Khornate Knights

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

This article or section involves Matthew Ward, Spiritual Liege, who is universally-reviled on /tg/. Because this article or section covers Ward's copious amounts of derp and rage, fans of the 40K series are advised that if they proceed onward, they will see fluff and crunch violation of a level rarely seen.

I make no claims to be a fan of the Bolter Bitches, but this is one of the most grievous offenses Matt Ward has transcribed to paper.

Not to be confused with Khornate Knights or Skullcrushers

SoBs make shmancy hats as well. Grey Knights have apparently taken a page from Necron Flayers.

But that this were real.

Really though, the Grey Knights and Sistas are total bros. Disregard Ward. As usual.

Rage

Basically one story in the new Grey Knight Codex, "The Bloodtide Returns", lists the Grey Knights as coming across a planet wherein a powerful Dark Age of Technology nanite weapon controlled by a bloodthirster resided - one so powerful that it was corrupting the populace by flying into their pores and driving them crazy. There was a convent of Sisters that were being slowly wiped out near the site whose faith was keeping them pure and untouched by the taint except for all the ones who were corrupted, and instead of asking for the Sisters' assistance the Grey Knights proceeded to slaughter them all and make wards from their blood, then go about banishing the daemon. Read the fucking fluff some time. All after the codex stating literally that their faith is strong enough to protect them from any kind of daemonic corruption.

Think about this, for just a minute. The Sisters' faith protected some of them from being corrupted. Yet, as has been shown before, there have been a few Sisters of Battle that have fallen to Chaos. In come the Grey Knights, whose faith is so powerful it is quite literally their strongest weapon and their most potent protection. These Grey Knights' faith is not strong enough to withstand the NANITE WEAPONS of Chaos, while the Sisters' is? Does that make ANY sense at all?

This is a classic case of extra heresy; canon to this point had implicitly detailed 3 things:

• That the Grey Knights greatly loathe the daemonic, to the point where the Black Templars' and Angry Marines' hatred for it would look like that of a guardsman in comparison.

• That no Grey Knight in the history of the chapter has ever fallen to the temptations of Chaos due to the massive amounts of spiritual and physical indoctrination and training they go through that would make the Space Marines' training and creation regiment look like your morning workout. In addition, in older fluff, the Grey Knights COULD fall to Chaos, in theory. However, in addition to their intense faith, they closely regulated themselves. If a Battle-brother's reaction to Chaos was anything less than "NO FUCKING WAY!", they were killed on the spot.

• That but a single Sister of Battle has fallen to Chaos.

And yet we have this - evidence of the darkest kind of heresy, if not outright Khorne worship, and it's canon.

Fucking Matt Ward. Next thing you know, Kharn will be working for the Tau or something. Yeah about that....funny thing happened guys...*nervous laugh* ' *BLAM* HERESY!!!!!

And the Sisters of Battle get mutilated a lot whenever Ward comes near them. We're starting to get the feeling that he's into sexist snuff flicks.

Counterpoint

You know, anyone with a basic working knowledge of the setting could understand why this works the way it does. Faith is powerful because of the FAITH, not because of what they have faith in, per se. The powers of the Sisters of Battle are as much like the Orkish Waaaaagh, IE: Miracles happen because they expect miracles. The Sisters, SOME OF THEM, had faith strong enough to resist the physical corruption of the blade. The Grey Knights, not seeing the Emperor as a God or HAVING that sort of faith, were not. Even if they weren't corrupted in body into evil Chaos Grey Knights, they could easily have triggered the Grey Knights protections and just killed them in the process.

Far be it from simply falling on the sisters and slaughtering them for the heck of it or 'desecrating' their bodies. It says they did slay them, yes, but then used their blood in rites that made sacred amulets, IE: something very IoMish given how fucking half their technology is based around taking human parts and integrating them into things. They didn't just bathe in the blood like freaks. They also took the daemon weapon because it was too strong to be destroyed, so they had to take it to prevent it from being used.

By the way, using the blood of slain good people (yes, when fluff says saints they refer to good people, just your normal folks from your average hivecity/manufactoria/agriworld/etc) is normative to create the ammunition of the Grey Knights, as stated in one of the tales of Victories of the Space Marines (one of the most recent sources on the matter) the Ecclesiarchy ritually sacrifices good men in order to instill a positive psychic charge to the bolt shells used by the Grey Knight so they can be so effective against daemonic forces, there are a thousand worlds whose tithe to the Imperium consists in a thousand bolt shells each one, oh and yes, is one shell per man, grimdak indeed.

Really, while maybe not the best fluff, it's hardly the super extra heresy people make it out to be, and they just have twisted it so they can continue their Wardhate. Not saying he's supergreat, but christ, he's better than some. He may make some mistakes, but he also makes codices that are honestly fun to play.' *BLAM* EXTRA HERESY!!!!! AND PROBABLY ONE OF MATT'S SOCKPUPPETS. THIS COUNTERPOINT IS STUPID AND INVALID.

Counter-Counter-Point, Asshole

This all falls apart when one reads any of the Grey Knights novels by Ben "I am a much fucking better source of canon than Matt Ward" Counter, wherein it's described several times that the Grey Knights are literally the most fanatical Imperial faction when it comes to venerating the God-Emperor, that they describe their faith in the God-Emperor as being "their most potent weapon" over and over again, when their fucking battle-litanies and rites are filled to bursting with veneration for the God-Emperor. How many times does the Canticle of Absolution go over that, to the point of near-redundancy? Oh, please, tell us more about how the Grey Knights don't have faith in the God-Emperor, please, after Justicar Alaric survives imprisonment [and the removal of his aegis and psychic defenses no less] on a fucking daemonworld in the eye of terror because of nothing more than his faith and dedication to his duty. Stupid and invalid?

To put it mildly, yes.

This is further backed up by literally every piece of dicking fluff on the Grey Knights that was not written by Matt Ward: Brother-Captain Stern in literally every Codex he's been in features a quote by him that he would fight Chaos with naught but his faith in the Emperor without a trace of fear. Countless other works, both from Chapter Approved to the codexes themselves (including, lest this not be sinking in, the very Codex the Khornate Knights tale is in) show that it's the absolutely unbreakable faith in the Emperor is what allows them to resist the taint of Chaos so thoroughly.

Putting it simply: One cannot have it both ways.

Either:

• The Grey Knights are the most dedicated Space Marines in the Imperium, and one that has never suffered one of its members falling to Chaos.
• Or, thanks to Ward, they now aren't.

These two are mutually-exclusive.

In the case of the former, the only explanation for the Bloodtide story is incredible plot contrivances that rely on everyone being retarded for the sake of the story, which means it's simply trite and stupid, and ending with heresy for good measure, since they stole the Daemonsword for themselves.

If it's the latter, then 20+ years of canon is thrown under the bus, and for what a wonderful reason, too: so Ward could have a stupid story that made no sense, in which the Grey Knights committed what was tantamount to outright Khorne-worship, have weaker faith than the Sisters of Battle, and, again, stole the sword for themselves. That's extra heretical.

On Misogyny

Now for the tricky part; misogyny is subjective, with most people defining it as an irrational or pathological dislike of women.

There is in that definition alone three points for us to try to puzzle this one out:

• For the fa/tg/uys to whom Bloodtide is misogyny it is fairly obvious (given that there was no reason for the Sisters of Battle to die in universe) that their deaths were the direct result of an irrational act of contempt for women or misogyny by Matt "bane of /tg/'s existence" Ward.

• To the second group of fa/tg/uys, 40K is a violent setting in which people get killed horribly all the time, and the Sisters of Battle are no exception to this (see for example the Second Battle of Sanctuary 101 in the novel Hammer and Anvil); to this group the Sister's deaths are a result of the general misanthropy of the setting, which delights in the brutal slaughter of humans (and xenos) regardless of gender.

• There is however a third interpretation of the events of Bloodtide, but it is of some sophistication, ergo not a product of Matt "Ima troll u" Ward. Were he so capable he could have used Bloodtide to demonstrate that the Imperium is sexist, the Grey Knights flawed, and that the needless deaths therein would have been seen as unimportant because the victims were women, in short using sexism irrrrrrrronically. To this smar/tg/uy, it is infinitely more likely that Matt "I failed Women's Studies 101" Ward failed to understand the very problematic nature of the Women in Refrigerators trope, which led to him creating a story in which the Grey Knights act as misogynistic wankers. That said there's no reason to believe that 38,000 years of human history has led to any sort of decline in sexism.

Which of these you believe is most plausible probably depends on how deep seated your hatred of Ward is, whether you are the type of person to give others the benefit of the doubt or to immediately assume the worst, and how you feel about violence towards women. However, the Grey Knights are humans. Stalwart protectors of mankind. Holy Warriors of the Emperor bla bla bla. I'm pretty sure that killing humans of any sort - most especially the holy Daughters of the Emperor - is heresy when done for absolutely no reason. Also, note the utter lack of "And the Grey Knights killed all the Imperial Guardsmen for lulz" in the codex, or any of Matt Ward's writings.

As it stands, we'll be keeping an eye on him. Y'know, because we've nothing better to do. And because the last group of Sister Militants we assigned to this thankless task tried to kill him.

Gallery

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  What REALLY happened that day.