Warhammer 40K Fluff Discussion XV: You Must Be THIS Tall To Witness The Grimdark

[Wraith]

Pre-Heresy Lorgar? As in Great Crusade Lorgar? Yes. There's nothing tainted about it. If you don't preserve what Lorgar did before he turned to Chaos, you may as burn Adepta Sororitas at the stake, shatter the Adeptus Ministorum, and scuttle the Imperium as we know it. Everything the Imperium stands for, the God-Emperor of Man and Manifest Destiny, is written in the Lectitio Divinatus - the most holy text in the Imperium, written by Pre-Heresy Lorgar. Why would something be tainted before Lorgar turned to Chaos? That makes no sense.

One would have to wonder just whether or not anyone knows that the Levictio Divinitatus was written by Lorgar, and just the the extent of what Lorgar was.

The Age of the Great Crusade is mythical to the 41st millenium. The name of Horus is a blighted curse on the lips of scholars, and a bogeyman used by parents to scare children into line for the masses; other than he was the Emperor's son who betrayed his father, everything else is murky at best. And he was one of the more beloved and documented of the Primarchs.

But Lorgar? Weak, bookish Lorgar who committed all three of the greatest sins imaginable (Treason and Heresy against the Emperor, gave his soul to Chaos and gave his flesh over to Daemons)? After 10,000 years of forgetfulness and intentional erasure by the Inquisition? Maybe. Probably not.

With that in mind, what would people really know about their temples? It's absolutely possible that there are some founded in the age of the Crusade that are still active; I doubt that anyone knows who founded them, because can you really imagine the conversation if it was known that your temple of worship was founded the Supreme Heretic Lorgar Aurelian?
"Welcome to the Temple of Our Beloved Father, the first brick was put in place by the guy who is now High Priest of Chaos but don't worry! We scrubbed the place out and lit some new candles, we're totally legit!"

Even more rare - but potentially less controversial and certainly more valuable - would be coming across one of the little ad-hoc shrines built in the bowels of Astartes starships during the Great Crusade, such as the one visited by Nathaniel Garro when he first discovered that the Emperor was deified. They're going to be made of scrap piled together and with an effigy of the Emperor balanced on top, but (if you can prove it's provenance beyond doubt) it's going to be a shrine founded under the worship of the original Levictio, while Lorgar was still loyal and his words were genuine praise of his father.
It'd be a small, humble and very well hidden little chapel somewhere where the Astartes don't go... but there might be a few still around on the oldest of starships, and possibly also in Space Hulks, and they're going to be valuable beyond measure to the Imperial faithful.

So in my long-running Deathwatch game, the Assault Marine is finally about to run out of Fate Points, and plans on getting himself interred in a Dreadnought chassis (everyone+DM is onboard). My somewhat radical nutjob Devastator will be trying to build him a Dreadnought-scaled jump pack when that time comes, so he can still fly. The question is, how big will the thrusters need to be? Would cannibalizing parts from a Land Speeder be enough, or will I need the jets from a Stormraven? Thunderhawk engines are overkill, I don't feel the need to make him void-capable.

Physics and thermodynamics aren't really the sort of stuff that 40k bothers itself with most of the time, so as long as your DM is onboard then the details probably won't matter.

A Land Speeder engine alone probably wouldn't be enough. Jump packs allow Astartes to descend from low orbit safely, and can fly in the traditional sense, whereas speeders don't "fly" as such, they just climb a few metres up to avoid traffic and obstructions, so lifting a Dreadnought chassis above head height would be unlikely, I feel. If you want to actually fly like a normal Jump Pack, it would need to be a little more powerful, although as you said a Thunderhawk engine would be overkill.

A Storm Raven jet, or maybe a couple of Speeder engines (one for each shoulder, like the 30k-style turbine-shaped Jump Packs), sounds plausible to me, for what that's worth.