The changing face of GW

[Psychosplodge]

There's limits though, you're never going to see Ork pacifists.

[grimmas]

I thought the whole point of the setting was, "do what you want?" Y'know, unimaginably vast setting with deliberate holes left all over it.

Yes that's why there's no need change existing background there's plenty of room to add new bits.

[Morgrim]

Europe has never been as lily-white as modern pop culture likes to portray it. Given the strong tradition of adult adoption in nordic culture, there were almost certainly some non-white vikings hanging about. And to use "well they're based on an earth culture!" as a reason to say darker toned Space Wolves break your suspension of disbelief is silly.

Because it's canonical that the humans of Fenris have been enhanced/tainted with the genetic sequences that the Canis Helix latches on to. The sequence that turns humans into WOLVES. Go look at the skin colour dogs have under their hair. There's pink skin under the white fur, and black skin under the black and brown fur. On our planet the people who have evolved to live furthest north don't get their vitamin D from the sun, they get it from their diet, and next to none of their skin is exposed to sunlight (so being pale is mostly down to descending from people who COULD get value from it). Boom. We now have entirely plausible reasons for Fenrisian humans to be any skin colour we damn well please.

Actually, we've also got justification for them to be piebald...

[Gotthammer]

Yes that's why there's no need change existing background there's plenty of room to add new bits.

The only thing we know for sure there aren't on Fenris is wolves, not brown people.

Though I will admit not reading the last couple of Wolves codexes, so I could have missed a passage where they specify they only recruit white people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Psychosplodge]

Actually, we've also got justification for them to be piebald...

lmao If you weren't in Oz I'd suggest you do that, but your prices make a comedy army prohibitive.

[grimmas]

The only thing we know for sure there aren't on Fenris is wolves, not brown people.

Though I will admit not reading the last couple of Wolves codexes, so I could have missed a passage where they specify they only recruit white people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Surely that fits with my line of reasoning then?


Also as a slight aside Viking is a job title not a racial group.

The areas of Europe involved in that sort of thing were and still are pretty lilly white. Though this certainly wouldn't have precluded Vikings of other skin tones it would have been rarer. Not necessarily relevant for another planet though.

[Erik Setzer]

Why's that?

I mean it's a world where there's a single permanent landmass, giant monsters abound, there are - despite almost no permanent land - permanent colonies of wolves (who may or may not actually be people) but it's thinking that non-white people might exist there that's too much?

Also Fenris isn't encased in a perpetual winter, during the summer months there's like volcanoes and all that jazz, so doesn't seem far fetched to me that people not living at polar latitudes could be non-white. I mean Mongolia is rather well known as a cold place, covered in snow during winter, but wouldn't call the people there white or say their existence makes no sense.

But maybe that's just me...

I always got the image that it *was* kind of permanently shrouded, which would make it far less likely to see someone with a darker skin tone than, say, Catachan. I might have my vision of Fenris wrong, though.

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Quick point of order. There are female Stormcasts, that's a fact not liking how this is represented doesn't change this. Where does it say that they are all white ? It's not been mentioned, we know that people of other ethnicities exist in the realms why wouldn't they be members of the Stormcast. They are completely covered in armour to hide their identity.

We're told these things, but given that they aren't represented because the gender or skin tone of the person doesn't matter in an army of basically clones of a white man, it's not an indication of suddenly "seeing the light" on diversity.

That's the problem when you're trying to save money and realize a good way to do it is make an army so generic that Space Marines look highly varied in comparison.

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In fact it makes no sense that Bangles are white, coming from a radiation soaked desert moon, or do they have the "all look like the primach" thing going on the raven guard and salamanders do?

This is one of the things I hate about modern Blood Angels and why I don't often use their uncovered heads. They shouldn't all be blue-eyed and blonde-haired. I think Sanguinius was awesome, but I like it when the guys in the chapter looked different.

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The background is rather important to the setting. It has its own history. Changing it to suit an individual's real life political stance is rubbish. However reflecting the actual diversity of the setting is appropriate and it is diverse.

Given that they keep changing the history of the setting and its participants, I don't see a serious issue with people making up "headcanon" for something. If it went too far astray, okay, that could be an issue.

However, expecting something like actually seeing some Guardsmen who aren't painted to be white men, or even a single female miniature created for AoS, there's no issue there.

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There's limits though, you're never going to see Ork pacifists.

It's actually possible. Some of them have their programming off by a good bit. Heck, Freebooterz were meant to be an example of this, Orks who went outside what they were programmed to do. Similarly, Stormboyz are a result of the programming going awry and creating some who demand order in their battle. They'd be an extreme rarity, but an Ork pacifist is still a possibility. And it'd make for a rather amusing story.

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I suppose I should add that I'm not opposed to black Space Wolves (heck, I planned on doing it with one or two Wulfen), it just seemed like maybe it wouldn't make as much sense as other worlds (and yeah, with Blood Angels, it does make plenty of sense), and with non-genetically-modified armies it makes more sense... but we still haven't see any Guardsmen painted non-white in a long time (I'm having a hard time remembering the last one). Being based on Vikings isn't an issue, I don't see a problem Heimdall being black in the Thor universe (assuming there's an explanation for why he changed, because he didn't start that way, but I'm sure there's something somewhere).

If someone wants to do black Space Wolves, cool. Just curious that it wasn't some other legion that got them first. (I meant, with Modern GW. Classic GW had a whole chapter of black Marines, then they decided to just make them coal black, which is boring.)

[Mr Mystery]

There's certainly capacity for Ork Pacifists. But given the Kultur, I don't expect they'd last terribly long at all.

More on the evolution/genetic tinkering. Because I can't believe I missed this one...

There Are No Wolves On Fenris

Genetic tinkering right there, enabling Man to survive on a deathworld. Similar likely happened to the Squats and Ogryns - 30,000 years doesn't sound like a particularly wide window for that level of evolution anyway

[Erik Setzer]

There's certainly capacity for Ork Pacifists. But given the Kultur, I don't expect they'd last terribly long at all.

They might be able to, depending on the role they took in the society. While Orks are all about violence as a form of partying, that's pretty much what it is to them: a party. They aren't unthinking brutes who get the urge to act out violence on a moment's whim against anything around. So if, for example, an Ork was a pacifist and he took up a position selling something necessary within a clan, it's unlikely he'd come to much harm, as those who pick on him would then find themselves in trouble from others.

Ork society is a lot more complex than people give it credit for. I really wish they'd re-release some of the old fluff. The 4th edition stuff (which just got copied-and-pasted for 7th edition) wasn't bad, the 3rd edition codex still owes us a serious explanation, but the earlier stuff, especially side stories, showed that Orks weren't as simple as people seem to think, and certainly not as simple as the Imperium is portrayed to believe they are.

And I swear this isn't my rampant Ork fanboyism coming through.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

hard SF nerd mode/

In a far future when humanity is so dominant throughout the galaxy the diversity of humans would be millions of times more than it is on earth as each world would have subtlies in temperature, gravity, atmosphere, sunlight (and more!) that would affect humans over time. Hell even cultures space-based would be affected in various ways. GW has only ever really had any focus on high gravity (with Squats lol)