"Grey Knights' Secrecy" Topic

According to the Grey Knights codex for Warhammer 40,000, the Grey Knights must remain a secret to the universe at large. If the Grey Knights require the cooperation of the Imperial Guard, for instance…

At the end of such battles, those Imperial Guardsmen who survive are invariably executed. They are a plentiful resource, and one easily replenished, so the Inquisition favours a terminal sanction to ensure their silence.

Given the definition of Warhammer 40,000 as a 'dark future' science-fantasy setting, is background material such as this appropriate? Or should the publisher rein in the background, in consideration of the age and maturity level of their primary audience?

the Grey Knights must remain a secret to the universe at large. If the Grey Knights require the cooperation of the Imperial Guard, for instance…

At the end of such battles, those Imperial Guardsmen who survive are invariably executed. They are a plentiful resource, and one easily replenished, so the Inquisition favours a terminal sanction to ensure their silence.

How do they know that?

Well they certainly don't kill Space Marines after a battle. What's to stop them from blabbing?

Otherwise I think it is silly NOT to include this background. Who cares?! It's appropriate and fine because the kids don't read that kinda stuff anyway. They are too busy yelling, 'kewl!' :)

Don

I think the codex mentions something about them mind- wiping the marines they fight with.

The Space Marines must subject themselves to the mind-wipe, or be terminated (according to the Codex).

You all know far too much…

This particular piece of fluff first appeared in "Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness", which had a 'mature readers' warning on the cover. It was also published in the 80s, when GW had a different target demographic.

In the current market, is this background item any worse for young players than anything else in the 40k universe? How about the Grey Knights' main enemies? Is the summoning of daemons and the sacrificing of blood to the blood god more or less appropriate for 10-year-olds than the mass execution of loyal troops?

More G/W silly Fluff !!!

Yep, love the figures, can't stand the puerile sado-masochistic literature … use my own rules and histories. I steer away from grotesque figures. Space Marines are my Heavy Drop Troopers, the Guard are local system forces, and the Dark Eldar are just additional Eldar forces. My future is hopeful but we keep our powder (and dilithium crystals) dry ….

I find 40K fluff to be intolerable nonsense. I find the game as such much more enjoyable when I think of all the fluff as propaganda, wild distortions, misinformation, superstition, exaggeration, and out right lies.( All in context to the fictional universe and its fictional characters.)
What I mean is the fluff is believed (or not) by the characters of the fictional setting. This explains the endless fluff revisions. As for rules changes based on new fluff…..thats different because as a general rule the physics of the real universe don't really change to match our beliefs.(I will stay away from Quantum Physics for the sake of this discussion :) )
However, that being said, since 40K is psychically attuned fictional universe, perhaps their physical reality is constantly distorted by beliefs.
To answer the OP, I believe the publisher could rein in ridiculous fluff. Much of it is overly descriptive of the utterly violent,mind numbingly bleak,off handishly genocidal, pervasively psychopathic, gleefully sadistic,and generally sickening.
Just my opinions of course. But I also believe that by utilizing more imaginative writers, they could create much more compelling, engrossing and intelligent stories, to entertain and entice their customers to continue to buy their products.
I say could because it is not for me to say what they should do, and of course, won't do :)
I now ignore all but the general outline of their story arc anyway.

"The Space Marines must subject themselves to the mind-wipe, or be terminated (according to the Codex)."

Not according to the novels. Capt. Ventris knew they had to test him so he could be allowed back into his chapter, the Ultramarines. He underwent the Test and was allowed to take command again. Calgar, Cassius and Tigurius were cool with it because the Grey Knights said he wasn't tainted.

Don

Not reality based, so I'm not worried about it.

Note To Self: When chronicling my uber powerful secret organization, do not send a copy of my codex to the past unless printed with cyanide ink.

There, that ought to take care of all those over-armored monochrome cheese monkies.

Back on Topic: I find it difficult to take any of the fluff on Grey Knights to heart when they're apparently so popular that everyone and their grandma has a force of them. The "most powerful elite wargle argle bargle" line has been painted all over every army that had terminators… These elite super secret ancient suits that are irreplacable, but every chapter keeps 5 of them on hand for use as soon as the 2 troops slots are filled.

If the books made it so that the army truly was rare, then I'd bother caring about what the G.K. were doing to innocent bystanders who got the license plate number of their hoverdumpster…. As it stands, every other army can just pack it in and draw the shades, the G.K. will be killing anyone stupid enough to witness them. Thanks to their low model count and superior statlines, that'll be every grimdark table everywhere.

(Bitter? Heck no, I just bested G.K. in a 750 points game with Tyranids… I'm just weary of hearing about how wonderful they are. Hold on … there's a knock at the door… Hello?AAAARRGGGHHH!!!)

Actually on topic: GW has been painting the galaxy with the blood of a dozen species for years, I don't think their fluff has changed so much as our desire to have good guys in games. I doubt very much that Space Marines were ever really white-hat goodies… Should they? Well, they should consider it… Will they? No, there's no such thing as bad press in that regard.

Yep !! I'm with you Foxtrot & K/Giest !!! Frakk the 'n Fluff !!!!

"Back on Topic: I find it difficult to take any of the fluff on Grey Knights to heart when they're apparently so popular that everyone and their grandma has a force of them. The "most powerful elite wargle argle bargle" line has been painted all over every army that had terminators… These elite super secret ancient suits that are irreplacable, but every chapter keeps 5 of them on hand for use as soon as the 2 troops slots are filled."

Yeah, I actually find that the Grey Knights current fluff goes against all others for the most part.

As for terminator armour….. Have to point out. Most chapters do actually maintain significant numbers of it and if it's damaged, continually repair it, just as they do armour and weapons. Space Marine's equipment is generally designed to be fixed because those who make it make it with the intention of it being passed down, not unlike suits of armour in our own dark ages. Power armour is much more common of course, being needed to cover around 900+ in each chapter. Then the much more numerous scout armour, which I suspect they do not cherish as much as they do power armour and terminator armour, but there seems to be lack of fluff on that.

Being so close to Terra though, I don't see it inconceivable that the Grey Knights could be obtaining larger quantities of Terminator armour from Mars than other chapters, aside from perhaps the Space Wolves. The one big issue with terminator armour is it's supposed production method. The Crux on it's left shoulder is supposed to contain a small fragment of the Emperor's own power armour he wore during his fight with Horus…but there were terminators prior that. So, what did their Cruxes contain? Is that fragment of armour even remotely necessary? I suspect not since the whole thing is just an ornate personal field generator meant to make the armour more resilient, plus eventually, yer gonna run out of armour fragments, no matter how small they're being made…. So it really just sounds like an excuse to slow down production on armour with what I suspect would be a huge production cost. The electronics suite in it, plus the shear thickness and amount of materials must put it's cost at damn near close to an MBT.

"Actually on topic: GW has been painting the galaxy with the blood of a dozen species for years, I don't think their fluff has changed so much as our desire to have good guys in games. I doubt very much that Space Marines were ever really white-hat goodies… Should they? Well, they should consider it… Will they? No, there's no such thing as bad press in that regard."

This…Is an excellent point. :)
If I had to say so though, there is one bunch of good guys in the GW universe. The Loyalist Imperial Guardsmen and Guardswomen. Why would I think that? Well. Personal opinion is that… Here you have a universe of monstrosities. Xenos of many kinds, demons and mutants. Things that more often than not, the Space Marines are needed to successfully fight. Yet, the lowly little imperial guard soldiers, their flesh frail. Their armour weak. Their guns incapable of engaging many of the things they're asked to fight with any success. Utterly mortal. No one will make a statue to them, nor remember them in three hundred years, but they march out anyways to protect mankind before those super human marines even bother to show up and hell, by the time the marines do show up(Often very late I notice), the guard are the ones who did the brunt of the fighting! Despite what their Codex would read, the rest of the fluff tells us most of them are no more afraid than any modern soldier would be.

Though, the idea that a loyal force would murder another loyal force just for seeing them is utterly insane. That's why I like the Space Wolves. If they encountered such bravery, they wouldn't execute them or mind wipe them post battle. They'd offer 'em a drink and mention 'em in a new song about the battle. :D

Though, the idea that a loyal force would murder another loyal force just for seeing them is utterly insane.

In the original fluff, the executions (or mind-wiping of marines) were because the troops had come into contact with Chaos, due to the fact that they'd been conscripted as allies to the Grey Knights – not simply because they'd seen the Grey Knights. Back in Rogue Trader, the existence of the forces of Chaos was a closely guarded secret.

Of course, in the current fluff, everyone in the 40k universe seems to know all about Chaos and daemons, so having witnessed the forces of Chaos in action isn't any reason to execute people.

What I don't understand about the current version of things is this – if people know about the threat of Chaos, and you have an elite force designed to combat Chaos, why would you kill people for knowing about that elite force? Wouldn't it be good for the people of the Imperium to know that they have such powerful guardians against Chaos?

It's like a country under military threat pretending to its population that it doesn't have any defence forces, and killing anyone who finds out about their own military. Who does that help?

Needs more skullz

"In the original fluff, the executions (or mind-wiping of marines) were because the troops had come into contact with Chaos, due to the fact that they'd been conscripted as allies to the Grey Knights – not simply because they'd seen the Grey Knights. Back in Rogue Trader, the existence of the forces of Chaos was a closely guarded secret. "

This is supported in the current Space Wolves fluff as during the First Armageddon War when chaos invaded, the entire population and all the soldiers who fought there were sterilized and put into forced labour camps, except for the aristocracies and Space Wolves forces, but if even a word about Chaos' existence was uttered by them, they'd be executed. Though, that fluff also rebukes the "Secret" part of the Grey Knights….as obviously Logan Grimnar was fully aware of them when he asked for their assistance prior to committing to the war. They obviously have Terminator armour to spare as well since they teleported in a force 100 strong, all clad in Termie armour in the center of the Chaos forces. Had forgotten about that part until I re-read it a few moments ago upon reading your post. :) The RT era fluff on that makes much more sense than the current fluff does.

They obviously have Terminator armour to spare as well since they teleported in a force 100 strong, all clad in Termie armour in the center of the Chaos forces.

Here's another interesting bit of old fluff on their extensive use of termie armour, from the very first article on Terminators (White Dwarf 109):

The Thule Decimation of 728.M40 is one of the most noteworthy examples of the use of Terminator Armour. Six entire companies of Grey Knights (an elite Chapter that is unusual in having all of its Marines trained and adapted for Exo-armour) were equipped with Terminator Armour, including suits that had been requisitioned from 5 other Chapters.

I see your one entire Terminator company and raise you five.

Agreed floogle … More Skullz !!!

According to my volumes of the Lost and the Damned it was the Inquisition who used to execute attached Imperial Guard because of the risk of 'taint' (regardless of the presence of GK's). Something which has mysteriously vanished from the fluff. Marines were mind scrubbed leaving you with an 8ft baby in need of potty training, inconvenient, but considered worthwhile given their value. The original GK terminators were lvl 4 psykers and a squad of five was over 1000 points so they were rare both in the fluff and on table. GW fluff has been the subject of a certain amount of retcon'ing over the years – some of which I'm sure is for the purposes of santization, but also in an attempt to accommodate changes and increasing detail the original authors left no space for. Their over representation on the gaming table was always going to be happen – heck there are only supposed to a million SMurfs in the entire Empire. Lets face it no ones going to play with a 'balanced' 40K list – for every 1000 IG purchased you can select one marine from the following list; for every 1000 marines you can select one GK…

As for it being appropriate its a "war"game and a dark sci-fi fantasy one at that, which does include some rather nasty aliens and demons with well documented, even in extant fluff, unsavory habits (as well as humans existing in pretty abject conditions as a matter of course). Personally I don't believe in santisation nasty things happen in wars, but GW clearly have their 'business model'.

Real history is littered with examples of troops being executed or imprisoned by their own side for actual and perceived battlefield behaviors, which had everything to do with their commanders and little to do with the actual PBI's on the ground…