I wouldn't put him in the same category.Originally Posted by malika
I wouldn't put him in the same category.
"WE ARE THE ONLY SOURCE OF GOODNESS, SEVERE AND DRASTIC. THERE IS NO OTHER SOURCE OF HOPE THAN US. WE ARE AGONISINGLY ALONE."
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That's entirely the point. Not every character in HH is going to get the death of Tarik or Ehrlen or Mhotep. Hence why bothwere killed so "reflexively" and without compunction by their respective Primarchs.
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What bothered me wasn't the death, but that nobody thought it at all odd or unusual that the Lion did it.
The guy was imbalanced. And no wonder - he's had a whole bunch of different authors mess about with his personality, none of them really being very convincing. He's probably got voices in his head by now. Murdering his own underlings for no evident reason is probably par for the course. Yet somehow nobody else was remotely bothered, didn't even raise an eyebrow. That was the stupid thing about it. Immersion ruined, verisimilitude blown.
Really not sure how you reached that conclusion. The old Dark Angel codexs, both Codex Angels of Death and the 3rd edition pamphlet both reference the watchers. Angels of Death explicitly states they are watching over The Lion and every Dark Angels codex has featured an actual Watcher hanging around with their Supreme Grand Master. And as others have stated a main character chats to them in both of the Horus Heresy books so far.
I must admit that bugged me too. The Lion isn't coming across as the most stable of individuals.
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I kinda hope they kill off more characters, to be honest. For a grim darkness where there is only war, there sure is a lot ofcharacters who seem invincible, lol.
Ultimately, I hope they show some balls and kill off some more of the Primarchs, but somehow I doubt it happens. I mean, Imperial Fist fans should almost *hope* that they do, lol, considering how crappy of a death Dorn has in existing canon. There could be some great stories to be told. Maybe a showdown where Guilliman gets his revenge on Lorgar, or kill off some of the other primarchs that dont play a huge part in the rest of the 40K "history" like Mortarion, Khan, Corax, Vulkan, etc. Always seemed a bit weaksauce that the Horus Heresy really only ended with the deaths of three of the primarchs.
Sanguinius, Ferrus, Horus, Alpharius (arguable, I know), and Curze all die. Guilleman might as well be dead.
I don't see how that's insignificant. Or adding up to just 3.
And remember that the majority of the tragedy isn't supposed to lie in the deaths - it's supposed to be in the treachery.
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The but the thing is,is surrounded by selfish, self centered traitors all hoping for each other to die just so they can get ahead. It's in both the primarch and legions nature to not care and generally be fine with his death. also Fulgrim has already killed both Vespasian and his best friend Ferrus so anythings on the table with him.
The Dark Angels are completely different and I just can't see them not giving a second thought about their primarch killing someone as such. The Lion isn't a Self-involved, sex crazed, drugged out traitor serving a nutjob a of a darkgod, the Lion just doesn't quite have the track record to be that much of a magnificent bastard yet with out somebody being surprised.
Agreed. I would really like to see some serious infighting between the traitors. Have Fulgrim take someone out, hes already made a name for himself as a Primarch hunter (I can imagine him thirsting for the experience of fighting another primarch, I'd like the idea of him actively hunting them).
Also I'm not a fan of having Russ, Corax, Vulcan and the Khan all having the same fate. I thought it was cool when Vulcan simply vanished after Istvaan V, no one having a clue what happened to him but I think that got reconned.
The BL authors have license/room to change the existing lore in some ways but not to the degree that they actually redefine how the Heresy ended with respect to the deaths of the Primarchs, and especially not how you put it forward. The Horus Heresy is also not "grim darkness of the far future where there is only war". That's M41, not M31.
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I agree with this, it is about a new age of discovery and potential, and hope, with utopia within reach. Then it gets torn down by jealousy, deceit, manipulation, and everything collapses like a house of cards. Not only is it sharing story elements with Paradise Lost, that is basically the definition of M31, at least where the ongoing Horus Heresy is concerned. It is about great potential, all for nothing, a tragedy.
Also (involving some spoilers from Aurelian and other texts),
Its just that a lot of the current plot threads through the series focus quite a bit on characters we DO know exist in M41. So its hard to actually see how things are going to pan out. They can't kill any of the Primarchs that are surviving or missing by M41 because that's a core part of the setting. The same goes for the big name Astartes like Typhon, Kharn, Abaddon and Lucius. Some, like Raldoron of the Blood Angels, Amit of the (later) Flesh Tearers, Sigismund of the (later) Black Templars, survive the Heresy but they don't survive the years of the Scouring. Among the loyalists, its only Bjorn of the Space Wolves who does. There just hasn't been enough focus on the new characters, which is where the "problem" comes in.
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Guilliman, Alpharius, and Curze all die long, long after the Heresy ended...
So yes, three. I'm pretty good at counting.
Three, possibly three and a half, we don't know the ultimate fate of Omegon. But would a higher Primarch bodycount really improve the series? We're already seeing the loyalist Primarch's world being torn down around them, having their beloved legions crippled in front of their eyes. And it's all leading up to the ultimate loss of the Emperor. Call me a sadist but i find it more interesting to read about the Primarchs suffering as they struggle to come to terms with how the galaxy has changed.
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Pretty sure they're only warring in 30K too. I mean, just because you let some people paint pictures, and write poetry about war, doesn't mean anything else is actually happening. If anything, there's even more war in 30K than 40K. The Space Marines haven't taken a break to do anything else since the Crusade started.
Whether or not the story shares many parallels with Paradise Lost doesn't change the basic tenets of the 40K universe. It's about big guys in big armor with big guns killing things. The enlightenment of the 30K age is just as much of a sham as the Tau's Greater Good. It's a science fiction Manifest Destiny, not some kind of reach for utopia that was stolen away.
Now is the perfect time to take the series in a new direction. The primarchs I mentioned have no major influence on the post-Heresy fiction. While obviously this involves minor fluff retcons, none of the primarchs I listed do anything important to teh greater 40K story. If you disagree with my sentiment, that's fine. But the only thing Mortarion does after HH is get grafittied by Draigo. Khan... gets lost in the Warp. Corax... wanders off and gets lost in the warp. Vulkan... wanders off. Lorgar... sits in a tower... forever. Russ... wanders off. Perturabo... sits around building stuff.
These are the kinds of ending that happen when the writers realized they wrote a history for a setting that includes immortal characters that no longer exist in the setting. GW phoned in the fates of the Primarchs. Would be cool to see this get set right. Just my opinion though. You're free to disagree, but I'm not "wrong" about anything.
They don't do anything to the timeline because they are not the focus of it. Myth and superstition are as much a part of m41 as anything else. For each loyalist Primarch who has disappeared, there are prophecies and myths about their return. The Space Wolves have their Wulftime. The Salamanders are intent on finding his lost relics and so on. Then there is the whole thing with Cypher, Luther, the Lion ahd the Lion Sword that Cypher apparently carries. By all account the Time of Ending and the Rhana Dandra as the Eldar call it is pretty much close at hand. That's the point of m41; that things are so screwed up for the galaxy that some of the Imperium's greatest heroes are going to return. That the Emperor himself will rise again and lead Mankind in a final battle against Chaos. This last part in particular is a very important theme in the grey knights novels and a plot point in the third one, hammer of daemons.
You sure you want that taken away from the tens of thousands of fans? Writers: hey guys, we don't think the heresy is grumdark enough. So we are going to kill more primarchs just because we can and so are going to retcon years of established GW lore and BL novels alike!! Oh and yeah, we are going to change the post-heresy balance of power between the loyalist primarcs with regards to the Codex Astartes too!! Oh and these guys don't do anything to the m41 timeline so they are better off dead. After all, GW has never written anything about them in the yars since the heresy so what's the harm? Absence of information is proof that there is none!
Frankly, its a ludicrous suggestion, no offence intended. But you are entitled ti your own opinions and that's fine.
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A lot of that stuff is kind of stupid, and irrelevant. So, yeah, I am okay if it goes away. You seem to regard the canon as sacrosanct, but the **** gets rewritten and overwritten all the time. Clipping out certain rumors and prophecies? Fine with me if we get a better story out of it. I'm not suggesting some kind of wholesale slaughter of every Primarch who never did anything. Just saying that one or two more could certainly die to add some drama to the story, and their deaths will have no greater repercussions on the storyline. They can't kill Guilliman, obviously. But Lorgar? Whatever. They can't kill Fulgrim, but Corax? Sure.
All those overwritten, now-irrelevant... sentences. LOL. Whatever will we do?are going to retcon years of established GW lore and BL novels alike!!
More lore you consider sacrosanct without even realizing it, too, is a rewrite of the original stuff, lol. What balance of power? Dorn's temper tantrum? Russ's temper tantrum? Nothing essential to that story is taken away if the less visible primarchs go away. The balance of power with the CA was Guilliman saying "I am Lord Commander of the Imperium, act with the authority of the Emperor, and I have more than twice as many Space Marines as the rest of you ******** combined. This is how it's going to be." Obviously that's the short and humorous version of it. Dorn and Russ screamed and kicked, and in the end they did what was required of them. The reactions of Khan, Vulkan and Corax were both tacked on after the fact (not part of the original Codex Astartes fluff) and irrelevant.Oh and yeah, we are going to change the post-heresy balance of power between the loyalist primarcs with regards to the Codex Astartes too!!
You seem to take an almost amusing stance on this. Some kind of pent up rage at the idea. I've decided it makes me like the idea of them killing off Primarchs even more, just so I can read these kinds of ludicrous reactions. But it isn't about there being proof there is no more fluff, lol. If there is no more written fluff, then nothing else is lost if they die.After all, GW has never written anything about them in the yars since the heresy so what's the harm? Absence of information is proof that there is none!
Frankly, its a ludicrous suggestion, no offence intended. But you are entitled ti your own opinions and that's fine.
To be fair... the thing with the fluff is... it wouldn't be like it is now, if they wrote it now, if you see what I mean. Luna Wolves and Space Wolves (and War Hounds)? Far too similar. Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands? That's just silly (and Iron Warriors too similar again). Lion El'Johnson of the Dark Angels? Cool poem, stupid name for a Primarch. Corax of the Raven Guard whose last words were "Nevermore"? OK, we get the classic poetry thing, let it go.
It's all cool to a degree... but... most of it was written when they had no idea that 40K was going to get so big, and the history would mean so much to so many people. Even back then it changed frequently. (Leman Russ was originally an Imperial Guardsman who was a founder of the Space Wolves - Primarchs didn't even exist when he first got mentioned. And you think Lion El'Johnson is bad? Try Lyyn Elgonsson, his original name IIRC). At some point, which was quite arbitrary, it all started formalising and stopped changing and settled down... and it was good enough that generations have been inspired by the setting... but you have to say that if they were able to wipe the slate clean and start over, they'd do it completely differently now. (I hear for example that the forthcoming HH book from FW will play around with things a bit. No drastic changes; but some Legion symbols on transfer sheets or whatever, might be subtly different to what we've previously been shown).
So... BL are in a tough position. They have to stick to the established fluff, because the NERD RAGE if they don't will be incandescent. But, not all of the established fluff is necessarily all that awesome. No, really - we're all adults, we can admit it. They've brought in stuff that never really got publicly mentioned (Alpharius/Omegon) and a couple of things that AFAIK didn't even exist in the original creators' minds (the Cabal) and looks like they're trying to put their stamp on other things that themselves were in something of a state of flux (Ollanius Pius is an ordinary Guardsman, no he's a Terminator, no a Custodes... no, BL say he's a thirty-six-thousand-year-old ex-Argonaut). But there's limits to what they can do, without infuriating everyone. Personally I hope they push some of those limits hard... I just hope they push in the right directions, and consistently (unlike the Lion's author-induced schizophrenia).
But it's a tricky proposition for them to get that right, because if they don't change anything, some of it is silly; but any change they do make risks upsetting people who have invested a lot of energy, even emotion, into the established milieu. (The very success of the HH series is evidence of that investment).
No more ludicrous than what you are proposing.
There are "changes to the established lore" and then there are "changes to the established lore". Its always helpful to not conflate the two.
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Dorn 'gets dead' as well.
"WE ARE THE ONLY SOURCE OF GOODNESS, SEVERE AND DRASTIC. THERE IS NO OTHER SOURCE OF HOPE THAN US. WE ARE AGONISINGLY ALONE."
beer and axes
Explain why it is ludicrous without resorting to "I don't like it".
Read... go.
I'll wait. You can take as long as you need, lol.
Hundreds of years after the Heresy.
Last edited by t-tauri; 26-05-2012 at 15:22. Reason: Double post-please use the edit button.
The objection isn't that he was killed off, it's that his death was badly written, which is unsurprising given Gav's stilted and uninspired style; Deliverance Lost was shambolic and more riddled with plot- and character-holes than Swiss cheese. I actually did a double-take and checked to see if my copy was a misprint with a missing page, it was surreal and jarring, and not in a good way; you just can't kill off a major character in four sentences, then continue the story as if it never happened, then try to spin it as some clever authorial trickery, it's simply lazy work.
I feel sorry for DA fans to be honest, they've been given really short shrift in the HH series; one bad book, one mundane book, and then Gav Thorpe got sicced on them.
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