Are you a heretic? If yes, open this spoiler.
Greetings, forumer! For those already initiated, please discuss the 40k setting, games, literature, personal fluff, video game ideas, tabletop game variations ideas, personal heraldry, costume creation and personal devotions to the God-Emperor here. For those not initiated, welcome! Let me tell you about Warhammer 40k.
Warhammer 40 000 is a bad-ass science-fiction/horror setting created by Games Workshop in order to sell bad-ass miniatures. I mean, really badass wargaming miniatures. How about a guy with a skull for a helmet?
There's a great many. The upside of this is that the setting is grim and dark enough (they coined the phrase "grimdark") that every army has a reason to fight to fight other people with the same army. But before we get into that, watch this.
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Your first question should be: what are Tyranids? They're an army in 40k. What are the armies? Well, first you have to understand that 40k is inspired by the most iconic ideas in Sci-Fi. Power armour (Space Marines). Bug Swarms (Tyranids). Survivor societies (Orks). Ancient aliens that like to meddle (Eldar, Necrons). Ancient horrors (Necrons, Daemons). Giant Mechs. Psychic powers. An alternate dimension where ships go to go FTL. (The Warp, home to Chaos Daemons, also responsible for psychic powers). A god-Emperor, although they do so much better with this concept here than in Dune. So, if the armies sound a little familiar, that's not my fault. Also, shamelessly stolen from the CF 40k thread.
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- The Dark Forces -
Daemons Lust, hate, despair, sorrow. All emotion has a reverberation within the warp, the worst, most bitterly felt, and the furtherest extreme becoming strong enough to persist, coalesce, and finally, become. It was from the darkest corners of the galaxy's hearts that Khorne - Lord Upon the Skullthrone, Tzeentch - The Changer of Ways, Nurgle - The Final Decay, and Slaneesh - The Feaster of Pain, sprang forth, and they await the time when the veil against the Warp wears thin, and their warriors, spawn, and offspring can pour through.
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- The Betrayer -
- At the very birth of the Imperium of Man, fully half of the Emperor's most trusted Legions turned against him in a bitter civil war. Brother fought brother, and Mankind drove itself to the very brink of extinction. Ten thousand years after their defeat, those same traitors still launch their Black Crusades from within the Eye of Terror, their dead hearts intent upon nothing less than the utter destruction of the Imperium and the death of its weakling Emperor.
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- The Hammer -
Grey Knights The Grey Knights are the most mysterious of all the Imperium's many organisations. Utterly incorruptible, they are armed with the best weapons and equipment that Mankind has to offer. Above all, they are humanity's last line of defense against the darkness of Chaos
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- The Dying -
Eldar An unimaginably ancient race who once ruled an empire spanning the galaxy. Then came the hideous time of the Fall, when the Eldar were consumed by their own decadence and nearly obliterated to the last, the few survivors scattered across the stars. Though the Eldar are few in number, they continue to be one of the most technologically advanced races in the galaxy. This advantage is combined with the prescient abilities of their Farseers, who scry the future and guide their kin along the most favorable paths of fate.
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- The Lost-
Dark Eldar These spawn of unquiet dreams inhabit a realm called Commorragh, a place as darkly twisted as its rulers, from which these merciless pirates launch raids across the length and breadth of the galaxy. The purpose of these raids is not to conquer planets or protect territory but to cause mayhem, steal, pillage, and – most importantly of all – capture new victims to be taken back to Commorragh for endless torture. Having fallen far into the depths of depravity, their every waking moment is dedicated to inflicting pain and suffering on the galaxy.
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- The Dutiful -
Imperial Guard In the midst of genetically engineered super-beings, alien killing machines, warrior mystics, and technology that approaches sorcery in its sophistication, the Imperial Guard are mere mortals. Protected by little more than faith, they contend with the most terrifying threats the darkest corners of the galaxy vomits forth. As such it is easy to identify with these brave souls and to see in them the qualities of true heroes. Also: tanks tank lol
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- The Ancient -
Necrons Ancient beyond imagining, the Necrons are awakening from their 60-million-year dormancy to plague the living once more. Thousands of immortal, soulless warriors have risen from dusty stasis-tombs, their cold wills bent on harvesting the teeming species of the galaxy. Their miraculous technology was far in advance of any contemporary equivalent long before the Eldar, reckoned the oldest amongst the xenos races, had even begun their existence, and it is only that so few have awoken that they do not pose a greater threat in the current day.
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- The Beast -
Orks The most widespread and warlike race of aliens in the bloodstained galaxy of the 41st millennium. From the depths of the galactic core to the distant ghost-stars beyond the galactic rim, burgeoning Ork empires rise and fall. In terms of sheer numbers and planets, Orks occupy more of the galaxy than any other single race, and if they ever unified, they would crush all opposition the stood before them. However, the Orks' passion for violence is so unquenchable that they spend their entire lives embroiled in war, and will fight each other as readily as any other foe.
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- The Loyal -
Space Marines They are the most powerful and dreaded of all the human warriors in the galaxy. No longer strictly human, but superhuman, superior in all respects to mere men by a harsh regime of genetic modification, psycho-conditioning and rigorous training. Being few in number compared to the uncounted trillions of humanity, Space Marines are organized into small independent armies called Chapters. Their unswerving loyalty is to the Emperor of Mankind first, their Chapter second, and none other beyond that.
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- The Young -
Tau Empire Since their first contact with the Imperium in the 35th millennium, the Tau have risen from a hunter-gatherer society to a star-faring race in less than six thousand years. Absolute obedient to the command of the enigmatic ethereal caste, the Tau believe that now is their time. It is their race and their Empire that will bring unity to the stars, all races equal, and the Tau first among them. There is no foe their technology cannot overcome, no quandary their science cannot resolve, the stars and all that lies between to be joined beneath the aegis of the Greater Good.
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- The Hungry -
Tyranids Without a doubt the most alien race encountered by Humanity. They have been likened to galactic locusts, remorselessly hungry and too numerous to stop. Tyranids are a nomadic, space-dwelling race that emerged from the void between galaxies into our own in search of new resources to consume. These hive fleets have discovered sustenance in abundance in the forms of the myriad species of the Milky Way galaxy, stripping planets of all bio-mass before moving on, leaving nothing but a ball of scoured rock in the wake of their titanic swarms. What's worse, no one seems able to halt, let alone reverse, the Tyranid tide as its tendrils bore ever deeper towards the heart of our galaxy.
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- The Faithful -
Sisters of Battle The darkness contained within the Imperium itself is a sinister and subtle threat. The heretic, mutant, and rogue psyker threaten humanity with an internal rot far more damaging than any xenos invasion. The Ordo Hereticus exists to seek and burn out this threat. Known as the Witch Hunters, these Inquisitors command the might of the Imperium – especially the Adepta Sororitas – in their hunt for the witch, the mutant, the heretic, the fallen cleric, and none is permitted to escape the cleansing fire of their wrath.
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Don't feel like assembling and painting hundreds of miniatures? That's cool, there are other things set in the 40k universe. Like video games! The most popular of which are the Dawn of War series, where you control armies as an RTS, and Space Marine, a TPS with a fluid back-and-forth between range and melee. There's also Space Hulk, which I heard okay things about, and other games, which are, umm, yeah. There is a future game coming out called Eternal Crusade, with similar mechanics to Space Marine, but you can play as Orks, Eldar and Chaos Marines too, and it's going to be a single-shard MMO! Looking out for that one!
But really, what we want to discuss is the awesome potential for video games that this IP holds. Give me your Mass Effect-style Inquisitor game! Give me your DMC-like Eversor Assassin game! Give me Titan mech simulation! Give me Battlefleet Gothic! Anyway, yes.
There are also books, like the ever popular Horus Heresy series, detailing the end of the Great Crusade, the fall of half the Primarchs to Chaos, and the war that almost brought the Imperium of Man to it's knees. Good stuff. I recommend starting with Horus Rising, False Gods and Galaxy in Flames which detail how Horus fell to Chaos, but my personal favorites were A Thousand Sons and Legion, detailing the fall of the Thousand Sons and the Alpha Legion respectively.
There is also a fan-movie name Damnatus, made in Germany, detailing a group of mercs trying to shut down a Chaos cult. Things go awry. There is certainly not, however, an Ultramarines film by Codex Pictures detailing the adventure of a newly minted Space Marine squad that fail to be an Assault squad even though it clearly says in the Codex Astartes that that's what you're supposed to be as a newly minted SM, and- Anyway, it doesn't exist, and I clearly did not order it for Christmas one year. No sir. On a brighter note, there's another CGI movie made by real fans that's in production but looking pretty good called
the Lord Inquisitor.
And there's a bunch of board games, roleplaying games, card game, etc. Anyway, this is a lot more effort than I was expecting out of a 40k OP. Now it's your turn.
@RoyceSraphim @timspork's ghost get in here.
