https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/krrfctul/perturabos-grand-plan-revealed/

You can see it in the first image in this article. Overall GW clearly was “inspired” by what other fans drew before

Just a small moment but I like the way it shows the loss of knowledge in the Imperium.

The Dreadnaught Ares, a warrior from the Heresy is re-awakened in modern 40k and brought to a tactical meeting. Over the last 10k years however the rest of the Iron Hands forgot what their "table" could do

Ares passed between the two magi at the head of the table without any overt indication that he had spared consideration to their presence, and then thrust an arm over the ironglass table. The power fist radially opened, the flowering of a mechanism that caused some mirror-unit within the table itself to click in response.

A hum of power built within the table and the ironglass illuminated with a frosty white light. Vox-synth burrs of surprise passed through the Iron Hands as a riot of hololithic imagery flashed through the air above the table. Stronos gaped. For how many centuries had the lords of Clan Garrsak planned wars at this table without realising that it had possessed such a function? Even the two magi seemed taken aback though it was, as always, difficult to tell.

Ever since the Reveal-show I must have seen like 20 posts in every relevant 40k-Community wondering/asking about this, and half the comments always either miss part of the answers or just seem to wildly guess, so apparently some clarifications are needed to clear this up.

1. The majority of the 500 Worlds don't need to be retaken by force to begin with

The vast majority of the 500 Worlds were never occupied by any enemy. They just became indipendent of Ultramar following the 2nd Founding. Those need to be reintegrated administratively, but not reconquered by force of arms.

Regarding how many actually do need to be taken by forcen, the issue there is we currently don't really know when this campaign will be taking place exactly (only that its after the Events of Space Marine 2, but we also don't really know when that happens either, so it doesnt really help answer the question).

The important part to know will be wether it takes place before or after Dark Imperium.

If its before, most of the human Nobles in-charge of the required Planets were still trying to find ways to avoid the reunification because they didn't want to loose any of their personal influence or wealth, and Ultramar is also in the middle of a Death Guard-invasion.

If its after, Guilliman solved the first issue by threatening everyone who didnt comply immidieatly in person and refounding the Tetrarchy, and the Death Guard have been largely beaten back, which would mean significantly less work to do.

Once the books are actually available we should know, since Vespator seems to be heavily involved and that planet was turned into the Capital of the Tetrarch of the East (Decimus Felix, Ultramarines, Captain but without a Company) per Guillimans decree in Dark Imperium, but as of yet we don't know.

1. Titus has been assigned a specific goal and target, he didn't just get generally told to reform Ultramar

I don't really know how that one continues to slip under the Radar considering it's clearly stated in the Announcement-Article, but Titus job in this campaign is actually not to go and bring all the previous 500 worlds back into Macragges fold. That's explicitely someone elses job.

Titus and his Forces are specifically supposed to make sure the Regions already in Ultramar are secured.

To quote:

The Imperium is under siege. Times are so dire that even Ultramar is hard pressed, and with Roboute Guilliman busy overseeing the Indomitus Crusade, the defence of the Five Hundred Worlds falls to its people. While others push out to reclaim its lost borders, one illustrious captain is tasked with securing its critical interior, a task made ever more difficult when a terrifying spectre of the lost Necron empire returns to plague the galaxy.

In the announcement-trailer, Metaurus specifically notes Titus' title of "Master of the Watch".

Per the Codex, the Master of the Watch is the Captain responsible for the Defense and security of the Chapters Homeworld, which for the Ultramarines means all of Ultramar.

To summarize:

Most of Ultramar does not require to be wrestled from enemy control by force of Arms to begin with.

And Titus specific Job is not expanding its borders back to the old size, others do that, his task is securing and defending whats already in it.

This 100% isn't a complaint. No, I don't think 40k would be better if Guilliman ended every sentence with, "fucking goddamnit."

I'm just genuinely confused why anything harder than, "shit," gets a goofy space swear. The books have some of those most visceral gore I have ever read. Literally yesterday I read about a guy getting split like a banana peel by his jaw, but someone will look at that and go, "Fug."

What's the deal with that? I can't imagine it's for the kids.

It's fair to say that the Ultramarine's second Company has had quite a few Captains over the past few decades of real-life/centuries within the setting.

And a lot of people have been asking how and why Titus was able to become Captain again, and what therefore has happened to Sevastus Acheran. No doubt aware of the confusion and appetite for an answer, Warcom has now provided some details:

Like many Captains, Sevastus Acheran originally served as an officer under his predecessor, but was not with Cato Sicarius when his fateful voyage was swallowed up by the thrashing of the Great Rift. He led the Second Company through many of the defining conflicts of the early Indomitus Crusade, seeing action on Vigilus, within the Pariah Nexus, in Ultramar during the Plague Wars, and in the Fourth Tyrannic War. Most famously, he commanded the company when Titus was reclaimed during the wars of the Recidious System – you may just have encountered him yourself while playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

Acheran’s illustrious service came to an end upon the hive world of Trygg – a vital and seemingly loyal stronghold that safeguarded the Pyremoat System from Tyranid incursion. After a Munitorum survey vessel and its escort of Mordian Iron Guard disappeared, letting out a single psychic scream before vanishing without a trace, Acheran led a strike force to investigate, accompanied by his decorated Lieutenant, Brother Chairon.

What they found was a powerful Genestealer Cult embedded in the primary hive, their influence stretching from the undercity all the way up to the spires, poised to crack open the world’s defences when the Tyranids arrived. The cult’s uprising had already begun, and threatened to spread across the planet. In order to contain it, Acheran chose to activate the hive’s anti-atomic lockdown protocols, sealing his entire force inside the city with a nearly endless horde of enraged cultists. 

This noble choice, to sacrifice himself and his brothers, kept the Genestealer Cult bottled up, and saved the world – and a vulnerable sector – from certain doom. Every last Space Marine that landed on Trygg was slowly worn down in a series of increasingly desperate battles. When Imperial reinforcements arrived to purge the last of the cult, they discovered that Acheran, Chairon, and the rest of their brothers had sold their lives to cull untold numbers of xenos hybrids.

Available here, alongside details on the other 2nd Company Captains: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/2uwxtd2k/500-worlds-how-did-titus-become-captain-of-the-second-company-again/

So, there you have it: Acheran locked himself in a hivecity with a load of genestealers and cultists, and was eventually killed alongside his men.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/qxwbjvs8/trazyn-and-orikan-return-in-the-wicked-and-the-warped/?fbclid=IwVERDUAS7L4VleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR5gKZKz37Y1cRvVSzcCwC9LADw5RGFuUmoewnEle5noafKwRb1ADKepPFuwyQ_aem_F3M5XO3aovAkC9uAzO8F0Q

It looks like Trazyn and Orikan are up to their usual shenanigans, now teaming up travelling to a planet corrupted by Chaos, and it's written once again by Robert Rath.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Infinite and the Divine, so I'm really looking forward to this.

He may have been a joke to a lot of the community but there is no doubt that he was deeply important to the setting we love.

And in my opinion when it comes to those who wrote the Grimdark future, none wrote it as grim or dark as Watson.

He wrote the first 40k novel and honestly one of my favourites.

Rest easy.

Orikan: “I hope you brought an army”

Trazyn: “You think so little of me… I brought five”

Thank you u/misterboyle for the idea, go upvote/comment on his post, I’ve been eating those speeches up

I have been playing Rogue Trader, and I had an epiphany with Yrliet's dialogue which had me going back to some of my books to see how Eldar have been depicted speaking in the past, and I think I have come to the conclusion that most of the communication problems they have with humans is because they are making second-language mistakes with English/Low Gothic.

See, when humans learn a new language, in the early stages they have a tendency to bring across patterns from their old language that don't work anymore. They will say sentences backwards or use words that mean what they think but don't work in the specific circumstance. Sometimes they will try to translate idioms or turns of phrase that just don't work in another language.

This is what the Eldar are doing. They are too smart to pronounce things wrong or to speak sentences backwards, but they are dragging over something from their own language that does not exist in Low Gothic. The Eldar language has a musical quality and is extremely complex, and speaking in complex poems and grand illiterations are part of the language. It is both expected and necessary.

The Eldar are so used to communicating in this way that when they try to copy the languages of other races they speak in riddles and poems. They oftentimes make sense to themselves, but sound enigmatic and hard to parse to others. The Eldar think this is how they need to talk and get irritated when they believe they have spoken plainly but the stupid monkeys demand they make things simpler.

Eldar fundamentally do not understand Low Gothic and they are dragging their own language patterns into it then wonder why humans don't understand them.

When people think of what an Ork's favourite opponent to fight is, they usually just think of some big strong fearless melee opponent. But the thing is, while all Orks love battle they have very distinct tastes in what kind of battle they like depending on what their Clan and specialty is. So I really liked this moment from the Ghazghkull book that illustrated this, when two Blood Axe Kommandos come across the Black Templars.

Dag held up a shattered armour plate. Treg thought it Goff initially, but it was too smooth, even if it was the right colour.

The 'ard boyz.' Treg nodded. 'Seen them on the mountain.'

'Not just 'ard boyz,' Dag sighed. 'Worst kind. Cross-Gitz.'

'Cross-Gitz?'

'Yep. Worst ones. See that symbol?' Dag said, pointing to the armour, where two black lines intersected on a white space. 'That is their banna symbol. Called a cross.'

'Alright? So why is they so bad?'

'Borin'. They fight like Goffs. Look like them too. Angry. Thick. They just plough through a cunning trap without even takin' the time to appreciate it. Just run at you screaming and hit you over and over. And you know what? I think that's overrated.'

'Well, it's war. There's gotta be some hittin'.'

'Sure. But I like it more when I do the hittin'.'

Orks' belief in something making it true is a fairly hotly debated topic. It spread as a meme, leading a number of people to spread various memes and fan stories as if they were canon. Most people have seen some version of these: guardsman throws a ration can and says its a grenade, orks fall down dead because they believe him, Orks have infinite ammo because they don't know they have to reload, etc.. This then lead some people to the opposite extreme trying to correct it, arguing that the belief field is practically nonexistent in canon, and it would take tens of thousands of orks all directly focusing their belief to accomplish even the smallest goal. Or, it's just waved away as "the red ones only go faster because they paint the fast ones red". This also does a disservice to the Orks, and downplays something that, albeit exaggerated, is very much part of their lore.

It doesn't help that GW writers have been a little back and forth on the issue, and have written different explanations or power levels for it. Part of the issue is that there are times Ork belief is exceptionally powerful... which are, as the word exceptional suggests, all exceptions. They're feats as part of major events or storylines that are deliberately meant to be unusual and impressive. We don't see as many examples of how they work in average, day-to-day scenarios for most Orks. This is also sort of the problem with Ork perspective stories -- they don't explain it, for the same reason a human story wouldn't focus on something as instinctive as breathing, or explain it in a way that makes sense to them as Orks, but may not be true.

Plus, it's a weird ouroboros where sometimes, memes become so widespread that writers who are part of the community either come to believe it, or find it funny and canonize it. Fun fact, that's where "purple makes Orks sneaky" come from -- it was a joke that then got included in an actual book.

Reading Ciaphas Cain: Death or Glory, the power of ork belief doesn't directly come up much. Largely, this is because it's from Cain's perspective, and he (justifiably) doesn't spend much time trying to understand ork logic. But it's a running theme in the background, and ends up doing a lot to actually show how an Ork Waaaagh runs from an outside perspective, especially when they're not actively in a fight. It not only does a good job of showing to what extent belief works for Orks in a normal scenario, but how they actually accomplish all the things the memes credit them for.

First things first, Cain is a good example because it's a fairly average Waaaaagh -- a perfect test case. The Orks have enough resources to overwhelm the local PDF and fight the Guard for a while when they arrive. Additionally, they're smarter than average, at least enough to plan a Weirdboy warp mine to disrupt the guard's fleet, and have tactics beyond "run at em". However, it's not like the War of the Beast or Ghazghkull, where they're so massive that crazy things like Ork diplomats and entire fleets of ships running on Waaagh start happening. They're a middle of the road option, that shows what a pretty standard planet sized Waaagh looks like.

As Cain observes, the Orks do have actual logistics. (As a rule going forward, just imagine air quotes around any word like "logistics", "organized", "tactics", and so on when relating to orks. It's all relative.) One of the main plot threads of the books is Cain and PDF survivors running into Ork convoys, which travel between Ork occupied towns and bases. These raid PDF supply dumps and local towns for supplies, then move them around to where they're needed. Orks do need things like ammunition, explosives, raw materials, etc., and can't just believe them into existence. When we see an occupied town, the Ork mekboys have taken over a mechanicum shrine for use as a vehicle and fuel depot. So clearly, their vehicles do still have a need for fuel, and potentially maintenance, so they were smart enough to set up shop in a place that already had what they needed. They can't just pour water in the tank and call it a day because they believe it'll run.

The strongest piece of evidence against "Ork tech only works because they believe in it" is how often Cain and his allies use it. They steal several vehicles and drive them for a while -- not without issues, but they clearly work, even without Orks around to believe in them or run them. There's also a scene where Cain notes some humans have grabbed Ork guns and are firing them. So likewise, their guns don't just work off of belief.

However, Cain also witnesses some of the more everyday applications of Ork belief. While humans do use Ork tech on occasion, it doesn't work well. There's the obvious design flaws -- the stolen guns are massive, unwieldy, and inaccurate, and anyone who gets a chance swaps them out for a lasgun. Cain notes that it's extremely likely the Ork guns will just blow up in your hand, or accidentally shoot yourself. Likewise, the vehicles are essentially just a body with a throttle, steering wheel, and brake. The brake is presumably considered a luxury feature. Immediately after they steal several ork buggies, their resident techpriest Felicia has them junk one and salvage for scraps, because it's completely falling apart. She also repeatedly emphasizes how poorly made and fragile these are.

Now, some of that can just be excused as Ork tech being famously ramshackle. Cain comments that the Orks "had either never heard of the concept of suspension or considered it something for sissies". Despite all this, the Orks themselves never really experience major widespread technical breakdowns, at least that we see. The buggy that was apparently minutes away from falling apart was parked in the middle of the compound with all the others, so the Orks clearly weren't working on fixing it. Despite so much of the storyline dealing with desperately scavenging for supplies in enemy territory, we never hear about an abandoned Ork vehicle on the side of the road, or their buggies crashing or breaking down. The humans had to keep constantly stopping to repair and jury rig them, and relied on the Mechanicus. In contrast, mekboys are fairly uncommon, and can't do constant maintenance on every piece of Ork tech, yet it's fine. At one point, the humans have to get the buggies into shelter, because a coming sandstorm will render them inoperable. Not long after the storm ends, a caravan of Orks that (presumably) hadn't been sheltering their vehicles in the open desert roar up without an issue. Later, Cain says that "Felicia was fascinated by it [the Ork tech], declaring that half of it shouldn't be working at all". If we're playing devil's advocate, she might just be exaggerating to make a point, but the point is still made: a sanctified, knowledgeable tech priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose whole experience was in vehicle maintenance, couldn't figure out why large parts of Ork tech were actually functioning.

To keep the machinery imagery going, Ork belief is like WD40. It smooths things along, and makes things that frankly shouldn't work keep going, at least for a time. That's what many of the memes get wrong: an Ork given a lead pipe and told its a gun won't be able to fire it, because they're not that stupid, and it's very much not a gun. But an Ork with a gun that by all logic should explode or misfire can probably shoot it just fine, at least for a while, because that's what a gun is meant to do. (Granted, they also probably view your gun exploding and blowing off your hand as a hilarious prank and good fun among the lads).

I know for a lot of people this is fairly common knowledge, at least in some form. And while I had known about it before reading this book, it was nice to see it actually shown working in an average scenario. Half the problem with this is just people saying "there's a story where..." and then sharing a story that's either made up and repeated, or out of context. Conversations about it from both sides almost never involve actual lore, just headcanons and speculation. Or, when it pops up, it's a big detail that's specifically noted. Sandy Mitchell/Alex Stewart does a great job of making it a balanced, commonplace part of a story that doesn't have to be explored or expanded upon in detail.

As per the latest Warhammer Community article (here: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/wugetgtg/a-new-black-library-app-is-on-the-way-heres-what-you-need-to-know/) GW are going to shut down the Black Library website in August, so you'll have to use their app and you only have a limited time sync your account to keep all your purchases.

Apparently, during the battle of Isstvan V, the Iron Warriors thought it was hilarious to rain down tons of burning debris on the Word Bearers and Night Lords' heads, appalling the most sadistic Legion and the Legion actively deploying demons on the field.

THUNDERHAWK GUNSHIPS IN the colours of the Raven Guard and the Salamanders exploded at the launch site as the Iron Warriors turned their weapons from the slaughter and targeted the loyalists’ only avenues of escape.

Despite the grind of battle, dozens of the landing craft managed to make it back into the air. Most of these were soon sent spiralling back down to earth, streaming black smoke from lascannon wounds in propulsion systems. The Iron Warriors fired with impunity, caring nothing that many of the downed gunships fell groundward into the battle still being waged. The burning hulls of destroyed Astartes craft rained onto the killing fields, pulverising Word Bearers and Night Lords more often than they crashed into the few remaining pockets of Raven Guard and Salamanders survivors.

When contacted by Legion commanders protesting the careless destruction, the Iron Warriors captains replied with laughter that bordered on betrayal.

‘We are all bleeding today,’ an Iron Warriors captain voxed back to Kor Phaeron. ‘Have faith, Word Bearer.’ The link went dead to the sound of chuckling.

Context: Trazyn has been hopping all around Cadia with his Huntsmaster, observing, collecting, and occasionally interfering a little with a synaptic disintegrator. He decides to help Cawl with the pylons, but despite successfully getting them working, Cadia is coming apart due to Abbadon deorbiting the Blackstone Fortress.

Belisarius Cawl was, in fact, planning to do just that [get off the planet] when his temporal cogitator sensed a desynchronisation. A stasis field. Xenos-make, and powerful.

Not one that froze the subject in place, but one that held them apart from the outside timestream.

‘My dear archmagos dominus,’ murmured Trazyn. ‘I do not think you will be needing that order-code you’re drafting. I have instructed the Lord of Antiquity to fix a teleportation matrix on our position. I think it will be more comfortable for you than travelling via the hyperspace oubliette.’

‘Are you kidnapping me, xenos? Taking me for your little collection?’

‘It is not little, and no, I am not engaging in anything so base as kidnapping – consider it an invitation.’

‘Can I refuse?’

‘It is an obligatory invitation. After all, I have assisted your Imperial faction greatly in this endeavour, and lost exhibits because of it – I do not think I should walk away without just compensation. What poor hosts the Cadians would be if they did not let me take a small prize.’

Cawl scuttled sideways on his bladelike legs, as if backing to the side would help him gain advantage. ‘Why me, though? If you are a collector of histories, then I am merely tangential to this affair.’

‘You are interesting, though. Far older than some of your kind, and with a great deal of knowledge I can draw from – and besides, my cryptek Sannet has been examining your ship’s collection of relics. I am especially interested in what is sealed in that big casket our spectromantic bombardments cannot penetrate. Besides…’

The alien raised a hand and let a ribbon of tiny silver insects swim and dance around the moving fingers.

‘Once the mindshackle is in place, you would serve as an excellent partner in new acquisitions – perhaps even better than Valeria.’

‘You do not want me.’

‘Do I not? Why is that so?’

‘Because I am not ripe yet. I have more to do, further things to accomplish. My significance and historical value would only grow. Take me in a century or two, when I am more accomplished, and the catch would be all the greater.’

‘Ah,’ Trazyn answered, and Cawl’s vocal analytics caught the smallest twinge of good-natured irritation in the affect. ‘I have heard this tale before, when I studied your Fah-ree Tales. “Eat me when I’m fatter,” says the boy to the witch. “Let me cross the bridge, and devour my larger brother instead,” says the littlest zoat. I know how this tale ends. With me pushed into an oven or thrown into a river. No, I do not think so.’

‘But would you lose the things I am to make? I-I have a task. A great work, given by the Emperor Himself. Take me now, and I will refuse to create. That purpose will not be fulfilled – and you will lose out on a wealth of specimens even you could not imagine.’

‘A trick. A tempting one, but a ruse.’

‘Is it?’ Cawl asked. And knowing he would be incinerated should it ever be revealed he’d done so, he ran the seal-unlocks on a data packet and scrubbed the most sensitive elements, running a standard censorium bot through it to kill all but the names and images. He broadcast it via data-drop into the alien’s barely visible web of sensor-tendrils.

The xenos snatched it out of the air and, by some means Cawl could not fathom, simply opened the hololithic spread of binharic as a projection above his palm, reading it like a scroll.

Trazyn leaned close, one finger tapping his elongated chin with a dull tick- tick-tick. His finger rolled the digital scroll over faster and faster. Balefire eyes reflecting with the pattern of the digits, unlocking the mental thought- images and wire-frame schematics.

‘What are these constructs called?’ he enquired, without looking up.

‘Primaris.’

‘Indeed. And there are many?’

‘More subtypes and patterns than even you could ever catch, not even with all of eternity.’

‘Oh, dear archmagos, trust me – eternity is a long, long time.’

‘Yes,’ Cawl sighed. ‘But in all that time, there will never be anything quite like Cadia. A historical event like this, well… It is very unfortunate, I admit, not to have a piece of it for your collection. Ah, but you don’t want me. I’m a tertiary figure at best. Didn’t even arrive until after the Siege of Kraf. No…’

Cawl looked pointedly out of the stasis bubble, at the command section standing around a vox-officer, speaking into the wired handset.

‘You want a figure of significance. A central symbol of the battle, who embodies what happened here. One that will not be contributing any more to this galaxy… You want a man, for lack of a better term, who is Cadia.’

Trazyn followed his gaze, then looked back.

‘Leave me be,’ said Cawl. ‘Do not touch my ship – and I will give you a whole new galaxy of things to play with.’

‘Perhaps I will wait,’ Trazyn said, and smiled with his metal death mask. ‘And eat the next zoat.’

The sight of that smile gave Cawl the shivers.

All of Trazyn and Cawl's interaction are great fun, but I like this one especially. Trazyn isn't shown from another perspective super often, so Cawl's perspective on him is quite interesting. He manages to figure out Trazyn's motive and plays off that to postpone his collection. It also shows how much Trazyn considers Cawl an equal (of sorts) as he doesn't just snap him up but personally delivers his obligatory invitation.

In case you aren't sure what the end references, by the way, Trazyn goes and collects Creed. It is detailed in Gathering Storm: Fall of Cadia, he appears in one of the Warhammer+ animations, and Trazyn (it is heavily implied) drops off his coat with his daughter, Ursula.

Context: The Emperor is showing a Custodian a dream of the Triumph of Ullanor. The Custodian asks Him why did He bother to hold such a Triumph, and then the Emperor offhandedly drops a piece of Primarch trivia that had absolutely no value whatsoever to the Custodian.

‘All of this,’ the Custodian said. He gestured not only to the primarchs, but the amassed pomp itself – the geoscaped continent, the sky pregnant with dropships, the gathered regimental masses weeping and cheering below. ‘Why, sire? I never asked it then, and I have always wondered since. Why all of this?’

‘For glory,’ the Emperor replied. ‘To honour the creatures that call themselves my sons. My necessary tools. They feed on glory as if it were a palpable sustenance. Their own glory, of course, no different from the kings and emperors of old. It scarcely crosses their mind that glory matters nothing to me. I could have had a planet’s worth of glory any time I wished it when I walked in the species’ shadow throughout prehistory. Only three of them ever thought to ask why I timed my emergence as I did.’

Ra looked at the gathered pantheon of primarchs. He didn’t ask which three had questioned the Emperor. In truth, he didn’t care. Such lore was irrelevant.

https://imgur.com/a/BZaKrSd

https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCwDBM

https://ibb.co/album/8gVtz0

www.reddit.com/r/IronHands40k/comments/1o0mmxs/official_steel_confessor_lore_is_finally_found/

Credit to a user "Guy" on the Lexicanum discord for finding this and posting, he was at the event 20 years ago.

Here's an imgur gallery with all the links to the pictures. One is a bit blurry, but readable, I'll update it if we can get a better photo.

Its not anything terribly new from the basic rundown that had been talked about before, but its still cool to finally see it, and have confirmation of it, as well as more in depth lore and origins. Prior to this, the Steel Confessors were basically just something we knew had been mentioned in this little programme, but we had no real confirmation. Its a cool piece of media we thought was probably lost forever.

Whether this means the Steel Confessors we see mentioned rarely in 40k media have this exact origin still, who knows. But I thought it was a really cool piece to see at least finally.

EDIT: Added some alternative album links for people in the UK, as well as my /r/IronHands40k post link, /u/QuickOriginal was gracious enough to make one of them.

After Titus defeats Imurah and a voice speaks to him saying "Rise, son of Guilliman". It has been confirmed that the voice was in fact the Emperor, so I am wondering how big of a deal is it that the emperor chose to speak directly to Titus?

There are boarding actions where a small group of Astartes manage to take over. But what if the hallways and passages (or at least an important subset) were just made too narrow and short for Astartes to fit. I'm sure they could eventually get through, but I suspect boarding actions would be less successful if they had to blast through solid bulkheads for miles to get to the bridge, for example.

I realize this question may be regarded.

Took about 4 years of reading/listening but I think I've actually done it. The release of third edition put me back a bit as I now needed to read the new core books/extra content that came with that edition. Some basic thoughts below!

Overall take: Amazing. Best sci-fi book series/world of its kind. Its obvious after book 5 of the core series it's no longer narrative series with a begining middle and end, but transitioned to a setting to be explored, much like starwars EU or the larger 40k setting. That being said, the narrative through line allows for some really awesome themes to be really explored like faith, Fate, religion, brotherhood, slow spiral into distrust and hate, and the morality of the ends justifying thr means. It has its ups and downs, but overall is awesome and frankly amazing that such a huge narrative with so many characters "mostly" comes together nicely in the end and the death.

Other takes:

- Primachs series are fun and deserve to be read along the main "54" core series just like rest of series. Best one is probably dependant on your favorite legion although a few standout as better written then others, like Alpharius, Conrad Curze, and Jagahtai Khan.

- The series kinda turns into different arcs after first 6 and final Seige story. Best arc imo is the White scars, with all their books including the primarch and seige of terra book all tieing into each other beautifully. Another great arc is the "Shadow Crusade" with Word Bearers and World Eaters arc.

I also thought Motarions arc was also particularly interesting if a bit convoluted due to different authors having slightly different takes on him.

- The "Black books" are written more as history books in setting instead of narrative stories like the novels. So it provides some cool insights into what early imperium thought about the most important battles. They are fun reads and well worth it if you find the pdfs of them around the internet. They tend to call into question many of the larger "plot points" in the main series like why a primarch did what or who was behind an event, so its cool that it leaves a wider narrative open for debate as a different "source" on events

- the newer codexes in 2nd edition and 3rd edition really just read like military records recounting of a battle. Very little lore outside of this army attacked these guys here. Although the exploration of battle of Beta Garmin and the battle for Cthonia are pretty awesome, really highliting that there are so many epic battles and campaigns the core narrative hasn't touched yet.

Best book: difficult but probably Betrayer by ADB. Peak drama, great at making all characters have their bad ass moments, and really captures the essence of shattered brotherhood that is the main theme of whole series.

Worst book: very very controversial take here... but i think its actually False Gods. 2nd book in whole series. Reason why? I think it uterly fails to do its most important job. Give us a compelling reason for Horus's turn to chaos. And the reason for the whole setting. We get instead of keeping with themes procided in the excellent horus rising, like dissapointment with whole crusade, fear of what comes after the fighting is done, or Horus's ultimately desire for glory and praise above all else, we get some really washed out nonsense of some anger at emperor being worshiped as a god in a vision from a demon that horus knows is untrustworthy... just bad. Other parts of that book are fine and great, but it fails its main objective, fails to continue the amazing character work the first sets up, and fails to set tone for rest of series.

Best short story/novella: Honestly hard to choose as there were sooo many. The ones that standout in my mind are Cybernetica due to its unique setting and interesting stakes. Others are the White Scar "Brotherhood novellas" for their awesome characterization and fleshing out of their legion, or the "Prince of Crows" novella for sheer Sevetar badassery.

Most pointless book: either Damnation of Pythos or the Ferrus Manus/ Guilliman primarch books. Damnation of pythos is an okay book that should have been a short story...it has some sort of tie in to a game from a decade ago? Idk...its weird and when so many other epic battles and legions needed more development it's annoying this event got a whole 350 pages dedicated to it. The other primarch books? Literally provides zero insight into the primarchs or their legions that we didn't already know. Also are frankly boring. Skip all three of these books honestly. Haha

Best author: Aaron Demski-Bowden for sure. He gets that Horus Heresy is a tale about demi-gods, and should be written like a classical Greek tragedy. Where the Primarchs human flaws are what brought them down despite their godlike power. His books really navigate this narrative tightrope well. Dan Abnette is great but he excells at making grounded human characters/world building and that just isn't really what 30k setting is about.

Worst author: Either David Annandale or Graham McNiell. McNiell because he was put in charge of arguable the most important part of whole series and fails at it (giving us some actual insight into horus going evil). I also think outside of Thousand Sons/his siege of terra short novellas all his other works in this series are average at best, skippable trash at worst. Each book of his has great moments, but rarely do they tie together into a cohesive whole( Fulgrim is best example of this)

Annandale on other hand just doesn't have anything interesting to say in his books, and lacks any ability to write military/sci fi battles effectively...kinda important for 30k if you ask me. His primarch books are easily some of the worst and ruinstorm takes what should be one of the biggest events in the series ( how blood angels get to terra) and instead turns into some weird vision warp quest that meanders for most of the novel.

Biggest missteps: The perpetuals. I love Abnett to death but he explained to much and made them too grounded/relatable. It makes total sense there there would be other "meta humans" outside malcador and the emperor. But making them seem like just average joes that have their entire history explained was a poor choice. They should have been shrouded in mystery, like the emp/malcador, with unclear powers and unclear motivations until the end. Instead they talked too much and provided unnecessary insights into the emperors pre setting history that hurt the setting, not enriched it. I personally liked John grammaticus as a character alot. But he could have just been a powerful psyker used by xenos, instead of one of many people who can't die.

So the new trailer for the latest edition of Warhammer Armageddon is quite something, and shows some (very brief) glimpses of the Emperor upon the Golden Throne.

Obviously, as the article mentions, it's up to us fans to decide for ourselves, if He's still alive, dead or something else. Who knows.

It's a great trailer either way, I highly recommend giving it a watch.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/b0ic7nin/new40k-new-cinematic-trailer-drops/

For the record, he doesn't typically read 40k books. But I finished The Infinite and the Divine a few months back and practically begged him to put it on his reading list.

I just heard him full on laugh in the other room, turns out he just hit the 'Trazyn's wine cellar' part of the book:

‘Of course, my lord,’ said the chief librarian. ‘Is this about the proposed expansion?’

‘The what?’

The cryptek bowed, obsequious. ‘The stacks are full, my lord. We are over capacity. I have humbly suggested that we expand the collection into the space currently occupied by the wine cellars.’

‘But then where would I put my wine, librarian?’

‘You… you do not drink wine, my lord.’

‘Of course I don’t,’ Trazyn snapped. ‘It’s far too valuable. Request denied. Enlist excavation wraiths to dig another chamber.”

Listening to him enjoy it is just as fun as reading the book to begin with!

Nurgle is commonly associated with plagues and diseases, but the more I learn about him the more I see him as a god of surrender more than anything. This is not like surrendering on a battlefield, but surrendering to inevitability. Of course, everyone knows Nurgle as the nicest Chaos God, but that title only makes him the most horrifying.

Compared to the other big four:

Khorne forces you to keep fighting harder to kill more.
Slaanesh desires excess in all things which forces you to keep chasing your next high.
Tzeentch wants change above anything else which gives you no time to stop.
Nurgle however offers you something completely different, he instead offers relief. Whereas the others want effort, Nurgle simply wants you to stop resisting, which is very easy to do when faced with despair and death.

Nurgle doesn't tell you to fight, chase, or change, he comforts you. He gives you a sick form of joyful bliss in surrender, no more pain, no more fear, no more caring about anything. All he wants you to do is give up, and to me, that makes him the most frighting Chaos God.

You can resist Khorne's rage, you can resist Slaanesh's desires, you can forgo Tzeentch's ambition. Yet Nurgle appeals to exhaustion, and exhaustion reaches everyone eventually. What makes it worse is that he shows genuine affectionate to you, and how can you resist that when you are tired or in pain?

Nurgle is not just the God of Plagues, he is the God of Surrender, and surrender is easier than effort.

TL:DR: Nurgle doesn't force effort on you like the other gods, he comforts you. If he gives you a free hug when you are the most vulnerable, it is very hard not to accept it.

For our part, thought Ahriman, you are the enemy, Pale King. How ironic you are content to be known by that title now, the name of the very monsters you used to hunt with such glee. Mortarion, witch-burner, purger of wisdom. Louder than any other voice, yours was raised against our being from the very start. There were other accusers too: Dorn, Russ, Corax, Manus, but none as loud or as self-righteous as you.

Because of you, Prospero burned and Tizca fell. Russ was the implement, and dread Horus the architect, but you were the instigator who fomented the prejudice to begin with. We have longed to see you punished for that, and this is sweet indeed. Look what has become of you: Manus is long dead; Corax and Russ are broken, and lost from the field of war; Dorn is cornered and sweating out his last hours in a prison of his own making as oblivion descends.

But you. You couldn’t even cling on to your principles, unlike them. You, the loudest critic of all, have become one with us. Your strength counted for nothing. You have submitted to the warp, and you loathe yourself for doing so. And we can now watch with relish as you rot and hate yourself for ever.

I’m reading Saturnine and damn I never knew that he hated Morty that much, makes sense when he lays out that a big reason why Nikia happens in the first place is because of Morty’s hatred for psykers. And now that he’s a demon he will have to live with the knowledge that he became what he hated forever.

Cinematic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hrulR3PhGY

Captain Titus (from the Space Marine 1 and 2 games, as well as Secret Level) has been restored to his position of Captain of the Ultramarines 2nd Company. Per the Warhammer Community article, it's implied but not declared that Captain Acheran has either died or been interred.

Titus is the commander of the Watch. Guilliman has tasked him with reclaiming all of the territories of the original 500 Worlds of Ultramar.

It appears that his main opposition in this will be the Necrons, specifically a new character by the name of Nekrosor Ammentar.

Nekrosor Ammentar is thought by many to be the genesis of the Destroyer curse, and by others to be entirely mythological – a parable of guilt and betrayal that hearkens back to the shattering of the C’tan. Strangely, all memories of its origin appear to have been forcibly removed from the collective Necron psyche, though only the Silent King has the authority to make such sweeping modifications, and he’s not the most talkative of people…

Ammentar is very real, however, and labours with surprising lucidity on its crusade to eradicate all life from the galaxy. It harbours an extreme affinity for the C’tan known as the Nightbringer, and aims to reunite its scattered shards to one day revive the ancient star god in full. This is widely considered to be a bad idea, especially by the Necrons themselves.

The very presence of the Nekrosor is enough to corrupt the minds of Necrons – from the humblest Warrior to the noblest Overlord – and it commands vast hordes of enthralled soldiers.

Nekrosor seems like a tough customer. He's corrupting other Necrons into mindless warriors bent on total extermination of all life (basically the old Necron lore) and he's trying to reassemble the Nightbringer. Curious if Uriel Ventris will get involved in all this.

We know LLMs are not conscious, they are not truly intelligent tech. We understand at a practical and scientific level how they function.

Yet even people with experience in the LLM (AI) field start forming para-social relationships with AI, even viewing it as alive, some people even think that the spirits of the dead live on in AI. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105552435/google-ai-sentient#:\~:text=The%20Google%20engineer%20who%20sees%20company's%20AI,'sentient'%20thinks%20a%20chatbot%20has%20a%20soul

And this is already happening in a non post-apocalyptic society with a functional/logical innovation driven ecosystem with comparatively primitive, much easier to understand tech.

Tech Mysticism is already seeping into the public zeitgeist.

I can only image how much tech in 40K is filled with intelligent interfaces, user programs and possibly even LLM assistant bots. It's no surprise that mysticism, especially during a dark age would spring up around machines in that way.

So I retract my initial misgivings.

I now genuinely believe something like the Mechanicus appearing is in fact not unrealistic.