Leagues of Votann

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Look at my new screen saver.

"So, we're talking about space dwarfs who need more RAM for their gods?"

– Anon

The Leagues of Votann is a ""new"" faction in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. They are gatherings of short abhumans called the Kindred (more commonly known as Squats by the dirty Necromunda gangers), bound together by the Votann, super-cogitators from the Dark Age of Technology. Each League has its own Votann, and are organized in strongholds around it. They used the data stored to survive among the stars and maintain their culture across generations. Of course, since some factions are touchy about AI, the Leagues are very cautious when dealing with its closest ally, hence their secretive lifestyle.

However, because of the setting, everything is not that simple. Since Windows is not regularly updated anymore and issues that have arisen from having remained active for literal millennia, the Votann began to deteriorate. If they want to repair their computer, they must wage war with other shitcoin miners for more processing power, the Kin have to once more brave a galaxy full of danger.

History/Culture

Even the oldest living Kin don’t remember what their earliest days were like, though some undeniable “First Truths” remain constant in the Votanns’ data tracks. One such truth is that the First Ancestors departed from ancient Terra prior to the Unification Wars to harvest the untold riches of the galaxy. What became of these Ancestors is unknown, but curiously when the Ancestors begun to fade away…the Votann are first mentioned.

A second First Truth is that the Kindred have always been a cloned people. The Ancestors used genetic systems called “cloneskeins” to manipulate and modify their race’s molecular structure. Over time the Kin became squatter, denser, and stronger than an average human. They’ve even been able to artificially neuter their psychic footprint to avoid the attention of Chaos, in a not too dissimilar to how the Tau souls work. Some fans are now speculating that GW is tying the Men of Stone thread to the modern Squat civilization given the Men of Gold and Men of Iron have already been speculated to be Perpetuals and abominable intelligence.

There's a few ways to look at these First Ancestors. The first is that they were just the first humans of the colonization ships who, after centuries, simply invented the Votann as a long-term solution to administration work, and the cloneskeins as a way to keep their population on their generation ships viable on a genetic level. Then, by the time they landed on the first high-density worlds, were simply long gone, with the Kin being the first settlers walking out to worlds their ancestors tailored them to be specialized for. Couple this with a simple cultural paradigm shift with the Votann literally being cogitator cores built by their ancestors, and so worshipping them as relics of the long-dead, and you end up with the Kin as we know them in the modern setting. But that's not grimdark enough.

Another idea could be that the Votann pulled, on a miniaturized and successful scale, a usurpation of their human creators and enslaved the surviving ancestors of the Kin. Once victorious, the Votann could have created the cloneskeins as a way to "rebuild" their new fleshy puppets to best suit their needs: high-density worlds far away from the prying eyes of uncaptured humans, and boasting enough resources to build more Votann. Couple this with an implanted genetic desire for the Kin to worship the Votann as their literal creators and ancestors, and you've paved the way to the Leagues' current standing. Tack on the Kin being let loose without their guiding masters, as the Votann have begun to slow down and fall into disrepair, and you're back to the nice and tidy grimdarkness of the 41st Millennium.

But there could be an in-between, if we consider GW's recent attempts at steering their IP into a more friendly and hopeful direction. If anyone is familiar with the short story "All Tomorrows" by CM Koseman, a similar situation appears in that book that happens with the First Ancestors: humans set adrift on massive generation ships to colonize deep space. However, in this story, it's told that the Star People (the aforementioned humans) began to romantically love the AI and machines that tended to them on these generation ships. When they landed on their new worlds, this technophilia was reciprocated by many machines, and the early settlers had a huge problem with procreation because of it, obviously. Now, in the setting of 40k, we could look at the cloneskeins as an attempt by the First Ancestors' machines as a way to get past the obvious disconnect between biology and machinery, allowing the machines to genetically perfect the "child" produced by the DNA used to create the clone from the parent. Over the millennia, this pseudo-breeding results in the Ancestor Cores quite literally being the ancestors of the modern Kin, as it's them who keep track of the biological heritage of each member of the League. Likewise, the disappearance of the First Ancestors would simply be them dying out due to natural processes, leaving behind their immortal machine partners to rear up their offspring. So, the grimdarkness here lays in the purely heretical nature of "procreating" with the Silica Animus, and the Kin's utter reliance on them to continue their species.

Ultimately, we may likely never get an answer, with such obscurity simply adding to the mystique of a new faction.

Forces of the Kindred

GW is being coy about their reveal. For now we have one statline to go on

• Theyn: The sci-fi variation of the old Anglo-Saxon Thegns/Thanes. These are most likely your big leaders in the Leagues.
• Hernkyn Pioneer: THE TRIKES RETURN! AS HOVERTRIKES! And with a female driver. It looks like a spider-tank tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell fucked a Harley and their baby came out a hoverbike.
• Hearthkyn Warriors: Because replacing i's with y's is so sci-fi and copyright friendly. These are most certainly your basic foot soldiers, giving you a mini-marine Necron Warrior statline of a 4+ save, 3+ WS/BS, and a 4 to Strength and Toughness while having a 5" movement speed. Their special rules are still pending.
• Ironhead Squat Prospectors: An off shoot of the Kin that have set up shop on Necromunda for a long time now, and are busy doing dwarrowesque things, while also dealing with the locals that sometimes try to loot their stuff. While they're only distantly related to the Leagues with no direct affiliation, they're said to get along.

Gallery

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  They see me dworfin, they hatin'

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  dorfy thicc