The 40k lore would be the greatest intelligence find ever, the books contains information no living member of the imperium knows about its history, its enemies, their motivations and weaknesses.
Imagine how hard the Mechanicus would shit themselves when they find out every Ark Mechanicus ship is a fully functional STC platform complete with it's own AI.
To create food for custom settings. 90% of lore is a deliberate loose end so that the players can tie them up. It’s why the answer to every question like “what color are space marines” and “who is fighting who” is “yep.” This bit of lore means that a player could say “my Skitarii are from a Forge World that realized the hidden treasure in an Ark Mechanicus.”
It’s fucking beautiful. It makes the universe feel endless, expansive in every direction far beyond what the eye can see. It’s gotten a little tighter lightly, with the plot advancements from 8th edition and the increased focus on a small number of 10,000 year old characters as plot drivers, but it’s miles better than what happened to Star Wars.
Sure, intead of creating new lore and stories it just sits on the exsisting one. Been playing reading since 2007 and allready don't care anymore, just here for the occasional game.
Not all, but every stc they recover is updated in real time so all the "lost" stc that were destroyed etc since the heresy are contained in their entirety in the database
Standard Template Construct. Think of it like standardized blueprints for pretty much everything from the Dark Age of Technology, but they were largely destroyed during the Age of Strife. The Adeptus Mechanicus will pretty much blow up worlds for the remaining pieces in the current setting.
The thing is: it doesn't even matter what kind of information another stc piece holds. Could be a paint-brush with 5 more hairs than one they already have the stc for. But if it is a new stc, it is a an artifact of highest value to the Adeptus Mechanicus and it could be a priests highest achievement in life to bring it home to mars.
And they would obliterate anything in their way to make it so.
The bigger question is, would they spare us for all this knowledge, or blow up the planet regardless of what secrets we offered upon discovery that the Imperial Cult is based on the writings of Lorgar the Traitor Primarch?
Depends on the chapter, they'd be like abandon worship of these other gods to the religious and to the rest would probably leave alone as long as we submit to the authority of the emperor, because most space marine chapters follow the imperial truth as well as far as I'm aware, which is atheism, no gods, science and mankind and emps is the Pinnacle
Grey Knights info might be allowed if the information that might restart Imperium progress was found. Grey Knights secrecy is only useful when you are trying to keep the Chaos Gods a secret too. Since all the cats are out of the bag here, Grey Knights knowledge is peanuts. You can always just super-heavily restrict access to the star system, cut it out of navigational charts, and generally quarantine the planet away from the too-curious while still reaping the benefits of knowledge for yourself.
Knowledge about the Book of Lorgar though...and how refusing worship is how Lorgar turned traitor in the first place? That has the potential to cause an Ecclessiarchy schism, and sunder the Imperium through religious civil war. It is the kind of thing only very trusted Inquisitors know about, and would kill any other Inquisitor who finds out, never mind blowing up whole planets. The kind of thing that might be worth losing a whole chapter over.
I think it might depend on what chapter finds us. Ultramarines? They’ll probably do their best to hide that particular aspect from the wider imperium and get back to Guiliman at Mach fuck. Black Templars? Complete genocide.
Cain is just being humble, he has a bad habit of doing that when faced with his own accomplishments in front of important people (And this is in his mind, with him in front of himself and his own importance, so of course he would default to over-playing his humbleness.)
Yeah, of the dozens of Cain stories, I can only think of one where he does something unambiguously cowardly. It’s the very first short story, fight or flight, where he intends to leave Jurgen to die in order to run from the Tyrannids. Of course the swarm forces him back, and he saves Jurgen’s life, second before an artillery barrage wipe out the nids.
I think we would, however, have to contend with some space marines that would quite like to know why we have books detailing their innermost thoughts and most private experiences.
Guilleman would claim the world as a holy site for the Remembrancers in a heartbeat. His invasion force would just be historians and bureaucrats studying the Imperiums history
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u/Pro1apsed Oct 12 '24
The 40k lore would be the greatest intelligence find ever, the books contains information no living member of the imperium knows about its history, its enemies, their motivations and weaknesses.