kabal wyches?

Hey guys ive been wondering if kabals keep their own cults of wyches or hire them? and if they do have their own, would they have the same colours?

cheers in advance, fish

The answer is; they do both, and it's possible in either situation for colors to be the same or different.

In my army my Kabal has a Wych Cult they sponsor - and all of my units wear similar colors.
It's also functional for an Archon to hire Wyches and pay them to wear his colors simply because he finds it more enjoyable.
On the other hand a sponsored Cult could wear different colors (or, a popular choice I've seen, is an inverted color scheme) because they still see themselves as separate from their Kabal.
While we're at it, a very successful Cult may have formed a Kabal as they branched out to doing more realspace raids or something.

Unlike Marines, and, indeed, pretty much all other races, the DE do *not* have clearly defined markings or color schemes. You are very much able to make your own decisions and literally none of them can really be 'wrong' because the fluff is so open and interpretive on the questions.

Thanks fir the help, I'm thinking of the inverted colour scheme and a different symbol but would they use their own raiders or would they borrow them I'm assuming their own.

I would say that if you're giving them a different symbol, then they'd probably want that symbol to be shown off on their Raiders and the like - so probably the different scheme should extend that far as well.

mkay cheers man

I've not painted any Raiders yet, but my plan is to give them all Kabal colour scheme but use them interchangeably with Cult/Coven units. I believe the fluff mentions Kabals owning Raiders and while it's possible that Cults have their own, I think it's also possible that they would borrow them from the Kabal. I think of the Kabal as the rich force funding the raid and the Wyches tagging along for the ride. This way, I don't need so many different Raiders...

Ben_S wrote:

I believe the fluff mentions Kabals owning Raiders and while it's possible that Cults have their own, I think it's also possible that they would borrow them from the Kabal.

I will note, that in the fluff there is nothing that suggests only Kabals own Raiders. They are noted as the primary transport of choice for Dark Eldar - which I would take to mean all Dark Eldar, not just the Kabals.

That said, I am totally with you on the idea that the Cult would use Kabal Raiders, after all, probably the Archon didn't pay enough for the Cult to bring their own transports or maybe he wants to make sure the Wyches go where he wants them on the battlefield and doesn't trust them having their own means to get away when the going gets tough

Actually, p. 44 of the Codex says "each of these craft is customised by its owning Kabal", so that can be taken to suggest that only Kabals own Raiders. (The best evidence to the contrary, that I'm aware of, is the picture of Cult Raiders on p. 79, but that just shows that how you model your army needn't be constrained by canon.)

Anyway, whether Cults own their own Raiders or not, it's plausible that they will sometimes use those belonging to the Kabal leading the raid, so it's entirely acceptable to have your Wyches in a Raider that's painted in your Kabal colour scheme. It would only look slightly odd, in my opinion, if you didn't have any Kabal elements in your army.

Interesting.

I'll choose to take the 'favored craft of Dark Eldar across the galaxy' (also on Page 44 and in contradiction to that conclusion) to mean that all Dark Eldar use them. But you do have a fluff standpoint there.

That everyone uses them doesn't contradict the claim only Kabals own them - it could just mean the Cults like borrowing them.

Anyway, the fluff's ambiguous/open enough that you can do what you like with your army.

It is equally valid to suggest that only Kabal customize their craft, while other groups do not.

Well, we probably shouldn't read too much into a single sentence, since the fluff is probably no better written than the rules, but "each of these craft is customised by its owning Kabal" implies that each craft is owned by a Kabal. It's not the same as "each Kabal customises their Raiders", which would allow for uncustomised non-Kabal Raiders.

While we're at it, that same sentence claims all Raiders have aethersails.
Also, per fluff, no Kabal owns a Razorwing.

But the sentence still holds true; 'each of these craft are customized by its owning Kabal' Well, what about the ones Kabals do not own? No where does it say they're all owned by a Kabal, it is an inference, and the inference can flow multiple ways. I would accept yours seems the most likely inference, but would argue it as absolute.

Yes, it's an inference, but that doesn't mean you can infer whatever you like.

Here, 'these craft' refers to Raiders. So the sentence can be re-worded as 'each Raider is customised by its owning Kabal'. And that implies that each Raider has an owning Kabal.

It's not the same as 'each Raider that is owned by a Kabal is customised by that Kabal'.

p.s. And don't all Raiders have Aethersails? The upgrade is Enhanced Aesthersails.

That's actually a good point on the upgrade part - derp on me.

Your inference is 'every' Raider is customized by its owning Kabal.
It doesn't say that.

It says 'each', so I don't really see how you can read it as applying to something other than all of them. If the sentence was simply [1] 'each Raider is owned by a Kabal', would you think that some weren't? I assume not.

So now suppose the sentence was [2] 'each Raider is owned by a Kabal, which customises it'. This adds some further information to [1], but still includes [1], that is all Raiders are owned by a Kabal.

Now simply rearrange: [3] 'each Raider is customised, by the Kabal that owns it'. This is equivalent to [2] and, since [2] includes [1], it implies that each Raider is owned by a Kabal. And that's pretty much what it says in the Codex.

How do you interpret 'each Raider' to mean 'some Raiders'?

I ate each chocolate chip cookie with relish.

Does that mean I ate all chocolate chip cookies in existence?
Does that mean I never ate a chocolate chip cookie I didn't like?
It's futzy language, and as I said I can understand your inference and could even argue it - but I don't see it as an absolute. it is an inference.

Hmm, an interesting example. It doesn't move me to change my mind, but I'm struggling to articulate why.

First, I just want to reiterate that I'm entirely sympathetic to anyone who thinks that we shouldn't read too much into this single sentence anyway. Given that GW often don't even write their rules clearly, there's no reason to assume the fluff should be watertight - it's entirely possible that whoever wrote this sentence didn't actually mean what it says. Further, even if it were absolutely clear, it shouldn't stop someone modelling/painting their army however they like.

That caveat out of the way, I'm pursuing this as an intellectual exercise (I trust that you, Thor665, feel similarly and don't find this a frustrating argument). Apologies that this is getting rather lengthy, but as I said I'm struggling to articulate it to myself.

I think it's helpful to note that even the terms 'all' and 'every' do not necessarily refer to every thing in existence. Often they refer to every one or thing within a given domain, which may be specified or understood implicitly.

For example, suppose I report on a meeting where some decision was taken and I say 'everyone voted in favour'. I clearly don't mean 'everyone in existence voted in favour' but rather something like everyone at the meeting, or perhaps even just everyone who voted.

Thus, even if you had said 'I ate all the cookies with relish', the natural interpretation is something like that you ate all the cookies in the jar, rather than all the cookies in existence. ('In the jar' is only one example here; you might even have meant merely that you relished all the cookies that you ate.)

I guess one thing this demonstrates is that ordinary communication is not governed simply by the laws of logic, but also by understanding of implicit context. It's this same understanding that tells me 'relish' here means 'enjoyment' and not 'barbecue sauce'. (To give another example, if I said there were 'over twenty' people at the meeting, when in fact there were 105, my statement would be logically true, but misleading - you'd normally expect 'over twenty' to be fewer than, say, fifty.)

With that in mind, I don't see any real difference between 'I ate all the cookies with relish' and 'I ate each cookie with relish'. The latter - like the former - does exclude there being any cookies in the relevant domain (the ones that you just ate) that you didn't relish.

I'm not sure this helps to show a difference between the Raider sentence and the cookie sentence. I did wonder whether it was something to do with the word order, but on reflection I don't think so. You could have said something like 'each cookie was eaten, with relish, by me' - that allows for there to be cookies that you didn't eat, because the domain of cookies that you're talking about is understood to be more narrowly defined that 'all cookies in existence'.

It may simply lie in the fact that we have background contextual understanding to bring to bear on the cookie sentence, which we simply don't have in the Raider case. But, perhaps because of this lack of context, it still seems a very odd sentence for someone to say if they didn't mean to imply that all Raiders are owned by Kabals. They could very easily have rephrased it to avoid this apparent implication - for instance 'Each Kabal customises the Raiders that it owns' or 'The Raiders owned by Kabals are customised by them'.

Given that the author didn't simply write something like this, but rather something that seems to carry further implications, the most natural assumption is that (if he was attending carefully to what he wrote, and not simply being sloppy) he intended those further implications.

Well, to come and argue your point for you to give you a hand - your implication has strength specifically because of the context it is in. It is an article *specifically* discussing Raiders. Now, it does indicate that there are "other blade nosed craft" yadda-yadda, but this article discusses Raiders.

THerefore, when it mentions each Raider, in the previously established context of the article (which is about all Raiders) it is indicating that everything within its subgroup (all of them) qualifies because 'each' of them have whatever it is about to discuss.

There's no actual need for inference here, because each is a way of specifically defining a section of a sub-group that has been previously established, and in this case that sub-group is all blade-nosed raiding crafts that are the most common, i.e. The Raider.

I would then have been forced to move to the more tenuous position of questioning what these other craft were and suggested that, gamewise, maybe just all craft owned by the Kabals are called Raiders, and Wyches own game identical items called other names (for instance, maybe all Wych Cults call them...I dunno...Aardvarks - whatever) and that 'Raider' is not so much a class of ship, but more specifically the designation given to craft serving a Kabal (this could be supported then by suggesting that since, as noted, Razorwings and Void Ravens are *not* owned by Kabals, Ravagers are not transports, and the wording of Venoms supports the idea that they are not owned by Kabals and are actually an unusual addition that is arranged for...also, as a random aside, in the Venom entry we can also see a note that Kabals customize their Raiders, which was another angle I was going to bring up if the discussion went that way.)

I will admit, yes, I do like debate for debate's sake and will argue anything.
But I will also admit I don't like 'implying' as a reason to accept something

I see that the talk of 'implying' and 'inferring' can be ambiguous.

'Imply' can be used to mean something like 'suggest' or 'hint at', but I was using it in the stronger sense of logically entailing (as defined here http://www.thefreedictionary.com/imply )

As for your earlier remark:

Thor665 wrote:

I don't see it as an absolute. it is an inference.

Some inferences can be arguable (for instance, an inference to the best explanation), but that something is an inference does not mean that it's arguable or can go either way. To use a standard logician's example:

All men are mortal. Socrates is a man.

If I utter these two sentences, then you can infer that Socrates is mortal - I didn't tell you this directly, but it's implied (in the logical sense of entailed) by what I said.

So there are things that we're not told, in so many words, about the 40k universe, but that we can safely infer or deduce from what we are told. I don't think there's any reason to be suspicious of such inferences, simply because they're inferences. (They're distinct from speculations we may make about the fluff, which can be interesting but are mere conjecture.)

Of course, one difficulty when it comes to something like the 40k universe is that background assumptions we make may not hold true. Your point that the game rules for 'Raiders' and 'Venoms' may be intended to cover a wider range of DE flying vehicles, of which these are merely two common examples, is well-made. It might indeed be that all Raiders are owned by Kabals, but Wych Cults use something very similar that, for game purposes, counts as a Raider.

As usual, there's enough ambiguity to allow players considerable leeway in modelling their army, with at least some justification in fluff. That's one thing I like about DE (there's obviously less leeway if you pick a well-developed SM chapter).

Ben_S wrote:

If I utter these two sentences, then you can infer that Socrates is mortal - I didn't tell you this directly, but it's implied (in the logical sense of entailed) by what I said.

Yes, but is your Raider inference a formal logical inference?
You re deciding it is, but the evidence you possess is not strong enough to make that presumtion, thus you are inferring without being formally logical and therefore the existence of formal logic inferences is meaningless to the question.

My Socrates example was merely meant to show that inferences are not, by nature, debatable or uncertain. But, since you ask, I believe this bit is all logical entailment:

Ben_S wrote:

If the sentence was simply [1] 'each Raider is owned by a Kabal', would you think that some weren't? I assume not.
So now suppose the sentence was [2] 'each Raider is owned by a Kabal, which customises it'. This adds some further information to [1], but still includes [1], that is all Raiders are owned by a Kabal.
Now simply rearrange: [3] 'each Raider is customised, by the Kabal that owns it'. This is equivalent to [2] and, since [2] includes [1], it implies that each Raider is owned by a Kabal.

The aim is to show that [3], being essentially what's in the Codex, entails [1], which I take to be a clear enough statement that only Kabals own Raiders. It consists of two logical steps: First, [2] and [3] are simple rearrangements ('P and Q' entails, because it is logically equivalent to, 'Q and P'). And, second, the transition from [2] to [1] is just to infer 'P' from 'P and Q'. Thus, [3] entails [1], in the formal, logical sense.

The only bit that's not watertight is the assumption about the domain - whether we're talking about something like all Raiders in existence or something more like all the cookies in the jar. Since nothing's said in the Codex, this is an assumption, rather than an entailment.

Here, I think we're dealing with conversational norms, rather than logic, as in my earlier example concerning the number of people at the meeting. You wouldn't ordinarily (unless, for instance, you intended to mislead) describe 105 people as 'more than twenty'.

Similarly, you wouldn't say 'all Raiders' - or 'each Raider' - meaning only each within some narrow domain, without signalling that domain restriction (unless it's clear from context).

So, there are two distinct issues:

1) Is the reference to 'each Raider' meant to cover absolutely all Raiders or only some subset? This is a matter of interpretation. Logic's no help here, because logic always needs a starting point (for instance, we need to be told that Socrates is a man and that all men are mortal - logic allows us to make inferences from these premises, but can't provide the premises).

2) If we assume that 'each Raider' really does mean absolutely all Raiders, does this entail that all Raiders are owned by Kabals? Here, logic dictates the answer yes: if all Raiders are customised by the Kabals that own them, then all Raiders are owned by Kabals.

I suggested, further, that these two issues may be related. 'Each Raider is customised by the Kabal that owns it' implies 'each Raider is owned by a Kabal'. If the author hadn't meant to imply that, he could have easily said something else, e.g. 'Each Kabal customises the Raiders it owns', which wouldn't have this implication. Thus, it's reasonable to suppose that he used the words he did because he intended that implication.

By the exact same logic I could note that he chose, specifically, not to use the word 'every' so by dint of that choice being made then clearly he did not desire the inference of 'every' to be applied to the statement.

Also, you have a logical fallacy in your logic example insomuch as point [1] is really just a badly written sentence, and I would have issues with seeing it, much less agreeing with it. And therein lies the fault of the phrase and the tick that doesn't sway me to your logic fully (also, you made an assumption there ).

Maybe I'm being obtuse, but I don't see the difference you're assuming between 'each' and 'every'. The two are slightly different linguistically, but equivalent logically (like 'and' and 'but').

I've tried looking online for a distinction, but sites I find seem to support this:
http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/english-grammar-using-each-and-every.html
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-determiners-each-every.htm

Both 'each' and 'every' cover all items of a given sort within a given domain. Can you illustrate the difference?

(Your cookie example from earlier doesn't help me here. It shows that neither 'each cookie' nor 'every cookie' necessarily means every cookie in existence, but this is just to show they can refer to all within a narrower domain, like all the ones in the jar. I'd understand 'I ate each cookie with relish' and 'I ate every cookie with relish' to mean the same thing, which supports my point, unless you can explain the difference between these two sentences.)

Nor, I'm afraid, do I see what's wrong with the phrasing of [1], but that's probably not the crucial issue at this point.