40K: Lore Galore – More in Store: War, Uproar, or Bore
Or – where is the Dark Imperium going? Were we supposed to turn back there? Just pull over and ask for directions.
Apparently, there’s more to the Codices than just datasheets that unlock the mysteries of how to put together an army that will break a person’s spirit by the time you’re done pulling models out of the plastic bag you’ve haphazardly dumped them into. If you turn to the earlier pages, you’ll find sprites that feature your beloved characters, only they’ll act differently. Like sometimes Conscripts will die in droves instead of taking down whatever Lord of War they’ve been pointed at.
Or an Ogryn Bodyguard will die after directly intercepting a lascannon blast instead of somehow shuffling the wound three miles away from the actual impact site.
I don’t know why your favorite characters are Conscripts and Ogryn bodyguards either, but hey, I’m not here to judge. Either way, as the codexes have been coming out, they’ve slowly been giving us a better picture of the state of the galaxy.
Borked is the word I’m getting.
Each codex is it’s own galactic gazzetteer. We get movie-tone news style snapshots of “A Galaxy in Peril.” And every time I read that phrase I hear it in that same war-news announcer voice and instinctively Want To Know More.
I literally just said I do, NPH–aw, I can’t stay mad at you.
Whether it’s reading about how the Astartes have heroically defeated the enemies of the Imperium, or forged through Watp storms to provide desparate relief to worlds cut off by the Cicatrix Maledictum.
Or reading about an industrial, Death Guard world that the Tyranids conquered after a massive struggle, only to find the slurry of the world was so toxic and disease-ridden that the other Hive ships were forced to blast apart a number of “infected” hive ships from a safe distance and now give that area a wide berth.
Or how millions of Guardsmen and Guardswomen have heroically died to liberate a world from chaos. Or how millions died in a valiant last stand before the world fell, but only because allowing the enemy to take the planet was a tactically sound decision (command never makes mistakes). You get the idea. We’re seeing a lot more of the galaxy in peril, but as of yet, nothing has really advanced the storyline.
And I don’t know that GW wants to just yet–after all, we’re only a few months in to the new edition, but here and there we’re seeing breadcrumbs of some of the big conflicts on the (event) horizon.
We know that Mortarion’s back, baby. He and Magnus are Daemon Primarching it up. And Motarion, in particular, seems to have it out for renowned saxophonist and Primarch, Bobby G.
There is no way this isn’t an album cover.
After all, Mortarion went out of his way to invade Guiliman’s “home world.” Yes, technically he was born in the Segmentum Solar in the Primarch Vats, but Mortarion was gunning for the world where he used to play with his dog in the summer. Probably wanted to kick over his treehouse. And there’s every reason to suspect we’ll see either Lionel Johnson or Lemon Russ come back from the ??? on their “current status” entries as one of the next big releases from GW.
And seeing brother against brother is the sort of dramatic, personal conflict against a backdrop of epic war that GW looooves. So I’m guessing we see big movements in that direction. Especially with the Horus Heresy ending. In all likelihood that’s the next big lore-advancing move that GW makes, fleshing out that epic confrontation between Horus and the Emperor. I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned more details that set the next stage of 40K in motion there. After all, the state of the galaxy as it is now is basically still just “dealing with the fallout of the Horus Heresy.”
With all that in mind, let’s turn the reins over to you.
There’s more lore in store, where do you see it heading? What pitfalls are put there to be avoided?
