Question about THE EMPEROR'S GIFT by A.D.B.

[acopp07]

Phlegyras of Titan "The Ferryman" ....
I read the book and Im not sure how to use the *spoiler tags* so I'll try to be vague ..... Did I miss something ? Hyperion seems really interested in his past and mentions it again later in the book to another Knight who closes off his mind at the mention of his name.
I double checked the awfull new codex and didnt find a mention in there .... I now know who Hyperion was before becoming a Knight of Titan is there some connection there ?

Please can someone also tell me how to use the spoiler tags or is it something simple like blacking out the letters ????

Thank you all

[Stonerhino]

Open bracket + "spoiler" + close brcaket. Then open bracket + "/spoiler" + close bracket. At the end of the text.

Open bracket = [
Close bracket = ]

had to double check

[PointBlank]

What are you actually asking? A connection between whom?

[sycopat]

Phlegyras of Titan "The Ferryman" ....
I read the book and Im not sure how to use the *spoiler tags* so I'll try to be vague ..... Did I miss something ? Hyperion seems really interested in his past and mentions it again later in the book to another Knight who closes off his mind at the mention of his name.
I double checked the awfull new codex and didnt find a mention in there .... I now know who Hyperion was before becoming a Knight of Titan is there some connection there ?

Please can someone also tell me how to use the spoiler tags or is it something simple like blacking out the letters ????

Thank you all

It's not explained who the ferrymen are. The knight who closes his mind off is the knight who would probably know the answer to that question, as his duties would require him to interact with the ferrymen.

It's not related to who Hyperion was as far as I can see.

It seems to be some sort of pariah marine. Perhaps even an ex-GK (as hyperion rants). Now why would anyone want to keep a secret order of pariah marines hidden near a secret order of psychic maries.... ;-p

[PointBlank]

Ohhhh, I see. Yeah, sorry - I was wondering that too. I was wondering if ADB was hinting that it was some hideous fate that could befall a Grey Knight and that's why no one wants to talk about it. I know Abnett introduced in Ravenor that

it was possible to 'burn out' an untouchable

so maybe he's hinting that the reverse can happen too? Which is weird considering

the untouchable condition is supposed to be gene-based

unless that's been retconned of course.

[sycopat]

Ohhhh, I see. Yeah, sorry - I was wondering that too. I was wondering if ADB was hinting that it was some hideous fate that could befall a Grey Knight and that's why no one wants to talk about it. I know Abnett introduced in Ravenor that

it was possible to 'burn out' an untouchable

so maybe he's hinting that the reverse can happen too? Which is weird considering

the untouchable condition is supposed to be gene-based

unless that's been retconned of course.

I don't think any of it's been retconned but

There were also examples of 'manufactured' pariahs and controlling pariah powers through the use of tech in those books IIRC. I think I remember ravenors pariah being elitest towards a pariah working for a criminal gang for this reason. And he definitely used a collar to regulate the effects of his null field

and

This isn't strictly a spoiler but it'd spoil the previous posts spoilers. Psychic powers are also genetic. It may be possible to burn them out in the same way as a pariah can be burnt out. It could well be they are just grey knights who burned out their powers in battle, but survived and so are considered a kind of 'living dead' in a semi-honourable retirement due to their inability to function as grey knights anymore

We don't have the evidence to come to any conclusions though. All we know about the ferrymen is:

They are marines. They do not register to psykers. They handle the grey knights dead. The grey knights don't like thinking or talking about them.They make Hyperion irrationally angry.

[acopp07]

I don't think any of it's been retconned but

There were also examples of 'manufactured' pariahs and controlling pariah powers through the use of tech in those books IIRC. I think I remember ravenors pariah being elitest towards a pariah working for a criminal gang for this reason. And he definitely used a collar to regulate the effects of his null field

and

This isn't strictly a spoiler but it'd spoil the previous posts spoilers. Psychic powers are also genetic. It may be possible to burn them out in the same way as a pariah can be burnt out. It could well be they are just grey knights who burned out their powers in battle, but survived and so are considered a kind of 'living dead' in a semi-honourable retirement due to their inability to function as grey knights anymore

We don't have the evidence to come to any conclusions though. All we know about the ferrymen is:

They are marines. They do not register to psykers. They handle the grey knights dead. The grey knights don't like thinking or talking about them.They make Hyperion irrationally angry.

Ive been in this hobby since 1989, when space marines used to smoke and leman russ was general you could buy as a model. Ive read everything and until Abnett introduced it I never heard of an Untouchable being burnt out, I actually didnt like that at all. The Necrons/Old Ones(which ever you believe) put the Pariah Gene into our genetic make up to battle the forces of Chaos. The Anti-pysker. Unless Abnett wanted to display just how poweful Zael was and it makes sense why he did it. That always bothered me about the book, but of course Im going to buy the new one but back to the question ... maybe his previous experience with Blanks is why he is curious about the ferryman.

I dont about you guys but to me it seems ABD always ties in the past 30K/40K together with all the hush hush and legends. It just seemed he was hinting at something. A blank is one in a billion but to have a blank....holy **** you have to be right, to become a knight you have to go through tremdeous trials and psychic manipulation, so a regular blank would never even make it to Titan. So it has to be a burnt out Knight or something else to be revealed in a future book

[PointBlank]

Ive been in this hobby since 1989, when space marines used to smoke and leman russ was general you could buy as a model. Ive read everything and until Abnett introduced it I never heard of an Untouchable being burnt out, I actually didnt like that at all. The Necrons/Old Ones(which ever you believe) put the Pariah Gene into our genetic make up to battle the forces of Chaos. The Anti-pysker. Unless Abnett wanted to display just how poweful Zael was and it makes sense why he did it. That always bothered me about the book, but of course Im going to buy the new one but back to the question ... maybe his previous experience with Blanks is why he is curious about the ferryman.

True! But then,

I don't think untouchables themselves were around in the the RT era, maybe not till 3rd ed?

I do know what you mean about the whole concept though, it doesn't sit right with me either:

Abnett seems to treat it as some sort of forcefield against psychic powers that can be turned on and off, which is contrary to the whole concept. If you're a blank, it's because you don't exist in the warp: you're a void in the psychic landscape and that's why you disrupt nearby psykers - therefore it's not something that can be undone by throwing psychic power at it.

[Nurgling Chieftain]

Normally, a hole can only absorb so much before it ceases to be a hole.

[Jericho]

Horus Heresy spoiler below:

In Outcast Dead, the Thousand Sons marine is able to use his powers to change his genetic structure and amputate his psychic abilities mid-combat when fighting a Culexus Assassin, a huge sacrifice in order to nullify some of the Assassin's advantages over him. Pretty badass.

And it suggests that you might be able to add/remove pariah genes as well.

[Nazguire]

Horus Heresy spoiler below:

In Outcast Dead, the Thousand Sons marine is able to use his powers to change his genetic structure and amputate his psychic abilities mid-combat when fighting a Culexus Assassin, a huge sacrifice in order to nullify some of the Assassin's advantages over him. Pretty badass.

And it suggests that you might be able to add/remove pariah genes as well.

I hope not. It was a massive cop out, something that I can't recall ever happening before. If that was the case, pretty much any psyker could decide to be normal again and away we go. McNeill should have thought of some other way to resolve that conflict.

[fantomex]

I think Abnett may have been right on the money with the way Zael burnt out Frauka's pariah ability.

Now, we all know that there is The Assignment power rating system, with Alpha being the tip-top of the regular list (excluding alpha-plus, etc), and everything else being a sliding scale down.
Very low on the chart, at Upsilon and Omega, we have the untouchables.
Even further below, you reach levels of power of the Culexus assassins..
Bear in mind, these are scales on the psyker chart. Not something unrelated that is anathema, another facet of the same thing.

Surely, with his power to reflect and mimic the psychic abilities of others, this would be what would happen with Zael?
Whilst around others talking psychically to Ravenor, he reflects the abilities being used in proximity, thus hearing the speech.
Notice he never displays a talent without parasitically witnessing it..

Ergo, his reflection of Frauka's ability is therefore to untouch his untouchability? By blocking what makes him untouchable, he must therefore render him normal?

Much like how an astropath burns out their ability after great use, then Zael's constant nearness would have been a constant passive slow-burn on Frauka..

If we think of the Pariah ability as making psykers drop from an active level to Rho (basline human) or below, then surely by reflecting and mirroring the effect of the power, it drags their ability up from Omega towards Rho?

I could be way off, but given a mirror reverses things, surely that'd be the way it would work?

[The Warmaster]

Horus Heresy spoiler below:

In Outcast Dead, the Thousand Sons marine is able to use his powers to change his genetic structure and amputate his psychic abilities mid-combat when fighting a Culexus Assassin, a huge sacrifice in order to nullify some of the Assassin's advantages over him. Pretty badass.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Atharva changed his genetic structure, just that he severed whatever physiological or psychic component was involved.

To clarify my point, let's use a real-world example: the cerebellum (or any part of our brain that you could choose from: hippocampus, frontal lobe, visual cortex, reticular formation, thalamus... the list goes on) is constructed according to genetic information, but that doesn't mean that we have to change our genome to remove it. Genes just provide a template for our body's cellular "machinery" to make things from, after all.

Considering that the Eisenhorn books elaborate on how psychic power (and Pariah ability) manifests due to neurological structure rather than JUST genes, it's always possible that there was some sort of structural component, such as organelles in psychic neurons that are sensitive to psychic energy (which brings to mind the Midichlorians from Star Wars), that he eliminated instead. Also, considering that the soul is said to be the human's psychic reflection in the Warp (see the Liber Chaotica books), it could be possible that he just severed the link to that, too, in which case you can just say that it happened because magic.

Any of these are also an explanation for how "burnouts" may occur in psykers and Pariahs, i.e. excessive exposure to certain forces causes irreversible structural damage.

[MajorWesJanson]

This doesn't necessarily mean that Atharva changed his genetic structure, just that he severed whatever physiological or psychic component was involved.

To clarify my point, let's use a real-world example: the cerebellum (or any part of our brain that you could choose from: hippocampus, frontal lobe, visual cortex, reticular formation, thalamus... the list goes on) is constructed according to genetic information, but that doesn't mean that we have to change our genome to remove it. Genes just provide a template for our body's cellular "machinery" to make things from, after all.

Considering that the Eisenhorn books elaborate on how psychic power (and Pariah ability) manifests due to neurological structure rather than JUST genes, it's always possible that there was some sort of structural component, such as organelles in psychic neurons that are sensitive to psychic energy (which brings to mind the Midichlorians from Star Wars), that he eliminated instead. Also, considering that the soul is said to be the human's psychic reflection in the Warp (see the Liber Chaotica books), it could be possible that he just severed the link to that, too, in which case you can just say that it happened because magic.

Any of these are also an explanation for how "burnouts" may occur in psykers and Pariahs, i.e. excessive exposure to certain forces causes irreversible structural damage.

Those structural changes could easily be canon, as foten straining psykers are said to have nose/eye/ear bleeds and other physical damage. Lesser amounts of damage could be healed naturally afterwards, greater amounts will be enough to kill the psyker. A narrow window would burn the psyker out but not kill them.

Nemesis also gives different levels of blanks, and we see blanks of varying power. As for Frauka having a nullifier, why not? Psykers have psychic hoods to isolate and ground their powers and the powers of other psykers. Why not a similar device for blanks?

[EDMM]

Speaking of similar devices, isn't that what a Culexis Assassin has built into their heads?

[stormblade]

I thought Animus Speculum is a part time nullifier and part time psycannon.