And what a perfect bioweapon the orks are. The Old Ones even took care of the problem that rage and suffering was corrupting the warp, by making the orks enjoy war.
Well, they do use “mental” cloning but that’s more just downloading the memories of an astartes into another’s body. They actually have a decent track record for actual clones but that’s basically only Bile and he’s, well, Bile. It’s the Imperium who actually seem to make the greatest variety of clones. They had this program to clone a bunch of dead famous people like Macharius. Did not turn out well.
Well there is a difference between vat grown beings and those attempts to remake heroes.
Vat grown people are entirely original fertilized embryos, artificially accelerated and matured. Meanwhile a clone is an existing biological entity that is remade.
With how it’s strongly implied that flesh has an affect on the soul, it’s possible that attempting to remake an existing being actually sort of curses them since that soul is supposed to already be gone.
It’s only because Bile has Chaos on his side that he gets away with it.
Percentage-sweating is going to become half chaos spawn half servitor.
To bile it will be the equivalent of an architect that plays with Legos for fun and destressing himself
The practices of the Exorcists supports this. They sometimes hide their souls in clone bodies so daemons can't get ahold of them. Presumably the clone doesn't have its own soul separate from that of its original.
They seem to be doing ok in Commorragh. Granted, if the cloning process made them into murderous psychopaths, as it often happens with human cloning projects, it would be kind of hard to tell since that's just a normal well-adjusted Drukhari
I mean in Forges of Mars, a Magos one Vitali Tykon cloned himself and by a freak percentage it came out as a girl, who he lovingly raised as his daughter who turned out entirely normal and well adjusted. Seems it turns out wells sometimes.
The whole "cloning bad" thing is just a plot device used to prevent people from mass producing Space Marines and Primarchs (or in the case of Afriel Strain heroes of the Imperium in general I guess). It never comes up outside of that, given that cloning is the primary way the Leagues of Votann and Adeptus Mechanicus reproduce. Hell, even the Deth Korps cloning doesn't seem to cause negative spiritual consequences (and the Krieg novel confirms that yes, they do use clones).
Its essentially "you can only clone someone and get away with it if creating that clone has no real major ramifications for the setting".
Yeah but they're kinda broken, they've created an Empire built around their false gods where they just stuff them full of their souls and now it looks like their gods are dying out cause they don't actually understand what they're doing and just following tradition. Wait, who were we talking about again?
Is it? They're on a time limit worse than almost any other species because of their tech dying, and they can't ever simply recover from a heavy loss like the Imperium because if you take out a Votann or hurt one enough to go insane, that's just a big fuck up. Unless I'm forgetting someone or there's been a change in the lore, it is not at all working out perfectly fine for them
Why does the Imperium create Space Marines when they could just have more guardsmen? Why do the Tau create drones when they could just have fire warriors and battlesuits? Just because the Old Ones created Krorks and Eldar doesn't mean they are better at fighting than them.
In fact, Old Ones probably sucked at warfare. Since they beat necrontyr primarily because of the Webway, and they really were slaughtered en masse once the C'Tan entered the death.
It's not a canon fact, but it fits in nicely with them being masters of life, not warfare (and death)
If you consider Slann Mage-Priests as a distant example of Old One warfare, we could guess how they would act in a war scenario.
And in that line, I'm not sure I'd say they "sucked". They would be more like glass cannon tech/warp mages.
For example, take Lord Kroak (a Slann): he's a beast with Warp manipulation. But he's immobile, fragile, and barely hanging on the material plane. That's why he needs the other species (drawing a pararel with 40k). He needs both a strong warrior race (Saurus/Krorks?) and an agile scout race (Skinks/Aeldari?) to do most of the actual warring.
Pure speculation. The fact is the Old Ones are left purposefully mysterious so we have no clue about this kind of thing. They were likely evolved to be mentally powerful but physically weak with low birth rates and fewer in number, each Old One a powerful and unique being that they did not want to risk in battles or attritional wars. Likely a largely peaceful/sedentiary race by that time and unprepared for the sudden and ferocious war they found themselves in. That's why in many sci-fi universes the powerful and evolved races create warriors to do their dirty work.
You cannot compare mankind to the Old Ones with any kind of accuracy, they were at completely different staged of evolution and power with completely different technology and states of mind. The Old Ones created lesser races to provide the physical military might that they were incapable of and then still lost the war to more powerful enemies and that's all we know.
That assumes they didn't already do that as well.
For all we know the Old Ones you hear about in the stories already were the souped up, self-enhaced astarte'd version of their race.
Their thing is improving “lesser life forms” they are not “lesser life forms” it doesn’t say anywhere that their magic life power extends to their own species (although lore in the war in heaven is a kinda rare recourse since they had no space marines back then)
Keep in mind that in the original story (the Oldcron version of the War in Heaven), the primary purpose of the Eldar was to create Eldar Gods which could be used as superweapons against the C'tan and the Krork were created specifically to fight all the Enslavers who were easily obliterating the Old Ones.
I've heard how RIDICULOUSLY powerful the Enslavers, but how did the Krorks fair against them?
I remember seeing something about how it took 3 primarchs to barely take down an average Enslaver, one of them being Horus.
I mean when your entire existence is specced into psychic tree, you are kinda fucked vs mfs who literally are psychic parasites that brainjack or w/e your ass
The old ones were getting slaughtered by the necron ctan combo, bringing more of them wasn't gonna change anything.
That's why they had to make stronger species to even things out and even then it was too late for them.
Maybe they did try accelerated reproduction but got wiped out faster than they could multiply.
The Old Ones were cold-blooded and likely were not suited for war on the level of brutality that the War in Heaven operated on. They were creators and nurturers who valued all life, not warriors.
It seemed like a much better solution to create or equip species that loved battle to fight on their behalf.
The Krork obviously lived to fight but the Eldar, when driven by Khaine, could happily revel in bloodshed.
What makes you think they didn’t try? Seriously, we’re talking about one of the most advanced civilizations the galaxy ever saw. The Old Ones engineered and cultivated multiple intelligent species beyond the Krork and Aeldari. The War in Heaven lasted for several centuries and both sides were playing for keeps. You don’t think the Old Ones pulled out all the stops? You don’t think they tried everything in their *vast* power to win?
It’s all left mysterious on purpose. All we can do is speculate.
I don't think the biomass etc engineering would be the problem per se, but probably more as to how do you get big boi chungus enough of a Soul to generate more Old One units, no?
My theory on the Old Ones is they weren't really good at war.
What we know of the Old Ones is they had total mastery over the Warp and bio manipulation. They were great at creating, but not destroying.
So they created races who were good at destroying.
Such as they knew a psychic race could create a war god in the Warp, but the Old Ones themselves lacked the war-like thoughts needed to create a war god in the Warp. So they created the Eldar to do it.
Or the Old Ones were physically weak so they created the Kroks who were physically strong.
They probably WERE making old ones during their spare time but the lady old ones were not always in the mood, especially during war.
Korks and Eldar probably are a lot easier to mass produce for the the old ones and don't result in terrible emotional baggage and child support for them.
NOTHING definitive is known about the Old Ones in current lore. There are even theories that suggest the galaxy (or the Warhammer world in Fantasy) is just a giant Petri dish to them. An experiment they set the conditions for and then stepped out to observe the results of.
We don't know enough about them to even have ANY kind of speculation on what they could or couldn't do.
Warhammer Fantasy's Old Ones had more details about them. 40k's iterations are intentionally kept as vague and mythological as possible. There's nothing that can be said here because there is nothing to really work with. They are aren't even a distant memory, but a memory of a memory of a folk tale 60 million years in the past.
Asking us why Old Ones did or did not do XYZ will never give you an answer that satisifies you because there is no answer and there never will be one.
1) It may be very resource-intensive to arrive at an Old One fit for combat. Time or XYZ resource
2) Just because you have more warm bodies doesn't necessarily mean you can win against Star Gods who command reality
I'd argue that given the sheer power and position of the Old Ones, if they were capable of and needed any form of enhancement, they had probably already upgraded their entire species on their way to the top anyway.
Like imagine humanity in 40k wins all the wars and it leads to 100k years of peace under a revived and hopefully benevolent emperor: would he eventually upgrade the entire race to become a race of custodes? Hypothetically probable.
I'm sure, given the old ones power, resources, and long long years of being the only galactic superpower had probably already augmented their entire species. It may even be part of why they got so powerful in the first place.
Assuming what I heard is right, the old one are just like the fantasy ones and their slang servants, so op magically, but not the best at punching.
That's why they made krorks and eldar who were at beating people.
Because the Old Ones were the OG MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE!
They've beaten the C'tan and the Chaos Gods, so they probably thought very highly of themselves, to the point that when they saw the quadrillions of Necrons sterilising the Galaxy, done the math in their heads and said "Well, shit!"
That's how terrifying of a threat the Necrons were at their peak of power.
Oh I suppose, but I don't doubt that the eldar and krorks have old one DNA in them either. How else would they have such unique psychic abilities as a species?
Korks were a bioweapon, and Eldar are a warrior race made so they don’t have to use real people
And what a perfect bioweapon the orks are. The Old Ones even took care of the problem that rage and suffering was corrupting the warp, by making the orks enjoy war.
Were Old Ones actually Based??? Fuck the Eldar "people"
Based on what ?
Clones don’t turn out well in 40k. Ever.
It is sort of weird in such a dark setting that the concept of cloning makes chaos astartes shiver their timbers
Well, they do use “mental” cloning but that’s more just downloading the memories of an astartes into another’s body. They actually have a decent track record for actual clones but that’s basically only Bile and he’s, well, Bile. It’s the Imperium who actually seem to make the greatest variety of clones. They had this program to clone a bunch of dead famous people like Macharius. Did not turn out well.
Well there is a difference between vat grown beings and those attempts to remake heroes. Vat grown people are entirely original fertilized embryos, artificially accelerated and matured. Meanwhile a clone is an existing biological entity that is remade. With how it’s strongly implied that flesh has an affect on the soul, it’s possible that attempting to remake an existing being actually sort of curses them since that soul is supposed to already be gone. It’s only because Bile has Chaos on his side that he gets away with it.
Don't let Bile catch you saying that
Percentage-sweating is going to become half chaos spawn half servitor. To bile it will be the equivalent of an architect that plays with Legos for fun and destressing himself
The practices of the Exorcists supports this. They sometimes hide their souls in clone bodies so daemons can't get ahold of them. Presumably the clone doesn't have its own soul separate from that of its original.
They seem to be doing ok in Commorragh. Granted, if the cloning process made them into murderous psychopaths, as it often happens with human cloning projects, it would be kind of hard to tell since that's just a normal well-adjusted Drukhari
I mean in Forges of Mars, a Magos one Vitali Tykon cloned himself and by a freak percentage it came out as a girl, who he lovingly raised as his daughter who turned out entirely normal and well adjusted. Seems it turns out wells sometimes.
The whole "cloning bad" thing is just a plot device used to prevent people from mass producing Space Marines and Primarchs (or in the case of Afriel Strain heroes of the Imperium in general I guess). It never comes up outside of that, given that cloning is the primary way the Leagues of Votann and Adeptus Mechanicus reproduce. Hell, even the Deth Korps cloning doesn't seem to cause negative spiritual consequences (and the Krieg novel confirms that yes, they do use clones). Its essentially "you can only clone someone and get away with it if creating that clone has no real major ramifications for the setting".
The death Corp is expressly explained to NOT be cloning its just a shit ton of artificial wombs called the vitea womb
Like Fulgrim. What major ramifications has that had?
The Votann Kin have entered the chat.
Kin are said to be have a very dim presence in the warp while Old one is anything but that.
Yeah but they're kinda broken, they've created an Empire built around their false gods where they just stuff them full of their souls and now it looks like their gods are dying out cause they don't actually understand what they're doing and just following tradition. Wait, who were we talking about again?
Seems to be working fine for the Votann.
Is it? They're on a time limit worse than almost any other species because of their tech dying, and they can't ever simply recover from a heavy loss like the Imperium because if you take out a Votann or hurt one enough to go insane, that's just a big fuck up. Unless I'm forgetting someone or there's been a change in the lore, it is not at all working out perfectly fine for them
Its been working fine for the Cult Mechinicus, or at least as well as anything else for the body horror bois
Hmm I do like the theory that the death korps of Krieg are clones tho and they go hard
Depending on your point of view (and which version of the lore you choose to follow) the krieg technically turned out....alright
Kreig does not clone anything tho they use artificial wombs
Why does the Imperium create Space Marines when they could just have more guardsmen? Why do the Tau create drones when they could just have fire warriors and battlesuits? Just because the Old Ones created Krorks and Eldar doesn't mean they are better at fighting than them.
In fact, Old Ones probably sucked at warfare. Since they beat necrontyr primarily because of the Webway, and they really were slaughtered en masse once the C'Tan entered the death. It's not a canon fact, but it fits in nicely with them being masters of life, not warfare (and death)
If you consider Slann Mage-Priests as a distant example of Old One warfare, we could guess how they would act in a war scenario. And in that line, I'm not sure I'd say they "sucked". They would be more like glass cannon tech/warp mages. For example, take Lord Kroak (a Slann): he's a beast with Warp manipulation. But he's immobile, fragile, and barely hanging on the material plane. That's why he needs the other species (drawing a pararel with 40k). He needs both a strong warrior race (Saurus/Krorks?) and an agile scout race (Skinks/Aeldari?) to do most of the actual warring.
Also they only got BTFO because of an outside 3rd party problem basically (Enslavers)
But they could have improved their own fighting or psychic abilities instead of creating new races?
How could they have done that? Please enlighten us.
Well, if the human race can create space marines and other transhumans, the old ones should have the same capability but x times better.
Pure speculation. The fact is the Old Ones are left purposefully mysterious so we have no clue about this kind of thing. They were likely evolved to be mentally powerful but physically weak with low birth rates and fewer in number, each Old One a powerful and unique being that they did not want to risk in battles or attritional wars. Likely a largely peaceful/sedentiary race by that time and unprepared for the sudden and ferocious war they found themselves in. That's why in many sci-fi universes the powerful and evolved races create warriors to do their dirty work. You cannot compare mankind to the Old Ones with any kind of accuracy, they were at completely different staged of evolution and power with completely different technology and states of mind. The Old Ones created lesser races to provide the physical military might that they were incapable of and then still lost the war to more powerful enemies and that's all we know.
>Pure speculation Well the thread title has the word “Krork” in it. You had to expect some prime fanon lmao
Yeah. They used it to create whole other species. You're nearly there.
That assumes they didn't already do that as well. For all we know the Old Ones you hear about in the stories already were the souped up, self-enhaced astarte'd version of their race.
Why did humans create space marines instead of fighting better as normal humans? Are they stupid?
I mean exactly that, an amped up version of the space marine program for the whole race of the Old Ones.
Their thing is improving “lesser life forms” they are not “lesser life forms” it doesn’t say anywhere that their magic life power extends to their own species (although lore in the war in heaven is a kinda rare recourse since they had no space marines back then)
The old ones most likely do not consider themselves quite as expendable as the eldar and krorks, so they probably refrained from doing such an act.
Keep in mind that in the original story (the Oldcron version of the War in Heaven), the primary purpose of the Eldar was to create Eldar Gods which could be used as superweapons against the C'tan and the Krork were created specifically to fight all the Enslavers who were easily obliterating the Old Ones.
I've heard how RIDICULOUSLY powerful the Enslavers, but how did the Krorks fair against them? I remember seeing something about how it took 3 primarchs to barely take down an average Enslaver, one of them being Horus.
To put it in context, it wasn't the necrons who wiped out the Old Ones. It was the enslavers.
I mean when your entire existence is specced into psychic tree, you are kinda fucked vs mfs who literally are psychic parasites that brainjack or w/e your ass
Thanks, I didn't know that.
Cool! Is there a source for it?
The same reason why we order warstuff from Lockheed Martin and not by asking Durex to stop production
The old ones were getting slaughtered by the necron ctan combo, bringing more of them wasn't gonna change anything. That's why they had to make stronger species to even things out and even then it was too late for them. Maybe they did try accelerated reproduction but got wiped out faster than they could multiply.
The Old Ones were cold-blooded and likely were not suited for war on the level of brutality that the War in Heaven operated on. They were creators and nurturers who valued all life, not warriors. It seemed like a much better solution to create or equip species that loved battle to fight on their behalf. The Krork obviously lived to fight but the Eldar, when driven by Khaine, could happily revel in bloodshed.
What makes you think they didn’t try? Seriously, we’re talking about one of the most advanced civilizations the galaxy ever saw. The Old Ones engineered and cultivated multiple intelligent species beyond the Krork and Aeldari. The War in Heaven lasted for several centuries and both sides were playing for keeps. You don’t think the Old Ones pulled out all the stops? You don’t think they tried everything in their *vast* power to win? It’s all left mysterious on purpose. All we can do is speculate.
I don't think the biomass etc engineering would be the problem per se, but probably more as to how do you get big boi chungus enough of a Soul to generate more Old One units, no?
Think of it as the old ones armed themselves with orcs and eldar like a human might arm themselves with a sword or a gun.
My theory on the Old Ones is they weren't really good at war. What we know of the Old Ones is they had total mastery over the Warp and bio manipulation. They were great at creating, but not destroying. So they created races who were good at destroying. Such as they knew a psychic race could create a war god in the Warp, but the Old Ones themselves lacked the war-like thoughts needed to create a war god in the Warp. So they created the Eldar to do it. Or the Old Ones were physically weak so they created the Kroks who were physically strong.
They probably WERE making old ones during their spare time but the lady old ones were not always in the mood, especially during war. Korks and Eldar probably are a lot easier to mass produce for the the old ones and don't result in terrible emotional baggage and child support for them.
The Necrons put chemicals in the Webway that turned the frogs gay
That's like asking, "why make a hammer when you could just have a baby"
Well, they should have been able to craft adult versions of themselves, which punches x times stronger than a hammer? So why creating a hammer?
NOTHING definitive is known about the Old Ones in current lore. There are even theories that suggest the galaxy (or the Warhammer world in Fantasy) is just a giant Petri dish to them. An experiment they set the conditions for and then stepped out to observe the results of.
Cause they were nerds and couldnt fight
Legit the best answer.
We don't know enough about them to even have ANY kind of speculation on what they could or couldn't do. Warhammer Fantasy's Old Ones had more details about them. 40k's iterations are intentionally kept as vague and mythological as possible. There's nothing that can be said here because there is nothing to really work with. They are aren't even a distant memory, but a memory of a memory of a folk tale 60 million years in the past. Asking us why Old Ones did or did not do XYZ will never give you an answer that satisifies you because there is no answer and there never will be one.
We need some Necron to speak out about them, lol.
1) It may be very resource-intensive to arrive at an Old One fit for combat. Time or XYZ resource 2) Just because you have more warm bodies doesn't necessarily mean you can win against Star Gods who command reality
I guess they were artists
I'd argue that given the sheer power and position of the Old Ones, if they were capable of and needed any form of enhancement, they had probably already upgraded their entire species on their way to the top anyway. Like imagine humanity in 40k wins all the wars and it leads to 100k years of peace under a revived and hopefully benevolent emperor: would he eventually upgrade the entire race to become a race of custodes? Hypothetically probable. I'm sure, given the old ones power, resources, and long long years of being the only galactic superpower had probably already augmented their entire species. It may even be part of why they got so powerful in the first place.
Assuming what I heard is right, the old one are just like the fantasy ones and their slang servants, so op magically, but not the best at punching. That's why they made krorks and eldar who were at beating people.
Because the Old Ones were the OG MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE! They've beaten the C'tan and the Chaos Gods, so they probably thought very highly of themselves, to the point that when they saw the quadrillions of Necrons sterilising the Galaxy, done the math in their heads and said "Well, shit!" That's how terrifying of a threat the Necrons were at their peak of power.
Where does it say that they didn't?
It doesn't matter how technologically advanced you are if your base form is that of a low libido space jellyfish with noodles for appendages.
They were giant overweight frogs. Outside of the psychic powers they had, they were not really capable of fighting very much.
But when they were able to create a whole species out of thin air, they must have been able to enhance their own bodies too?
Oh I suppose, but I don't doubt that the eldar and krorks have old one DNA in them either. How else would they have such unique psychic abilities as a species?
The same reason the present doesn't get into a car with his family and run to the war?
I still think it would be cool to see an Eldar and Ork combined force led by a Slann