All posts by Quel Tarin

Looks totally insane. In a good way.

Well, He’s in agony because of the Golden Throne. I’m honestly not certain if His warp self even feels pain. Daemons don’t seem to unless they inhabit a corporeal form. I’d guess that any agony the Emperor in the warp feels is merely a reflection of His mortal pain.

Excellent work. The reflective helm/cowling pieces are spectacular.

Are you asking what happened in it recently, or what’s happened in its entire 30+ year existence? Because that’s a lot.

If you’re after a general overview of 40K and it’s biggest elements and events, the videos on this wiki are a good way to catch up with the basics.

You could also read the Warhammer 40k Timeline articles, which give a decent quick run through of all the future history in chronological order.

Tragically, the Valdor book is truly awful. It makes no sense and butchers a lot of existing lore to make a sci-fi story where a bunch of people try to “arrest” Valdor for killing the Thunder Warriors. It literally makes no sense at all. It’s the one book I’d say not to bother with at all. Reading it means ignoring the lore written by Alan Bligh and countless others. It even contradicts all the other books in the Heresy. Besides, it’s just dumb. Amar Astarte is just a jealous woman. Everyone in the book is either a very decent bloke or a bitter and jealous harpy. It’s awful.

But we do know that Valdor was born in Albia (Northern England/Scotland) and was kidnapped as a baby by the Emperor. We know that his real parents went to war to get their son back and paid a terrible price for it. Valdor knows that isn’t his real name but he neither remembers or much cares what he was before he was Valdor.

He’s also not certain if he was the first Custodian, though possibly the most successful of an earlier test project. He is enormous, bigger than most Thunder Warriors and close in scale to some of the Primarchs. He’s fast, faster than Dorn for one, and unutterably loyal. He wanted the Primarchs destroyed after their scattering, believing that Chaos could corrupt anything - even them (so we also know he was right!)

Alpharius claims he could have possibly bested Valdor in single combat, but Valdor seems to have been less impressed by this young Primarch. Valdor accepts that Russ, for one, could likely beat him through sheer aggression and strength, but Russ privately reckoned Valdor was the equal of the Primarchs.

So Valdor definitely wasn’t made like the Primarchs. He isn’t a lab bred orchid. He had a mother and father and was born naturally. It’s just as an infant he survived some ultra intense variant of the Custodes creation process.

I was referring more to the average citizen. The Inquisition novels and the Watchers of the Throne novels make clear that what the average church going citizen and what hierarchs and sanctioned psykers believe are two very different things.

We know from these sources that the average citizen doesn’t know Horus was the Emperor’s son or that the renegade Primarchs were that either. They know that the Emperor forged eight Angels to war with eight daemons of the Outer Dark (also known as the Archenemy, the Enemy Without and the Forces of Ruin, but never Chaos) The church goers tend to know that the Emperor fought Horus personally and after that battle, which was horrific on a scale now unimaginable, the Emperor returned to being the God of Mankind, something He was before all this (as the average citizen also believes the Emperor made Humanity in His image and pre existed Mankind) They know He sits upon a golden throne and watches over them. That He draws the souls of the faithful to Him in some glorious afterlife. They worship Sanguinius for his sacrifice and they worship Guilliman as the saviour of the Imperium.

Inquisitors and others tend to know much of that is bullshit. They still tend to be faithful and devout, but with a more sophisticated and informed knowledge base. They know about the warp and Chaos, they know that the Emperor wasn’t a god before the Heresy (though many accept He is one now) they know there were 20 Primarchs and the champions of the Outer Dark are actually once loyal sons who fell to corruption.

Whilst the Imperium and the imperial cult are certainly geared around death occultism and sacrifice, I’m not certain they think of the Emperor as a corpse in agony as that suggests weakness. Maybe some sects do, but I can’t remember reading about that other than from high ranking sorts who have access to knowledge beyond the Ministorum holy texts.

Im also not certain them believing in His pain would do anything to relieve it. His pain and continual death/rebirth are priced into His decision and sacrifice. Believing in things doesn’t make them always happen in realspace. Beliefs shape the warp, not reality. Orks believe they always win. But they don’t. Trillions believe the Emperor made mankind, but he didn’t. Beliefs can intrude on reality but not rewrite it. If they could, humanity would simply believe their forces could not fail and sheer weight of prayer would mean zero losses ever again.

Everything religious is tied into the warp and psychic energy. That’s it. Just belief reflected in an alternative universe. Reality doesn’t change, it’s just the warp intrudes where the veil grows thin and can cause havoc.

The average citizen knows the God-Emperor sits upon the Throne of Terra, undying and eternal, but they believe He already transcended mortality and is also God (I guess a little like Jesus and Yahweh - one of the flesh and one of the other realm but both the same) Different sub cults see Him slightly differently but most believe He has already “won”. I doubt they know He’s held together by the Throne and is in constant agony, as that probably doesn’t fit the narrative, but they know He was injured fighting a Great War and re-ascended to Godhood after His work was done.

I don’t think the beliefs impact His physical body. They make His warp self ever more potent but they don’t seem to change His rotting flesh. He seems to have chosen to be on the Throne and foresaw what it meant, so He’s not trapped as in He can’t get out, but that He must remain and chose this fate to try and save Humanity.

Horus’ fleet went into the warp. Unlike most ships, they survived the warp storms because the gods kept these ships safe. The Thousand Sons ritual was quite complex and required building a psychic resonator machine, waiting for alignment of the planets, and capturing a comet filled with Unification war relics and bones. Only when these conjunctions came about could the main fleet arrive in-system.

As mentioned above, those local cults are all tailored to an audience but tailored by Ministorum priests to slot into the wider cult. They may be varied in symbology and precise terminology and mythos but they are all geared towards worshipping the God-Emperor. So I can see it all impacting the warp in the same way.

Valdor tends to defer to the Primarchs as he sees them as the chosen ones of the Emperor, but he doesn’t seem remotely intimidated by any of them, and he very nearly killed Alpharius before being ordered to cease. The Khan describes Valdor’s fighting skills as bordering on the mythical - and the Khan knows a bit about good fighters.

It’s clear he’s a step above even the best custodians and so I’d consider him close to a Primarch level and certainly capable of beating some of them at least some of the time.

It isn’t on the app. I had no idea for years until I went on desktop

He’s a daemon prince, so more in common with the daemon Primarchs than pure daemons. But he takes the form of a Bloodthirster to show his ancient allegiance to the God of Blood. As for the most powerful, he’s certainly one of the most terrifying warrior princes, but he’s been defeated before so he’s not invincible.

Mutations are extremely varied and can come in millions of different forms. It’s true that Khornate mutations tend towards brass and fire and Nurgle errs on the side of pus and decay, but even between the gods, you get crossovers and unique features. It depends on the individual and the whims of the gods/the randomness of the warp.

After all, it is Chaos. Strict rules would kind of be against the spirit of that.

Come on, Szarekh, all-star from Sleepy Necron State, nearly took it a bunch of times. There will be fan favourites but it’s not as foregone as implied. Khârn got through to the finals of the space marine bowl, which was obvious, but then got pounded by Bjorn in the matchup. Upsets happen, discussions sway a few things, votes mount up in surprising fashion and best of all, we all learn something from looking into the lore.

I don’t know, there’s a lot of Dorn fanboys out there…

Ha, Demolition Man, still love that film. Should be terrible and yet it never is…

I’d call trading standards. You don’t have to prove anything but you can provide evidence. I’m certain GW would be interested in seeing a prosecution as that’s outright fraud - both against the manufacturer and consumer.

It’s only defamation if it’s untrue! The guy clearly needs the police or trading standards or whoever enforces counterfeiting in your jurisdiction to pay a visit.

If he’s selling stuff to customers that isn’t genuine, he’s defrauding them. Same as any counterfeit goods passed off as genuine.

3D rip offs are extremely cheap. If people choose to buy counterfeit goods that’s on them but this is deception on top of theft.

Every surgery scar has a silver lining I guess!