Welcome to Arkhona conflict, background-lore master thread. I don’t know about you guys but what brought me into the wh40k universe was the story behind it. Miniatures, board games and video games came afterwards. Since in my opinion the post launch time that we are in currently is a great opportunity to flesh out the game with numerous details let’s try to gather all the things we got so far and try to encourage the developers to work more on the wh40k story that should stand behind the conflict at hand. In this thread I will summarize all that there is today and will speculate upon what should be added in order to make the game experience worthwhile for those lore-hungry wh40k fans out there. First of all, let’s look at the intro to the gathered short stories, located HERE: "Kharon is located in the galactic northern marches of Segmentum Obscuras, in the dead centre of a void of systems – right on the edge of Imperial space. It is a trinary star system, consisting of three suns locked in orbit. The fifth planet in the system, Arkhona, is a former Imperial world dating back tens of thousands of years. Although mankind at one time stretched across all its continents, when representatives from the Ordo Xenos arrived recently they found that the entire population had been destroyed. Shortly afterwards, the Inquisitors themselves were lost under terrible circumstances, thus setting events in motion..." First of all there is a funny typo: Segmentum Obscuras should be written Segmentum Obscurus. And then lets go into some details: - Kharon is supposedly a star system, which means it is located in some sector of unknown name. This does not help to located it on the galaxy map on the wh40k universe making it even more cut out of context. Rest of the data in the paragraphs is so generic that it could be referring to nearly anything at all in wh40k Universe, while following the pattern: humans were here and the past was so great, now everything is destroyed, inquisition is involved and lets grind our armies together to bloody pulp over a scratch of worthless land that is of no significance. Ok, so the setting on the side of location needs lots of work to be convincing, but that is the least of our concerns. Who is fighting whom? Lets summarize it: Imperium: 1. Ultramarines how many companies? - no idea, but by the aviablity of pauldron trims in game, i guess elements of 5 comapnies could be possibly present, that is truly significant deployment what strength? - at least three squads judging by the short story content, that gives at least 30 marines at the initial descent what size of naval support? - no idea... who is in charge of the expeditionary force? - no idea..., yet several sergeants were mentioned in the short stories 2. Blood Angels how many companies? - no idea what strength? - no idea... what size of naval support? - Baal’s Blood vessel was mentioned, although we have no idea of its type who is in charge of the expeditionary force? - possibly Mephiston 3. Imperial Fists how many companies? - no idea... what strength? - no idea... what size of naval support? - no idea... who is in charge of the expeditionary force? - no idea... 4. Space Wolves how many companies? - for now we know of one great company: Ragnar Blackmane's Company what strength? - probably as much as the great company itself, if deployed with full force what size of naval support? - no idea... at least one vessel that brought the great company to Arkhona, and ambushed the Blood Angels force in asteroid belt, no name mentioned thou... who is in charge of expeditionary force? - Ragnar Blackmane 5. Dark Angels how many companies? - not specified what strength? - not specified what size of naval support? - not specified who is in charge of expeditionary force? - Grand Master of the Deathwing (First Captain of the Dark Angels), Belial - who is also considered a leader of LSM faction in the Arkhona conflict lets leave it at that for now. Summarizing the above mentioned, we can easy speculate of a conflict the size of siege of Vraks or more, in terms of significance, both due to the forces present, as well as important characters from wh40k setting. It would be also fair to say that the other factions did not get as much "love" as Space Marines. Lets look at Chaos forces: 1. Overall command belongs to Abaddon 2. Out of secondary characters, there is only a truly poorly written sorcerer that has nothing specific about himself, other than being Abaddon's puppet. He goes by the name Ash’hy Mok. His input into the overall story is close to zero, since what he actually does is to come up with an idea to bring Arkhona to his heel and offer it to Abaddon as a prize. 3. What fores of Chaos are present at Arkhona ? - not specified? 4. Since Black Legion is Abaddon's to command there is no doubt that their presence and his overall command is to be expected in synergy, yet what about the other Chaos forces. We can choose from Night Lords, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors. Non of those are easily controllable and are highly independent in their prosecution of war. Who is leading those groups and to what end. What is the troop disposition? What are their goals? Seriously, I don't see Night Lords or Word Bearers answering blindly Abaddons call, just cause one of his (lesser) sorcerers passed info to Abaddon about a long forgotten planet with nothing interesting on it. What is the deal here???? I'll skip Eldar and Orcs to not make this post too long, but I hope you guys get what I mean. Also don't get me started on Tyrannids, since out of all Segmentums the one you guys choose to set this game in, Segmentum Obscurus is the only one not infested by them... ____________ What i want to achieve with this thread? A discussion and a means to press on the devs to talk about those things and develop them (this is the easiest part of game development there is, god dam it, just decide the basics of the setting we are in, an we are good to go). My requests to elaborate on this matters have been completely ignored for the past several twitch sessions so maybe since we are already in the magic area of post launch and happiness we can get some of the details. Apart from many things gameplay-wise, we as a players community in love with wh40k setting need some details about the war we are prosecuting here. Forge world books depicting conflicts are great example of this handled properly and provide tons of lore material for the hobbyists. Damn, even this terrible game like Dawn of War had story that inspired books, and became part of canon lore, I would wish the same for Eternal Crusade, to produce some events, characters and places that will be memorable and interesting parts of warhammer 40k cannon.
Did you even read what i wrote? I guess not... the entire point of this thread is to talk about things that are not in the those pitiful short stories that tell us nothing about what is happening on Arkhona. Dont get me wrong I am enjoying the game, I have high hopes for its future development and i do and will support it. It is just that the one of things that i miss in the game is solid background story. Also if you come here and dont read what i wrote and jst post me this link to those stories it is kind of offensive, and I guess it was intended to show how much of an edgy kid you are, good job.
I've learned to ignore Katitof's posts. More likely than not, its just him thinking he is right and amazing.
@Valrak Any idea how this died? http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/q-a-with-the-new-ec-writer.53009/ Is this guy still responsible for EC? Will he be later?
Sooooooooooooo, where do I begin... First of all I would love to see the troops disposition of initial war setting on Arkhona, to get the view of the scope of this conflict. Also I would love to see plenty of secondary characters made up for the purpose of this conflict, like lets say an Iron Warrior fortress castellan that rulles over some scrap of land that Abaddon told him to hold on the planetside. Then for example LSM participate in this (not yet seen) player driven campaign and this dude gets wrecked and obliderated together with his fortress. This results in us players having impact on the game and this made up character becomes a part of the lore, he gets mentioned together with his story on for example wh40k wiki or lexicanum, and we the players get the feeling on having impact on wh40k universe - this is the dream come true! forum cancer troll at its finest...
Do thing like Titanfall + Red Orchestra 2. Voice overs that depends on W/L and that change patch by patch, and add some kind of closure when some of sides win. This way you got at least feel of persistent world. And W/L and effort of players some meaning in game. And it wouldn't cost much. Win/Win situation for devs and players if you ask me. Besides most of players of EC love lore and would be very active to see something like that. And it would be a great appeal to 40K fans who don't like EC because of lack of lore
