*reverses a chair in order to sit backwards in it across from you*
So, you’ve started to write some Warhammer Lore. Your army collection has grown, you’ve maybe converted up a fancy character to lead your army. Or maybe you’ve just got a name and a few games under your belt, and you’re eager to record your army’s victories and defeats across the battlefields of the 41st (42nd?) Millennium.
And that’s excellent. Warhammer, at its core, is a wellspring of creativity – whether it’s the setting or the miniatures, there are many ways to make an army your own. Decades of lore that provides a rich background for your own contributions.
Next comes the question of how to make your army stand out from the crowd – how do you make them unique? How do you make them yours? So you write. Maybe you’re pretty happy with it, too – confident enough to share it online. And that’s when you encounter one single sentence:
“This isn’t canon.”
WHAT IS CANON?
“Canon”, at least in the sense of Warhammer, is a nebulous idea, but most generally it’s taken to mean anything that Games Workshop has written for the background of their games. Whether that’s the rulebooks, codexes, or novels put out via Black Library, it’s considered the “word of god” for the lore. Among some lore-enjoying circles on the Internet, the idea of Canon is taken very seriously – almost as if it were immutable dogma. Violate it at your own risk.
Here’s why they’re wrong.
IS CANON IMPORTANT?
It can be – the lore does establish certain rules of the setting – the laws of the universe. For example – that the Imperium is a crumbling totalitarian fascist hellscape that cares not for the lives of its citizens beyond them devoting their entire lives to the Emperor. That the forces of Chaos are twisted individuals who seek to topple all civilizations in the galaxy in the name of their lovecraftian warp-gods. It can give us a good indication of tone and mood, of broad strokes to follow with your own projects.
But is all of it vital? Is all of it immutable?
Well, no – least of all according to Games Workshop.
There was once a time where Space Marines weren’t the monastic “Angels of Death” supersoldiers they are now, but conscripted convicts
on a cocktail of steroids and drugs that were the mainstay of the Imperium’s forces. Necrons were once known as “Chaos Robots”, the Primarchs were simply regular Space Marines, or even human generals – and even a time where Chaos didn’t exist in the setting at all. These changes are “retcons” – Retroactive Continuity – that evolved alongside the many editions of the game.
When a new unit is produced for an army, we’ve seen them retroactively added to the lore – Stormraven Gunships initially being regarded as exclusive to the Blood Angels and Grey Knights, being technology that was “found” after the Horus Heresy – gradually, it found its way into every Space Marine army with a quiet lore acknowledgement that the design had “originated” with the Blood Angels. Units like the Hammerfall Bunker have even been added to Horus Heresy, with the acknowledgement that it had “always been there”. And so on, and so forth.
An entire army was removed from the setting during the move from 2nd to 3rd edition – the Squats, with the reasons being inferred that their
homeworlds were consumed by the Tyranids. And then decades later, with 9th edition in full swing, we saw their return as the Leagues of Votann . Still Space Dwarfs, but now with a much more suitable Grimdark Hypercapitalist Pawns of AI Overlords flair.
This even extends to Black Library’s novels – compare any two of them, and you’ll see inconsistencies. Even celebrated books like the Gaunt’s Ghosts series feature departures from what’s considered “canon”: From Guardsmen using .30 and .50 machine guns in place of heavy stubbers and heavy bolters, to their Chaos foes using tanks such as the AT70 and the Stalk-Tank that have no presence in the tabletop game. Even for two
books like Prospero Burns and A Thousand Sons that cover the same battle, inconsistencies can be found.
Further to this, the scale of 40k alone is absolutely vast. It covers events taking place across an entire galaxy – 100,000 light years, containing millions, if not billions of star systems. The Imperium itself is over a million worlds – establishing any sort of consistency on that scale is more or less impossible, and Games Workshop to their credit recognizes this. They’ve often pointed out that those telling the stories within this universe are either working from an absolutely tiny perspective, or otherwise are skewed by their own beliefs and biases. TV Tropes calls this an “Unreliable Narrator,” and I think it’s a very apt term when we consider the sheer amount of propaganda that the Imperium alone would produce.
Consider the 10th Edition trailer: Roboute Guilliman bitterly remarking on the Imperium declaring victory after victory, as we watch a Space Marine strike force get wiped out to the last man by a Tyranid invasion.
Even for one of the most hotly contested pieces of lore – the idea that women cannot be Space Marines – there’s been exceptions. Whether that’s the early Female Adventurers in Power Armor of Rogue Trader, or Challenge Magazine’s “Little Sisters of Purification”, it’s not something that’s impossible.
ALYS, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TRYING TO SAY HERE?
Right, right, let’s go with real world examples, and yes we’re going for the most controversial one because I have STRONG OPINIONS on the matter and you’re gonna read ’em. Or not. I guess. You could click off this article right now, if you’re a coward.
My Space Marines include women – both my Raven Guard for Heresy, and my 40k Raptors. My main army leader is a woman who’s survived through to the 42nd Millennium as one of the initial recruits of Cawl’s Primaris project.
Now, I recognize that the lore has taken a stance on Space Marines only being men. But I have to ask – does this fundamentally change Space Marines in a way that upsets the setting? They’re still 8-foot tall genetically modified warriors, recruited from childhood and brainwashed into carrying out the will of their distant or dying Emperor. They’re still human in name only, built for war and nothing else. It’s just that some of them are women now.
I hear some of you already saying “Just play Sisters of Battle”, and to that I say “No Drop Pods, No Deal.” In all seriousness though, there’s a significant difference in aesthetic and playstyle there – Sisters aren’t just Marines But Girls, they’re a force of religious fanatics whose faith manifests full-on Holy Miracles on the battlefield – a close-range firefight army whose casualties only serve as martyrs who fuel their fervor. Also they have church-tanks. To just call them “Female Space Marines” would ignore that rich background, and be a disservice to the effort done to make those two armies distinct.
A CONCLUSION
I guess the crux of what I’m trying to say is that the Canon isn’t set in stone, it’s not dogma, and it’s not historical texts that need to be 100% conforming. It’s a guideline. Games Workshop itself has left holes in the setting for us to fill in – areas of space, Marine Chapters, Ork WAAAAGHs, or any which way in between. This hobby thrives on creativity – and it’s an invitation to go forth and create something
of your own.
The 8th edition Chaos Daemons codex acknowledged that the Warp connects to an infinite number of realities. Infinite realities means infinite possibilities, my little baby lore birds. Now go forth and get wild with that Lorehammer.
THINGS TO CHECK OUT
Arbitor Ian’s Canon and Retcons in Warhammer 40k