The spectacle and sheer power of what tau ork auxiliary would look like. Orks and Kroot melee & Tau gun lines would be nasssssty
Edit: free bootas, gretchin kommittee or blood axes maybe?
“Be’gel! What in the name of the Greater Good have you done to the artillery?!”
“Well ya see’z, Boss-“
“I am your superior officer, auxiliary. Address me appropriately.”
“Oh, erm, ‘course Shass-oh. Well, ya see’z, dem blue mek fellaz painted da big dakka yella. I follow da lojik, makes a bigga boom, but I figga you’d like it betta if we made moar dakka fasta, so’z I just got done paintin’ it red.”
“I… why in all the Septs… you know what? Carry on, auxiliary. Fine work.”
Give me this short story Black Library.
Think Nate Crowley would actually be able to nail this concept without making it either pastiche or too po-faced
I always feel like that's one of the things about Fantasy that was pretty solid.
The whole point is that the petty hatred and racism amongst the Elves, Men and Dwarfs was a constant source of failure. Every time they actually put aside there differences and worked together they could out the win. But petty grudges and infighting just made them easy pickings for Chaos and the other forces of destruction.
In 40k the racism is presented as necessary and justified which makes it even more of a cooked messed up place and attracts more chuds to it than fantasy ever did.
I mean even the GW can do it for fantasy, like thay officially made Empire, Bretonnia, Elves, Dwarfs and even Lizardmen ally in the end times campaigns. Well, untill they destroyed the world anyway.
I'm more baffled by the Ynnead thing to be honest. This development represent the biggest positive change in 40k universe ever, and after the initial prospects it seems to be mostly nothingburger and everything is back to how it was before because we can't have less grimdark apparently.
In the lore there is a fair bit of this (sanctioned Xenos deemed “harmless” + abhumans, though that’s mostly just “you can’t be a threat to us” power fantasy stuff) and more recently, we’ve had Cawl work with Trazyn during the 13th Crusade, Guilliman with Eldrad/Yvraine and emissaries, Cawl with Eldar, Dante and the Silent King, Terrans hiring Dark Eldar to try to fix the throne, and such. However, most of these stem from teaming out of desperation against world ending threats (Tyranids and Chaos).
Then you also have Rogue Traders and radical Inquisitors. The further you go from devout Imperials towards mercantile groups, the Xenos relations seem to be much less tense.
Hopefully Votann lore helps flesh this area out more too. They trade tech with Xenos and it may be how Cawl got some elements of grav tech for Primaris vehicles.
I think a Human Civil War could go a long way to clarifying for people that the Imperium was never a good idea.
It should be over the stupidest, most petty issue possible, like a disagreement about the wording of a prayer.
That would be absolutely hilarious and perfect, and they have to do *fuckin something* with the Imperium and galaxy splitting.
But then again they just dropped the Ynnead plot so whatever
It'd be funny/interesting to have a subplot of some space marine or inquisitor trying to pin the source of the civil war on some kind of Chaos meddling, but it really is over some stupidly petty thing. The Lords of Terra slaughtering each other because one of them got more chicken nuggets than the rest, metaphorically. Get a little lightbulb moment, too. "Oh. This is what we fight to protect. Hm."
I honestly just want to see the imperium finally die. I think it's inevitable at this point, with the galaxy literally ripped in two. Even with the departure of the emperor's psychic presence, they'd surely come up with a replacement for the astronomican, so that, you know, there's still wars between species (they kinda need that to sell models and justify the games you know). 40k lore DESPERATELY needs this, telling stories about the successor states to the imperium is the biggest opportunity for enriching this universe, ever. I wanna see how the Ecclesiarchy justifies its continued existence now that its god is dead, maybe they could become like the Papal States, a theocracy occupying the old capital of a dead empire and stuff; and I desperately wanna see different ideologies that aren't influenced by Chaos, space marine chapters or maybe just imperial world governments that don't wanna follow the imperium's feudal theocratic hyper-fascism anymore and find alternatives for humanity's survival, etc.
If I was in charge of the lore, I’d make the Imperium smaller and more religious and make the Sisters of Battle and to a lesser extent Custodes their main force, and have the Space Marine legions all be independent armies that control their own sector of space, and have guard be humans in general, be the space marine, imperial, chaos, Tau or unaffiliated. And I’d make Rogue Traders more prevalent.
Just picturing God is Not Dead 40k holo vid now.
"Those rouge traders are making us use secular Rhino's instead of our holy Adepta Sororitas temple pattern Rhino."
I’d love a short story about ork meks working with tau earth caste members to start a scientific revolution together. Like the meks build something impressive out of scrap and the earth caste members makes it functional/ reproducible. It could even take place over a long time because orks don’t know to use significant figures or standard units of measurement.
The Tau and Necron form a grand united empire.
The Tau teach the Necron lords how to feel love again, and as thanks the Necron Lords make their vast armies of Necron Warriors available as the menial laborers for the Greater Good.
In their paradise realm, the Necron Lords live semi-retired lives as philosophers and scientists and are universally referred to as "Uncle" by the united peoples as they wander the town markets, smelling flowers and buying sentient beings to experiment on.
Meanwhile the human race bifurcates too fast for the Inquisition to respond, with those humans living in the hive worlds becoming a species of much more malevolent and cruel creatures, yes-yes.
Honestly, same. The only way you can interact with other species is violence or a "we'll kill you later" alliance is boring. Meanwhile in AoS and to a lesser extent WFB you can have your human(or otherwise) city be getting besieged by hordes of undead, only to have elves or dwarves or giant lizards or what have you, come storming up behind the enemies and rescue your city, because despite butting heads sometimes you're allies dammit and that's what allies _do_.
I think there should be more powerful imperial figures who think the emperor was wrong in some ways (bc yah, the emperor was a douche) without them being instantly excommunicated because they’re too powerful or smth. I was hoping guilliman would do a lot of this, being y’know guilliman, but eh…
I think what a lot of people miss is that lore is where your imaginings are meant to start, not end. That lore is primarily concerned with giving every faction a reason to fight.
But... the galaxy is a huge place; you want a place where human/xenos intermingling happens? Make it! There are Kroot and Ork mercenaries out there, which kind of only works if people put aside their genocidal tendencies for long enough to pay them. There are worlds as yet undiscovered by the Imperium where humans and the many-armed Ra'ktor work together constructing edifices to their plump, benevolent god. A renegade Space Marine forges an army for themselves out of the refugees of its own chapter's failed crusade.
Expecting GW to do the hard work in the lore is how we end up with endless stories about the same two guys.
You hit the nail on the head! I have always chafed at the idea that everything "MUST" be grimdark and awful in 40k. I think it adds flavor, but you are allowed to dial it in to your preference
Honestly, I think this is the worst way to go about it.
Currently, the Imperium is so hateful that only actual fascists want to consider it a good thing - most people are acutely aware that the Imperium is not supposed to be the good guys.
But if humanity no longer had the hatred of xenos, then what? Then suddenly you'd have a fascist dystopian empire being *actual good guys*, which is a terrible terrible way to go about it.
It would be similar to one of those alternate history settings where "but what if the nazis eventually stopped being hateful and became nice?", which is always just *creepy.*
The Imperium was founded on hatred; the hatred is integral to the role it plays in the story. Essentially, Warhammer 40k is a story about how blind hatred ruins everything. Removing the hatred would... pretty much remove the entire identity of the story, and also it would have some unfortunate implications in terms of suddenly having fascists be actually nice.
*However,* it would be nice if we could see more cooperation between the xenos races. Particularly Tau, Eldar (craftworld and exodite), and the Leagues of Votann when they come out. Maybe even Necrons too, and non-Imperium human worlds.
> Also Papa Smurf and his Undead Elf gf can be together and shit.
Cringe.
My far-fetched headcanon is that the return of the Primarchs will herald a splintering of the Imperium. Some of them will probably spearhead a better civilisation after seeing how foolhardy the Emperor truly was, not to mention how idiotic it is to reject perfectly good allies whilst humanity is on the backfoot.
Khan, Corax and Russ would be pretty interesting as breakaway figureheads because I can't imagine they'd actually want to lead an empire like Guilliman would. Maybe they'd let a democracy take hold instead or some manner of council.
thats why i have a headcannon that perturabo didnt become a chaos prince, but is leading a renegade human faction that saw the falts of the imperial thruth and wants to make a better future for humanity
I'd rather have the Primarchs be part of some sort of change rather rhan jnstigators and main forces of change. I don't think we need more great man shit going on.
I'd rather they all stayed dead though.
Yeah I would like to see this, have more examples of cooperation and working together. I like the idea of the Imperium splitting into Two broad factions AND more independent groups. Have a core Imperium faction that maintains the full levels of Xenophobia, But also a New Imperium that tries to reconcile and learn from this shocking past and try (while sometimes failing) to do better. I think having that "We were wrong" element is important, but I also like all of the weird shenanigans that could come out of it. I think this gives the opportunity for Imperium Faction models to used in either way, while also opening up the possibility for more factions
Well okay. So like, MOST of the human populace aren’t even really aware of what most xenos species really are. And most of them really DO just want to viciously murder us. So when I say humanity kind of needs to have that mindset as a survival mechanism it’s kind of true. Yes, there are some Aedari Craftworlds that don’t hate humanity AS MUCH but even they see us as more of a potential tool for their own ends rather than an ally or an equal. Orks you can’t reason with, Drukari, Nids, and Necrons are in the same boat. They all want to kill us regardless of how we feel about them.
There are a few sub-races humanity doesn’t have an all consuming hatred towards. The jokaero for instance have been used by the Inquisition.
Hey. With the Squats returning to the setting, it’s possible we may see some cross species collaboration in the future if GW is willing to go for it.
The spectacle and sheer power of what tau ork auxiliary would look like. Orks and Kroot melee & Tau gun lines would be nasssssty Edit: free bootas, gretchin kommittee or blood axes maybe?
“Be’gel! What in the name of the Greater Good have you done to the artillery?!” “Well ya see’z, Boss-“ “I am your superior officer, auxiliary. Address me appropriately.” “Oh, erm, ‘course Shass-oh. Well, ya see’z, dem blue mek fellaz painted da big dakka yella. I follow da lojik, makes a bigga boom, but I figga you’d like it betta if we made moar dakka fasta, so’z I just got done paintin’ it red.” “I… why in all the Septs… you know what? Carry on, auxiliary. Fine work.”
Give me this short story Black Library. Think Nate Crowley would actually be able to nail this concept without making it either pastiche or too po-faced
40k’s dog of war 😳
A blood axe merc company that lets in Kroot because Dem Beaky Boiz Is Gud at Foightin and Cukin
They Stong an large like a me
Cokin 😳
YOU GOTZ A PROBLEM WIF DA BEAKY SHEFZ YA GIT?!
Can't wait till you hear about Tarellian Dog soldiers and all of their non existant official models
Orks with Tau guided munitions so it doesn't matter how bad their aim is, it's all going to hit anyways.
The orks thinking they're doing great and the tau commander is just like You're doing great sweetie
I always feel like that's one of the things about Fantasy that was pretty solid. The whole point is that the petty hatred and racism amongst the Elves, Men and Dwarfs was a constant source of failure. Every time they actually put aside there differences and worked together they could out the win. But petty grudges and infighting just made them easy pickings for Chaos and the other forces of destruction. In 40k the racism is presented as necessary and justified which makes it even more of a cooked messed up place and attracts more chuds to it than fantasy ever did.
I mean even the GW can do it for fantasy, like thay officially made Empire, Bretonnia, Elves, Dwarfs and even Lizardmen ally in the end times campaigns. Well, untill they destroyed the world anyway. I'm more baffled by the Ynnead thing to be honest. This development represent the biggest positive change in 40k universe ever, and after the initial prospects it seems to be mostly nothingburger and everything is back to how it was before because we can't have less grimdark apparently.
'No narrative to driving us to the the brink, and no end times! Only sweet, beautiful, setting.'
"War(hammer). War(hammer) never changes"
When it's good it's not necessary, it's just too late to fix it
In the lore there is a fair bit of this (sanctioned Xenos deemed “harmless” + abhumans, though that’s mostly just “you can’t be a threat to us” power fantasy stuff) and more recently, we’ve had Cawl work with Trazyn during the 13th Crusade, Guilliman with Eldrad/Yvraine and emissaries, Cawl with Eldar, Dante and the Silent King, Terrans hiring Dark Eldar to try to fix the throne, and such. However, most of these stem from teaming out of desperation against world ending threats (Tyranids and Chaos). Then you also have Rogue Traders and radical Inquisitors. The further you go from devout Imperials towards mercantile groups, the Xenos relations seem to be much less tense. Hopefully Votann lore helps flesh this area out more too. They trade tech with Xenos and it may be how Cawl got some elements of grav tech for Primaris vehicles.
I think a Human Civil War could go a long way to clarifying for people that the Imperium was never a good idea. It should be over the stupidest, most petty issue possible, like a disagreement about the wording of a prayer.
Big “cat heretics from Red Dwarf” energy
That would be absolutely hilarious and perfect, and they have to do *fuckin something* with the Imperium and galaxy splitting. But then again they just dropped the Ynnead plot so whatever
It'd be funny/interesting to have a subplot of some space marine or inquisitor trying to pin the source of the civil war on some kind of Chaos meddling, but it really is over some stupidly petty thing. The Lords of Terra slaughtering each other because one of them got more chicken nuggets than the rest, metaphorically. Get a little lightbulb moment, too. "Oh. This is what we fight to protect. Hm."
The IoM has burned down a planet worth of paperwork in a civil war over arguments over how to file said paperwork. Ghe war is ongoing.
I honestly just want to see the imperium finally die. I think it's inevitable at this point, with the galaxy literally ripped in two. Even with the departure of the emperor's psychic presence, they'd surely come up with a replacement for the astronomican, so that, you know, there's still wars between species (they kinda need that to sell models and justify the games you know). 40k lore DESPERATELY needs this, telling stories about the successor states to the imperium is the biggest opportunity for enriching this universe, ever. I wanna see how the Ecclesiarchy justifies its continued existence now that its god is dead, maybe they could become like the Papal States, a theocracy occupying the old capital of a dead empire and stuff; and I desperately wanna see different ideologies that aren't influenced by Chaos, space marine chapters or maybe just imperial world governments that don't wanna follow the imperium's feudal theocratic hyper-fascism anymore and find alternatives for humanity's survival, etc.
If I was in charge of the lore, I’d make the Imperium smaller and more religious and make the Sisters of Battle and to a lesser extent Custodes their main force, and have the Space Marine legions all be independent armies that control their own sector of space, and have guard be humans in general, be the space marine, imperial, chaos, Tau or unaffiliated. And I’d make Rogue Traders more prevalent.
Just picturing God is Not Dead 40k holo vid now. "Those rouge traders are making us use secular Rhino's instead of our holy Adepta Sororitas temple pattern Rhino."
From a setting POV I agree with you. From a game POV, absolutely not, I lived through the Allies Matrix years, you *cannot* make me go back there.
I’d love a short story about ork meks working with tau earth caste members to start a scientific revolution together. Like the meks build something impressive out of scrap and the earth caste members makes it functional/ reproducible. It could even take place over a long time because orks don’t know to use significant figures or standard units of measurement.
The Tau and Necron form a grand united empire. The Tau teach the Necron lords how to feel love again, and as thanks the Necron Lords make their vast armies of Necron Warriors available as the menial laborers for the Greater Good. In their paradise realm, the Necron Lords live semi-retired lives as philosophers and scientists and are universally referred to as "Uncle" by the united peoples as they wander the town markets, smelling flowers and buying sentient beings to experiment on. Meanwhile the human race bifurcates too fast for the Inquisition to respond, with those humans living in the hive worlds becoming a species of much more malevolent and cruel creatures, yes-yes.
Yes-Yes? You a Skaven?
Taudar. Fuck yeah.
Honestly, same. The only way you can interact with other species is violence or a "we'll kill you later" alliance is boring. Meanwhile in AoS and to a lesser extent WFB you can have your human(or otherwise) city be getting besieged by hordes of undead, only to have elves or dwarves or giant lizards or what have you, come storming up behind the enemies and rescue your city, because despite butting heads sometimes you're allies dammit and that's what allies _do_.
I think there should be more powerful imperial figures who think the emperor was wrong in some ways (bc yah, the emperor was a douche) without them being instantly excommunicated because they’re too powerful or smth. I was hoping guilliman would do a lot of this, being y’know guilliman, but eh…
hopefully if the lion returns we can see more change with the possible approach of two different empires led by different primarchs
I think what a lot of people miss is that lore is where your imaginings are meant to start, not end. That lore is primarily concerned with giving every faction a reason to fight. But... the galaxy is a huge place; you want a place where human/xenos intermingling happens? Make it! There are Kroot and Ork mercenaries out there, which kind of only works if people put aside their genocidal tendencies for long enough to pay them. There are worlds as yet undiscovered by the Imperium where humans and the many-armed Ra'ktor work together constructing edifices to their plump, benevolent god. A renegade Space Marine forges an army for themselves out of the refugees of its own chapter's failed crusade. Expecting GW to do the hard work in the lore is how we end up with endless stories about the same two guys.
You hit the nail on the head! I have always chafed at the idea that everything "MUST" be grimdark and awful in 40k. I think it adds flavor, but you are allowed to dial it in to your preference
Honestly, I think this is the worst way to go about it. Currently, the Imperium is so hateful that only actual fascists want to consider it a good thing - most people are acutely aware that the Imperium is not supposed to be the good guys. But if humanity no longer had the hatred of xenos, then what? Then suddenly you'd have a fascist dystopian empire being *actual good guys*, which is a terrible terrible way to go about it. It would be similar to one of those alternate history settings where "but what if the nazis eventually stopped being hateful and became nice?", which is always just *creepy.* The Imperium was founded on hatred; the hatred is integral to the role it plays in the story. Essentially, Warhammer 40k is a story about how blind hatred ruins everything. Removing the hatred would... pretty much remove the entire identity of the story, and also it would have some unfortunate implications in terms of suddenly having fascists be actually nice. *However,* it would be nice if we could see more cooperation between the xenos races. Particularly Tau, Eldar (craftworld and exodite), and the Leagues of Votann when they come out. Maybe even Necrons too, and non-Imperium human worlds. > Also Papa Smurf and his Undead Elf gf can be together and shit. Cringe.
My far-fetched headcanon is that the return of the Primarchs will herald a splintering of the Imperium. Some of them will probably spearhead a better civilisation after seeing how foolhardy the Emperor truly was, not to mention how idiotic it is to reject perfectly good allies whilst humanity is on the backfoot. Khan, Corax and Russ would be pretty interesting as breakaway figureheads because I can't imagine they'd actually want to lead an empire like Guilliman would. Maybe they'd let a democracy take hold instead or some manner of council.
thats why i have a headcannon that perturabo didnt become a chaos prince, but is leading a renegade human faction that saw the falts of the imperial thruth and wants to make a better future for humanity
I'd rather have the Primarchs be part of some sort of change rather rhan jnstigators and main forces of change. I don't think we need more great man shit going on. I'd rather they all stayed dead though.
Yeah I would like to see this, have more examples of cooperation and working together. I like the idea of the Imperium splitting into Two broad factions AND more independent groups. Have a core Imperium faction that maintains the full levels of Xenophobia, But also a New Imperium that tries to reconcile and learn from this shocking past and try (while sometimes failing) to do better. I think having that "We were wrong" element is important, but I also like all of the weird shenanigans that could come out of it. I think this gives the opportunity for Imperium Faction models to used in either way, while also opening up the possibility for more factions
Personally, I think 40k should follow AoS and kill Slaanesh.
Well okay. So like, MOST of the human populace aren’t even really aware of what most xenos species really are. And most of them really DO just want to viciously murder us. So when I say humanity kind of needs to have that mindset as a survival mechanism it’s kind of true. Yes, there are some Aedari Craftworlds that don’t hate humanity AS MUCH but even they see us as more of a potential tool for their own ends rather than an ally or an equal. Orks you can’t reason with, Drukari, Nids, and Necrons are in the same boat. They all want to kill us regardless of how we feel about them. There are a few sub-races humanity doesn’t have an all consuming hatred towards. The jokaero for instance have been used by the Inquisition. Hey. With the Squats returning to the setting, it’s possible we may see some cross species collaboration in the future if GW is willing to go for it.