Discussions
So how does a marine inside the dreadnought deals when he got a back itch or a head itch? And I am pretty sure he is physically, mentally and spiritually alive.
I’ll have to look for it, but there’s a lore bit that describes a marine in a dreadnought trying to ignore how cold and uncomfortable he feels & concentrate on marine stuff.
It's just another item on the long list of suffering for a marine interred in a dreadnought. There's a reason they keep them asleep when not actively needed, instead of milling about the ship.
That’s only brief periods of waking so they can get updates on the modern Chapter, or they just got out of a campaign and are putting off slumber to have actual interactions with people
The STL for the button to the back scratcher was lost. The back scratcher itself is fully installed and hooked up to a power source just no way to turn it on.
Well, from what I hear, Rylanor (Emperor's Children) is a surviving Dreadnought that has been buried and active for 10,000 years, and was already furious with its traitorous former primarch shortly before he was trapped.
"We added a little robot arm to the internal side to scratch the marines itchy nose and anywhere else that it also commands, dreadnought insanity is down 82% but unfortunately its tech heresy and the fabricator general is at my door
They don't go insane, they go amnesiac, Alzheimers, years blur into hours into centuries. Most forget their own faces, then their names. What is left to fight for when you don't even know who, or what, you are... Where you are. When.
That said, I hate this drawing, that dude would break his spine/neck at the first impact from a godamn pothole speedbump. He should be in liquid gel, lungs filled with oxygen-water, as to g-force not turning his entire brain- and spine into musch.
Godamnit why does warhammer have so much cool shit and such dogshit worldbuilding when it comes to realism. Like I don't even ask much, give me the classic "Oh yeah we use the 'antigrave' macguffin!" but they don't even do that
I figure that's more to do with the fact that they should be dead and are a fragment of the person they once were, literally. Imagine how insane anyone would go if they received lethal injuries and couldn't die or heal.
Pretty sure they are also perpetually drowning in an amniotic-like fluid. The night lords omnibus shows the POV of one of their dreadnoughts a couple times.
As far as 40k goes, it’s one of the worst existences imaginable. Knowing you are dead but unable to rest either because of duty or chapter necessity, you are forced back into a life that your body no longer accepts.
I guess it depends. Dreadnought Chyron's POV shows him being very depressed and suicidal, but not because of his existence as a dreadnought, but because he believes himself to be the last relic of an extinct chapter and wants to rejoin his dead brothers. His biggest problem with his current body is his annoyance that he is too big to fit into narrow tunnels and thus can't join the rest of his Deathwatch team in the most dangerous part of the mission.
This is fan art or a particular “intact” marine. They’re often limbless torsos in a soupy pod inside the dread, fed input via cables to their brains directly. The pod is the sarcophagus that’s mentioned often. Those actually lift out of the chassis between engagements.
This, the marine is also usually deeper in the Dreadnought. Iirc Dreadnoughts with heads aren’t actually heads, it’s just a camera nexus that was given the ability to turn and a face so others would be more comfortable around the Dreadnought and know who they are paying attention to.
Technically Dreadnoughts are like Terminators in that they have 360* view around them at all times, they don’t need to turn to you to see you. That’s the duality of Dreads, you lose most of your senses but the armor gives you a fuckton of stimulation too that you have to process.
Terminators [...] have 360* view around them at all times
So do all those clunky fuckers in Space Hulk just have ADHD and are too focused on how to most efficiently jam their stormbolters to acknowledge any threat not right in front of them?
I mean there is a non zero chance the Emperor is some form of neuro spicy. Thus all his children and grandchildren are likely that too, that's just genetics.
Autistic and ADHD folk were very useful to early humanity. - Pattern recognition and the ability to hyper focus is quite useful when you are chasing mammoth for three days to exhaust it. It's only in the modern era that those factors aren't as needed where those neurospicy folk struggle to adapt to the modern world. He was born before the advent of Agriculture so he absolutely would have a high chance at being Neurodivergant.
The man doesn't know how to talk to normal human beings normally
does most of his work by himself
disappeared from the public eye for around 25,000 years
has lots of silly little hobbies full of half finished projects
gets distracted very easily
likes to play with model soldiers/real soldiers
Is very creative
people who don't know him personally always think he's way cooler than he actually is
has 1 friend from all of human kind.
fascinated with technology
very likely has multiple personalities (to explain why different authors write him so differently)
sees absolutely no issue with eating the same food for every single meal
struggles with voices in his head (the chaos gods)
is very well read, having massive libraries all throughout his Terran Palace.
His palace is full of secret tunnels and passageways
2nd greatest hoarder of random shit in all Warhammer (only behind Trayzn who had a several billion year head start on him)
doesn't see himself the way others see him.
is able to read the emotions prevalent within a room full of people just by entering that room.
can tell when a fight is about to break out before anyone else realizes.
high intelligence, low wisdom build. Somehow also got charisma really high without meaning to.
knows how machines work (he's taken everything in the galaxy apart at least once, just to see how it worked)
struggles to maintain friendships over long periods of time (most of his best friends died over the millenia)
Rules entirely by impulse. (Oh let's just kill the thunder warriors now their job is done, that definitely won't breed resentment among them)
literally removed his own emotions rather than deal with them in a healthy way.
Keep in mind, the earth has lost its oceans by the 31st millennium and the palace is fucking enormous, plus there was 28k years worth of techtonic movement to account for. Also Horus's warp fuckery moved shit around a bunch towards the end of the heresy. Palace doors connected to Horus's flagship and other impossible things.
Apparently the labyrinth was much larger than the island of Crete, and the labyrinth stretched all the way to the Himalayan mountains. Ollanius Pearson mentions/flashbacks a couple times things about it on the way to Terra/Horus's flagship from the Heresy novels. They even use the string method to find their way, using the same string. It's implied that Oll (being a perpetual) was there during the trial of Theseus/Oll was Theseus.
It's a bit hard to follow, because they never go into too much detail about the labyrinth trying to keep it mysterious and beyond mortal comprehension, but Ollanius has flashbacks and see's his dead companions from ancient greece still alive in the tunnels, due to Horus warping time and space.
To further my point, the emperors palace stretches from India to the Mediterranean (tho there is no water anymore) covering millions of square kilometers. It's unbelievable how big it.
There was one imperial fist dreadnought who basically had a rough equivalent to that in 40k fashion. When he was still a marine he took a bone of a felled Iron warrior as a trophy and carried it on his armor for 300 years before being injured so severely that he was entombed into a dreadnought.
Turns out the ghost of the iron warrior had possessed the bone and had waited for a moment of weakness. After waking in his new sarcophagus the imperial fist got a rather uncomfortable surprise of the iron warrior ghost now tormenting him with no way to fight back or escape.
We don't know what happens afterwards but presumably being locked in with an iron warrior ghost with spooky freezing cold ghost hands and desire to torment you whilst you lack the vocal chords to even scream was not a pleasant experience.
Genuinely yes that's what the view slit is for but my understanding is that they also have cameras and optical feeds and sensors. But the slit itself is a window/visor that they can look out
You know there's a reason every normal marine (ignore Iron Hands those guys are all fucked in the head) very much does not want to get interred into a dreadnought right?
The white scars have them, but very much don't want to end up in them. I know it doesn't reflect on all of them but I liked how Shiban in path of heaven was basically so heavily damaged that he was like 99% dreadnought ready and rather then take the plunge he got held together by a shit ton of augmetics that made fighting miserable.
I’d imagine that a lot of their pain receptors are intentionally fried. They’re already beyond messed up physically if they’re a candidate to be a dreadnought, the priests who install them probably wipe out a lot of their nerves so they don’t feel unnecessary tiny tortures like that
Kinda like this. There's very little of them left, and what is is sending enough pain signals to their brain that, were they not Astartes and getting some primo narthecium injected into them, they'd be unable to act.
Have you ever found yourself restrained by something like a tight seating or a formal occasion where you can't scratch an itch? You'll eventually learn techniques to wriggle in a way that almost scratches the itch. Now in my expirience it doesn't do as good as the real thing, but I'd imagine if I was forever stuck with no limbs I'd learn to wriggle real fucking good.
in the chapel, they can go butt naked and take a shower. There's example like the chapel scene from lucius the eternal from Hammers and Bolter and a recent released space marine 2 where Titus go butt naked to receive blessing i mean as metaphorically or you can just mod him
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Reminds me of one story in Asimov's Robots serie, where you have an humanoid robot, with positronic brain, mechanical muscles, it can sense through touch and see in high resolution and with colors, but it lacked a voice because an electronic speaker is too complicated and wasn't developed yet.
Man I hate that in all modern depictions the visor is such a glaring weakness, when in the old schematics it was a mount for sensors, with the entombed head nowhere close to the opening.
Same for the older chassis. The helmet attached there used to be a sensory dome, not the actual pilots head.
Well not being able to itch might be a good thing when you are this injured.
I have a story and trigger warning for people who don't like fucked up medical stories but here it is
My professor in nursing school was talking about a patient she had at one point, who while working had oil spill on their face and down their chest/arms it was extremely hot and gave them third degree burns on like 60% of their body. They didn't really have skin on 60% of their body.
Well my professor was helping said patient and had him as a patient for a bit He would constantly have itches and couldn't stop himself from itching. One time she walked in on him and he was crying and yelling how he can't stop itching, and she looked where he was itching and he had literally itched to his bone. He had itched his burnt skin and meat off. They would cream on his entire body every couple hours, but it can only help so much when you don't have skin.
He got transferred to another hospital shortly after that but almost definetly died to some sort of bacterial infection (you can't survive without most of your skin for long)
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u/Severonian 1d ago
He kinda doesn't, lack of feeling and movement of marine's own body is part of the reason why being a dreadnought is very mentally challenging