CM_Zero - Devotion comic and Warhammer art

[CM_Zero]

I thought it might be a nice idea to open a thread for the discussion of the still ongoing Devotion comic and my latest (and maybe even other people's) Warhammer 40k art.

Please tell me your thoughts on Devotion in terms of plot, art and whatever else comes to your mind.

Since Rob is still in the process of finishing the storyline, I'm sure he'd be glasd to hear your ideas and thoughts on this matter as well. What would you like/expect to see? What do you think is missing in the story?

Also, what do you think about the other artworks dealing with Warhammer? Do you prefer a certain faction? Are you a fan or do you have no interest in Warhammer at all?

Help us out here people ^^

[RobM]

For your art, you've brought in the Eldar and this is win in my book - I mean the stuff you've done is just so ghostly and key. The Eldar have always got a real look about them that they're more silhouttes rather than actual physical beings, yet you've captured them really well, I think.

I loved the Mohn-kay humour thrown in, we Imperials are a simple people, I know. I'm interested in perhaps drawing a pic or two where some of your characters come meet a few of mine. I've still got my guardswoman of the 3rd battalion 85th Sappho Rifles, an all-female force-recon regiment under the temporary command of Colonel Janson with the assistance of Commissar Jamelial.

The art being pumped out by the CM_Machine right now is just top quality!

As for factions - as limited as the Tau are militarily (If it wasn't for the Tyranids, the Imperial war-machine would just hammer them into disexistance, they're hopelessly outclassed without psykers and its ironic that someone on semi-friendly terms with the Eldar is actually totally outclassed by the HUMANS of all people in terms of telepathy, astropathy and warp-navigation (The Tau are incapable of all of these, so, no Inquisitors, no instant interstellar communication and no ability to travel beyond their warp beacons in the empyrean - a massive disadvatage).

Saying this, the Tau use a heck of a lot of computerisation and technology, more so even than the Eldar, I wonder if they have spanking machines?
A culture like theirs, you could almost imagine a punishment building somewhere in their cities with twenty or so such machines in a single large room where tau such as adult Fio'la have to report for punishment when ordered and recieve a pretermined number of swats.
Their culture is highly Orwellian and fairly impersonal, family structure is canon unknown so its pluasable.

[CM_Zero]

Hehe, well, thank you a lot. I'm curious about how Devotion will end (although I know the basics of course). Had to do some Eldar to get away from the battle sisters for a bit ^^

As for factions:

I like Eldar best, followed, not closely, but with much distance by the Tau. Tau with their hightech and mecha are great for japanophils like me anyway ^^

After those two factions follow the humans, Space Marines and Imperials on a far off third place.

The rest is very much not to my liking. Rock bottom would be the Orls, since I think the Warhammer Orks are among the most boring scifi/fantasy race ever created.


A "correctional facility" for the Tau wouldn't be so far fetched. They like brainwashing more than corporal punishment, but those two are not mutually exlusive ^^

As for meeting your female battalion: Maybe that could become a future project sometime. But if they meet in battle it would have to be a spanking battle, since I don't want to have anyone shot ^^

[solomonspanker]

Hey now, the Orks are awesome, even if they lack...erm...potential for this site, I suppose. Any race which has nearly achieved their own nirvana compared to the hell the other races put themselves through must be doing something right....

Eldar are fun, but seem to act too stupid at times for me to really like them, and I have to admit for plumping for the Imperial Guard as my favourites, given what they have to endure having thrown against their armies.

Devotion is awesome so far. Interesting setup, and the Ordos Chastisment interest me, it will be cool to see who and how they'll be chastising.

Also, still inking my comp entry piece. Need to get a move on.

[RobM]

Well, Soloman, I have some things that'll be bringing a smile to your face on almost every count~

Eldar vs Imperials, we can but drool but things are happening inside my brain - the sort of things that would in other places lead to the mandatory evacuation of several small towns - which I hope will have far reaching consequences.
Wanna take part and join the madness?

Not sure how you describe guardsman as 'suffering' as they seem to love it. Doesn't matter who they're fighting, they meet it the sensible way.
Which is to say, Orbital bombardment by warships, preliminary artillery bombardment, carpet-bombing, precision bombing, close-range artillery bombardment, heavy mortars, then rocket-grenades before in go the tanks. In that order. Whatevers left alive is then trampled to death by a mixture of tanks slugging at you, groundtroops pouring in and shooting anything on full auto with decently accurate rifle-fire, shells dropping on your head and droptroops gravchuting in behind you.
If by some mircale you've managed to survive, or started to stack two bricks on top of one another from the rubble, they fall back and shell you some more - or send in a titan team.

The only reason there are other factions to play is because the Tyranids are infinately coming in from outside the galaxy, the Eldar never fight a battle they don't think they'll win unless its absolutely essential they die gloriously, (otherwise they just melt away) the Orks can't ever be eradicated, Reavers (dark-Eldar) and the Chaos forces are lurking somewhere unreachable, Necrons can't die ever, and the Tao are hiding behind the fact everyone just mentioned are higher priorities to fight, leaving them building their wildly armed, caped, gundam mecha in peace.

To talk spanking, your Tao drawing really brought it in nicely~
I'm not sure if I'd call the Eldar stupid though. Too clever by half, is one of their problems - but if you want arrogant, their kin the Reavers are faaaaar worse. They've made some right schoolboy howlers on the back of arrogance that have let the Mon-keigh have a few last-laughs at their expense.

Thanks for the comments about Devotion, I'm hoping you'll be loving the pages to come whereby the field-agent sisters have their agenda clarified and objectives staked.
Aaaand then the total derailment of everything when Arise gets a little more angry the next time. It's perhaps limited by scope of what can be drawn, but I'm hoping to see a few good effects being put to cinematic use soon. I trust you won't be disapointed. The Ordos Chastisment I came up with for my main devotion story as a presence in Reiche's past and for those who've read all I've written so far they might be aware of the special interest they've taken in the poor sister.

Oh, and Orc Spanking is possible at least, Klauth drew this, its in his gallery~
Admittedly they're from WoW, but, what the hey, its awsome. Orks from WH40k are of course a bioweapon and have no females so for those of us that don't draw M/M. Plenty of muscle-bound Barabara art for those that do - and those grots will do ANYTHING to one another. Orks are one of my favourite, dysfunctional things but hopeless.

[Dr. Weird]

I'm not familiar with 40K fluff outside of what I've gleaned from my friends and /tg/ threads on 4chan, so I'm not really the best source for commentary or ideas. Though I have liked what I read of the Ciaphas Cain series so far; it's got a nice Catch-22 sort of vibe to it. So far it's the closest match to Devotion I've seen at least in terms of "Grimness and Darkness" levels.

But really, none of you think there's a picture to be had from Orks and the "Red makes everything faster" thing? For shame! OK, so there's no female Orks, but there's no Ordo Penitas or Tau spanking camps either. You can't exactly hide behind continuity, you know? Clearly, after they win a major engagement, the Imperium decides that they must study the phenomenon further. Preferably with the assistance of a techno-priestess whose servo arms have a variety of useful functions!

And that right there would be the most nerdy post on the forum, if you guys hadn't already written yours. :P

[CM_Zero]

Wasn't there something about Warhammer Orks being some kind of fungus? ^^

Anyway, I have to say I'm not too happy how gamesworkshop handles the Eldar lately. Relic's Dawn of War games which are supposed to be part of the canon 40k fluff (and are great games btw) had two eldar farseers die in relatively quick succession. Both from the Ulthwe craftsworld.
I don't know but it kind of defeats the purpose of being able to see into the future if they die so easily. Even if the future is constantly changing, the farseer should be able to at least manage a retreat if things get ugly, instead of getting themselves and their soldiers killed. Otherwise they could just as well stop with the clairvoyance and send someone else to lead the soldiers.

That said, I don't think orks in general have no potential for spankings. It's just the warhammer world orks that give me a headache. The warcraft orks are much better suited because A) they have females ^^ B) they are more interesting as a race, because they actually have something like an interesting culture and history, instead of just being hooligans (Boyz, to WAAAAAAGGHHH!)

I guess it's indeed really nerdy of me to be thinking about that stuff, but when it comes to stories and games (and spanking scenarios of them), I have a cetain taste I guess. ^^

Also:
http://jaekyu.deviantart.com/art/Pre...s-III-53086061

Much win. Maybe space marines aren't so bad after all ^^

[angel_stranded]

Originally Posted by CM_Zero

Wasn't there something about Warhammer Orks being some kind of fungus?

Ah, now you've done it. (Gets out soapbox)

Once upon a time, there was fluff for the Boyz. Not just a few paragraphs, but entire books of the stuff. First came Waaargh The Orks, which was 104 pages of pure fluff and reference. Not even any rules, just fluff. Excellent reading for any Ork player. This was followed by 'Ere We Go (208 pages) and Freebooterz (144 pages) which went into great detail with army lists for each clan. Those were the good old days, when you could have Flash Gitz, Pulsa Rokkits, and a wandering Dreadmob (an unlimited number of Dredds in one big unit). Those were the end days of the Rogue Trader era.

When 2nd ed came out, all that was swept away. All the Ork background and reference was reduced to one thin book. They revised the rules (again) and made a complete hash of it (again). That was pretty much when I stopped playing 40k.

By 3rd ed the book was even thinner, and the whole question of Ork reproduction was chopped down to half a page that said they grow like seeds and pop out of the ground when they're big enough. What a loss to the 40K universe! All that effort thrown away, all that background created for nothing. I tried 3rd ed a few times, it was a totally different game. The rules were so badly broken that I put all my 40k stuff back on the shelf, and it's still there now. I can't bring myself to sell it on eBay, but the golden days of 40K have gone and nobody wants to play the old rules anymore. *sigh* I don't even know what edition they're up to now.

/soapbox

Spanking for Orks? If you're old enough to remember, there were several female goblin cheerleaders in Blood Bowl...

[RobM]

Technically, thats Orcs. There ARE female Orcs in warhammer fantasy (those betonnian lasses, ooooh, the accents!) and female goblins.
As hideous as it sounds, there ARE female Grot minitures, but true to canon - they're male grots in drag. Sheeeeesh!

As for 'short'... the new Codexs are just that, army lists with next to nothing extra. I was fizzed at the new ones for the 'deamon-hunters' and 'assassins' books. Completly annailated around 15 pages of history down to four paragraphs, the entirety of the Age of Apostasy was only revealed in the Sisters of Battle codex and the old Assassins codex had full break downs of all the wargear of the assassins carried and its histories, it had about four pages on the assassin war and the caverns underneath Terra and the secret custodes vaults deep in the crust... all rendered down into a half-a-dozen sentances.

I wasn't aware that Orks actual were ever explained prior to GorkaMorka where the full boxset contained an imperial dossier on both orks and the necron tombs on the planet.

Orks arn't exactly a fungus, they're more of a plant with chlorifil in their blood.
They were originally a bio-weapon from what I understand, used by the 'Old Ones' (Presumably but not confirmed as the Slaan) to keep both Necron infestations and any Enslavers colonies suppressed and under-attack until the Eldar could get to a staging area and deal.
The atmosphere is seeded with Ork seeds and the process begins. First up-come the Squigs which act as an instant basecamp for the Orks. They eat all the big trees, clear the area and provide food for the Ork foot-troops who appear a few days later. Born into every X number of Orks is a few Mechboyz who arm and equip the orks to fight, some Doktors to act as corpsmen and one of the first Orks up becomes the Boss. Each Ork has a genetically coded understanding of tactics, weapon skills and deployment, language and basic learning from birth and they're an effect military unit the instant the genius Mechs start handing out guns.
Any Necrons feeling smug with themselves are hit about a week later, from several directions by a dozen warbands armed with trukks and plasma weapons who just keep coming and keeping them pinned down and suppressed until the Eldar turn up and flatten them.

Here's a controversial point for the Ork-boyz to feel smug about - Ork Mech-boyz are smarter than the Tao.
As horrible as that sounds for a Tao player, the highest technologies they have - the orks have too and more. Greatest strengths for the Tao are plasma physics and gravitation (and anti-grav for fliers and railguns). Orks have both of these from birth - and also have a full understanding of building working warp-engines, something the Tao havn't yet mastered.

Wot' yu fink ov dat den, eh'? I kan't heer yu smart-arze, we'z gotz all dem dead shootie t'ings an' yu ain'! Needz sum moar dakka dakka dakka~

I fink, I mean... think its all down to changing canon. The Orks origins used to be decended from 'The brain boyz what woz all killed in sum plague thing'. That was back when the Necrons were half-a-billion years old or more and predated ALL existing canon races and were as totally isolated in canon as the extra-galactic Tyranids.

From what I understand, Games Workshop decided to change canon and made the Necrons only 30+ million years old bringing them into the canon timeline and in the same stroke moved the era of the Eldar backwards to suit, set the Slaan up as the Brain Boyz and the creators of the WebWay. This of course means that the height of Eldar civilisation was 30m years ago instead of 140k years (Their civ started to decline around then, ending in the creation of the Eye of Terror around 25k AD) which is a bit of a HUGE ARSE JUMP.

And to Dr. Weird, yah, I'll concur that Ciphias Cain is a little lighter even that my Devotion and perhaps stretches Canon a bit whilst remaining decent for the start. As with all things WH40k though, its been squeezed too much. The most recent 'novel' was a dire low in a declining series.
The first book I've ever read made up entirely of a person recollecting that at the time of events they were recollecting other situations from the earlier books. It has less new material than /B/ (Ack, rules 1&2). The first book I've read where the only way they attempt to build tension is to by remarking on the parallells with near identical not-so-tense-actually situations from the previous books. I don't find it builds my fear or worry up reading about how similar a situation is to other events - especially when the author is just reminding me of previous - better - books I could be reading instead. The author has singularly failed to kill anyone with a name, ever. Hell, the author manages to skip killing friendly characters without names too. You can't have tension in a book where no-one ever dies or even gets badly injured.
It started off as really funny, playing off Cains 'Arnold Rimmer-ness'. It massively losses its way a few books later. Then again, even the last few Horus Heresey books have been piss-poor, I fear GW has totally run out of good stuff.

[Dr. Weird]

I still think the idea's amusing, but I'm not exactly married to the idea of warty green bottoms getting spanked. I mostly just wanna see the Adeptus Mechanicus with all the implement-equipped servo arms. :P A clear case of contamination by contact with ancient servers uncovered during an excavation on Terra. Was this AOTK an ancient chapter of the Space Marines?