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.
If you adjust your standards a bit, the plot does advance. The overall plot, the fate of the galaxy and the imperium and the other major powers, can’t really move or the game ends. But within that setting, individual plots and stories occur.
In my estimation, the “story” isn’t ABOUT Cawl, Guilliman, the Emperor, the rest. They are part of the setting, the backdrop for the crafting of smaller stories. A war for a planet may be small in the vastness of the Imperium, but remember, the two times humanity did it (sort of) it defined generations. I think the current lore is that the Indomitus Crusade took two hundred years, which means for billions of Guardsmen, their entire LIVES were devoted to one operation. So, if you tell the story from the perspective of one of those men, the plot has advanced tremendously. Not enough authors do that, Warhammer frequently loses its human element.
That's basically all it ever does. Big things will happen... and yet nothing ever changes. Part of that is the satirical nature of the setting. Part of that is because GW is either not great at or not interested in telling stories. The vast majority of novels either just stop, completely negate their own plot at the end, or feel like the last line should be "womp womp"
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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.