Warhammer 40K: More Leagues of Votann Background Revealed
The Leagues of Votann are coming. But, uh…what exactly is a Votann anyways? Games Workshop has the answer.
Games Workshop has announced that the Leagues of Votann are coming (back) to the game. It’s the return of the Squats and folks are super excited! But the name change had folks wondering…what’s up with that? Aside from IP and copyrights, we also were wondering what’s with the name. What the heck is a Votann anyhow? Turns out a “Votann” isn’t just a fancy word for “Squat” either.
“The Votann are Ancestor Cores – super-cogitators, gestalt repositories of inherited wisdom and knowledge. Each League has its own Votann, central to its way of life, and no Kin would hesitate to lay down their lives to protect it – these venerable cogitators are as sacred to the Kin as gods are to the more spiritual races. “
The Votann Cores
Yeah, this is kind of a huge change and addition to the lore. These Votann Cores are more than just supercomputers. They hold the entire knowledge and secrets of their respective Leagues inside of them — “weapon specifications, military theory, genealogical data, science, philosophy, and even Standard Template Constructs.” It’s a big freakin’ deal! If one of these cores fell into the wrong hands, well, you can only imagine.
The Votann Cores are giving me major Craftworld-vibes. Only instead of Spirit Stones it’s bites of data. And there’s a slight problem with the Cores. They weren’t designed to be up and running for tens of thousands of years and all that uptime has introduced some kinks. Even these massive supercomputers are having storage problems…
“Some have developed idiosyncrasies – what might even be termed “personalities”. When once the Kin would have received an answer to a tough question in a matter of moments, as the 41st Millennium comes to a close, some Votann can take decades – or even centuries – to deliver the same solution. Day by day, year by year, the Ancestor Cores become more eccentric and mercurial.”
Personally, I really like this twist on the idea. I like the fact that these Votann are supercomputers with limitless processing power — but finiate storage space. Turns out being on for that long is filling up their hard drives. Might be time to restart and refresh…but if the risk is losing all that data then I can see why they don’t want to hold that power button for too long. That said, you’d think the Leagues of Votann would make a copy or backup or something. Maybe install some off-site storage? What about “the cloud” for your storage needs?
I’m kidding of course. This is the Grimdark! Of course these god-processing machines would run afoul! I can’t wait to see what sorts of hijinks these Votann Cores get up to or what their “personalities” are like. It’s going to be a blast to see how these are protected — and you know at some point one is going to get compromised and captured. It’s only a matter of time.
All that knowledge. Nigh infinite processing POWER! …Itty-bitty living space.
