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[nenjin]

Didn't that piss off the fandom? I mean, telling the fans one origin story only to retcon it and say "nope, it is something else" is kinda unfair. Also, isn't that a bit risky for the business?

Any GWS fan understands that 40k pretty much is fantasy in space. Old 40k used to take itself A LOT less seriously than it does today. The big change came when GWS realized Space Marines were the most popular faction and became the face of the franchise. And the universe in general got a lot less tongue in cheek, because the Empreror didn’t deign to gift Space Marines with a superhuman sense of humor. Or any sense of humor, really.

As for Matt Ward, he tried to elevate the UM above all other chapters in UM codex he wrote, saying the UM primarch was “spiritual liege” of all other chapters. That all the other chapters look up to the UM because gosh, they’re just the best. (Despite existing lore where other chapters consider them trumped up pretty boys with a superiority complex and a stick up their backsides.) And that pissed a lot of SM fans off because they’re very loyal to their favorite chapter. He also wrote some fiction that informed neck beards took him to task for.

You can read all about it here: https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Matthew_Ward

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As for C.S. Goto, he's just the writer who cares least about lore compliance (out of a a group where lore compliance is already low). In particular, he has an obsession with giving everybody multilasers when they shouldn't have them. His love of multilasers borders on the pathological.

The other factions are scared of Necrons because they are ancient, enigmatic, and unpredictable. The Necrons have the same "plans beyond the kin of mortal minds" thing that Farseers do, except Necrons are much longer lived and they tend to be crazy due to bitrot. Sometimes they kill everybody. Sometimes they kill a specific few. Sometimes they ignore everyone. They wake up on unclear timetables and could be sleeping below any world in the galaxy. And if all that wasn't enough, they don't stay dead even if you kill them because their technology is just that advanced.

[milo christiansen]

And, to add insult to injury, C S Goto isn't a very good writer either. Consistency is something that happens to other people, people not in his books.

[Grim Portent]

The last one is just because 40K came out of another game "Warhammer Fantasy Battle" so the marketing originally stated that "it's like this other thing, but in space". That wasn't needed once it became it's own established brand.

Didn't that piss off the fandom? I mean, telling the fans one origin story only to retcon it and say "nope, it is something else" is kinda unfair. Also, isn't that a bit risky for the business?

Also, thanks for answering LordBaal and Trekkin.

Lord, I know I ask too much now, but what is the deal with this Matt Ward and C.S? I know from 4chan wiki that Matt used to "fanboy" the Ultramarines. But I don't really know much else.

Also, yeah Necrons! Or how 4chan refers to them as "space egyptians". Although, why are they so feared by every other faction? I know that they are super strong and that "they come out of the damn walls", but like with Ward, I don't know else.

It being Fantasy in Space was marketing, not an origin story.

Basically 40k was based loosely off of Warhammer Fantasy with some factions being loosely based on the Fantasy version. Squats were steampunk biker versions of Dwarves, Eldar were Elves, the Imperium was based off the (Holy Roman empire inspired) Empire with some sci-fi dystopia elements added, the Orks were Orcs. At the time 40k was a mish mash of pop culture references, bad jokes, historical nerd jokes and 80s subculture references. When they sat down to make 2nd edition and make the setting more formal they scrapped a lot of it and redrafted it, mostly making things more cohesive and dropping a lot of stuff they couldn't be bothered with like Squats and the shark people aliens. From 2nd edition onwards the setting has largely stayed the same beyond adding new factions and the odd retcon.

C.S. Goto is considered one of the worst 40k novel writers to have ever touched the setting. His books outright contradicted established conventions and rules of the setting, like marines using bolter weapons and Khorne hating psykers.

Matt Ward's main problem is writing fluff in a very fanboyish way, any codex he writes goes more heavy on 'these guys are the bestest ever!' than other codexes do, and his rules writing tends to be overly strong which draws attention to the codex as people jump on the bandwagon.

Necrons are considered scary because they're highly advanced and the main factions have few responses to them. They don't die easily, often teleport around, don't generally negotiate and are usually something you find by accident. They're basically a faceless horror.

Or were anyway. Current Necrons are less feared, because part of making them customizable and personable was making them more present. They now negotiate, are a bit less individually strong in most portrayals, and are often long enough for them to become known quantities in their area of influence.

[nenjin]

I started reading some of C.S. Goto's Eldar stories. Setting aside that I'm not intrinsically interested in the Eldar, the writing was still shit. Like, just not action-oriented and dealing a lot with an Eldar's inner thoughts in a tedious and uninteresting way. I didn't even get to the lore discrepancies, their writing style had me NOPING out of there by page 30.

[Trekkin]

Also, yeah Necrons! Or how 4chan refers to them as "space egyptians". Although, why are they so feared by every other faction? I know that they are super strong and that "they come out of the damn walls", but like with Ward, I don't know else.

The Necrons are scary for a few reasons. Their technology is flatly impossible by the rules of the universe as the other factions understand them. They don't use the Warp or the Webway; they just are places where they want to be, and they have inertialess drive when that's not precise enough. Furthermore, their basic infantry weapons don't even really fire anything. They just tear their targets apart. Even their bodies are made out of self-repairing metal. Contrast the Eldar and the Tau, arguably the two other factions most characterized by exceptionally advanced technology. The Tau have pulse rifles that are way more advanced than the Imperium's bolters and lasguns, but they still fire something; the same is true of shuriken weaponry. The Necrons are the embodiment of technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic.

On top of that, they're old on deep time scales. They've been asleep for sixty million years and active for long before that; they were dueling gods while humanity's ancestors were derpy-looking noob voles eating bugs off of ferns. It's scary looking at something older than the majority of your genetic code and realizing you're just now worth their getting off their techno-couch to swat. The Imperium of Man's star-spanning empire is just now big enough to annoy them.

And, as MetalSlimeHunt said, they're inscrutable. Not only are many of them insane, it's difficult to tell which ones; it is entirely possible, and indeed probable, that they are entirely deliberately acting according to a plan no one else is capable of seeing. What the Farseers do through the power of the Warp, the Necrons do through the power of being literally older than dirt -- and it's worth bearing in mind that both the Eldar and the Orks were created to fight them, and neither were sufficient to do so.

[Reelya]

The last one is just because 40K came out of another game "Warhammer Fantasy Battle" so the marketing originally stated that "it's like this other thing, but in space". That wasn't needed once it became it's own established brand.

Didn't that piss off the fandom? I mean, telling the fans one origin story only to retcon it and say "nope, it is something else" is kinda unfair. Also, isn't that a bit risky for the business?

Why would it? We're only talking about the phrase "Fantasy Battle in space" not the game itself. They marketed it as such when it first came out because people were familiar with Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Once Warhammer 40K became even more popular than the original game then it didn't make sense for the marketing to refer to it as "Fantasy Battle in space". That's all.

[Archibald]

Also, yeah Necrons! Or how 4chan refers to them as "space egyptians". Although, why are they so feared by every other faction? I know that they are super strong and that "they come out of the damn walls", but like with Ward, I don't know else.

The Necrons are scary for a few reasons. Their technology is flatly impossible by the rules of the universe as the other factions understand them. They don't use the Warp or the Webway; they just are places where they want to be, and they have inertialess drive when that's not precise enough. Furthermore, their basic infantry weapons don't even really fire anything. They just tear their targets apart. Even their bodies are made out of self-repairing metal. Contrast the Eldar and the Tau, arguably the two other factions most characterized by exceptionally advanced technology. The Tau have pulse rifles that are way more advanced than the Imperium's bolters and lasguns, but they still fire something; the same is true of shuriken weaponry. The Necrons are the embodiment of technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic.

On top of that, they're old on deep time scales. They've been asleep for sixty million years and active for long before that; they were dueling gods while humanity's ancestors were derpy-looking noob voles eating bugs off of ferns. It's scary looking at something older than the majority of your genetic code and realizing you're just now worth their getting off their techno-couch to swat. The Imperium of Man's star-spanning empire is just now big enough to annoy them.

And, as MetalSlimeHunt said, they're inscrutable. Not only are many of them insane, it's difficult to tell which ones; it is entirely possible, and indeed probable, that they are entirely deliberately acting according to a plan no one else is capable of seeing. What the Farseers do through the power of the Warp, the Necrons do through the power of being literally older than dirt -- and it's worth bearing in mind that both the Eldar and the Orks were created to fight them, and neither were sufficient to do so.

Well fuck. GG everyone else then. Thanks for answering everyone.

Now that you mentioned Chaos, I was about to ask something regarding the Chaos Space Marines: What happens to their bodies when they "die" (if they die at all)? Cause in the Space Marine game, their bodies dissapear in a puff of Warp smoke, but in Dawn of war some type of mist just goes out of them and they fall on the ground. Any ideas?

[Tack]

Basically whenever anyone dies, their soul goes to the warp.
Chaos Space Marines tend to get some respawn hax, because their alignment means the entities of the warp are not immediately wanting to eat them.
On the top end of this is certain Big Damn Heroes and Rubric Marines, who can basically get tossed back into a new chump as quick as you can provide acceptable chumps.

I started reading some of C.S. Goto's Eldar stories.

I enjoyed the Gav Thorpe Eldar books, but they also came off a little bit too... showcase-y.
"Here is an Eldar. Here is an Aspect Warrior. Here is a Warlock. Here is a Farseer. Here is an Exarch. Here is an Exile. Here is a Ranger. Here is a Pheonix Lord. Books done, hope you enjoyed our product features."

[Egan_BW]

The Necrons are the embodiment of technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic.

Worse, their technology is easally distinguished from magic because magic is nowhere near as precise and... brutal? If you used magic in WHAOKland to accomplish those things, you'd get a whole swirly light show and get eaten by a demon. With the tech, though, it just happens, no fanfare, no clues as to how they pulled that off.

[Tack]

Worse than Magic, it's SCIENCE!!

[Trekkin]

The Necrons are the embodiment of technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic.

Worse, their technology is easally distinguished from magic because magic is nowhere near as precise and... brutal? If you used magic in WHAOKland to accomplish those things, you'd get a whole swirly light show and get eaten by a demon. With the tech, though, it just happens, no fanfare, no clues as to how they pulled that off.

Well yes. They are faintly silly that way; one gets the sense that they look at something like a Nova Cannon and wonder why the Imperials insist on so much busy work to fire a simple flare gun.

"Exterminatus? Oh, you mean setting the gauss flayers to 'Medium-Rare'?"

Heck, they have a pistol that can shoot through mountains, apparently just in case there's a mountain between them and their target and they don't feel like walking around it.

[Tack]

Becoz anyfing less boomy just Ain't Propa Dakka.

[nenjin]

I enjoyed the Gav Thorpe Eldar books, but they also came off a little bit too... showcase-y.
"Here is an Eldar. Here is an Aspect Warrior. Here is a Warlock. Here is a Farseer. Here is an Exarch. Here is an Exile. Here is a Ranger. Here is a Pheonix Lord. Books done, hope you enjoyed our product features."

It's true. But Gav Thorpe is one of the oldies, worked his way up from nothing. Also not the most creative or literary of the BL authors but he's pretty decent. So if anyone is going to reflexively write their stories to showcase specific things in the WH40k universe or its armies.....it'd be Gav Thorpe.

Tangentially related to that, I'm re-reading the Last Chancers Omnibus by Thorpe right now and....I've trashed it in the past. A lot. But I think it's actually a pretty decent story now, good characters. Even the 1st person writing doesn't put me off like it used to. Just start it from the beginning. I originally started reading from the last novel in the series and I think that's why it seemed like trash to me.

[Archibald]

What irritates me though is that sometimes the setting is so grimdark that the characters go beyond stupid. Like, oh I am a general and muh army is made of expendables?! Why don't we throw hundred soldiers in that minefield, let them die, and then throw some new troops?! Who needs explosive-detection devices when you have fresh meat?! Also, FUCKING KUBRIK CHENKOV!