“Return to Kronus” - Sergeant Castus in Blood Ravens colors. It was a ton of fun doing a one-off Marine with no plans for a further army! Freehanding the icon was a pain in the butt, but I’m glad I finally found a use for this guy who’s been burning a hole in my backlog for over a year now. 

how about we tie "la'kais is o'kais" into "greater good god" and say his recovery was in fact the seed crystal around which the new god formed?

i just think it makes for a fun narrative

Ork........ Blease.............. Just stay out of the blood pulse range............... I told you to go the opposite direction why are you running toward the blood pool stop running toward the blood pool

[Ganondorf's forces have sorrounded the Moblin hold's final position. The Moblins fight fiercely, out of ignorance more then anything, but their leaders recognize the direness of their situation]

King Bulblin: Ya ain't got me yet. Got me one more serprize for ya!

Moblin: Boss, we'ze getting cut up!

King Bulblin: Ain't you da master of da obvious. Use da 'splosives!

Moblin: Da what? 

King Bulblin: Da bomb, ya git! Da bomb!

(A massive chain reaction of explosions detonate within the Moblin hold, killing scores of invaders along with whatever defenders remained as their boss escapes on his boar mount, his one remaining lacky trailing behind him)

King Bulblin: Always have yer tunnels dug'n ready.

Moblin: You sure iz smart, boss.

King Bulblin: Shut it, ya git! I got me a whole warband to rebuild. 

[One rebuilt warband later the tables have turned and now King Boblin leads an assault on Ganondorfs stronghold]

King Bulblin: (after overhearing Ganon's rallying speech) Do ye alwayz yap so much, Gerudoz?

Ganondorf: You've come here to die, savage!

King Bulblin: Guess so.

[After killing Ganon's "chief motivator"]

King Bulblin: I liked dat commisar's 'at! Too bad it blew off with with his 'ead!

Ganondorf: That's one more insult I will avenge when you die, beast!

King Bulblin: 'Ere we come, Gerudoz! 'Ope, you weren't bored waiting.

So I recently picked up a game called Project Zomboid, and while it activates all my old prepper/survivalist neurons I haven't used in years, you might also enjoy it. I've never played The Sims, but people often describe it as "The Sims with zombies."

Plus, the "This Is How I Died" trailer is pretty cool.

Ooh, never heard of this game before, it looks fascinating! But again, I don't like the genre that much (though to be fair, I only played, like, one survival game), but I'll keep this game in mind!

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHHAHAHAAHAHAHA

And so it begins

Warhammer dawn of war - DARK CRUSADE DEMO gameplay trailer

Hello everyone, here is a new video from my YouTube channel “ Warhammer dawn of war - DARK CRUSADE DEMO gameplay trailer ”, I invite you to watch it, like it, and subscribe to the channel if possible, thank you for your understanding.

Here is the channel link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCyc3_VX1zAsuivHf5fwcBw

Dawn of war dark crusade faq

Each turn you choose whether to make a ranged, melee, or psychic attack and the relevant numbers get added up and damage exchanged. You build a deck of one warlord and a bundle of bodyguards, keeping three of them in play, replacing bodyguards as they die. It went through several iterations, and the 2017 version became a free-to-play videogame with painted 40K miniatures on the cards.ĭon't expect Magic: The Gathering. In 1998 Games Workshop released collectible cards with photos of Warhammer miniatures that had stats so you could play a rudimentary Top Trumps kind of game with them. (Image credit: The Phoenix Lighthouse GmbH) While the first two games are divisive and there are plenty of passionate defenders of each, Dawn of War 3 didn't end up appealing to anyone. In the story campaign you alternate between marines, orks, and eldar one mission at a time, never playing any one group for long enough to get comfortable with them-almost every level feeling like a reintroduction of abilities and tech it expects you to have forgotten, as if the tutorial never ends. Elites all have different things they can do and some of your units have an ability or two, but there are long stretches where it feels like you should be using them yet there's nothing for you to do. Dawn of War 3 tries to split the difference, and it's an awkward compromise. If you prefer a handful of units and heroes with their own special abilities to carefully manage, that is Dawn of War 2's whole deal. If you like the kind of RTS where you manufacture a huge amount of troops then drag them together in a glorious blob, the first Dawn of War is for you. It's entirely charmless, and not worth setting up the virtual machine you'll need to get it running today. The way they bark "SAPHON / search this area for / AN ARCHIVED RECORD" and "I haven't found / AN ARCHIVED RECORD" at each other will make you long for their death, especially when BETH-OR! shouts his name with the same cadence every time he's selected. The marines are chatty, but their dialogue is stitched together from samples. Everything's stuttery and enemies awkwardly pop into rendered CG when they're close enough for a melee animation. The big problem with Vengeance of the Blood Angels is that it came out when 3D graphics and CD audio were new and experimental and rarely any good. Once you do take command, it's just pausing to drop commands on the map, which is both less innovative than its 1993 predecessor with its realtime/turn-based combo and less satisfying than having full control over them. It's a first-person shooter where you get to control a squad, except the first six missions of the campaign don't actually let you. This was the second attempt at adapting the board game Space Hulk, and the worst. Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels (1996) In Talisman: The Horus Heresy someone might find a card that gives them +1 to the Resource stat and consider it an exciting turn. In the original board game players got turned into toads on the regular. It's an even more desperate and serious version of Warhammer 40,000, completely at odds with a chaotic beer-and-pretzels game about chucking dice and laughing at your latest misfortune. This videogame reskins it with The Horus Heresy, a prequel setting 10,000 years in 40K's past that's been the basis for a huge amount of novels, some of which are actually good. It was fantasy Snakes & Ladders with PvP. Even if the other players didn't drag you down, the luck of the cards and dice would. It was a race-to-the-centre board game, half of which you spent finding a talisman to let you access the middle of the board, and the other half not letting someone else steal it from you. Games Workshop released the first version of Talisman: The Magical Quest Game in 1983. At other times they seem more like the cyberpunk COOL FUTURE meme with power armor on. You can practically hear the writers striving to outdo each other.Īt their best, videogames have taken the same glee in depicting this baroque world, its cursed inhabitants, and their awful fates. In the miniatures game Necromunda, the underclass at the bottom of the hive city live on a diet of mould, rats, and food made from the recycled dead. In the Eisenhorn novels, an Imperial Inquisitor, so scarred by torture he loses the ability to smile, makes compromise after compromise until he's indistinguishable from those he hunts. In the board game Space Hulk, doomed space marines are beamed onto derelict craft in oversized power armor and then hunted by aliens through corridors they can barely turn around in. Though frequently balanced by a tongue-in-cheek sense of the absurd, the various adaptations of Warhammer 40,000 that followed delighted in its grimness.

I’ve been playing Dawn of war: Dark crusade as the necrons and hearing their old lore is so funny. “Their Dark God, the Nightbringer-“ buddy that thing is their pet. They feed it kibble

Why The Tau Were Never 'Too Good' For 40k

The Tau were added midway through Warhammer 40,000's 3rd edition, though according to some records the idea had been floating around since Laserburn. In the twenty years since their introduction to the 41st millennium, the Tau have remained one of the most consistently reviled and hated aspect of 40k lore, with all complaints around them boiling down to one core issue: they're too good for 40k. By that, people mean that they are too morally good to fit within the grimdark narrative of the 41st millennium. This has always been the primary complaint levied at them, since they were first introduced in 2001. And GW has seemingly agreed with them, and spent the last 20 years trying to inject grimdarkness into the Tau Empire.

The first attempt to grimdarkify the Tau came very early on, with the Tau campaign in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

It's explained how in the decade following Tau victory on Kronus the remaining human population was subjugated, oppressed, forced to give up their culture, and eventually simply sterilized and allowed to die off naturally to create a Tau and Kroot ethnostate on Kronus. It explains this over images of prisoners of war being fed to Krootox in prison camps and humans huddling together in slums.

This is obviously a departure from the image of the Tau as it was established in Codex: Tau (3rd Edition), as that codex makes explicit mention of the Tau trading and making alliances with frontier human colonies. This is also a departure from... common sense. Why exactly would the Tau accept Kroot, Vespid, Nicassar, Demiurg, Tarellians and many others into their ranks but then arbitrarily draw the line at humans?

This would become a pattern that I like to call "The Grimderp Tau Cycle." It's not exactly a stretch to say that the Tau are easily the most morally good society in the 41st millennium. Their tolerance toward other species alone makes them head and shoulders above almost any other species in the galaxy. So to remind people that there are no good guys in the 41st millennium and that this is a very serious and grimdark setting that you need to take seriously because there are no good guys or whatever, GW will occasionally have the Tau commit a completely out of character, random, and nonsensical atrocity. This was also seen at the end of In Harmony Restored, the short story that came out alongside 8th edition's Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good.

For context, In Harmony Restored is a short story about a group of Gue'vesa soldiers (human auxiliary troops fighting in the Tau military) performing a desperate defensive rearguard action to halt an Imperial advance long enough for Tau reinforcements to come and smash the delayed invasion force. The Gue'vesa are able to do this, though at great sacrifice to themselves, and then when the reinforcing army does arrive and makes quick work of the Imperial army they then continue on to butcher the Gue'vesa soldiers who performed this valiant holding action for... Seemingly no reason? Assuming the Tau forces thought they were more Astra Militarum soldiers, the Gue'vesa step out of cover pleading for mercy, only to be gunned down. With one of the Gue'vesa at the end noting that the language one of the Battlesuit pilots is using is very reminiscent of the way the Imperium talks about those they've labeled undesirables.

The message here is clear: these humans betrayed the Imperium in order to escape from the Imperium's genocidal regime... Only to end up in the equally merciless clutches of an equally ruthless oppressor. But, from a lore standpoint, that defeats the entire purpose of the Tau. It makes them wholly indistinct and, frankly, boring. But that doesn't even scratch the surface of how stupid this is, because it has clearly been stated in the past that the Tau do not hold bigotries toward client species on the basis of their faiths. And that makes sense.

Not only does this contradict previous lore, not only does it render the Tau a boring palette swapped version of the Imperium, it also just defies practical sense. If you're a race like the Tau, who expand primarily through ingratiating yourself with other races and convincing them to join your collective, you'd naturally want as few barriers between potential client races and joining as possible. No human colony is going to voluntarily join the Greater Good if the Tau's version of the Greater Good happens to require that the human population of that planet lose all sense of their heritage and culture through forced reeducation and the abandonment of their faith, and in the long term for that human population to slowly go extinct through gradual forced sterilization and confinement to ghettos and slums.

It's deeply stupid, lazy writing on the part of GW to repair the image of the Tau in the eyes of a fandom who accused the faction of being "too good." Except, uhm, here's the thing: the Tau were never too good to begin with. Lets rewind back to 3rd Edition's Tau Codex, our first introduction to the Tau in the 40k universe. From the very beginning it was very clear that the Utopian idealism of the Tau Empire held beneath the surface a significantly more sinister and malevolent nature, and it all roots from the mysterious and enigmatic fifth caste of Tau Society: the Ethereals.

In 3rd Edition, the Ethereals are spoken of more like mythological beings than the slightly mundane way they exist in modern 40k. All we know about them out of this book is that they are the autocratic leaders of the Tau Empire who inspire radical devotion among the Tau, though are rarely seen or heard from. They reorganized Tau society with pursuit of the Greater Good in mind first. But the specifics of what that means matters a lot. Tau are born into a caste that roughly determines, from birth, what role in society that person will fulfill. Those born into a caste are not allowed to have children with members of other castes, are not allowed to take up any job or position that contradicts the societal purpose of their caste, and generally lack self-determination in regards to things like career choice.

so, bam, the setup for Tau as a flawed and morally ambiguous faction are already present. They're a faction who fight for a better future, for a galaxy where all can exist in harmony with one another, so long as that harmony is kosher by the standards of the Ethereal caste. In that sense they're somewhat similar to the Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A multispecies interstellar collective who seek to create a galaxy harmoniously unified... in service to the Founders. Just taken from this vision of the Tau Empire, they're already an autocratic dictatorship who fight in the name of an ideology that declares itself to be for the greater good of all who ascribe to it while also relying on the assumption that the tyrannical power of the Ethereals must inherently be for the Greater Good. I reject the idea that the Tau were ever "too good" for 40k. Rather that they were written with a realistic level of nuance, with an understanding that dictatorships are built upon cognitive dissonance, not on perfectly consistent virtues.

TL;DR THEY'RE NOT FUCKING COMMUNISTS, THEY LITERALLY HAVE A CASTE SYSTEM, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

Any thoughts on Pebblefoot (Minnowtail's brother)? I had an AU with him when I was 16-ish and I've been weirdly attached to that little nobody ever since

Not too many, he's open to suggestions if he's your blorbo. Here's the downlow on BB!Pebblefoot at the moment though;

One of the VERY first episodes of Po3 is the Shinewater Plague. It's pulled up from TNP, so there's more time to dedicate to the WindClan Civil War.

In coming to help RiverClan with the illness that breaks out as a result of the oilspill, Hollypaw realizes she isn't cut out for the life of a Cleric. She is grossed out by the details of sick cats, and finds herself "in her element" when she's leading and commanding, not caring and nurturing.

Patient Zero of the Shinewater Plague is, famously, Tumblekit. Pebblefoot and Minnowtail's sibling, who Minnow dared to drink the shiny poison.

Pebble unfortunately blames Minnow for this. I see him as kind of a hardass, but also, he's not TOTALLY wrong

He doesn't really like "fun" and has trust issues. A stickler for the rules because, well, he didn't follow the rules once and he lost a littermate and was horrifically sick for a week.

Minnowtail's strained relationship with her surviving brother, plus the guilt she feels for how Tumblekit died, is a contributing factor for why she ends up in the Dark Forest.

And it makes Mousewhisker more attractive to her. He doesn't hold grudges, he's super easygoing and is a little bit vain, in a funny way.

He loves looking like he's tough, liked to mention his mentor Iceheart, generally he thinks he's a coolguy! But he's actually LAME.

And that makes him endearing. Ok toughboy. I don't think toughboys spend 15 minutes adjusting their hair in the reflection of a lake.

Pebblefoot disapproves of this, if he finds out any of this before Mouse eventually joins RiverClan much, much later (probably BB!ASC)

He's not ESTRANGED from Minnowtail, just critical of her and strained. He thinks she makes awful choices and deserves to be confronted about them

Pebblefoot has the sort of personality that will be VERY useful in the Impostor's crusade in BB!TBC.

Funny enough, it's a very similar personality to his grandfather, Swansong. They're confident and kind of rude, but Pebble has different life experience that has caused him to have different political opinions.

His uncle and aunt, Stonestream and Willowshine, are less than a year older than he is. I feel like he's pretty close to Stonestream for some reason.

Pebble's mother Dawnflower claimed Queen’s Rights for her litter. Her mate has a little split in the fur at the end of his tail, which gave Minnow and Pebble a false "flipper"

He was probably a Tribe cat, or maybe a loner. Dawnflower isn't interested in anyone in RiverClan, and lived through TigerClan which has made her not entirely trust the "protection" of the Queen’s Rights.

So she probably didn't even know his name, honestly. Didn't WANT to know it.

Dawn has her family, but going through that situation, seeing her uncle get slaughtered in front of a cheering crowd, having your rebel leader die after refusing to snitch out everyone's names including yours and saving your life...

She's traumatized. Acts in emotional self-defense a lot.

Pebble and Minnow probably grew up very aware of that.

I'm not sure when Pebblefoot dies, but it's probably NOT going to be in the great big storm of BB!ThunderClan's Tempest. I have use for him.

For a painful soulamte au, what if the Dawn Knight was Lilias soulmate? And to make it more painful what if Dawn knew that Lilia was his soulmate somehow and still went to war with the fae because he couldn't stand to go against the family who raised him

Not a soul knew, except for Leia.

Leia knew because she knew everything about him— the leash of loyalty around his neck, the weight of despair upon his shoulders, the mark of his soulmate tattooed like a harbinger on the inside of his wrist.

Leia knew, and loved him for it all the same.

You are a knight, she would remind him on those moonless nights, delicate features as solemn as a saint as she laid her hands against the haunted hollows of his face, as merciful and sweet as her namesake. You are the only one out of them all who has the right to call himself so. What greater sacrifice have you given to my father, to our family, than the cost of love?

He loved her, too.

Her effortless charm and wit were always happy to fill his awkward and stoic silences, and she never shamed him for his reserved nature. She was a princess, born and raised to be a queen, and it sat right inside his heart that she should realize such a vision. Her kindness to their people, her kindness to her traitor of a knight— too kind, to allow him even into her arms and bed when his nerves fail him and the shadows creep in.

It's what he feels, when he places his hand on the swell of her gown, the gentle life growing inside of her: their child, steeped in kindness.

A tragic beginning that can only lead to a tragic end.

Leia is the only kindness that he's ever known, and the irony is not lost on him that she is not his soulmate, nor is he her own. She does not speak of the mark blurred and faded on her skin, and she does not press him for explanation when he disrobes for her and only her, and the bat in flight unfurls its wings upon his wrist.

She does not need to, for they both know whose standard he bears, whose symbol lays a claim that would spell betrayal and doom for his fate.

He lies there within the shelter of her embrace, her slim fingers weaving through his golden hair, and he wonders what manner of mark lies on the fae general's wrist. He wonders if it is of a gleaming sword raised to strike, or a loathsome owl, talons curled, both prepared to rid the fae of his heart and gift it to the enemy's feet. It must not be obvious, because the fae has never reacted to his presence beyond the expected vitriol to their immoral crusade. And each time that they meet, the gratitude of a coward lances through his veins for the sake of the helmet obscuring his expression— it is your eyes that give you away, Leia had murmured to him, her own dark and forgiving as they glitter in the candlelight. Your truest emotions lie within them, crystal clear and as unclouded as the brightest dawn.

He does not deserve her unshakeable belief, for he feels like the muddiest of waters, choked with debris and tainted by waste.

He does not deserve her, and as he clutches at his wrist in the night, nails all but digging into the taut flesh as if to pull the bat from his skin—

He knows that he does not deserve the general either.

Hi! Love your blog! Warhammer is something I've been interested in for a long time. I loved playing the Dawn of War trilogy when I was younger. But the lore and world and sheer amount of games involving W40K is a bit overwhelming. I was wondering if you had some insight on where to "start", especially in terms of learning world lore. Sure I could watch 175 hours of YouTube videos but.....I'd rather not.

Hi, happy to lend a hand!

40k has two main ways of learning lore, the rule books/codices, and novels published by Black Library. The latest edition of core rules (10th edition) released last july and about 50% of that massive tome is background on the setting and various factions competing on the galactic scale. Smaller more faction specific codices have been released this edition for Tyranids, Necrons, Space Marines, Dark Angels, Mechanicus and the Necrons.

Old editions and codices can be bought on ebay or other resellers for pretty cheap if you’re just interested in lore, though i’d personally recommend sticking to 7th edition at the earliest as several now-prominent factions had not been developed before then (Mechanicus, Custodes, Chaos Knights, Leagues of Votann for example all got their first codices in 8th or 9th edition).

Novels set in the 40k universe are available from Black Library publishing directly, or through bookstores or possibly your local library. These are broken into ~3 categories relevant to 40k. 1) The ~50 book Horus Heresy series takes place 10K years prior to the current game setting and explains the speedrun rise and fall of the human Imperium. 2) Dawn of Fire, an 8 book series focused on developing the current 40k setting and the Indomitus Crusade 3) Standalone 40k books which focus on certain events or characters of interest from nearly every faction. Idk what characters or races have caught your interest, but Option 3 has the most diversity, and generally does not require having read one book to understand another. There are small exceptions such as novels about Ahriman, Belisarius Cawl, or the Plague Wars, having multiple books though, so do a quick google search before you purchase. Audiobooks are also available for a significant portion of Black Library’s offerings.

For general wikipedia style link-diving i highly recommend Lexicanum.

Let me know if you have any further questions, happy to help! :D

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade: Campaign Introduction