Topic: If You Could Retcon Anything/Have a Do-Over

[Sir_Godspeed]

Over the years, there are a number of things in the fluff that kinda annoy or grate me. These can be very petty and idiosyncratic, of course, but I've sometimes invoked some headcanon, or fantasized about how it would be with a different angle. So, in the interest of just shooting the amphetamine parrot, here is the thread where you can tell us all about the things you would have seen done differently.

For the purposes of this thread, assume that you're at the writer's table at its very inception, not being let into Games Workshop in the modern day.

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So here are some of mine:

- I've never really been a fan of the Grey Knights. I just find their background a bit naff. They're so often sold as future space knights, but that's like... ALL space marines. Additionally, they are said to be superior to ordinary marines, which in my opinion is a niche already occupied by Custodes, so there's too much overlapping, imho. Then there's a vague overlapping with the Death Watch too, in my opinion, with the coordination with the Inquisition. I don't know, I'm just not a fan. In my opinion, I'd prefer if the Grey Knights were instead a specialized arm of Deathwatch comprised of librarians and what have you, not a specific Chapter that's specialer than the special. Custodes get to be uber-ubermarines.

- Necrontyr: Okay, first off, that name is dumb and needs to go. Call them literally anything that's not just a pun, please. Secondly, part of their lore was always that they resented the Old Ones because their lives were so short. Pretty every retelling of this lore makes it pretty clear, even if read between the lines, that their lifespan was short by HUMAN standards. This just ruins my immersion, personally, since it shows that this is all some the Udders of Thoth written by a real-life human author seeing things from a real-life human perspective. The Necrontyr lived at a time when humans weren't even evolved in the 40k universe, so how would this comparison be relevant or interesting? I think the simplest change would simply be to say that the Necrontyr lived short lives *in comparison to the night-immortal Old Ones*. Their resentment was due to the perceived injustice when seeing themselves in relation to their neighbors. That fixes it pretty neatly, honestly.

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Got any hot takes of your own?

[Radec]

From post 8th lore:
1. Custodes - never should have left earth or should be attached as military advisors and commanders to the Imperium's armies. Seriously a whole army of even more superhuman soldiers flying across the stars when the majority of them should be on Terra after a warp rift opened on said Terra and Khorne launched an invasion?? They should be even more maniacal about security and even more direct intervention in matters of Imperium government.
2. The Indomitus crusade and the hundreds of years in the dark following the cicatrix maledictum being brushed aside. Come on... This just sticks up like a sore thumb. 9th should've extrapolated even more on this...

From the old lore
1. Newcrons - nothing new to add here. Clowncrons should've stayed with their buddies in Nehekhara. The faction lost its appeal for me with the 5th edition codex and even more with later codexes.
2. Ork technology - somewhere along the lines between 5th and 7th orks just got good at technology. I liked some of the old explanations that that the technologies themselves were gene coded in their DNA and not just the ingenuity and knack for technology as newer codexes portray them (IIRC).

[Wyddr]

1. Primaris Marines are just a stupid idea that sticks out like a sore thumb in the lore. It's probably the most naked attempt by GW to sell more toys by rigging up some new lore, and it's dumb. By all means update the models! But the tactical squad should have stayed forever, and the second it became obsolete the game started sliding into the gutter.

2. Agreed about Custodes. It just seems...irresponsib le of them.

3. It always sort of seemed to me that the Ordo Malleus and the Ordo Hereticus would spend an awful lot of time stepping on each others' toes (like, where do you get daemons if not from heretics?) and I don't quite get why they're separate jobs in the Inquisition. I would prefer something along the lines of Ordo Mutatus" (or some similarly pseudo-latinate word for mutants), as that fits with the Heretic/Mutant/Xeno creedo the Inquisition is always bandying around.

4. If the galaxy is so vast and the Emperor's dominion so varied and numerous, most people would not have heard of most places. Saying "CADIA STANDS" in Segmentum Tempestus should get a reaction akin to a Red Sox player yelling "Yankees Suck" and a Manchester United match. Additionally, if the universe is so big and space travel so dangerous, everybody should not be able to get everywhere at the Speed of Plot in the fluff. Pick a lane guys - it's either SUPER BIG or VERY MANAGEABLE, but it can't be both.

[Sir_Godspeed]

I can only concur with the Primaris. It seems so silly too, like, they could've just said "and then Belisarius Cawl introduced the completely new mark of Space Marine armor and the improved new antigrav engine, (or whatever works) and let it be at that.

[Lachdonin]

I'm not entirely against Primaris, and think that GW was basically screwed one way or the other. They either just made Marines true scale, and got waves of complaints about trying to gouge players by making them replace all their armies... or they introduced a new 'type' of Astartes and slowly phased out the old ones... and got waves of complaints about trying to gouge players by making them replace all their armies. Oh or they ignored the Truessxale problem and, you guessed it... got waves of complaints.

For what it's worth, I think the approach was the best option, though I'm not fond of some of the stylistic decisions made.

The two things I would change are...

Newcrons (seems to be a popular one). I don't MIND Newcrons, but I lament the loss of the C'tan as any sort of threatening enemy. Using the C'tan and the old cults to them as a way to break up the homogeneity of the Necrons dynasties, creating internal factions that want to restore the C'tan as their gods, would help diversify the whole faction IMO.

And Chaos. They actually seem to be moving away from this in the narrative, but I've always hated the whole Chaos = The Warp approach. Chaos as simply the most powerful faction WITHIN the Warp is fine, but making it the expression of the Warp it's self is heavily limiting and boring.

[Wyddr]

I would really like to see Undivided Chaos (i.e. "people who just like Chaos of all kinds") get a bit more support. That's more of a gaming thing than a lore complaint, though, but it does seem like everything has to be focused through the lens of one or another of the four gods. There should be more variety.

[Sir_Godspeed]

I would really like to see Undivided Chaos (i.e. "people who just like Chaos of all kinds") get a bit more support. That's more of a gaming thing than a lore complaint, though, but it does seem like everything has to be focused through the lens of one or another of the four gods. There should be more variety.

I remember that we had a discussion back in the day about Chaos Undivided. I was pretty adamant about there being people who viewed Undivided as its own thing, a kind of principle as opposed to a deity - but GW pretty heavily pushed the idea that Undivided was just a balanced worship of the four deities. Kind of a bummer, imho.

[Wyddr]

This is part of why I play Beasts of Chaos in AoS - they treat Chaos as its own thing and disdain the actual gods.

But yeah, I like the idea of a Chaos Space Marine chapter that doesn't care about worshiping any particular god, but rather is a kind of an anarchist "No Gods, No Masters" kind of thing. The antithesis of the Imperium, basically.