We break down the book and discuss:

• Satire that works, and when propaganda is actually good for you

• Immersion vs self insertion vs theory of mind

• Friend-enemy distinctions and existential stakes

• The sanctity of the human form and the benefit of pumping it full of super soldier chemicals

• Duels, honor culture, and the desirability of a worthy foe.

*Yes, we know Inquisitor DeAnna sounds like he’s speaking from the back of a cave. It’s called ambiance.

If you liked this episode and would like to see more, subscribe so you don’t miss a show!

Subscribe now

-The eternal nature-v-nurture debate

-Blood, genes, and destiny at the point of conception

-The changing form and role of the father for their aging children

-responsibility, duty, and answering the call to action

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Back in the HateShed, we sat down to discuss faith and belief as it applies to the setting of 40k, our world, the strength it gives in both cases, and the inherent need humans have for structures of belief.

Subscribe now

-SW fans are boob-nervous furries

-The disconnect between early lore and later portrayals

-Yet more reasons why the Heresy should never have been made explicit

-GW’s inability to portray European culture when genuinely attempting to do so vs their accidental reiteration of western canon when trying to avoid it

And more!

Share

Subscribe now

-The plot, generally

-The illuminated life of an Imperial hive citizen, and why it is, in many ways, better than our world today

-How dissent, resentment, and ultimately corruption emerge in a society

-The role and fate of traitors

-Why are foids always Tyranid players, and how their ravenous uncontrolled simulacrums of children (‘nids) pair with their ravenous uncontrolled simulacrums of children (pitbulls)

And more!

Share

-the place of the Ordos in Imperial society

-Sovereignty, who has it, and what it means

-the mantle of nobility being synonymous with the mantle of sacrifice

-Eisenhorn posting

-How much does the knowledge of corruption sway you? Is it inevitable to become corrupted yourself?

And more!

-Big E confirmed as a deity, fighting other gods in the Warp.

-The origin and power of deities, in this world and ours

-The development of the greater myth and how it brings meaning to individual sacrifice

-The begrudging and (unconscious) inclusion of folk soul in the developing 40k mythos

and a lot more!

-Story vs Myth vs Narrative

-GW hates their fans (again)

-What it means to be an IP company and what that means to us

-Why AoS is garbage

And more!

-The origins of Chaos, including its intent

-why Mikey Moorcock is dumb and wrong

-stealing saintly relics via the holy prison wallet

-why purpose is a greater antidote than order

-feudalism vs fascism in the Imperium

-the duty to protect innocence

and more!

-Adepticon news, 11th edition, new models, new rules speculation etc

-replacing good characters (men) with new bad characters (foids)

-incompetence, malice, stupidity, or spite? A GW question

-The end times might be ending again?

And a lot more!

-The longstanding lore and tabletop rules of IG regiments being uniquely meaningful

-Humans as the principle bulwark of the Imperium

-The continued consequences of Marvelizing the setting

-The loss of the old/midhammer culture of creativity, DIY, and the true nature of the hobby

-Why this keeps happening; spite, ineptitude, or apathy?

-And more!

In today’s show, Inquisitor Kevin and I discuss:

-The role of the gang in social orders and as a necessity in patriarchal culture

-The nature of loyalty, to one’s brothers, one’s leaders, and ideals, and when each go wrong

-Hives, gangs, and recruitment from within

-Who rules, how, and by what right

-Rants, diatribes, and crass humor generally

Share GrimdarkEnlightenment

-How “progress” destroys the setting

-The nature of a stagnant society and its opportunity for heroism

-Retconé Guilliman and Belisarius Lols

-The death of consequence in a setting defined by consequences

-And More!

-Big E, his depiction in early vs late works
-The trouble with portraying mythic characters
-Power, it’s use, and why western culture avoids it thematically
-Women generally, abortions specifically
-And more!

The decline of the spirit, setting, and underlying philosophy of 40K is undeniable, and already frequently addressed. Throwing the Imperium itself under the bus in the lore was a major marker that those charged with this IP at GW had lost the plot, and they still haven’t managed to find it again.

In my constant declarations that WE must become the new and rightful stewards of this hobby, it bears stating that this goes far beyond lore, new animations, new models, etc. It must be a holistic approach, encompassing all aspects of the scene. There’s already great work being done by Space Shark and friends at White Shark Magazine, an excellent hobby-focused quarterly publication that has the feel of the much earlier hobby zines, combined with short fiction and artwork, all from those on the right side of things.

We will be attempting to cover another angle, specific to 40K: the gameplay itself, its evolution, and a distillation of the original intent from the spirit presented within these tomes. I’ll be examining the path from the original OldHammer, to my beloved MidHammer, and the changes and decisions made that led us to this current state of affairs (5th ed+, though I might be a bit more generous by the end of this series).

It’s not a revolutionary statement to anyone that’s played the tabletop that GW writes and balances their rules in orbit of the tournament scene, but this wasn’t always the case. So much has been lost through the march of time and churn of editions; too often I see people in the scene laboring to recreate something from first principles, when it’s already been done (and done well, in many cases) in previous editions!

To be clear, this is in no way a dig at new players, new fans, or newcomers to the lore or hobby in general; the goal is to preserve the culture, setting, and feel of the Dark Age of 40K-ology. It’s certainly not your fault that so much flavor, character, narrative expression, and simple thematic cool shit has been purged from the rulebooks and codexes over the decades. I want to put it back in your hands!

What’s more, all these older edition rulebooks and codexes are easily found and downloaded as scanned pdf files online, freeing you from the moral quandary of giving your money to a company who actively hates you. Combined with the proliferation of 3d printing, excellent alternative sculpts as well as recasts, all available to order without needing to invest in a printing setup yourself, it’s never been cheaper to get into the hobby!

No, seriously, 14 year old me trying to recast old Stormtrooper models, and the then-new Steel Legion infantry, with plaster of paris and melted lead fishing weights would’ve killed for this.

With our course set out ahead of us, and some much larger yet-to-be-announced goals in mind, we’ve got one more point to establish:What the hell is our benchmark?

Without a common point of comparison, how do we analyze these changes, their impact on the game, and their impact on the scene? Personally, I’ve always found that the 1st iteration of a thing most closely captures its true spirit; later edits and revisions may be technically better or more efficient, but the feel and original intent come across most clearly in the original documents. With that in mind, we’ll all start at the beginning, at the 1st iteration of our hobby. So, without further adieu, here’s Rogue Trader circa 1987*

*I’m certain this has been done before, and certainly done better than I will; there’s nothing new under the sun. Frankly, I don’t give a shit. The intent is much more than a longitudinal rules analysis, and growing the collective understanding of how and why this culture was derailed is a crucial step in rebuilding it for ourselves and for future Chud posterity.

Share

++ INTRODUCTORY BLATHERINGS ++

Revealed in 1986 and fully released at Games Day Nov 10 1987, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader was the first complete science fiction offering from GW. It filled a strange space between a TTRPG and a full wargame. For those unaware, GW got their real beginnings by being the licensed importer and distributor of D&D and other TSR products, opening their first shop in 1978. Their focus was nearly exclusively RPG’s before they pivoted the other way into wargaming, although much could be said about the crossover between OD&D and wargaming via Chainmail*.

*That’s a discussion for another time, but for now it’s enough to know that D&D was a roleplaying supplement for wargames, and Warhammer Fantasy Battles was a wargame drawn out of the resultant RPG scene. That WHFB was mathematically near-identical to Chainmail is a discussion for yet one more another time…

From the onset, 40K is described as distinct from typical wargaming culture and convention, instead being a “game that lets you create all kinds of exciting, futuristic adventures on a tabletop.” It assumed the use of a gamemaster (GM), filling the same role as a Dungeon Master would in D&D, a system the writers were well familiar with, even proposing styles of play where multiple players cooperate against the GM. What’s more, the game mechanics were not yet fully cemented on a d6 system, requiring polyhedral dice from a d4’s to d20’s

Even the organization of this rulebook itself is referential to the 3 book system of the original white-box of OD&D with each major section listed as a “book” in the table of contents: “Book” 1: Combat (Volume 1: Men & Magic), “Book” 2: Equipment (Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure), and “Book” 3: The Age of the Imperium (Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures), with an added “Book” 4: The Advanced Gamer (AD&D anyone?)

The included tables and instructions for randomized units, their chances of having each type of equipment, and 5 pages just on generating mutants, with an initial d100 table and many subsequent sub-tables, is something you’d never see the like of in later editions, but would feel right at home at a table of gamers of the day.

The points cost section reads much more like buying equipment, goods, and services in a roleplaying game than what we’re likely familiar with in 40K (especially today, don’t get me started on free wargear…). Even included here are points costs modifiers for making your own units/monsters/xenos/special characters, and prebuilt “level” scaling statlines for champions, minor heroes, and major heroes. Almost like playing an RPG with hirelings and henchmen at the domain-play level. Hmm…

Plug #2 to play OD&D with Chainmail, it’s the best way to play!

Anyways, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this thing.

++ RULES ANALYSIS ++

The statline would be very recognizable today, with a few exceptions. For those newer players, the original iterations of ballistic/weapon skill was given as a score, not as a listed “to hit” number adopted in 8th edition. This was a “higher is better” system that offered some interesting interactions, if not the most intuitive. Initiative is another stat that may be unfamiliar, and dictates combat order in melee, as opposed to the simple charge/attacker/defender mechanics also adopted in 8th edition, along with a few others that feel more at home in a roleplaying game than what most of us are familiar with from Warhammer.

The turn sequence has also stayed relatively concrete over the years: move, shoot, fight, followed by a second “reserve move” phase, psionics (psychic phase), closed down with Rallying and Morale.

Movement was heavily tied to equipment, more so than the Heavy weapon trait we know today. Armor and weaponry had direct movement reductions using an encumbrance system that would be much more familiar to players of AD&D. Turning would count against your movement after an initial free 90º, as individual unit facing and firing arcs mattered quite a bit. Terrain imposes movement penalties as expected, though with an already slow moving game, this can reduce units to an absolute crawl. Infantry feels punitively slow, while most vehicles are excessively fast. It’s almost as if they were on to something…

The cover system was fairly simple, as far as cover systems go, and was very intuitive. Cover was split between hard and soft cover, i.e. cover and concealment, and imposed a negative modifier on the Hit roll (how sensible!) instead of affecting an armor save. Likewise, true line of sight was used between models, with enough discretion left to the players and the GM to make battlefield terrain effective and enjoyable, even if you didn’t own $500 of L-shaped ruins, weird pipelines, and conex boxes.

Overall, it feels much less like “memorize these hyper specific and regulated mechanics” than “if that were me, how might my shot be affected”. For someone who has played far, far more games of OD&D, Chainmail, and other independent TTRPGs than 40k in the last 5 years, this is actually quite refreshing, though not surprising. Given the origins and design inspiration of this game, the “do what makes sense” approach fits a good natured, but still possibly competitive, game between people who know and like each other (gasp!).

Subscribe now

Alongside these shockingly reasonable cover and line of sight mechanics were a similarly reasonable set of situational modifiers. Your shots would become harder or easier to land based on your range, target size, target speed, and certain weapon traits. While this system could slow down a game with more “modern” model counts, players who actually bothered to read, rather than skim, the rules could still breeze through a shooting phase with relative ease, but with much more strategic depth and thematic flavor.

Continuing this stream of sensible writing is the to-wound matrix. No, we’re not on a true equal/over/under/double/half scale. It’s similar, but creates far fewer “magic numbers” than needing a strength twice the target’s toughness to wound on 2’s. Also of note is that weak weapons simply could not harm tough targets! I’m sorry, but a lasgun has no business putting a wound on a landraider, ever.

Also, why do vehicles have toughness values? Or even “wounds”? And not, say, an armor value that changes based on its facing, and a results table with varying effects? That’s a solution for future editions!

Saving throws are quite simple and remain familiar to players of all editions. Yes, you’ve been hit, yes, it hurts…maybe. Roll to find out. Interestingly, the armor penetration mechanic here is more similar to modern 40k than it is to my beloved MidHammer; weapons simply provide a modifier to the saving throw value.

Blast Weapons (here called Area Weapons) used a template and scatter system, with larger blast templates having an increased chance of scattering off target. This was before we had our beloved scatter dice, so deviation was determined by nominating one direction as the 12 o’clock position and rolling a d12, plus a d6 to establish distance.

Even here, parameters are in place to prevent wildly improbable swings; a few finer points are added in the rules that enhance the gameplay for those that bother to remember them. These are somewhat offset by still needing to roll to hit for each model touched by the blast- oh, uh, area marker, but because cover affects the To Hit roll, I can understand it.

Those who came after the death of flame templates will never know joy of the perfect table-slapper

Those fortunate few who came up on the OG editions didn’t have to wait till Cityfight in 2001 to realize the increased effect of lobbing a grenade into a room (or vehicle!). All occupants within are automatically hit by area weapons, and likely vaporized in an awesome wave of overpressure.

“So cover wasn’t always good? Tactical decisions actually matter??”

Speaking of buildings, the rules for urban combat feel like almost like a dungeon crawl, with the GM having designed the interior of larger structures and describing it to the players as they move room to room, playing out combats on a side table away from the main action as needed. The building terrain on the table wasn’t necessarily considered to scale, but representative of a separate area that could be utilized in greater depth.

What’s more, buildings are destroyable objects, with their own toughness and wounds (called damage here) characteristics based on their construction. Individual sections of wall can also be shot/smashed through, allowing troops to move/fire into the interior, as well as values for doors and bulkheads. And yes, collapsed buildings and building sections have a good chance of killing anyone inside/on top of them.

Annoyed at an opponent’s squad holding down a rockcrete bunker? You could one shot it with a Krak Missile! Collapse a hab unit with an autocannon! Destroy an improvised defensive position with sustained bolter fire!

Another interesting bit is the ability to target riders and their means of conveyance deliberately at shorter ranges, and randomizing between them at greater distances, a nice touch that values movement and positioning as a key element rather than raw firepower alone, although I can imagine the frustration of a crack missile (this is before the Krak epidemic) vaporizing an Ork in the back of a truck rather than blowing the whole vehicle apart.

Melee has always been a major part of the game from its inception; charges were still the way into glorious fisticuffs. The charged model(s) is free to make reaction fire, shooting at the incoming enemy, or flee. It’s important to note here the distinction between models and units; not all models in a unit must charge, and not all must flee, creating some strange coherency-breaking interactions unless the tried and true daisy chain of improbable coherency is implemented.

Something that stands out sharply here is that the Attacks characteristic of a model is applied per weapon, so instead of simply gaining an extra attack for two melee weapons or a melee weapon and a pistol, you get your attack characteristic with each weapon

Initiative mattered a great deal in this edition, and for two decades to come, strictly dictating the order attacks were resolved in. If your models died before their initiative was reached, too bad. If you charged, but had lower initiative, too bad. Charging would confer a positive modifier to your To Hit roll however, which is great because even equally matched, striking your opponent was hard (5+!). Also included is a series of additional modifiers to your attack rolls, the base result needed determined by comparing your Weapon Skill to the target’s as opposed to a flat “to hit score”.

After each round of combat, a victor is declared, and any models still in base contact on the losing side are forced back or can be routed, and satisfactorily cut down as they flee in classic wargame fashion.

Like Fleeing, psychological effects are very much in play, yet another holdover from the RPG games that clearly influenced the early Warhammer offerings, ranging from confusion, to fear, to frenzy, to hatred. While some units and monsters would inflict these effects on their own, there is a host of racial modifiers and proclivities included later, and differing weapons, equipment, and abilities frequently trigger these effects.

The following sections are a bit of a fucking mess, not helped by being split up between “Books” 1&2 for no real reason, but anyways, on to vehicles! Vehicle stat blocks represent only the vehicle, with the exception of Dreadnaughts, as the pilot/gunner/passengers may freely enter or leave any eligible vehicle as desired. Interestingly, vehicles do not have a simple movement score, but an Acceleration score (how fast they can increase or decrease their speed in a given turn) and a Maximum Speed (take a guess here). Combined with these more unique (and realistic) characteristics is the vehicle’s Turning Radius. With a few specific exceptions, land vehicles “wheel” as they turn, around a radius equal to their current speed of travel. The Turning Radius stat is a modifier that is multiplied by the current speed to give the minimum turning radius at any given time. How…reasonable?

Vehicles have Toughness and Damage (wounds) scores, as well as saves just like all other objects you can interact with in game (I’m still in love with blowing up buildings). While destroyed outright when reduced to zero Damage, each turn a vehicle takes any damage it rolls a d6, with cumulative modifiers; on a 6 it must roll on a table of special effects that diminish the vehicles effectiveness, or even outright destroy it.

My only objection here is that the special damage effects are a d10 roll, not a 2d6. This makes each outcome equally likely (if unique to a single number), while the weighted curve of a 2d6 table still allows for dramatic results while utilizing normative probability. Anyways…

Collisions also have their own rules, which are again a bit clunky, but very interactive and confer a lot of options to creative players. The vehicle’s speed, toughness, and the toughness of whatever it hits (remember, terrain features have Toughness values) are considered then damage is rolled for.

In a blaze of thematic glory, a Land Raider (which here only had a 5+ save!) could smash through the front of a building and deposit its cargo of Space Marines inside to deal with the Orkish menace within

A vehicle’s maximum loadout of equipment and weaponry can be determined by its Equipment and Weapon scores; they can select (or randomize) from the same equipment table presented later in the book, with weapons of different magnitude scaling in weapon “points” cost against its total weapon score, allowing some bizarre combinations

Curiously, the “Vehicle” section ends here (pg.41), then picks back up in “Book” 2 (pg 100), part of a trend of formatting issues present in this book. In this later section, the specific rules for differing vehicle types, from wheeled to tracked, bikes to burrowers, hoverers, flyers, and walkers (these are neither Dreadnaughts nor robots. Yes, robots, we’ll get there) are presented, along with information on firing arcs for the first time, and samples and design templates for each vehicle “type”. Also curious is that the stat blocks for vehicles are presented differently between the initial vehicle section, and the actual vehicle lists, but these oversights don’t limit the understanding of the intent.

Can you imagine ANYTHING like this being printed in a GW publication today?

Flyers, which didn’t reappear in the core rules for another 25 years are also present, and also a bit clunky. They wheel while moving, much like vehicles, and have the added stat of a minimum speed they must maintain without crashing. They fly at altitude “bands”, called height levels, that add arbitrary range to attacks in a way satisfactorily explained away, although I can vividly hear the arguments in the writing room in favor of requiring basic geometry to calculate the true range.

I’m on team pythagorean theorem here, make these fuckers Mathhammer!

Altitude also grants advantage in flyer vs flyer dogfights, and disadvantages the accuracy of “dropped” items, which curiously function differently from normal scatter rules. Also included are some marginally effective rules for melee combat between flyers, and between flyers and ground targets, as well as collision rules similar to ground based vehicles.

Now something strange to anyone familiar with current lore, or even the past few decades of it: fully autonomous robots. There’s a whole goddamn section on robots, with their own quirky and clunky rules, also curiously split in two parts between pg. 42-43 and pg. 116-119, and also with different information presented in the stat blocks of each section, They’re described as commonplace, fully autonomous, and a part of everyday life, though this and much more was later altered in subsequent materials from the time.

So how weird were these robots? Pretty fucking weird. They have the statlines of normal creatures, but damage characteristics of vehicles, with their own special damage effects table to roll on like vehicles, and Equipment and Weapon scores as well to cap their loadout. And while they have an Intelligence score like typical creatures, it doesn’t limit their equipment usage, it’s their actual hardware’s intelligence. The controlling player would have to write down the movement orders of direction and distance for their robot a turn in advance, up to three turns in advance depending on how low its Int.

In later “support” in White Dwarf 104, robots were standardized along Legio Cybernetica guidelines in class and design limitations. Their pre-written orders could be replaced by a programming flowchart of behavior, designed pre game, and followed to the letter, to potentially disastrous consequences. While clunky and unfriendly to the youth and tournament targeted audience today, it’s a pretty damn cool game mechanic!

This score also restricted its firing arc, all the way down to 22.5º for low Int machines, and was crucial for reducing instances of friendly fire. See, you didn’t get to choose targets either, they shot the closest eligible enemy model within their arc. If you had a friendly model in that arc and were closer than the enemy, you had to make an Int check or your robot hosed your own men! Surely, these limitations would make their points cost lower when it comes to designing robots? Nope! They’d be costed just the same as a custom-made, fully sentient, non-retarded creature. And if fully “programmed”, there was a points cost per coded unit of instruction! Oh well!

The last few sections we'll cover in this already longwinded review are definitely skewed towards the “Herohammer” side of things. The Personalities section offers instructions on how to create your own special characters, how many should be included, their limitations, and guidance on design. Even included is an admittedly rudimentary system of leveling your personality characters over a series of games, allowing you to comfortably play escalation style games where your commander and his forces increase in power over time. Again, utilization of a GM is considered a given throughout this section, leaning into its more RPG-style roots.

Not even a character, just a normal depiction of your average Space Marine in 1987, complete with penal-legion tier knuckle rockers, taking out some green-skinned trash.

Rules for psykers in the Psionics section feel just like the magic section of OD&D. Psykers have differing levels of power that correspond to their abilities and the number of “psi-points” they have to spend using their abilities, which only must be rolled for once below a given threshold. Intelligence caps the maximum abilities a psyker can know, and Will his used by effected targets to attempt to save against psychic effects, though psykers may spend additional psi points to temporarily reduce the target’s Will and increase their chance of success.

The 40 abilities presented offer a mix of obvious in-game effects, like various buffs and debuffs and a scaling smite-like ranged attack, to more role-playing effects like telepathy and teleportation, to more fantastical abilities like animating individual weapons (with great stats!) and stealing control of enemy models. Overall, the mix of combat specific and environment/narrative effecting abilities serve to reinforce the feel of the rules thus far: a wargame written by RPG fans, more focused on rule of cool and the thematic elements of the game than competitive rules lawyering

.

The following section outlines creating hordes of randomly generated disgusting mutants, with the aforementioned d100 table and sub-tables, most with no direct combat effect but rather descriptive features more at home in a game about storytelling and adventures.

Hmmm…

It feels out of place in the formatting, and somewhat unnecessary overall, but I don’t mind the idea of a game where my inquisitor and his retinue roll up to some Island of Misfit Toys planet and liquidate the subhum—er, abhuman population. And boy, does this book make it easy to want to liquidate mutants!

40 years after its publication, the prophetic nature of Rogue Trader was revealed, as not only do these abhumans have the right to vote, they make up the majority of England’s Parliament.

Finally, we return to a real nuts-and-bolts section to close things off..for this article. The section on points costs is pretty unique, and necessary, as almost none of the stat blocks for units, creatures, vehicles, etc include what we’d expect: points values! Here, in one section (mostly), all weapons, equipment, base units, and the latter bestiary entries, are costed out. I won’t bother going through the individual entries for wargear here, but it’s sufficient to say the focus was more on flavor over function. Some of the points costs would still seem right at home in, say, the 2nd Imperial Guard codex of 3rd edition?

The humble auto-gun has changed probably the least in terms of design in all subsequent editions. We thank you for your service

What makes this stand out, outside of being in the main rules instead of a codex, is the provided formulas for making custom units, creatures, and modifications to basic units’ stats. The previous section on personalities and psykers didn’t include guidance on what those advancements and enhancements should cost in a “points balanced” game, and instead explained to the GM how they might implement and grant these powerful units to the players. Instead, players (and/or the GM) were expected to use the clunky modified stat formulas, and scaling modifiers, to price out any of the random units and equipment from the latter sections. This further enhances the intent and feel of this first edition as much more concerned with playing a game with your friends than a balanced competitive tabletop wargame.

++ Summary ++

If you’ve made it this far, both a Thank You and an apology are in order.

I’ve rewritten this piece several times now. Each time, it takes a new direction, and focuses on a different angle, but it’s always fucking long and only covers the first 120 pages, not counting the sections on lore, setting, and the physical hobby itself.

Who the hell would want to read all that?

There’s simply so much shit to cover here, 1st Edition is a whole different beast. While this iteration may not be the most thorough, analytical, or best written attempt (I am the dumb one afterall; if ya’ll want brains, talk to Kevin), I think it stays closest to the purpose of this project: to find the real spirit of each edition of our game. Because it is OUR game. A new edition, a new balance dataslate, a new codex, a new Space Marine Lieutenant in Gravis Armor, a range refresh, etc doesn’t change what this is about.

The next article in this series will tackle the remainder of the book, and will thankfully shorter (I hope), along with a final analysis of the feel and theme of the game, the presentation of the lore, and the path forward.

If any of this inspires you, awesome. Find one of the many great quality PDF scans on this ruleset and play the game with your friends. Hell, do one better and travel! Meet up with the Oldhammer chuds you talk to online, build real networks, own the real community, preserve this thing for the next generation of chuds to follow in the trail we blaze. It’s up to us.

Share GrimdarkEnlightenment

The Warrior Lodges, their role in the Heresy, their role in life, the fraternal nature of man, and the power of ritual

Man as the natural romantics, while foids are the ultimate pragmatists

The corrupting nature of tolerance

Mild to severe Japan and WW2 posting