Canonically literally every Space Marine (except for the Blood Angels IIRC) should have dark skin when exposed to sunlight and then (except for the Salamanders) flash to an unnatural pallor when they step inside, because one of the mutations they get is photochromic skin to protect them from getting sunburns while still ensuring they get enough vitamin D. That sounds incredibly stupid and like I just made it up but that is the actual canon from the lore, along with Space Marines eating their enemies brains to gain their knowledge and having acid spit like the xenomorph.
Warhammer 40K is a very silly franchise and the art direction does it a disservice by not leaning into it more.
Back during the Rogue Trader and 2nd edition days was when it was absolutely obvious
Noise marines killing dudes by rocking out
Harlequins dancing around in clashing loud colors
Squats
I miss the old design for Noise Marines, back when they had colorful Mohawks and wielded electric guitars.
Also the Emperor is from somewhere in what is now Turkey and canonically the most common language the humans speak (“Gothic”) is descended from Mandarin and is just artistically portrayed as being Latin based because “High Gothic” is supposed to scan as archaic in the way that inserting incorrect Latin into English does.
You have a source for Gothic being Mandarin-descended? Never heard that before, but I could see it. The imperial palace being in the himalayas would certainly put it geographically in the correct place, but I don’t remember from where he started the unification wars.
I think it’s something from an old Rogue Trader article? So it may be more a metacommentary from an old writer sort of thing, that Gothic would have been descended from Mandarin with a bunch of English vocabulary mixed in, albeit all unrecognizable after tens of thousands of years of sound changes.
“improbably diverse”, “improbable female authority figure”.
Holy shit these nerds need to get a life.
Crackers wouldn’t last ten seconds without minorities whether they want to admit it or not.
If they ever got their precious ethnostate, who would they have to look down on?
improbable female authority figure
female authority figure is Cadian
Cadia is (yes, Cadia still stands. fite me chaos nerds) a world where every human with a pulse and an age above 5 is handed a rifle and sent to boot camp because LITERAL HELL IS RIGHT THERE, JUST LOOK UP AT THE DAEMONS COMING TO GET YOU
Bruh.
Ultramarines are improbably diverse
Ultramar is literally Space Rome, a massive cosmopolitan space empire consisting of 500 worlds and trillions of people
I’m going to find this person and beat them with my worn-out copy of Know No Fear until they stop whining about the existence of women and black people long enough to have at least a cursory knowledge of the lore they’re butchering.
Yeah, them being angry that a Cadian woman is calling shots shows how they don’t know the lore.
Cadia literally has child soldiers. Like they teach their kids how to use a gun before they teach them to read. In the event of a demonic invasion, Cadians expect toddlers to man the front lines. Fact: adult women are stronger than a five-year-old boy.
I remember part from the book about Ursula Creed (“Creed: Ashes of Cadia”), which was sadly the only good part of that book, where some general during war council tried to use Ursarkar against Ursula “What would your daddy do” and she straight up responded: “My father commanded over the worst disaster in entire history of Cadia. Excuse me but i would prefer to win”
It’s true that there were a pair of models of FSM back in ye olde Rogue Trader days (Female Warrior Gabs and Female Warrior Jayne), but they weren’t in the first batch. The first space marine model was the metal LE2 Imperial Space Marine in '85 (or possibly '86), followed by the RTB01 plastic kit in Sept '87 which came out at the same time as Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader (aka 1st edition). Gabs and Jayne were metal models ordered individually from a miscellaneous “Adventurers” release in Spring '88.
Personally I don’t think they sold like shit because they were women, either. I think they sold like shit because they look like complete shit. Even the best paint jobs on those two models still look awful.
Don’t fuck with us reactionary 40k fans, we don’t even understand the lore of the franchise we’re gatekeeping
