TTRPG Site Bell Of Lost Souls Attacks Warhammer 40K Fans As “Bigots” For Disliking Games Workshop Changes To Lore

In a move that many within the comic and gaming sphere will find familiar, access media site Bell of Lost Souls came out hard yesterday in defense of Games Workshop’s flagrant retcon of decades-old Adeptus Custodes lore. In a recent article titled “Warhammer 40K: Only Bigots Hate Female Adeptus Custodes”, writer Abe Apfel published a vicious, hateful, and blatantly defamatory attack on the Warhammer 40K fandom.

In a mask-off moment, Bell of Lost Souls (BOLS) leaps headfirst into smearing the 40K fanbase, exposing their own seething hatred for the fandom they try to profit off of, as Apfel begins his article with, “Oh No! Women are coming to ruin 40K! The bigots need to get over themselves about female Adeptus Custodes.”

Apfel then goes on to give an extensive list of background female characters who’ve appeared in Warhammer 40K in recent years, which, according to him, are part of a recent push by Games Workshop to diversify their setting. Interestingly enough, Apfel never once mentions any of the more prominent examples of females within the Warhammer 40,000 setting, such as the Adepta Sororitas, who go back to the late 80’s and who made their first appearance as a full-fledged army in the late 90’s during the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40K. Nor does he mention the Anathema Psykana (AKA Sisters of Silence), the female counterparts to the Adeptus Custodes, who make up five separate units, including a named character, within the latest codex. There are many other examples of female characters found in the tabletop game. Focusing on Imperial units alone, there are Inquisitors, Death Cult Assassins, Rogue Traders, Imperial Guardsmen, and that’s just for starters.

BOLS, however, doesn’t mention any of them because to do so would immediately undercut their central thesis, that the Warhammer 40K fanbase is made up of “sexists” and “bigots,” and that female representation in Warhammer 40K was all but non-existent until recently when history shows that that’s not the case at all. On the contrary, there has already been significant female representation in the setting, both in the background and on the tabletop, going back decades. And the fans who are most up in arms about the changes to the Adeptus Custodes lore have long requested expansions to both the Sisters of Battle and Sisters of Silence ranges. One of their chief concerns with the lore change is that the addition of female Adeptus Custodes could potentially lead to the erasure of all-female forces like the Sisters of Silence.

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Continuing to demonstrate BOLS’ seething, vitriolic hatred of the 40K fanbase, Apfel writes, “As seems to happen every time GW [Games Workshop] takes a step to be more inclusive, to get more people into the hobby, some bigots on the internet are mad. In a number of online spaces, including comments on our website, people have come out to protest this update. In general, they position themselves as guardians of the lore. Maybe even a few people reading this are in this position. You might be about to tell me how you’re not a bigot at all, you simply really care about 40K lore and its sanctity.”

He continued, “But you know what? Save yourself the breath and take a seat. The truth is that 40K has never cared one bit about the internal consistency of its own lore. There have been countless retcons and changes galore from the very first days of 40K. Indeed 40K is specifically written so that there is no truth, imperfect narrators are the norm, and that everything can, and often does change at any moment. And yet people still get mad about only a small subsection of these things.”

Apfel’s argument defending Games Workshop falls apart here because, as mentioned previously, he intentionally sidestepped any mention of the large number of female representation that already exists in the game. So when he claims that “it always seems to be when women get introduced, that you see anger popping up on the internet,” that’s an attempt made by Apfel to gaslight his readers, as there was no anger whatsoever when Sisters of Battle, Sisters of Silence, female Inquisitors, or other female models were introduced.

On the contrary, the anger in the 40K fanbase surrounding those armies revolved around the lack of support. Whether it’s the long years when the Sisters of Battle went without a range refresh and were forced to use old metal models cast in the 90s, and in some editions forced to use a digital codex because GW couldn’t be bothered to publish a proper codex book for them, to the Sisters of Silence being forced to use a single kit to make three units. For a fanbase that’s supposedly made up of “sexists” and “bigots,” as Apfel claims, they’ve long shown themselves to be incredibly supportive of the Adepta Sororitas and the Anathema Psykana.

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BOLS then goes on to make several intellectually dishonest “lore” arguments to justify their defamation of the 40K fanbase, such as claiming that the introduction of female Adeptus Custodes is no different than the recent introduction of the Rogal Dorn Battle Tank. While it’s true that the Rogal Dorn was never mentioned before, neither was it explicitly excluded. No piece of lore ever published has ever stated that the tanks found in any iteration of Codex: Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum make up the sum total of all the tanks available to the Imperial Guard.

To the contrary, the lore has been extremely consistent on the point that the Imperium has access to a bewildering array of vehicles and war machines and that the ones found in the codex books are simply some of the most common examples. That’s in stark contrast to Adeptus Custodes lore, which has explicitly stated on multiple occasions over the course of 30 years that Adeptus Custodes are only male, with miniatures and lore, including lore released in just the past few months, consistently fitting within that framework.

Likewise, they decry opposition to female Bretonnian Knights in a similar manner, when yet again, the lore was explicit in stating that knights are only male, not female. In fact, the one instance of a female knight, Repanse de Lyonesse, is notable because she was an unusual exception. She was able to rally the Bretonnians because she was such an unexpected figure that it had to have been a sign from the Lady of the Lake. Ironically, in pushing for more representation, the current lore writers destroyed the backstory of the pre-existing female representation that existed in the universe.

Apfel’s argument also falls apart when one considers that some of the biggest critics of Games Workshop’s rewrite of Adeptus Custodes lore are themselves women. And in the discussions surrounding the topic, it isn’t the lore purists whom Apfel is excoriating who are proving themselves to be vicious sexists, but his fellow travelers:

One such example is @CommineInaBox, who said the following on X to a female hobbyist by the name of @LadyRunesong:

Another activist Warhammer fan, @bigox666, accused artist and pop culture enthusiast @LostLeanore of being an OnlyFans whore:

And in a response to female Warhammer 40K hobbyist and Necron fan @Triarch_Praetor, @JordanAtki59229 made another attack:

But user @dosgenderos sums the Games Workshop shills hypocrisy best when she states the following in this short but heartrending post:

As these screenshots show, it’s clear where the sexism and even racist toxicity within the Warhammer community and Games Workshop fandom is coming from, and it isn’t from the people who want to see the lore respected. Rather, it’s the activists who viciously smear and attack anyone who disagrees with them, just as BOLS has viciously smeared and attacked the vast majority of Warhammer 40K fandom with this repugnant article.

Those vile screeds directed at female hobbyists by those who share the same political persuasion by Apfel and his editors will, of course, go unreported by BOLS, who will instead continue to launch divisive blind item attacks directed at the entirety of the 40K fandom. @Newfaceofrev makes the reasoning behind that clear:

The point was never about creating a more inclusive space. If that were true, the people clamoring for more “inclusivity” wouldn’t be so vicious and hateful towards women, minorities, the disabled, or members of the LGBTQ+ community who disagree with them, as these screenshots show. The actual goal has always been to create an exclusionary, politically motivated space. And that is why Warhammer fans are up in arms, because not only is the recent Adeptus Custodes change a major change to the lore, but because they can see the reasoning behind it, which is that it’s entirely driven by politically motivated hatred of the large swathes of the existing fanbase.

BOLS concludes their shameful, embarrassing article with the boilerplate comment, “Let us know what you think of this change, down in the comments!” which follows all Bell of Lost Souls articles.

Bell of Lost Souls, however, locked the comments.

In the comments below, let us know what you think about the situation surrounding Games Workshop and Warhammer 40,000. Unlike Bell of Lost Souls, our comments section is always open, and we want to know what you think.

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