# Grey Knights and Space Wolves



## SoL Berzerker (May 5, 2009)

So I just now read about the "Months of Shame" 

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Months_of_Shame#.UC-Vit2PV48

Some questions rose from this. 

1) Civilians do not know that the primarchs betrayed the Emperor? 

2) Shouldn't the Grey Knights and Space Wolves not be allowed to ally in the 6th Edition rules? 

3) How would something like this go so unnoticed? I mean, this isn't even in the Grey Knights codex. I cannot say about the Space Wolves codex because I didn't read it.


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## Lepaca (Oct 19, 2011)

SoL Berzerker said:


> 1) Civilians do not know that the primarchs betrayed the Emperor?


Remember that the Heresy happened 10.000 years ago and for Joe the average Imperial citizen has long passed into the realm of myths and legends. So I'm guessing yes, they know what happened (to a certain degree) but in general they do not know that most of the traitors are still around and potentially dangerous.



SoL Berzerker said:


> 2) Shouldn't the Grey Knights and Space Wolves not be allowed to ally in the 6th Edition rules?


Some of the allies rules don't make much sense and this is one of those.



SoL Berzerker said:


> 3) How would something like this go so unnoticed? I mean, this isn't even in the Grey Knights codex. I cannot say about the Space Wolves codex because I didn't read it.


It has actually been retconned in the SW codex. There it states that the situation almost resulted in violence.
Too bad actually. I think this is/was an excellent piece of fluff.


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

"The ancient events of the Horus Heresy have long since passed into myth within the Imperium. The average Imperial citizen is entirely ignorant of the tumultuous events of the Imperium's founding... Indeed, records of the full horror of the Heresy are only preserved by the daemonhunting Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus, and perhaps within the memories of the Emperor himself." - Codex: Chaos Space Marines, p. 17.


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## Barnster (Feb 11, 2010)

Also note in some fluff they have noted that the imperium actively hunts down to destroy any evidence that the heresy ever happened.

Picture that the average joe knows nothing of the wider imperium, but it has heard legends of the angels who fall from the sky to save them from evil, protect them when all seems lost. they have heard legends of marines. The greatest warriors in all the imperium, neigh the universe.

How would they react knowing that half the greatest hope for salvation, half of their protectors wants them dead? 

The darker side of this of course is that the vast majority of citizens will never see a space marine, how are they expected to know the difference between a chaos marine and a loyalist marine? Massive avenue for corruption there, though of the legions I'm guessing Word bearers, alpha legion and thousand sons probably make the most use of this


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## merp141 (Aug 1, 2012)

Well the retconning is kind of sad..

But for the events going unnoticed? The Inquisition has the power to kill anyone they don't want talking if they really want to (though this didn't help in the context)

As well as that the imperium is HUGE, with at least a million worlds spread out across the galaxy. The fact that people didn't realise that there was a "war" going on in the depths of space by one of the most secretive chapters of space marines (the Grey Knights) and another space marine chapter (one that while helpful tends not to play nice with others and prefers to go it alone) is pretty plausible. Don't forget, in space no-one is can hear you scream


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

Lepaca said:


> It has actually been retconned in the SW codex. There it states that the situation almost resulted in violence.


If anything it's the other way around; _The Emperor's Gift_ was released after _Codex: Space Wolves_ IIRC.

But it doesn't really matter, there exists more than one account on what happened - such is the reality in a galaxy-spanning empire where information is quickly supressed and where communication is unreliable at best. Besides, "retconning" doesn't really exist in 40k; at least not in the way that most people use the term.


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## darknightdrako (Mar 26, 2010)

Months of Shame is the reason why I started to collect Space Wolves. I was undecided weather to collect them or not. I do like their codex rules and I like their models. What I didnt like was their Ignorance of the Warp and no successor chapters (I like to build my own unique color schemes). When I read what happened during the Months of Shame I just had to collect these guys. Gotta love the Wolves for killing of them Grey Knights and pissing off the Inquisition. I quite admire their nobility even though they have a barbaric vibe to them, they are still loyal to those who serve the Imperium. And this is coming from a Chaos Player


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## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

darknightdrako said:


> Months of Shame is the reason why I started to collect Space Wolves. I was undecided weather to collect them or not. I do like their codex rules and I like their models. What I didnt like was their Ignorance of the Warp and no successor chapters (I like to build my own unique color schemes). When I read what happened during the Months of Shame I just had to collect these guys. Gotta love the Wolves for killing of them Grey Knights and pissing off the Inquisition. I quite admire their nobility even though they have a barbaric vibe to them, they are still loyal to those who serve the Imperium. And this is coming from a Chaos Player


As it should be. 

Once the primarch's return the inquisition will be destroyed.


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

The vast, vast majority of people don't know Chaos exists. They don't know warp travel is through a hell dimension with sentient entities. They certainly don't know that the God-Emperor's sons betrayed him and there are fallen Space Marines. 

Only the Space Marines, the Inqusition and other high ranking Imperial and Mechanicus officals know such secrets. 

The standard response to those who encounter Chaos is death or mind wiping.


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## Scholtae (Aug 16, 2010)

Rems said:


> The vast, vast majority of people don't know Chaos exists. They don't know warp travel is through a hell dimension with sentient entities. They certainly don't know that the God-Emperor's sons betrayed him and there are fallen Space Marines.
> 
> Only the Space Marines, the Inqusition and other high ranking Imperial and Mechanicus officals know such secrets.
> 
> The standard response to those who encounter Chaos is death or mind wiping.


what about the imperial guard, Gaunt for instance has killed several chaos space marines?


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

Scholtae said:


> what about the imperial guard, Gaunt for instance has killed several chaos space marines?


There of course _has_ to be exceptions, mostly in the military. But the point stands; the Inquisition deems it necessary to keep knowledge of Chaos to an absolute minimum.

Your average Imperial citizen knows next-to-nothing about anything. The Emperor's Angels are nothing more than a myth to most. The Primarchs, the Heresy and Chaos are mostly unknown quantities. Worship of the God-Emperor is the only thing that is truly enforced, and even then that can manifest itself in many ways; such as sun-worship or deifying the God-Emperor as part of a native religion or custom.


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

Scholtae said:


> what about the imperial guard, Gaunt for instance has killed several chaos space marines?



As COTE said there are invariably exceptions. Gaunt and co are currently engaged in an ongoing, very important crusade where the the enemy is the forces of chaos. It would be wasteful in the extreme and detrimental to the crusades efforts to eliminate a regiment every time they win a battle, when the next one's going to be against chaos aswell. It wouldn't surprise me though if after the crusade is won the remaining troops are rounded up and purged or mind wiped (depending on their pull/ importance). 

It also helps to be protected by plot armour. You can't kill your protagonist when there are more books in the series to write.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

I would also like to point out that there's probably a big difference between knowing that CSM exist and that one of the Emperor's own sons betrayed him.


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## SonOfStan (Feb 20, 2011)

The fact that the average Imperial citizen knows jack-all is what makes me sort of confused about why the Inqusition was so concerned with what the people on Armageddon saw. I mean, it's not like Angron paused in the midst of eating peoples souls to yell at the fleeing survivors, "And by the way, my dad is the Emperor, so fuck you!" Nobody would have recognized him, having absolutely no clue about what a Primarch even is, let alone what a corrupted one should look like. Sure, the daemonic invasion was huge, but like it's already been said, the Guard vets of the Sabbat Worlds crusade have seen Greater Daemons and the like. I personally think that the justifications provided for the Inquisition's reaction in the fluff are a bit flimsy.


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## darkreever (Apr 3, 2008)

SonOfStan said:


> Nobody would have recognized him, having absolutely no clue about what a Primarch even is, let alone what a corrupted one should look like. Sure, the daemonic invasion was huge, but like it's already been said, the Guard vets of the Sabbat Worlds crusade have seen Greater Daemons and the like. I personally think that the justifications provided for the Inquisition's reaction in the fluff are a bit flimsy.


Your assuming that the likes of Grimnar did not have those soldiers and citizens informed of just what it was they were fighting, in order to give them a slightly better chance. Or at the very least some measure of understanding of what was being asked of them.


The very fact that these people had seen such sights, and could tell others of what was seen, is sharing closely guarded knowledge; and in the end you never know what that information will do. If the average citizen learns that, at any moment, his/her world could be invaded by a traitor and the choice is either join or die, they might take the initiative and help pave the way.

Its flimsy reasoning, but semi-justified reasoning all the same.


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## Agarwaen (Oct 8, 2011)

how the hell did i not know about this?? this is mental.


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## Over Two Meters Tall! (Nov 1, 2010)

darkreever said:


> Your assuming that the likes of Grimnar did not have those soldiers and citizens informed of just what it was they were fighting, in order to give them a slightly better chance. Or at the very least some measure of understanding of what was being asked of them.
> 
> 
> The very fact that these people had seen such sights, and could tell others of what was seen, is sharing closely guarded knowledge; and in the end you never know what that information will do. If the average citizen learns that, at any moment, his/her world could be invaded by a traitor and the choice is either join or die, they might take the initiative and help pave the way.
> ...


I also understood that a good part of the mind-wiping and the killing is due to the infectious nature of Chaos on the mind. All those IG may have come through with flying colors in their combat situations, but the PTSD has them sprouting horns and flaying their fellow soldiers. Civilians coming through something like the Armageddon campaign are probably highly likely (from a statistical sense) to start Chaos cults themselves as the little voices whisper in their ears.

I am uncertain about why the sterilization instead of outright death... has there been any fluff indicating that civilians exposed to Chaos are likely to have demon seed? If that's the case, how would you tell between true corruption by the Warp and your normal, say, 3-year-old? :laugh:


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## Phoebus (Apr 17, 2010)

Two quick notes:

1. I think it's been qualified that the average citizen knows of the Primarchs... just not what they really were. To them, they are the semi-divine sons of their God-Emperor, with whom they re-united the Galaxy under the rule of Man. Whether they are aware that there were twenty, eighteen, or just nine loyal Primarchs is another question altogether. I think it's also probably valid to assume that human beings know of the Heresy in a heavily mythologized, inaccurate, and propaganda-rife version propogated by the powers that be.

2. Chaos corrupts. I don't know that the Inquisition was simply worried about the average person on Armageddon hearing Angron bellow who he was. I think it was the concern that the average human could not be trusted to remain pure whilst on the same planet as a massive Chaos incursion featuring millions of monsters, daemons, cultists, Chaos Space Marines... and a Daemon Primarch. We're talking about an Imperium that would probably have you shot if the Commissar saw you carrying the lasgun of a Chaos cultist. That sounds crazy, but remember that these things actually happen. In one of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, for instance, a Guardsman ends up with precisely such a weapon and its not long before he starts feeling its influence.

In that sense, the thrust of the argument between Grimnar and the Inquisition wasn't whether this corruption could have happened... but whether that justified such a total approach, especially where troops and civilians who hadn't even _seen_ the enemy were concerned.

We're talking about the kind of dystopian society where Exterminatus is considered a viable extreme. With that in mind, being executed for being on the same planet as Angron was probably inevitable. :wink:

Cheers,
P.


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## Tensiu (Aug 15, 2009)

I know only that Sanguinius is commonly know, for he even have his own sacred day, "the Sanguinala" or something like that.

By the way, I knew that Wolves tried to save some survivors of the Armageddon War, but damn, I didn't know it was SO MUCH GODDAMMIT awesome. They are epic, nothing less.


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

SonOfStan said:


> The fact that the average Imperial citizen knows jack-all is what makes me sort of confused about why the Inqusition was so concerned with what the people on Armageddon saw. I mean, it's not like Angron paused in the midst of eating peoples souls to yell at the fleeing survivors, "And by the way, my dad is the Emperor, so fuck you!" Nobody would have recognized him, having absolutely no clue about what a Primarch even is, let alone what a corrupted one should look like. Sure, the daemonic invasion was huge, but like it's already been said, the Guard vets of the Sabbat Worlds crusade have seen Greater Daemons and the like. I personally think that the justifications provided for the Inquisition's reaction in the fluff are a bit flimsy.


The Imperial citizenry is not supposed to know that Chaos exists. They don't know there are traitor marines, they don't know the warp is inhabited by daemons, they don't know the Chaos Gods exist. 

The Inquisition proscribes such knowledge for the fear it will send people into a panic or rebellion. Imagine how uncomfortable you would be with star travel if you knew you had to travel through a hell dimension to do so? Or if you knew there were dark god's hungering for your soul, or daemons that could invade your world at any time?

We know also that Chaos corrupts as Phoebus said. What if those soldiers carried a taint, a traitor or a cult that could be transmitted to the next regiment they serve alongside and so on? 

The Sabbat Crusade is a special case and either way it's still ongoing. I fully expect at the end of it the involved regiments are going to be purged or mind wiped.


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## randian (Feb 26, 2009)

> They certainly don't know that the God-Emperor's sons betrayed him and there are fallen Space Marines.


They do, but not as such. if I recall correctly, Imperial theology portrays the Traitor Primarchs as Satan-like beings who rebelled against the Emperor, and their Legions as their followers. I believe citizens know names like Horus and Angron, but they are seen as essentially allegorical. Even if Angron had bothered to say who he was, he'd be seen only as an alien pretender. Nobody would be thinking he's the real deal in the flesh.

It's not as if the Imperium would get much traction saying that the events recorded by your ancestors never happened. How did the Emperor become a corpse on a throne? Why did all those ancient cities get leveled? It's much easier to mythologize history than erase it.

I wonder whether the high lords of the Cult of the Savior Emperor even know their theology is but propaganda. It would be a shock to be a most devout believer who rises to a high position and then be told that no, the Traitor Legions are real, indeed we're fighting them as we speak.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

randian said:


> They do, but not as such. if I recall correctly, Imperial theology portrays the Traitor Primarchs as Satan-like beings who rebelled against the Emperor, and their Legions as their followers. I believe citizens know names like Horus and Angron, but they are seen as essentially allegorical. Even if Angron had bothered to say who he was, he'd be seen only as an alien pretender. Nobody would be thinking he's the real deal in the flesh.


The Imperium is a wide empire, but we do have an example from ADB's _Blood Reaver_ novel. It has an Imperial citizen confronting a Night Lord. The citizen asks what Chapter the NL is from and the NL replies he's from the 8th Legion. The citizen is skeptical because, to him, the 8th Legion never existed in the catechism he learned. 

This is just one example of one citizen out of quadtrillions of people, so take it with a grain of salt, but I do not recall any "ordinary" people discussing the traitor primarchs.


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## SonOfStan (Feb 20, 2011)

Rems said:


> The Imperial citizenry is not supposed to know that Chaos exists. They don't know there are traitor marines, they don't know the warp is inhabited by daemons, they don't know the Chaos Gods exist.
> 
> The Inquisition proscribes such knowledge for the fear it will send people into a panic or rebellion. Imagine how uncomfortable you would be with star travel if you knew you had to travel through a hell dimension to do so? Or if you knew there were dark god's hungering for your soul, or daemons that could invade your world at any time?
> 
> ...


So at this point, are we honestly saying that every time an IG regiment comes into contact with Chaos forces, that they're summarily executed? That every time Chaos Marines raid a planet, anyone who survived the attack gets hunted down and killed?

_Emperor's Gift_ made it pretty clear that what happened on Armageddon was an extreme case, done primarily out of convenience as opposed to necessity. And besides, do you really think that the Inqusition would get away with purging an IG force the size of the one that fought during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade? Of course not. Has there been any fluff written about the Inquisition rounding up and killing the civilians that managed to survive on Chaos-held worlds during the Crusade? None that I'm aware of. Isn't Balhaut, formerly controlled by a Chaos warlord, now where IG regiments go for R&R? 

As for star travel, I'm pretty sure everyone who travels through the Warp knows that something horrible is going on out there. Maybe they don't know the exact nature of what it is, but you don't have to be able to positively identify a Khorne Bloodletter to know that you don't want to get stabbed by one.


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

randian said:


> They do, but not as such. if I recall correctly, Imperial theology portrays the Traitor Primarchs as Satan-like beings who rebelled against the Emperor, and their Legions as their followers. I believe citizens know names like Horus and Angron, but they are seen as essentially allegorical. Even if Angron had bothered to say who he was, he'd be seen only as an alien pretender. Nobody would be thinking he's the real deal in the flesh.


Imperial theology is so diverse in an empire consisting of a million worlds. Worship of the God-Emperor manifests itself in competely different ways across different cultures, so it is safe to assume that knowledge of true events - that is incorporated into such worship - also varies. The lore isn't consistent on such matters, with some sources suggesting only the nine Primarchs are widely known about, others suggesting all are known about, and yet others suggesting none are widely none about.



randian said:


> It's not as if the Imperium would get much traction saying that the events recorded by your ancestors never happened.


Obviously all records of the Heresy could not be wholly erased. But records of ten millennia old wars - in an empire with unreliable communication and travel networks - are likely to be far from accurate. Also, if the Inquisition has moved to repress as much knowledge of such things as possible it is likely that only very little is truly known about the Heresy and the fact that half of the Emperor's sons turned against him.



randian said:


> How did the Emperor become a corpse on a throne? Why did all those ancient cities get leveled? It's much easier to mythologize history than erase it.


Do people actually realise the God-Emperor is a corpse enslaved to a throne? Some might, but considering the nature of the worship of the God-Emperor in some Imperial cultures, I doubt such knowledge is widespread. Also, I imagine knowledge of such things would also hamper the doctrine of the Imperial Cult.

Why did all those ancient cities get leveled? Ancient wars of course; the history of humanity is littered with war and conflict. But that doesn't mean extensive knowledge of the Heresy is well known. Such things could have happened in any war.



hailene said:


> This is just one example of one citizen out of quadtrillions of people, so take it with a grain of salt, but I do not recall any "ordinary" people discussing the traitor primarchs.


On top of the _Blood Reaver_ example, we have one from _Lord of the Night_. Zso Sahaal has to explain what the Primarchs were to Mita Ashyn because she had never heard of them, and she was an Inquisitorial aid who had travelled widely.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

I was looking through _Blood Reaver_ for another nugget of information when I stumbled upon the moment the Imperial citizen, Maruc, has a conversation with a NL. Maruc realizes that the NL is clearly not a loyalist or (in my interpretation) a renegade Space Marine. I'll quote it:

"The Great Betrayer's fallen angels. Mythology. A legend. 'Just a legend,' he croaked as he dangled. Just a legend.'"

My money is that he doesn't know the names of any of the traitor primarchs or the fact that they are the Emperor's sons. Simply that the "Great Betrayer" also had Space Marines.


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

SonOfStan said:


> As for star travel, I'm pretty sure everyone who travels through the Warp knows that something horrible is going on out there. Maybe they don't know the exact nature of what it is, but you don't have to be able to positively identify a Khorne Bloodletter to know that you don't want to get stabbed by one.


From the rulebook pg 144. "So all pervading and profound are the dangers harboured in warp space that those in the Imperium who understand the perils keep that knowledge a closely guarded secret. Only a few truly realise what dangers await humanity just beyond the veil of real-space. 

pg 218. "There are few in the Imperium who understand the real ramifications of what lurks in the warp...". "If every citizen in the Imperium was privy to the knowledge safeguarded by the Inquistion, then humanity would become a race of madmen...". 

Obviously there will be exceptions, Cadian's for example likely know more than the average citizen but by and large the knowledge of chaos and the true nature of the warp is restricted and unknown.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

SonOfStan said:


> As for star travel, I'm pretty sure everyone who travels through the Warp knows that something horrible is going on out there. Maybe they don't know the exact nature of what it is, but you don't have to be able to positively identify a Khorne Bloodletter to know that you don't want to get stabbed by one.


The number of people who travel is probably pretty small, too. From the Rogue Trader core rulebook, "Even the lowest press-ganged crew-scum will have the chance to travel to different worlds--a privilege most Imperial citizens do not even know exists..."

Most citizens, apparently, are not aware of space travel (which would include intra-system traveling), much less warp travel.

Also of the people who are aware of interstellar travel, most of them probably do not have the clout or money to actually travel.


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## SonOfStan (Feb 20, 2011)

Rems said:


> From the rulebook pg 144. "So all pervading and profound are the dangers harboured in warp space that those in the Imperium who understand the perils keep that knowledge a closely guarded secret. Only a few truly realise what dangers await humanity just beyond the veil of real-space.
> 
> pg 218. "There are few in the Imperium who understand the real ramifications of what lurks in the warp...". "If every citizen in the Imperium was privy to the knowledge safeguarded by the Inquistion, then humanity would become a race of madmen...".
> 
> Obviously there will be exceptions, Cadian's for example likely know more than the average citizen but by and large the knowledge of chaos and the true nature of the warp is restricted and unknown.


So I wasn't too far off, haha. I guess it could be compared to the way the Legions viewed the Warp prior to the Heresy; full of predatory creatures, without necessarily understanding that they are daemons in servants to actual intelligent powers.


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## cheeto (Apr 1, 2011)

I think it's much more complicated and simple than any of that. The high lords of terra are control junkies. They do their level best to hide information even in modern times... as we have seen when the Soul Drinkers go renegade. They just wipe all record of the chapter with explosions. 

That said there are millions of worlds. It's impossible to keep any of it a secret and equally impossible to make all worlds understand all of it. Some of the worlds aren't even all that terribly aware that there are wars going on off their own planet. So some know a lot, some know a little, some know incorrectly... It's a mixed bag.

One thing is for sure though. When there isn't anything productive to wage war against I guess the imperium just wages war on itself ensuring the intro to every 40k book remains true lol I can't think of a worse idea than to wage war on one of the original loyal legions. It's not like there is chaos around every corner, orks competing for the attention, dark eldar raiding where they can, necrons popping up, worlds in rebellion... lol


Space Wolves am cool!


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## Dead.Blue.Clown (Nov 27, 2009)

The misunderstandings here are the result of some baseline misapprehensions about the setting. There is no "average Imperial citizen." That's the most important thing you can understand about the scale of 40K.

There's no such thing as the Inquisition. There's no such thing as the Imperium, really. There's definitely no such thing as an average Imperial citizen. That just doesn't exist. There's no such thing as an average human on Earth, though you can tar the broadest brush strokes over "an average Westerner", and even that's pushing it a great deal. On one world, we have countless languages, cultures, nations and so on (and we've had thousands more over the course of a few thousand years) - and among those, we have people at wildly diverse levels of understanding, knowledge, financial freedom, and so on. And that's just one world, at one point in time. The Imperium is a million worlds, over ten thousand years. 

The Imperium is so vast, so incomprehensibly vast, that it defies any teeny-tiny rules of thumb like "But on this world, they do X." Yeah. They do. On that world. 

Look at Cadia, the most heavily defended world beyond Holy Terra. Yes, they have a rule that applies to them, where the armed forces of the world are mobilised and seem aware of what Chaos is - but their understanding is still a shallow, hollow version of what we know from merely skimming the rulebooks. And every other world will likely have a rule that applies just to it, too. I tried to make this clear in _The Emperor's Gift_, though largely through the explanation of the Inquisition and the God-Emperor. On one planet, the Emperor is the Usher of Souls, who welcomes all the spirits of a people's ancestors. On another, he's the Sun God who brings the harvests. On another, he's a holy man living on Terra, incarnated as a divine being. On another, he's a long dead hero who watches over humanity. On another, he's a god in stasis, and will return one day, like King Arthur's myth of returning to defend Britain. All that matters is that these planets pay their tithes. Their local variations on the Imperial Creed mean nothing to anyone.

"The Imperium" is a collection of a million vastly different, utterly separate worlds, 99% of which will have no interaction with 99% of the others. Just let that sink in. This isn't the Federation of Star Trek. This isn't the Empire or the Republic of Star Wars. For every galactic trade hub or world knee-deep in immense trade with other worlds, you'll have a backwards feudal world who worship the Emperor as the spirit of the harvests, and a populated, industrialised world that exists in absolute misery, doing nothing but importing and exporting in an endless, tedious, near-meaningless grind, with maybe 6 or 7 people in the highest echelons of command even understand - really, truly understanding - that the Imperium is more than a few other planets "out there".

The scale of this setting is literally breathtaking. I think the most important phrase you can ever really understand in 40K is this: *There's no such thing as an average Imperial citizen. *

Every world, every system, every subsector, every sector, every Segmentum, is a diverse, separate entity with its own laws, rules, culture, variation on Gothic, variation on the Imperial Creed, histories, myths, and so on. Applying one rule from one world to another is madness, as is trying to make sense of the Imperium in anything but the most fractured, chaotic, complicated, hypocritical, rarely-connected city-states, where the most reliable way to carry a message from one world to another is to quite literally sail through Hell to carry it there yourself, or get one guy to dream some images and ideas to another guy across the galaxy, who'll dream bits of the same things and may - _may!_ - interpret it right.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

Dead.Blue.Clown said:


> *Snip*


I think the term we're trying to grasp is "most". As in, do most Imperial citizens do X. At least that's my spin on it.

In that light, I would probably say most citizens are ignorant of the Horus Heresy specifics. Even the basic point of the Emperor's sons turning against him. 

A world where such knowledge is common place seems unlikely in the extreme. Though as you said, the Imperium is a wide place. Perhaps there is a planet or small colony or even lone vessel that is aware of the true history of the Heresy and has escaped censure one way or another.

On a side note, when was it decided that the Space Wolves and Grey Knights engaged in actual conflict? The Space Wolf codex says it nearly came to blows but nothing more than Grimnar swearing revenge came of it.


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## Dead.Blue.Clown (Nov 27, 2009)

hailene said:


> On a side note, when was it decided that the Space Wolves and Grey Knights engaged in actual conflict? The Space Wolf codex says it nearly came to blows but nothing more than Grimnar swearing revenge came of it.


When it was decided both sides had more invested in it, and there was more to the story. Everything is propaganda, lies, and misinformation. Codexes aren't immune to that. They're the source of it. They're what every story evolves from, explores in more detail, tries to make sense of, and ultimately changes.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

Dead.Blue.Clown said:


> When it was decided both sides had more invested in it, and there was more to the story. Everything is propaganda, lies, and misinformation. Codexes aren't immune to that. They're the source of it. They're what every story evolves from, explores in more detail, tries to make sense of, and ultimately changes.


Fair enough. Though it seemed odd to me that the story would directly contradict the codex. Usually we see gaps being filled and not different roads being taken, I think.


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## cheeto (Apr 1, 2011)

Everything averages out. Regardless, that's not even the point. The point is that there is no way to actually control anything so absolutely over an empire spanning a million worlds.


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## MontytheMighty (Jul 21, 2009)

hailene said:


> I think the term we're trying to grasp is "most". As in, do most Imperial citizens do X.


Pretty much...

Replace "does the average Imperial citizen do X?" with "do most Imperial citizens do X?", and you have a simple, legitimate question


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## Quozzo (Oct 2, 2010)

The Emperors Gift contains information about the Months of Shame, actually it is the Months of Shame.


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