Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[NecroLord]

The Sisters of Battle love only the Emperor.

 

[Cyberarmy]

This is now a full scale 40K thread.

 

[NecroLord]

Grimaldus purging some Ork ass.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I would like to see a game where you play as either the Black Templars,Blood Angels(Flesh Tearers and Lamenters particularly) and World Eaters(Pre Heresy) or all of them.
MAXIMUM RIP AND TEAR!

This looks like some weird gay porn. Serious 40k fans are strange.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

This looks like some weird gay porn. Serious 40k fans are strange.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Also have another, mediocrepoet,


10/10

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Also have another, mediocrepoet,


10/10

Shit is kinda sad tbh fam. Iron Warriors were a cool legion before getting their primarch back, afterwards they got all fucked up because their leader was a massive assburger stereotype with zero people skills.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

because their leader was a massive assburger stereotype with zero people skills

So all primarch besides Guilliman?

 

[PulsatingBrain]

So all primarch besides Guilliman?

Robot Girlyman has nothing on ma boi Vulkan

 

[Parsimonious cook]

because their leader was a massive assburger stereotype with zero people skills

So all primarch besides Guilliman?

Nah, Perturabo, Angron and Kruze were probably the worst in terms of their impact (ie turning an OK legion into utter shit). IMO even most other fallen primarchs were not that bad in their direct impact on their legions. Sanguinius was a huge improvement for Blood Angels for example, others were mostly OK (you could say that Russ wasnt that great an influence on Space Wolfs, but they were always kinda crazy).

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Shit is kinda sad tbh fam. Iron Warriors were a cool legion before getting their primarch back, afterwards they got all fucked up because their leader was a massive assburger stereotype with zero people skills.

Like father, like son. Pushing onto his sons his own inadequacies (as his brothers have done as well with their respective legions). I do find Perturabo particularly tragic though since I can emphatize with him a lot more than with the other traitor primarchs. That discussion that he has with his foster sister while Olympia is burning is peak tragedy.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Right in the feels, man.

'The Imperium is my father's folly,' he continued. 'I try to believe in it because I want it to be true, just like I wanted my great buildings to be true, and the perfect societies that would use them to exist. But they cannot be. There is no such thing as perfection. Humanity is too chaotic to accept true order.'

His facade of iron cracked. All the pain he had suffered - the isolation, the sense of abandonment that had dogged him all his life, the awful knowledge that he was a hawk among fowl that must restrain itself, the rejection of his brothers, the disregard of his father - was all concentrated in that moment. A single tear dared to roll down his cheek and was immediately resented - not only for the weakness that it showed, but because Perturabo wanted to cry for the broken dream, but he could not. The dream was what should be mourned, yet he could only cry only for himself.

'Wanting something to be does not make it so,' he murmured. Calliphone nodded. 'You are weak. Badly forged iron looks strong but is brittle as a dried reed. You never understood. People cannot be forced to live to an ideal, they must be led. People are messy, and more complicated than your most profound calculations. You would build a perfect world, realising at the final moment that its greatest mar were the people living within it. Now you would destroy them to save your creation. You are a marmoreal god, 'Bo, a tomb lord. You cannot achieve the impossible so you rage like a child, and now you have unleashed this horror upon us because you can accept no compromise.' A heavy shell exploded near the palace, shaking the windows.

'People do not listen,' said Perturabo. 'They do not know what is good for them.'

'People do not bow to you without love, without respect! Great tyrants rule with the blessing of their people, effective ones through fear. But no tyrant ever achieved anything through indifference. You have sulked your way to damnation. You refused to accept the love of the people. You were given the approbation of a god and an army to conquer the stars, and your first act was to decimate your Legion.'

'They had failed,' he said, clenching his fist.

'Failed to do what? Be the best? You waste your men to prove a point that needs no proof, and then grow angry when no one notices and praises your self-sacrifice. Your petulance has cost this planet whole generations of its youth, bringing your Legion up to strength again and again. You have been an absent king. You have not seen the empty schools, the haunted mothers, the husbandless women.'

'My brother Curze did worse,' said Perturabo. 'I have come to set things right, not to destroy everything as he did. This punishment for treachery must be borne, but I will rebuild Olympia.' 'Comparing yourself to the worst of your brothers to excuse the enormity of your own crimes,' said Calliphone. 'Listen to your words! Setting things to rights would be to cease recruiting and to hear the grievances of the people with forgiveness in your heart. Not this… massacre! You slaughtered the delegation that came to see you, brother. In that moment you lost You lost everything. This was a good place once. Bellicose and unfair, but it had its measure of beauty and nobility. You have destroyed all that. Why, brother?' 'I have other brothers now, my true siblings. I am not yours.' Calliphone wept, her tears tracking through the dust caking her face. 'And do they care for you as your family here did?' she asked.

'Dammekos never cared for me.'

'No, he only adopted you into his household, and raised you as his son.'

'A calculated risk. He used me for his own ends.'

'He reached out to you over and over,' she retorted. 'You are blind as you are selfish. All wrapped up in yourself, in your own brilliance, in your difference!' Her voice changed, becoming quiet.

'I cared for you.'

'What of it?' he said coldly. 'What good did the affection of mortals ever do for me?'

'You always thought yourself superior to those around you.'

'I am,' he said plainly. 'Look upon me, foster sister. I was made by the Emperor of all mankind, one of twenty sons forged to conquer the galaxy. You are withered, yet I am young. Of course I am superior.'

Calliphone threw up her hand and looked away. 'What happened to the man I knew who wished for no more war? The boy who drew such wonderful things?'

'Nobody wanted them,' he said. 'The Emperor uses me for the most thankless tasks. My men are thrown against the worst of horrors, given the most gruelling roles. We are divided, our talents ignored, our might reduced to splitting rock. My father ignores me. My men go unsung. Our triumphs are unremembered. My brothers mock me as my men bleed. Nobody cares.'

'Is that so?' she said. 'Let me present a different hypothesis to you, brother. Use that fine mind of yours to judge its worth. Here is my version of the story - the Emperor of all mankind came here and found a son whom he valued. He saw an indomitable will, with unshakable determination. He recognised that you would not give up, that you would rise to best any difficulty, that the tedious to you is as necessary a challenge to overcome as the glorious, and neither are to be shirked. Seeing these qualities in you, your father set you difficult tasks, not because he saw no value in you, but the exact opposite - he can trust no one else to get them done.'

'That is not true,' said Perturabo, though the acid of uncertainty began to eat at him. 'He underestimates me. They all do.'

Calliphone went on. 'For a long time, I thought you a fool to follow the Emperor. After all, he is a tyrant like all the rest. Look what he has done to you, I thought. He has brutalised you, and your wars have brutalised your home. But the truth is, brother, I have followed your campaigns carefully, and I noticed a pattern that disturbed and then alarmed me. Always you do things the most difficult way, and in the most painful manner. You cultivate a martyr's complex, lurching from man to man, holding out your bleeding wrists so they might see how you hurt yourself. You brood in the shadows when all you want to do is scream, 'Look at me!' You are too arrogant to win people over through effort. You expect people to notice you there in the half-darkness, and point and shout out, 'There! There is the great Perturabo! See how he labours without complaint!' 'You came to this court as a precocious child. Your abilities were so prodigious that nobody stopped to look at what you were becoming.' She got shakily to her feet. Exoskeletal braces whirred under her skirts.

'Perturabo, this will anger you, but you never truly grew into a man.'

'I am not a man,' he said. 'I am far more.'

'In those words is the poison that spoils your potential. It is not the Emperor who has driven this world into rebellion. It is not he who has held it back. It is you and your woeful egotism. Let me tell you, my brother, you who affects to despise love so much yet must certainly crave it over all other things, you are the biggest fool I have ever met.'

With a cry of anger, Perturabo lunged forwards and grasped her by the throat. He raised her up until she was level with his eyes. She grabbed weakly at his wrist. Her mouth gaped for air.

'I am far from a fool, sister,' he said. 'I wished for more from life. I hoped to build a better world for people. I have found that there is only brutality. Whether the court intrigues of the tyrants or this war to conquer the stars, it is all the same. Violence is the constant of human existence.'

'It need not be…' she choked. 'That is the violence… within you… speaking…'

'No, no, no,' he said soothingly. 'I know my own limitations. My temper does not cloud my judgement, it focuses it. Humanity is venal and fractious. It can never be governed as one. Everything else is an impossible dream. There is no peace. There is no goodness.'

He stroked away the hair from his sister's face with one hand as he strangled her with the other.

'And in such a flawed universe, there can be no mercy for traitors.' She choked, trying and failing to speak. Coldly, Perturabo squeezed the life from her.

'You have lived long enough.' She kept her eyes locked with his as he throttled her. Even as her clawing hands became more desperate, and a dreadful clicking sounded in her throat, she stared into his soul. What he saw reflected in her eyes was not fear, nor loathing, but pity. With a last minor effort, he crushed her neck. Her eyes rolled back to show the whites and she judged him no more He stared at her in hatred a moment, wavering on the brink of tearing her body to pieces. But a sob escaped his mouth unexpectedly, and he gently lowered her back into her throne. Her head lolled on its broken neck. Warning chimes peeped insistently from the augmetics concealed in her skirts. A trickle of blood ran from her mouth. Appalled at what he had done, Perturabo turned away. Dancing flamelight drew him to the windows of the palace. Ancient, cloudy glass blocked his view, so he methodically punched it out. Muffled weapon's fire became the hellish noise of a city's sack.

Lochos burned.

 

[NecroLord]

Kurze was legitimately insane,his mental state degenerated throughout the duration of the Great Crusade and then the Horus Heresy. By the end of the Heresy,he was batshit insane.
Angron was under the effect of the Butcher's Nails. You might say that him implanting the Nails in his sons is him trying to "resurrect" his dead gladiator bros from Nuceria.
Sanguinius totally reformed the Blood Angels and had arguably one of the more positive influences a Primarch could have on the Legion he commanded.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Besides Perty, another primarch which I find particularly tragic is Ferrus Manus since his untimely death led to his legion fully embracing the sort of cyborg autismo that his failings as a mentor to his sons had brought about through their flawed emulation of him. He realized what was going on and why it had to be stopped, but alas. He died before he could actually do it.

 

[Harthwain]

I want a game where I could play as the Iron Warriors, portraying their particular brand of utilitarian grimderp. Something with a bleak story and a desaturated visual design.

Interesting. I always thought the Iron Warriors are extremely logically-driven, to the point of being very machine-like, in the vein of Iron Hands (who are big fans of forbidden AI tech, if I am not mistaken?).

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Interesting. I always thought the Iron Warriors are extremely logically-driven, to the point of being very machine-like, in the vein of Iron Hands (who are big fans of forbidden AI tech, if I am not mistaken?).

They are in terms of having an engineer's outlook on things which is likewise coupled with a disdain for Chaos worship (contrasting them quite nicely with their fellow Chaos Undivided brethren in the Word Bearers; the latter being true believers, while the Iron Warriors perceive the Chaos gods simply as powerful *natural* entities that exist within the Warp whose powers should be exploited no differently from how man exploits other forces of nature). Although this is in turn balanced out by a negative trait of theirs, namely their underestimation (and outright disavowal) of the human factor in matters of war: commander runs the numbers, assigns the orders and those down the command chain must adhere to them religiously even if changing circumstances on the battlefield makes adhering to them illogical from a strategic point of view (as a perfect illustration of that, see the case of Perturabo punishing Barabas Dantioch for breaking orders for perfectly logical reasons at the end of their war against the Hrud). In this regard, they're the opposites of the Ultramarines who have more of a Prussian mindset in terms of officer autonomy.

Besides that, they're also quite innovative and technologically inclined hence them also being the traitor legion that cooperates with the Dark Mechanicum the most. Something which in turn contrasts them with the Iron Hands who parallel them in their stronger ties to the Adeptus Mechanicus compared to the other loyalist legions; plus both legions embrace augmentations - Iron Hands out of a disdain for the weakness of the flesh similar to the AdMech, Iron Warriors out of pragmatism as a solution to the frequent Chaos mutations which they prefer to purge from their bodies, unlike other traitor legions that perceive them as divine blessings to be embraced. And this likewise contrasts them with the Iron Hands in terms of outlook - Iron Hands fetishize transhumanism, Iron Warriors are human chauvinists and consider their bodies to be the apex of human evolution (which also entails that regular humans are biologically inferior and should be ruled over by space marines) that should not be debased through warp fuckery. Basically internalized body negativity in the case of the Iron Hands vs body positivity tempered by pragmatism in the case of the Iron Warriors.

 

[just]

rogue trader
no rogue class
no trading
nice game you have there

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Anyhow, Harthwain, in order to understand the Iron Warriors, you have to understand Perty since he had molded them in his image,

Good explanation of Perty's personality

As mentioned earlier, Perturabo was born with the innate knowledge of pretty much all practical and metaphysical sciences, which pretty much sets him apart from all of his brothers in that he had no "real" childhood, no trial and error period of learning. On his first day he was debating (and dismissing) the nature of religion with his planet's wise men, and was master-crafting swords better than most smiths. You'd reckon being born knowing everything would stunt your emotional growth. Yes, other Primarchs like Angron, the Lion or Kurze got a pretty raw start but for better or worse they learned to adapt and rise to greatness (or infamy). Perturabo started off already being as good as he was going to get; though it would take time for his body to grow strong, his mind was already at its peak, and he had to spend decades on a shitty little backwater planet with no appreciable resources with which to build an empire the same way that Guilliman or Dorn did, all the while having to slap down naysayers telling him that his fantasies of advanced engineering and space travel were impossible.

As to his mind, if a comparison could be made, then he was probably just as intelligent as Guilliman, if not more so due to the seeming wide range of his capabilities. (Guilliman was renowned neither as philosopher, smith or artisan). As a military strategist Perturabo could plan a campaign from start to finish in his mind using the arithmetic of war; where Guilliman could orchestrate a flawless battle plan from the command center, Perturabo would enact it himself by plugging straight into the data feeds and absorbing all the info at once, circumventing the chain of command and issuing orders directly to squads, taking direct control of gun turrets and mechanised units and plotting their firing trajectories, even taking over starship systems and running them himself.

Thus lies the problem: Perturabo is a general as much as any player of Warhammer 40,000 is a "general": he sees the battlefield in terms of units with stat blocks; every soldier can be reduced to a number based on his armament or capability which would factor in to his arithmetic of war. Even Guilliman recognised the random nature of war and how small moments of heroism could change the flow of battle; other generals could trust their men to follow their orders to the best of their abilities and even exceed them from time to time and pull off something spectacular. On the other hand, in sincerely believing in his own superiority Perturabo would micromanage everything and instead remove the agency of his officers and men. His soldiers would never get their chance to succeed or fail on their own terms and were essentially reduced to minis on a tabletop. Which in turn would make his men paranoid, wondering if they would be thrown away into the grinder or be blamed for failure when they couldn't match Perturabo's expectations.

Additionally, one could make the argument that while he had a vast store of knowledge he knew how to use, Perturabo's other major flaw as a tactician was that he was unimaginative in anything other than his areas of expertise. Godlike with an artisan's inspiration when it came to matters of logistics, technology, siegecraft, and artillery, but too much of a stubborn and entitled martyr-manchild to use different tactics as a situation demanded, even when he was underestimated; it would seem that he refused to adapt because he was completely convinced of the logical superiority of his own methods, and to change them would be to suggest they were incorrect or inferior. This stubbornness might even be engineered into his particular gene-seed, as the sloppy victories his Legion achieved in the decades leading up to his rediscovery were on the whole spoiled by their refusal to change gears and try something different.

To be fair, he certainly wasn't the only Primarch who was a one-trick-pony, and many of those specialties were likely engineered into them by the Emperor, but his attitude certainly didn't help matters, whether he was calling Corax a coward for suggesting a feint, or dismissing (or worse) his men for suggesting that a war of attrition might not be the best play. He may know how to crack an orbital defence that stymied three separate Legions, and how to dispassionately, surgically exploit killboxes to tear apart his opponents, but his tendency to dig in and throw men and big guns at the problem without paying heed to the input and suggestions of others made him ill-suited for mobile and asymmetrical warfare unless he had already engineered a means to keep them in place. There's even a scene in 'Path of Heaven' when Horus (swole from Chaos gains but still decidedly in his right mind as Warmaster) opines to Mortarion that Perturabo would be a poor choice to send after the Khan, believing that the Scars would run rings around his fortresses and artillery emplacements.

So ultimately, he was an ultra-competent specialist you could count on to perform his functions (but little else) to masterful effect no matter the cost, his crowning achievement likely being the fact that despite the degradation of so much of the Traitors' leadership and organization, Perturabo nearly-singlehandedly kept the siege running and the guns blasting on the logistical, strategic, and tactical levels. But he either couldn't or wouldn't change his methods even if he was ever wrong-footed, and his stubborn superiority-inferiority-martyr complex meant that he would never, EVER hear constructive feedback as anything other than a personal attack from an inferior mind. The main reason he was even functioning as a member of Team Horus was because, as mentioned, following orders and doing his duty were big things to him; without those, he likely would have been as much of a team player as Angron.

As an unwelcome revelation to the Mechanicum, Perturabo was quite capable of understanding binary machine code even when blurted out in its lightning fast audible form (something that would otherwise not be possible without some form of implants) to the point that tech priests unfamiliar with Perturabo would not actually believe it and be in for a shock when they attempted to use it in his presence (yet another example of Perturabo being underestimated).

Of all the Primarchs, Perturabo is the most misused of all. He was the only person in the Imperium of Man with his savant-esque technical expertise; he can read and write binary fluently by heart, he's a master mathematician and engineer, he programmed a new AI from scratch for a Warhound Scout Titan that he hand-built from the ground up, all things that the Mechanicum and greater Imperium are in dire need of constantly. Nobody, not Magnus nor Ferrus Manus or Belisarius Cawl could compare with his technical mastery, which remains unparalleled to the current millennium. Instead of assigning this literal Primarch-savant to research and development so nobody would have to waste time and energy kissing a machine spirit's ass for hours on end just to do something, the Emperor saw fit to just throw Pert at walls.

All things considered, the only siege battle Perturabo should have ever fought would be a campaign on the bowels of Mars to purge it of all Archeotech bullshit like the Men of Iron, then emerge as a genuine hero and receive the accolades and recognition he would rightly deserve. Then put him to task on unfucking Mars' broken-ass atmosphere so the planet can flourish again, followed by putting him to task on creating STCs for brand new weaponry and AI to completely overwrite all the shitty machine spirits that have no place in holding the Imperium back from full-throttle badassery. Would it piss the Mechanicum off? Probably, but what right would they really have to complain about innovation after the Omnissiah's son just fixed two of their planet's worst problems? If anything, it would endear the populace of Mars to the Emperor more than ever and give Perturabo a purpose bigger than walking an army into a meat grinder over and over. But you can't have a grimdark story without enormous potential being wasted fucking everywhere, now can you? To make an omelette, you gotta break eggs.

Unknown to anyone else, Perturabo had always possessed a strange connection to the Eye of Terror-- for some reason, he could sense it from anywhere in the galaxy, and he became convinced that it was constantly watching and judging his every action. The resulting inferiority (superiority) complex wasn't really helped by the fact that when he tried ask others if they could see the Eye, they assumed he was hallucinating. (Ironically, he was actually the one to give the Eye its current name-- before then, it was called Cygnus X-1.) Considering he become one of those chosen by Chaos, he may have been right in feeling off at the Eye of Terror.

 

[NecroLord]

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Dark Eldar Incubi:

 

[Infinitron]

Making a game requires so much attention to detail, and when your game is about Rogue Traders, style is one of the top priorities. And, as you can see, we deliver.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Servoskulls with fashionable accessories confirmed!

 

[Anthedon]

Morte got quite a few upgrades I see.

 

[Matalarata]

Mmh. This game appeals to my male fantasy.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Eldar Guardians:

Pesants from an Agri-world: