Warhammer 40K: 7 Recent Plotlines GW Abandoned
Let’s talk about some Warhammer 40K abandoned plotlines that seemed like big deals but have gone nowhere in the past few years.
8th Edition kicked off with a bang, or a tear at least – and a big one. First it brought back a Primarch and ripped the Galaxy in half. It then jumps a few hundred years into the future (before retconning that). During the setup for, and early part of, 8th there were a lot of storylines and ideas teased.
Some of these went on to be the major beats that move the plot forward, such as Guilliman’s return. Others have petered out and been abandoned, having gone nowhere. Now, this isn’t new for 40K. There have been lots of hints and leads dropped over the decades that never panned out (yet). However in 8th GW really tired driving home that there is a story going on, not just a setting. 9th Edition, kind of dropped the ball on this. Now with 10th just starting up I wanted to take a look at a few major recent plotlines, from 7th, 8th, and 9th Editions, that have been seemingly abandoned.
Note, just because something has been abandoned doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. Some of these may just have been put on the back burner for the last few years. 40K has a long memory (looking at you Blackstone Fortress Zoats. For now, though let’s look at some stuff that hasn’t been used yet.
7. Fixing the Flaws
When the Primaris Marines were introduced there was an idea that they were a more perfect version of the regular Marines and that possibly they fixed the flaws that other Marines, in particular, the Space Wolves and Blood Angels suffered from. For the Blood Angels in particular this was a big deal since members of their Chapter have been working towards finding a cure for their flaws for millennium. The novel Devastation of Baal was pretty clear here, saying that the flaw was fixed and in two hundred years none of the line of Sanginuis had turned to the Black Rage (this was later retconned). Story-wise of course this was kind of a flat idea, as just fixing the issue without cost doesn’t do much narratively but the idea that a cure could be found was interesting.
When the 8th Edition Blood Angles Codex came out it hinted that the flaw wasn’t cured in Primaris Marines at all, and that maybe it was worse, or there was some other dark secret there. This was a much more interesting idea, that it was either getting worse, or as some people speculated the Primaris Blood Angels were built using a different geneseed, possibly World Eaters, leading to worse rages. However, all this mystery and the idea of any cure for the flawed chapters seemed to be pretty quickly thrown out. Several books have just flatly stated that despite what was thought at first the Primaris are susceptible to the flaws, such as the Curse of the Wolfen and Black Rage, and that’s it. No dark truth or secret really. A whole bunch of hints went nowhere.
6. Rejecting the Primaris
Back at the start of the new era, we found out the Primaris Marines were being spread around to reinforce the various Chapters. Despite the massive advantage it gave them, there was an idea that some Chapters might resist the new Marines. Indeed this made a lot of sense since Space Marine Chapters tend to be secretive and distrustful of even chapters that share their gene lineage. Though it seemed like most would accept the new warriors there was some nice room for division and storytelling. You had Gabriel Seth of the Flesh Tearers disliking them and resistance from the Dark Angels as well. But so far at least none of that has really gone anywhere. Across some 97ish% of Chapters, the new Primaris Marines have been added, and both Dark Angels and Flesh Tearers seem to have just accepted them.
Indeed they’ve gone so far into accepting them that any distinction between Firstborn and Primaris is starting to just go away. One could almost argue that at the dawn of 10th Edition, the entire idea of Primaris Marines is an abandoned plot point. Or at least an underused one.
5. The Ynnari as the new Aeldari Faction
This one hurts a lot because it had a ton of potential to really change things up. When the Ynnari were introduced they took what had been a really static existence for the various Aeldari factions and gave them an active story. There was a story here about uniting the shattered remnants of their race into one unified faction and possibly killing Slannesh along the way, making them into a totally new faction. This idea was really cool and seemed to be going somewhere, it even led me to write about how they need to kill off the Eldar (well the Craftworlds at least) to unify the plot.
So far, years and years later, however, this plotline hasn’t really gone anywhere. The Ynnari are kind of stuck as just another, Aeldari faction, and a minor one at that. In the recent 9th Edition Aeldari Codex they are affectively just another Craftworld. With GW seemingly rekindling their embrace of Slannesh the idea that the Aeldari will kill He Who Thirsts also seemed to have passed away. Now, this does seem like a plot that’s more on the back burner than gone for good. The Ynnari are still getting stories and exist, but it’s one that really hasn’t moved forward in any meaningful way in years.
4. The Aeldari/Imperial Alliance
The Imperium is famously xenophobic, working to destroy all non-human life in the galaxy. However, the galaxy is a huge place. There have always been exceptions and allowances made in battle or on the fringes. While the Imperium is generally opposed to all the non-human races it has had the closest and most friendly relations with the Eldar, whose goals are generally more aligned with the Imperium than others. Though there have been plenty of conflicts.
The Gathering Storm storyline seemed to take this to a new stage with high-level cooperation between Imperials and Eldar taking place. In particular, we had Harlequins working with Cawl and the Ynnari working to bring Guilliman back. This wasn’t done in secret either. Yvraine publicly takes part in Guilliman’s re-crowning as Lord of Ultramar – in a room full of Space Marines, an Inquisitor and a Living Saint. All of this suggested that there might be a real alliance in the works with the factions actively working together on a high level in the wake of the Great Rift. But nope! They all just kind of went their separate ways and haven’t seemed to talk in a few hundred years. Odd. I wonder what The Lion will think of all this when he reads the transcripts of his brother’s rebirth.
3. Guilliman Can’t Take Off His Armor
When Guilliman was brought back to life it was done using the Armor of Fate. Armor specially crafted armor built from him by Cawl. After his return he was warned never to take the armor off, and that doing so would kill him. Then, umm, he took it off. It was fine. Took a bit of work to get used to, but that was it really. The end. There has been some 11th-hour ret-conning that the warning was meant metaphorically rather than literally.
2. Anything Not Being What It Seemed to Be
This is kind of a catch-all. Gathering Storm and the start of 8th implied that a lot of things might not be what they seemed. That a lot of people might be working towards nefarious goals. So far however none of those threads have really panned out. Guilliman isn’t really back, or it’s “not” Guilliman? Nope. Cawl or Yvrine or the Eldar are secretly controlling Guilliman? Nope. Cawl is evil or out for his own good? Nope. All these people are just outright heroic fighting for the good of the Galaxy – boring but true.
Primaris Marines have a dark secret or are part of a larger plot? Not really, just heroic saviors of mankind. Guilliman faked talking to the Emperor or wasn’t given the regency? Nope, he talked to Big E and is doing what He wants. There is a ton of stuff like this. Overall the new lore so far has been a very… straightforward story with how things appear to be on the surface being the truth in the end.
1. Chaos, The Great Rift, & Vashtorr
8th Edition was all about the Imperium Vs Chaos. Abbadon blew up the galaxy and split it in two. The Imperium was on the back foot and working hard to path things up. At the same time Chaos had big plans. 9th kind of continued this with and some things like the Physic Awakening and Vashtorr played into this conflict a bit. There seemed to maybe be a grand overarching story going on there. The Lion came back, and Abaddon fled into the warp with a Daemon-planet in search of something that could alter time and rewrite history. Kind of a big galaxy-shattering cliffhanger there.
Then 10th launched and lol no, its all Tyranids. Maybe they haven’t entirely abandoned those older plots points, but at the very least its a hard pivot to a totally different galaxy ending threat without any kind of wrap up for a Chaos plot GW has been setting up since the end of 7th Edition.
Let us know which abandoned plot lines you want to see worked on, down in the comments.
