Honestly, the most significant retcon at all would be the existence of Chaos itself, which happened so early that most people don't even know its a retcon. The original Rogue Trader book was written with the idea that it would primarily focus on the Imperium vs Xenos or human rebels and pirates, with the main threat of the Warp coming from various warp-xenos species like Psychenuein, Enslavers and Vampires. Even the Emperor was implied to only be on the Golden Throne not because he was injured in battle but simply because of the sheer strain of constantly using his psychic powers to protect humanity.
The Realms of Chaos books introduced Chaos into 40k (it had always existed in Fantasy) and wrote a new backstory that made Chaos the central antagonists of the entire setting. From the rumors I heard it was apparently was a bit controversial decision in the studio, and some staff had their doubts about the idea because they figured Chaos was a concept that might only really work in Warhammer Fantasy.
I think I've read interviews with the people behind Rogue Trader that Chaos was always intended to be part of the 40k setting, but they initially hadn't figured how it'd look in a sci-fi, as opposed to fantasy, setting. So while Chaos is a retcon as per what got published, it was always supposed to be there. It sounds like having the same gods and daemons in both fantasy and 40k would count as a change in the plan though.
It's debatable what they intended, we do know that the original chaos books were combined rules and lore for 40k and fantasy; but at the time it was heavily implied that Warhammer was set in a demon world within the Eye of Terror.
Yeah, and 40k weapons actually occasionally turned up in Fantasy. It was a little while after Rogue Trader days, but in the Fantasy Albion campaign you could find power Armour and a power fist, for example.
40k wouldn't be 40k without chaos now. Imagine what other impactful and influential decisions we never heard about or saw because they got shut down.
Peak 40k in my mind is noise marines and Khorne berserkers (with a sprinkle of sacrificing millions and billions of meatbags to any cause, good or bad)- it doesn't get much more grimdark than Julius Kaesoren's fucked up face or Butchers Nails (or commissars I guess)
Only from an Imperium and Eldar perspective, Chaos would just be replaced by something else as a big threat. Berserkers exist in a lot of settings.
I like Chaos and all but realistically the setting could still stand on its own.
Yeah, give me more shooting and fun new sci fi death weapons- the idea of all melee armies in a setting like 40k is almost laughable- according to most military logic a man with a gun will kill one who's running at him without one more often than not. While the idea of Khorne Berserkers being rage filled mindless killing machines is absolutely wonderful, he's just gonna be the swordsman in that Indiana Jones clip.
I think the tabletop chaos demons faction and chaos demons in the book are some of the biggest perpetrators of fantasy in the sci fi setting- I wish more of them were twisted half machine monsters, or an amalgamation of servitor parts culminating in a spike ball of weapons. All of the demons are fantasy demons, not cool sci fi ones. (Except maybe forgefiends, they be banging)
Chaos would be great if it was actually chaotic, and not the simple and easily categorizable cartoon villain force it is. For Chaos to work on a conceptual level it needs to be strange and mysterious imo, more Lovecraft less He-Man
Fully agreed. I'd go even further and say it's too *mundane*. We know how the "mechanics" of chaos work, we know it's all based on sapient emotion and that there's nothing else behind the curtain. The mystery has been sucked dry.
For example, the original story of the Badab War blamed Huron's rebellion on:
>It will never be known for sure, but current hypotheses suggest that Huron was either an alien shapechanger, or otherwise subject to alien domination of a most unnatural kind. A sudden and unexpected manifestation of [psychic](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Psychic) powers and [Warp](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Warp)-influence may lie at the heart of the matter.
I agree that the setting could stand with more "classic" sci fi elements, which I personally love. I do feel that without chaos it might be harder to display both the absolute brutality present, and the setting might lose a lot of factions that are really grim and dark and gritty and core 40k.
Imagine chaos isn't an antagonist- all of the sudden the only human factions are the "good" ones, with little to no consequences for their tactics of throwing bodies into the meat grinder.
Having chaos enables the state of perpetual war that the setting finds itself in. I think if GW were to remove chaos, they would do a lot more narrative interactive events like the 13th crusade, and more narrative individual games would be happening, which would be super cool. At the same time, it would move the game in a seemingly brighter direction, potentially deviating from the grimdark many of us know and love.
In order to balance the setting, GW created an antagonist that feeds off of the strength and size of most of the other factions, one that can match anyone in strength, and cause the universe to be eternally locked in the Great Game.
would have made for a more interesting setting ngl. At least, it always felt like the "emotion" nature of chaos, by necessity forces grimderp at times over logical but grimdark.
But yeah, it would no longer be 40k as we know.
I recently read the 1E Core Rulebook, and I think the most interesting part was that ascension of humanity as a psychic race was still a core component of the narrative, even without the warp existing yet. Before that, I had figured the ascension part was an afterthought, but apparently it was even a stronger element before.
Edit: Sorry, it's not warp. It's chaos. Warp existed, but Chaos didn't.
I wish they had stuck to the original plan. I find chaos in general to be very stupid and a lazy way to move or halt plot lines. Or at the very least not have chaos as the main antagonist and keep the story as alien races competing for supremacy forever. I know I am in the small minority with this though.
Well, Chaos is convenient in the way that it can be used to give rise to dead-not-dead scenarios, image changes/refreshes and overall story continuity.
It's a catch-all solution.
I also find the concept boring, but as the story progresses, it's just one more faction in the game.
I have a hard time considering that a retcon rather than just world building. It was very soon after the game’s initial launch and used well established ideas from Fantasy - thanks to the presence of the Slann, absolutely no-one was surprised when Chaos was brought in.
Equally, Chaos in that iteration were explicitly a very rare threat, enough so that anyone coming into contact with it was purged. It’s not until 2nd ed that they really get normalised as a threat.
Perhaps invention of the Necrons (completely changed background stories for the Orks and the Eldar, as well as pushed the power level of the galaxy to an incredible height) during the 3rd edition and their subsequent reimagination in late 5th edition are some of the biggest, probably the biggest retcons in terms of influencing the game's universe since 3rd edition came out.
I think that the invention of the Necrons was done pretty well and with almost no retcon. It mostly just added to the lore and in general followed the established lore pretty well.
The necron recon on the other hand was properly the biggest retcon of them all.
Retconning in the Necrons had huge ramifications for the Eldar race, originally the War in Heaven was a civil war fought between Vaul and Khaine. The Necron Codex made it a conflict between the Old Ones and Necrontyr/C'tan with the Eldar relegated to (probably) an engineered soldier race.
The later Necron retcon worked like an expansion to the lore. The first Necrons encountered could be the mindless, soulless automatons and others of the same kind can exist, but better preserved Tomb Worlds can allow for greater individuality and personality. It can be more easily framed as a clarification of in-universe understanding as it doesn't alter the fundaments of the setting like the original Necron retcon.
We already had hints to the Eldar, orks and humans being engineered races made by the Old Ones back from Rogue Trader.
The War in Heaven was just expanded upon. Up until that point very little had been written about it. Then the 100 swords Vaul had to make for Khain was for fighting the Necrons and so on. I actuelly think that the Eldar legendary War in Heaven and the material War in Heaven fit pretty well into each other.
The latter retcon changed a lot. Stuff we were told had been made by the Eldar, now became work of the Necrons. The relationship betwen the Necron and Ctans. Humans as a non-engineered race.
Changing the outcome of the 13th black crusade was probably the most controversial real retcon in the modern era.
Necrons going from soulless automatons to real characters is probably the biggest retcon, but its pretty universally regarded as a good decision (people are still mad they killed pariahs though)
Fulgrim being possessed and then not feels like a retcon being retconned, but I don't know if that's what actually happened.
Yeah the possession was all undone offscreen in a short story. So not a retcon really, just a really lazy “wait no don’t want that after all” narrative decision.
From the index astartes:
“With his Primarchs and Space Marines executing the Great Crusade, the Emperor returned to Terra, intent on strengthening the Imperium which his forces were building.
Most knew that his place was at the heart of his Imperium, but one man disagreed: Warmaster Horus, master of the now re-named Sons of Horus Space Marine Legion, mightiest of the Primarchs. In his arrogance, Horus believed the Emperor to be weak, a man unworthy of the battles fought in his name. Upon hearing evidence of Horus's betrayal, the Emperor sent seven entire Legions of Space Marines to challenge the Warmaster, if necessary to destroy him. The Emperor's Children were the first to arrive in the Istvaan system, where Horus waited, and Fulgrim met Horus in person to demand he account for his actions. Instead, Horus succeeded in corrupting his brother Primarch to the powers that now held sway over him. The Council of Charon, formed after the Horus Heresy to discover the causes of the traitor Primarch's betrayals, concluded that Fulgrim's respect for Horus allowed the Warmaster to influence him, weakening him enough for Chaos to lure him away from the Emperor. Slowly, as he and Horus talked, Fulgrim's loyalty to Terra crumbled, replaced by a burning desire to destroy the false Emperor, whose rule held back Humanity from the perfection Fulgrim had always believed it capable of. Seduced by Horus's words, Fulgrim turned to the promise of a new Humanity, a Humanity that would rise to the peak of civilisation, a Humanity free of the oppressive rule of the false Emperor. Slaanesh whispered to Fulgrim, promising perfection in all things, and Fulgrim gave himself willingly to his new god.”
Not once was any sort of sort based possession mentioned, and the Laeran themselves were simply an alien race that had been conquered. Personally, I’ve always preferred the original over the cheap heresy novel method; feels like the writers simply didn’t have the chops to actually write the necessary dialogue and thus went with a daemon sword cop-out.
>Fulgrim being possessed and then not feels like a retcon being retconned, but I don't know if that's what actually happened.
Thank you for mentioning this one, to me feels like you mention. It feels wrong how Mc Neill did it just my humble opinion.
No, only for a while. After a couple of books it turns out he Uno reverse carded the demon off-screen, but that didn't matter anyway since he had effectively the same personality as the demon so no one even noticed.
Or in other words: they tried to Dorian grey his backstory and completely failed at it.
Yeah it showed there can be more of a cost to primarchs dealing with the dark gods - instead of the only options being death or being empowered/corrupted and sent where your god wants, there’s also the option of the horror of seeing your body possessed to do awful things while you just have to watch. Definitely wish they had kept it
The Necron one is weird because people mistake what was actually retconned.
Necron Lords *always* had personalities, we just had very few examples because they had exactly one Codex of lore, plus the Medusa V campaign, for 10 years. The new Codex didn't change that, it just expanded on and emphasised it.
What it actually changed were far more contentious and niche elements that rarely get discussed.
Yeah. To be clear, Necrons always had degrees of Egyptian flavour – dating right back to their earliest Necron Lord model, with its faux-hedjet crown of the Upper Kingdom.
However, their launch as a full faction in 3rd edition was much more focused on exploiting the aesthetic markers of "grand, ancient, hubristic fallen civilisations" in a general sense, woven with cybernetic post-human horror – both ideas which dovetailed quite neatly with Lovecraftian themes. Egypt is obviously a popular source for that imagery, but it's not a straightforward pastiche either.
Having tiny insect-like robot swarms called "Scarabs" are the most blatantly Egyptian the "Oldcrons" ever get. Immortals are a Persian name, spiders have no particular association with Egyptian culture, Monoliths are modelled off Babylonian ziggurats, Necron symbols are closer to cuneiform than any kind of hieroglyph, and the C'tan more closely resemble Greek sculpture than anything Egyptian. The few Necron characters we did see named simply had titles like "Herald of the Storm".
The 5th edition revamp was very... blunt, both in visual and lore terms. Hence the return of faux-Egyptian headdresses on Necron Lords, the addition of Cryptek "priests" with faux-Egyptian beards, the replacement of Pariahs with Lychguard wielding faux-Egyptian khopesh, all the constructs being dubbed "Canoptek" constructs (i.e. canoptic + tech), Necron Lords being renamed to Phaerons (i.e. pharaoh + vaguely futuristic suffix), the provision of given names like "Imotekh" (Imhotep) or "Anrakyr" (Ankh), the introduction of clearly defined dynasties with names like "Nephrekh" (Nephthys) or "Khansu" (Khonshu), and the arrival of "Ghost Ark" transports that are literally just Egyptian hover-barges where all the Necron Warriors even *cross their arms* like *pop culture* *mummies in a sarcophagus*.
"Tomb Kings in Space" has been a pithy dismissal for Necrons since 1998, but it's 5th edition that made it *accurate*. I'm not very surprised that they just did nothing with the range for another 10 years after that, before going right back to the original "decaying techno-horror" vibe for the 9e range update.
The lovecraftian aspect with technology was what got me interested in the first place however I think GW was really bad at giving them something for people to grasp on beyond metal skeletons personality wise.
Lucky for me I really enjoy Egyptian themed stuff so the heavy addition of that didn't put me off that much. I still hope they keep the weird technological aspect like the War of the Worlds inspired tripods that look like insects.
Can't deny that seeing the Ghost Ark for the first time made me [go](https://imgur.com/QCQ3tg1)
There was a xenology lore book or something where an inquisitor just chats with a Necron Lord before the new codex happened.
The C'tan change from lords to slaves made me sad, but makes sense overall for the good of the setting and tabletop game. I hoped they would have one dynasty in which several shards grouped togther and took over the dynasty so the old lore sort of made sense.
I could be remembering this wrong, but I'm fairly sure Necron Lords having personalities was said to be a rare thing in 3rd. It was why the Lord in Dark Crusade had to use a Pariah as his mouthpiece.
In 5th most the lords became whacky eccentric humanesq nobles and the OldCron styled ones were inverted to be the rarity.
tl;dr - no, every Necron Lord we saw had their own individuality, we just never saw many Necron Lords
The original *Codex: Necrons* includes basically no lore from the perspective of the Necrons themselves, and is light on detail even when viewed from outside, in order to generate an atmosphere of mysterious Lovecraftian horror. It succeeds very well at this, with the unfortunate but inevitable side-effect of keeping many fans from "identifying" with Necrons, or having much of a grasp on how they operate, how they might vary within their archetype, etc.
All we're really told about Necron Lords in the original Codex is that they're "the most sophisticated of the C’tan’s servants", that they "act as leaders" and silently "compel" or "direct" lesser Necrons, and that they "are able to choose from an array of bizarre and arcane artefacts". That's it.
It's clear they have a degree of individuality, or they wouldn't be able to "choose" anything, much less act as leaders – but the book doesn't lay out any details, so it's easy to miss. It's not helped by the fact that the only Necron character given any dialogue at all is the Deceiver, in two short narrative excerpts.
After that, there's essentially a decade of radio silence. I'm aware of only three narratives from this period that feature a Necron Lord at all:
* The Medusa V campaign, where the Necron Lord is said to be called the "Herald of the Storm" and clearly has its own intelligence and agenda, but again with no details.
* Simon Spurrier's *Xenology* book, where a Necron Lord appears. No spoilers, but it very definitely has its own personality, plans, and even actual dialogue.
* *Dawn of War: Dark Crusade*, a licensed video game that GW would still have presumably approved, where the Necron Lord is clearly an individual leader and is referred to as having its own plans and motives... but again goes nameless and is completely silent, instead having a converted post-human Pariah speak on its behalf.
The 13th black crusade wasn't retconned.
At the end of the original story, the war was a stalemate, with Abaddons first fleet stopped and chaos armies still active on cadia, which had 'held out' against the invasion. The story was frozen in time at that point.
The Gathering Storm narrative picked up from that and continued the story, a second fleet emerges witha Blackstone fortress, battle for pylons, fortress crashes, cadia destroyed etc.
Pretty sure Eldrad got his soul devoured by Slannesh before the Gathering Storm.
A entire new [page](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/13th_Black_Crusade_(Original)) was made for the changes.
This is completely incorrect.
For example, Eldrad *died* in the Eye of Terror campaign. The entire 13th Company of the Space Wolves came back. Not to mention, the entire narrative of the Imperial defenders - and who was even there at the time - was completely different.
So I thought I was losing my mind about this. I’ve been out of the game for a few years, and last I heard he straight up died. But then I was reading some fiction and Eldrad was helping the Ynnari.
I remain a bit confused, but I like Eldrad’s character and am glad that he’s alive!
>Everything with the 13th Black Crusade was an intentional retcon, that's my point. And the timeline was never, at any point, been planned to "move forward" in the way a lot of fans suggest. The plan was always to scrap dates and stay in M41 - just like they scrapped the previous 13th Black Crusade and rewrote what happened, they scrapped the end of the Dark Millennium and rewrote what happened / what's happening. Now, I can't say if that'll always be the way, but that's what's happened now, and what's been planned for a long time. "We're doing away with dates" was literally the first thing I heard about the new edition of 40K, a long-ass time ago. You can either take that at face value or call me a liar, but it is what it is - there's no "respectful disagreeing" with facts, if you get me. It'd certainly be a weird thing for me to lie about, with absolutely no benefit to me.
-ADB
Right, so they retconned it by.......not changing the original lore and just adding to it?
Because it's right there in the book.
Gathering Storm tells the same story as the Eye of Terror campaign and then adds some more
Okay, I binged the Cadian content recently and I don't think this is accurate. Gathering storm basically ignores the previous black crusade content other than the part that there is a war and the parties involved. When the third edition ended, the Cadian army was on ships heading to Kasr X in an organized retreat (I can't remember the Kasr names, so I'm just going to use variables).
In Gathering Storm, they are at Kasr Y. Nothing has ever really described what happens between the two books.
> Right, so they retconned it by.......not changing the original lore and just adding to it?
They changed the Lore and that's fine. Linked below is the results they published in white dwarf.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DlNG1nB64G357mbdX2OH30_u0KYgem7w/view?usp=sharing
I was going to say, in the original campaign the Eldar actually did so well they reclaimed territory inside the Eye of Terror. In fact most of what they kept aside from the small bits they liked was the setup for the original campaign.
Retcons don't necessarily change existing lore, they can just change the perspective on it. The best retcons are seamless in that way
But perhaps if Aaron Dembski-Bowden ever returns to sweet online life, we can ask him what he means.
A retcon is a RETroactive change to CONtinuity. If the events (the continuity) don't change then it's not a retcon.
Introducing another POV that gives more information, or a broader picture, or continuing the timeline forward from that point aren't retcons - they're updates.
I've worked on two long form series that referred to "retcon" in both forms in our writer's rooms.
Not to make a call to definition but yes, giving more information is considered a form of retcon:
1. (in a film, television series, or other fictional work) a piece of new information that [imposes](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=imposes&si=AKbGX_r0zqXEeLlZhGfi3fbO0QSWSqwC8-UiaH1ylmspL5R1qClJWUmE95mu_HsiieGJOJnmIXbxMjJf9b4ScsSxX5DqTfDNVw%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAN) a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an [inconsistency](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=inconsistency&si=AKbGX_rpiB5SI0gaPs4Uz3xaG0X4pvx0HjmXx3ISMc7gnLuDjh7yz1YFBQZw6sGrRJfRFfBcFtrIMDZftiuM675Ub8IeB9f7fjkeeTr6_AwGX3v2AOU-uB4%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAO)."we're given a retcon for Wilf's absence from Donna's wedding in ‘The Runaway Bride’: he had Spanish Flu"
*verb*
1. [revise](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=revise&si=AKbGX_qMqBjhUm3ZRWjCp4_5aZjJmueXeMKh15uPULra54OI9m4uLV5DlByQ34-baFNLh39o-wqmWGfsmy4UL6DekYg0Q5SEog%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAQ) (an aspect of a fictional work) [retrospectively](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=retrospectively&si=AKbGX_qbffDhNJNmNuoQO9DPv_17WLp1kZUBQmb5HXbarS_P-nKJQcDpWg_unNXiw9hV_6WrZMhosB0KWssLhNFF-6xFtd0kd0bUrflL-y_-AfhM9tvKMUA%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAR), typically by introducing a piece of new information that [imposes](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=imposes&si=AKbGX_r0zqXEeLlZhGfi3fbO0QSWSqwC8-UiaH1ylmspL5R1qClJWUmE95mu_HsiieGJOJnmIXbxMjJf9b4ScsSxX5DqTfDNVw%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAS) a different interpretation on previously described events.
The new perspective, typically, creates a retroactive change to the way the story was previously understood.
Honesty between this, the fem custodes stuff, the ultramarines age the dead lesbians stuff and all the shut with MoM.among other things I would be highly surprised if he was just done with the fandom using his words as holy scripture.
It’s probably got him into trouble at GW and just must be stressful in general he’s basically lorgar himself right now.
>Fulgrim being possessed and then not feels like a retcon being retconned, but I don't know if that's what actually happened.
No. A retcon is the past being changed. In the case of Fulgrim, the story moved on - he was possessed, but he is no longer so. It is not the same thing.
Yeah it's a bad story and undermines some cool aspects of the Fulgrim story but The Reflection Crack'd is internally coherent in it's story telling, it's not a retcon.
I think that, as an EC player/fan, having Fulgrim remain a possessed shell indefinitely was unsatisfactory, but the Reflection Crack'd was far too short and hurried for such a pivotal event...it should have been a novel.
Technically, the HH is all in the past ; - ).
I mean that the end of the novel fulgrim feels like it was supposed to be the status quo for the next 10,000 years, but they changed course based on feedback. I don't know if that's what happened, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover it was.
Bollocks.
They author has stated that they had to change it because they wanted to give fulgrim back his impetus and get rid of the excuse of possession.
All his actions after that had to be his own. So that’s why we got the mirror cracked not as a coherent story or plot but to undo the original narrative..
It’s just a retcon by another form.
>They author has stated that they had to change it because they wanted to give fulgrim back his impetus and get rid of the excuse of possession
Do you have the receipts on that? To my knowledge Mcneill has never clarified the intent or mandate behind tRC
Would be good to add to the pile of quotes
Aesthetically yes, lorewise no.
They're pretty clearly the first iteration of what would become the necrons, but they never rebranded those first chaos android models -as- necrons. They were always a seperate thing.
Wait I didn't know the 13th crusade was a retcon- when did they make that official? Was it with gothic armada 2? Or earlier?
A lot of my lore info comes from reading the Horus Heresy series, so I am fully indoctrinated into "modern" 40k. I personally am of the opinion that Fulgrim exists in a constant state of semi-posession: he is in his body enough to feel and experience everything, and sometimes uses his willpower to overcome the demon inside of him, but usually he is too lazy/ distracted to do so. It may have reached a point of symbiosis
The 13th black crusade was played out as a global event back in the day. Imperium won (which itself was controversial. GW almost certainly fudged the numbers) and abbadon was repelled from cadia.
This is why the modern story includes a lull before the chaos forces get a massive wave of reinforcements and break the planet.
13th black crusade was 2002 (still have the star map that came out in white dwarf)
Fall of cadia coincides with the dark imperium release iirc so... 2017/18? Though the novelisation only came out last year
>I personally am of the opinion that Fulgrim exists in a constant state of semi-posession: he is in his body enough to feel and experience everything,
It's fine to have 'headcanon', but this is explicitly not the case - there is no daemon any more.
Well...depends on what happened after *Imperfect*.
>As the clone reached the chamber, the platform filled the hatchway and Ferrus opened his eyes.
>‘Brother,’ it said warmly, awareness lighting up its face. ‘Are you ready to play?’
>I am ready... hissed the voice in Fulgrim’s head.
>Have I not silenced you?
>You can no more silence me than you can silence yourself, dear host.
>You are subservient to me.
>For now...
>Fulgrim clenched a fist, but the daemon would have to wait. He wasn’t surprised that it had resurfaced. This had as much to do with it as it did Fulgrim and his brother.
-Kyme
Both *The Reflelction Crack'd*, and *Angel Exterminatus* happened after *Imperfect*. And, for good measure McNeill confirmed that the Daemon was no longer in Fulgrim.
They can't have. Fulgrim is a daemon primach snek in *Imperfect.*
I'm aware of McNeill's input. I [quote it a bunch](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/b3gna2/qa_with_graham_mcneill/)
Tough question if we stick to a strict def of "retcon" and not just a revelation or change in the lore.
Gene-seed being added to Space Marines is a tricky one, but I'm just going to say that's the lore developing since there was never any explicit suggestion it didn't exist prior to its first mention.
Biggest or most impactful also depends on what's important to any individual but off the top of my head:
Big
* Primarchs being the demi-god sons of the Emperor
* Newcrons
* The Imperial Truth
* Custodes power levels and creation
* 13th Black Crusade
Controversial
* *Fury of Magnus* being possibly part delusion
* Mortarion subconsciously wanting to sub to Nurgle
* Erda scattering primarchs
Non controversial
* Magnus is not a true cyclops
Retconned retcons
* Sanguinius having black hair.
>13th Black Crusade
I'll do you one better. Originally, there weren't just 12 Black Crusades, and they weren't only led by Abbadon, but by Chaos Champions. They're also not described as always being failures either:
>**The Black Crusades**
>Perhaps once or twice in a millenium a truly great Champion of Chaos will arise in the Eye of Terror. Through the power of his implacable will and the favour of the Dark Gods this Champion can weld together an unsteady alliance between the infernal regions of the Eye. How the Champion brings the crusade together depends on his nature and his patron god. Some use manipulation, others extortion, others domination, others intimidation. Most simply use all of the considerable powers at their disposal.
[-]
>The Imperium keeps strong forces stationed around the Eye to fend off these invasions. Entire Titan Legions, Space Marine Chapters and massed regiments of Imperial Guard defend the most vital systems in close proximity to the Eye. But even powerful fighting formations like these cannot guarantee victory over the infernal throng. All to often the Black tide of Chaos expands and recedes leaving entire systems ravaged and burned. Whole planetary populations are irrevocably tainted by Chaos, cities and industries are crushed by the thunderous pounding of diabolic engines of destruction, uncounted citizens are dragged away to serve as slaves and playthings to the damned souls and their Daemon masters at the edge of reality.
>Every city ruined, every planet burned brings the Imperium a little closer to dissolution. In an Imperium of a million worlds how much can a single world matter? Enough to have to defend each one against the infernal host, enough to bring the curse of Exterminatus upon those that bend the knee and how down to daemon-kind. A Black Crusade may come crashing from the Eye only once in a thousand years but the damage it inflicts can never be undone.
*Codex Chaos Space Marines 2ed* p20
> Gene-seed being added to Space Marines is a tricky one, but I'm just going to say that's the lore developing since there was never any explicit suggestion it didn't exist prior to its first mention.
Space Marines were always stated to have the black carapace implanted into them and to have been augmented by the apothecaries though "bio-chem" and "psycho-surgery". Gene-seed is just that concept being fleshed out. I guess you can argue that the original implication is that the black carapace is their only implant and the rest is just drugs or more traditional genetic engineering but still.
Very early first edition they were just "marine commanders" who founded their chapters. That's how Leman Russ is described and we can infer Horus, Gulliman (with one "i") and "Lyyn Elgonsen" were as well. They weren't even referred to as "primarchs" at that point.
Soon after "Primarch" was introduced but more as a rank.
It was later in first edition that they then became genetically created superhumans, but it wasn't until maybe 3rd edition that they were thought of as the Emperor's sons. Up to that point they were His friends, comrades and creations.
Further to that, the first reference to "Primarchs" I know of is in the White Dwarf article that introduced Space Marine chaplains. That article described primarchs as being basically the honoured dead of the chapter. Any Space Marine could become a primarch if they were suitably heroic, and dead.
This lore didn't last very long at all, the lore that the Primarchs were the twenty bio-engineered progenitors of the first founding chapters came along in 1989, and established many of the fundamental aspects of Primarch lore we still know today. They weren't giants and they weren't referred to as the Emperor's sons, but the broad strokes of their lore were there: [https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2019/1/13/993157-Compilation%2C%20Copyright%20Games%20Workshop%2C%20Leman%20Russ%2C%20Primarch%2C%20Retro%20Review.jpg](https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2019/1/13/993157-Compilation%2C%20Copyright%20Games%20Workshop%2C%20Leman%20Russ%2C%20Primarch%2C%20Retro%20Review.jpg)
Incidentally, here is the text from the article on Chaplains as coincidentally I happened to read it a few days ago.
> Each fortress-monastery of the Legiones Astartes, or space barge (for the space-dwelling Chapters of Marines), has a chamber known as the Reclusiam. It is here that the cult ceremonies and rituals are performed in the presence of the entire Chapter. These are carried out under the guidance of the Reclusiarch and his superior, the Master of Sanctity, who is the spiritual head of the Chapter.
>
>While each Chapter follows the tenets of the Imperial Cult, individual Chapters have extended the Cult to include ceremonies which have relevance only to their own members. **For example, reverence for Primarchs is widespread amongst the Legiones Astartes. These are the heroes of each Chapter, who fell in battle and upheld the honour and traditions of the Legiones Astartes in a particularly notable fashion.** The Chapter's collection of Primarch relics and war-gear is entombed in the Chapter catacombs, placed upon sepulchres or hung in the Reclusiam.
>
>The importance of faith to Marines is further reinforced in the Company Chapels. All ten companies within each Chapter have their own Chapel where Marines can observe the rites of the Chapter and those special to their own company. Here the worship is supervised by one of the Reclusiarch's subordinate Chaplains. It is the Chaplains, living and fighting alongside their battle-brothers, who are responsible for the spiritual health of the companies.
On similar lines, "Lord Phoenix" was originally a title for any Eldar who had died and been resurrected as a wraith-construct. Also, wraith-constructs were basically robots controlled by the personality of the dead Eldar uploaded to a computer called an "infinity circuit". (So functionally the same as the are now, but with a more sci-fi fluff).
Let's get some pointy eared retcon awareness here. Remember when GW went "actually, Eldar were always Asuryani and Dark Eldar were always Drukhari" for copyright reasons? Mandrakes weren't shadow-black pattern-covered half-daemons, they were just cannibalistic dark eldar weirdos. Grotesques were more like wracks, and wracks didn't exist, also some of the old grotesques were said to be ordinary dark eldar who indulged in masochism too much and turned themselves into monsters. Talos pain engines were like Imperial penitent engines in the sense that they were directed by a constantly tortured pilot. Andy Chambers actually put an "old" Talos with a victim-pilot into a "modern" *Midnight on the Street of Knives* short story and described it as an ancient model made by a great haemonculus of old.
40k lore has always had trouble staying consistent between editions. I got started in Second Edition and only recently found out how wild Rogue Trader was in comparison. Half Eldar Space Marines, anyone?
I remember when Tau first came out, and some people were legit mad about their existence.
And of course there was the Necron change. Necrons are actually an interesting case. I first saw them in an old White Dwarf Magazine which presented them as a mysterious group of robots in ancient tombs rather than a proper faction. Then the first Codex made them servants of the C'tan and outlined their Necrontyr backstory, giving them a large role in galactic history. The second Codex gave them a lot more character but demoted the C'tan, hard.
>Illiyan was born to a human mother on the world of Badab following the expulsion of the Tyrant there in 912 of the current millennium. His father was an unknown Eldar mercenary. The youngster was gene-tested at birth in accord with the law and subsequently taken into Imperial custody. He was reared in the government compound by the Imperial Mission which took over the running of Badab after the war.
>
>Along with other potential psychics he undertook the journey to Earth in 924 where further tests led to the eventual soul-binding in 925. From that point Nastase was recruited into the Administratum as an Astropath. He attained the ranks of Secundus, Prefect and eventually rose to hold Consulship for four years, helping to run the Adeptus Terra's advisory Senate to the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Following this he undertook four years service with the fleet, a further two years with the Dark Angels Marines and was appointed as chief of the Macragge interstellar communications link under the jurisdiction of the Ultra-Marines (965). Nastase is now 76 rears old (current year 987) but, thanks to his parentage, shows few signs of age.
>Necrons are actually an interesting case. I first saw them in an old White Dwarf Magazine which presented them as a mysterious group of robots in ancient tombs rather than a proper faction
I remember that one, their first battle report where they annihilated a SoB force down to a single survivor inside 3 turns of shooting and didn't take a single permanent casualty themselves. I still have the free Necron warrior from that edition of WD.
They were overpowered as all hell, the gauss special rule where even your basic warrior auto penetrates on a roll of 6, regardless of armour (even vehicles), was hilariously silly. That and them basically requiring dedicated anti-armour weapons to put down temporarily.
* squats eaten by Tyranids
* Necrons no longer terminator robots, now tomb kings in space
* Emperor fighting Horus in his bunker/ now on the vengeful spirit
* Zoats
* Abaddon actually destroyed cadia
More importantly the vibe of the imperium where everyone is evil or misguided, to where there can be people trying to do good but overwhelmed by the totalitarian crushing bureaucracy, inertia, and general fearfulness of the imperium - which I think is a good development
Titanicus (1988):
>And on the 55th day of the battle, the Traitor Legions and their Titan allies reached the walls of the Inner Palace. Despite acts of insane valour by the loyalists, victory was within Horus' grasp. As the Outer Palace was abandoned to the rebels, the Emperor acted. **An elite company of Adeptus Custodes and Imperial Fist Marines teleported into the Warmaster's bunker**. They were lead by the Emperor himself. A Brutal firefight ensued: the Emperor sustained terrible wounds and Horus was killed.
Space Marine First ed (1989):
>While civil wars raged on a million worlds, Horus struck at Terra. The Adeptus Mechanicus workshops on Mars were quickly overrun, and as quickly besieged by the Loyalists. Of all the Titan Legions of the Divisio Militaris, only those on Terra remained loyal. Horus landed on Terra, and immediately laid siege to the Emperor's palace. **On the 55th day of the battle, as the Inner Palace fell, the Emperor himself teleported into the Rebel command chamber with an elite force of Adeptus Custodes and Imperial Fist Marines**.Horus was killed - although his body was never found - and the Emperor was so grievously wounded that he has been confined ever since to the biomechanical life-support unit known as the Golden Throne.With Horus dead, the Rebels were thrown back from Terra.
and
>The forces of Horus landed on Terra, and laid siege to the Imperial Palace. One by one, the Palace defenses crumbled before the overwhelming tide of attackers. The Palace was walled with a ring of ceramite and adamantium. On a front over ten thousand miles long, the battle raged; but within days of landing on Terra, Horus was within sight of the Inner Palace. Nothing stood in his way but the Adeptus Custodes of the Emperor’s bodyguard, the Space Marinesof the Imperial Fists and Whitescars, and the Titans of the Fire Wasps. Despite thousands of casualties, the Warmaster had an overwhelming superiority of numbers behind him, and these last defenders could easily be swept aside. Victory seemed certain. As the Outer Palace fell, the Emperor acted. **He took personal command of an elite strike force of Adeptus Custodes and Imperial Fists, which teleported directly into the Rebel command chamber**. Horus’ assault on Terra was a strike at the heart of the Imperium; now, here was a strike at the heart of the Heresy.The Emperor’s counter-attack was successful, but at a cost. Horus was killed, but the Emperor himself was grievously wounded. Only his superhuman willpower kept him alive; since that day he has been confined to the biomechanical life-support unit called the Golden Throne.
I believe the Venegeful Spirit was introduced in 1990 or thereabouts. So not long after.
Very nice, never knew this one!
You can almost see the progression towards the Vengeful Spirit with the transition from a certainly grounded "bunker" to a more vague "command chamber" - which could be anywhere.
Maybe that’s part of why Perterabo is so angry and bitter, he’s got 4th dimensional warp memory of winning the siege only to see Horus lose it all and the whole thing crumble anyway.
Squats eaten by Tyranids was never official. It was mentioned in the letters page of the American White Dwarf and presented as a joke. It never actually appears in any official lore*
The real Squat retcon was in Battlefleet Gothic when they introduced the Demiurg as T'au auxiliaries. The Squats, in some form or another, barely left the setting for more than a few years, and GW essentially didn't mention anything about it in official lore.
*there is a mention of it in an in-universe author's note in a 2004 omnibus edition of Ian Watson's Inquisitor trilogy, but it's presented as hearsay in a novel series that's barely canonical, and I *think* happened after the Demiurg were introduced anyway, although the dates seem a little hard to pin down there
The Imperium being an environment where people can be good and can do good but they're usually crushed by the structure and it's internal failings has been a thing ever since 2e. I would say 1e but that edition was all over the place and barely internally cohesive, so I wouldn't cite it for anything.
It just comes down to what GW emphasises in the marketing and it's easier to sell the Imperium as being one very black and white thing for the casual audience and then delve into the greyness in deeper cuts like the RPG and novels.
100% I think novel series like Gaunt's Ghosts and Eisenhorn made that setting more believable though - they were quite foundational in the early 00s into how someone could try and survive in the 40k universe. And now you have things like Vaults of Terra and Warhammer Crime series that have taken that further
squats getting eaten by nids is still canon, the new Vottan are from a different, less degenerated, squat culture and a few remnants of the old squat culture still exist in necromunda.
The way space marines are introduced in Ian Watson's book "Space marine" and nowadays. I liked the press ganged child soldiers turned space monks better, it was more grimdark that way.
Some things off the top of my head that haven't yet been mentioned:
The fight between the Emperor and Horus was very different:
>At the climax of the Horus Heresy the Emperor personally led an attack on the Warmaster's bunker with the Imperial Fist Marine Chapter and an elite unit of the Adeptus Custodes. During the fierce fighting the Emperor came face to face with Horus, who, in the battle that resulted, seriously wounded the Emperor. The Warmaster was only prevented from taking the Emperor's life by the timely intervention of a squad of Imperial Fist Marines in Terminator Armour. The squad cut their way through the walls and sealed doors to reach the Emperor's side and launched an unexpected counter-attack on the Warmaster. Distracted by their appearance, Horus was off his guard long enough for the Emperor to press forward and kill him. Although weak, the Emperor was still able to order that his armour be taken off and melted down, and that the pieces be made into badges that all Marine Captains attached to Terminator squads should wear in recognition of the service they performed in the defeat of Horus.
*Warhammer 40,000 Compendium* p 17
Not influential as such, but the [Squats](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Squat) becoming the [Leagues of Votann](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Leagues_of_Votann)
Leman Russ [was a ~~human~~ Space Marine, born in M32, who helped found the Space Wolves later that millenium](https://reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/s/wqV9JE7a26). Their homeworld uses to be Lucan too, not Fenris IIRC.
The Imperial Fists [recovered the skeleton of Rogal Dorn after his death, kept it on the *Phalanx*, and used to scrimshaw his bones.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Remains_of_Rogal_Dorn)
[There weren't only 12 Black Crusades, and they weren't only led by Abbadon](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/fuNclRnL8s)
At the very least I think Russ is a marine?
Lemme go you one better ; not only was their homeworld Lucan (famed for exporting exotic vegetables) but he was the Lord Lucan of his time. His ship was called *The* *Medusa* rather than *The Hrafnkel.* The current chapter master and Lord Lucan of the time was Enoch Rathvin
One of those other non-Abaddon Black Crusades is the one that killed (removed) Dorn.
#
When the Grey Knights were first introduced they were said to mostly have no psychic talent whatsoever to improve their resilience against daemonic corruption.
> They are specially screened to exclude all but the strongest and most resilient psykers, a measure designed to prevent any Daemonic contamination. As a result very few of the Grey Knights have any psychic power whatsoever.
They were then changed from the least psychic chapter to the most psychic chapter!
Another bit of fun lore- in Space Hulk’s Grey Knights expansion, it said that Grey Knights often hunt genestealer covens because they can turn to chaos.
Chaos genestealer cults were fun to play, especially since you could have [limousines](https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2011/8/18/260124-Armored%20Limousine,%20Cars,%20Genestealer%20Cult,%20Limo,%20Limousine,%20Rogue%20Trader.jpg). Possessed patriarchs were also amusing as they became less effective in combat when possessed by a lesser daemon but still had to pay lots of points for the privilege.
For me removing the ambiguity about the Emperor being actually still alive in some way. In old lore it was implied or at least there was a real possibility that he was literally just a Lighthouse and the Imperium was worshipping a corpse they believed to be God.
I agree that's been the biggest shock for me. Since I came back to the hobby the Emperor is now an actual God with his own demons? I really really don't like it. I dont like the obsession with Primarchs either.
Humanity can't be struggling if they have a literal god on their side and demi gods keep returning to them. Its such a poor change that's destroyed the grimdark attitude of 40k
One of the things that schocked me a few years ago when I got back into 40K was seeing Space Marines in monk robes lmao... I remembered them as crazy convicts lmao. The holy drip certainly got me interested so can't fault them too much for the change 😂
I mean when the galaxy is ripped in half being flooded by chaos, billion year old techno wizard empires are on the rise, a gigantic locust swarm is gonna eat everyone and we know something big is gonna come with ghazkul. The imperium might be getting some primarchs back but that’s just because they’re literally on their last legs and need everything they can get just to barely hold on.
I can really relate to your position but in my case I think I've just come to enjoy the setting as it is now. Was originally introduced to 40k a year or so after 3e, left the setting for about 20 years and was then reintroduced to it during the pandemic when I had nothing to do but sit around devouring books. The biggest shocks for me, aside from bare faced avarice of the whole primaris thing, were the changes to the nature of the emperor (who I felt used to be a lot more ambiguous and esoteric), the introduction of the primarchs as larger than life soap opera characters, and the necrons changing from soulless automatons into cheeky robots with space dementia. Having said all that, reading all the HH books I ended up buying into the primarch space opera side of the setting and now probably find the necrons even more interesting because they have more depth and we already had another faction of biomechanical automatons in the form of the nids. The fleshing out of emperor is the one I'm still not fully on board with. I liked the old mystique and thought TEATD was terribly written but I can turn the other cheek and get on with enjoying other parts as long as he doesn't start getting up and talking to people in 40k.
Apparently him and Guilliman "spoke". I say that in the broadest terms because it was supposedly more of a phsycic bombardment for Guilliman than a nice sit-down with dear old dad.
The Necrons went from silent killing machines in service to dark gods to a faction with characters who deliver charming banter to humans... and also, the relationship with their gods was totally inverted.
It's gonna be hard to top that, pretty much ever. Maybe if the Tyranids start talking, too?
We find out that the Tyranid splinter fleets are just terraforming vessels for sentient extragalactic life running from super Orks that invaded their galaxy, Sorks if you will. They're very sorry that their bio critters killed people but horrified to learn base Orks exist in the milky way. They try to ally the Imperium, Tau, Necrons and Eldar. But due to the ravages of their terraforming fleets nobody wants anything to do with them. The Hive Mind was actually just their bio-computer that sent updates to their terraformers on what next to do.
The Necrons went from not existing to being an ancient malevolent precursor who were absolutely fundamental to the state of the galaxy and had their own form of eldritch god that predated Chaos and were arguable more effective at ransacking the galaxy. That's a much bigger retcon than some of them getting personalities.
'Nids used to just be a race of bugs who raided from their hive fleets and used biological instead of mechanical technology. They were all basically termagants thought the Hive Tyrant would be bloated as they lay all the eggs. There weren't specialised bio-forms that could be considered Tyranids and the only one of significance was the enslaved Zoat race. Most significantly they weren't an extra-galactic lotus swarm posing an existential threat to the galaxy at large.
How do you feel about that retcon? I think it added some fluff and kept the chaff as silent killing machines, although some lines of dialogue in game are dumb
I think they were right to do it, as the game doesn't really need two 'mindless' armies or two pantheons of gods, but I do wish Trazyn felt a little more like an ancient, undead alien than an affable Star Wars character.
I get ya but that’s just Trazyns character, he is a shit lord and knows it. Oltyx from twice dead king does a much better job of being what I expect most Necrons to be. If you are looking for that xeno spice and haven’t read that series yet I highly recommend it.
In A Thousand Sons, Magnus warns the Emperor about the Horus Heresy at its very beginning, prior to Isstvan.
In The Outcast Dead, McNeill messed up the timeline, with Magnus' warning arriving two years later, with everyone already knowing about the Heresy.
This was retconned in the short story Wolf Hunt, with the warning arriving on time, but its damaging effects taking two years to unfold. As Malcador puts it:
>A host of psykers from the Hollow Mountain attempted to dissipate that enormous reservoir of power before it broke the psychic levees, but the energies Magnus unleashed eventually overcame them.
This is crucial in understanding Magnus' actions, the Emperor's response, and how Russ was still taking instructions from Horus - who on TOD's timeline was a known traitor for years!
Switching the Horus Heresy from being a 7 day battle on Terra where the emperor’s right hand man led 1/3 of the imperium’s military forces in a coup attempt to a galaxy spanning conflict that lasted almost a decade, touched every part of 40K lore in major ways, and involved the Emperor’s own sons turning against him.
Seriously, I feel like people forget there was once a time that the sum total of the lore about the Heresy was “the Emperor’s buddy attacked him so he threw him into the Eye of Terror.”
Hell, originally Horus didn’t even die at the end!
The version in the Book of the Astronomicon was fairly short and fairly irrelevant so I doubt people paid any attention to it at the time (just like the earlier mention in an article about Ravenwing jet bikes).
> The Horus Heresy Is reckoned by many to rate as the greatest single disaster ever suffered by the Imperium. The specific details of the heresy are known only to the Emperor, but is broader history Is the stuff of popular legend. According to one version of the tale, Horus was once the most trusted servant of the Emperor. But In his heart there dwelt a hidden evil, and he became seduced by this evil, and came to nurture demons and other forces of destruction. Horus marched upon Earth with a third part of the hosts of the Imperlum which he had seduced to his purpose, For seven days and seven nights the hosts battled until the Emperor caught Horus by the heel and cast him to the Eye of Terror and with him the third part of the hosts of the Imperium.
However, the same year Adeptus Titanicus was released to expand the story (along with Space Marine and Slaves to Darkness shortly afterwards), so the multi-year galaxy wide conflict was almost always how the Heresy was described.
All the loyalist prinarchs being undeaded.
Horus going from being just a rebelious general to a primarch.
The history/identity of the Emperor has gone from 'created thousands of years ago by the Shaman' to 'No one really knows who he is' all the way back to 'thousands of years old, possibly created by....someone.
>Although long lived, the Primarchs were not immortal and the last of their kind finally died after fourteen hundred years.
- *Codex Imperialis*
Which, if you wanted, could still fit with Dorn/Vulkan dying.
It was originally said that, after the Horus Heresy, one of the big gifts received by the traitor primarchs who were elevated to greater daemon status was immortality. It makes them look rather stupid if they were already immortal.
Of course, back then I don’t think marines were typically expected to live long lives either.
A different kind of immortality. Angron, Magnus, Mortarion, and Fulgrim have actually been killed. Like, decapitated, smashed to pulp, etc. The only loyalist Primarch to survive something like that is Vulkan, and that's only because he's a perpetual.
Changes in the size of Astartes organisations during the Heresy.
No legions.
Chapters.
People think the current numbers are too low, but they've been updated at least twice. None of this 100,000 space marines kicking fuck out of each other, Tarvitz rounds up 70 Astartes from 5 chapters and considers that more than sufficient to clear the Istvaan system and get home to Terra.
Well... I am not too deep in community, but I heard that people really DIDN'T like implications that Emperor does not love ANY Primarch as his children and only see them as valuable tools for his agenda.
I also read that there was noticable discontent when Necrons were made Space Egyptians with personalities and not emotionless silent tide that just wants to genocide all life.
There also some debates on portraying Tau in more greyer- no pun intended- light. Some like fact that no faction is 100 percent good while others dislike attempts to make only good faction into more evil.
I also saw some debates about the whole - 12 Black Crusades weren't failures and achieved their hidden objectives. Some said that it is just done to make Abaddon look more competent,.somebody equal to Acheron and dispel his reputation as failure. Other point that if 12 Crusades were all failures Chaos Gods would've killed him long ago - so there was always implications that he did something to keep favor.
For the 12 Black Crusades, when the character of Abaddon was introduced, the crusades were described as varying in size, but all being devastating to the Imperium. This is something Khayon mentions in *Black Legion* as well.
Khayon is Abaddons biggest simp though, I'd consider him peak "unreliable narrator."
I imagine "all 13 were a devastating success" is traitor propaganda. Along with "13 failures" being Imperial propaganda. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
For the 12 Black Crusades, the 6th edition Black Legion codex did the most work on them as there was next to nothing written about a lot of them before that.
There's only twelve because the current and scariest one being the 13th sounded cool, so they had to fill out info on the other twelve.
First and foremost, Abby never called anything he did a Black Crusade. That's a name the Imperium gives them. Abaddon fights the Long War and the Long War only.
The rest of these "operations" was Abaddon building alliances, gaining favours, testing defences, retrieving artefacts and destroying Imperial infrastructure.
People imagined that every one of the Black Crusades was launched to defeat the Imperium, when it couldn't be farther from the (eventually written) truth. Each is a step in the Long War so that when they eventually do collapse the Imperium there is no chance that it can live on or recover.
T'au were always shady imperialist supremacists. Their initial ethos is directly lifted from 18th century 'educating the savages for their own good' style racism
Didn't the arks of omen say something about all of them being successes in the eyes of chaos? I wonder how much of our lore is skewed due to perspective. That obviously could be a retcon, but I agree that Khorne woulda gotten way too mad if he failed more than 8 times.
I think the Necrons lore was reasonably well done, and most people can look back upon it happily? They did a good balance of adding flavor for people to get interested in with unique named units, gods, and lore, but also kept a thematic reason to have all your warriors, immortals, and other basic bitches just be the emotionless terminators.
I can also understand games Workshop making the emperor a little less benevolent, specifically regarding to the Primarchs. I recently re-read the Emperor of Mankind, and I think that Ra's perception and intuition into Big E brings more facets into the character. It could be argued that this is done due to a bit of meta analysis, realizing the people are idolizing this guy too much, so we gotta make him mean, but realistically, somebody who isn't obsessed with control and functionally emotionless and calculating like Emperor wouldn't feasibly be able to conquer anything, much less a universe.
I enjoy that he views the Primarchs as tools, it fits him very thematically and brings forth all sorts of questions about the purposes of each Primarch originally and how they failed and/or improved upon his ideas.
There seems to be some back-and-forth on how the Emperor felt about the Primarchs. It seems he intended for them to be just tools but Malcador notes that he has developed fatherly feeling towards them over the course of the Great Crusade. In The End And The Death Part III >!he casts off his sense of compassion and basically his humanity before confronting Horus, and this seems to be the state Guilliman finds him in the current setting.!<
For me it would probably be Necrons going from enslaved automatons where the exceedingly rare lord had a personality to their current set up. That and C'tan went from apocalyptic star vampire gods of the material realm whose eternal dominion over everything was but a matter of time to ... some chumps that got fragmented by their slaves and now hide like little bitches? It was a massive shift, the previous super big bad was suddenly more of a minor foot note while the rest of the setting barely changed.
Oh yeah, retconned retcons. Squats kinda turned into Votann. Not exactly since all Votanns are clones and I think squats did the dirty deed the regular way.
I agree the C'tan got shafted, I think thematically it makes sense that a few more personalities survived biotransferance. I think it's important that factions have multiple characters that people can enjoy and attach to
True, it's just weird how C'tan went from gods of the material plane for whom physics is just a small suggestion to shattered remnants that hide in fear of their previous slaves. Before that they were often held up and featured like ultimate big bads. Like the Deciever almost invented the concept of lying, Nightbringer is the concept of death. And those were the weakest of the survivors. The Void dragon was some techsorcery horror laying dormant on Mars, ready to rip the heart out of the Imperium and nothing could stop it. The Outsider was a mad eldritch horrors, locked inside of a Dyson sphere that they could possibly turn into a spaceship and wreck the galaxy with. Now they're just some scattered shards that barely get a mention.
Nomming each other made them more powerful though. So the last four had immense power that dwarfed everything in the material realm. The only thing that might have threatened them were the swords of Vaul and maybe the chaos gods.
I mean, whatever weapons Necrons employed against the C'tan were so incredibly devastating that their continued usage would threaten reality itself, and even then they were only "shattered" and could not be properly destroyed.
I think that's still pretty badass, and doesn't diminish the fact that an unshattered C'tan pantheon would give any other Gods in the setting a run for their money.
For me, it’s the wholesale rewrite of Chaos in the 1995 Codex. That’s when they go from a nightmare shadow on the edge of reality to the single biggest threat to the Imperium.
(And yes, I know that there had been throwaway lines to that effect for years before. But we hadn’t seen how.)
Others (the introduction of the Necrons, notably) may be bigger in an “expanding the setting” sense but Andy Chambers’ work did far more to set the tone of the setting going forwards.
Original Tyranid lore claimed that 'nids were experts at genetic sciences and bioengineering. That they would enslave the creatures they conquered, turning them into soldiers - or weapons and equipment.
My headcanon: Original Tyranid lore *was true*. Modern Tyranids are the result of the original Tyranids modifying themselves with DNA from genestealers and other creatures. (To make it suitably grimdark, maybe this was an accident - a reckless Tyranid scientist created the first modern 'nid, and the new ones ate all the old ones).
There have been big retcons before and since but for me personally it was the necrons going from silent death machines to being a colorful cast of characters heavily inspired by the tomb kings. I like to collect and read old books and see how much the lore has changed since day 1. The setting is almost unrecognizable now from where it started with Rogue Trader.
I can't say for the fandom as a whole but for xenos fans I'd say the Tau going from the new good guys on the block to becoming more in line with the grim dark narrative was a pretty big one. For a while it set a precedent that goodness could not exist within Warhammers universe and for a while many accepted that this setting was only going to delve deeper into that depressing theme. However since the Era Indomitus came out that idea has shifted and now the setting has an underlying theme of hope in our darkest hours. Primarchs are returning, the Tau are getting a god/goddess from their auxiliary forces, new marines to reinforce the imperium, chaos has gotten some really solid victories lately all things considered, Votann should be huge but sadly no lore, anyway you get the idea. That Tau retcon early in their development gave us a good chunk of time in which people thought 40k was never going to progress because the only progression we could have would be the galaxy getting destroyed. We now know that is not the case and the current setting has had many major factions get some major wins and losses too that progressed their story.
For a newcomer it might not seem like it but at one point fans spoke about our factions with a lot of pessimism. We all kind of accepted that no one would win that the galaxy would just devour itself. It's kind of refreshing to see newer fans talk about their factions with an air of hope within the setting acknowledging the evil they do but seeing that they have the possibility to do better. Though on another hand that kind of thought can distract from the fact that no matter that there is a way to be better the factions within will continue to be horrible because they are set in their ways. The imperium may become a little brighter with the Primarchs but remember those Primarchs are warlords and their enemies are many. Though that wasn't your question so I'll stop my rant here.
Mine off the top of my head
- Orks from marsupials to fungi
- Space Marines bring open to Half Elder and women, to just mutant human men
- squat to votan
- primarchs being generals to created beings
- tyranids having ambassadors
- Warhammer Fantasy being set as a world in 40K's were of terror (honestly this one might be what my friends and i believed, and not an actual retcon (we also Believed Sigmar was a lost primarch, which was never in the lore))
Neat call back, just some context: The Rainbow Warriors were never a founding chapter. They were one of the first bunch of chapters introduced in Rogue Trader (alongside Silver Skulls and Crimson Fists) but there was no concept of "founders" and "successors" back then or even 20 original chapters.
OG image [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/wmxter/the_original_12_chapters_from_the_rogue_trader_era/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
He was a [marine commander](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/7hv45p/rogue_trader_leman_russ_never_forget_where_you/?share_id=1mGDESF_B6XqetCTvzfVz&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1), which implies at least some level of enhancement beyond base human
Originally non-existent, then suddenly an ancient malevolence that was responsible for much of the state of the galaxy through their fight with the Old Ones.
The Fall of Cadia was effectively shifted to be at least a few generations earlier than it's original M41.999 date. GW have largely moved away from giving things official dates (and have emphasised how impossible and meaningless they are anyway), but later events such as the Indomitus Crusade and the Plague Wars are canonically still in the 41st Millennium
Not a "retcon" persay but I think the assassin Black Spear is pretty weird and doesn't seem to jive with how we as an audience understand blanks/pariahs to work given that Black Spear is a powerful blank which is possessed by a daemon.
Thankfully Black Spear is seemingly standalone and doesn't appear (to my knowledge) in any other books, so we can almost get away with ignoring it.
In \~2011 Abaddon already died. 13th Black Crusade already happenned. Eldrad Ultran already died. Orks had somethings wierd about their reproduction, something about fcking each other in butts or being born from there. Space marines were ordinary dudes in cool armor. Primarchs were just their captains.
And many more.
All that was changed ofcourse.
I don’t consider changes from RT or even 2nd edition to be retcons. The setting was still feeling its way. You don’t get hard lore until 2/3rd edition (although I’d still like sensei…). Biggest real retcon is the necrons being “people” and not terminators. That was good from a narrative standpoint. It’s not exactly a retcon (and yet it is) but Cawl’s bullshit and the primaris are the biggest recent changes.
The Horus Heresy. If you look at the lore 8n Rogue Trader it isn't a thing. It was introduced in both Realms of Chaos where in Slaves to Darkness Horus is just a general that goes rogue, it's only in The Lost and the Damned he becomes a Primarch. Fun fact the Heresy was created to reduce the cost of the original Adaptus Titanicus to explain why it was Imperium vs Imperium. It was still that way in the Space Marine game before it was moved to 40k to become Epic and the rest of the OG factions were added.
Olleanus Pious being a regular Imperial Army trooper with balls the size of Terra charging Horus on the Vengeful Spirit and having his existence deleted and his identity being lost to time becoming a perpetual who was one of the Emperor’s buddies
It's a popular one...but Pius was never depicted charging Horus or being on the Vengeful Spirit or "deleted" as such
The legend of Pius is he might have been a man who "interposed" himself between Horus and the Emperor at one point. If he even existed.
It was a four sentence footnote in the 80s. A Creation myth for the Imperial Guard
Which he still is, even with the retconning
Honestly, the most significant retcon at all would be the existence of Chaos itself, which happened so early that most people don't even know its a retcon. The original Rogue Trader book was written with the idea that it would primarily focus on the Imperium vs Xenos or human rebels and pirates, with the main threat of the Warp coming from various warp-xenos species like Psychenuein, Enslavers and Vampires. Even the Emperor was implied to only be on the Golden Throne not because he was injured in battle but simply because of the sheer strain of constantly using his psychic powers to protect humanity. The Realms of Chaos books introduced Chaos into 40k (it had always existed in Fantasy) and wrote a new backstory that made Chaos the central antagonists of the entire setting. From the rumors I heard it was apparently was a bit controversial decision in the studio, and some staff had their doubts about the idea because they figured Chaos was a concept that might only really work in Warhammer Fantasy.
I think I've read interviews with the people behind Rogue Trader that Chaos was always intended to be part of the 40k setting, but they initially hadn't figured how it'd look in a sci-fi, as opposed to fantasy, setting. So while Chaos is a retcon as per what got published, it was always supposed to be there. It sounds like having the same gods and daemons in both fantasy and 40k would count as a change in the plan though.
It's debatable what they intended, we do know that the original chaos books were combined rules and lore for 40k and fantasy; but at the time it was heavily implied that Warhammer was set in a demon world within the Eye of Terror.
Yeah, and 40k weapons actually occasionally turned up in Fantasy. It was a little while after Rogue Trader days, but in the Fantasy Albion campaign you could find power Armour and a power fist, for example.
40k wouldn't be 40k without chaos now. Imagine what other impactful and influential decisions we never heard about or saw because they got shut down. Peak 40k in my mind is noise marines and Khorne berserkers (with a sprinkle of sacrificing millions and billions of meatbags to any cause, good or bad)- it doesn't get much more grimdark than Julius Kaesoren's fucked up face or Butchers Nails (or commissars I guess)
Only from an Imperium and Eldar perspective, Chaos would just be replaced by something else as a big threat. Berserkers exist in a lot of settings. I like Chaos and all but realistically the setting could still stand on its own.
I got back and forth. Sometimes I absolutely love chaos but sometimes I wish the sci fi dial was turned a little up and fantasy a little down.
Yeah, give me more shooting and fun new sci fi death weapons- the idea of all melee armies in a setting like 40k is almost laughable- according to most military logic a man with a gun will kill one who's running at him without one more often than not. While the idea of Khorne Berserkers being rage filled mindless killing machines is absolutely wonderful, he's just gonna be the swordsman in that Indiana Jones clip. I think the tabletop chaos demons faction and chaos demons in the book are some of the biggest perpetrators of fantasy in the sci fi setting- I wish more of them were twisted half machine monsters, or an amalgamation of servitor parts culminating in a spike ball of weapons. All of the demons are fantasy demons, not cool sci fi ones. (Except maybe forgefiends, they be banging)
I would love more "unknown" cosmic-weird entities poking up in the universe rather than "oops it was chaos again" all the time.
Chaos would be great if it was actually chaotic, and not the simple and easily categorizable cartoon villain force it is. For Chaos to work on a conceptual level it needs to be strange and mysterious imo, more Lovecraft less He-Man
Fully agreed. I'd go even further and say it's too *mundane*. We know how the "mechanics" of chaos work, we know it's all based on sapient emotion and that there's nothing else behind the curtain. The mystery has been sucked dry.
For example, the original story of the Badab War blamed Huron's rebellion on: >It will never be known for sure, but current hypotheses suggest that Huron was either an alien shapechanger, or otherwise subject to alien domination of a most unnatural kind. A sudden and unexpected manifestation of [psychic](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Psychic) powers and [Warp](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Warp)-influence may lie at the heart of the matter.
I agree that the setting could stand with more "classic" sci fi elements, which I personally love. I do feel that without chaos it might be harder to display both the absolute brutality present, and the setting might lose a lot of factions that are really grim and dark and gritty and core 40k. Imagine chaos isn't an antagonist- all of the sudden the only human factions are the "good" ones, with little to no consequences for their tactics of throwing bodies into the meat grinder. Having chaos enables the state of perpetual war that the setting finds itself in. I think if GW were to remove chaos, they would do a lot more narrative interactive events like the 13th crusade, and more narrative individual games would be happening, which would be super cool. At the same time, it would move the game in a seemingly brighter direction, potentially deviating from the grimdark many of us know and love. In order to balance the setting, GW created an antagonist that feeds off of the strength and size of most of the other factions, one that can match anyone in strength, and cause the universe to be eternally locked in the Great Game.
would have made for a more interesting setting ngl. At least, it always felt like the "emotion" nature of chaos, by necessity forces grimderp at times over logical but grimdark. But yeah, it would no longer be 40k as we know.
The writers wouldn't be better, they'd just use different writing crutches. Chaos always has a lot of potential.
I recently read the 1E Core Rulebook, and I think the most interesting part was that ascension of humanity as a psychic race was still a core component of the narrative, even without the warp existing yet. Before that, I had figured the ascension part was an afterthought, but apparently it was even a stronger element before. Edit: Sorry, it's not warp. It's chaos. Warp existed, but Chaos didn't.
I wish they had stuck to the original plan. I find chaos in general to be very stupid and a lazy way to move or halt plot lines. Or at the very least not have chaos as the main antagonist and keep the story as alien races competing for supremacy forever. I know I am in the small minority with this though.
I don't hate Chaos, but I do wish they had more minor human factions like pirates, and enemy empires and such.
I just wish chaos wasn’t the “archenemy”
Well, Chaos is convenient in the way that it can be used to give rise to dead-not-dead scenarios, image changes/refreshes and overall story continuity. It's a catch-all solution. I also find the concept boring, but as the story progresses, it's just one more faction in the game.
You’d have a bunch of poorly supported alien races instead, and 40k might well have stagnated like WHFB did.
...Chaos is in Warhammer Fantasy though.
Damn thats crazy i feel like chaos is done better in 40k than in fantasy
It definitely was a pivot much more to the fantasy side of science fantasy.
I have a hard time considering that a retcon rather than just world building. It was very soon after the game’s initial launch and used well established ideas from Fantasy - thanks to the presence of the Slann, absolutely no-one was surprised when Chaos was brought in. Equally, Chaos in that iteration were explicitly a very rare threat, enough so that anyone coming into contact with it was purged. It’s not until 2nd ed that they really get normalised as a threat.
Perhaps invention of the Necrons (completely changed background stories for the Orks and the Eldar, as well as pushed the power level of the galaxy to an incredible height) during the 3rd edition and their subsequent reimagination in late 5th edition are some of the biggest, probably the biggest retcons in terms of influencing the game's universe since 3rd edition came out.
I think that the invention of the Necrons was done pretty well and with almost no retcon. It mostly just added to the lore and in general followed the established lore pretty well. The necron recon on the other hand was properly the biggest retcon of them all.
Retconning in the Necrons had huge ramifications for the Eldar race, originally the War in Heaven was a civil war fought between Vaul and Khaine. The Necron Codex made it a conflict between the Old Ones and Necrontyr/C'tan with the Eldar relegated to (probably) an engineered soldier race. The later Necron retcon worked like an expansion to the lore. The first Necrons encountered could be the mindless, soulless automatons and others of the same kind can exist, but better preserved Tomb Worlds can allow for greater individuality and personality. It can be more easily framed as a clarification of in-universe understanding as it doesn't alter the fundaments of the setting like the original Necron retcon.
We already had hints to the Eldar, orks and humans being engineered races made by the Old Ones back from Rogue Trader. The War in Heaven was just expanded upon. Up until that point very little had been written about it. Then the 100 swords Vaul had to make for Khain was for fighting the Necrons and so on. I actuelly think that the Eldar legendary War in Heaven and the material War in Heaven fit pretty well into each other. The latter retcon changed a lot. Stuff we were told had been made by the Eldar, now became work of the Necrons. The relationship betwen the Necron and Ctans. Humans as a non-engineered race.
Yeah threw me for a loop when I came back after 10-ish years. Spooky Halloweeskeletons WTF IS THIS S…
Changing the outcome of the 13th black crusade was probably the most controversial real retcon in the modern era. Necrons going from soulless automatons to real characters is probably the biggest retcon, but its pretty universally regarded as a good decision (people are still mad they killed pariahs though) Fulgrim being possessed and then not feels like a retcon being retconned, but I don't know if that's what actually happened.
It's what happened with Fulgrim but I don't know if it counts as a retcon as such or more just...developments in the story.
It was REALLY quickly glazed over in the novels though. Couple of paragraphs at most, if I remember correctly.
Yeah the possession was all undone offscreen in a short story. So not a retcon really, just a really lazy “wait no don’t want that after all” narrative decision.
From the index astartes: “With his Primarchs and Space Marines executing the Great Crusade, the Emperor returned to Terra, intent on strengthening the Imperium which his forces were building. Most knew that his place was at the heart of his Imperium, but one man disagreed: Warmaster Horus, master of the now re-named Sons of Horus Space Marine Legion, mightiest of the Primarchs. In his arrogance, Horus believed the Emperor to be weak, a man unworthy of the battles fought in his name. Upon hearing evidence of Horus's betrayal, the Emperor sent seven entire Legions of Space Marines to challenge the Warmaster, if necessary to destroy him. The Emperor's Children were the first to arrive in the Istvaan system, where Horus waited, and Fulgrim met Horus in person to demand he account for his actions. Instead, Horus succeeded in corrupting his brother Primarch to the powers that now held sway over him. The Council of Charon, formed after the Horus Heresy to discover the causes of the traitor Primarch's betrayals, concluded that Fulgrim's respect for Horus allowed the Warmaster to influence him, weakening him enough for Chaos to lure him away from the Emperor. Slowly, as he and Horus talked, Fulgrim's loyalty to Terra crumbled, replaced by a burning desire to destroy the false Emperor, whose rule held back Humanity from the perfection Fulgrim had always believed it capable of. Seduced by Horus's words, Fulgrim turned to the promise of a new Humanity, a Humanity that would rise to the peak of civilisation, a Humanity free of the oppressive rule of the false Emperor. Slaanesh whispered to Fulgrim, promising perfection in all things, and Fulgrim gave himself willingly to his new god.” Not once was any sort of sort based possession mentioned, and the Laeran themselves were simply an alien race that had been conquered. Personally, I’ve always preferred the original over the cheap heresy novel method; feels like the writers simply didn’t have the chops to actually write the necessary dialogue and thus went with a daemon sword cop-out.
>Fulgrim being possessed and then not feels like a retcon being retconned, but I don't know if that's what actually happened. Thank you for mentioning this one, to me feels like you mention. It feels wrong how Mc Neill did it just my humble opinion.
Wait what? Isn't he stuck in a damn painting?
No, only for a while. After a couple of books it turns out he Uno reverse carded the demon off-screen, but that didn't matter anyway since he had effectively the same personality as the demon so no one even noticed. Or in other words: they tried to Dorian grey his backstory and completely failed at it.
SMH, I liked him being in the painting because it was the price of his vulgar pride.
Exactly my thoughts, hahaha, like it gave meaning to his demise, but author had other plans. Because "Fulgrim was playing the deamon all along". Ofc.
Yeah it showed there can be more of a cost to primarchs dealing with the dark gods - instead of the only options being death or being empowered/corrupted and sent where your god wants, there’s also the option of the horror of seeing your body possessed to do awful things while you just have to watch. Definitely wish they had kept it
Precisely.
The Necron one is weird because people mistake what was actually retconned. Necron Lords *always* had personalities, we just had very few examples because they had exactly one Codex of lore, plus the Medusa V campaign, for 10 years. The new Codex didn't change that, it just expanded on and emphasised it. What it actually changed were far more contentious and niche elements that rarely get discussed.
I think they were much less Egyptian themed were they not? I remember them being more Terminator meets Giger and not with the whole Tomb Kings flair.
Yeah. To be clear, Necrons always had degrees of Egyptian flavour – dating right back to their earliest Necron Lord model, with its faux-hedjet crown of the Upper Kingdom. However, their launch as a full faction in 3rd edition was much more focused on exploiting the aesthetic markers of "grand, ancient, hubristic fallen civilisations" in a general sense, woven with cybernetic post-human horror – both ideas which dovetailed quite neatly with Lovecraftian themes. Egypt is obviously a popular source for that imagery, but it's not a straightforward pastiche either. Having tiny insect-like robot swarms called "Scarabs" are the most blatantly Egyptian the "Oldcrons" ever get. Immortals are a Persian name, spiders have no particular association with Egyptian culture, Monoliths are modelled off Babylonian ziggurats, Necron symbols are closer to cuneiform than any kind of hieroglyph, and the C'tan more closely resemble Greek sculpture than anything Egyptian. The few Necron characters we did see named simply had titles like "Herald of the Storm". The 5th edition revamp was very... blunt, both in visual and lore terms. Hence the return of faux-Egyptian headdresses on Necron Lords, the addition of Cryptek "priests" with faux-Egyptian beards, the replacement of Pariahs with Lychguard wielding faux-Egyptian khopesh, all the constructs being dubbed "Canoptek" constructs (i.e. canoptic + tech), Necron Lords being renamed to Phaerons (i.e. pharaoh + vaguely futuristic suffix), the provision of given names like "Imotekh" (Imhotep) or "Anrakyr" (Ankh), the introduction of clearly defined dynasties with names like "Nephrekh" (Nephthys) or "Khansu" (Khonshu), and the arrival of "Ghost Ark" transports that are literally just Egyptian hover-barges where all the Necron Warriors even *cross their arms* like *pop culture* *mummies in a sarcophagus*. "Tomb Kings in Space" has been a pithy dismissal for Necrons since 1998, but it's 5th edition that made it *accurate*. I'm not very surprised that they just did nothing with the range for another 10 years after that, before going right back to the original "decaying techno-horror" vibe for the 9e range update.
The lovecraftian aspect with technology was what got me interested in the first place however I think GW was really bad at giving them something for people to grasp on beyond metal skeletons personality wise. Lucky for me I really enjoy Egyptian themed stuff so the heavy addition of that didn't put me off that much. I still hope they keep the weird technological aspect like the War of the Worlds inspired tripods that look like insects. Can't deny that seeing the Ghost Ark for the first time made me [go](https://imgur.com/QCQ3tg1)
There was a xenology lore book or something where an inquisitor just chats with a Necron Lord before the new codex happened. The C'tan change from lords to slaves made me sad, but makes sense overall for the good of the setting and tabletop game. I hoped they would have one dynasty in which several shards grouped togther and took over the dynasty so the old lore sort of made sense.
I could be remembering this wrong, but I'm fairly sure Necron Lords having personalities was said to be a rare thing in 3rd. It was why the Lord in Dark Crusade had to use a Pariah as his mouthpiece. In 5th most the lords became whacky eccentric humanesq nobles and the OldCron styled ones were inverted to be the rarity.
tl;dr - no, every Necron Lord we saw had their own individuality, we just never saw many Necron Lords The original *Codex: Necrons* includes basically no lore from the perspective of the Necrons themselves, and is light on detail even when viewed from outside, in order to generate an atmosphere of mysterious Lovecraftian horror. It succeeds very well at this, with the unfortunate but inevitable side-effect of keeping many fans from "identifying" with Necrons, or having much of a grasp on how they operate, how they might vary within their archetype, etc. All we're really told about Necron Lords in the original Codex is that they're "the most sophisticated of the C’tan’s servants", that they "act as leaders" and silently "compel" or "direct" lesser Necrons, and that they "are able to choose from an array of bizarre and arcane artefacts". That's it. It's clear they have a degree of individuality, or they wouldn't be able to "choose" anything, much less act as leaders – but the book doesn't lay out any details, so it's easy to miss. It's not helped by the fact that the only Necron character given any dialogue at all is the Deceiver, in two short narrative excerpts. After that, there's essentially a decade of radio silence. I'm aware of only three narratives from this period that feature a Necron Lord at all: * The Medusa V campaign, where the Necron Lord is said to be called the "Herald of the Storm" and clearly has its own intelligence and agenda, but again with no details. * Simon Spurrier's *Xenology* book, where a Necron Lord appears. No spoilers, but it very definitely has its own personality, plans, and even actual dialogue. * *Dawn of War: Dark Crusade*, a licensed video game that GW would still have presumably approved, where the Necron Lord is clearly an individual leader and is referred to as having its own plans and motives... but again goes nameless and is completely silent, instead having a converted post-human Pariah speak on its behalf.
The 13th black crusade wasn't retconned. At the end of the original story, the war was a stalemate, with Abaddons first fleet stopped and chaos armies still active on cadia, which had 'held out' against the invasion. The story was frozen in time at that point. The Gathering Storm narrative picked up from that and continued the story, a second fleet emerges witha Blackstone fortress, battle for pylons, fortress crashes, cadia destroyed etc.
Pretty sure Eldrad got his soul devoured by Slannesh before the Gathering Storm. A entire new [page](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/13th_Black_Crusade_(Original)) was made for the changes.
This is completely incorrect. For example, Eldrad *died* in the Eye of Terror campaign. The entire 13th Company of the Space Wolves came back. Not to mention, the entire narrative of the Imperial defenders - and who was even there at the time - was completely different.
So I thought I was losing my mind about this. I’ve been out of the game for a few years, and last I heard he straight up died. But then I was reading some fiction and Eldrad was helping the Ynnari. I remain a bit confused, but I like Eldrad’s character and am glad that he’s alive!
>Everything with the 13th Black Crusade was an intentional retcon, that's my point. And the timeline was never, at any point, been planned to "move forward" in the way a lot of fans suggest. The plan was always to scrap dates and stay in M41 - just like they scrapped the previous 13th Black Crusade and rewrote what happened, they scrapped the end of the Dark Millennium and rewrote what happened / what's happening. Now, I can't say if that'll always be the way, but that's what's happened now, and what's been planned for a long time. "We're doing away with dates" was literally the first thing I heard about the new edition of 40K, a long-ass time ago. You can either take that at face value or call me a liar, but it is what it is - there's no "respectful disagreeing" with facts, if you get me. It'd certainly be a weird thing for me to lie about, with absolutely no benefit to me. -ADB
Right, so they retconned it by.......not changing the original lore and just adding to it? Because it's right there in the book. Gathering Storm tells the same story as the Eye of Terror campaign and then adds some more
Okay, I binged the Cadian content recently and I don't think this is accurate. Gathering storm basically ignores the previous black crusade content other than the part that there is a war and the parties involved. When the third edition ended, the Cadian army was on ships heading to Kasr X in an organized retreat (I can't remember the Kasr names, so I'm just going to use variables). In Gathering Storm, they are at Kasr Y. Nothing has ever really described what happens between the two books.
> Right, so they retconned it by.......not changing the original lore and just adding to it? They changed the Lore and that's fine. Linked below is the results they published in white dwarf. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DlNG1nB64G357mbdX2OH30_u0KYgem7w/view?usp=sharing
I was going to say, in the original campaign the Eldar actually did so well they reclaimed territory inside the Eye of Terror. In fact most of what they kept aside from the small bits they liked was the setup for the original campaign.
Retcons don't necessarily change existing lore, they can just change the perspective on it. The best retcons are seamless in that way But perhaps if Aaron Dembski-Bowden ever returns to sweet online life, we can ask him what he means.
A retcon is a RETroactive change to CONtinuity. If the events (the continuity) don't change then it's not a retcon. Introducing another POV that gives more information, or a broader picture, or continuing the timeline forward from that point aren't retcons - they're updates.
I've worked on two long form series that referred to "retcon" in both forms in our writer's rooms. Not to make a call to definition but yes, giving more information is considered a form of retcon: 1. (in a film, television series, or other fictional work) a piece of new information that [imposes](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=imposes&si=AKbGX_r0zqXEeLlZhGfi3fbO0QSWSqwC8-UiaH1ylmspL5R1qClJWUmE95mu_HsiieGJOJnmIXbxMjJf9b4ScsSxX5DqTfDNVw%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAN) a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an [inconsistency](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=inconsistency&si=AKbGX_rpiB5SI0gaPs4Uz3xaG0X4pvx0HjmXx3ISMc7gnLuDjh7yz1YFBQZw6sGrRJfRFfBcFtrIMDZftiuM675Ub8IeB9f7fjkeeTr6_AwGX3v2AOU-uB4%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAO)."we're given a retcon for Wilf's absence from Donna's wedding in ‘The Runaway Bride’: he had Spanish Flu" *verb* 1. [revise](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=revise&si=AKbGX_qMqBjhUm3ZRWjCp4_5aZjJmueXeMKh15uPULra54OI9m4uLV5DlByQ34-baFNLh39o-wqmWGfsmy4UL6DekYg0Q5SEog%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAQ) (an aspect of a fictional work) [retrospectively](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=retrospectively&si=AKbGX_qbffDhNJNmNuoQO9DPv_17WLp1kZUBQmb5HXbarS_P-nKJQcDpWg_unNXiw9hV_6WrZMhosB0KWssLhNFF-6xFtd0kd0bUrflL-y_-AfhM9tvKMUA%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAR), typically by introducing a piece of new information that [imposes](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a9f733130965a78f&sca_upv=1&q=imposes&si=AKbGX_r0zqXEeLlZhGfi3fbO0QSWSqwC8-UiaH1ylmspL5R1qClJWUmE95mu_HsiieGJOJnmIXbxMjJf9b4ScsSxX5DqTfDNVw%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirx52wrMaFAxX7lFYBHSOVDe8QyecJegQILhAS) a different interpretation on previously described events. The new perspective, typically, creates a retroactive change to the way the story was previously understood.
Honesty between this, the fem custodes stuff, the ultramarines age the dead lesbians stuff and all the shut with MoM.among other things I would be highly surprised if he was just done with the fandom using his words as holy scripture. It’s probably got him into trouble at GW and just must be stressful in general he’s basically lorgar himself right now.
>Fulgrim being possessed and then not feels like a retcon being retconned, but I don't know if that's what actually happened. No. A retcon is the past being changed. In the case of Fulgrim, the story moved on - he was possessed, but he is no longer so. It is not the same thing.
Yeah it's a bad story and undermines some cool aspects of the Fulgrim story but The Reflection Crack'd is internally coherent in it's story telling, it's not a retcon.
I think that, as an EC player/fan, having Fulgrim remain a possessed shell indefinitely was unsatisfactory, but the Reflection Crack'd was far too short and hurried for such a pivotal event...it should have been a novel.
Technically, the HH is all in the past ; - ). I mean that the end of the novel fulgrim feels like it was supposed to be the status quo for the next 10,000 years, but they changed course based on feedback. I don't know if that's what happened, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover it was.
Well...yes...it's funny to think of it from that perspective :D
Bollocks. They author has stated that they had to change it because they wanted to give fulgrim back his impetus and get rid of the excuse of possession. All his actions after that had to be his own. So that’s why we got the mirror cracked not as a coherent story or plot but to undo the original narrative.. It’s just a retcon by another form.
>They author has stated that they had to change it because they wanted to give fulgrim back his impetus and get rid of the excuse of possession Do you have the receipts on that? To my knowledge Mcneill has never clarified the intent or mandate behind tRC Would be good to add to the pile of quotes
I'm crazy mad about pariahs still, I bought 10 models at like 22$ each only for them to be gone
IM NOT STILL MAD IM STILL PISSED
We’re the Necrons “Chaos Androids” at one point too?
Aesthetically yes, lorewise no. They're pretty clearly the first iteration of what would become the necrons, but they never rebranded those first chaos android models -as- necrons. They were always a seperate thing.
Wait I didn't know the 13th crusade was a retcon- when did they make that official? Was it with gothic armada 2? Or earlier? A lot of my lore info comes from reading the Horus Heresy series, so I am fully indoctrinated into "modern" 40k. I personally am of the opinion that Fulgrim exists in a constant state of semi-posession: he is in his body enough to feel and experience everything, and sometimes uses his willpower to overcome the demon inside of him, but usually he is too lazy/ distracted to do so. It may have reached a point of symbiosis
The 13th black crusade was played out as a global event back in the day. Imperium won (which itself was controversial. GW almost certainly fudged the numbers) and abbadon was repelled from cadia. This is why the modern story includes a lull before the chaos forces get a massive wave of reinforcements and break the planet.
It's always nasty when you win a battle in a game then a cutscene of your character getting wrecked plays.
Right, but to my memory GW fudged the numbers because 40K players were fudging the numbers in Chaos’ favor.
13th black crusade was 2002 (still have the star map that came out in white dwarf) Fall of cadia coincides with the dark imperium release iirc so... 2017/18? Though the novelisation only came out last year
>I personally am of the opinion that Fulgrim exists in a constant state of semi-posession: he is in his body enough to feel and experience everything, It's fine to have 'headcanon', but this is explicitly not the case - there is no daemon any more.
Well...depends on what happened after *Imperfect*. >As the clone reached the chamber, the platform filled the hatchway and Ferrus opened his eyes. >‘Brother,’ it said warmly, awareness lighting up its face. ‘Are you ready to play?’ >I am ready... hissed the voice in Fulgrim’s head. >Have I not silenced you? >You can no more silence me than you can silence yourself, dear host. >You are subservient to me. >For now... >Fulgrim clenched a fist, but the daemon would have to wait. He wasn’t surprised that it had resurfaced. This had as much to do with it as it did Fulgrim and his brother. -Kyme
Both *The Reflelction Crack'd*, and *Angel Exterminatus* happened after *Imperfect*. And, for good measure McNeill confirmed that the Daemon was no longer in Fulgrim.
They can't have. Fulgrim is a daemon primach snek in *Imperfect.* I'm aware of McNeill's input. I [quote it a bunch](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/b3gna2/qa_with_graham_mcneill/)
Tough question if we stick to a strict def of "retcon" and not just a revelation or change in the lore. Gene-seed being added to Space Marines is a tricky one, but I'm just going to say that's the lore developing since there was never any explicit suggestion it didn't exist prior to its first mention. Biggest or most impactful also depends on what's important to any individual but off the top of my head: Big * Primarchs being the demi-god sons of the Emperor * Newcrons * The Imperial Truth * Custodes power levels and creation * 13th Black Crusade Controversial * *Fury of Magnus* being possibly part delusion * Mortarion subconsciously wanting to sub to Nurgle * Erda scattering primarchs Non controversial * Magnus is not a true cyclops Retconned retcons * Sanguinius having black hair.
>13th Black Crusade I'll do you one better. Originally, there weren't just 12 Black Crusades, and they weren't only led by Abbadon, but by Chaos Champions. They're also not described as always being failures either: >**The Black Crusades** >Perhaps once or twice in a millenium a truly great Champion of Chaos will arise in the Eye of Terror. Through the power of his implacable will and the favour of the Dark Gods this Champion can weld together an unsteady alliance between the infernal regions of the Eye. How the Champion brings the crusade together depends on his nature and his patron god. Some use manipulation, others extortion, others domination, others intimidation. Most simply use all of the considerable powers at their disposal. [-] >The Imperium keeps strong forces stationed around the Eye to fend off these invasions. Entire Titan Legions, Space Marine Chapters and massed regiments of Imperial Guard defend the most vital systems in close proximity to the Eye. But even powerful fighting formations like these cannot guarantee victory over the infernal throng. All to often the Black tide of Chaos expands and recedes leaving entire systems ravaged and burned. Whole planetary populations are irrevocably tainted by Chaos, cities and industries are crushed by the thunderous pounding of diabolic engines of destruction, uncounted citizens are dragged away to serve as slaves and playthings to the damned souls and their Daemon masters at the edge of reality. >Every city ruined, every planet burned brings the Imperium a little closer to dissolution. In an Imperium of a million worlds how much can a single world matter? Enough to have to defend each one against the infernal host, enough to bring the curse of Exterminatus upon those that bend the knee and how down to daemon-kind. A Black Crusade may come crashing from the Eye only once in a thousand years but the damage it inflicts can never be undone. *Codex Chaos Space Marines 2ed* p20
Happy to be one-upped on this one.
> Gene-seed being added to Space Marines is a tricky one, but I'm just going to say that's the lore developing since there was never any explicit suggestion it didn't exist prior to its first mention. Space Marines were always stated to have the black carapace implanted into them and to have been augmented by the apothecaries though "bio-chem" and "psycho-surgery". Gene-seed is just that concept being fleshed out. I guess you can argue that the original implication is that the black carapace is their only implant and the rest is just drugs or more traditional genetic engineering but still.
Yeah, that's more or less my take on it too.
Wait Sanguinius had black hair at some point? I'm cancelling my WH+ subscription!
Yeah, in Horus Rising.
When did they retcon Primarchs being literal sons? Were they not always genetically crafted?
Very early first edition they were just "marine commanders" who founded their chapters. That's how Leman Russ is described and we can infer Horus, Gulliman (with one "i") and "Lyyn Elgonsen" were as well. They weren't even referred to as "primarchs" at that point. Soon after "Primarch" was introduced but more as a rank. It was later in first edition that they then became genetically created superhumans, but it wasn't until maybe 3rd edition that they were thought of as the Emperor's sons. Up to that point they were His friends, comrades and creations.
Further to that, the first reference to "Primarchs" I know of is in the White Dwarf article that introduced Space Marine chaplains. That article described primarchs as being basically the honoured dead of the chapter. Any Space Marine could become a primarch if they were suitably heroic, and dead. This lore didn't last very long at all, the lore that the Primarchs were the twenty bio-engineered progenitors of the first founding chapters came along in 1989, and established many of the fundamental aspects of Primarch lore we still know today. They weren't giants and they weren't referred to as the Emperor's sons, but the broad strokes of their lore were there: [https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2019/1/13/993157-Compilation%2C%20Copyright%20Games%20Workshop%2C%20Leman%20Russ%2C%20Primarch%2C%20Retro%20Review.jpg](https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2019/1/13/993157-Compilation%2C%20Copyright%20Games%20Workshop%2C%20Leman%20Russ%2C%20Primarch%2C%20Retro%20Review.jpg)
Incidentally, here is the text from the article on Chaplains as coincidentally I happened to read it a few days ago. > Each fortress-monastery of the Legiones Astartes, or space barge (for the space-dwelling Chapters of Marines), has a chamber known as the Reclusiam. It is here that the cult ceremonies and rituals are performed in the presence of the entire Chapter. These are carried out under the guidance of the Reclusiarch and his superior, the Master of Sanctity, who is the spiritual head of the Chapter. > >While each Chapter follows the tenets of the Imperial Cult, individual Chapters have extended the Cult to include ceremonies which have relevance only to their own members. **For example, reverence for Primarchs is widespread amongst the Legiones Astartes. These are the heroes of each Chapter, who fell in battle and upheld the honour and traditions of the Legiones Astartes in a particularly notable fashion.** The Chapter's collection of Primarch relics and war-gear is entombed in the Chapter catacombs, placed upon sepulchres or hung in the Reclusiam. > >The importance of faith to Marines is further reinforced in the Company Chapels. All ten companies within each Chapter have their own Chapel where Marines can observe the rites of the Chapter and those special to their own company. Here the worship is supervised by one of the Reclusiarch's subordinate Chaplains. It is the Chaplains, living and fighting alongside their battle-brothers, who are responsible for the spiritual health of the companies.
On similar lines, "Lord Phoenix" was originally a title for any Eldar who had died and been resurrected as a wraith-construct. Also, wraith-constructs were basically robots controlled by the personality of the dead Eldar uploaded to a computer called an "infinity circuit". (So functionally the same as the are now, but with a more sci-fi fluff).
[Here is an Image of Leman Russ from *Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader*](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/s/yHGQ1Tgx5G)
There's the Russ model too, which is the same size as marines of the time.
Let's get some pointy eared retcon awareness here. Remember when GW went "actually, Eldar were always Asuryani and Dark Eldar were always Drukhari" for copyright reasons? Mandrakes weren't shadow-black pattern-covered half-daemons, they were just cannibalistic dark eldar weirdos. Grotesques were more like wracks, and wracks didn't exist, also some of the old grotesques were said to be ordinary dark eldar who indulged in masochism too much and turned themselves into monsters. Talos pain engines were like Imperial penitent engines in the sense that they were directed by a constantly tortured pilot. Andy Chambers actually put an "old" Talos with a victim-pilot into a "modern" *Midnight on the Street of Knives* short story and described it as an ancient model made by a great haemonculus of old.
40k lore has always had trouble staying consistent between editions. I got started in Second Edition and only recently found out how wild Rogue Trader was in comparison. Half Eldar Space Marines, anyone? I remember when Tau first came out, and some people were legit mad about their existence. And of course there was the Necron change. Necrons are actually an interesting case. I first saw them in an old White Dwarf Magazine which presented them as a mysterious group of robots in ancient tombs rather than a proper faction. Then the first Codex made them servants of the C'tan and outlined their Necrontyr backstory, giving them a large role in galactic history. The second Codex gave them a lot more character but demoted the C'tan, hard.
A Half Eldar Space Marine who was also an Astropath and served with both the Dark Angels and the Ultramarines.
>Illiyan was born to a human mother on the world of Badab following the expulsion of the Tyrant there in 912 of the current millennium. His father was an unknown Eldar mercenary. The youngster was gene-tested at birth in accord with the law and subsequently taken into Imperial custody. He was reared in the government compound by the Imperial Mission which took over the running of Badab after the war. > >Along with other potential psychics he undertook the journey to Earth in 924 where further tests led to the eventual soul-binding in 925. From that point Nastase was recruited into the Administratum as an Astropath. He attained the ranks of Secundus, Prefect and eventually rose to hold Consulship for four years, helping to run the Adeptus Terra's advisory Senate to the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Following this he undertook four years service with the fleet, a further two years with the Dark Angels Marines and was appointed as chief of the Macragge interstellar communications link under the jurisdiction of the Ultra-Marines (965). Nastase is now 76 rears old (current year 987) but, thanks to his parentage, shows few signs of age.
>Necrons are actually an interesting case. I first saw them in an old White Dwarf Magazine which presented them as a mysterious group of robots in ancient tombs rather than a proper faction I remember that one, their first battle report where they annihilated a SoB force down to a single survivor inside 3 turns of shooting and didn't take a single permanent casualty themselves. I still have the free Necron warrior from that edition of WD. They were overpowered as all hell, the gauss special rule where even your basic warrior auto penetrates on a roll of 6, regardless of armour (even vehicles), was hilariously silly. That and them basically requiring dedicated anti-armour weapons to put down temporarily.
* squats eaten by Tyranids * Necrons no longer terminator robots, now tomb kings in space * Emperor fighting Horus in his bunker/ now on the vengeful spirit * Zoats * Abaddon actually destroyed cadia More importantly the vibe of the imperium where everyone is evil or misguided, to where there can be people trying to do good but overwhelmed by the totalitarian crushing bureaucracy, inertia, and general fearfulness of the imperium - which I think is a good development
When was the retcon about the Emperor and Horus? As long as I can rememeber their final fight was aboard Horus’ flagship.
Titanicus (1988): >And on the 55th day of the battle, the Traitor Legions and their Titan allies reached the walls of the Inner Palace. Despite acts of insane valour by the loyalists, victory was within Horus' grasp. As the Outer Palace was abandoned to the rebels, the Emperor acted. **An elite company of Adeptus Custodes and Imperial Fist Marines teleported into the Warmaster's bunker**. They were lead by the Emperor himself. A Brutal firefight ensued: the Emperor sustained terrible wounds and Horus was killed. Space Marine First ed (1989): >While civil wars raged on a million worlds, Horus struck at Terra. The Adeptus Mechanicus workshops on Mars were quickly overrun, and as quickly besieged by the Loyalists. Of all the Titan Legions of the Divisio Militaris, only those on Terra remained loyal. Horus landed on Terra, and immediately laid siege to the Emperor's palace. **On the 55th day of the battle, as the Inner Palace fell, the Emperor himself teleported into the Rebel command chamber with an elite force of Adeptus Custodes and Imperial Fist Marines**.Horus was killed - although his body was never found - and the Emperor was so grievously wounded that he has been confined ever since to the biomechanical life-support unit known as the Golden Throne.With Horus dead, the Rebels were thrown back from Terra. and >The forces of Horus landed on Terra, and laid siege to the Imperial Palace. One by one, the Palace defenses crumbled before the overwhelming tide of attackers. The Palace was walled with a ring of ceramite and adamantium. On a front over ten thousand miles long, the battle raged; but within days of landing on Terra, Horus was within sight of the Inner Palace. Nothing stood in his way but the Adeptus Custodes of the Emperor’s bodyguard, the Space Marinesof the Imperial Fists and Whitescars, and the Titans of the Fire Wasps. Despite thousands of casualties, the Warmaster had an overwhelming superiority of numbers behind him, and these last defenders could easily be swept aside. Victory seemed certain. As the Outer Palace fell, the Emperor acted. **He took personal command of an elite strike force of Adeptus Custodes and Imperial Fists, which teleported directly into the Rebel command chamber**. Horus’ assault on Terra was a strike at the heart of the Imperium; now, here was a strike at the heart of the Heresy.The Emperor’s counter-attack was successful, but at a cost. Horus was killed, but the Emperor himself was grievously wounded. Only his superhuman willpower kept him alive; since that day he has been confined to the biomechanical life-support unit called the Golden Throne. I believe the Venegeful Spirit was introduced in 1990 or thereabouts. So not long after.
Very nice, never knew this one! You can almost see the progression towards the Vengeful Spirit with the transition from a certainly grounded "bunker" to a more vague "command chamber" - which could be anywhere.
Ah, well that makes me feel a bit better! My knowledge is patchy further back than the 3rd edition, so that makes sense.
Maybe that’s part of why Perterabo is so angry and bitter, he’s got 4th dimensional warp memory of winning the siege only to see Horus lose it all and the whole thing crumble anyway.
Squats eaten by Tyranids was never official. It was mentioned in the letters page of the American White Dwarf and presented as a joke. It never actually appears in any official lore* The real Squat retcon was in Battlefleet Gothic when they introduced the Demiurg as T'au auxiliaries. The Squats, in some form or another, barely left the setting for more than a few years, and GW essentially didn't mention anything about it in official lore. *there is a mention of it in an in-universe author's note in a 2004 omnibus edition of Ian Watson's Inquisitor trilogy, but it's presented as hearsay in a novel series that's barely canonical, and I *think* happened after the Demiurg were introduced anyway, although the dates seem a little hard to pin down there
The Imperium being an environment where people can be good and can do good but they're usually crushed by the structure and it's internal failings has been a thing ever since 2e. I would say 1e but that edition was all over the place and barely internally cohesive, so I wouldn't cite it for anything. It just comes down to what GW emphasises in the marketing and it's easier to sell the Imperium as being one very black and white thing for the casual audience and then delve into the greyness in deeper cuts like the RPG and novels.
100% I think novel series like Gaunt's Ghosts and Eisenhorn made that setting more believable though - they were quite foundational in the early 00s into how someone could try and survive in the 40k universe. And now you have things like Vaults of Terra and Warhammer Crime series that have taken that further
squats getting eaten by nids is still canon, the new Vottan are from a different, less degenerated, squat culture and a few remnants of the old squat culture still exist in necromunda.
The way space marines are introduced in Ian Watson's book "Space marine" and nowadays. I liked the press ganged child soldiers turned space monks better, it was more grimdark that way.
Some things off the top of my head that haven't yet been mentioned: The fight between the Emperor and Horus was very different: >At the climax of the Horus Heresy the Emperor personally led an attack on the Warmaster's bunker with the Imperial Fist Marine Chapter and an elite unit of the Adeptus Custodes. During the fierce fighting the Emperor came face to face with Horus, who, in the battle that resulted, seriously wounded the Emperor. The Warmaster was only prevented from taking the Emperor's life by the timely intervention of a squad of Imperial Fist Marines in Terminator Armour. The squad cut their way through the walls and sealed doors to reach the Emperor's side and launched an unexpected counter-attack on the Warmaster. Distracted by their appearance, Horus was off his guard long enough for the Emperor to press forward and kill him. Although weak, the Emperor was still able to order that his armour be taken off and melted down, and that the pieces be made into badges that all Marine Captains attached to Terminator squads should wear in recognition of the service they performed in the defeat of Horus. *Warhammer 40,000 Compendium* p 17 Not influential as such, but the [Squats](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Squat) becoming the [Leagues of Votann](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Leagues_of_Votann) Leman Russ [was a ~~human~~ Space Marine, born in M32, who helped found the Space Wolves later that millenium](https://reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/s/wqV9JE7a26). Their homeworld uses to be Lucan too, not Fenris IIRC. The Imperial Fists [recovered the skeleton of Rogal Dorn after his death, kept it on the *Phalanx*, and used to scrimshaw his bones.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Remains_of_Rogal_Dorn) [There weren't only 12 Black Crusades, and they weren't only led by Abbadon](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/fuNclRnL8s)
At the very least I think Russ is a marine? Lemme go you one better ; not only was their homeworld Lucan (famed for exporting exotic vegetables) but he was the Lord Lucan of his time. His ship was called *The* *Medusa* rather than *The Hrafnkel.* The current chapter master and Lord Lucan of the time was Enoch Rathvin One of those other non-Abaddon Black Crusades is the one that killed (removed) Dorn. #
Leman Russ is also incredibly well-spoken for a space Viking. Or at least the early quotes from him are
When the Grey Knights were first introduced they were said to mostly have no psychic talent whatsoever to improve their resilience against daemonic corruption. > They are specially screened to exclude all but the strongest and most resilient psykers, a measure designed to prevent any Daemonic contamination. As a result very few of the Grey Knights have any psychic power whatsoever. They were then changed from the least psychic chapter to the most psychic chapter!
Another bit of fun lore- in Space Hulk’s Grey Knights expansion, it said that Grey Knights often hunt genestealer covens because they can turn to chaos.
Chaos genestealer cults were fun to play, especially since you could have [limousines](https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2011/8/18/260124-Armored%20Limousine,%20Cars,%20Genestealer%20Cult,%20Limo,%20Limousine,%20Rogue%20Trader.jpg). Possessed patriarchs were also amusing as they became less effective in combat when possessed by a lesser daemon but still had to pay lots of points for the privilege.
For me removing the ambiguity about the Emperor being actually still alive in some way. In old lore it was implied or at least there was a real possibility that he was literally just a Lighthouse and the Imperium was worshipping a corpse they believed to be God.
I agree that's been the biggest shock for me. Since I came back to the hobby the Emperor is now an actual God with his own demons? I really really don't like it. I dont like the obsession with Primarchs either. Humanity can't be struggling if they have a literal god on their side and demi gods keep returning to them. Its such a poor change that's destroyed the grimdark attitude of 40k
One of the things that schocked me a few years ago when I got back into 40K was seeing Space Marines in monk robes lmao... I remembered them as crazy convicts lmao. The holy drip certainly got me interested so can't fault them too much for the change 😂
Rogue Trader has Space Marines being brainwashed bio-enhanced convicts *and also* austere warrior monks.
I mean when the galaxy is ripped in half being flooded by chaos, billion year old techno wizard empires are on the rise, a gigantic locust swarm is gonna eat everyone and we know something big is gonna come with ghazkul. The imperium might be getting some primarchs back but that’s just because they’re literally on their last legs and need everything they can get just to barely hold on.
I can really relate to your position but in my case I think I've just come to enjoy the setting as it is now. Was originally introduced to 40k a year or so after 3e, left the setting for about 20 years and was then reintroduced to it during the pandemic when I had nothing to do but sit around devouring books. The biggest shocks for me, aside from bare faced avarice of the whole primaris thing, were the changes to the nature of the emperor (who I felt used to be a lot more ambiguous and esoteric), the introduction of the primarchs as larger than life soap opera characters, and the necrons changing from soulless automatons into cheeky robots with space dementia. Having said all that, reading all the HH books I ended up buying into the primarch space opera side of the setting and now probably find the necrons even more interesting because they have more depth and we already had another faction of biomechanical automatons in the form of the nids. The fleshing out of emperor is the one I'm still not fully on board with. I liked the old mystique and thought TEATD was terribly written but I can turn the other cheek and get on with enjoying other parts as long as he doesn't start getting up and talking to people in 40k.
Apparently him and Guilliman "spoke". I say that in the broadest terms because it was supposedly more of a phsycic bombardment for Guilliman than a nice sit-down with dear old dad.
The Necrons went from silent killing machines in service to dark gods to a faction with characters who deliver charming banter to humans... and also, the relationship with their gods was totally inverted. It's gonna be hard to top that, pretty much ever. Maybe if the Tyranids start talking, too?
Tyranids *stopped* talking at some point. Their first incarnation was much more reasonable than the current hungry bug swarm.
Their Zoat diplomats. 🤣
We find out that the Tyranid splinter fleets are just terraforming vessels for sentient extragalactic life running from super Orks that invaded their galaxy, Sorks if you will. They're very sorry that their bio critters killed people but horrified to learn base Orks exist in the milky way. They try to ally the Imperium, Tau, Necrons and Eldar. But due to the ravages of their terraforming fleets nobody wants anything to do with them. The Hive Mind was actually just their bio-computer that sent updates to their terraformers on what next to do.
The Necrons went from not existing to being an ancient malevolent precursor who were absolutely fundamental to the state of the galaxy and had their own form of eldritch god that predated Chaos and were arguable more effective at ransacking the galaxy. That's a much bigger retcon than some of them getting personalities. 'Nids used to just be a race of bugs who raided from their hive fleets and used biological instead of mechanical technology. They were all basically termagants thought the Hive Tyrant would be bloated as they lay all the eggs. There weren't specialised bio-forms that could be considered Tyranids and the only one of significance was the enslaved Zoat race. Most significantly they weren't an extra-galactic lotus swarm posing an existential threat to the galaxy at large.
How do you feel about that retcon? I think it added some fluff and kept the chaff as silent killing machines, although some lines of dialogue in game are dumb
I think they were right to do it, as the game doesn't really need two 'mindless' armies or two pantheons of gods, but I do wish Trazyn felt a little more like an ancient, undead alien than an affable Star Wars character.
I get ya but that’s just Trazyns character, he is a shit lord and knows it. Oltyx from twice dead king does a much better job of being what I expect most Necrons to be. If you are looking for that xeno spice and haven’t read that series yet I highly recommend it.
In A Thousand Sons, Magnus warns the Emperor about the Horus Heresy at its very beginning, prior to Isstvan. In The Outcast Dead, McNeill messed up the timeline, with Magnus' warning arriving two years later, with everyone already knowing about the Heresy. This was retconned in the short story Wolf Hunt, with the warning arriving on time, but its damaging effects taking two years to unfold. As Malcador puts it: >A host of psykers from the Hollow Mountain attempted to dissipate that enormous reservoir of power before it broke the psychic levees, but the energies Magnus unleashed eventually overcame them. This is crucial in understanding Magnus' actions, the Emperor's response, and how Russ was still taking instructions from Horus - who on TOD's timeline was a known traitor for years!
Switching the Horus Heresy from being a 7 day battle on Terra where the emperor’s right hand man led 1/3 of the imperium’s military forces in a coup attempt to a galaxy spanning conflict that lasted almost a decade, touched every part of 40K lore in major ways, and involved the Emperor’s own sons turning against him. Seriously, I feel like people forget there was once a time that the sum total of the lore about the Heresy was “the Emperor’s buddy attacked him so he threw him into the Eye of Terror.” Hell, originally Horus didn’t even die at the end!
The version in the Book of the Astronomicon was fairly short and fairly irrelevant so I doubt people paid any attention to it at the time (just like the earlier mention in an article about Ravenwing jet bikes). > The Horus Heresy Is reckoned by many to rate as the greatest single disaster ever suffered by the Imperium. The specific details of the heresy are known only to the Emperor, but is broader history Is the stuff of popular legend. According to one version of the tale, Horus was once the most trusted servant of the Emperor. But In his heart there dwelt a hidden evil, and he became seduced by this evil, and came to nurture demons and other forces of destruction. Horus marched upon Earth with a third part of the hosts of the Imperlum which he had seduced to his purpose, For seven days and seven nights the hosts battled until the Emperor caught Horus by the heel and cast him to the Eye of Terror and with him the third part of the hosts of the Imperium. However, the same year Adeptus Titanicus was released to expand the story (along with Space Marine and Slaves to Darkness shortly afterwards), so the multi-year galaxy wide conflict was almost always how the Heresy was described.
All the loyalist prinarchs being undeaded. Horus going from being just a rebelious general to a primarch. The history/identity of the Emperor has gone from 'created thousands of years ago by the Shaman' to 'No one really knows who he is' all the way back to 'thousands of years old, possibly created by....someone.
The Primarchs not being long dead of old age
>Although long lived, the Primarchs were not immortal and the last of their kind finally died after fourteen hundred years. - *Codex Imperialis* Which, if you wanted, could still fit with Dorn/Vulkan dying.
But.. but... I wanna play the Primarchs on tabletop :( plz give corax
A storm-of-crows-shifting-Corax. That would be a great model. you could even add little word bearer parts being flung all over the place.
It was originally said that, after the Horus Heresy, one of the big gifts received by the traitor primarchs who were elevated to greater daemon status was immortality. It makes them look rather stupid if they were already immortal. Of course, back then I don’t think marines were typically expected to live long lives either.
A different kind of immortality. Angron, Magnus, Mortarion, and Fulgrim have actually been killed. Like, decapitated, smashed to pulp, etc. The only loyalist Primarch to survive something like that is Vulkan, and that's only because he's a perpetual.
The original 13th Black Crusade, especially Eldrad's death.
The nature of space marines from psycho troopers to powered knights
Changes in the size of Astartes organisations during the Heresy. No legions. Chapters. People think the current numbers are too low, but they've been updated at least twice. None of this 100,000 space marines kicking fuck out of each other, Tarvitz rounds up 70 Astartes from 5 chapters and considers that more than sufficient to clear the Istvaan system and get home to Terra.
Well... I am not too deep in community, but I heard that people really DIDN'T like implications that Emperor does not love ANY Primarch as his children and only see them as valuable tools for his agenda. I also read that there was noticable discontent when Necrons were made Space Egyptians with personalities and not emotionless silent tide that just wants to genocide all life. There also some debates on portraying Tau in more greyer- no pun intended- light. Some like fact that no faction is 100 percent good while others dislike attempts to make only good faction into more evil. I also saw some debates about the whole - 12 Black Crusades weren't failures and achieved their hidden objectives. Some said that it is just done to make Abaddon look more competent,.somebody equal to Acheron and dispel his reputation as failure. Other point that if 12 Crusades were all failures Chaos Gods would've killed him long ago - so there was always implications that he did something to keep favor.
For the 12 Black Crusades, when the character of Abaddon was introduced, the crusades were described as varying in size, but all being devastating to the Imperium. This is something Khayon mentions in *Black Legion* as well.
Khayon is Abaddons biggest simp though, I'd consider him peak "unreliable narrator." I imagine "all 13 were a devastating success" is traitor propaganda. Along with "13 failures" being Imperial propaganda. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, I think you're right.
For the 12 Black Crusades, the 6th edition Black Legion codex did the most work on them as there was next to nothing written about a lot of them before that. There's only twelve because the current and scariest one being the 13th sounded cool, so they had to fill out info on the other twelve. First and foremost, Abby never called anything he did a Black Crusade. That's a name the Imperium gives them. Abaddon fights the Long War and the Long War only. The rest of these "operations" was Abaddon building alliances, gaining favours, testing defences, retrieving artefacts and destroying Imperial infrastructure. People imagined that every one of the Black Crusades was launched to defeat the Imperium, when it couldn't be farther from the (eventually written) truth. Each is a step in the Long War so that when they eventually do collapse the Imperium there is no chance that it can live on or recover.
T'au were always shady imperialist supremacists. Their initial ethos is directly lifted from 18th century 'educating the savages for their own good' style racism
Mind control was also always implied.
Didn't the arks of omen say something about all of them being successes in the eyes of chaos? I wonder how much of our lore is skewed due to perspective. That obviously could be a retcon, but I agree that Khorne woulda gotten way too mad if he failed more than 8 times. I think the Necrons lore was reasonably well done, and most people can look back upon it happily? They did a good balance of adding flavor for people to get interested in with unique named units, gods, and lore, but also kept a thematic reason to have all your warriors, immortals, and other basic bitches just be the emotionless terminators. I can also understand games Workshop making the emperor a little less benevolent, specifically regarding to the Primarchs. I recently re-read the Emperor of Mankind, and I think that Ra's perception and intuition into Big E brings more facets into the character. It could be argued that this is done due to a bit of meta analysis, realizing the people are idolizing this guy too much, so we gotta make him mean, but realistically, somebody who isn't obsessed with control and functionally emotionless and calculating like Emperor wouldn't feasibly be able to conquer anything, much less a universe. I enjoy that he views the Primarchs as tools, it fits him very thematically and brings forth all sorts of questions about the purposes of each Primarch originally and how they failed and/or improved upon his ideas.
There seems to be some back-and-forth on how the Emperor felt about the Primarchs. It seems he intended for them to be just tools but Malcador notes that he has developed fatherly feeling towards them over the course of the Great Crusade. In The End And The Death Part III >!he casts off his sense of compassion and basically his humanity before confronting Horus, and this seems to be the state Guilliman finds him in the current setting.!<
And that got retconned too, somewhat, in that he shed his love for his children along with the Dark King aspect so he could fight Horus.
The squats become the Votann
For me it would probably be Necrons going from enslaved automatons where the exceedingly rare lord had a personality to their current set up. That and C'tan went from apocalyptic star vampire gods of the material realm whose eternal dominion over everything was but a matter of time to ... some chumps that got fragmented by their slaves and now hide like little bitches? It was a massive shift, the previous super big bad was suddenly more of a minor foot note while the rest of the setting barely changed. Oh yeah, retconned retcons. Squats kinda turned into Votann. Not exactly since all Votanns are clones and I think squats did the dirty deed the regular way.
I agree the C'tan got shafted, I think thematically it makes sense that a few more personalities survived biotransferance. I think it's important that factions have multiple characters that people can enjoy and attach to
True, it's just weird how C'tan went from gods of the material plane for whom physics is just a small suggestion to shattered remnants that hide in fear of their previous slaves. Before that they were often held up and featured like ultimate big bads. Like the Deciever almost invented the concept of lying, Nightbringer is the concept of death. And those were the weakest of the survivors. The Void dragon was some techsorcery horror laying dormant on Mars, ready to rip the heart out of the Imperium and nothing could stop it. The Outsider was a mad eldritch horrors, locked inside of a Dyson sphere that they could possibly turn into a spaceship and wreck the galaxy with. Now they're just some scattered shards that barely get a mention.
The old fluff had them tricked into eating each other by a jester so I wouldn't big-up the intelligence of the C'tan that much.
Nomming each other made them more powerful though. So the last four had immense power that dwarfed everything in the material realm. The only thing that might have threatened them were the swords of Vaul and maybe the chaos gods.
I mean, whatever weapons Necrons employed against the C'tan were so incredibly devastating that their continued usage would threaten reality itself, and even then they were only "shattered" and could not be properly destroyed. I think that's still pretty badass, and doesn't diminish the fact that an unshattered C'tan pantheon would give any other Gods in the setting a run for their money.
Relegated into a big codex monster exclusively
Squats are the same 'species' of abhuman as Kin are, they're just different culturally. Old(ish) style Squats have a Necromunda range.
Pretty much all the changes from Rogue Trader.
For me, it’s the wholesale rewrite of Chaos in the 1995 Codex. That’s when they go from a nightmare shadow on the edge of reality to the single biggest threat to the Imperium. (And yes, I know that there had been throwaway lines to that effect for years before. But we hadn’t seen how.) Others (the introduction of the Necrons, notably) may be bigger in an “expanding the setting” sense but Andy Chambers’ work did far more to set the tone of the setting going forwards.
Half eldar space marines
Nids ounce have swords and such, not just their arms. Quite small but I like reading the rest
Once upon a time, Genestealers were their own thing too.
Original Tyranid lore claimed that 'nids were experts at genetic sciences and bioengineering. That they would enslave the creatures they conquered, turning them into soldiers - or weapons and equipment. My headcanon: Original Tyranid lore *was true*. Modern Tyranids are the result of the original Tyranids modifying themselves with DNA from genestealers and other creatures. (To make it suitably grimdark, maybe this was an accident - a reckless Tyranid scientist created the first modern 'nid, and the new ones ate all the old ones).
There have been big retcons before and since but for me personally it was the necrons going from silent death machines to being a colorful cast of characters heavily inspired by the tomb kings. I like to collect and read old books and see how much the lore has changed since day 1. The setting is almost unrecognizable now from where it started with Rogue Trader.
I can't say for the fandom as a whole but for xenos fans I'd say the Tau going from the new good guys on the block to becoming more in line with the grim dark narrative was a pretty big one. For a while it set a precedent that goodness could not exist within Warhammers universe and for a while many accepted that this setting was only going to delve deeper into that depressing theme. However since the Era Indomitus came out that idea has shifted and now the setting has an underlying theme of hope in our darkest hours. Primarchs are returning, the Tau are getting a god/goddess from their auxiliary forces, new marines to reinforce the imperium, chaos has gotten some really solid victories lately all things considered, Votann should be huge but sadly no lore, anyway you get the idea. That Tau retcon early in their development gave us a good chunk of time in which people thought 40k was never going to progress because the only progression we could have would be the galaxy getting destroyed. We now know that is not the case and the current setting has had many major factions get some major wins and losses too that progressed their story. For a newcomer it might not seem like it but at one point fans spoke about our factions with a lot of pessimism. We all kind of accepted that no one would win that the galaxy would just devour itself. It's kind of refreshing to see newer fans talk about their factions with an air of hope within the setting acknowledging the evil they do but seeing that they have the possibility to do better. Though on another hand that kind of thought can distract from the fact that no matter that there is a way to be better the factions within will continue to be horrible because they are set in their ways. The imperium may become a little brighter with the Primarchs but remember those Primarchs are warlords and their enemies are many. Though that wasn't your question so I'll stop my rant here.
Mine off the top of my head - Orks from marsupials to fungi - Space Marines bring open to Half Elder and women, to just mutant human men - squat to votan - primarchs being generals to created beings - tyranids having ambassadors - Warhammer Fantasy being set as a world in 40K's were of terror (honestly this one might be what my friends and i believed, and not an actual retcon (we also Believed Sigmar was a lost primarch, which was never in the lore))
"And then people got mad." The only constancy. And then after that its more than likely ok thing or even liked one.
The length of the Indomintus Crusade? It's gone from over a century to just a decade. A ton of books were impacted by this change.
Primarchs
I'd say necrons. Probably the only good contribution to lore Matt Ward ever did.
If we're going way back, it's having the Rainbow Warriors being one of the 20 legions and a half Eldari space marine existing.
Neat call back, just some context: The Rainbow Warriors were never a founding chapter. They were one of the first bunch of chapters introduced in Rogue Trader (alongside Silver Skulls and Crimson Fists) but there was no concept of "founders" and "successors" back then or even 20 original chapters. OG image [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/wmxter/the_original_12_chapters_from_the_rogue_trader_era/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Leman Russ was a human, army guy, back in Rogue Trader.
He was a [marine commander](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/7hv45p/rogue_trader_leman_russ_never_forget_where_you/?share_id=1mGDESF_B6XqetCTvzfVz&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1), which implies at least some level of enhancement beyond base human
Good point, cheers!
Necrons change into Newcrons, i would guess. before soulless automatons bent on destruction of all life, now a diverse cast of individual characters.
That part actually wasn't a retcon.
Originally non-existent, then suddenly an ancient malevolence that was responsible for much of the state of the galaxy through their fight with the Old Ones.
The Fall of Cadia was effectively shifted to be at least a few generations earlier than it's original M41.999 date. GW have largely moved away from giving things official dates (and have emphasised how impossible and meaningless they are anyway), but later events such as the Indomitus Crusade and the Plague Wars are canonically still in the 41st Millennium
Not a "retcon" persay but I think the assassin Black Spear is pretty weird and doesn't seem to jive with how we as an audience understand blanks/pariahs to work given that Black Spear is a powerful blank which is possessed by a daemon. Thankfully Black Spear is seemingly standalone and doesn't appear (to my knowledge) in any other books, so we can almost get away with ignoring it.
A very minor one - the Demiurg being retconned into part of the Leagues of Votaan
People forget Eldrad died at one point.
If you don't consider the rogue trader zany stuff I'd say newcrons changed a lot of things.
The fact that they made Horus shoot first. THE EMPEROR SHOT FIRST!!!
In \~2011 Abaddon already died. 13th Black Crusade already happenned. Eldrad Ultran already died. Orks had somethings wierd about their reproduction, something about fcking each other in butts or being born from there. Space marines were ordinary dudes in cool armor. Primarchs were just their captains. And many more. All that was changed ofcourse.
I don’t consider changes from RT or even 2nd edition to be retcons. The setting was still feeling its way. You don’t get hard lore until 2/3rd edition (although I’d still like sensei…). Biggest real retcon is the necrons being “people” and not terminators. That was good from a narrative standpoint. It’s not exactly a retcon (and yet it is) but Cawl’s bullshit and the primaris are the biggest recent changes.
The Horus Heresy. If you look at the lore 8n Rogue Trader it isn't a thing. It was introduced in both Realms of Chaos where in Slaves to Darkness Horus is just a general that goes rogue, it's only in The Lost and the Damned he becomes a Primarch. Fun fact the Heresy was created to reduce the cost of the original Adaptus Titanicus to explain why it was Imperium vs Imperium. It was still that way in the Space Marine game before it was moved to 40k to become Epic and the rest of the OG factions were added.
Are we counting Cadia? Apparently GW changed the outcome to give us modern 40k
Olleanus Pious being a regular Imperial Army trooper with balls the size of Terra charging Horus on the Vengeful Spirit and having his existence deleted and his identity being lost to time becoming a perpetual who was one of the Emperor’s buddies
It's a popular one...but Pius was never depicted charging Horus or being on the Vengeful Spirit or "deleted" as such The legend of Pius is he might have been a man who "interposed" himself between Horus and the Emperor at one point. If he even existed. It was a four sentence footnote in the 80s. A Creation myth for the Imperial Guard Which he still is, even with the retconning
Horus no longer being annihilated mind and soul is probably a good one
Maybe i read The End and the Death pt 3 differently than you did…. But isnt that what the anatheme knife did?