this post got five likes so i'm posting this vignette. it's part of an au i discussed w @horuslupercal a while ago i might've posted about it? anyway here's a little under 1000 words written at 5 AM. very funny i guarantee!! if you can guess when it's set and/or what's going on you win an internet cookie <3. but with no more addendums here is:
PUNCH.
They would be known as "cameras", to you, the flock of glass-eyed artefacts that descend upon the occasion. Recording footage for a—now perhaps not-so-glorious—posterity, these clockwork vultures are the emotionless wandering eye of an empire that’s not so much in mourning as it is in doubt: how can the mighty fall? How many lies have they promised? How mad should they be? The remembrancers manning the swarm will provide, hopefully, part of the answer to these questions; the rest of it, tonight at 8, on every planet unlucky enough to have figured out 24-hour media circuses.
One of these cameras seems unremarkable. Its model isn't even gold-plated and engraved like the fashion demands nowadays, shy in its bare steel shell—but it is, actually, a very lucky camera. In fact, it might be the luckiest. (Its contents will soon propel its wielder into non-literal Sainthood for the next century, and if possible, literal Sainthood for two after that—no small task, dare I say).
This camera is not trained on the procession: its larger and better sister has that job, and the lucky little camera's operator instead is swerving around the crowd, trying to capture this energy. She wants to do her own documentary filmmaking, you see, but she's stuck apprenticing; but this is such a powerful moment in the history of Humanity, she gathers, that, even if nothing happens, any footage she captures—on this humble silver creature—of the unnameable emotion currently permeating the air is something that can, and will, be used for millennia to come.
But remember: this camera is lucky, and so her operator—her name would translate to Daisy, with some liberties—notices a break in a vital part of those gathered, in a half-shadowed corner.
Two relatives, both tall and long haired; one steps aside, the other follows on cue, invited. They separate somewhat from the crowd, and Daisy's lucky, lucky camera zooms closer. As the view inches forward, the shorter figure's body language changes; he steps back, away from the other. Then his—limbs, so to speak, his whole body, the soft enormity of it, raises its hackles. He steps closer to the taller one, who looks unphased, surprised maybe, annoyed at the surprise. And then, right after the camera jerks forward one last time, the action comes.
The lucky, lucky camera is the only one who records any footage of Sanguinius punching the everloving shit out of Lion El'Jonson's jaw at the late Warmaster's funeral.
It remains its homeworld's most prized possession, even today.
The Lion, of course, has an approximate shit-tonne of metric force directed to his face by a man who flies with those back muscles. So, yes, he stumbles. It is in fact a testament to his strength that he doesn't fucking crashland on his derrière. He doesn't get the last word in the argument; Sanguinius rejoins the funeral procession, now fuming at the audacity. New warmaster. New warmaster! A proposal to fill the post! At their brother's funeral—Sanguinius never believed the Lion to be so thoughtless, but this is something else. At their brother's—when they should be—his eyes well up once more. Sanguinius thought grief was an old friend, for those who raised him, for his sons, for—for unnameable people. He didn't expect the suddenness—he likes the Baalite word, súbito—of this loss. It feels like an old and loveable neighbour is pummeling him across the chest with a hammer; these are not, necessarily, tears he wants to turn into a fashion statement.
The Lion rejoins his family after a minute, pride wounded in more ways than one. Fulgrim shoots him an unabashed look, then makes a maddened grin of disbelief that the Lion actually growls at. Fulgrim ignores that, shooting a wide-eyed glance and a head-tilt at Ferrus—who's been occasionally side-eyeing Fulgrim's thicker-than-usual makeup for the funeral with confusion, and Lion has noticed that, thank you very much—to indicate to him Lion's new angel-given bruise. Ferrus doesn't have the willpower to hold back a snort, and the Lion swears vengeance on both of them—failing to notice, of course, how his appearance has been the first thing to produce such a reaction out of an unusually quiet Fulgrim in the whole day.
Next to Ferrus is Guilliman—Angron is absent, as is Curze, for perhaps the obvious reasons that they're technically-at-large-Terra has it covered do not even worry; Roboute notices Ferrus's double-take and steels his expression, still trying to will away with determination alone the ugly redness that creeps over his patrician features when he's recently cried in fear. Mortarion, next over, doesn't see any of it, his face under the hood a terrifyingly blank mask; Magnus, fresh from colloquial house arrest and with his hair tamed perhaps for the first time since the Lion met him, has already turned to Sanguinius, sensing a new emotion in the maelstrom of his grief. (It isn't so much anger or offence as it is wrath). Besides Fulgrim, Perturabo peers at him so discreetly the Lion almost doesn't notice and then looks back at Horus's grave, dissociated; Jaghatai Khan not so much sees as perceives a disturbance and crosses something off a mental bingo with genuine bitterness. Slowly, the information trickles, Rogal Dorn blatantly ignoring them, Vulkan frowning in obvious concern, Leman's disappointment a surprise to the both of them, Corax an enigma as he always is.
But it's Lorgar's reaction that sticks with Lion—he struggles to read faces at the best of times (misses Luther's assistance when he sees it, regrets leaving him back with his Legion). But he remembers it—and he will ignore it at first, but later, when things come to light, he won't be able to help but think that what his paranoid mind saw now makes for a sickening picture.
The pure, unadulterated guilt that knits together Lorgar's face is unmistakable, even to him.
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Why do Drop Pods get so little love from Games Workshop?
The recent weeks I helped a friend build up their Space Marine army. As they play Deathwatch it's a horribly complicated matter, but we considered using the Teleport Homer ability from the Proteus team as a strategy: get something into the enemy zone T1, then warp in right behind it T2 with 700p worth of troops.
Generally the first impulse for that would be a drop-pod, as they can arrive T1 despite starting in reserves, our second solution was something with Concealed Positions that just walks into the zone.
But then I looked at the Drop Pod's data sheet, which mind you, is the MOST UNIQUE THING SPACE MARINES AS AN ARMY HAVE OVER ALL OTHER FACTIONS - and all I got to ask is... why?
Why does the most iconic transport of the faction is so heavily restricted and why does it have almost nothing synergizing with it rules wise? And why is that one basic drop-pod the only non-forgeworld option? There's one specifically for Dreads, except its design is utterly redundant as you just need to take the guns of a regular pod, and then there's the Deathstorm Pod which essentially is an EMPTY pod with a totally garbage turret in it.
See, THAT'S the weird shit I expect from forgeworld, but the dread-pod not being a variant of the same box as the regular one just is weird.
Meanwhile there's like 4 other options for conventional dedicated transports that get supported better, and NONE of them have ANY of the unique element that the drop pod has. Every faction except for the Nids has "car with guns where you put dudes in". So why do Marines get four of those.
But you see, GW actually has found a way to make drop-pods cool with the Chaos DREADCLAW DROP POD:
It's a pod posessed by a demon, which makes it walk around after landing and try to stab people with its legs or burn their faces off with its engine exhaust. It has versatile transport capacities (10 Astartes, 5 Posessed, 1 Hellbrute) and once it landed a movement of 12'' and <Fly>.
It's a cool twist on the regular old pod, one that for a moment made me consider scrapping my current new army plan and go for Alpha Legion, and you know what the problem with it is?
IT'S A FORGEWORLD MODEL THAT COSTS A 100 EUROS A PIECE.
Can't even aim for a local store discount with these. Who the fuck pays that much for failcast only to have just the transports for your army?
How is one of the conceptionally best models of the recent decades so overlooked that it is not part of the regular plastic release? Why were the "regular" pods not explored more to make them more interesting? I can only explain that by GW in general disliking the pods, and I seriously can't figure out WHY. It's the most unique and in-flavour thing for the whole faction, and Space Marines, the blandest of all factions that has 80 datasheets that boil down to "marine powerarmor with a gun" and who's vehicles are all "here's a BRICK in your faction colors" is in dire need of that.
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