It was such a welcome relief when GW started advancing the lore/story with Gathering Storm, and continued it with Psychic Awakening. The setting felt pretty stale by the time of 7ED. IMO this is still totally compatible with the "universe of stories" idea, while throwing a bone to those of us who are more into the lore than the game/models. Advancing the story as a big narrative event makes total sense at each new edition release.
Honestly I've really come around to it myself. When I first heard about Gathering Storm I kinda rolled my eyes (I was out of the hobby at the time), but since coming back... yeah I've been enjoying seeing the story push forward in interesting ways. Kinda love the Ynnari as a thing and I really hope in 10th we'll get a little more of them.
@@mistformsquirrel Ynnari is the only exciting thing that has come out of all this, everything else feels to me like its just the same old stories but turned to 11
@@Grymbaldknight I can certainly understand that, but I think GW is driving a large change in the setting, and that requires presenting a coherent picture of the the environment that you're changing. Think about it like this: after the Fall of Cadia you had an entire Imperium Nihilus to run your stories in, but you had to have GW take the reins to ESTABLISH that Imperium Nihilus.
@@Grymbaldknight GW has always left the door open for YOU to establish your own narrative for your own worlds. It's just the big named individuals and their ilk that they slowly pigeon hole.
@@Grymbaldknight Yeah, I agree. Made a similar post. And good point about the popularity of Heresy sort of washing back into 40k and influencing it. Really not a big fan of that, since though Heresy is cool, some parts of the books are absolutely ridiculous (particularly the Primarchs being gigantic, that is just so stupid I can't get over it).
Ian, I love how you mostly just give a pretty straight picture of what's going on, and then will throw in *just a little* snark at exactly the right moment. That makes it so, so much funnier
The Tau (Greater Good) and Knight (Engine War) plot lines were particularly fun IMO. The Tau plot lines involved believable force sizes for the PDFs for example, and the Engine War finally gave the Knights a chance to shine, and tied in nicely with the Siren's Storm (Ian skips over the the Beacon being used to try to whip the Siren's Storm toward Segmentum Solar, which is delightfully crazy 😂) . I'm writing a little story about that.
When something as significant as the Cicatrix Maledictim happens, rending the galaxy asunder and flooding it with both daemons and newborn psykers, you kind of _have_ to present information on how the various regions and factions are faring in the aftermath. Nor is it really a problem if these events aren't all connected in some grand narrative. Not everything has to be.
For reals I almost forgot this was a thing. Maybe I'm just a grognard (There's no maybe about it..) but all the latest fluff leaves me quite bored and I prefer the 'minuite to midnight' setting that preceeds it...I'm sure Rogue Trader players were saying the same thing before me though
Even this video was kinda hard to watch. It's not Ian's fault...the fluff is just boring. I started in third and ~3.5, so yeah I'm sure there's some 2nd. Edition and Rogue Trader grogs who look on my generation with disgust (especially since there was a lot more camp, kitsch, and Monty Python before third). I think some of it is the new branding and some of it is the writing. Compare new books to stuff written in 4th. and earlier. Newer books seem to just be these huge exposition dumps told from an omniscient narrator. Previously, large portions of the setting was revealed to the reader from an in-universe perspective. Maybe it's just nostalgia glasses on, though IDK.
I take the approach of just picking what I like from the big glorious mess that is 40K and having that be my personal version of the setting. I'm not at all interested in what the corpo thinks is "canon" or whatever. So I'll happily mish mash stuff from Rogue Trader, 3e, 2e and the Horus Heresy novels as I feel like it. This advancing plot stuff is to me an entirely different product aimed at an entirely different audience (though with a large group in the middle who just like 40K stuff no matter what). The aim with this stuff is to have twists and discoveries, whereas the aim with the old stuff was to have inspirations and mysteries.
this channel is unique among the 40k loretubers.. anyone else coming back to this video bc they cant buy the actuall books so they go by with videos and Yohohoooo PDFs (and no ebooks and audiobooks aint books i dont want to see anyone telling me to go buy """audiobooks"" )
That was quite impressive! Some lore videos take 3 hours on purity seals (not knocking those, but by comparison, covering 9 books in 30 minutes, but still fairly comprehensively is, wow.)
Great video, thanks for clarifying this series of books. If anyone wants to know more about the tail end of the Baal book, the game Battlesector is set then, with the Blood Angels coming to grips with the new untested Primaris marines, and having to deal with a mysterious Tyranid presence that is delaying the departure of Gulliman, putting a heavy strain on the resources of the world. It also intimately looks at the effects of the Black Rage and on how a Dreadnought copes with life in a coffin. Plus it's good fun! (Though a bit hard if you're not good at xcom--ish games)
You missed the main point of the story from the Space Marine side, that being the Primaris Marines. The Blood Angels and all their successor chapters are eaten by the Tyranids and left with named characters and a handful of others, and then immediately all returned to full strength by the arrival of the Primaris.
I agree. I don't mind if those characters are Primarchs since they're basically demi-Gods. But I'd like to see a lot less Ultramarines present in high stakes battles. There's only 1,000 of them yet they're seemingly everywhere.
@Jack Rogers while the loyalist Primarchs has awesome sculpts I don't really like how much positive change they seem to bring to the Imperium, the whole setting of 40k (at least was) about how "great" men ruined everything during the Heresy and it was up to "lesser" (as in non-demigods) persons to solve their mistakes
@@Yurt_enthusiast7I wish more people understood the difference between a story and a setting. It's like this hobby switched from a creative environment to forge your own stories to this hand holding through a scripted sequence of events. I don't want GW to tell me how the story goes, I want to participate in it and influence the events and have my own story.
@@joriankell1983 Yeah me too but GW pretty much turned 40k from a setting to a story with these books. I would gather that they thought that a story is easier to sell to the large set of people who can't be bothered making their own.
Arbitor Ian once again being the only loretuber who actually covers the damn lore instead of 10 minute fluff pieces about yet another Mary Sue space marine or a 3 hour rant about Horus heresy
@@ArbitorIan The loretubers ability to waffle on and on about a single paragraph for long enough for me to watch Ben Hur would be impressive if it wasn't so annoying
Thank you for the great summary. I had read some of the books but not all. The fluff was really fluctuating and some of them were just bad. Especially "The Ritual of the damned".
Id love for them to do another big campaign book like the badab war. those were always very cool and felt authentic. I mean unlikly at the mo what with the whole universe about to be eaten by nids.
This is where I started and good lord was it such a mixed bag. Some plots were absolute bangers and yet there was always so much that felt untapped, especially as GW basically did a rewind a little to focus on the Indominus Crusade. I suppose that's the split imperium in a nutshell though: a big ol' Steamed Hams sketch where they tease such tantalizing events and goings ons, but never execute on them cus that would be too weird and AoS-ey to their jaded audience.
Each time people talk about the PSYCHIC AWAKENING I just want a proper novel that pitches the T'au against the Death Guard. Would be so cool. Written by James Swallow would be the cherry on top
I thought faith powers were different from Psychic warp ones, as didn't the necron have area's which messed up the warp and stopped psychics painfully, yet faith powers were not affected?
These came and went so fast... I ended up googling them in an after thought... oh yeah... those books after Gathering Storm. (Which was released so rushed I couldn't even buy them fast enough. What a cash grab.) And now 10th Edition... *throws more books on the campfire*
I really appreciate the videos you make on this type of lore but I do find they become an information overload, I really struggle to follow all the overarching stuff as there are so many fights between so many factions and in so many seemingly unrelated battles.
Not super relevant, but your colour grading is slightly off between the green screen and your old set up XD not sure if you already know/know how to fix it, but it's pretty easy
I know the plot comes after the game, but it still annoys me that the edition that's come with the psychic awakening has toned down psychic powers into being a few set unit abilities and hazardous guns.
I feel that this ark is just a huge missed opportunity to show how desperate the battle for the survival of humanity against chaos could be. This is THE most dramatic event of the galaxy since the birth of Slaanesh, and to me it just felt like this: "Look! Primaris save the day! Pew pew! Alright, moving on to the next plot!"
Dante isnt a primarch....I'm sure it was a simple mistake and you know that but it really perked my ears up and made me go "hang on a minute. Did i hear that right?"
tbh PA feels like a bit of a mess. As others mentioned I think Arks of Omen works much better which is nice since they are newer so supposedly GW has learned some things.
I know it's just that I'm an old fart at this point, but I'd rather this stuff was backfilled history rather than an advancing narrative. I've got this sense that the advancing narrative requires protagonists and the named characters are filling that role, and it honestly makes the universe feel far too small to me. I genuinely prefer hearing about random planet X and it's newly created background and culture than everything being focused on a few big name characters leading factions on well known named planets. But I guess, I got mine for decades, and it's nice for people who like the advancing storyline stuff to get some of that. But there's no way I'd be buying these books, give me a forge world campaign about some less significant sector or planet any day. This stuff sounds like big comic crossover events, and I never liked those.
Great question! As I recall it's because Ian's usual space (as seen in the background) is having some work done on it, so he's probably filming from his work or somesuch. I think he mentioned it in a previous vid, but no way you'd know that 🙂
4:35 I still think thats absolute bull that 5 Champions of Eldar only was able to beat a *shade*. Not even the actual Daemon.
It was such a welcome relief when GW started advancing the lore/story with Gathering Storm, and continued it with Psychic Awakening. The setting felt pretty stale by the time of 7ED. IMO this is still totally compatible with the "universe of stories" idea, while throwing a bone to those of us who are more into the lore than the game/models. Advancing the story as a big narrative event makes total sense at each new edition release.
Honestly I've really come around to it myself. When I first heard about Gathering Storm I kinda rolled my eyes (I was out of the hobby at the time), but since coming back... yeah I've been enjoying seeing the story push forward in interesting ways. Kinda love the Ynnari as a thing and I really hope in 10th we'll get a little more of them.
@@mistformsquirrel Ynnari is the only exciting thing that has come out of all this, everything else feels to me like its just the same old stories but turned to 11
Stale for you, eh? I'm still trying to catch up to Imperial Armour Vol3.... I'll probably die before I get to IA: Vol 10-13 lol
Where does that fit in? @@walt_man
Honestly I prefer the new Arks of Omen; in my opinion are far better to describing the situation in a coherent narrative
Can you help? I don’t understand the tarot cards for Arks of Omen. Can you clarify? Thanks!
@@blueknight5754 the tarots are just a giant teasing of the content in the Arks of Omens books
@@Grymbaldknight I can certainly understand that, but I think GW is driving a large change in the setting, and that requires presenting a coherent picture of the the environment that you're changing.
Think about it like this: after the Fall of Cadia you had an entire Imperium Nihilus to run your stories in, but you had to have GW take the reins to ESTABLISH that Imperium Nihilus.
@@Grymbaldknight GW has always left the door open for YOU to establish your own narrative for your own worlds. It's just the big named individuals and their ilk that they slowly pigeon hole.
@@Grymbaldknight Yeah, I agree. Made a similar post. And good point about the popularity of Heresy sort of washing back into 40k and influencing it. Really not a big fan of that, since though Heresy is cool, some parts of the books are absolutely ridiculous (particularly the Primarchs being gigantic, that is just so stupid I can't get over it).
Ian, I love how you mostly just give a pretty straight picture of what's going on, and then will throw in *just a little* snark at exactly the right moment. That makes it so, so much funnier
Arbitor Ian is that hobby guy, who gets the instant like, because I`ll know his content is going to be great.👌
The Tau (Greater Good) and Knight (Engine War) plot lines were particularly fun IMO. The Tau plot lines involved believable force sizes for the PDFs for example, and the Engine War finally gave the Knights a chance to shine, and tied in nicely with the Siren's Storm (Ian skips over the the Beacon being used to try to whip the Siren's Storm toward Segmentum Solar, which is delightfully crazy 😂) . I'm writing a little story about that.
When something as significant as the Cicatrix Maledictim happens, rending the galaxy asunder and flooding it with both daemons and newborn psykers, you kind of _have_ to present information on how the various regions and factions are faring in the aftermath. Nor is it really a problem if these events aren't all connected in some grand narrative. Not everything has to be.
Although, to be fair, they kinda ARE all doing the same thing as before, just with more wizzards
For reals I almost forgot this was a thing. Maybe I'm just a grognard (There's no maybe about it..) but all the latest fluff leaves me quite bored and I prefer the 'minuite to midnight' setting that preceeds it...I'm sure Rogue Trader players were saying the same thing before me though
Even this video was kinda hard to watch. It's not Ian's fault...the fluff is just boring. I started in third and ~3.5, so yeah I'm sure there's some 2nd. Edition and Rogue Trader grogs who look on my generation with disgust (especially since there was a lot more camp, kitsch, and Monty Python before third).
I think some of it is the new branding and some of it is the writing. Compare new books to stuff written in 4th. and earlier. Newer books seem to just be these huge exposition dumps told from an omniscient narrator. Previously, large portions of the setting was revealed to the reader from an in-universe perspective.
Maybe it's just nostalgia glasses on, though IDK.
I take the approach of just picking what I like from the big glorious mess that is 40K and having that be my personal version of the setting. I'm not at all interested in what the corpo thinks is "canon" or whatever. So I'll happily mish mash stuff from Rogue Trader, 3e, 2e and the Horus Heresy novels as I feel like it.
This advancing plot stuff is to me an entirely different product aimed at an entirely different audience (though with a large group in the middle who just like 40K stuff no matter what). The aim with this stuff is to have twists and discoveries, whereas the aim with the old stuff was to have inspirations and mysteries.
@@johnnybigbones4955 This feels spot on
I love the piece of music you use for your intros and outros, never change it! Cool videos too
Thanks for this, much better if you read them all for me and explain it to me.
My man’s keyed into his own flat
this channel is unique among the 40k loretubers..
anyone else coming back to this video bc they cant buy the actuall books so they go by with videos and Yohohoooo PDFs (and no ebooks and audiobooks aint books i dont want to see anyone telling me to go buy """audiobooks"" )
That was quite impressive! Some lore videos take 3 hours on purity seals (not knocking those, but by comparison, covering 9 books in 30 minutes, but still fairly comprehensively is, wow.)
Nice video. Thank your making it concise and easy to follow. Keep up the good work.
Great video, thanks for clarifying this series of books. If anyone wants to know more about the tail end of the Baal book, the game Battlesector is set then, with the Blood Angels coming to grips with the new untested Primaris marines, and having to deal with a mysterious Tyranid presence that is delaying the departure of Gulliman, putting a heavy strain on the resources of the world. It also intimately looks at the effects of the Black Rage and on how a Dreadnought copes with life in a coffin. Plus it's good fun! (Though a bit hard if you're not good at xcom--ish games)
This was such a good era. New exciting lore and rules. Funny that the White Dwarf harlequins rule set was the most flavorful and strong.
You missed the main point of the story from the Space Marine side, that being the Primaris Marines. The Blood Angels and all their successor chapters are eaten by the Tyranids and left with named characters and a handful of others, and then immediately all returned to full strength by the arrival of the Primaris.
Psychic Awakening, also known as Xenos Factions Get Wrecked: The Series.
Then again, the Imperium just got wrecked as well. So it's only fair.
Also could be called "Chapters getting decimated to justify Primaris reinforces" the series
Making a couple of character be the movers and shakers of the setting kinda makes the universe feel smaller then it is
Agreed
I agree. I don't mind if those characters are Primarchs since they're basically demi-Gods. But I'd like to see a lot less Ultramarines present in high stakes battles. There's only 1,000 of them yet they're seemingly everywhere.
@Jack Rogers while the loyalist Primarchs has awesome sculpts I don't really like how much positive change they seem to bring to the Imperium, the whole setting of 40k (at least was) about how "great" men ruined everything during the Heresy and it was up to "lesser" (as in non-demigods) persons to solve their mistakes
@@Yurt_enthusiast7I wish more people understood the difference between a story and a setting. It's like this hobby switched from a creative environment to forge your own stories to this hand holding through a scripted sequence of events. I don't want GW to tell me how the story goes, I want to participate in it and influence the events and have my own story.
@@joriankell1983 Yeah me too but GW pretty much turned 40k from a setting to a story with these books. I would gather that they thought that a story is easier to sell to the large set of people who can't be bothered making their own.
Question is Warhammer 40k Psychic Awakening: The Collected Fiction just all PA books combined?
Fantastic summary. Thanks!
Arbitor Ian once again being the only loretuber who actually covers the damn lore instead of 10 minute fluff pieces about yet another Mary Sue space marine or a 3 hour rant about Horus heresy
YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED THIS ONE TIME IN THIS ONE BOXOUT! The truth is so COOOL!
Running time: 2hrs.
@@ArbitorIan The loretubers ability to waffle on and on about a single paragraph for long enough for me to watch Ben Hur would be impressive if it wasn't so annoying
These summary videos are so helpful keeping up to date with Warhammer lore.
Really enjoying these campaign summaries.
These were the last extra books i bought. I never got to use them on the table before lockdown and the new edition hit...
Awesome video again, mate! Totally agree with you about Ork naming "traditions" :)
Love these lore recap videos thanks!!
Thank you for the great summary. I had read some of the books but not all. The fluff was really fluctuating and some of them were just bad. Especially "The Ritual of the damned".
I was so happy to have rules for The Eight, I don't think I ever read the lore in The Greater Good.
Humans: "Demons are pouring out of the rift: we're doomed!"
Orks: "A blessing from da' Lord"
Thanks for this, I missed these and are so expensive
Please make videos for The A dawn of fire - series!!
And also Great videos, thank you! Keep it upp :D
Id love for them to do another big campaign book like the badab war. those were always very cool and felt authentic. I mean unlikly at the mo what with the whole universe about to be eaten by nids.
See TBH, handy video, good length covering a big series of events.
This is where I started and good lord was it such a mixed bag. Some plots were absolute bangers and yet there was always so much that felt untapped, especially as GW basically did a rewind a little to focus on the Indominus Crusade. I suppose that's the split imperium in a nutshell though: a big ol' Steamed Hams sketch where they tease such tantalizing events and goings ons, but never execute on them cus that would be too weird and AoS-ey to their jaded audience.
Each time people talk about the PSYCHIC AWAKENING I just want a proper novel that pitches the T'au against the Death Guard. Would be so cool. Written by James Swallow would be the cherry on top
Phill Kelly just published a book about Shadowsun's Tau fighting the Death Guard.
I thought faith powers were different from Psychic warp ones, as didn't the necron have area's which messed up the warp and stopped psychics painfully, yet faith powers were not affected?
My 3 word summary of the whole thing: Bile escapes again.
Ian has finally succumb to the GW approved pronunciation of Roboutte Guilliman. Next up, Ghazghkull
I need the Godblight trilogy! Also Arks of Omen
Isn't Psychic Awakening immediately after Vigilus Nihilus, which is after the Gathering Storm?
These came and went so fast... I ended up googling them in an after thought... oh yeah... those books after Gathering Storm. (Which was released so rushed I couldn't even buy them fast enough. What a cash grab.)
And now 10th Edition... *throws more books on the campfire*
The Tau part of the video has any novel? I recently begin "Empire of Lies" and was wondering where to continúe the Tau narrative. Thanks!
Shadowsun's book seem to be post 4th sphere, but unsure if it's about the specific event in the video
Okay Ian don't pretend we haven't noticed the green screen. what's up? something spicy your working on?
There are 9!?!?
NINE BOOKS!
NEIN!
There are four lights!!
22:26 Please let this be Darktide 2
I had to back up and make sure i heard right. You changed how you pronounce guilliam lol. Thanks for the video
I was trying to get every possibility in but there just weren't enough appearances
Well at least the orks are having fun.
All the new names are making me wonder how long the writers spent playing Boggle.
I really appreciate the videos you make on this type of lore but I do find they become an information overload, I really struggle to follow all the overarching stuff as there are so many fights between so many factions and in so many seemingly unrelated battles.
Lovely as always.
what they did to aeldari in that book was a crime
Oy! Got a license for those psychic abilities?!
I forget about PA, they were out so quick
First rule of the Fourth Sphere Expansion: Don’t talk about the Fourth Sphere Expansion!
It sounds like the only legitimately cool Psychic Awakening book was War of the Spider
Would love to hear your thoughts on the new announcements around 10th Edition.
Is it just me or are about half of all the people in the Imperium called Sturn
Phionex rising still pisses me if they could have done that so much better.
and now if you want to buy these books you have to either pay a ton of money for second hand or dont buy them at all ..
But thankfully you don't have to buy them BECAUSE THIS VIDEO EXISTS!
(Also they might be on the vault by now I don't know)
Psychic Awakening was a MASSIVE letdown after Gathering Storm
So verily TRUE!
Not super relevant, but your colour grading is slightly off between the green screen and your old set up XD not sure if you already know/know how to fix it, but it's pretty easy
Nice!
Is anybody just living life in 40K? 😂 Are they all at war everywhere?
Yes and yes
In the grim darkess of the far future there is only war
And cake. War and cake.
@Arbitor Ian cake is a given, what else would they put in all those pouches?
Ain't NO FUCKING WAY you just said "the wolf time" 🤣🤣😭
I know the plot comes after the game, but it still annoys me that the edition that's come with the psychic awakening has toned down psychic powers into being a few set unit abilities and hazardous guns.
I'm not a wizard 😔
But I also haven't had a free ride on a Black Ship so 👍🏼
🚫✨
Cough The Lion cough
Sweet ... ✌️💚
"A brutally kunning campaign" 😂
Yeah, it’s pronounced Puh’sigh’kick yeah. 😜
The REd nAughty Trouble not BLu oRe WhiTe
5:16 avengers infinity war has forever ruined the gravitas of the phrase hitherto unseen 🤦for me
I feel that this ark is just a huge missed opportunity to show how desperate the battle for the survival of humanity against chaos could be. This is THE most dramatic event of the galaxy since the birth of Slaanesh, and to me it just felt like this: "Look! Primaris save the day! Pew pew! Alright, moving on to the next plot!"
Dante isnt a primarch....I'm sure it was a simple mistake and you know that but it really perked my ears up and made me go "hang on a minute. Did i hear that right?"
hope you're ready for the 4th tyranic war Ian
No comments about the return of the Lion?
tbh PA feels like a bit of a mess. As others mentioned I think Arks of Omen works much better which is nice since they are newer so supposedly GW has learned some things.
So what really happened??
Nothing, nothing at all.
Warhammer was at its best when it did this: created a sandbox of conflicts for players to create their own narratives in.
I know it's just that I'm an old fart at this point, but I'd rather this stuff was backfilled history rather than an advancing narrative. I've got this sense that the advancing narrative requires protagonists and the named characters are filling that role, and it honestly makes the universe feel far too small to me. I genuinely prefer hearing about random planet X and it's newly created background and culture than everything being focused on a few big name characters leading factions on well known named planets.
But I guess, I got mine for decades, and it's nice for people who like the advancing storyline stuff to get some of that. But there's no way I'd be buying these books, give me a forge world campaign about some less significant sector or planet any day. This stuff sounds like big comic crossover events, and I never liked those.
Why does your background look greenscreen fake
Great question! As I recall it's because Ian's usual space (as seen in the background) is having some work done on it, so he's probably filming from his work or somesuch. I think he mentioned it in a previous vid, but no way you'd know that 🙂
Yup, the flat got flooded at xmas and so I have the FAKE FLAT until it's habitable again.
I dunno why I keep clicking on these videos, this lore isn't all that great...
Awankening
Arbitrate me hard