Writing balanced cultures: rescuing the Space Wolves of Warhammer 40,000 from corruption

 

I encountered Warhammer 40,000 (40k from now on for brevity) as a child and like most people I liked the aesthetic of super soldiers in powerful armour vanquishing tonnes of foes. The space marines are the main selling point of the IP, as is obvious from the fraction they form of all the models sold for the games. In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war: war lost by all except the space marines, who just about hold the enemies back. 

                Warhammer 40,000 is a grand example of people not understanding a subject deeply enough. When you first encounter Space Marines, you might see the chunky armour and think “Oh cool, super-soldier knights in space”. That’s roughly why they are Games Workshop’s most popular models. And once you’ve decided you like the setting, parts of it seem nicer: you might be drawn to ‘Imperial Fists’, because the idea of righteously, er, fisting the enemies of humanity sounds good, and once you get beyond the name the main aspects of their culture that you first encounter will be dogged, valiant defenders, with a strict honour-code. You begin to form an idea in your mind: these are sent in to hold the line in unwinnable battles, routing the alien hordes. It’s a heroic concept, and so that becomes the army you choose to play in the game.

                You find out more: the army rulebook comes with snippets of stories about these people, their heroic deeds etc. You find out about all the good stuff they’ve done, all their victories, and their nemeses. Meanwhile you don’t engage so closely with the options you discarded.

                This creates a mismatch: people know more good about what they were initially drawn to, and have a more basic understanding of the rest. As in the rest of life.

                This happens with writers commissioned to write stories about the different factions too, which would be fine, if it didn’t also happen to their editors who oversee the whole setting. Someone, whether an individual or a group of individuals, needs to understand the strengths of everyone, what makes the setting appealing overall, and ensure that individual contributions don’t detract from the greater whole. There needs to be someone responsible who can point out that your favourites aren’t the best at everything.

                Once you get past ‘knight commandos in space’, you might see the Dark Angels, and think ‘crusaders in space looks cool’. And since you’ve decided that they’re cool, you get on board with ‘stern, unwavering, aloof and constantly questing’. And you find out that they have a rivalry with the Space Wolves, and you think ‘Wolves in space: how crass’. Just brute animals, humans with fangs with no sense, duty or honour. Hur hur. You read about Dark Angel heroes being the greatest of soldiers and know for sure that they’re the best.

                But you didn’t read about the Space Wolves being sort-of Vikings in space: the ‘wolves’ name simply being part of the Nordic background. You didn’t learn about their honour, independence of thought, scorn for the arrogance of Dark Angels, nor their endless array of mighty heroes who were, for sure, the best.

                Likewise if you’re tasked with writing about Mongols in space whose only characteristic so far established is mobile warfare, you know that Europeans (and much of Asia) regards the Mongols as murderous horse archers, but when delving into their history for inspiration you find aspects of culture and learning that are often missed. So you make them your own Mary-Sue culture: they’re regarded as barbarians because they’re independent of imperial authority, but they’re actually entirely learned and wise and clever and brave and, and, and… Such a writer thinks he’s being clever, a step up from re-writing the boring, basic understanding of Mongols as mere fast-moving barbarian horde.

                It is a step up, but only one, and there are many more. To write a new faction or character into a setting requires you to leave the setting balanced afterwards. Whether it’s making She-Hulk stronger, cleverer and more self-controlled than the original Hulk, or making the White Scars have all the good character the Space Wolves had plus more strengths besides, it’s not good writing to give your own character a niche by stealing it off someone already established and liked. She-Hulk wasn’t ‘just Hulk, but woman’. That was basic level, and the writer didn’t want to retread old ground and instead made her ‘Hulk, but better’, as surely that would appeal to women? Some women, apparently, but not that many… and it made men and women who liked Bruce Banner unhappy.

                The more characters there are in a setting, the harder the challenge to introduce new ones. There might be some diminishment of previous characters, as the same pool of strengths is now shared more widely. The key is not to grab as many for yourself as you can, setting be damned. It’s to find a novel combination of strengths and weaknesses that is both individually compelling and appropriate for the setting.

                I was discussing the Warhammer 40k setting with my sister, and admitted that as a child I chose Space Wolves for their character, saying that Ultramarines were boring. She countered that they are not boring at all: that their strengths of logistics and organisation are actually very important. The implication being that this is a more advanced understanding that counters my statement. It is a more advanced understanding than I had at 11 years old (‘were boring’) but also not in itself complete. ‘Good at logistics’ is not character, and is, in fact, about as boring as ‘standard super-soldier’. My sister values planning and logistics now, and thinks it’s cool to tout the value of supposedly boring but immensely valuable activities. That’s her niche in the game.

                The game as a whole, though, can’t take sides. Strengths must be matched with weaknesses such that it becomes a question of preference, rather than more or less deep understanding, about which character in a superhero franchise, or faction in a wargame, is truly best. This is the most advanced understanding: and if a setting has failed to understand this, it is a flawed setting.

                Logistics and planning are better strengths than ‘looking cool’, which is roughly how I initially chose the Space Wolves (and the +1 to weapon skill in game). But a good setting gives everyone strengths and weaknesses. Rather than stop at the strength, let’s consider the weakness: doctrinaire and rigidly conformist, with plans and logistics following long-established options and rules. This is a severe weakness, especially to an independent-minded person like me. If you’re a more conformist person, or you also like to feel a little bit of a rebel by not being mean about how boring logistics is, you will like the Ultramarines.

 

                The later Warhammer writers and designers who took the early-era, balanced Space Wolves and have decided to give them wolves on everything, werewolves in space, thunderwolf cavalry and a ferocious, entirely animal nature like wild animals have tried to write this faction while having the incomplete understanding of a supporter of any of the other factions, not a supporter of the overall setting.

                An equivalent might be giving the [vampire-themed] Blood Angels bats on all their insignia, bat-themed flying troops, bat heads for their Death Companies and an insatiable animal desire to drink blood; or making the overhyped White Scars speed junkies who just like to go zoom-zoom on their fast vehicles or noisily rev their engines like idiot teenagers no matter the situation; or making the Dark Angels all follow a complete vow of silence and never communicate at all while they brood uncontrollably; or the Ultramarines no free will at all, just mindless automata who cannot help but follow orders.

                Yes it’s funny to take down a rival faction as a player, but the next-level up, the mature, deeper understanding, is that as a writer in a setting you have to set aside your personal rivalries and let every part of the setting shine. That definitely involves giving your character/faction weaknesses, both to balance the setting and also to provide plot development: something to overcome.

                On the subject of weaknesses, they come in three overlapping categories, hinted at already, material, mental and social. Material weaknesses are pretty-much absolute. If your character is physically weak, that’s unlikely to change over a story. Theoretically he could take up body-building and train hard, but aside from training montages or children growing up writers rarely bother. And it’s not going to change into super-strength without being a major part of the plot (e.g. Captain America).

                Mental weaknesses are more character habits, or perhaps cultural habits, that impede the character. There is no firm barrier, but it’s still a flaw. An addiction, impulsivity, cowardice: these are detrimental but lesser, as a mere effort of will (in a story) can overcome them. There is a temptation for writers to remove these weaknesses with too much such willpower, and then they become mere temptations rather than weaknesses. A character must actually have a weakness, and overcome it only after character development.

                Social weaknesses are barely weaknesses, being more problems. Nothing is wrong with the character, but there are social problems. He is black in a racist society; or independent in a conformist one; or neurodivergent; or scarred; or mistrusted because of past events that weren’t even his fault. If you build a character for a role-playing game these will count as negative attributes because they will indeed be barriers to doing well in the game. But take a step back and it’s obvious that the weakness/flaw here is with everyone else. The ‘weakness’ is actually the writer highlighting how great the character is: my character is independent and the silly conformists therefore don’t like him!

                It’s the hackneyed interview answer ‘my greatest weakness is perfectionism’. It’s a cop-out: a way of avoiding difficult problems by pretending that they don’t exist, cleverer than guilelessly admitting to unforgivable failings, but not as wise as constructively admitting what one prefers to focus on and what one has let slide. One step up, but blind to further steps above, looking proudly down at the fools below.

                Is my understanding truly at the top of this metaphorical staircase? I don’t know, but at least I’m considering the possibility.

 

 

                There are, canonically, 20 main ‘chapters’ of space marines (the Empire of Man is a dystopian fascist theocracy and the space marines are therefore warrior monks), although a player can choose to have his own chapter, which will have branched off the ‘Ultramarines’ chapter and will follow their rules but not their colour scheme.

Ultramarines are the boring ones; or, to put it kindly, the least odd ones, with a solid focus on logistics and strategy. It takes some inventiveness to make logistics matter in a tabletop game (more/better ammunition = better shooting?) but from a storytelling perspective this is a good start.

                20 chapters is a lot of different characters to distinguish; try describing a class of children so that each is clearly distinct and equally likeable in one clause each. There will be inevitable overlap, and inevitably some will seem more appealing than others. 40k is spared this challenge because two are lost and Games Workshop is unlikely ever to create a story in which they are found, and because half of the remainder turned evil and are now the arch-enemies of mankind. Nonetheless, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are not big character traits in themselves; and super-powered indoctrinated soldiers in a fascist theocracy at constant war can only have a subset of the full range of human cultures/characteristics, as some attitudes or extra powers will not fit the setting.             

                Space marines are child soldiers taken from their families, put through a gruelling indoctrination and genetic conversion which many do not survive, who then go from battle to battle for the next few hundred years until they die, always in battle. This isn’t the first aspect of the setting one teaches to children; it’s background that one discovers after fighting a few games and seeing humanity’s champions emerge victorious. It might seem nasty and brutal, but I think that’s actually a good lesson to learn about war, especially endless war. A setting with clean heroes who vanquished evil with no sacrifice is an entirely different setting, and probably worse for children’s attitudes to violence and war than something over-the-top gory and violent in which no-one is doing well from warfare.

                This is one of the key features of the setting: it is grim and dark (it spawned the slang term ‘grimdark’!). There is no haven of loveliness, no flourishing or fulfilment for most. Survival is the best to hope for.

                That makes perfectly wise and thoughtful supersoldier monks a no-go just because what makes the setting so characterful is that every faction has flaws. There can be good individuals but whether through racial character traits or pervading culture, there is no haven of goodness safe from the ravages of a hostile galaxy. One of the setting’s defining themes, once you get past the basic understanding of a galaxy at war, is about the conflict between being good and surviving in a horrible environment. The Empire of Man is terrible, but the alternative of wholesale death of billions is worse. The inquisition kills many innocents, but when daemons and evil corruption genuinely exist and can steal the souls of whole planetary populations if allowed to thrive, a few innocent lives (and not necessarily their souls) could be a cheap price to pay for a bit more safety.

                This is the setting. The Space Marines have character dictated partly by their culture and partly by the specific chapter’s genetic enhancement, as each has a different geneseed. Space Marines are made by adding the genes of a demigod-like progenitor to humans, who over the course of their lives then grow more implantable material which can be harvested on death and used to make more. The progenitors are called primarchs and are characters in the stories who then define the character of the supersoldiers they commanded and to whom their genes are given.

 

Chapter	Character	Primarch
Ultramarines Roboute Guilliman	Strategic, carefulm rational and calm. Rule-followers. Roman legions in space… in an empire that is Rome in space	Extra strategic special abilities
Space Wolves Leman Russ	Vikings/wolf-themed. Ferocious combat specialists, independent, disobedient, honourable, able to enjoy feasts and leisure as pauses between battles.	Fierce, honourable, cunning
Blood angels Sanguinius	Vampires aspiring to be angels. Ferocious combat specialists, dark nature, get into a mind-ending rage about the death of their progenitor.	Chivalrous, charismatic angel. Brightest and best, unsullied by the vampirism of his seed.
Dark Angels Lion El’Johnson	Catholic knights in space: aloof, mysterious, unsharing, tortured by original sin, determined.	Watchman at the edge of humanity, grim, cold, merciless, dour, moody, arrogant, death obsessed loner
Iron Hands Ferrus Manus	Tech-worshippers, hate flesh, hate their enemies: proud, brutal, remorseless, isolationist	Craftsman; ruthless, practical, uninterested in frippery
Imperial Fists Rogal Dorn	Proud; masters of siegecraft; valiant, fastidious, loyal adherents to Imperial doctrine. Self-sacrifice and bravery over strategic retreat. Flagellants.	Disciplined, dutiful, unyielding, unquestioningly loyal
Salamanders Vulkan	Merciful, concerned about civilian casualties, integrated into normal people’s lives, careful, considered, self-sacrificing, corruptible self-sufficient mechanics/soldiers	Regenerating immortal, craftsman, thoughtful, empathetic, immensely strong
White Scars Jaghatai Khan	Mobile, fierce, enjoy hit-and-run lightning strikes, honour-scarred, wild, savage, lacking in heavy ordnance or staying-power, pursue mysticism and artwork in defiance of imperial doctrine; good pilots. Mongols in space	Wayward, unreliable yet honourable, fierce and unwilling to get bogged down or accept others’ authority. Always resentful of being part of another’s empire
Raven Guard Corvus Corax	Patient stalkers striking at right time; stealthy, precise infiltrators, cool-headed	Stealthy; led a slave rebellion, believes in human dignity and tortured by the knowledge that innocents must die in war
Emperor’s Children Fulgrim	Noble, excellent… but proud and now enslaved to pride, hedonistic desires and excess	Noble, civilized, learned, excellent, but proud and a little too beauty-obsessed
Iron Warriors Perturabo	Siege and assault specialists, vengeful, technical lovers of destruction	Keen, cold, calculating, technical, furious, vengeful
Night Lords Konrad Curze	Terrorizing, merciless murderous psyops followers, enjoyers of fear and brutality	Edgelord obsessed with justice and preventing great injustice; order through fear, since people are base and need such coercion.
World Eaters Angron	Angry, brutal, bloodthirsty	Angry enraged hulk once had honour
Death Guard Mortarion	Resilient, strong, indefatigable heavy infantry, experts in survival, endurance; contempt for the less sturdy, and now, having been corrupted, hatred for the strong and desire to bring all to rot and ruin	Intelligent, good leader cared little for rank, judging it only by damage on armour. Holds grudges, wanted to liberate humanity from all shackles, anti-psyker
Thousand Sons Magnus the Red	Psykers seeking knowledge; non-psychic marines have been turned into mindless automata, their souls sacrificed to preserve the few. Rely on deceit and guile.	Great psyker more loyal to knowledge and learning than to principle, authority or humanity. Immature, proud
Luna Wolves Horus	Once honourable, ruthless, loyal, elite shock troops, proud, humourless, practical yet also aggressive. Merciless and focused; no ultimatums or parley, often attacking and winning before an enemy could choose to be one.	Charismatic leader, intelligent, persuasive, strategically and tactically gifted (perhaps not logistically). Resentment and a desire for always greater recognition and accolades.
Word Bearers Lorgar Aurelion	Zealots fighting for and preaching the Word, not merely murdering for its own sake. Superstitious, devoted, willing to work with human cultists	Obsessed with faith and mysticism, driven by need to feel fulfilled by faith ahead of reason, loyalty or virtue. Original corrupter of other chapters. Seeker of Truth, not truth.
Alpha Legion Alpharius (and Omegon?)	Secretive, cunning, revel in misdirection, infiltration and guerilla warfare. Disciplined and loyal to the mission	Devious, cunning, scornful of simplicity

 

                There are numerous challenges in such a set-up, which can also be relevant to other settings and stories.

1.       An ability is not a character.

Good with technology is an essential specialization in warfare (or peacefare, for that matter). It might be the story purpose of a character, but it is not in itself a character.

2.       Being the best is not a character; it is characterless

Character is best understood as some aspect of a person that stands out. Being the best often involves being well-rounded, good at everything, with no major weaknesses. There is nothing salient that defines someone who, for storyline purposes, is the best.

3.       Making multiple characters both the best and roughly equal gets ever harder the more there are

Someone will need to be in the group for their strengths but have more severe weaknesses. Two or three might all be the best, but five out of 18 is pushing it. Horus (best because he’s the primary antagonist), Sanguinius (the best because  his ‘character’ was born that way), Fulgrim (the best because his character is that he achieved perfection), Vulkan (the best because whoever created the Salamanders backstory did not have an editor) and Lion El Jonson (the best because the first and oldest and it’s his character too to mysteriously always win, willpower overcoming all in the ultimate bad-writing trope) all have been written to be truly the best. Others who have claim on being able to best their brothers should they desire it are Jaghatai, because he represents a target market for the IP owner and has no real weaknesses (also needed an editor), Leman Russ, because as ‘the executioner’ assigned to keep his brothers in line he necessarily needs to be able to do so, and Alpharius, because his complex schemes have the plot armour to enable him to pull off any victory should he scheme for it. We could even add Angron, given this quotation from 40k’s website: ‘Russ, along with his brother primarchs Angron and Vulkan, were considered to be the greatest warriors one-on-one amongst the primarchs’. Angron is a beast and a force of nature, not a soldier, so this is debatable.

4.       Culture, character and genes are different, but are here all conflated into one.

Not every member of a culture will share those cultural characteristics: a culture is a set of behaviours, actions or beliefs that can shape character but not replace it. Although, in the space marines, this rule is less strong, since they are brainwashed soldiers.

5.       Power creep is a temptation, not a virtue

Writers want new characters and stories to be impactful and therefore make them powerful, with people, gadgets and stakes that are bigger and better than before, but this ‘power creep’ disrespects whatever drew people to the setting in the first place. A setting based around selling new models experiences this temptation doubly, as the money pours in from people buying the new, powerful gameplay, not just from people buying books.

6.       Gaming and storytelling are at odds with each other

The game wants everyone at war, to explain any match-up of armies; wants everyone balanced, so that one army (perhaps of different size) stands a chance against every other; and wants limited progression, so that characters and armies remain playable. Stories are progression, and victories that change nothing can be boring for the reader, with stakes that do not seem real.

7.       Using real-world cultures as inspiration naturally also co-opts real-world loyalties and tensions

Which is better? Mongols or Vikings? Were crusaders a noble part of history or an evil in the world? Are vampires better than werewolves?

 

                All these general problems apply to the whole setting, but I loved the Space Wolves. Why do I think they, in particular, have been done dirty over the years? Let’s start by noting that of the table of 18 chapters above, the first four were the original good ones fleshed out in the early life of the IP; and with there being four chaos (evil) gods, the four relevant traitor chapters also got a bit more description.

                So there was the choice of the Ultramarines, bright, strong, devoted strategists, greater than the normal human armies, unsullied by peculiar weaknesses but also not culturally distinct; Dark Angels, firstborn knights in space with willpower, but suffering from the vices of pride, wilfulness, distrust and faith and anguished over the original sin of some of them turning traitor; or you could have the Blood Angels, vampires trying to be good and enraged at the heresy that caused their sainted primarch to die, with the potential to be as perfect as him but the bloodlust within them preventing it; or the Space Wolves, practical, fierce close combat specialists less motivated by faith and instead with loyalty through culture, oath and love of combat. The Ultramarines were the basic version, and each of the others had a severe problem: vampirism, canis helix genetic instability/faithlessness, and the legacy of half of them succumbing to temptation.

                I loved the Space Wolves. I liked their independent minds: their free-thinking (in the setting, more practical than genuinely free-thinking). I liked that they had a sense of honour that was not simply following the Imperial faith or obeying orders. I can get behind Dark Angel introversion and dour watchman aesthetic, but faith, for me, is a horrible vice. I liked that Space Wolves got +1 weapon skill in-game, making their basic troops the best basic troops in the game at the time, consistent with their primarch’s title as executioner; the potential police to send after other space marines who got out of hand. I liked that their psykers used a weird rune magic, a subtype of psychic powers that protected the user far more from the corrupting energies he wielded, and that they were suspicious of psychic power more broadly – a correct, practical attitude, given that the evil chaos gods are rulers of ‘the warp’, the source of psychic power. Because of their independence, divergent culture, mutated geneseed, disobedience and lack of faith they were distrusted by others, but I sympathised with them as outsiders.

                Yet subsequent writing and, it seems, game editions, have taken almost all of this away from them. Sanguinius of the Blood Angels was the greatest primarch, not only charismatic but best in combat, and Fulgrim, the traitor of the Emperor’s Children, because of his story about excessive pursuit of perfection, needed a claim to best duellist as well. Leman Russ of the Space Wolves, for his story and role to have any validity, has a strong claim to third place, but was always displaced. Vulkan is immortal, strong, merciful: a Mary Sue, modern sensibilities transplanted to a setting where they should be a weakness but written as a strength. Jaghatai is great at everything, a second Emperor not only in his mind but near enough in actuality. El Johnson was the firstborn, and somehow this makes him the best through experience. Horus of course needed to be impressive as the Emperor’s chosen deputy and the main antagonist, although we can say some of his power came after the chaos gods imbued him with further strength. So writers have demoted Russ from being the policeman of 20 primarchs, able to subdue any of them, to being 7^th out of 20, and no-one seems very invested in keeping him even that high.

Russ’ weaknesses are minimal, as with any primarch: his sense of honour which may lead to suboptimal strategies, a disinterest in psychic and machine help in warfare and an inclination to let violence do the talking; but his ferocity ends and sanity returns before he or his soldiers devour corpses, drink blood or slaughter innocents as some of the other marines do. It is directed only at winning combat, not death, fear, satiation of bloodlust etc.

                Not the worst of weaknesses; everyone wants their hero’s weaknesses to be social status or ineffective virtue, not personal vice. Distrusted by others is barely a weakness: the cause of the distrust might be. The same applies to being headstrong, disobedient and wilful; although many people value obedience to hierarchy and I’m on the opposite end of that spectrum, the reason for disobedience matters to us all.

                That’s not a problem, though, if we don’t try to make all the primarchs, and space marine chapters, equal. There is no harm in Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands being a master craftsman -  a great strength, to be sure – and not exceptional otherwise. There is distinct gameplay, with access to more and more special wargear, and his character can be crafted around non-power related aspects. Neuroticism, perfectionism, shyness… there are definite possibilities.

                The problem is that everyone competes for the same ‘weaknesses’, just as at job interviews we are all instructed to claim that our greatest weakness is perfectionism, or caring too much about doing the job, or working too hard. Thus the Dark Angels are mysterious, distrusted outsiders, great at everything but a bit sad about something they didn’t do; and the White Scars are outsiders, tactical geniuses, great assault specialists, cultured and clever but distrusted because they’re off doing things. These are the true enigmatic outsiders: the Space Wolves have therefore been rewritten as also-rans, just a bunch of savages who can’t control themselves. The Space Wolves are actually stupid barbarians; the White Scars are thought of as barbaric but secretly are cultured geniuses who use that misjudgement to their advantage; the Dark Angels cleverly withhold vital information from allies and enemies alike to gain a strategic advantage.

                As we were given books about each of the primarchs and further stories set in the 40k world, writers competed for their character to be the real best, not merely the best in that particular story, and the development of the White Scars, of Lion El Jonson, Magnus the Red (enemy of Leman Russ even before he turned traitor) and Vulkan have all eaten away at the Space Wolves’ distinctiveness. Each has laid claim to be more Space Wolf at something than the Space Wolves themselves.

                A very early story of the setting was the Space Wolves’ disobedience in the name of protecting an innocent population. Vulkan and the Salamanders are now the merciful protectors of humanity, caring about collateral damage in a very normal, real-world way (Russia, Israel and Iran excepted). They barely fit into the 40k setting.

                The ‘barbarians who are actually cunning’ has been snatched by the White Scars. The ‘outsider whose weakness is that he isn’t liked and is secretly great at everything’ role has been comprehensively adopted by Lion El Jonson, although Jaghatai of the White Scars made a convincing effort too. The ‘assault specialists who are best at close combat’ is an understandably popular title to tilt at in a wartorn galaxy, and it seems to have been snatched from the Space Wolves and handed to the Blood Angels, who were in need of a specialism to match their vampiric/angelic description.

                All that is left is a disobedient faction with a bit of honour and ‘wolf’ in the title who aren’t trusted by the others, and the cause of this distrust (unlike with the Dark Angels and White Scars) has been amplified and fleshed out. They are wild, prone to wanton aggression and have many candidates who do not complete conversion to marines, instead becoming ‘wulfen’: werewolves in space. The honourable, independent police force has been rewritten as a slavering ‘horde’ of wolf-obsessed beastmen or beast-like savages. A complex culture and character has been overwritten by making everything about the name ‘Space Wolves’ to make room for other cultures and characters who are better at everything. One video I watched recently even had a commentator suggest that Space Wolves are the orcs of the imperium: brain-dead fools who just love to charge.

                If the writers liked the Space Wolf character so much, they should have written stories about Space Wolves! I am most upset about the double standard in portraying Space Wolves and White Scars as barbarians; but the White Scars merely had a reputation with no real weakness, whereas the Space Wolves, who had originally been delicately written with the possibility of weakness but also intelligence, awareness and deliberate divergence, have been sunk into actual barbarism. The original writer’s balanced approach, allowing for weakness at the same time as strength, has been misunderstood by subsequent writers who seized on this possibility of weakness and emphasized it to make their own ‘Mary Sue’ characters look better.

 

 

                How would I fix things? Firstly, we should distinguish between the primarchs and their chapters. As the Blood Angels (vampires) demonstrate with their angelic primarch, the marines don’t have to be perfect simulacra of their primarch.

                Leman Russ was the second primarch the Emperor ‘discovered’ (after Horus, the arch-traitor himself), and was always implicitly trusted, despite his apparent waywardness. He was the one to put down disagreement and disobedience even amongst his brothers. He must therefore be a very capable soldier, intelligent as well as fierce. In a world where the ‘magic’ must have a technological/sci-fi explanation, we might write him to have unique glands that activate even greater prowess during a ferocious ‘rage’, but that the effects wear off and take time to recharge. He is therefore a one-use powerhouse; perfect for being instructed to dispense justice to a specific malefactor no matter how strong, but not for consistently beating everyone all the time. Such ‘occasional’ powers work very well in stories, as the writer can choose whether it is available or not for the particular scene by timing it appropriately.

                Leman Russ’ background in an honourable warrior culture should be the source of his refusal to slaughter innocents: his strength is for battle, not slaughter. He can regard normal humans and lesser soldiers as inferior, in contrast to Vulkan, perhaps, but still not chattel to be killed with no regard. This is an exception to his apparent practicality over many aspects of warfare, which Horus and some of the traitor primarchs respected. Russ was not obsessed with doctrine or faith, but still drew the line at murder, and this is a key distinction between the evil primarchs and Russ, who was regarded by many as one of the most knowingly savage and disloyal primarchs, because of his lack of doctrine. The World Eaters and Angron were indeed thoughtless savages who knew no better; mere tools; and the Night Lords were edgelords using fear for a purpose; but to rigid, doctrinaire thinkers Russ was the worst of both, savage and fearsome, aware enough to know this and know better, and not doing it because he thought the bad means justified a good end.

                The primarchs Jaghatai, Jonson and Guilliman did not understand. Russ was loyal not because of faith, nor because practically it made sense, but because he liked and respected the Emperor, because he had made an oath, and because the Imperium had a place for his principles and culture. His was a devotion to a greater cause that was not in conflict with other principles that he would not abandon, but on those rare occasions when breaking his principles might have advanced the cause more easily, his commitment to uphold all his principles took precedence, and it is precisely this commitment that meant that he could never be a traitor, despite all the suspicion. His devotion to the Imperium was obviously not as great as others’, since other things could prevent him from doing what was always for the greater good, but it did not need to be. There was no hidden conflict between his loyalties that would lead to betrayal; he always was loyal to both. Extreme faith is corruptible: it has no basis but itself, a fortress with no foundations. Purely practical consent can be swayed by practical claims of ineffectiveness, pointlessness or flawed goals. Loyalty to a man based on friendship and shared principles is hard to shake. This is why Russ was the Emperor’s most trusted. He befriended Russ with his eating and drinking challenges, rather than awing him.

                Are principles a weakness? No. It makes him less effective and rules out some strategic options that others would consider, but in the real world we mostly don’t consider it a weakness.  Some people and cultures might be less sympathetic to disobedience, disrespect of hierarchy and unwillingness to win against pure evil in any way possible (the core feature of the setting is, as I noted previously, that the existence of souls, real soul-eating daemons and pure evil makes some unpleasant acts more reasonable, such as the death of innocents to save souls). But there is something intrinsically noble in not being subsumed to others’ will or culture, and Russ and the Space Wolves were the original wayward sons. There is nothing wrong with Russ being more likeable and more consistent with our real-world values than other primarchs. Their stories and gameplay can still be fun.

                The Space Wolves need the real rescue. They should not be beastmen in space. That’s a misunderstanding of both Norse culture on which they are loosely based and the original writing; a misunderstanding as barbaric as the White Scars claim the Space Wolves to be. No-one wanted to be bigoted about the Mongols when writing the White Scars, but have ended up demoting northern European culture instead. They are not the ‘Space Dogs’, slavishly obedient to the whims of an Imperium; an Imperium that a proud and noble people should acknowledge is powerful but not infallible, again as the White Scars depict them.

                In a crowded field of super-soldiers all vying to be the super-est, of course some will lose out. And the temptation for a model-selling company is for the original ranges, once sold, to be deemed to be inferior. This is also common practice in modern storytelling, with new heroes humiliating the ones they replace to show their power. But as we see with many franchises (e.g. Marvel and Star Wars) that have adopted this model, it is not good business. The fans who liked the IP enough to make it worth producing more do not want whatever they initially liked to be humiliated and ridiculed.

                And when it comes to selling models, the Space Marine range is a bestseller already, with models broadly interchangeable between chapters. Making one chapter weaker than others does not make the Space Marine range more or less appealing; it just determines what colours buyers paint the models.

                So I see no reason for the Space Wolves ever to have lost their status as the best close combat specialists of all. But I also recognize the desire to make things roughly balanced so that every chapter has some players and readers who like them best, and the difficulty when these are all already super-strong, sturdy and brave soldiers.

                So far we have seen specialisms in siegecraft, fortitude, strategy, devotion, psychic power, stealth, mobile warfare, psyops and close combat: nine specialisms for eighteen chapters, nine good and nine bad. But some are one-shot specialisms and there isn’t room for two. There is only one psychic chapter and no need for multiple fearmongers.

                So while we have multiple challengers claiming to be good at close combat, brave and strategically brilliant, there are two big gaps that in both gameplay and stories could be regarded as separate categories: tactical excellence and shooting accuracy.

                Of these, I think that the Space Wolves are a great fit for tactical excellence, helping to distinguish them from the other outsiders, the White Scars, their new rivals who are apparently better at everything they were good at, except being uncontrolled savages. It is consistent with their cultural independence of thought, small-scale warrior culture and wolf name!

                The Space Wolves might not have the grand logistics of the Ultramarines, the carefully-planned lightning strikes of the Luna Wolves or the well-drilled mobile warfare of the White Scars, but they do have preternatural co-ordination with allies in combat, born of long combat training in small groups and perhaps some unusual psychic inheritance, since they are so against normal use of psychic powers. They are already said to have specially acute senses, which could also contribute to their tactical awareness… or be psychically powered, a sort of low-level, safe psychic sensitivity because of its low range.

                Thus the Space Wolves are resistant to traps and stealth that might otherwise be used evade justice, further explaining Russ’ title of The Executioner: no guile will evade the Emperor’s wrath. Disrupting their plans does not guarantee victory because they can ad-lib. The Space Wolves can sniff out renegades and have the close combat ferocity to exterminate them. And it allows them to be not quite the best duellists: the Emperor’s Children and Blood Angels can be given that title for the traitors and loyalists respectively. But in a pack, the Space Wolves have the edge. They can spring any trap and come out better than anyone expected. Others might anticipate a trap, avoid or endure it; the Space Wolves, although not fools (no chapter except the World Eaters is), are best at responding to it.

                Their weaknesses can be manifold. Firstly, it might seem that they do not plan strategically enough, preferring to feast, sing, and win anyway, relying on their might and battlefield brilliance. They are capable of it, but get themselves into trouble through not doing it. Being capable of something, and doing it in extreme circumstances, makes laziness a minor weakness at best. But for other chapters, perhaps, a major one, almost heretically frivolous. The Space Wolves might bluster about being good enough anyway, or cite the honour of straightforward combat, but senior Wolves know that strategy matters in more balanced situations. They are a practical culture, unfussed about whether it is heresy, or disobedient to the strictures of the Space Marines’ governing ordnances, but nonetheless aware of the practical importance of strategy. Calling them barbarians, as in stories about the White Scars, is plain bad writing.

                The Wolves’ second weakness can be technology and craftsmanship. And by weakness, this must be by comparison to other chapters, not genuine incompetence, just as we do not claim that other Space Marines are pathetic in close combat. They have little clout with administrative centres and the Adeptus Mechanicus that looks after machinery, and their own ‘iron priests’ are outsiders amongst mechanics. Their primarch was never famed as a craftsman like Fulgrim, Ferrus Manus or Vulkan. Exceptional equipment is rarer for them than the Iron Hands or Ultramarines and some of them rely on stuff that elsewhere would be considered outdated. Their assault troops, amazing combatants though they are, rarely have jump packs, and must use ground-based mobility. In an Imperium which venerates technology as holy, their repeated malfunctions are sometimes seen as an additional sign of heresy; of failing to care sufficiently for holy objects. Those Space Wolves who do get good equipment – leaders and the Wolf Guard – perform well on the battlefield, explaining the Space Wolves’ long list of heroic figures and, in-game, very long list of playable special characters.

                Perhaps this lack of Imperial technology, combined with their divergent cultural beliefs, means that their iron priests can incorporate some alien machinery into their arsenal, providing further gameplay and story possibilities.

                The Wolves’ third weakness can be the other category I have noted is unmentioned: shooting. All Marines should be good shots, equipped with powerful bolters as a basic minimum: the default marine has a bolt-gun and combat knife, suited more to medium-range firepower than close combat or long-ranged devastation. The Space Wolves’ junior soldiers, the Blood Claws, started with very sub-par shooting skills in early editions of the game. Older, experienced Wolves took on the more tactical roles at range, and did so as well as any marine: the Space Wolves have a structure of soldiers ageing out of close combat into medium range tactical combat and then to long range accuracy, unlike other chapters whose soldiers specialise from the start. This lack of ranged accuracy in a significant fraction of their soldiers is still a weakness.

                The Wolves’ refusal to attack non-combatants, and practicality in dealing with non-aggressive abhumans and aliens, makes them refuse some valuable strategic options. This combines with occasional honour-based arguments about avoiding guile: although this is rarer in senior Space Wolves, it’s still a cultural tendency and a factor that weighs with them. Wolves will not ‘make the hard choices for the good of all’ as a Dark Angel might put it. Space Wolves respect any and all who respect them; and they fight those who choose to fight against their purpose, often respecting their foes even as they kill them. Those who are not enemy combatants might be inferior, but not nothing. The Space Wolves concern themselves with fighting worthy foes, not the brutal slaughter of the traitor legions. This attitude that worse soldiers, and all non-soldiers, are inferior, can be a cause of friction with the prideful and sensitive who do not also observe that the Space Wolves acknowledge that they still have some value.

                Finally, and fifthly, the Wolves lack the devotion and need for self-sacrifice in service of the cause. They are willing to retreat, regroup and strike again. Tactical excellence is all well and good, but it helps one escape a tricky situation to start afresh. It is not a direct substitute for the extreme constitution of the Death Guard or the stubborn faith of the Imperial Fists or Dark Angels. Space Wolves appreciate individual heroism and sacrifice to save the pack, and have many such heroic tales, so cannot be called cowards, but are practical, not devoted. They do not compete for the title of most stubborn; their sense of honour allows retreat in battle in situations where these other marines would fight on.

                That’s actually a decent list of weaknesses! Although each can be worked around in a story, and there are exceptions, that’s the case with all Space Marines, as they are super-soldiers: their weaknesses are stronger than many humans’ strengths, and some individuals in every chapter will excel in areas which are culturally unexpected. The Space Wolves pay for their strength at their strongest with this litany of weaknesses that ensure that they cannot be at their strongest very often. Under a firm hand that truly understands their nature, this can be worked around, but under the distrustful supervision of a ‘senior’ Ultramarine, Inquisitor or normal human general, they will genuinely be unreliable, disobedient and annoying, and their good humour and ability to carouse will often look like spreading disorder and bad discipline.

 

                We might end up with a ranking table as follows (joint gold silver and bronze awards highlighted; green chapters loyal and red traitor):

               

                The Dark Angels, everyone’s favourite super-boring flagellents, still get the place at the top that everyone else seems to want them to have, because mysterious = good, amIrite? Strengths are reasonably evenly spread. All writers have to do is use the strengths of the factions to solve problems… and if that means a cameo appearance for another faction, so be it.

                I have deliberately not introduced ‘strength’ as a strength. All are super-soldiers, and physical might rarely is so universally distinctive across a chapter. But we might rank the Salamanders, the World Eaters, and maybe add a couple of others (Space Wolves, Iron Hands) who are strong if we really wanted them to be.

 

                `This brings me onto the other chapters, and how we might re-write them and their focus. 40k has been becoming less ‘grimdark’ and more normal, with storylines increasingly having actually good heroes in positions of power. Guilliman apparently chats with the Eldar in breach of standard rules of conduct for Space Marines – which he formulated!

                The Ultramarines can be the numerous, standard template, strategically sound, well-equipped and not quite as insane as the Angels, but they are still obedient to both the Codex Astartes that governs them and the Imperial Faith. They are standard: this means single-minded soldiers who rarely question authority and when they do it is because they have information that changes the situation and have training in strategy and tactics themselves, able to assess what might be best instead. Writing them as ‘more human’ than other chapters misunderstands the nature of Space Marines.

                Only the Salamanders and the Space Wolves are more human, representing true empathy as moral equals, and principled value as moral inferiors respectively. Other Space Marines have been trained/brainwashed into treating mere humans as tools of no intrinsic value at all.

                It’s a difficult task to write a zealot as a likeable protagonist, or to write a story without a likeable protagonist, so I understand writers veering into Space Wolf territory when writing about other marines. The simple solution is for marines who retain some empathy for humans to be less welcome and accepted in other chapters. They will be disciplined, re-trained and, because their actions will not align with their brothers’ strategies and tactics, they will be less effective. Their empathy will be a genuine weakness, impairing their ability to achieve results. Every chapter has variations in character; the chapter ‘character’ is a culture, which individuals can fight or adopt.

“My Dark Angels are good at everything and know it and their weakness is that everyone else resents their arroganace and aloofness”. Get a grip and stop being so childish. It’s not a weakness for others to be jealous of your perfection. Dark Angels might be tactically sub-par because they give away too little information to allies and comrades; they might have the rigourous training and determination to make specific brothers good at something but thereby not as tactically versatile as others with broader understanding of roles and combat.

A Dark Angel might be humble, open and honest, and scorned by his brothers for being easy to read, giving away information that might be an advantage, and for having insufficient respect and therefore devotion for who he is and what he represents. For them, arrogance is a sign of understanding of their place in the galaxy and humility an insult to it. Their whole culture reinforces the tactical deficiency and regards it as a strength.

“My Ultramarines are good at everything; clever, calculating and flawless. Their weakness is being boring, but the reason they’re the most numerous and popular is because being boring isn’t a weakness at all”. Well said. It’s not a weakness; let’s find one. An Ultramarine might have some character, and be greeted by stunned incomprehension of his conformist brothers, for whom being part of a whole is greatest fulfilment. The Ultramarines are conformist; they obey doctrine, they obey orders. Their one great strength is logistics; other strengths are mild at best, and their weakness is in conformity and inability to think for themselves. It takes time for an Ultramarine to learn to plan strategy from a blank slate, and it takes time for them to do so: their plans are meticulously laid not because they come up with them in an instant but because they, more than others, feel the need to plan beforehand.

Strategic brilliance is not an excuse to make them strong at everything: they’re clever because it’s required for strategic brilliance; they’re great at close combat because they can plan to take advantage of weakness; they’re great at… If your strength makes you great at everything, you’re grasping. If you like the other strengths, play, support or write about those others who have them.

As for character, the Ultramarines are Roman legions in space: and the whole Imperium is a weird futuristic, [more] militaristic, [more] theocratic Rome, with religion, Emperor, and all institutions given Latin names. Thus the Ultramarines come to be the default, but for character, think of Roman soldiers

“My Blood Angels are the best at everything. They’re vampires but good: stronger, faster, fiercer, longer-lived and therefore more learned.. Their weakness is that they’re all tempted to go a bit wild but they resist, and when they don’t they’re even more superpowered.” Get a grip and grow up. A temptation is not a weakness; giving in is the weakness, if it causes a problem. A temptation to become even more super-powered is a strength.

A Blood Angel might be quite calm and thoughtful, rather than on the cusp of madness with mixed emotions of love for Emperor and bloodlust to sate his inbuilt addiction, but he will be misunderstood by his brothers whose lives are built around restraint and occasionally letting themselves go, but not too much. The Blood Angels can think for themselves and act independently but they like rapid assaults because they inevitably lose their minds in bloodlust if they do not have time to collect themselves after some brief fighting. Those who do lose their minds can, with some medical procedure, become super-powered rage machines (Death Company), but that needs them to be taken off the battlefield and treated. Without this they become careless and even gore-obsessed, diluting their blood with their enemies’, more easily fought against rather than less. Thus the Blood Angels’ weakness is that they are always on a time limit, and they are lost ever afterwards if they fail: a powerful weakness for an otherwise overpowered chapter.

“My White Scars are masters of mobile warfare. They’re the fastest, and that means they get into combat fast and they’re good at that, and they’re really clever so they always hit weak points and they’re noble and independent and have good psychic powers and their weakness is that they’re outsiders because no-one else can keep up”. Get a grip. Strengths need to be shared around, not all claimed for the one chapter. White Scars are the fastest in a crowded field of mobility; the Blood Angels, Luna Wolves, Raven Guard, Alpha Legion and space marines in general all rely on mobile, pinpoint assaults. It’s the nature of being special forces. So being genuinely the fastest is already a great strength: it’s one key task of being a marine. The White Scars rely on machinery: bikes, ships, so they are good pilots, and mobile warfare does require some degree of planning to attack the right targets and move at the right time, so it’s fair that they are good at this, but there is no need for them to be the best. In exchange for this list of strengths: speed, tactics, some strategy, they also have a weakness: resilience. They have sacrificed armaments or armour on their vehicles, and they themselves struggle to operate as well with injuries. Injuries really ‘knock them off course’ in body and machine, making them easier to finish off. If they get the lightning strike just right, this never comes up, but if they don’t their losses will be bigger than other chapters. Just as with all the other chapters, there is scope when writing a story for their weakness to be avoided for the story… but it needs to be present in the chapter, with others experiencing it or the hero working around it.

My Space Wolves are, in actual fact, the best. They’re the best at combat but they’re clever and resilient enough to get there and not be outmanoeuvred and they tear everyone apart and then celebrate with a drinking song. I have got a grip. The Space Wolves do diverge from the pattern so far of strengths balanced by one big weakness; they have several weaknesses. They are great at close combat and tactics, which play well together. However, they lack the devotion, careful strategy and equipment of others. Of these, strategy is probably the most important. Reinforced by a cultural antipathy towards winning through guile, they like to feast rather than plan, and then charge in and [try to] win anyway. A Wolf who does think more carefully can exist, but must fight the prevailing culture and attitudes. Lack of equipment should not be dismissed as ‘not a weakness’ either. Soldiers rely on equipment to win, and a haphazard array of whatever can be scrounged up will not present the strength in depth that easily translates to a tactical superiority. Just as with other chapters, one Wolf might obtain and maintain relic armaments, but he must still fight beside brothers who lack such firepower or dedication to maintenance.

The Space Wolves can go ferocious, like the Blood Angels, but it’s not so scary for them or their opponents. They never risk losing themselves entirely to an inner darkness: their brothers, their feasting and their drinking will always call them back. They have no inner war with themselves and can therefore be open with each other, fully trusting their pack, helping their tactical co-ordination. Their divergent culture is the bulwark that protects them from corruption, just as sheer faith works for other chapters.

“My Salamanders are the strongest and toughest. Their primarch was the very best and they’re his sons. They’re the only good guys; the rest are too stupid and brainwashed, and what’s the point in being good at being bad?” Stop being so childish: you shouldn’t undermine a setting by disobeying one of its foundational features. In 40K being good is bad for you, because it’s such a violent galaxy. Faith and theocracy are justifiable, because daemons that can steal the souls of worlds can indeed be conjured up simply by misplaced belief. The Salamanders’ mercy towards the innocent will always make them appealing to a real world audience. But that is countered by the fact that in stories this is a weakness: non-combatants can still be a threat. Being able to trust others is important, as someone needs to teach the other green goodies, the Dark Angels, but trusting too much is a weakness that hostile people will abuse, and the 40k galaxy is almost entirely hostile.

Otherwise, the Salamanders get to inherit some strength and resilience of their primarch, and there’s no harm in that as a strength. They are prudent, calm, thoughtful; all appealing qualities, but not amazing combat strengths in themselves, and which could turn into combat strength or weakness (slow to respond or too carefully strategic). They are strong in weapons and gear; the opposite to the Space Wolves, proving that it is a strength. As for the primarch Vulkan: well, he was overpowered and there’s nothing that can be done about it now except avoid bringing him back, especially since he conflicts with the grim darkness of the setting, as a good and decent being that is strong enough to keep to that goodness.

If the Salamanders get to regenerate, like their primarch, or the setting decides to make them extremely resilient, a disadvantage to go with it can be stupidity. They are big and strong, and although it’s a childish understanding of the world to imagine that big strong men are stupid, the Salamanders do select recruits for strength rather than anything else. Left alone, without the support of the families they still stay close to (unlike other chapters) and their intelligent siblings, they can be deceived more easily, combining with their trusting, merciful nature to be a parable about the perils of importing real world values into a dystopian setting.

“My Iron Hands are best. They replace flesh with machines, and machines can do everything better” Not in this setting, chum. In truth, the Iron Hands are already balanced and well-written, with character, strength but obvious weaknesses too. They are tough and well-equipped, with a focus on war machines as much as wargear, but full of hatred and mistrust. They use cybernetic enhancements extensively, allowing them some unusual abilities, but in the 40k world computers are very different, and the entire existence of genetically-enhanced super soldiers demonstrates that robotics is not the panacea that it is in some sci-fi settings. The Iron Hands do enhance themselves rather than handicap themselves, but in no special pattern, nor cohesively with squad-mates, and not to such an extent that they naturally outdo other chapters’ inherent strengths.

“My Imperial Fists are the best. They’re the most valiant, used by the Emperor himself as his bodyguard and strike force”. Get a grip: having the closest supervision does not make you the best. That’s the attitude of a hopeless conformist: that proximity to a centre of power demonstrates power in itself; that power is naturally coalesced in one place, all brought together where like recognises like. The Imperial Fists are another already-balanced chapter. Their strength is their devotion and valour. They are single-minded in defence, rigorously adherent to doctrine and masters of siege warfare because of this dogged, some would say plodding, attitude. Their motto of death before dishonour is appealing and slightly different from the other fully-compliant chapter of the Ultramarines; they’re yellow Ultramarines who do a bit more bravery and a bit less strategy and have an interesting honour culture underneath. No great weaknesses, but not the most powerful strength either.

 

The conflict of a hero with his innate weaknesses, or with the culture that makes his character a weakness, is a valid subject for a story. Dark Angels and Ultramarines are boring because they have no weaknesses, and Dark Angels make even worse stories because their main appeal is being mysterious, and a story necessarily removes that mystery. Make both chapters quite rigid thinkers, conformist to doctrine as a way of avoiding corruption, and you have a central character conflict: a protagonist for a modern audience is likely to think for himself, but both he and his brothers know that this leads to heresy, failure and chaos… and this is a genuine threat that he must navigate.

Making a protagonist invulnerable to corruption is a bit of a cop-out; a power fantasy for a computer game, but not a compelling story arc otherwise.

There should be whispers in his mind, doubts, consultations with chaplains and failures from disobedience. All can occur alongside the hero’s eventual triumph by uniting his personality and his brothers; a tactical coup that others could not have contemplated, or some such result.

               

                The Space Wolves in this set-up have the unusual strength of tactical excellence, based on training, culture, gene inheritance, super-senses or minor psychic power. They replace devotion to a Great Truth with acknowledgement of a great truth. Others pit the powerful forces of corruption against their equally powerful devotion, avoid temptation into sin through rigid adherence to pre-approved doctrines, and avoid battle inefficiency by obedience to command and pre-approved strategies.

                The Space Wolves are for those times when the enemy is clever and the situation will change rapidly; they can respond not with ever-more stubborn adherence to failure, but in whatever way wins in the moment. Such devotion as they need comes from their culture: their pack, their feasts, their drinking; their community with each other. This is a meaningful and deep point about the world, with echoes of Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil. A little bit of joy in life grounds people far more than extreme faith. Life is for living. And true friends will always bring you back from the brink. I hope this essay shows me to be a friend to the Warhammer universe, and perhaps writers of other settings.