Draigo - The pinnacle of bad fluff?

[Asuron]

Having heard the GK rumours involving this character and his background, the first question that comes to my mind is what were they smoking when writing this guys background.

Now I'm not entirely certain if this is all 100% accurate, but heres a brief summary of what exactly I'm talking about that I pulled from another website

"Well, for instance, Draigo has Killed Daemon Prince M'kar twice, carved his name into Mortarion's (the Death Guard Daemon Primarch) heart as his first act as Lord Grand Master for the death of the previous Grand Master, held a pass for two days for an IG regiment to escape and landed every single blow and bolter shot for two days, got sucked into the warp and killed a bloodthirster and takes its axe to reforge into a new sword, burns Nurgle's garden and destroys Tzeentch's city single handedly and buries a lord of Change in it, and now Daemons are too afraid to face him in battle. Now he spends is time fighting through the realm of chaos, sometimes being able to return and getting sucked back in again. "


Upon reading that, I can only hope its not true, but for the sake of discussion, what does Warseer think about it and are they any worse examples of fluff that you can think of?

[MOMUS]

This guy sounds exactly like a chaos lord, hopefully when the CSM codex gets rewritten he will have fallen to the dark powers.

[TheLaughingGod]

This guy sounds exactly like a chaos lord, hopefully when the CSM codex gets rewritten he will have fallen to the dark powers.

You just... this... that's what I've been trying to put my finger on. This guy is Abaddon. Loyalist Abaddon.

Everyone is going to give him a hard time for being a badass, but they're going to give Abaddon a pass when he does the exact same thing.

Hurr durr.

[Lord Gabranth]

Hopefully so since they nerfed the csm codex this last time around. But on the comment for the original thread, the book, Lord of Night, talking about a Night Lord marine, he damn near burned a whole imperial hive city single handedly. The fluff is just that, stuff to get you more involved with any army. Who would want to play an army that has no good fluff or that starts out with "Our army always gets it ass beat, and that is the way of the Emperor on his golden throne!"

[Hive Mind 33]

No, you forget according to the fluff even he wants to be an Ultramarine.

[Vaktathi]

You just... this... that's what I've been trying to put my finger on. This guy is Abaddon. Loyalist Abaddon.

Everyone is going to give him a hard time for being a badass, but they're going to give Abaddon a pass when he does the exact same thing.

Hurr durr.

Abaddon doesn't always win. Abaddon is sometimes bested in combat and isn't doing all his stuff by his onesy.

[Lord Gabranth]

No, you forget according to the fluff even he wants to be an Ultramarine.

ROFL.... of corse, who doesnt anymore, they always have the newest crap

[TheRatsInTheWalls]

Hopefully so since they nerfed the csm codex this last time around. But on the comment for the original thread, the book, Lord of Night, talking about a Night Lord marine, he damn near burned a whole imperial hive city single handedly. The fluff is just that, stuff to get you more involved with any army. Who would want to play an army that has no good fluff or that starts out with "Our army always gets it ass beat, and that is the way of the Emperor on his golden throne!"

There is a difference between "man this character is such a badass," and "this guy does every impressive thing the author could think up and gets away with it." I would really like it if he were the toy of the chaos gods, but the bits about Mortarion's heart and deamons fearing him are just too much.
As to the comparison to Lord of Night, I haven't read the book, but I imagine a hive city would be much easier to burn than a god's garden and another's ever-changing city.
I would be fine with fluff that excessively glorifies characters, or factions, if the fluff was well written. This is not. It makes no sense, and never even tries to explain how he gets away with what he does. There certainly must be a middle ground between this and "Our army always gets it ass beat..."

[SurahAhriman]

The middle ground is showing the character struggling and suffering, with losses, and setbacks, and last minute improvisations to accomplish their Epic Feat of Awesome.

[Lord Gabranth]

I would be fine with fluff that excessively glorifies characters, or factions, if the fluff was well written. This is not. It makes no sense, and never even tries to explain how he gets away with what he does. There certainly must be a middle ground between this and "Our army always gets it ass beat..."

And I agree with that statement, but IMHO, GW never seems to balance it out right. The fluff from the CSM codex (past and present) I think is awesome, but the rules in the new codex dont back up what the fluff says, yet they still back up the SM and GK to the utmost extremes

[DuskRaider]

It's absolutely horrible fluff. My real question is: Do we blame Matt Ward, whose story writing is still on par with an 8 year old with a crayon, or GW, who actually published this imbecile's garbage? Keep him on rules writing duty, he's not TOO bad at that. But for god sake, keep this shmuck away from the fluff... he's a cancer.

[Fallencarcass]

Until I read his full story in the Codex I'm not going to really worry about it. Summary of fluff for a codex that isn't out isn't a full story by any means.

[TheRatsInTheWalls]

Until I read his full story in the Codex I'm not going to really worry about it. Summary of fluff for a codex that isn't out isn't a full story by any means.

There's a test codex floating around, which GW responded suitably violently to to authenticate it. I've read it. This fluff sucks, and the summary basically captures it.

And I agree with that statement, but IMHO, GW never seems to balance it out right. The fluff from the CSM codex (past and present) I think is awesome, but the rules in the new codex dont back up what the fluff says, yet they still back up the SM and GK to the utmost extremes

Naw, they've done good fluff before. I remember being quite fond of the 3rd ed. Tyranid codex. Then again, I may have been too young to see this type of issue then. There are even good examples of fluff in this edition, such as the Dark Eldar codex.

[Lord-Caerolion]

As to the comparison to Lord of Night, I haven't read the book, but I imagine a hive city would be much easier to burn than a god's garden and another's ever-changing city.

There's also the fact that he doesn't do it singlehandedly, but unifies the entire Under-Hive into his personal army, getting them to murder up-hive civilians, sabotage important facilities, etc. Sahaal does some of the work, but he wouldn't have done anywhere near as much without his private army.

[chromedog]

To the OP:

You do realise that the publishing date on THAT 'codex' is listed in the document properties as 2009, making it likely to be one of the PRE-launch revisions by GW.
There is a story that GW marketing didn't like the direction Matt Ward's codex was going, so they took it off him and re-did it. They then asked MW to write a battle report with 'his' codex (sorry, if it was a film, it would now be "Alan Smithee's" codex) and he told them to get the work experience chap who 'finished' it (rewrote it).

[Chapters Unwritten]

There's a test codex floating around, which GW responded suitably violently to to authenticate it. I've read it. This fluff sucks, and the summary basically captures it.

To be fair, Marneus Calgar had a story on his description page, and was the subject of a much larger fluff piece elsewhere that is the source of his ire. Draigo's unit description page is the only thing in the leak; for all we know, there could be explanations for all of it in the rest of the book's more detailed stories.

Perhaps I'm just a mangy sod but I somewhat liked the story. I just wish Ward was a better writer. The whole thing could have worked with a subtle overtone that maybe the whole thing was just a bizarre playing out perpetrated by the Gods, y'know?

Still, I could see it. GKs are powerful psykers and I imagine in the warp his power was greatly magnified.

[TheRatsInTheWalls]

To the OP:

You do realise that the publishing date on THAT 'codex' is listed in the document properties as 2009, making it likely to be one of the PRE-launch revisions by GW.
There is a story that GW marketing didn't like the direction Matt Ward's codex was going, so they took it off him and re-did it. They then asked MW to write a battle report with 'his' codex (sorry, if it was a film, it would now be "Alan Smithee's" codex) and he told them to get the work experience chap who 'finished' it (rewrote it).

Is that what happened? What an interesting story. You should post it in the Grey Knights rumor thread to stop all the speculation going on there.

[TheRatsInTheWalls]

To be fair, Marneus Calgar had a story on his description page, and was the subject of a much larger fluff piece elsewhere that is the source of his ire. Draigo's unit description page is the only thing in the leak; for all we know, there could be explanations for all of it in the rest of the book's more detailed stories.

Perhaps I'm just a mangy sod but I somewhat liked the story. I just wish Ward was a better writer. The whole thing could have worked with a subtle overtone that maybe the whole thing was just a bizarre playing out perpetrated by the Gods, y'know?

Still, I could see it. GKs are powerful psykers and I imagine in the warp his power was greatly magnified.

You make a fine point. There might be more fluff which mitigates what we have.

And I kinda agree with you about the story. If Ward had written a tale in which Draigo destroys all four god's realms, only to watch them spring back into existence, thus realizing why it 'was too easy,' after which he actually fights a never-ending battle against infinite legions of deamons out for his blood, it might have been fluff worthy of praise. It would also have served to mark him as sufficiently badass just by surviving in those circumstances and remaining pure.

[Chapters Unwritten]

Absolutely. And you know, as odd as it sounds, I bet something like that was what Ward was shooting for. But he just doesn't have the capacity to understand how to convey the tragic might and epic glory that are so engrained in the 40k universe. He makes Marneus Calgar choke out an Avatar and fight hundreds of bad guys singlehandedly, but never explains how this is even possible. It's just "blah blah he held the west gate for five days alone" and "blah blah he wiped out the Chaos city".

I don't think it's a lack of talent, quite honestly. I think the man just does not understand 40k, and the world it takes place in. The story of Draigo is most upsetting in that it is so close to a perfect 40k horror story of a noble hero lost to the endless war we see touted on about so much. It could have been handled very well. I could have felt bad for this guy.

The similar bit in the Blood Angels codex about the Necron team-up could have similarly been handled, such that they merely both fought the same enemies and went their separate ways without the vibe being all "Wonder Twin Powers, unite!"

[samiens]

The point of the story is that despite his power draigo achieves absolutely nothing in the realm of chaos, and is doomed to occassionally find himself in the material realm before returning to his cycle of pointlessness. Its basically an allegory for all of 40k- where great heroes make no lasting impression (probably because the aim of the background is perpetuation of the setting)