I'm currently working my way through the Horus Heresy novels, and I've liked them all up until Fulgrim - even Galaxy in Flames, and I'm not a big fan of Counter's work. Interestingly, I think Counter actually did the best job aside from Abnett at doing a character falling to Chaos in a sympathetic light in the form of the Titan moderati, rather than knowing from the second he's introduced which way he's going to go like most of the other characters in the series.

Fulgrim just seemed...I dunno. The whole daemon sword bit just felt like a cop out. He picked up a daemon sword, and suddenly he's all about Slaanesh. Seems a little too weak-willed for a Primarch.

Fulgrim has gotten a lot of criticism, so you are not alone. Galaxy in Flames, meanwhile, is the best thing I've ever read by Counter save only his short story Daemonblood. That story is probably my favorite piece of BL fiction overall. But back to the thread topic: Graham McNeill is very hit or miss and for me it's almost always a miss.

Excellent! Glad I'm not alone.

And yeah, as far as Counter goes, I'd read the Soul Drinkers Omnibus for some reason, intensely disliked it, and thought about simply skipping Galaxy In Flames. Glad I didn't.

Galaxy in Flames was excellent, probably my favourite HH novel so far.
I liked Fulgrim, while the daemon sword did push him to Chaos at least there was a bit of a path there. Rather than Horus who had 1 dream and bam hes bad.

I was thinking about it this morning, trying to decide which of the primarchs who fell had the best story/motivation, was going to wait till i could read the Index Astartes about the various primarchs that haven't been given much face time in HH.
I am eager to read The First Heretic, see how Lorgar fell.


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Seems a little too weak-willed for a Primarch.

Seems a lot of the Primarchs are weak-willed and easily manipulated.

Did Chaos try very hard to get the other primarchs (the ones that remained loyalists)? or did it focus primarily on the ones that had weaknesses? Fulgrim tried to get Ferrus onside but thats the only one i can recall. Im sure Horus tried to get sanguinus onside as well.

Something to consider in Fulgrim is the path to damnation described in Codex: Chaos Space Marines. In the Codex, damnation is a path paved with good intentions, and the Emperor's Children pretty much abandoned good intentions prior to the Heresy. They were trying to make pride a virtue, and like the Thousand Sons, the Luna Wolves, and the other Traitor Legions they basically opened themselves up for subversion. Fulgrim had damned himself long before he picked up the Daemon Sword of the Laer.

If anything the Sword simply marked the Legion's irrevocable damnation. That's not to say that the Sword didn't have an influence, but that its influence was more one of momentum, of exploiting existing flaws, and generally giving Fulgrim more rope with which to hang himself and his Legion.

I did like the ending where Ferrus Manus was killed, because that marked the point in the series where they finally admitted that the Primarchs were primarily psychic constructs, rather than just artificial humans.

ChaosGalvatron wrote:Galaxy in Flames was excellent, probably my favourite HH novel so far.
I liked Fulgrim, while the daemon sword did push him to Chaos at least there was a bit of a path there. Rather than Horus who had 1 dream and bam hes bad.

See, I actually expected Horus' fall to be pretty eye-rollingly bad too, having heard bits and pieces of it, but I was surprised at how plausible it actually was. It wasn't just the "dream" with him; he'd been given a huge task that he essentially couldn't handle, he was being kept in the dark about a lot of things. etc. The "dream" is a big part of it, sure, but calling it a dream is a little too tame for what it was. Bear in mind that he had no idea that Chaos even existed as we know it to exist in the 40K universe, and the fact that Chaos appears to have shown him nothing that wasn't true is also huge - it was out of context and out of order, sure, but all of it was essentially the truth. As far as experiencing it...I suspect it didn't feel like a dream, but more like if you, sitting right there, were told that what you're currently experiencing isn't real. You wouldn't believe it, because you're seeing it, tasting it, feeling it, hearing it, etc.

Spoiler:

Any idea if Fulgrim is still possessed 10,000 years later?

I'm sure he is.


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Nurglitch wrote:Something to consider in Fulgrim is the path to damnation described in Codex: Chaos Space Marines. In the Codex, damnation is a path paved with good intentions, and the Emperor's Children pretty much abandoned good intentions prior to the Heresy. They were trying to make pride a virtue, and like the Thousand Sons, the Luna Wolves, and the other Traitor Legions they basically opened themselves up for subversion. Fulgrim had damned himself long before he picked up the Daemon Sword of the Laer.

On the other hand, Saul Tarvitz successfully made pride a virtue without falling to Chaos, so I'm not so sure that Fulgrim couldn't have done the same.

I guess another one of my main problems with the story is that, by that point in the Heresy series, I was pretty fed up with the pattern of making it abundantly clear to the reader which Space Marines were going to turn and which ones were going to stay loyal. The Titan Moderati in Galaxy In Flames is, like I said, the only character I was actually surprised at. There's simply a little too much of the, "Eventual Traitors snarl and scowl and act like total while loyalists are pillars of virtue," in the series, and Fulgrim just brought it to a head for me.

ignore the sword thing and get to the real story of Fulgrim, brother against brother in a more personal way than any of the previous heresy books, the last scene where he stands over ferrus sealed it for me. best heresy book by far... ok maybe thousand sons... and first heretic... ok THIRD best is Fulgrim

So First Heretic is good? How does Lorgar turn? Is it as simple as looking for a new thing to worship or more complex?

You know, people seem to understand so little about faith. To me, that's what the whole Heresy is about. Where your faith is, determines how you turn out.

Now, when I say faith, I'm not talking about if you pray or some other silly thing. I'm talking about what you believe in.

Where was Horus' faith? Was it in the Emperor? No. How do we know? Because, from the very beginning, Horus was questioning his father's actions. He had faith in the Crusade. Once it was coming to an end, he had nothing to believe in. So, he was easy to get at. The vision simply gave Horus something else to believe in.

See what I mean?

I HOPE, more than anything, that the author gets this right in First Heretic.

The story of Lorgar is one of my favorite in 40K. Can you imagine actually meeting your god in the flesh? Talk about powerful stuff.

Now, imagine your god coming to you, and telling you that you have failed him. Imagine your god telling you that he no longer wants your devotion or love. Imagine your god telling you that all of your efforts to worship him have not only failed, but made him mad.

Wow...I don't know how you could survive that.

Of course, that's the point. Lorgar DIDN'T survive that. He became a thing of Chaos...

Whether he will appear again in later books or not, the lack of closure on Saul Tarvitz' story in Galaxy in Flames was kind of bemusing. I had to flick back to see if I had missed something, but no he's just there and then...not mentioned again.

whatwhat wrote:Whether he will appear again in later books or not, the lack of closure on Saul Tarvitz' story in Galaxy in Flames was kind of bemusing. I had to flick back to see if I had missed something, but no he's just there and then...not mentioned again.

Er, what? He

I was unconvinced by the description (or lack there of) of Horus' fall. Fulgrim's decent was much more detailed and made sense. Fulgrim wasn't just prideful, he was vain and arrogant. Even the smallest amount of both can be manipulated and drawn out by the great powers of chaos, especially if you don't realize that can even happen. Horus displayed some of the same symptoms as Fulgrim, but it was much more subtle and I think it was too subtle. As seen from the eyes of Loken, I can understand why it would be more subtle, but the book was not written specifically from his point of view and I think it could have been a little more descriptive.

Now Sault Tarvitz was proud but drew his pride from a different source than Fulgrim. Just like in A Thousand Sons Ohthere Wyrdmake talks about how he does not desire power and implies that he only uses his abilities for survival and nothing more. Really Saul Tarvitz was just more practical and grounded. He didn't let being a nearly immortal super-human go to his head as it were. Some of his compatriots however were a little full of themselves. Saul took pride in his legion's accomplishments but also realized how much hard work it took to maintain that level of "perfection."

It also seems to me that the primarchs are truely innocent. Much like the way Adam and Eve are portrayed the primarchs extoll that same sort of parodoxical lack of knowledge. The Emperor tells them bits and pieces while witholding knowledge and then for some reason expects them to behave a certain way.

Seaward wrote:

whatwhat wrote:Whether he will appear again in later books or not, the lack of closure on Saul Tarvitz' story in Galaxy in Flames was kind of bemusing. I had to flick back to see if I had missed something, but no he's just there and then...not mentioned again.

Er, what? He

Spoiler:

was on Isstvan III; dude's dead.

Could you point me to the page where he dies? I could have sworn it never said anything about him dieing.

Or are you just assuming he's dead because he was a loyalist on isstvan 3? In which case you've missed my point about there being no closure in the book and also you may be wrong as there are still questions over what happened to some loyalists on Isstvan 3.

whatwhat wrote:

Seaward wrote:

whatwhat wrote:Whether he will appear again in later books or not, the lack of closure on Saul Tarvitz' story in Galaxy in Flames was kind of bemusing. I had to flick back to see if I had missed something, but no he's just there and then...not mentioned again.

Er, what? He

Spoiler:

was on Isstvan III; dude's dead.

Could you point me to the page where he dies? I could have sworn it never said anything about him dieing.

Or are you just assuming he's dead because he was a loyalist on isstvan 3? In which case you've missed my point about there being no closure in the book and also you may be wrong as there are still questions over what happened to some loyalists on Isstvan 3.

So I suppose you think Butch and Sundance made it out of Bolivia alive, too?

I'm assuming he's dead because they virus bombed it, firebombed it, assaulted it for months with three legions...then firebombed it again after they'd killed everybody.

Seaward wrote:

whatwhat wrote:

Seaward wrote:

whatwhat wrote:Whether he will appear again in later books or not, the lack of closure on Saul Tarvitz' story in Galaxy in Flames was kind of bemusing. I had to flick back to see if I had missed something, but no he's just there and then...not mentioned again.

Er, what? He

Spoiler:

was on Isstvan III; dude's dead.

Could you point me to the page where he dies? I could have sworn it never said anything about him dieing.

Or are you just assuming he's dead because he was a loyalist on isstvan 3? In which case you've missed my point about there being no closure in the book and also you may be wrong as there are still questions over what happened to some loyalists on Isstvan 3.

So I suppose you think Butch and Sundance made it out of Bolivia alive, too?

I'm assuming he's dead because they virus bombed it, firebombed it, assaulted it for months with three legions...then firebombed it again after they'd killed everybody.

So yeh you did miss my point. Like I said here's no clossure on Saul Tarvitz in the book.

As for your statement there is a lot of ambiguity in the book. Take for example Rylanor the ec dreadnaught, who tarvitz asked to go guard something underground (and that's all we are told). Also Abnett has hinted we havent even seen the last of Loken yet. So sorry if I don't take your assesment that everythng layalist got screwed on Istvan III, that's not the picture I was left with after galaxy in flames.

I also like to think Loken somehow survived, no harm in hoping.

I'm reading the series, half way through 'The Flight of the Eisenstein' by James Swallow. I personally think his writing style suits the series really well and is 2nd only to Abnett so far.

Not really heard anyone talk about this book but I'm really enjoying it, think Garro is pretty cool and like the divisions in his squad.

Also gutted to hear noone thought much of the Soul Drinkers omnibus as I have it on the shelf awaiting reading. Also the Ultramarine omnibus and I already have my reservations about that one...

whatwhat wrote:

So yeh you did miss my point. Like I said here's no clossure on Saul Tarvitz in the book.

As for your statement there is a lot of ambiguity in the book. Take for example Rylanor the ec dreadnaught, who tarvitz asked to go guard something underground (and that's all we are told). Also Abnett has hinted we havent even seen the last of Loken yet. So sorry if I don't take your assesment that everythng layalist got screwed on Istvan III, that's not the picture I was left with after galaxy in flames.

Those are the final words about Tarvitz and his band in Galaxy In Flames. Now, do we actually see a bomb hit and kill Tarvitz? No. But, as I said, we also never see the Bolivian army gun down Butch and Sundance. Doesn't change the fact that they're dead. So's Tarvitz.

Also, I'm not sure where the bit about Rylanor being asked to guard something underground is, as it's not in Galaxy In Flames.


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Don Cooperino wrote:I also like to think Loken somehow survived, no harm in hoping.

See, and I think Loken's even LESS likely a survivor than Tarvitz, and I'm sure Tarvitz is stone cold dead.

I'm reading the series, half way through 'The Flight of the Eisenstein' by James Swallow. I personally think his writing style suits the series really well and is 2nd only to Abnett so far.

Not really heard anyone talk about this book but I'm really enjoying it, think Garro is pretty cool and like the divisions in his squad.

I enjoyed Flight of the Eisenstein as well, the end in particular. As you're reading it, I won't spoil it for you, but it's just as cool as everything else.

Also gutted to hear noone thought much of the Soul Drinkers omnibus as I have it on the shelf awaiting reading. Also the Ultramarine omnibus and I already have my reservations about that one...

Eh. Soul Drinkers was the first 40K stuff I read...and I followed it with the Eisenhorn trilogy, which probably makes it seem even less good than it is. It's not outright terrible, by any means, I just wasn't a fan. Felt a little too fanwankish.

I've got the problem it seems a lot of people have. I've read lots of Dan Abnett (Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Gaunts Ghosts, Titanicus etc) and I'm struggling to find another writer as good.

Any suggestions?


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I've got the problem it seems a lot of people have. I've read lots of Dan Abnett (Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Gaunts Ghosts, Titanicus etc) and I'm struggling to find another writer as good.

Any suggestions?

I fyou lie Abnett the you will like Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

I read Armageddon and was a little disappointed in truth, and I'm building a BT army! I've heard his books about Chaos are good though, maybe give them a try. Cheers!

Soulhunter is excellent and most of the audio book Throne of Lies is also great. Cadian Blood is a good, sometimes wonderful, read. I haven't picked up Helsreach as I'm not a big BT fan.

Yeah I've heard good things about Soulhunter, that's sealed it, I'll give it a read, thanks for the tip

Seaward wrote:Also, I'm not sure where the bit about Rylanor being asked to guard something underground is, as it's not in Galaxy In Flames.

Definitely is. I'll have a look where tonight.

edit: heh. No you are right it's in Fulgrim. page 429. On isstvan II though.

Soulhunters is pretty good, although it leads to the question of the distribution of Techmarines amongst the Pre-Herey forces, as the Night Lords in Soulhunter depend on a Techpriest. Otherwise it's a great book about how 10,000 year old veterans of the Heresy survived that long - morale has gone to pot, equipment failure is common and typically cannabilized, crew is elderly or kidnapped, and being slapped in a Dreadnought sucks. Oh, and there's an donkey-cave in your squad that keeps muttering about Kharnath...

Not to mention it has only been 100 years by their watches.

I'm pretty unhappy with A D-B's portrayal of the NLs. It's a well written book. But it isn't really true to what had been established about them and made them cool.

(More thoughts on that here.)

I will politely disagree with you on that.

I think he has created a very good and vivid portrayal of one particular company of Night Lords, as told from the POV of a very anti-chaos prophet.
Any assumptions that the entire Legion is like them is a bit of a leap.

Talos has visions of the future and this lends him much of the Primarch's pragmatism.
He has no illusions about the "greatness" of the IoM.
At the same time, he has no respect for those who give in to worshipping Chaos.

Now based on "The Core", it looks like there will be an addition of a Raptor squad, who are much more like the "traditional" idea of Night Lords.
Also, "Throne of Lies" gives the idea that much of the Legion is different from Talos' company.

Talos' company gives me the impression of one that suffered greatly from inattentiveness from their leader, and Talos has presumed to lead in his stead, as best he was allowed.


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Seaward wrote:I'm currently working my way through the Horus Heresy novels, and I've liked them all up until Fulgrim - even Galaxy in Flames, and I'm not a big fan of Counter's work. Interestingly, I think Counter actually did the best job aside from Abnett at doing a character falling to Chaos in a sympathetic light in the form of the Titan moderati, rather than knowing from the second he's introduced which way he's going to go like most of the other characters in the series.

Fulgrim just seemed...I dunno. The whole daemon sword bit just felt like a cop out. He picked up a daemon sword, and suddenly he's all about Slaanesh. Seems a little too weak-willed for a Primarch.

Also, its an Abnett novel. The endings of his books tend to suffer as it seems he crams in an ending just as his dead-line approaches.

edit- Gah, was wrong, its a Graham McNiell book. The end just made it feel like an Abnett book.

Still reading through the series, I'm at Descent of Angels so far, and although I enjoyed Fulgrim I felt it had some small flaws to it.



All in all, I thought it was a good read. Not as good as Galaxy in Flames but one of the more enjoyable ones.

response to your 1.

I think this was glossed over in anticipation of a full novel focused on it later.

Valkyrie wrote:Still reading through the series, I'm at Descent of Angels so far, and although I enjoyed Fulgrim I felt it had some small flaws to it.

Spoiler:

1: I felt that they could have extended the Drop Site Massacre a bit. Seriously, the most important part of the heresy and it's over within a dozen pages. I was expecting an entire chapter devoted to the betrayal part alone, althought the duel between Ferrus and Fulgrim was very enjoyable to read.

2: I thought Fulgrim's degredation came from the Anathame, not the Laer blade he recovered.


However, I thought they idea of the self-harming artist slowly degrading and her work becoming more and more grotesque was very interesting.

All in all, I thought it was a good read. Not as good as Galaxy in Flames but one of the more enjoyable ones.

To be honest, I've found myself enjoying the non-battle portions of the novels far more than the battle portions. I think there's only so much, "And then he shot, and then he ducked, and then he swung his sword, and blood was places," I can take.

@skrulnik: I don't think either the novel or audiobook (haven't read the short story) give any impression that the rest of the NLs are different from Talos. If anything the, the end of Throne of Lies gives the opposite impression. In any case, none of the main characters seem representative of the NLs. I would have the same complaint about a SW series where all the characters are prissy and fastidiously neat.

Manchu wrote:@skrulnik: I don't think either the novel or audiobook (haven't read the short story) give any impression that the rest of the NLs are different from Talos. If anything the, the end of Throne of Lies gives the opposite impression. In any case, none of the main characters seem representative of the NLs. I would have the same complaint about a SW series where all the characters are prissy and fastidiously neat.

Not to hijack the thread, but would you have the same complaint about a SW series where some of the characters were thoughtful/introspective/dare I say, intellectual?

Manchu wrote:I fyou lie Abnett the you will like Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

You better be right!


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Valkyrie wrote:Still reading through the series, I'm at Descent of Angels so far, and although I enjoyed Fulgrim I felt it had some small flaws to it.

Spoiler:

1: I felt that they could have extended the Drop Site Massacre a bit. Seriously, the most important part of the heresy and it's over within a dozen pages. I was expecting an entire chapter devoted to the betrayal part alone, althought the duel between Ferrus and Fulgrim was very enjoyable to read.

2: I thought Fulgrim's degredation came from the Anathame, not the Laer blade he recovered.


However, I thought they idea of the self-harming artist slowly degrading and her work becoming more and more grotesque was very interesting.

All in all, I thought it was a good read. Not as good as Galaxy in Flames but one of the more enjoyable ones.

I totally agree about the Drop-Site massacre. One could argue its the most important event in 40K history yet it seems like they just glossed over it.
I think Fulgrim is actually one of the longest books in the HH and i guess they had to wrap it up but I don't know, perhaps the Massacre could have had its own book.


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Rascon wrote:

Manchu wrote:@skrulnik: I don't think either the novel or audiobook (haven't read the short story) give any impression that the rest of the NLs are different from Talos. If anything the, the end of Throne of Lies gives the opposite impression. In any case, none of the main characters seem representative of the NLs. I would have the same complaint about a SW series where all the characters are prissy and fastidiously neat.

Not to hijack the thread, but would you have the same complaint about a SW series where some of the characters were thoughtful/introspective/dare I say, intellectual?

Actually Ragnar Blackmane is one of the most, thoughtful introspective characters I've read about in the BL. I remember him having an existential crisis about relativism which is decreed a sin by The Emperor.
That wacky Barbarian.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Actually Ragnar Blackmane is one of the most, thoughtful introspective characters I've read about in the BL. I remember him having an existential crisis about relativism which is decreed a sin by The Emperor.
That wacky Barbarian.

Ha, really? I may have to revise my opinion that a Space Wolf would stare at a book in utter incomprehension for several long moments before putting a bolt through it out of fear it might attack him.

Ragnar Blackmane is two thick and ugly hairs away from being a Berzerker, and that's pretty much the only fact that we come away with upon reading about his ordeal at the Gates of Morkai in Space Wolf.

Besides, aside from the incessant bloodshed and mindless slaughter, Orthodox Khornism is an ancient and revered religion that also calls its adherents to observe the virtues of hard work and honesty. Off the battlefield many Berzerkers like to pursue such hobbies as writing samizdat and war poetry. Killing, maiming, and burning are popular topics, though Kharn the Betrayer's epic "Kill! Maim! Burn!" continues to top the charts in both the abriged pocketbook version, and the full iron-bound war-tome with close combat attachment.

Rascon wrote:would you have the same complaint about a SW series where some of the characters were thoughtful/introspective/dare I say, intellectual?

Wise SW who express themselves in mystical terms are okay. SW that are debating Heideggar's concerns about technology are problematic. So, to get to what you're actually asking, NL being pragmatic and resourceful are spot-on but noble, likable NL who are compassionate to their slaves (despite the author taking great pains to tell us this is not the case while showing us the contrary) are not okay. Again: he's a good author (just bought First Heretic tonight) but he's hasn't written authentic NL, at least if IA is the standard.

Manchu wrote:

Rascon wrote:would you have the same complaint about a SW series where some of the characters were thoughtful/introspective/dare I say, intellectual?

Wise SW who express themselves in mystical terms are okay. SW that are debating Heideggar's concerns about technology are problematic.

Why, out of curiosity? The Space Wolves have certainly cultivated a "barbaric" image, but I'm also fairly sure Russ wrote at least one book. And as we can all roundly agree they're flavored a lot by the Vikings, it's worth pointing out that the Vikings certainly didn't scorn knowledge or even literary arts - they wrote some pretty epic stuff.

So, to get to what you're actually asking, NL being pragmatic and resourceful are spot-on but noble, likable NL who are compassionate to their slaves (despite the author taking great pains to tell us this is not the case while showing us the contrary) are not okay. Again: he's a good author (just bought First Heretic tonight) but he's hasn't written authentic NL, at least if IA is the standard.

That's a good point, but I feel it's fundamentally different from what Rascon was asking about. The character, or maybe even the very nature, of the Night Lords is represented incorrectly, in your view, whereas I don't think the same would be said to be true about a Space Wolf who wasn't an illiterate idiot.

Characters are usually better when they aren't caricatures.

@Seaward: There's a big difference between Space Wolves being illiterate numbskulls (they are not) and them being Ivy League philosophy professors (they are not).

Manchu wrote:@Seaward: There's a big difference between Space Wolves being illiterate numbskulls (they are not) and them being Ivy League philosophy professors (they are not).

I dunno. If what was said above about Ragnar in the Space Wolf Omnibus is true, they might be closer than we think!

I wouldn't worry about that, my good man.

Manchu wrote:I wouldn't worry about that, my good man.

Well, are you really saying that individual Space Wolves couldn't have an interest in history, or science, or technology, or art? If so, I do in fact worry about that.

::crooked eyebrow::

Um, nope. I am saying that SW don't need to be written out of character (suede patches on tweed elbows sort of thing) in order to take an interest in history, science, or technology. Just like Night Lords don't need to be written as darkly noble to be interesting protagonists.

Manchu wrote:::crooked eyebrow::

Um, nope. I am saying that SW don't need to be written out of character (suede patches on tweed elbows sort of thing) in order to take an interest in history, science, or technology. Just like Night Lords don't need to be written as darkly noble to be interesting protagonists.

Right, which illustrates the point I was trying to make, I think. We both agree that a Space Wolf could have interests not necessarily considered "Space Wolfie" - that's what I meant when I said "intellectual" earlier, and you seemed to flatly disagree with it. When it's been more specifically defined a bit, we're both in agreement - though is there a reason you left out art?

That's a relatively minor issue that somewhat speaks to the essence of the chapter/Legion/whatever. You're making the point that Night Lords shouldn't, essentially, ever really be compassionate to anybody, and I agree with you there as well - that's a core tenet of their principles. However, it's possible that what could seem compassionate to one person might not seem compassionate to another. Just as what could seem intellectual to one person might not seem intellectual to another.

Note: I could be talking out of my ass here, I haven't actually read the book in question. I'm just thinking it may be an interpretation issue. If the author fundamentally got Night Lords wrong, so be it.

Okay, I finally see the distinction you're making and we can go from there. Night Lords are simply not noble. In any way, shape, or form. I don't want to get bogged down with the word "compassion" because I'm sure I'll already have the A D-B fanclub breathing down my neck about it should they stumble across my earlier comments. But he does want Talos and at least some of the others to come off as dark heroes--and by "hero," I don't simply mean "protagonist."

To the fanclub: I don't need a list of all terrible things that Talos et alia do in the new NL stories (and they don't have many bad moments anyway). We all know very well that in a 40k novel, you can forgive a character the vilest acts of torture as long as he truly loves his Primarch. If anyone is too blinkered to notice Dembski-Bowden pulling the wool over your eyes about this cast being Chaos Space Marines when they're mostly written as a renegade chapter, then I doubt we'll be able to have a very useful conversation about it. And I'm also not about to say that Dembski-Bowden didn't do all of this on purpose. I'm just saying that whether it was intentional or not, it's not the Night Lords.

Manchu wrote:

Rascon wrote:would you have the same complaint about a SW series where some of the characters were thoughtful/introspective/dare I say, intellectual?

Wise SW who express themselves in mystical terms are okay. SW that are debating Heideggar's concerns about technology are problematic. So, to get to what you're actually asking, NL being pragmatic and resourceful are spot-on but noble, likable NL who are compassionate to their slaves (despite the author taking great pains to tell us this is not the case while showing us the contrary) are not okay. Again: he's a good author (just bought First Heretic tonight) but he's hasn't written authentic NL, at least if IA is the standard.

That's the problem right there, for the most part.

IA is, sadly, no longer the standard, even though it should be!

Of course, SOME of the changes in the recent HH series are good (LEGION adding some layers to what could have been a one note...Legion), and some are bad (The unnecessary muddling of the Psyker situation via The Council of Nikaea).

I guess we'll have to view the thing as a whole to be able to render an accurate Final Judgment.

Which, given the pace we're on now, might be a ways away...

Manchu wrote:

Rascon wrote:would you have the same complaint about a SW series where some of the characters were thoughtful/introspective/dare I say, intellectual?

Wise SW who express themselves in mystical terms are okay. SW that are debating Heideggar's concerns about technology are problematic. So, to get to what you're actually asking, NL being pragmatic and resourceful are spot-on but noble, likable NL who are compassionate to their slaves (despite the author taking great pains to tell us this is not the case while showing us the contrary) are not okay. Again: he's a good author (just bought First Heretic tonight) but he's hasn't written authentic NL, at least if IA is the standard.

I was actually really just asking about Space Wolves. I'm not sure that I agree that chapters are so thoroughly archetyped/stereotyped that we can extrapolate every detail of their culture, philosophies, etc. from the couple-sentence blurbs they get. Just as an example, and I know it's a pretty weak piece of proof, but in the Deathwatch RPG, Space Wolf characters aren't at all prevented from taking the "Studious" Demeanor, nor are they prevented from picking up things like, "Lore: Scholastic".

The point is not that they aren't or can't be smart SW. (We're doing that thread again, are we?) The point is that there are no SW who have posh Oxford accents ("I say, Gærhialm, what a damn fine sherry!"). Some superficial characterizations break continuity while their deeper manifestations do not. At any level of analysis, however, nobility is not a characteristic of Night Lords. It is similar to writing a Grey Hunter with the mannerisms of C-3P0.

Manchu wrote:The point is not that there aren't or can't be smart SW. The point is that there are no SW who have posh Oxford accents ("I say, Gærhialm, what a damn fine sherry!"). Some superficial characterizations break continuity while their deeper manifestations do not. At any level of analysis, however, nibility is not a characteristic of Night Lords. It is similar to writing a Grey Hunter with the mannerisms of C-3P0.

Okay. But again, I was just asking about the Space Wolves. I don't disagree with you on the Night Lords.

How about that Fulgrim, eh?

Seaward wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Actually Ragnar Blackmane is one of the most, thoughtful introspective characters I've read about in the BL. I remember him having an existential crisis about relativism which is decreed a sin by The Emperor.
That wacky Barbarian.

Ha, really? I may have to revise my opinion that a Space Wolf would stare at a book in utter incomprehension for several long moments before putting a bolt through it out of fear it might attack him.

Really. That's just one example. He also thought long and hard about the socially learned Bigotry. The Emperor strongly encourages prejudice against mutants and psychics (he had his reasons and I actually agree with them) but yet made use of Navigators which are full-blown 3 eyed mutants. He wondered if it was "right" to feel so "good" killing ugly mutants that had served their Emperor all their life.


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Manchu wrote:The point is not that they aren't or can't be smart SW. (We're doing that thread again, are we?) The point is that there are no SW who have posh Oxford accents ("I say, Gærhialm, what a damn fine sherry!"). Some superficial characterizations break continuity while their deeper manifestations do not. At any level of analysis, however, nobility is not a characteristic of Night Lords. It is similar to writing a Grey Hunter with the mannerisms of C-3P0.

Right. Basically Ragnar was smart. Not learned. Surely such a thing existed in real life. There were Viking Beserkirs that terrorized Briton yet still wondered about the nature of their existance.

Manchu wrote:Okay, I finally see the distinction you're making and we can go from there. Night Lords are simply not noble. In any way, shape, or form. I don't want to get bogged down with the word "compassion" because I'm sure I'll already have the A D-B fanclub breathing down my neck about it should they stumble across my earlier comments. But he does want Talos and at least some of the others to come off as dark heroes--and by "hero," I don't simply mean "protagonist."

To the fanclub: I don't need a list of all terrible things that Talos et alia do in the new NL stories (and they don't have many bad moments anyway). We all know very well that in a 40k novel, you can forgive a character the vilest acts of torture as long as he truly loves his Primarch. If anyone is too blinkered to notice Dembski-Bowden pulling the wool over your eyes about this cast being Chaos Space Marines when they're mostly written as a renegade chapter, then I doubt we'll be able to have a very useful conversation about it. And I'm also not about to say that Dembski-Bowden didn't do all of this on purpose. I'm just saying that whether it was intentional or not, it's not the Night Lords.

Can it not be true that one member of a company lives to better his company and Legion, while the rest are self-serving bastards who only work together to further their own existences?

If that is your definition of noble, than so be it.

A protagonist HAS to have some redeeming values for the reader to identify with, or you don't care about the story.
I can think of plenty of novels/movies/tv shows with characters that had no redeeming characteristics, even if it was in character for them, and those did not leave me wanting more or giving a gak about their story.

Calling people Fanboys for disagreeing with your POV is not conducive to good discussion.

Whether or not a protagonist MUST have redeeming qualities is debatable. (Unless you think that your standards are absolute while you are telling others the opposite?) In any case, the redeeming quality you're talking about does not necessarily have to be kindness, compassion, or another similar trait. It could very simply be humor, cunning, perseverance, or another non-moral trait. One great example of a totally vile but extremely interesting protagonist is Malus Darkblade.

And, to be clear, I don't call people who disagree with me fanboys. The people that I call fanboys are the ones who believe that Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, or whoever (J. J. Abrams, J. K. Rowling, Joss Whedon, and J. R. R. Tolkien all come to mind here) can do no wrong because they have managed to do some things well. Those are the type of people who seem to intentionally misinterpret people who criticize the object of their fandom in order to evade the legitimacy of the criticism.


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skrulnik wrote:Can it not be true that one member of a company lives to better his company and Legion, while the rest are self-serving bastards who only work together to further their own existences?

It really isn't a question of pragmatically trying to keep your unit effective versus being totally self-serving. Again, I refer you to Malus Darkblade. You're simply reframing the discussion to avoid the actual criticism, which is Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords in Soul Hunter and Throne of Lies are poor representations of the Night Lords established before those works.

I disagree. When the crew needs special identity tags to prevent the Astartes from preying on each other's staff, they kill each other over equipment, and all of them (including Talos) take sadistic pleasure in terrifying their opponents prior to killing them, then they're a pretty much in line with prior representations of the Night Lords, if we take that single company (or warband depending on whose perspective you take) as representative of the Legion.

It's not like the author didn't make it clear that other Night Lords, particularly those also favoured by the Night Haunter, regarded Talos as a self-righteous tool.

The diversity of characters and characterizations in the book made for a refreshing change from the usual collections of stereotypes that inhabit 40k fluff, up to and including the part where even the stereotype Uzas takes some time out of being a cardboad cutout.

I am definitely giving my opinion on things. We are talking about subjective ideas, not black white, true false ideas.

I am not re-framing anything. I said straight out that I disagreed with you about your perception of the characterization of the Night Lords previously.

A couple pages in the IA article was barely enough to get the general demeanour of the Legion.
When I read that article, I saw a group of soldiers disillusioned with the war, and that were used to fighting in a morally ambiguous manner.
This did not preclude them from having a code they live by.

And expecting characters to be a carbon copy of old fluff creates boring characters I dont want to read about.
Most of the main characters break from the fluff stereotype in some manner.

Gaunt has compassion for his men -- the rest of the commisars will shoot you in the head.
Malus actually cares about his fellow Dark Elves to an extent, as evidenced by his being tied up or left outside the walls when he was overtaken by the demon.
Fulgrim has the tragedy that he doesn't see his pride as a fault, where we can see it coming.
Talos has his Legion and his attachment to Septimus, as you have pointed out.

Their differences from the established fluff is what makes them interesting to me.
It doesn't break the universe for me, to have one character that is outside the mold.

People wonder why were Primarchs were so weakly willed,you have to remember several things:
1.)They were sucked into the warp when they were just infants at which point Chaos could plants seeds of rebellion in them and 2.)Chaos Gods are very powerful,Sanguinius was nearly broken,tested by the Khorne(that may explan why Fulgrim was possesed,not because of the gulit,but because of the Chaos power),while Horus was corrupted by the entire Chaos Pantheon.
These are just my theories so don't be too hard on me.

@Nurglitch: I've already addressed one of your points. In a 40k novel, much can be forgiven in exchange for living up to the fascistic ideals of the hero. If the character unapologetically kicks a lot of ass and is sincerely loyal to whatever sympathetic ideal, that's usually enough for the BL readership. In Talos's case, that ideal is "the Legion" or, better yet, Kurze himself (take that, Vandred!)--although, as you wisely point out, Talos's concept of what these things signify is not very authentic. And in this sense, Dembski-Bowden is engineering sympathy for his personal world rather than contributing to a larger, better one that pre-exists his ideas.

@skrulnik: Exception-to-the-rules characters (written by pulp novelists that you might say have "Drizzt syndrome") seem more like the rule than the exception. You bring up Gaunt and I'll throw Cain out there, too. Where is the hardass Commissar? Well, A D-B kills one off in Cadian Blood, specifically for being a true-to-the-fluff hardass, while rewarding his more "original" characters--who are uniformly boring--with survival and possible futures in a series.

And then there's the Heresy books: instead of reading about Abbadon, Eidolon, or Typhus I end up reading about Torgaddon, Tarvitz, and Garro. Again, uniformly boring characters--nearly indistinguishable one from the other--that are "mould breakers" You know what? The mould is interesting. One of the triumphs of Soul Hunter is the scene with Abaddon. You know why? Dembski-Bowden wrote the character as Abaddon rather than something "novel" (read: silly). No wonder the HH books have been so heavily criticized for not establishing properly compelling motivations for the traitors . . .

By the way, the Night Lords are not really disillusioned with war. They are disillusioned by the myth of honorable combat. They actively seek out weaker opponents, who they delight in terrifying. This is not expressed in the character of any CSM in A D-B's novel or audiobook, except perhaps Vandred--and even then, Vandred's opponents are his equals in sheer strength and only inferior to him in tactical acumen (and that because he is a genius naval commander).

So read or don't read Soul Hunter?

Definitely read it. It's an awesome book.

...but you don't like it...

No, I like it a lot. As I have said many times in this thread, Soul Hunter is a good book and Aaron Dembski-Bowden is a good writer. I wish he had a little more respect for the established fluff and a little less confidence in the tropes of our times. Even good things can be criticized for their weak points.

I tried to explain this here

This is a partly a Night Lords thread, so let me use a Batman anology. The Burton Batman movies dealt with the silliness of a grown man dressing up as a bat by taking into account that the world in which Batman exists is itself somewhat silly and stylized. The Nolan movies sidestep the issue by giving Batman more "realistic" gear and throwing him into more "realitic" situations. Instead of the Batmobile, we get a souped-up Hummer. Instead of being a super villain, the Joker is a terrorist. While The Dark Knight is clearly a better film than 1989's Batman in so many ways, it doesn't manage to capture the authentic feeling of Batman as well. I think Soul Hunter and Throne of Lies are like The Dark Knight in this regard.

I'm pretty sure that, in Soul Hunter at least, the Night Lords don't go looking for someone that can stand up to them. They try to escape from the Blood Angels, not try to confront them. Talos hunts inferior warriors as much as the next Night Lord. His sadism is the equal of any you could name.

In each of his first two appearances (again, haven't had the pleasure of sitting down to The Core just yet), he fights and defeats Callidus assassins. A D-B makes it exceptionally clear how incredibly dangerous they are on each occasion. In Throne of Lies, Talos is not described as taking anything but what the readership would consider justifiable pleasure in torture--which I would emphasize is a pretty august standard considering their otherwise vile reputation as notorious blackguards (the NL, I mean, not BL readers).

On the other hand there is no justifiable pleasure in torture...

Justifiable???

That's the problem, my good man, we're talking about CSM here.

So? Either the Chaos Space Marine in question takes pleasure in torture and is an evil sadist, or doesn't and isn't.

There is no justification for torture, and any that anyone attempts to make is just rationalization. I'm reminded of the final episode of the third season of Dexter where Dexter is captured by a serial killer that skins his victims. Dexter, being a serial killer himself, knows that it doesn't matter what he tells the guy because the interrogations that serial killer conducts are simply pretexts to indulge in torture.

Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Then you forget the psychic power of the Daemon inside.

IvanTih wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Then you forget the psychic power of the Daemon inside.

Would you grab a sword that was beckoning your name? And saying I can give you all the pleasures...

Asherian Command wrote:

IvanTih wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Then you forget the psychic power of the Daemon inside.

Would you grab a sword that was beckoning your name? And saying I can give you all the pleasures...

I wouldn't,but think in this way.It's a Daemon possesed sword + ignorance=Traitor.
I could name certain feat of Chaos Corruption if you like.

Nurglitch wrote:So? Either the Chaos Space Marine in question takes pleasure in torture and is an evil sadist, or doesn't and isn't.

No, that's a bit silly to say about a BL novel. We're not talking about Guantanamo Bay here, we're talking about the GrimDark. There is certainly a such thing as justifiable satisfaction in torture in the GrimDark and it isn't the same thing as sadism; rather, it's a form of religious righteousness. The GrimDark is the fascistic dream of modern zealots made real, where torturing your ideological enemies is a just and good pursuit that does not necessarily speak to the psychological depravity of the torturer. The sadists are still around, however. That would be the Night Lords, for one. But Talos is not presented as one of them.

Manchu wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:So? Either the Chaos Space Marine in question takes pleasure in torture and is an evil sadist, or doesn't and isn't.

No, that's a bit silly to say about a BL novel. We're not talking about Guantanamo Bay here, we're talking about the GrimDark. There is certainly a such thing as justifiable satisfaction in torture in the GrimDark and it isn't the same thing as sadism; rather, it's a form of religious righteousness.

You do realize that you essentially stated that religious zeal in the pain of the fallen cannot be sadistic in nature? Enjoyment in torturing those of different faith (Heretics hurr) is the very essence of sadism (Enjoyment in the pain of another). Remember, in Grimdark there are no good guys...only degrees of bad.

Unless you are wanting to roll the sadism definition back to de Sade's era where a person obtains sexual pleasure in pain of another....then I would say only Slaanesh qualifies. Maybe the new DE....

Fulgrim is my favorite HH book, actually.

It was the first book, in my opinion, that explored the more personal aspects of the betrayal of one Brother Primarch to another, and I liked the moment at the end when Horus starts to realize that this whole "Chaos" thing is getting uglier than he originally realized.

Loved it.

Monster Rain wrote:Fulgrim is my favorite HH book, actually.

It was the first book, in my opinion, that explored the more personal aspects of the betrayal of one Brother Primarch to another, and I liked the moment at the end when Horus starts to realize that this whole "Chaos" thing is getting uglier than he originally realized.

Loved it.

There are elements of it I liked, don't get me wrong. I especially liked the detailed description of how the remembrancers acted once corrupted; Slaanesh has always been the hardest Chaos god for me to wrap my head around in terms of what he's all about, and that was a great way of displaying it.

However, I was left with the conviction that, for a Primarch, Fulgrim wasn't a terribly bright guy.

Seaward wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Fulgrim is my favorite HH book, actually.

It was the first book, in my opinion, that explored the more personal aspects of the betrayal of one Brother Primarch to another, and I liked the moment at the end when Horus starts to realize that this whole "Chaos" thing is getting uglier than he originally realized.

Loved it.

There are elements of it I liked, don't get me wrong. I especially liked the detailed description of how the remembrancers acted once corrupted; Slaanesh has always been the hardest Chaos god for me to wrap my head around in terms of what he's all about, and that was a great way of displaying it.

However, I was left with the conviction that, for a Primarch, Fulgrim wasn't a terribly bright guy.

I actually thought his character was pretty well developed.

In any epic, the main character will have a serious character flaw. In Fulgrim's case, much like Odysseus, the flaw was hubris. I don't think he was stupid, I just think that it occurred to him that anything could go wrong since he was so perfect.

Monster Rain wrote:

I actually thought his character was pretty well developed.

In any epic, the main character will have a serious character flaw. In Fulgrim's case, much like Odysseus, the flaw was hubris. I don't think he was stupid, I just think that it occurred to him that anything could go wrong since he was so perfect.

See, I actually thought Horus was well developed, whereas everyone else seems to think he was poorly written. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

It could just be that 'perfection' seems like sort of an oddball focus for a Primarch and a Legion to me.

Okay, my point is that even in the "grimdark" the ends do not justify the means. As the blog-link in my signature argues, even a fictional universe adheres to the rules governing universes in general, and there is no such thing as justifiable torture in any. Any attempt to justify said torture, whether it be religious righteousness or zealotry, is simply another manifestion of the Taint. In the Warhammer 40k ficton (a.k.a "fictional universe") any attempt to justify torture not only speaks to the psychological depravity of the torturer, it speaks to the spiritual deficiency of the torturer that is Slaanesh.

Warhammer 40k background materials harp on this theme with some success, A Thousand Sons and Legion being the most successful in my opinion. No matter the good intentions, rationalizations, and occasional willful ignorance sorcery is nothing but an irreversible sin. Just about any time anyone in the 40k ficton is going to fall to Chaos, the authors telegraph it by having the character try to justify what they're doing. I don't think it's a coincidence that those Imperial factions best known for torture (The Unforgiven, the Inquisition, etc) tend to be engaged in civil wars.

Soul Hunter is interesting because in part it's about justification and vindication. Talos feels justified in disobeying the Night Haunter, the Night Haunter feels he'll be vindicated by commiting a complicated suicide, the Exalted justifies the neglect of his warband by appealing to the chain of command when really the daemon possessing him just plain doesn't give a feth. It's that core of moral nihilism that characterizes the lost and the damned, when they stop trying to justify their actions and do them for their own sake. Conversely it seems that characters, Zho Sahaal from Lord of the Night comes to mind, can hold off the depredations of Chaos by maintaining some kind of ulterior justification for their actions.

Talos, more than the other Night Lords characters, has reasons to rationalize his use of fear as a weapon. He regards it as foremost amongst his Primarch's teachings, and regards the lack of opportunity to use it as a sin against the Night Haunter's memory. But that doesn't change the fact that he takes every practical opportunity to terrorize his enemies. I think you're confusing his practical disposition which is emphasized by his foil Uzas being the caricature of a nihilistic Chaos Space Marine idiot, with his behaviour as a sadist.

As mentioned the serial killer in the 3rd season of Dexter likewise feels a need to dress his sadism up as interrogration (a fact Dexter uses against him), much like Dexter uses his code as a pretext for indulging in his urges. The fact that he's loathe to "gak where he eats" neither justifies nor excuses the fact that he's just as sadistic as the next Night Lord.

AgeOfEgos wrote:You do realize that you essentially stated that religious zeal in the pain of the fallen cannot be sadistic in nature? Enjoyment in torturing those of different faith (Heretics hurr) is the very essence of sadism (Enjoyment in the pain of another). Remember, in Grimdark there are no good guys...only degrees of bad.

I'm well aware of modern pop psychology. And even if I wasn't before reading this thread, Nurglitch already posted a useful example from the show "Dexter." But just as we can't properly apply such analysis to the study of actual history, I think it's inappropriate to assume it applies to the GrimDark. I guess there could be three schools of thought about this: (1) morality in the Grimdark is exactly the same as in the actual 21st century (i.e., morality is an unchanging, universal absolute), (2) there is no such thing as a meaningful concept of morality in the GrimDark (i.e., everyone's bad and so the whole thing is a non-issue), or finally (3) the GrimDark's morality is proper to itself and requires its own analysis. I subscribe to the third.

Also, Nurglitch, I would have never pegged you for an advocate of natural law theories.

Well said and a Dexter reference as well...if there was a Like/+1 button I'd click it.

Nurglitch wrote:Okay, my point is that even in the "grimdark" the ends do not justify the means. As the blog-link in my signature argues, even a fictional universe adheres to the rules governing universes in general, and there is no such thing as justifiable torture in any. Any attempt to justify said torture, whether it be religious righteousness or zealotry, is simply another manifestion of the Taint. In the Warhammer 40k ficton (a.k.a "fictional universe") any attempt to justify torture not only speaks to the psychological depravity of the torturer, it speaks to the spiritual deficiency of the torturer that is Slaanesh.

Warhammer 40k background materials harp on this theme with some success, A Thousand Sons and Legion being the most successful in my opinion. No matter the good intentions, rationalizations, and occasional willful ignorance sorcery is nothing but an irreversible sin. Just about any time anyone in the 40k ficton is going to fall to Chaos, the authors telegraph it by having the character try to justify what they're doing. I don't think it's a coincidence that those Imperial factions best known for torture (The Unforgiven, the Inquisition, etc) tend to be engaged in civil wars.

Soul Hunter is interesting because in part it's about justification and vindication. Talos feels justified in disobeying the Night Haunter, the Night Haunter feels he'll be vindicated by commiting a complicated suicide, the Exalted justifies the neglect of his warband by appealing to the chain of command when really the daemon possessing him just plain doesn't give a feth. It's that core of moral nihilism that characterizes the lost and the damned, when they stop trying to justify their actions and do them for their own sake. Conversely it seems that characters, Zho Sahaal from Lord of the Night comes to mind, can hold off the depredations of Chaos by maintaining some kind of ulterior justification for their actions.

Talos, more than the other Night Lords characters, has reasons to rationalize his use of fear as a weapon. He regards it as foremost amongst his Primarch's teachings, and regards the lack of opportunity to use it as a sin against the Night Haunter's memory. But that doesn't change the fact that he takes every practical opportunity to terrorize his enemies. I think you're confusing his practical disposition which is emphasized by his foil Uzas being the caricature of a nihilistic Chaos Space Marine idiot, with his behaviour as a sadist.

As mentioned the serial killer in the 3rd season of Dexter likewise feels a need to dress his sadism up as interrogration (a fact Dexter uses against him), much like Dexter uses his code as a pretext for indulging in his urges. The fact that he's loathe to "gak where he eats" neither justifies nor excuses the fact that he's just as sadistic as the next Night Lord.

Manchu:

The moral imperative that torture is always wrong does not necessarily imply that morality is unchanging or absolute. Likewise one would imagine that "grimdark" is only grim, and dark, if stuff like torture is wrong.

Incidentally, consider that if you've never pegged my as an advocate for natural law theories, it could be that I'm not...

The statement that something is "always wrong" (already assuming that the thing in question is itself a universal absolute) indicates a belief in the universal and absolute nature of morality. (I was just as surprised to see you posting in OT the other day that science and technology are not culturally determined but psychology and other humanities topics are.)

The GrimDark is both grim and dark not because torture is wrong but rather because it is not necessarily wrong. The "shift" in alignment to a more "evil" tone when compared to the real world of the 21st century is what makes it grim and dark.

Manchu:

I need to disabuse you of two notions: the first being that I posted the opinion that the Humanities are culturally determined, but Science & Technology are not, and the second being that "always wrong" indicates a belief in the universal and absolute nature of morality.

Likewise I disagree with the notion that 40k is grim and dark because stuff like torture is not necessarily wrong. If torture is not necessarily wrong, either because its moral value is held to be relative to the beholder, or subject to the viewer, then either it's okay for them ('them' being those relative to the beholder) and there's nothing more grim and dark about it than eating a sandwich, or it seems okay to you ('you' being the subjectivity of the beholder) and then I don't get why you would find it grim and dark.

Maybe you could explain what "a 'shift' in alignment to a more 'evil' tone" is supposed to mean.

Sure thing. What I mean is that the "grim darkness" of this fictional future is relative to the actual present. As you have suggested, the Inquisitor finds torturing the heretic neither grim nor dark. The Space Marine does not find the destruction of a planetary population wrong at any level, provided he and his allies have prosecuted it in the name of the Emperor (there are a few exceptions here--and, notably, the Ultramarines are not among them). As I said before, the horrors we humans have dreamt up to inflict on our fellows become justifiable in a world where "the enemy" of twentieth-century nationalist propaganda--or indeed, the Great Enemy of the medieval Christian imagination--truly exists.

As to the other matter:

Nurglitch wrote:Science and engineering aren't based on Western schools of thought: a wheel is a wheel regardless of your underlying philosophy. The Humanities, on the other hand, are based on Western cultural norms.

But perhaps I overstated your argument? Also, I would be glad to know what you mean by "always wrong."

Manchu:

Actually you mistated my argument. But, I see the problem:

You're taking morality to be subjective to the agent, so as long as the agent doesn't think they're doing anything wrong then it's not actually wrong. Unfortunately this is the meta-ethical equivalent to solipsism, which isn't so much a position in meta-ethics as a refusal to even play the game. That explains why you're taking a rejection of subjectivism to be an endorsement of absolutism, as subjectivism does not represent the difference between acts and intentions like an actual meta-ethical philosophy has to represent.

The solution, incidentally is pretty easy, and it's at the root of all much good philosophy: the first step is the intersection of independent ideas. Here's an example: I mentioned that subjectivism is the meta-ethical equivalent of solipsism, the notion that we have no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds. But the existence of minds is logically independent of belief in their existence, so given no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds, we likewise have no reason to believe in the existence of our own mind.

In other words, either they exist and we can know them, they don't exist and we can know them, or they exist and we can't know them, or they don't exist and we can't know them. The intersection of two values with two variables means four possible permutations (I think that's the right word...).

There's the meta-step, where one raises a value to its own exponent (so 2^2, 4^4, etc), like in epistemology where some smartass like Socrates can claim that all he knows is that he knows nothing. Which is a step up from not knowing that he knows nothing, one down from not knowing that you know, and two from knowing that you know. Think of the number of values as the resolution or focus

Subjectivism confuses knowledge of the truth of moral rules, with the truth of moral rules, taking a denial of knowledge to be a denial of the object of that knowledge (not to imply Platonism either). The former is a matter of epistemology, while the latter is a matter for ethics. One is about normative statements regarding knowledge, and the other is about normative statements regarding moral rules. Therefore meta-ethical statements deal with the intersection of morals and other domains such as knowledge, metaphysics, and especially morals. Subjectivism is kind of like answering "2+2=tiger" on an arithmetic exam.

Similarly I take the scope of moral statements to be independent of the statement. "Torture is always wrong" is just one option from "Torture is sometimes wrong", "Not-torture is sometimes wrong", and "Not-torture is never wrong". By indicating that "Torture is always wrong" I've also implying the others, such as "It is possible that torture is always wrong" and "It is possible that torture is sometimes wrong" so that that morale value, action, scope, modality, quantity, and the right identity/existence/predicate relation exists for "is" are represented independently, with more than two moral values...

Now let's apply this scheme of intersecting statements (so xy, xx, ~x, ~xx, ~x~x) to the statement(s) that torture is always wrong, or that there may be torture, that may be is wrong, and that it may be that torture is wrong, or that it it may be that torture is not wrong, etc.

In terms of the particular fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, torture is especially bad because, as mentioned, Slaanesh is totally gay for torture. And Slaanesh may be an amoral Chaos Gods, but Slaanesh's area of interest is specifically in wrongness, deception, secrets, and good intentions turned to bad ends. Being wrongness incarnate isn't actually wrong, since It is a personified wrongness rather than a predication of wrongness. It's good to keep your terms straight if you're multiplying out all the predicates that an object might have.

But doing wrong when you either don't care or have some ulterior motive seems extremely grim and dark to me, as I'm not afraid of people that do not know what they're doing is wrong and do it anyways, I'm afraid of people that don't know what they're doing is wrong, and that it is that value that is the condition for doing that action or avoiding it, rather than some potential value in the future. Having to make sacrifices for the survival of the race, Master Race or otherwise, is not materially different (in the 40k universe where spiritual matters are also material matters) from making sacrifices for the Thirst of the Gods. The grimness is in the hypocrisy, and the tragedy that these measures won't save humanity in the end.

Even the Great Crusade has the shadow of Chaos hanging over it. Two Legions didn't make it to the Heresy, Magnus the Red struck his deal with Tzeentch not long after the start of the Crusade, and the interex at least first mistook Horus' expeditionary fleet for that of a Chaos warfleet.

Nurglitch wrote:You're taking morality to be subjective to the agent, so as long as the agent doesn't think they're doing anything wrong then it's not actually wrong.

I think I just expressed myself in an imprecise way. But I'll try to do better at laying out my own assumptions. I suppose unlike you, I do accept the concept of natural law. Or, at any rate, here is what I mean by that: In my view, morality is a reality of the created universe, known to us in interior dialog with the Creator (the conscience). The statement that something is "always wrong" does not imply acceptance of some positive value among others but rather reflects an experience universal to all consciences (and is therefore a very difficult statement to make or, for that matter, to believe). The 40k fictional universe may not be based on this kind of idea but I don't think we have any evidence to suggest that it is not. In any case, I think we can agree in the rejection of "argumentum ad fireballum" that the same concept could be applied to the GrimDark. The content of the natural law in the GrimDark, I think, is very different from that of the actual world so that the GrimDark conscience does not recognize torture as wrong because in the nature of the GrimDark universe torture simply is not wrong in and of itself in the first place. As I said, the morality of the GrimDark is proper to itself rather than to that of the real world. The horror (grimness & darkness) is not experienced by the inhabitants of the GrimDark but rather by us, the readership, because it contrasts so sharply with our own experience of natural morality. It's worth noting that this still allows for the kind of horror you mentioned ('I'm afraid of the guy who does what is wrong knowing it is wrong') because there is still morality, although it differs from that of the real world. So, to use your example, it's not really torture that Slaanesh is interested in but rather a certain motivation for and satisfaction derived from torture. (And this is why not just anyone can be an Inquisitor!)

No, you expressed yourself fairly exactly and you're repeating yourself by confusing a natural law concept of morality with that of a relativist concept of morality. However, in claiming that morality is a reality of the created universe, you're saying that morality is relative to a particular universe. However you then go ahead and make the subjectivist mistake that conflates the subject's knowledge of morality, and their feelings about morality, and confuses them for normative statements that hold the value "True".

In claiming a relativist position and instead making a subjectivist error in your analysis, you're showing that you have a confused view of morality as well as meta-ethical terms. I think you need to think about how to distinguish between moral agents and moral subjects, consider the difference between the cognitive (understanding statements) and non-cognitive (feelings) aspects of morality, as well as the moral significance of 40k tropes.

40,000 is about bad stuff happening to people, it's a morality play, and that morality isn't the same as the theory of morality deployed by a Dark Angel Interrogator Chaplain, a Word Bearer Dark Apostle, a Thorian Inquisitor, or an Eldar Pirate, to pick a few creeds that have popped up in the fluff. So you can consider the question of morals in 40k to be the moral systems of the characters, or of that universe, as the moral systems of the real world may adequately represent that universe.

You see, in a lot of the Horus Heresy books there's a strong sense of moral coding behaviour with characters destined to damnation acting out their flaws in outrageous pantomime (and occasional drag...). It's like the authors have a macro so that they can type "good" and "bad" in any pattern they want and their word processor spits out the requisite prose. It's the creation-myth of the 40,000 universe, so of course the Horus Heresy is going to be a complete cluster-feth.

But that's the problem with 40k, because writing self-deception is hard. Dan Abnett did it well in Ravenor when Slyte ligates Ravenor's attention in the same way that Ravenor hypnotized the rich guy. The hard part is this: If you make something apparent to the reader, it then become harder for the reader to believe that something could not be apparent to the characters. They have to 'show' the first-person experiences instead of simply telling the reader about didactically.

I think that's why nobody finds the corruption of the Primarchs too convincing, because the hyperbole surrounding the Primarchs is at dissonance with the notion of being weak and failing.

But then the span of time is pretty recent, and the Primarchs are pretty young by the standards of the 41st millennium. Dante's 1,000 year reign over the Blood Angels is 5x the length of that of Sanguinius (since the Great Crusade was about two hungred years long). I mean after Loken's experience with Jubaal being possessed at the Whisperheads Horus virtually mindwipes him after explaining that Horus is more aware of the true nature of daemons than the official Imperial line about them just being another kind of alien.

The horror of 40k is both that some inhabitants of 40k recognize the horror, and others are duped by it, and still others actively collude with what they believe it to be. My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe.

The 40k universe is distinctly Cartesian with two "substances", except that one substance is curiously insubstantial and that of mind, and the other is substantial and that of the body. The material substance is mysteriously joined to the immaterial substance or the mind or soul. This mind-body dualism is also characteristic of Platonic thought, and as Gilbert Ryle pointed out long ago with his analysis of the category mistake, crazy-talk. However, modern material monism (or the doctrine of there being an ontology of one substance) still makes the dualist distinction of there being a soul inside and a body outside, raising problems such as the problem of intentionality, and the problem of consciousness. In other words, we don't actually have a working alternative to metaphysical dualism if we want to explain the relation of body to mind. Dualism is consistent with the metaphysics of the Warp and the Material Universe in 40k. From a metaphysical point of view, the 40k universe is extremely similar to our own. They have people and everything.

Not to say that Warhammer 40,000 doesn't have novel cases. But this universality of personhood, or 'hands', or 'face' and a million other descriptive items is so similar as to be identical to our own world. For novel cases we can generalize by improving existing symmetry, and so make sense out of trying to have-wave away Slaanesh's relationship with torture. In one sense I could say that Slaanesh is the Platonic Ideal of Torture and establish an identity claim. Torture then feeds Slaanesh as a shadow feeds the darkness. In another sense I could say that Slaanesh is one of four underlying moral values in the 40k universe, and that the weirdness of the 40k universe is that retroactive changes from the Chaos Gods being born into time. Interestingly the Chaos Gods seem to be counting back from nine for some reason, but the implication is that the universe is changing from a tripod of nihilism, entropy, and change to the current configuration suggests that all else is being left equal to established usage.

Could you please unpack the following terms for me please: "Proper to itself", "certain motivation, "so sharply", and "conscience"?

Well, I typed up a comprehensive response that seemed to vanish off of my screen so here's the condensed version: There is no "particular universe" to be selected among others but only the universe and, within the universe as a product of human imagination (creativity and its limitations), incomplete hypotheticals that do not constitute alternatives to the universe. Considering these fictional "universes" as proper to themselves (i.e., not strictly comparable to what is actual) as well as relative to the actual (i.e., the activity of literary critique) does not entail a subjectivist position. Similarly, considering morality in history does not preclude natural morality: the good is eternally the good but the circumstances in which it is known change. I am reminded of the crusaders who burnt Béziers and the moderns who have variously demeaned their Christianity, imagined them to be proto-capitalists, or dismissed their entire historico-cultural context as psychotic--or, indeed, as "dark." The alternative is too horrific to square with modern sensibilities or too complicated to fit into modern agendas. Imaginary worlds allow us to go further, albeit more safely, by altering the very nature of reality (like ghost stories, for example).

As for the unpacking, I'll let it rest for now and maybe you'll give me a clearer picture of what you'd like to know.

Oh and I think you'll really enjoy The First Heretic, given some of the comments you just made concerning the HH series.

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Worked out for Link.

Nurglitch wrote:Manchu:

Actually you mistated my argument. But, I see the problem:

You're taking morality to be subjective to the agent, so as long as the agent doesn't think they're doing anything wrong then it's not actually wrong. Unfortunately this is the meta-ethical equivalent to solipsism, which isn't so much a position in meta-ethics as a refusal to even play the game. That explains why you're taking a rejection of subjectivism to be an endorsement of absolutism, as subjectivism does not represent the difference between acts and intentions like an actual meta-ethical philosophy has to represent.

The solution, incidentally is pretty easy, and it's at the root of all much good philosophy: the first step is the intersection of independent ideas. Here's an example: I mentioned that subjectivism is the meta-ethical equivalent of solipsism, the notion that we have no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds. But the existence of minds is logically independent of belief in their existence, so given no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds, we likewise have no reason to believe in the existence of our own mind.

In other words, either they exist and we can know them, they don't exist and we can know them, or they exist and we can't know them, or they don't exist and we can't know them. The intersection of two values with two variables means four possible permutations (I think that's the right word...).

There's the meta-step, where one raises a value to its own exponent (so 2^2, 4^4, etc), like in epistemology where some smartass like Socrates can claim that all he knows is that he knows nothing. Which is a step up from not knowing that he knows nothing, one down from not knowing that you know, and two from knowing that you know. Think of the number of values as the resolution or focus

Subjectivism confuses knowledge of the truth of moral rules, with the truth of moral rules, taking a denial of knowledge to be a denial of the object of that knowledge (not to imply Platonism either). The former is a matter of epistemology, while the latter is a matter for ethics. One is about normative statements regarding knowledge, and the other is about normative statements regarding moral rules. Therefore meta-ethical statements deal with the intersection of morals and other domains such as knowledge, metaphysics, and especially morals. Subjectivism is kind of like answering "2+2=tiger" on an arithmetic exam.

Similarly I take the scope of moral statements to be independent of the statement. "Torture is always wrong" is just one option from "Torture is sometimes wrong", "Not-torture is sometimes wrong", and "Not-torture is never wrong". By indicating that "Torture is always wrong" I've also implying the others, such as "It is possible that torture is always wrong" and "It is possible that torture is sometimes wrong" so that that morale value, action, scope, modality, quantity, and the right identity/existence/predicate relation exists for "is" are represented independently, with more than two moral values...

Now let's apply this scheme of intersecting statements (so xy, xx, ~x, ~xx, ~x~x) to the statement(s) that torture is always wrong, or that there may be torture, that may be is wrong, and that it may be that torture is wrong, or that it it may be that torture is not wrong, etc.

In terms of the particular fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, torture is especially bad because, as mentioned, Slaanesh is totally gay for torture. And Slaanesh may be an amoral Chaos Gods, but Slaanesh's area of interest is specifically in wrongness, deception, secrets, and good intentions turned to bad ends. Being wrongness incarnate isn't actually wrong, since It is a personified wrongness rather than a predication of wrongness. It's good to keep your terms straight if you're multiplying out all the predicates that an object might have.

But doing wrong when you either don't care or have some ulterior motive seems extremely grim and dark to me, as I'm not afraid of people that do not know what they're doing is wrong and do it anyways, I'm afraid of people that don't know what they're doing is wrong, and that it is that value that is the condition for doing that action or avoiding it, rather than some potential value in the future. Having to make sacrifices for the survival of the race, Master Race or otherwise, is not materially different (in the 40k universe where spiritual matters are also material matters) from making sacrifices for the Thirst of the Gods. The grimness is in the hypocrisy, and the tragedy that these measures won't save humanity in the end.

Even the Great Crusade has the shadow of Chaos hanging over it. Two Legions didn't make it to the Heresy, Magnus the Red struck his deal with Tzeentch not long after the start of the Crusade, and the interex at least first mistook Horus' expeditionary fleet for that of a Chaos warfleet.

That was awesome because it was like a philosophy/logic proffesor lecture and then "Slaanesh is totally gay for torture" comes out of nowhere. good stuff.

Nurglitch wrote:No, you expressed yourself fairly exactly and you're repeating yourself by confusing a natural law concept of morality with that of a relativist concept of morality. However, in claiming that morality is a reality of the created universe, you're saying that morality is relative to a particular universe. However you then go ahead and make the subjectivist mistake that conflates the subject's knowledge of morality, and their feelings about morality, and confuses them for normative statements that hold the value "True".

In claiming a relativist position and instead making a subjectivist error in your analysis, you're showing that you have a confused view of morality as well as meta-ethical terms. I think you need to think about how to distinguish between moral agents and moral subjects, consider the difference between the cognitive (understanding statements) and non-cognitive (feelings) aspects of morality, as well as the moral significance of 40k tropes.

40,000 is about bad stuff happening to people, it's a morality play, and that morality isn't the same as the theory of morality deployed by a Dark Angel Interrogator Chaplain, a Word Bearer Dark Apostle, a Thorian Inquisitor, or an Eldar Pirate, to pick a few creeds that have popped up in the fluff. So you can consider the question of morals in 40k to be the moral systems of the characters, or of that universe, as the moral systems of the real world may adequately represent that universe.

You see, in a lot of the Horus Heresy books there's a strong sense of moral coding behaviour with characters destined to damnation acting out their flaws in outrageous pantomime (and occasional drag...). It's like the authors have a macro so that they can type "good" and "bad" in any pattern they want and their word processor spits out the requisite prose. It's the creation-myth of the 40,000 universe, so of course the Horus Heresy is going to be a complete cluster-feth.

But that's the problem with 40k, because writing self-deception is hard. Dan Abnett did it well in Ravenor when Slyte ligates Ravenor's attention in the same way that Ravenor hypnotized the rich guy. The hard part is this: If you make something apparent to the reader, it then become harder for the reader to believe that something could not be apparent to the characters. They have to 'show' the first-person experiences instead of simply telling the reader about didactically.

I think that's why nobody finds the corruption of the Primarchs too convincing, because the hyperbole surrounding the Primarchs is at dissonance with the notion of being weak and failing.

But then the span of time is pretty recent, and the Primarchs are pretty young by the standards of the 41st millennium. Dante's 1,000 year reign over the Blood Angels is 5x the length of that of Sanguinius (since the Great Crusade was about two hungred years long). I mean after Loken's experience with Jubaal being possessed at the Whisperheads Horus virtually mindwipes him after explaining that Horus is more aware of the true nature of daemons than the official Imperial line about them just being another kind of alien.

The horror of 40k is both that some inhabitants of 40k recognize the horror, and others are duped by it, and still others actively collude with what they believe it to be. My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe.

The 40k universe is distinctly Cartesian with two "substances", except that one substance is curiously insubstantial and that of mind, and the other is substantial and that of the body. The material substance is mysteriously joined to the immaterial substance or the mind or soul. This mind-body dualism is also characteristic of Platonic thought, and as Gilbert Ryle pointed out long ago with his analysis of the category mistake, crazy-talk. However, modern material monism (or the doctrine of there being an ontology of one substance) still makes the dualist distinction of there being a soul inside and a body outside, raising problems such as the problem of intentionality, and the problem of consciousness. In other words, we don't actually have a working alternative to metaphysical dualism if we want to explain the relation of body to mind. Dualism is consistent with the metaphysics of the Warp and the Material Universe in 40k. From a metaphysical point of view, the 40k universe is extremely similar to our own. They have people and everything.

Not to say that Warhammer 40,000 doesn't have novel cases. But this universality of personhood, or 'hands', or 'face' and a million other descriptive items is so similar as to be identical to our own world. For novel cases we can generalize by improving existing symmetry, and so make sense out of trying to have-wave away Slaanesh's relationship with torture. In one sense I could say that Slaanesh is the Platonic Ideal of Torture and establish an identity claim. Torture then feeds Slaanesh as a shadow feeds the darkness. In another sense I could say that Slaanesh is one of four underlying moral values in the 40k universe, and that the weirdness of the 40k universe is that retroactive changes from the Chaos Gods being born into time. Interestingly the Chaos Gods seem to be counting back from nine for some reason, but the implication is that the universe is changing from a tripod of nihilism, entropy, and change to the current configuration suggests that all else is being left equal to established usage.

Could you please unpack the following terms for me please: "Proper to itself", "certain motivation, "so sharply", and "conscience"?

My lord it would take me an entire week to type such a thing. I actually think you and Manchu are agreeing with each other and not knowing it.
Anyways I call 40K "Dystopian Sci-Fi" but I'm sure there are other names for it. It's not exclusive to 40k by any means but basically Dystopian fiction is IMO meant to act as a "cautionary tale" to us in the real world. I think you statement "My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe." means you agree with me somewhat Nurglitch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Manchu wrote:

@skrulnik: Exception-to-the-rules characters (written by pulp novelists that you might say have "Drizzt syndrome") seem more like the rule than the exception. You bring up Gaunt and I'll throw Cain out there, too. Where is the hardass Commissar? Well, A D-B kills one off in Cadian Blood, specifically for being a true-to-the-fluff hardass, while rewarding his more "original" characters--who are uniformly boring--with survival and possible futures in a series.

And then there's the Heresy books: instead of reading about Abbadon, Eidolon, or Typhus I end up reading about Torgaddon, Tarvitz, and Garro. Again, uniformly boring characters--nearly indistinguishable one from the other--that are "mould breakers" You know what? The mould is interesting. One of the triumphs of Soul Hunter is the scene with Abaddon. You know why? Dembski-Bowden wrote the character as Abaddon rather than something "novel" (read: silly). No wonder the HH books have been so heavily criticized for not establishing properly compelling motivations for the traitors . . .

By the way, the Night Lords are not really disillusioned with war. They are disillusioned by the myth of honorable combat. They actively seek out weaker opponents, who they delight in terrifying. This is not expressed in the character of any CSM in A D-B's novel or audiobook, except perhaps Vandred--and even then, Vandred's opponents are his equals in sheer strength and only inferior to him in tactical acumen (and that because he is a genius naval commander).

I know what you mean. When I lend out my Gaunts Ghost's books my buddy remarked "Guant is like the nicest Commissar ever". Which is basically true. I haven't read Cain but I believe he is even nicer. Where are the take-no-prisnors characters we keep reading about in the Codexes and Rulebooks?
"It is better to let one million innocent souls perish than let one heretic live and spread his lies". This reasoning is supposed to be the starting requirement for an Inquisitor. That's the Inquisitor I want to read about! Eisenhorn and Ravenor were ok but they ain't that guy. Henry Zhou has an Inquisitor who be all acounts is the biggest pansey in the universe. How does someone like that become part of the fearsome Inquisition?

I know the reasoning is these humane characters are supposed to be more relatable but I think Warhammer fans can handle a harder edge to their characters. Most of us are fans because we were drawn to the fiction's darker grimness.

Nurglitch, if you don't mind me asking, what is your profession? I ask as you are extremely well read or you major in this...as I consider myself semi-educated in philosophy and realize the depth of my ignorance after reading your posts!

Nurglitch wrote:No, you expressed yourself fairly exactly and you're repeating yourself by confusing a natural law concept of morality with that of a relativist concept of morality. However, in claiming that morality is a reality of the created universe, you're saying that morality is relative to a particular universe. However you then go ahead and make the subjectivist mistake that conflates the subject's knowledge of morality, and their feelings about morality, and confuses them for normative statements that hold the value "True".

In claiming a relativist position and instead making a subjectivist error in your analysis, you're showing that you have a confused view of morality as well as meta-ethical terms. I think you need to think about how to distinguish between moral agents and moral subjects, consider the difference between the cognitive (understanding statements) and non-cognitive (feelings) aspects of morality, as well as the moral significance of 40k tropes.

40,000 is about bad stuff happening to people, it's a morality play, and that morality isn't the same as the theory of morality deployed by a Dark Angel Interrogator Chaplain, a Word Bearer Dark Apostle, a Thorian Inquisitor, or an Eldar Pirate, to pick a few creeds that have popped up in the fluff. So you can consider the question of morals in 40k to be the moral systems of the characters, or of that universe, as the moral systems of the real world may adequately represent that universe.

You see, in a lot of the Horus Heresy books there's a strong sense of moral coding behaviour with characters destined to damnation acting out their flaws in outrageous pantomime (and occasional drag...). It's like the authors have a macro so that they can type "good" and "bad" in any pattern they want and their word processor spits out the requisite prose. It's the creation-myth of the 40,000 universe, so of course the Horus Heresy is going to be a complete cluster-feth.

But that's the problem with 40k, because writing self-deception is hard. Dan Abnett did it well in Ravenor when Slyte ligates Ravenor's attention in the same way that Ravenor hypnotized the rich guy. The hard part is this: If you make something apparent to the reader, it then become harder for the reader to believe that something could not be apparent to the characters. They have to 'show' the first-person experiences instead of simply telling the reader about didactically.

I think that's why nobody finds the corruption of the Primarchs too convincing, because the hyperbole surrounding the Primarchs is at dissonance with the notion of being weak and failing.

But then the span of time is pretty recent, and the Primarchs are pretty young by the standards of the 41st millennium. Dante's 1,000 year reign over the Blood Angels is 5x the length of that of Sanguinius (since the Great Crusade was about two hungred years long). I mean after Loken's experience with Jubaal being possessed at the Whisperheads Horus virtually mindwipes him after explaining that Horus is more aware of the true nature of daemons than the official Imperial line about them just being another kind of alien.

The horror of 40k is both that some inhabitants of 40k recognize the horror, and others are duped by it, and still others actively collude with what they believe it to be. My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe.

The 40k universe is distinctly Cartesian with two "substances", except that one substance is curiously insubstantial and that of mind, and the other is substantial and that of the body. The material substance is mysteriously joined to the immaterial substance or the mind or soul. This mind-body dualism is also characteristic of Platonic thought, and as Gilbert Ryle pointed out long ago with his analysis of the category mistake, crazy-talk. However, modern material monism (or the doctrine of there being an ontology of one substance) still makes the dualist distinction of there being a soul inside and a body outside, raising problems such as the problem of intentionality, and the problem of consciousness. In other words, we don't actually have a working alternative to metaphysical dualism if we want to explain the relation of body to mind. Dualism is consistent with the metaphysics of the Warp and the Material Universe in 40k. From a metaphysical point of view, the 40k universe is extremely similar to our own. They have people and everything.

Not to say that Warhammer 40,000 doesn't have novel cases. But this universality of personhood, or 'hands', or 'face' and a million other descriptive items is so similar as to be identical to our own world. For novel cases we can generalize by improving existing symmetry, and so make sense out of trying to have-wave away Slaanesh's relationship with torture. In one sense I could say that Slaanesh is the Platonic Ideal of Torture and establish an identity claim. Torture then feeds Slaanesh as a shadow feeds the darkness. In another sense I could say that Slaanesh is one of four underlying moral values in the 40k universe, and that the weirdness of the 40k universe is that retroactive changes from the Chaos Gods being born into time. Interestingly the Chaos Gods seem to be counting back from nine for some reason, but the implication is that the universe is changing from a tripod of nihilism, entropy, and change to the current configuration suggests that all else is being left equal to established usage.

Could you please unpack the following terms for me please: "Proper to itself", "certain motivation, "so sharply", and "conscience"?

tldr.
But i will when i get home from work!

Please don't spam threads, ChaosGalvatron.

AgeOfEgos wrote:


Nurglitch, if you don't mind me asking, what is your profession? I ask as you are extremely well read or you major in this...as I consider myself semi-educated in philosophy and realize the depth of my ignorance after reading your posts!

he stayed at a Holiday Inn yesterday

AgeofEgos:

I have an MA in Philosophy, although I should point out that I washed out of school as a career. Beyond grad-school I've been a financial consultant, and am now back in school retraining as a technical writer.

KamikazeCanuck:

Regarding the difference between caricature and character, the novels are replete with the caricatures that the codex background presents. That's because the codex 'fluff' is there as flavour, putting a paint-scheme to the dull plastic of the miniatures, so to speak. They work great as foils, wandering around in background to convey the notion that the protagonist is both special and awesome, but they're two dimensional because they have no history with the reader or any unique motivation. Cliches make awful characters or protagonists (ex: Deus Sanguinius).

Conversely the protagonist is never going to be average, even if the work explicitly labels them as average (ex: Idiocracy, so they're going to deviate from the caricature for their archetype. You're going to get the self-serving Commissar like Ciaphas Cain who treats his authority over morale seriously because his own life is at stake, rather than out of fanaticism like the Tallarn Commissar, or madness like the ex-Commissar that Inquisitor Amberley employed. In fact the rational Cain being the protagonist in a mad universe like 40,000 makes his novels farcical, and therefore funny. The funny is far more attractive than any attempt to make Cain seem humane; it's his mask of the 'kind Commissar' he uses to disguise a self-interested coward.

On the other end of the spectrum you're going to get heroic characters like Uriel Ventris, whose challenge is that he's too damn awesome in a hyperbolic universe, so while he fits in, that just means that he plays straight and the result is melodrama (here defined as drama but overdone).

If you do find a genuinely good and humane character or background stock, then you just know something pretty awful is going to happen to him/her/it.

Nurglitch wrote:AgeofEgos:

I have an MA in Philosophy, although I should point out that I washed out of school as a career. Beyond grad-school I've been a financial consultant, and am now back in school retraining as a technical writer.

KamikazeCanuck:

Regarding the difference between caricature and character, the novels are replete with the caricatures that the codex background presents. That's because the codex 'fluff' is there as flavour, putting a paint-scheme to the dull plastic of the miniatures, so to speak. They work great as foils, wandering around in background to convey the notion that the protagonist is both special and awesome, but they're two dimensional because they have no history with the reader or any unique motivation. Cliches make awful characters or protagonists (ex: Deus Sanguinius).

Conversely the protagonist is never going to be average, even if the work explicitly labels them as average (ex: Idiocracy, so they're going to deviate from the caricature for their archetype. You're going to get the self-serving Commissar like Ciaphas Cain who treats his authority over morale seriously because his own life is at stake, rather than out of fanaticism like the Tallarn Commissar, or madness like the ex-Commissar that Inquisitor Amberley employed. In fact the rational Cain being the protagonist in a mad universe like 40,000 makes his novels farcical, and therefore funny. The funny is far more attractive than any attempt to make Cain seem humane; it's his mask of the 'kind Commissar' he uses to disguise a self-interested coward.

On the other end of the spectrum you're going to get heroic characters like Uriel Ventris, whose challenge is that he's too damn awesome in a hyperbolic universe, so while he fits in, that just means that he plays straight and the result is melodrama (here defined as drama but overdone).

If you do find a genuinely good and humane character or background stock, then you just know something pretty awful is going to happen to him/her/it.

Well like I said I haven't read Cain but that made him sound more interesting.

Anyways, like Manchu said I believe you can have a protangonist who is not a "mold-breaker" and still have an interesting story.

KamikazeCanuck:

You know, I don't think it's strictly necessary to repeat my entire posts just to post a two sentence comment. Or at all, really. If anyone wants to read what you're replying to, then I suspect they also have scroll bars on their browsers.

Also, maybe you'd like to explain how one can have a protagonist who is not remarkable, and still have an interesting story.

Also, I'm curious, what exactly do you mean when you say: "he stayed at a Holiday Inn yesterday" and how does that contribute to the thread?

Nurglitch wrote:

Also, I'm curious, what exactly do you mean when you say: "he stayed at a Holiday Inn yesterday" and how does that contribute to the thread?

Really? We're going to start doing the thread police thing in this thread, but only after the last three pages?

Thread police? Settle down Seaward, maybe I'm just baffled and confused about what that curious non sequitor is supposed to mean.

Nurglitch wrote:Thread police? Settle down Seaward, maybe I'm just baffled and confused about what that curious non sequitor is supposed to mean.

It's a reference to widespread commercials for Holiday Inn in the States. Usually you see someone doing something involving a great deal of skill and knowledge - major surgery, solving some unsolved equation, etc. Someone asks him, "Are you a doctor/mathematician/whatever?" and the person replies, "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night." Implying they're smarter for having done so, and smart for having chosen to do so in the first place.

That's awful.

Nurglitch wrote:That's awful.

yes it is but obviously its not going to make sense if you haven't seen the commercial. As for quoting the whole thing, i don't know, I just pressed the quote button It's never offended anyone before.