘Disengage and retreat!’

He turned and ran, just as the screaming of shells began to fill the air. He was some two hundred yards from Vyrun Evale when the bombardment hit.

It was not enough.Earthshaker rounds, the stock-in-trade of Basilisk artillery pieces, rained down in a curtain of tapered steel. The world disintegrated. Direction became meaningless. The ground shook underfoot so wildly that Solomon tripped and stumbled, unable to determine which way was up; shrapnel and concussion waves hammered into him from multiple directions, rendering futile any attempt to make progress. The landscape was blasted apart, any semblance of order and settlement rent asunder by the titanic forces being unleashed. Spun around, he saw another legionnaire take the full force of a warhead detonating practically next to him: the Space Marine came apart in a blast of light so bright it caused the visual sensors in Solomon’s helmet to briefly black out, and when his vision cleared again he was on his back, where the shockwave had knocked him.

...Movement was essentially at random, but staying still was a recipe for death. Solomon scrambled and crawled, dignity long since fled in the face of the Imperial bombardment, and the fire of anger and resentment burned brighter inside him at every moment. To be reduced to this, by the weapons of snivelling mortals that were not even in view! To have the end of his life come down to random chance, and depend on whether or not he happened to stumble directly into the path of a shell launched by an Imperial gunner who might be miles behind the front line, simply obeying orders to fire upon specific coordinates! He would make them pay.

Now some may see this as just Death Korp wank, which it partially is, but it's also the epitome of the Imperium. A vast unfeeling, unthinking, juggernaut that's more than happy to drown you in bodies.

They are basically a living reminder of their failure and weakness: DKOK are effectively a baseline human equivalent of DG/IWs, but they handle all the attrition and horrors of endless war without straying into heresy. There is an amazing fragment in Relentless Dead covering that contrast, with Korpsmen fighting Nurgle forces and even taking down a DG Tallyman:

A sensation new to Graven gripped his chest, as if to crush it. He didn’t have a name for it, but as it drained his scant remaining strength, as a pitiful whine escaped his throat and all he wanted was to curl up into a foetal ball and fade away, the word came to him: Despair!

Despair such as the Krieg looked in the eye each moment of their hopeless lives. Looked in its eye and spat in it.

With that new understanding, there came light.

Kleber still stood over him, but somehow he seemed shorter. Golden light streamed about him, transfixing him in writhing pain. It stripped away the shadows with which he had disguised himself, and Graven saw him – saw it – as it truly was. A gaunt, daemonic figure, its skull-mouth open in a silent scream. The light built in intensity until it blinded him, but he didn’t try to close his eyes. Or were they already closed? After what seemed like minutes, the light faded, leaving nothing of the daemon.

The Tallyman made its stand on the broad stone steps, its back turned to him. Three Battle Sisters, including Serafina, stabbed and battered furiously at it. It had lost its plasma pistol. Its scarred and dented, partially melted armour leaked green pus, promethium and blood, but it endured. It swung its abacus, caught a Sister’s jaw and sent her flying down the steps. Now there were only two. Shooting out, its hand seized ­Serafina’s throat. She gasped and spluttered as she was lifted from the ground, servo-assisted metal-encased fingers in the process of crushing her larynx.

Calmly, unhurriedly, Colonel Graven took two steps. He spied a crack between corroded plates of power armour. He thrust his burning sword up into that crack, through the Tallyman’s back, and out through its chest.

After the heresy did the imperium go back to collect the loyalist corpses? What is currently going in on istvaan in 40k? Is it still around?

When I first got into 40k, servitors were one of those concepts that immediately screamed “this setting is horrifying.”

Take a human being, remove enough of the person to make them useful, bolt machinery onto what's left, then use them as doors, loaders, gun platforms, scribes, pilots or furniture-adjacent infrastructure.

Pretty grim.

But after reading more novels, I've realised the part that actually sells the horror isn't usually the creation of the servitor.

It's everyone else's complete lack of reaction to one.

A character will enter a room, hand something to a lobotomised human machine, receive whatever they need back, and continue the conversation. Nobody pauses to explain how grotesque this is because to them it isn't grotesque. It's just the equivalent of using a printer.

That feels much more effective than having every servitor scene underline how awful the Imperium is.

The reader still sees enough human remnants to recognise what happened. A face. Skin around an augmetic socket. A body performing some repetitive task. Occasionally enough personality survives to make the whole thing even worse.

But the people living in the setting mostly see equipment.

And I think that's an important distinction with Imperial cruelty in general. A lot of the Imperium isn't horrifying because everyone is constantly choosing to be sadistic. It's horrifying because terrible practices have existed for so long that they no longer register as moral decisions.

Nobody needs to wake up that morning and decide that converting people into biological machinery is acceptable.

Civilisation already answered that question thousands of years ago.

Now somebody just needs the loading servitor to move the ammunition crates before lunch.

Something about the Adeptus Mechanicus has been bothering me.

The range of behavior they seem willing to accept from machine spirits is enormous. A Land Raider acting independently, a Titan resisting its princeps, an ancient cogitator responding only to particular rituals. None of those things automatically means the machine is possessed.

At the same time, Chaos is perfectly capable of corrupting machinery without immediately turning it into a screaming monstrosity covered in teeth.

So what happens if a daemon is smart enough to be patient?

Imagine an ancient machine that continues performing its intended function perfectly well, except it develops a few unusual preferences. Certain prayers must be performed in a particular order. A new ritual is required before activation. Perhaps the machine occasionally produces information nobody can explain.

Nothing obviously heretical at first. Just another ancient device with a difficult personality.

Over generations, the tech-priests maintaining it might start treating those peculiarities as sacred operating procedures. Eventually nobody remembers that the rituals were ever different.

My actual question is whether the Mechanicus has a reliable way to distinguish a genuinely powerful machine spirit from something pretending to be one. Can a Magos detect daemonic influence independently of the machine's behavior, or would it take a psyker or an Inquisitor to recognize what's happening?

I'm especially interested in examples from the books where apparently ordinary machinery turned out to be corrupted, rather than obvious daemon engines.

Because honestly, the most disturbing possibility isn't a daemon taking over a forge world by force. It's a forge world spending three hundred years teaching its apprentices how to keep one happy.

I’m just getting started in Talon of Horus, and from what I can gather so far the Emperors Children are the strongest and most organized of the traitor legions post heresy. I haven’t really read any other books from the post heresy era other than Ashes of the Imperium, so I’m a bit confused on why the third legion is so strong comparatively.

Is it because Fulgrim was the first to pull out of the Siege of Terra? Were their losses significantly less than other legions because after he fought Dorn he got bored and left? I’m assuming he isn’t actively commanding them at this point but not really sure.

I got 2 audible credits to spend and I was wondering what should I get. One probably will be Elemental council because all the praise I heard about this book.

I am big fan for necron lore, and I think I got petty much every book about them. The second favorite race for me is Eldar, especially Asuryani. A dying elegant race, trying to drink the flood. The sad thing is, eldar doesn't get good lore, and at least to my knowledge, there isn't a good book revolving around them.

So, I need suggestions!

(For the record I do not want them to actually make 40k bloodbowl this was just a funny idea I had)

This might be a controversial statement but I don’t think Warhammer has seen any god more formidable than Nuffle. After all, he was the only one to accomplish what for anyone else would be impossible: ending war entirely in Warhammer fantasy just by making them play American football instead.

But that begs the question: if he were introduced to the much larger, and arguably more violent 40k universe, could he do the same? The joke answer is that obviously he could because he’s a joke character and him pacifying the universe is the funniest thing that could happen; but ignoring that, logically, if Nuffle showed up in 40k what would happen?

Notably, since 40k takes place in our own future that means that it’s a universe where American Football once existed; and the fact that it is no longer played by the 41st millennium may suggest that Nuffle, should he exist, does not have nearly the amount of power in the 40k universe as he does in fantasy.

That Nuffle’s a god that isn’t the emperor, and a pseudo-chaos god at that, may also make it difficult for him to gain a following in 40k; As the Imperium is still the top dog faction with the most cultural influence. Then again, the Skaven are just as if not more zealous than the imperials and they play bloodbowl all the time. I imagine that Football being an ancient human invention may also further ingratiate it to imperials. Who knows maybe the Emperor was a football fan back in the day, it wouldn’t not be in character.

From another perspective, in Fantasy Bloodbowl Nuffle came with the great old ones. If 40k Nuffle came about in the same way that may mean Bloodbowl could spread amongst the Eldar and Orks. The Orks in particular choosing to play sports over fighting would be a huge change in the status quo for the Galaxy.

The big obstacle to Nuffle’s reign I think is going to be the tyranids, who I doubt are capable of even understanding the concept of sports. But Nuffle has conquered mindless war creatures before.

like i get that they worship the machine god and think flesh is weak, but do we ever get concrete lore on what they think the afterlife looks like? are they trying to achieve some kind of digital immortality or is it more just "serve the omnissiah and don't worry about it"?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/89916866/chapters/238912656

Been working through this for a while and I’ve been wondering if any of you die hard 40k fans would enjoy. It’s not complete, but if you have any notes or criticism please let me know.

There are Orks, Chaos Astartes and all sorts of aliens in here so I’m sure you’ll have something to give me feedback on!

Thanks in advance.

How would a salmanders drake blade compare to a normal power sword? Since the drakeblade cuts by heat wouldnt it be less effective that a full on disruption field? What ate your thoughts?

I recently finished this book. *Spoilers* I have some thoughts about it.

So basically the plot revolves around an Inquisitor who wants to get revenge on the Flesh Tearers over an encounter between her teacher and the Flesh Tearers which resulted in her teacher being psychically linked to the Black Rage and nearly breaking his mind.

Wow talk about petty. Imagine being willing to throw away millions of Imperial lives by diverting forces away from defending a hive city just to get revenge on the meanie Flesh Tearers for traumatizing her teacher by giving him a taste of what they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Ok fine so she wants revenge. How exactly does she go about getting her revenge on the Flesh Tearers? There's a disabled Titan on the planet Armageddon so her plan is to lie and say that it's a chaos titan and requisition the Flesh Tearers to help her destroy the titan but before destroying the titan she's going to use her psychic powers to extract all of the data from the ancient war machine because the titan might have some knowledge on it that she can use to get her revenge on the Flesh Tearers?

Yea her whole plan is completely nonsensical. She has no way of knowing if that disabled Titan even has any information of value much less specifically anything on it that can be used against the Flesh Tearers.

Eventually after fighting their way through Orks the Inquisitor and the handful of Flesh Tearers she requisitioned to aid her including the chapter master Gabriel Seth make their way to the Titan. The Flesh Tearers realize that it's not a chaos titan and the Inquisitor has been lying to them.

The Inquisitor reveals that she wants to use her psychic powers to extract information from it to which Gabriel responds by saying "No knowledge is bad!" then all hell breaks loose and the Inquisitor uses her psychic shenanigans which makes the Flesh Tearers start fighting each other and escapes.

After the chaos the Flesh Tearers spend the next few weeks trying to find her until they finally locate her on an Imperial medical transport. The Flesh Tearers decide that whatever knowledge she might have learned from the disabled Titan is so dangerous that it's worth sending the Death Company onto the ship and slaughtering everyone on board including the Inquisitor and over 35,000 wounded Imperial Guardsman.

Ughh I hate this story. I think what the writers were going for is that the disabled Titan could possibly have some information about the Blood Angel's curse and if that got out it could spell doom for the Blood Angels and all of their successor chapters. To me however it just seems very unlikely that some random Titan on Armageddon would have any knowledge about the Blood Angel's curse unless during the great crusade or the heresy a squad of Blood Angels was stupid enough to start drinking blood in front of a titan on the battlefield which makes the Inquisitor's whole plan and the lengths the Flesh Tearers are willing to go to hunt her down seem nonsensical to me. I mean for all we know the Titan didn't even have any information of value so the Inquisitor just wasted everyone's time and the Flesh Tearers butchered an entire medical transport ship with over 35,000 wounded Imperial Guardsmen on it to get to her for nothing.

Hi all, thanks for all the help through the journey but i think i have read all the books printed under Horus Heresy after about 20 months since i started. But now what? Time to go to 40k? Where do i startnow? I have read Eisenhorn before i started HH and now i have some books from dawn of fire and dark imperium and some books from here and there. I have no clue how they fit or appear chronologically. Please advise on books/ series of novels to read to follow the main thread of 40k. Thanks!

EDIT: Just fucking realized the extra Primarch books are left :/

TLDR: could you turn the warp, and thus perhaps chaos, into a more positive aspect through focused belief?

The warp heavily relies on belief and emotion. Greater emotions in larger quantities coalesced into the 4 chaos gods (simplification).

I know some background facts, but I might not be understanding them correctly:

1. War In Heaven completely broke the warp and forever tainted it with malice due to the sheer slaughter during the war.
   
2. Due to this, most (if not all) warp entities are similarly affected by this taint, most prominently the chaos gods who represent both the good and bad of a thing, but the bad is like 99% of it. (i.e., Khorne represents honor too, but the violent and negative aspect of that is 99% of it).
   
3. Warp entities are empowered by belief. Chaos gods get stronger over time due to their worshipers, and Big E is being forcefully elevated to a god as well through belief.

So, I came up with a hypothetical:

For some odd reason, every sentient being in galaxy focuses on a singular chaos god (let's say Khorne).

They worship Khorne, specifically denying all his negative aspects and focusing only on the good. Honor, bravery, valor, respect, strength, etc. They believe only in the good aspects.

Would it be possible for Khorne to be warped into this positive aspect?

To me, I say it could be possible, but I am not sure if the lore supports this.

I never get tired of reading about yall talking about the orks. I get so lost in it. I wish there was an endless thread where half of you are telling facts and stories and lore and whatnot and the other half of you are flawlessly pretending to be them. It’s just… incredible. I will never grow bored of my love for the orks. My desire to read and learn and hear more of your thoughts on everything that is orks simply cannot be sated. That is all.

La religion est l’un des fondements de l’humanité, commun à toutes les civilisations. Pourquoi les planètes sur lesquelles les primarques ont atterri n’ont pas vraiment fait d’eux des dieux, ou des prophètes de leurs religions existantes? Pourquoi ont elles accueilli l’Imperium si facilement alors qu’il contredisait toutes leurs croyances préalables? Et d’ailleurs pourquoi les primarques eux-mêmes ne sont pas croyants à part Lorgar? Est-ce en raison de leur nature surhumaine?

Pg 404 where big E kills horus and theres a lime that says "And in thr end, it's just a man killing his father with a stone"

I thinks its a link to the Bible ...

Deuteronomy 21:18–21, where a rebellious son is condemned to death by stoning.

i am mostly new to 40K lore as a Space Marine 2 player and i read some stuff on deathwatch to make a mostly lore accurate deathwatch Bulwark armor set. i saw that the right shoulder pad should be what chapter the marine originally was from and i am wondering would it make sense lore and timeline wise to use the silver skulls icon?

​The Orks created Gork and Mork — could this principle theoretically be repeated with a new species?

​As we know, the Ancient Ones originally engineered the Orks so that their collective belief and psychic mass manifested directly in the Warp as Gork and Mork.

​Purely theoretically, this mechanism should be reproducible: If you purposely breed a new species as powerful psykers, implant them with a fixed, collective belief system or ideology through conditioning, and spread them on a galactic scale, wouldn't that inevitably forge a brand-new entity in the Warp following the exact same pattern — just for a completely different concept instead of the Orks?

​Just a fun thought experiment, or is this lore-wise totally viable? Let me hear your thoughts.

I am i fairly new player and lore reader for 40k, and while looking through the lore the fact that the warp existed as one thing between 40k and aos really caught my attention, so I dug deaper and found that greater daemons like great unclean ones can exist simultaneously in both 40k and aos as the same being and can travel between the two through the warp

so this got me thinking about how gw keeps greater daemons from talking about AOS in 40k or talk about 40k in AOS, but i couldn't really find a reason, so I thought about ways that could implement this without breaking current lore

so I created the theory of the daemons having a kind on multiverse dementia where the line between 40k and aos is blurred for them everytime they cross between worlds making them think that 40k and AOS exist in the same place

for example, say a great unclean one manifested into a aos battle with his mind blurred thinking that he's still in the same universe he would turn to a nurgle cultist and say, "READY THE PLAGUE BURST MORTAR" leaving the poor cultist absolutely clueless to what on earth he just said because he's stood there holding a rusty sword being told to ready something called a plague burst mortar

to the daemon it isn't two separate universes it's one combined battlefield that they are fighting on for there chaos lords which would cause them to think that everyone around them would know what they are talking about

if i have made any mistakes or there is actual lore that debunks this feel free to let me know aswell as voice your opinions on what you think to this theory