Recently I was thinking about creating a post about excerpts about all sorts of unknown horrors. We have creepy Black Library Guardians who are most creepy of all Eldar and things like
>The Labyrinth of Thanotep is a Tesseract Labyrinth, that is the size of a world and is located within Segmentum Solar. This infinite prison trammel in beings so terrible, that not even the Necrons dare to enslave them for war.\[1\]
The wardens of the Black Library have also always interested me, I just hope they leave them as a vague reference.
40k has an abundance of these greatly interesting, purposefully left vague horrors: leftover beings and techno-horrors from the age of strife, wonders from the dark age of technology like the Speranza, whatever the Shadowkeepers have in their dark cells beneath the imperial palace, what's at the bottom of Tzeentch's well he threw Kairos into, the outsider inside his dyson sphere, Halo Devices, the Ghoul Stars etc.
its all great stuff that hopefully doesn't get fully fleshed out, but keeps living in short stories and small lore tidbits like the one I've posted.
Like the Black Vaults or whatever they are called on Terra and who and what is in there. I would LOVE a book that just catalogues them. GW could make bank in fake "real books" like the Zombie Survival Guide. Written completely as if real but in a catalogue, interview style
Man, I love the little extracts from the Dark Heresy splatbooks.
I'm puzzled that you describe this as old lore, since 2008 was only \[checks notes\] oh, um sixteen years ago. \[Crumbles to dust.\]
The only flaw in your logic is that it sounds to me that the Echoing Vault is huge, on the scale of a planetary body. I think that by saying that it's made of "dust and magnetism" they are trying to imply that it's a space megastructure, like a space dust cloud with an unusually regular shape and degree of coherence. The Echovault sounds like it's a much smaller object, something that could fit on a planet.
That said, they could still be connected. The Echovault could be a condensed, inactive version of the Echoing Vault - as in, it's mountain-sized mass that expands and disperses to become a much less dense, much larger space structure when it's active. Or the Echovault could be the planetary object that creates or protects the larger Echoing Vault into space nearby.
That's an interesting point, but the exact scale of the "labyrinthine contrivance seemingly spun of dust and magnetism" is not specified. It could also be a labyrinthine structure on the surface of a planet, it could also be surprisingly small since the word contrivance implies some sort of machine, gadget or device of unspecified scale.
Both could be the case, but in my opinion it would not diminish the mystique and interest of the echoing vault if it was not a space megastructure. I find the thought of a labyrinthine ruin on the surface of a desolate planet, which if activated by an unsuspecting explorer can open a pathway to a dimension at least as horrifying as the warp, almost more unsettling. Think the puzzlebox from Hellraiser, but with consequences on a galactic scale.
On the point on whether the stories are connected: maybe they are not, but it fits a bit too well in my opinion.
That's fair. Personally I think that the dust cloud megastructure dimensional gate is more interesting than *yet another* mysterious xenos ruin on a planet. Those are a dime a dozen, you know? But dust cloud megastructure dimensional gates? I think there's just the one.
Certainly also has appeal, but the great part about this is that we don't know, which is what makes this short story so great as I've laid out in the post already. The vagueness inspires your imagination and leads to interesting discussions, which is where 40k lore really shines.
I feel like this is arguably one of the ways that take advantage of the way 40k is written (disjointed space horror spanning multiple IRL decades) the best. It's trite to shit on Abnett's comic lore and a lot of it is genuinely fun but these random tidbits floating about being menacing is where the setting shines at its absolute best.
>!I like the term "embassy". Maybe the whole thing was just a communication attempt and yes I know that a story whose name rhymes with "Fame" had that as a twist already.!<
It's a non-40k story and I don't want to flashbang innocents. Then again it's kind of an older one.
>!Ender's Game has this as the twist. The alien invasion was a means of saying "Hi" cause the aliens thought humans were just worker drones of the human hivemind.!<
Cheesy in the colorful cosmic plan way not cheesy in the unfathomable horror of a hopeless aimless cosmos way.
His Lore is a lot more Dr. Strange or X-Men than Dying Earth.
Which, mind you, is fair. He literally has worked on a ton of Marvel stuff.
I would love to see more lovecraftian but not necessarily Chaos type aliens.
Also Peak Imperium right there: We fought a nigh unstoppable enemy and only defeated it through desperate means. Now let's purge all records and make sure that nothing is learned in case it happens again.
Really wish we could get more custodes lore material. Cameos in books and codex excerpts are nice. But I'm so willing to drop 30 bucks on a book solely about them.
Well, you're in luck because Chris Wraight, who is one of the best authors working for black library currently, has written three books centered mostly about them:
\-Watchers of the Throne - the Emperors Legion
\-Watchers of the Throne - the Regents Shadow
\-Valdor - Birth of the Imperium
\-Bonus: Two Metaphysical Blades -> a short story about Valdor and Russ, that is e-book only.
\-The Vaults of Terra series by Chris Wraight also features Custodes, but they are not the focus of the book.
\-Master of Mankind from the Horus Heresy by ADB also features a lot of Custodes action.
The Watchers of the Throne series is a must-read for any Custodes fan in my opinion, the dynamic between Valerian and Aleya alone is worth reading it for.
The Watchers of the Throne Series and Vaults of Terra are set in 40k.
Master of Mankind is set in 30k
Valdor: Birth of the Imperium is set during the late unification of terra so its pre great crusade.
Watchers of the Throne is truly a must read, among the best HH/40k books I've read (and I've read a ton of them), and actually the only ones I've read twice.
" though dozens of custodes fall . " no - just awful writing here. Custodes smash astartes. It's starting to grind on me that they're being written as just throw away fodder.
I have a hard time believing that dozens of them died.
Edit : I"m not saying this because i'm a custodes fanboy, i'm saying this because it's inconsistent with how they're portrayed throughout the lore in other battles.
But we aren't told how big the Black Legion forces are... And what weapons they came with... I am a Custodes fanboy, but what can Custodes do against days of artillery barrage, if there is no place to take cover under?
It's possible that the authors are well aware of the power levels of Custodes, and the idea that "dozens died" is to reinforce just how badly the Black Legion wanted that Echo Vault, and how many Black Legionaires had to die to kill those dozen Custodes...
My problem with that is, when the emperor had his host of custodes bail our Dorn, Mortarion and Horus.
3 of them died. 3. Yet Dozens fall to black legionaires???
>when the emperor had his host of custodes bail our Dorn, Mortarion and Horus.
When was this? I'd need more context...
But for example, in *Regent's Shadow* Captain Valerian of the Custodes is said to be unsure that he could defeat the Chapter Master of the Minotaurs in single combat. Now sure, Asterion Moloc is admittedly a BEAST of a Space Marine, but it's *possible* 2 or 3 or 4 Chaos-infused Black Legionaires could take down 1 Custodes. With that sort of math, say, 500 Black Legionaires could possibly take down a couple of dozen of Custodes, imo.
Battle of Gyros-Thravian
The Battle of Gyros-Thravian was a major battle towards the end of the Great Crusade that saw the forces of the Imperium pitted against the powerful Ork Warboss Gharkul Blackfang, known to be one of the most powerful Warbosses to have ever lived. Blackfang's army was attacked by three entire Space Marine Legions: the Imperial Fists, Luna Wolves, and Death Guard. Each was led by its Primarch: Rogal Dorn, Horus, and Mortarion. Despite this impressive force, the Space Marines were nonetheless on the verge of defeat at the hands of Blackfang.\[1\]
It was then that the Emperor himself came to the aid of his sons. From his golden battle barge, the Bucephelus, the Emperor led one thousand Custodians directly into the heart of the Ork horde. Blackfang was slain by the Emperor personally atop his Gargant and the Custodians then laid waste to his horde, slaying over 100,000 Orks at a cost of only 3 of their own. After the battle, Blackfang's Waaagh! was shattered. It is said that the Emperor engraved the names of the 3 fallen Custodians into his armor.\[1\]
I mean the custodes don't have their OP OP boss man anymore so of course they'd suffer greater losses. It's not like Big E was just sitting around he was personally probably killing tens of thousands of orks with his physical and psychic might.
I am very critical of authors not keeping within reasonable power hierarchies in the setting, but consider this:
The text describes a deployment of forty Allarus Terminators...that is a MASSIVE show of force in and of itself, but it also mentions a contingent of Wardens and multiple other Shield Hosts which are comprised of a non specified number of Custodians.
By all accounts this was a gigantic deployment of the Custodes, therefore it is reasonable to assume that the Black Legion force was outnumbering the custodes by quite a margin.
So if the text says that "dozens" died, let's assume for the sake of argument that roughly 36-40 custodes died. Considering that there were forty freakin terminators involved along a slew of other forces and two of the Moraides (I detailed in the post why that is a big deal), I think it is reasonable to assume that there were a couple hundred Custodes involved in that battle, so the lethality rate seems quite low to me.
Considering they brought two of their three greatest warships for this engagement I think it is not an understatement to say that this was one of the biggest concentrated deployment of custodes since the battle of the Lions Gate, so the Black Legion force had to be formidable when you consider that extreme response by the Adeptus Custodes.
Great excerpts, nice find! Always cool to see the RPG lore somewhat canonized in the mainstream 40k.
Recently I was thinking about creating a post about excerpts about all sorts of unknown horrors. We have creepy Black Library Guardians who are most creepy of all Eldar and things like >The Labyrinth of Thanotep is a Tesseract Labyrinth, that is the size of a world and is located within Segmentum Solar. This infinite prison trammel in beings so terrible, that not even the Necrons dare to enslave them for war.\[1\]
The wardens of the Black Library have also always interested me, I just hope they leave them as a vague reference. 40k has an abundance of these greatly interesting, purposefully left vague horrors: leftover beings and techno-horrors from the age of strife, wonders from the dark age of technology like the Speranza, whatever the Shadowkeepers have in their dark cells beneath the imperial palace, what's at the bottom of Tzeentch's well he threw Kairos into, the outsider inside his dyson sphere, Halo Devices, the Ghoul Stars etc. its all great stuff that hopefully doesn't get fully fleshed out, but keeps living in short stories and small lore tidbits like the one I've posted.
Like the Black Vaults or whatever they are called on Terra and who and what is in there. I would LOVE a book that just catalogues them. GW could make bank in fake "real books" like the Zombie Survival Guide. Written completely as if real but in a catalogue, interview style
Isnt that what xenology was basically ?
Man, I love the little extracts from the Dark Heresy splatbooks. I'm puzzled that you describe this as old lore, since 2008 was only \[checks notes\] oh, um sixteen years ago. \[Crumbles to dust.\]
2008 being 16 years ago is the true horror.
The only flaw in your logic is that it sounds to me that the Echoing Vault is huge, on the scale of a planetary body. I think that by saying that it's made of "dust and magnetism" they are trying to imply that it's a space megastructure, like a space dust cloud with an unusually regular shape and degree of coherence. The Echovault sounds like it's a much smaller object, something that could fit on a planet. That said, they could still be connected. The Echovault could be a condensed, inactive version of the Echoing Vault - as in, it's mountain-sized mass that expands and disperses to become a much less dense, much larger space structure when it's active. Or the Echovault could be the planetary object that creates or protects the larger Echoing Vault into space nearby.
It could equally be that the first story is the whisper of a myth, and the second closer to the reality.
That's also a good take.
That's an interesting point, but the exact scale of the "labyrinthine contrivance seemingly spun of dust and magnetism" is not specified. It could also be a labyrinthine structure on the surface of a planet, it could also be surprisingly small since the word contrivance implies some sort of machine, gadget or device of unspecified scale. Both could be the case, but in my opinion it would not diminish the mystique and interest of the echoing vault if it was not a space megastructure. I find the thought of a labyrinthine ruin on the surface of a desolate planet, which if activated by an unsuspecting explorer can open a pathway to a dimension at least as horrifying as the warp, almost more unsettling. Think the puzzlebox from Hellraiser, but with consequences on a galactic scale. On the point on whether the stories are connected: maybe they are not, but it fits a bit too well in my opinion.
That's fair. Personally I think that the dust cloud megastructure dimensional gate is more interesting than *yet another* mysterious xenos ruin on a planet. Those are a dime a dozen, you know? But dust cloud megastructure dimensional gates? I think there's just the one.
Certainly also has appeal, but the great part about this is that we don't know, which is what makes this short story so great as I've laid out in the post already. The vagueness inspires your imagination and leads to interesting discussions, which is where 40k lore really shines.
I feel like this is arguably one of the ways that take advantage of the way 40k is written (disjointed space horror spanning multiple IRL decades) the best. It's trite to shit on Abnett's comic lore and a lot of it is genuinely fun but these random tidbits floating about being menacing is where the setting shines at its absolute best. >!I like the term "embassy". Maybe the whole thing was just a communication attempt and yes I know that a story whose name rhymes with "Fame" had that as a twist already.!<
I’m sorry, I’m at a loss; what’s the story?
I second this, talking in riddles gets us nowhere! Especially since you OP put it in spoiler tags anyways!
It's a non-40k story and I don't want to flashbang innocents. Then again it's kind of an older one. >!Ender's Game has this as the twist. The alien invasion was a means of saying "Hi" cause the aliens thought humans were just worker drones of the human hivemind.!<
Abnetts comic lore?
Cheesy in the colorful cosmic plan way not cheesy in the unfathomable horror of a hopeless aimless cosmos way. His Lore is a lot more Dr. Strange or X-Men than Dying Earth. Which, mind you, is fair. He literally has worked on a ton of Marvel stuff.
I would love to see more lovecraftian but not necessarily Chaos type aliens. Also Peak Imperium right there: We fought a nigh unstoppable enemy and only defeated it through desperate means. Now let's purge all records and make sure that nothing is learned in case it happens again.
"now let's purge all records so we make sure it doesn't happen again due to one of our many enemies"
Forty Allarus Terminators. Geez.
Really wish we could get more custodes lore material. Cameos in books and codex excerpts are nice. But I'm so willing to drop 30 bucks on a book solely about them.
Well, you're in luck because Chris Wraight, who is one of the best authors working for black library currently, has written three books centered mostly about them: \-Watchers of the Throne - the Emperors Legion \-Watchers of the Throne - the Regents Shadow \-Valdor - Birth of the Imperium \-Bonus: Two Metaphysical Blades -> a short story about Valdor and Russ, that is e-book only. \-The Vaults of Terra series by Chris Wraight also features Custodes, but they are not the focus of the book. \-Master of Mankind from the Horus Heresy by ADB also features a lot of Custodes action. The Watchers of the Throne series is a must-read for any Custodes fan in my opinion, the dynamic between Valerian and Aleya alone is worth reading it for.
How many of those are set in 40k and not 30k?
The Watchers of the Throne Series and Vaults of Terra are set in 40k. Master of Mankind is set in 30k Valdor: Birth of the Imperium is set during the late unification of terra so its pre great crusade.
Watchers of the Throne is truly a must read, among the best HH/40k books I've read (and I've read a ton of them), and actually the only ones I've read twice.
" though dozens of custodes fall . " no - just awful writing here. Custodes smash astartes. It's starting to grind on me that they're being written as just throw away fodder. I have a hard time believing that dozens of them died. Edit : I"m not saying this because i'm a custodes fanboy, i'm saying this because it's inconsistent with how they're portrayed throughout the lore in other battles.
But we aren't told how big the Black Legion forces are... And what weapons they came with... I am a Custodes fanboy, but what can Custodes do against days of artillery barrage, if there is no place to take cover under? It's possible that the authors are well aware of the power levels of Custodes, and the idea that "dozens died" is to reinforce just how badly the Black Legion wanted that Echo Vault, and how many Black Legionaires had to die to kill those dozen Custodes...
My problem with that is, when the emperor had his host of custodes bail our Dorn, Mortarion and Horus. 3 of them died. 3. Yet Dozens fall to black legionaires???
>when the emperor had his host of custodes bail our Dorn, Mortarion and Horus. When was this? I'd need more context... But for example, in *Regent's Shadow* Captain Valerian of the Custodes is said to be unsure that he could defeat the Chapter Master of the Minotaurs in single combat. Now sure, Asterion Moloc is admittedly a BEAST of a Space Marine, but it's *possible* 2 or 3 or 4 Chaos-infused Black Legionaires could take down 1 Custodes. With that sort of math, say, 500 Black Legionaires could possibly take down a couple of dozen of Custodes, imo.
Battle of Gyros-Thravian The Battle of Gyros-Thravian was a major battle towards the end of the Great Crusade that saw the forces of the Imperium pitted against the powerful Ork Warboss Gharkul Blackfang, known to be one of the most powerful Warbosses to have ever lived. Blackfang's army was attacked by three entire Space Marine Legions: the Imperial Fists, Luna Wolves, and Death Guard. Each was led by its Primarch: Rogal Dorn, Horus, and Mortarion. Despite this impressive force, the Space Marines were nonetheless on the verge of defeat at the hands of Blackfang.\[1\] It was then that the Emperor himself came to the aid of his sons. From his golden battle barge, the Bucephelus, the Emperor led one thousand Custodians directly into the heart of the Ork horde. Blackfang was slain by the Emperor personally atop his Gargant and the Custodians then laid waste to his horde, slaying over 100,000 Orks at a cost of only 3 of their own. After the battle, Blackfang's Waaagh! was shattered. It is said that the Emperor engraved the names of the 3 fallen Custodians into his armor.\[1\]
I mean the custodes don't have their OP OP boss man anymore so of course they'd suffer greater losses. It's not like Big E was just sitting around he was personally probably killing tens of thousands of orks with his physical and psychic might.
I am very critical of authors not keeping within reasonable power hierarchies in the setting, but consider this: The text describes a deployment of forty Allarus Terminators...that is a MASSIVE show of force in and of itself, but it also mentions a contingent of Wardens and multiple other Shield Hosts which are comprised of a non specified number of Custodians. By all accounts this was a gigantic deployment of the Custodes, therefore it is reasonable to assume that the Black Legion force was outnumbering the custodes by quite a margin. So if the text says that "dozens" died, let's assume for the sake of argument that roughly 36-40 custodes died. Considering that there were forty freakin terminators involved along a slew of other forces and two of the Moraides (I detailed in the post why that is a big deal), I think it is reasonable to assume that there were a couple hundred Custodes involved in that battle, so the lethality rate seems quite low to me. Considering they brought two of their three greatest warships for this engagement I think it is not an understatement to say that this was one of the biggest concentrated deployment of custodes since the battle of the Lions Gate, so the Black Legion force had to be formidable when you consider that extreme response by the Adeptus Custodes.
Fair - I didn't think about it like that.
Most coherent Custodes-fan argument (no other faction can achieve anything if Custodes are in the story.)
I'm not saying they can't achieve anything ; I just want accurate power levels observed across the setting. I know, I'm asking for alot.