Here is all the latest background lore for the tiny but mighty Squats, aka the Leagues of Votann in Warhammer 40k
With them (hopefully) coming out later this year, GW has to build up a backstory for the Leagues of Votaan, as lore is just cool! They are really leaning into the ancient tech with them, so this means the rumor of Men of Iron coming along with the faction might be more possible than we originally thought.
Warhammer Community unveiled a bunch of secrets and why they are now choosing to get more involved with the constant wars of the Grimdark. First, look at the new model reveal, then jump into the lore!
GW Confirms New 40k Squats aka the Leagues of Votann
These warriors have a long and proud martial history, and to those who aren’t on their bad side, they’re known as the Leagues of Votann – though they refer to themselves as Kin.
Although their civilisation shares common roots with Humanity, the Leagues of Votann have an uneasy relationship with the Imperium of Man. Unlike their superstitious Human cousins, the Leagues emerged from the Age of Strife with far more of their ancient technology intact, including some infamous advances the Imperium would consider extremely heretical.
This is a cool idea in terms of weaponry as well. It looks like you just won’t have shorter Guardsmen with Lasguns or something like that. Let’s just hope they have some really cool weapons!
Their knack for science and a headstrong nature make for skilled warriors backed up by reliable weaponry, as you can see from even this basic trooper. And while there’s no love lost between the Leagues of Votann and Humankind, the resurgence of Chaos and ascendent xenos hordes mean there are usually more pressing concerns than fighting each other.
40k Squats Leagues of Votann Lore Revealed!
A secretive people in a galaxy full of mortal threats, the Kin do not discuss the nature of the Votann with outsiders – by sacred custom and sensible caution. The word is used freely enough, but no-one beyond the Leagues has any clue what it refers to.
There’s good reason for this reticence – if the secrets of the Votann were ever revealed to the galaxy at large, the uneasy peace between the Leagues and the Imperium of Man would quickly crumble.
Why? The Votann are Ancestor Cores – super-cogitators, gestalt repositories of inherited wisdom and knowledge. Each League has its own Votann, central to its way of life, and no Kin would hesitate to lay down their lives to protect it – these venerable cogitators are as sacred to the Kin as gods are to the more spiritual races. That’s the sort of thing the Adeptus Mechanicus has strong opinions on.
This really allows GW to lean into new/old weapons that will set them apart from the rest of the armies in 40k. Plus, all this talk of ancient tech also really gives them the opportunity to bring about some really old stuff back into the game.
Also, the Votanns themselves are a really cool idea, supercomputers that just give all the answers. We’re sure they get 42 a lot of the time, but hey, what can you expect?
Within these self-organising datastacks and quantum infocores is held all the information a people might need to survive among the stars – weapon specifications, military theory, genealogical data, science, philosophy, and even Standard Template Constructs. There is an unimaginable wealth of lore buried in each Votann, which cannot be allowed to fall into the more superstitious hands of outsiders.
Of course, the 41st Millennium being what it is, not all is well among the Votann – it turns out that even machines of near-limitless power can eventually run out of memory. Whoever first created these marvels did not design them for tens of thousands of years of constant operation, and the sheer weight of data they are forced to compute has begun to slow them down.
Well, it wouldn’t be 40k without tech failing! This would also lead to some really cool scenarios you could play out with them hunting for tech to fix up the machines. They also mention that it can now take decades or centuries for the info to pop out!
GW Reveals Who & What the Leagues of Votann are Clones!
The Kin may not know much about their earliest days, but there are certain articles of lost history deemed indisputable, known as “First Truths”. One such principle is that the First Ancestors departed their original homeworld – almost certainly pre-Imperial Terra – millennia ago, aboard vast fleets of generation ships. It is also deemed to be true that these Ancestors set out as prospectors, miners, and void-dredgers, charged with exploiting the riches of the heavens.
The eventual fate of the First Ancestors is uncertain, for Kin myth solidifies into intelligible history only after the long-march fleets began to arrive at their destinations near the galactic core. The records of this period boast the last references to the First Ancestors – and the earliest mentions of the Ancestor Cores.
This makes sense with the new Necromunda Divergent Ironhead Squats Prospectors minis we just saw, as they are some of the only dedicated miners left out there.
Likewise, it is a First Truth that the Kin have been a cloned people from the very start.
The First Ancestors are held responsible for the cloneskeins – the systems of stable mutations that underpin the entire genetic structure of the Kin to this day. The gene pool drawn upon by the Leagues of Votann is stable, deep, and varied – this is no race of identical clones. In practical terms, the cloneskeins have produced a species with denser bones and muscles than baseline humans, higher red and white blood cell counts, and formidable strength and resilience.
It’s quite interesting to think that the Leagues of Votann are all clones of some sort, but not from the same source, from all the different first ancestors out there.
Such was the craft of the First Ancestors that even Kin souls are engineered – they shine more dimly against the tides of the warp than their distant human cousins, with no evidence of uncontrolled psychic mutation. Indeed, only those with the appropriate psychically active cloneskein can activate the so-called barrier-tech the Kin employ to access the empyrean.
Cloneskeins differentiate the division of labour in Kin society, and impart useful abilities on those who possess them. Some Kin might have enhanced reaction times, the ability to see the infrared spectrum, or limited resistance to cosmic radiation and extremes of temperature or gravity. Many cloneskeins manifest in visible fashion, with giveaways including distinctive bodily odours, unusual eye colours, or thick subdermal layers. Such physical variations would be a cause for concern in Imperial society – but to the Kin, they are a badge of honour.
It would make sense then that your heroes and characters could actually be bigger as that could be a mutation, or with this, it opens the possibility for some very interesting special rules!
The Leagues of Votann Weapons are Ancient STLs!
As with more or less everything else in the Leagues, the collected technological knowledge of the Kin is contained within the Votann. These ancient minds are vast repositories of weapon schematics that would have just about every member of the Adeptus Mechanicus weighing up the merits of becoming a heretek. As with more or less everything else in the Leagues, the collected technological knowledge of the Kin is contained within the Votann. These ancient minds are vast repositories of weapon schematics that would have just about every member of the Adeptus Mechanicus weighing up the merits of becoming a heretek. The Kin, you see, are sitting on a closely guarded network of functioning STCs – a fact reflected across their entire armoury.
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An armoury which, mark you, they are perfectly permitted to improve over time. The Kin may move slowly, but they’re not stuck in technological stasis like some factions we could mention. Their engineers – called Brôkhyrs – command the auto-foundries of each Kin hold from their personal A.N-vyl terminals. But what are they forging?
So STCs or Standard Template Construct are basically files that can be used to fabricate pretty much anything a colony needed in the world they were settling on. For the most part, they were lost since the exploratory fleets set out from Terra millennia ago, and the Mechanicum guards any shreds of data found.
They are basically the evolution of 3d printing’s STL files that we know in real life…
It’s also nice to know that even though The Kin move slowly, they still improve. This gives the Games Workshop studio a lot of room to give them really cool weapons over time.
Weapon Types
From the Autoch-pattern bolter to the Etacarn plasma gun, many Kin weapons bear superficial similarities to Imperial weapons, but they’re superior in every respect. There’s a clear shared ancestry between the bolt revolver and bolt shotgun and the bolt weapons of the Adeptus Astartes, but Kin weapons simply work better and hit harder.
A Bolt Shotgun sounds quite deadly, not to mention their other forms of bolt weaponry that the Astartes don’t have. They say they hit harder and work better, so maybe they get more Strength, AP, or Damage? It would be interesting to see how strong they will make the bolt weapons.
Then there are items like the volkanite disintegrators, which use technology since lost to the Imperium, or ion technology, which is proscribed by the Adeptus Mechanicus. That’s their loss – the T’au Empire certainly seemed to appreciate being taught how to harness it…
This could be the most interesting part of all the lore! First, it points to possible Men of Iron, and a link between the Tau, Men of Iron, and the fact that the Leagues showed them how to make weapons!
We heard rumblings about this, but GW basically just confirmed it, so who knows what type of allegiance(s) they will have in tabletop 40k.
All these weapons are supported by smart tech integrated into Kin battlegear. The haptic utility nerve transmission recalibrator modules – HunTR for short – interface with their neural augmetics to establish a feedback loop between firearms and their users. This system projects minute gravitational pulses to maintain a stable firing platform even while running at full pelt – or zooming along on a flying trike.
The Graviton Blast Cannon and SP Conversion Beamer look like some serious weaponry! They didn’t say much about their power, but that, combined with their HunTR tech, could lead to some insane shooting units.
Again though, they are really changing them into a proper faction with a backstory all focused around sticking to the old ways, but a need to venture out. Now with all this revealed, we’d not at all be surprised to see them with some super old robots to help them out!
If you love everything Squats, check out the latest on the new Leagues of Votann below.
- New 40k Squats Leagues of Votann Rules & Rumors
- Leagues of Votaan Squat Trikes Are Back!
- What the New ‘Votann’ Are in Warhammer 40k
- Leagues of Votann Miniatures & Rumors
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Here’s the most up-to-date list of new Games Workshop bits from preview models that we should watch out for. Click on the gallery above to see dozens of Rumor Engines with new models still left to be revealed!
All the Newest GW Model & Rules Previews For 2022
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About the Author: Rob Baer
