Most of the traitor Primarchs come to the Heresy with a plausible reason for why the Imperium/Emperor/Primarchs 'failed them' in some fashion, arguably excusing their actions (at least in their own minds). Now, the degree of plausibility (and the degree to which they buy their own crap) varies between Primarchs, but the HH series has done a good job of at least trying to flesh these guys out. So tell me, of the traitor Primarchs, which do you think had the most legitimate grievance? Which of them is the most sympathetic person? Are there any of them that you look at and say, "you know, in his position I might have done the same damn thing," or are they all just traitorous scum who deserve their eventual fate?

Thats an easy one, Magnus. So a few thousand people died when he broke the barrier, At least he tried to tell the pompus emperor about Horus. There was no need to go sending space puppies to wipe out an entire legion.

Ohh, after reading Betrayer I gotta give it to Angron. He got wronged by the Emperor from the get-go.

I'm voting Perturabo.

Angel Exterminatus shows him to be a much more complex character than previously portrayed, with a talent and passion for constructing intricate and delicate machines, but he's regarded by his father and brothers as a blunt instrument suitable for only doing the dirty work they don't want to bother with, which he does out of a sense of duty.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Ohh, after reading Betrayer I gotta give it to Angron. He got wronged by the Emperor from the get-go.

Angron got a few of his friends left behined. Magnus had his Planet burned to the ground...... still going for magnus here.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
I'm voting Perturabo.

Angel Exterminatus shows him to be a much more complex character than previously portrayed, with a talent and passion for constructing intricate and delicate machines, but he's regarded by his father and brothers as a blunt instrument suitable for only doing the dirty work they don't want to bother with, which he does out of a sense of duty.

thats not realy a sad a story though, He is to the traitors as Dorn is to the Loyalists. they are the Workers and siege masters, constructing machines do deal death or deffend.

Yeah Magnus for me. There are a few others it's possible to understand but Magnus stands out. That Tzeentch lol.

Magnus, by like a million percent.

First, he only did what he was told not to in order to PREVENT tragedy. He's the only traitor primarch who actively sought to prevent the Horus Heresy.

Second, the Space Wolves were not sent to destroy Prospero. At least, not initially. From what I understand, Horus intercepted the message from the Emperor to Leman Russ and manipulated it from being a "bring in for questioning" order to a straight kill order, so he got boned yet again by the dickishness of his brothers.

And even then, he didn't want to kill brother space marines even as much as he didn't like the Space Wolves so he didn't actively join the fighting til it was clear if he didn't, they'd lose. Then Tzeentch was like "HERE YOU GO FRIEND HAVE SOME DAEMON POWER," cursing the whole remants of his legion.

And then, they suffered more tragedy post-chaos. Trying to prevent the mutations from having to reside in the warp, Ahriman got all "I CAN DO THIS MAAAAAAN" and totally screwed up his spell so everyone that wasn't psychic turned to dust. Magnus just can't win, man.

 cerbrus2 wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Ohh, after reading Betrayer I gotta give it to Angron. He got wronged by the Emperor from the get-go.

thats not realy a sad a story though, He is to the traitors as Dorn is to the Loyalists. they are the Workers and siege masters, constructing machines do deal death or deffend.

 SRSFACE wrote:
And then, they suffered more tragedy post-chaos. Trying to prevent the mutations from having to reside in the warp, Ahriman got all "I CAN DO THIS MAAAAAAN" and totally screwed up his spell so everyone that wasn't psychic turned to dust. Magnus just can't win, man.

I agree that Magnus has the most tragic story, but Ahriman didn't cast the Rubric in an act of cockiness. He cast the Rubric because Magnus was content to sit within his tower and let his sons mutate. Ahriman pleaded for Magnus to help them, but Magnus refused because the last time he had attempted to save them, he inadvertently cursed them all. You can't blame Ahriman for not accepting the destruction of his brothers. If it wasn't for Ahriman there wouldn't be any Thousand Sons at all, Mangus would have let the Wolves kill them all on Prospero.

 cerbrus2 wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
I'm voting Perturabo.

Angel Exterminatus shows him to be a much more complex character than previously portrayed, with a talent and passion for constructing intricate and delicate machines, but he's regarded by his father and brothers as a blunt instrument suitable for only doing the dirty work they don't want to bother with, which he does out of a sense of duty.

thats not realy a sad a story though, He is to the traitors as Dorn is to the Loyalists. they are the Workers and siege masters, constructing machines do deal death or deffend.

Yeah...no.

Read the book, or reread it as you've missed the point if you already have.

He's an artisan with a highly developed sense of honour and duty. You've made the exact same assumption about him as the people he ultimately rebelled against.

Oh, and FYI, sympathetic doesn't mean sad.

I haven't read that one yet, azreal. I'll have to give it a go. I've been fairly unimpressed with Graham McNeill's work to date, but from what you say, it sounds like it could be really good.

I totally agree with you on sympathetic =/= sad. I just love the backstory behind Angron's fall. Just the idea of someone who had finally gained such a crystal clear picture of his life, only to have it snatched away? Awesome. And not only was he denied his perceived role as the Gladiator King, dying in heroic defiance of his tyrannical captors, but was forced to leave them behind to die, in essence forcing him into the role of a coward. When he talks about how he's already dead, that he died back in the mountains, I really felt a sense of empathy for him. I mean, he's a monster and all, but I still felt bad for him, at least for a minute.

Magnus all the way, everything he ever did was for the good of someone else. Gave his eye to Tzeentch to save his sons, warn the emperor that Horus turned, and tried to prevent conflict on Tizca by psychically blocking everyone from seeing the wolves (he didn't know Horus had changed Russ' orders from capture to kill), the guy gets screwed every step of the way. A thousand sons has to be my favorite book so far from the HH series, pretty much the reason I turned to chaos.

I feel sorry for Lorgar - there's a lot of stuff with people calling him an emo loser, but for me, the Emperor did not treat him right at all - "My son thinks I'm awesome enough to be a god - I know! I'll crush an innocent, loyal planet to make him stop!" The guy needed a good father figure - probably why Kor Phaeron and Erebus had so much power over him. He didn't want to be a warrior either - but no choice given!

Perturabo is a very close rival though - he wasn't treated very well, and no-one likes feeling unappreciated. Horus showed some appreciation, therefore I can't fault Perturabo for siding with him.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I haven't read that one yet, azreal. I'll have to give it a go. I've been fairly unimpressed with Graham McNeill's work to date, but from what you say, it sounds like it could be really good.

I totally agree with you on sympathetic =/= sad. I just love the backstory behind Angron's fall. Just the idea of someone who had finally gained such a crystal clear picture of his life, only to have it snatched away? Awesome. And not only was he denied his perceived role as the Gladiator King, dying in heroic defiance of his tyrannical captors, but was forced to leave them behind to die, in essence forcing him into the role of a coward. When he talks about how he's already dead, that he died back in the mountains, I really felt a sense of empathy for him. I mean, he's a monster and all, but I still felt bad for him, at least for a minute.

I'm a big fan of McNeil when it comes to his portrayal of Slaanesh, he manages to get past the sniggering about boobies and taps into a more Hellraiser vibe, which coming from the Realm Of Chaos era myself, is a lot more reflective of 'my' Slaanesh. (Fulgrim and the EC being the other significant Legion to feature in Angel Exterminatus)

Thing is with Angron, for me, is that everything is kind of inevitable, he was broken from the get go, and if the Heresy had never happened, I somehow doubt things would ever have ended well for him. Which makes him a tragic character, but Perturabo seems to have had so much potential to have been a better person, and would have been if others had just been slightly different in the way they treated him.

Horus was poisoned, Lorgar was a petulant child, Fulgrim was arrogant, Curze was a psychopath, Angron was broken, Mortarion was backed into a corner, Magnus..perhaps, but if he'd listened to the Emperor and done as he was told, he'd have been fine, and nobody really knows what side Alpharius was on!

 azreal13 wrote:
...and nobody really knows what side Alpharius was on!

Probably on a huge load of warpdust.

I have the most sympathy towards Angron. He was the most broken of the bunch. Doomed to be angry and eventually to die due to the nails.
Magnus on second place. Though he was tempering with warp powers on his own act. Angron couldn't help it as much. Angron would have died to the nails if there weren't a heresy. It was inevitable.

I'd argue with you that the Emperor was somewhat stupid about it though. Hey second mightiest psyker in the entire world. Don't use your powers, the things you've been raised sense youth to do NO NOT AT ALL DON'T DO IT! Oh all the while using it yourself. Also doesn't help Tzeentch was meddling the whole way.

I do agree with you on Angron. Also, I feel rather sympathetic to Perturabo and to a slight extent Lorgar.

Also, whilst Tzeentch is my favorite, slaanesh is my second favorite and I'm glad when they get past the boobies and taps part.

I WANT to say Lorgar but it just isn't true. Hes a sympathetic character but his reason for turning really pales in comparison to Magnus, who was more or less betrayed by the emperor before Magnus even hinted at heresy

I would say angron, we can see from his legion pre nails that they took brotherhood and loyalty utterly seriously, Angron could have beem the primarch to unite the others through brotherhood and comraderie but the nails twisted everything so much that there is no way to see how he could have changed things had they not been implanted.

Heaped on top of this sheer feeling of utter failure he must have had, the emperor murdered though lack of action angrons friends and family (yep he considered them family), his brothers shunned him thinking him insane and he was the only primarch not to take over his homeworld in some aspect..... got to feel sorry for the guy who never was given a real chance, spat on his entire life and forced to kill in the name of someone who cared nothing for him (both the nucerians and the emperor) he finally rebels just to have some modicum of freedom only to be manipulated by a madman and sorceror and turned into an abomination.... its true that the galaxy is a harsh place

Lol, NO love for Horus or Mortarion.

Magnus and it isn't even close.

Magnus doesnt feel tragic for me, it was his own arrogance and hubris thinking he knew better than the Emp and his brothers that led to his fall, the Wolves are just the Effect not the cause, he brought it on himself.

also he was a traitor through and through, he was told not to dabble by the emperor, then nikea was another chance from the emperor to bring him into line, both were completely ignored, he may have meant well but he damned himself through his own actions and deserves no sympathy for that, if anything its his sons that deserve the sympathy as they were not to blame.

 Formosa wrote:
Magnus doesnt feel tragic for me, it was his own arrogance and hubris thinking he knew better than the Emp and his brothers that led to his fall, the Wolves are just the Effect not the cause, he brought it on himself.

also he was a traitor through and through, he was told not to dabble by the emperor, then nikea was another chance from the emperor to bring him into line, both were completely ignored, he may have meant well but he damned himself through his own actions and deserves no sympathy for that, if anything its his sons that deserve the sympathy as they were not to blame.

Because he DID know better than the Emperor. He literally knew tragedy was about to happen and did the only thing he could to prevent it. It was the Emperor's hubris and arrogance that doomed Magnus and Big E himself. If The Emperor heeded the warnings, he probably wouldn't have died.





Serious question for everyone, are you familiar with actual tragic stories, as in the ones that defined it? Stuff like Oedipus, and the like? Bringing doom upon yourself is kind of the lynchpin of all those stories. It's about pride leading to our downfall. Like I said in the thread "who caused the Horus Heresy," everyone did. It was a lot of chest thumping and pride and anger and sadness on everyone's sides. The entire thing reads like an epic Greek tragedy.

 SRSFACE wrote:
Magnus, by like a million percent.

First, he only did what he was told not to in order to PREVENT tragedy. He's the only traitor primarch who actively sought to prevent the Horus Heresy.

Second, the Space Wolves were not sent to destroy Prospero. At least, not initially. From what I understand, Horus intercepted the message from the Emperor to Leman Russ and manipulated it from being a "bring in for questioning" order to a straight kill order, so he got boned yet again by the dickishness of his brothers.

And even then, he didn't want to kill brother space marines even as much as he didn't like the Space Wolves so he didn't actively join the fighting til it was clear if he didn't, they'd lose. Then Tzeentch was like "HERE YOU GO FRIEND HAVE SOME DAEMON POWER," cursing the whole remants of his legion.

And then, they suffered more tragedy post-chaos. Trying to prevent the mutations from having to reside in the warp, Ahriman got all "I CAN DO THIS MAAAAAAN" and totally screwed up his spell so everyone that wasn't psychic turned to dust. Magnus just can't win, man.

This. He didn't do anything wrong, got screwed by both sides and had his whole world (literally) burned to nothing.

 SRSFACE wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Magnus doesnt feel tragic for me, it was his own arrogance and hubris thinking he knew better than the Emp and his brothers that led to his fall, the Wolves are just the Effect not the cause, he brought it on himself.

also he was a traitor through and through, he was told not to dabble by the emperor, then nikea was another chance from the emperor to bring him into line, both were completely ignored, he may have meant well but he damned himself through his own actions and deserves no sympathy for that, if anything its his sons that deserve the sympathy as they were not to blame.

Because he DID know better than the Emperor. He literally knew tragedy was about to happen and did the only thing he could to prevent it. It was the Emperor's hubris and arrogance that doomed Magnus and Big E himself. If The Emperor heeded the warnings, he probably wouldn't have died.

Except Magnus, when projecting his spirit across the Galaxy, fethed up the Emperors plans by charging in like a clumsy bull and ruining everything. It is pretty heavily implied that the Emperor had a plan, and Magnus cocked it up.

 SRSFACE wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Magnus doesnt feel tragic for me, it was his own arrogance and hubris thinking he knew better than the Emp and his brothers that led to his fall, the Wolves are just the Effect not the cause, he brought it on himself.

also he was a traitor through and through, he was told not to dabble by the emperor, then nikea was another chance from the emperor to bring him into line, both were completely ignored, he may have meant well but he damned himself through his own actions and deserves no sympathy for that, if anything its his sons that deserve the sympathy as they were not to blame.

Because he DID know better than the Emperor. He literally knew tragedy was about to happen and did the only thing he could to prevent it. It was the Emperor's hubris and arrogance that doomed Magnus and Big E himself. If The Emperor heeded the warnings, he probably wouldn't have died.





Serious question for everyone, are you familiar with actual tragic stories, as in the ones that defined it? Stuff like Oedipus, and the like? Bringing doom upon yourself is kind of the lynchpin of all those stories. It's about pride leading to our downfall. Like I said in the thread "who caused the Horus Heresy," everyone did. It was a lot of chest thumping and pride and anger and sadness on everyone's sides. The entire thing reads like an epic Greek tragedy.

I'm not so sure. I think Curze and Angron were pretty much already screwed up so bad by the time they got handed their Legions, that there was never any other way for it to go. The reason I picked Angron as my own vote was that I really don't think his own hubris caused his downfall. I'm not saying he isn't responsible for his own actions, but the moment the Emperor beamed him up to the spaceship from those mountains, there was never going to be a good outcome for their relationship.

 azreal13 wrote:

 SRSFACE wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Magnus doesnt feel tragic for me, it was his own arrogance and hubris thinking he knew better than the Emp and his brothers that led to his fall, the Wolves are just the Effect not the cause, he brought it on himself.

also he was a traitor through and through, he was told not to dabble by the emperor, then nikea was another chance from the emperor to bring him into line, both were completely ignored, he may have meant well but he damned himself through his own actions and deserves no sympathy for that, if anything its his sons that deserve the sympathy as they were not to blame.

Because he DID know better than the Emperor. He literally knew tragedy was about to happen and did the only thing he could to prevent it. It was the Emperor's hubris and arrogance that doomed Magnus and Big E himself. If The Emperor heeded the warnings, he probably wouldn't have died.

Except Magnus, when projecting his spirit across the Galaxy, fethed up the Emperors plans by charging in like a clumsy bull and ruining everything. It is pretty heavily implied that the Emperor had a plan, and Magnus cocked it up.

I agree here, Magnus was so shocked and just brashly sent it hoping it would solve their problems. Instead, he unkowingly smashes the Emperor's plan open, floods it with warpy goodness, and kills many Imperial citizens. Then again, I still like to say that the Emperor wasn't really brilliant either. Bans the most potent psyker sense himself from using psyker spells, entirely ignores warning, makes it possible for Horus to hear and thus change the message. I still hold sympathy to Magnus, that doesn't mean that his own ego didn't blow up in his face.

Magnus, followed by either angron and perturabo

Night Haunter fanboy (obviously)

 Jimsolo wrote:
I haven't read that one yet, azreal. I'll have to give it a go. I've been fairly unimpressed with Graham McNeill's work to date, but from what you say, it sounds like it could be really good.

I totally agree with you on sympathetic =/= sad. I just love the backstory behind Angron's fall. Just the idea of someone who had finally gained such a crystal clear picture of his life, only to have it snatched away? Awesome. And not only was he denied his perceived role as the Gladiator King, dying in heroic defiance of his tyrannical captors, but was forced to leave them behind to die, in essence forcing him into the role of a coward. When he talks about how he's already dead, that he died back in the mountains, I really felt a sense of empathy for him. I mean, he's a monster and all, but I still felt bad for him, at least for a minute.

Angel Exterminatus is the only book I have read from 40k....and I REALLY wish I didn't. When most people think of slaanesh pervdark, they get a kick out of it. THAT book, did the exact opposite. Seriously, prepare for some disturbing images. Which is why, honestly, I feel that its mostly a tie between Magnus and Perturabo.

Magnus was cruelly duped for most of the heresy, and he did quite a bit for his legion to stabilize the mutations. It was only in the end that he finally lost all hope and the sympathy ran out and turned to simple bitter grief. Perturabo was the one who probably cared the most for his legion out of all of the primarchs. Nine times out of ten, it was his men that did most of the dying while one of his brothers ran in front of him just as the pictures were being taken, to hog all the glory. The only reason he actually joined Horus is that Horus was the only one to be semi-polite to him in the end, with even Fulgrim trying to kill him! He and his men had a simple understanding; they would not be stepped on again.

I'd say Magnus. He even tried to save Horus when he was in a coma and warn him away from Chaos. He was enabled by the Emperor to use psycic powers to the point they became a lynch pin for his legion and the had the permission for their use yanked from under him, leaving his legion essentially crippled.

For my money, though, a close second is Lorgar.

A couple of people seemed to have trouble picking between two. (I admit, I did as well. Curze was pretty sympathetic to my ear as well.) So I changed the poll to allow multiple choices. Sorry to people who already voted.

I went with Perturabo, for some reason the bitterness turning to anger and even hate that can come from feeling unappreciated and seeing those whom are equal to you in skill being lauded above you... for some reason that speaks to me

Got to be Magnus. If I was ranking them (sympathetic to pathetic)

Sympathetic
Magnus
Peturabo
Horus
Lorgar
Fulgrim

Pathetic
Curze
Alpharius
Angron
Mortarion

To me it has to be Pertuarbo (biased a bit as I play IW) and Magnus.

Pertuarbo as others have said was shunned and ignored by his brothers and given all the dirty jobs that not even Dorn wanted to trouble his Legion with. Horus was the only one to show him a bit of respect. When Olympia rebelled and they brutally put it down Pertuarbo knew the Emperor would never forgive him.

When news of Horus' betrayal came through, Pertuarbo knew that his only course of action for his Legion was to follow him. I don't think he wanted to do it, but he had no choice as he knew he would never be accepted by the Imperium.

Magnus I agree with for all the reasons others have said.

Lorgar I guess as he just wanted something to believe in and worship and the Emperor shunned that. He just went and found something else that wanted and demanded the worship (Chaos).

Horus was manipulated by Erebus and I can't sympathise with that because as a Primarch he should have been able to resist, even when wounded. He also should have listened to and trusted Magnus.

Fulgrim I just can't sympathise with at all. Of all the traitors, he had the least grievances and reason to turn (except maybe Alpharius). He did it out of sheer arrogance and desire for new experiences. If he hadn't picked up the Laeran sword it might never have happened.

Mortarion I can't actually discern his reasons for turning traitor. Is it because the Emperor killed his father on Barbarus? I can't see any other reasons from their history.

Angron I can't see having gone any other way. The Emperor betrayed him from the start when he whisked him away from his army and allowed them to be slaughtered. If he had joined the battle then Angron could have been a loyal son (especially if the nails were somehow removed).

Curze I do actually have some sympathy for. Although he was a psychopath leading a Legion of murderers and sadists who did eventually come to enjoy the fear and pain he spread, he was also a tragic figure because he did what he did while serving the Imperium under the orders of the Emperor, but was then criticised and called to account for those same actions.

He was also the only traitor primarch to willingly accept responsibility for his actions and take the consequences for them, just so he could be justified in what he had done.

I can't imagine any other primarchs letting the assassin kill them willingly.

 rohansoldier wrote:






Mortarion I can't actually discern his reasons for turning traitor. Is it because the Emperor killed his father on Barbarus? I can't see any other reasons from their history.

.

I think Mortarion Was never close to the Emperor, because of killing his Adopted father, And the fact he asked Mortarion to do it first. So Mort was never fond of the Emperor and the way I see it, only followed him due to being given an entire legion at his disposal. Mortarion was however very fond of Horus. and so would most likely of turned traitor in a second, because his true leader was horus, It was never the Emperor. thats my impression of it any way.

Perturabo's story was a little upsetting in Angel Exterminatus. I personally don't think he should have joined in the rebellion, and when he almost became lunch for Fulgrim I really didn't feel that bad for him. The entire story was one of his petty revenge against Dorn and his inability to look towards the greater war. Fulgrim had to lead him along step by step.

Curze's story is a little more upsetting. Vulkan Lives and Prince of Crows both have their moments where you get to see what truly lies beneath the guise of the "Night Haunter". Curze's entire life has been torturous and he only lives for the sweet release that death will bring him. He's trapped in following the road laid before him because the only way he can finally die is at the blade of an Imperial Assassin.

I had to stop reading a few times and reflect upon this curse. He doesn't just see a "possible" future like his brother Sanguinius, he sees exactly what will happen. How painful it must be to know the future and be powerless to change it.

 cerbrus2 wrote:

 rohansoldier wrote:






Mortarion I can't actually discern his reasons for turning traitor. Is it because the Emperor killed his father on Barbarus? I can't see any other reasons from their history.

.

I think Mortarion Was never close to the Emperor, because of killing his Adopted father, And the fact he asked Mortarion to do it first. So Mort was never fond of the Emperor and the way I see it, only followed him due to being given an entire legion at his disposal. Mortarion was however very fond of Horus. and so would most likely of turned traitor in a second, because his true leader was horus, It was never the Emperor. thats my impression of it any way.

I look forward to the Death Guard getting their chance in the HH series, not because I'm especially fond of the Legion, but because the books that have covered some of the more superficially one dimensional Primarchs (Angron and Perturabo specifically) have, IMO, been quite successful in fleshing out their characters and giving them some depth, which in turn has made it easier to interpret their better known actions.

Why Mortarion embraces Nurgle is well known, but as has been said, why he sided against the Emperor in the first place could use some expanding on.

Sympathetic
Magnus
Peturabo
Horus
Lorgar
Fulgrim

Pathetic
Curze
Alpharius
Angron
Mortarion

How is Curze pathetic and Fulgrim sympathetic, one was a mentally ill primarch pushed over the edge cause the Emperor needed a tame monster that he would later cast aside, the other was a Dark Eldar trapped in primarchs body talking to his sword thinking it must be his conscience.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
The fact that Fulgrim tries to eat one of his brothers doesn't help his image much either, or going on a murder rape torture spree because he was bored with the siege at the Emperors palace, or betraying the other Legions in the Eye.

 azreal13 wrote:

 cerbrus2 wrote:

 rohansoldier wrote:






Mortarion I can't actually discern his reasons for turning traitor. Is it because the Emperor killed his father on Barbarus? I can't see any other reasons from their history.

.

I think Mortarion Was never close to the Emperor, because of killing his Adopted father, And the fact he asked Mortarion to do it first. So Mort was never fond of the Emperor and the way I see it, only followed him due to being given an entire legion at his disposal. Mortarion was however very fond of Horus. and so would most likely of turned traitor in a second, because his true leader was horus, It was never the Emperor. thats my impression of it any way.

I look forward to the Death Guard getting their chance in the HH series, not because I'm especially fond of the Legion, but because the books that have covered some of the more superficially one dimensional Primarchs (Angron and Perturabo specifically) have, IMO, been quite successful in fleshing out their characters and giving them some depth, which in turn has made it easier to interpret their better known actions.

Why Mortarion embraces Nurgle is well known, but as has been said, why he sided against the Emperor in the first place could use some expanding on.

I would like some more deathguard related storeys as well. eisenstien was a great book but dealt with the whole loyalist side of the deathguard, and hinted at the start of what would create the greyu knights later on. but they never hit upon mortarion that much. from what i remember mortarion shows up near the beggining. and thats about it.

 rohansoldier wrote:

Pertuarbo as others have said was shunned and ignored by his brothers and given all the dirty jobs that not even Dorn wanted to trouble his Legion with. Horus was the only one to show him a bit of respect. When Olympia rebelled and they brutally put it down Pertuarbo knew the Emperor would never forgive him.

When news of Horus' betrayal came through, Pertuarbo knew that his only course of action for his Legion was to follow him. I don't think he wanted to do it, but he had no choice as he knew he would never be accepted by the Imperium.

But then Leman Russ apparently was also given dirty jobs that he didn't necessarily want to do, but he carried them out and didn't go Traitor. Perturabo also had as much reason to side with the Emperor as he did with Horus if that is the course of thinking we are going to take, as the Warmaster, Horus would have assigned many of the dirty jobs to Perturabo also, as the Index Astartes article seems to imply.

I guess I feel sympathetic to Perturabo due to how he was treated by his brothers and the Emperor, but not for why he turned traitor. Horus shamed him into joining his side after the Olympia Massacre and he believed, perhaps wrongly, that the Emperor couldn't forgive him for his and his Legions actions. After all, it was an Imperial World in open rebellion regardless of it being a Legion homeworld. Sure, it must have been hard for Perturabo, but the massacre was justified. I don't think that's to justify him turning traitor.

Magnus, nope, he caused his own downfall, he can't really be blamed for it because he was a puppet dancing to anothers tune but his arrogance blinded him.

I would say Angron because he was never really given a chance. Abducted and then abandoned, left for his Legion to deal with.

 SRSFACE wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Magnus doesnt feel tragic for me, it was his own arrogance and hubris thinking he knew better than the Emp and his brothers that led to his fall, the Wolves are just the Effect not the cause, he brought it on himself.

also he was a traitor through and through, he was told not to dabble by the emperor, then nikea was another chance from the emperor to bring him into line, both were completely ignored, he may have meant well but he damned himself through his own actions and deserves no sympathy for that, if anything its his sons that deserve the sympathy as they were not to blame.

Because he DID know better than the Emperor. He literally knew tragedy was about to happen and did the only thing he could to prevent it. It was the Emperor's hubris and arrogance that doomed Magnus and Big E himself. If The Emperor heeded the warnings, he probably wouldn't have died.





Serious question for everyone, are you familiar with actual tragic stories, as in the ones that defined it? Stuff like Oedipus, and the like? Bringing doom upon yourself is kind of the lynchpin of all those stories. It's about pride leading to our downfall. Like I said in the thread "who caused the Horus Heresy," everyone did. It was a lot of chest thumping and pride and anger and sadness on everyone's sides. The entire thing reads like an epic Greek tragedy.

Yeah im familier

He didnt know better thats the thing, he dealt with beings so far above his understanding that there is no way he could have understood, he doesnt even believe the gods are gods (which is half true)also his warning to the emperor was proof in the end that he had betrayed the emp, prior to the warning itself he had continued to dabble and allowed his legion to do so too, that is breaking both his word to emp about nikea and ignoring prior warnings not to delve too deep into the sea of souls, and if someone betrays you once, how can you trust them not to do so again

You feel for quite a few of the traitor primarchs.

Magnus: He was genuinely trying to help prevent the Heresy and to warn his brothers. He ended up destroying something that could have helped mankind, and got his planet destroyed in return. Would he have stayed loyal during the Heresy if the Wolves hadn't come after him? Would he have helped turn the tide? Or would he have willingly consorted with Chaos for victory? We'll never know.

Perturabo: Here is a primarch that would have liked nothing more than to be an engineer. But while other Legions got glory, his was turned into menial warriors and garrison minders. They did all the work, and their sacrifices were never glorified. Hell, even with his amazing skills, it was Dorn who was recalled to Terra. And to top it all off, his home world shames him by rebelling against the Emperor.

Angron: You have to feel for Angron. The poor kid gets enslaved, has implants that are slowly killing him, and is the only one who doesn't rule his adopted world. And when his father shows up, he doesn't help out Angron. No, he kidnaps Angron away from his friends and comrades and lets them die. What about bringing the Imperial Truth? What about freeing people from enslavement?

After that, perhaps Lorgar, only because he never wanted to fight. He just wanted to tell everybody how awesome his dad is, and his dad turns his back on that. And in the end, Lorgar is proven correct.

Horus turns because of his ambition and his fear of being cast aside by his father. Mortarion turns because he holds a grudge against the Emperor for killing his adoptive father.

Actually, the only primarchs without daddy issues are probably Fulgrim and Alpharius/Omegon. Fulgrim has already started to fall before Horus even approaches him. Though, what pushes him over the edge is that Horus tells him that the Emperor will cast them aside. Apharius and Omegon don't seem to have any connection to the Emperor.

Magnus.

Angron might be sympathetic if he wasn't such an donkey-cave.

Magnus, though he was arrogant enough to keep doing the naughty, and then destroyed the emperors webway project, the emperor showed no sympathy, and had he listened to Magnus the isstvan drop site massacre would have gone very differently

Also the emperor never gave Magnus any reasoning for banning his greatest strength


In the emperors defence he sent leman Russ to bring Magnus to him, not to destroy prospero

I'd say Perturabo. He joined the Emperor without a fuss, which is more than most primarchs did, then his army was split up too much for him to get credit for any of his victories, and he was declared a traitor for going overboard putting down a rebellion (and it's not like any other primarchs were doing the exact same thing at almost the same time, especially not the Space Wolves). Then he was betrayed by the traitor legions as well, so all that was really left for him to do was try get revenge for whatever grievances he could think of.

I'm always perplexed at the hate levelled at Magnus for breaking the edicts of Nicea. Mainly because virtually everyone seems to forget or ignore the fact that virtually all the loyalists did exactly the same as soon as they were drawn into the Heresy. Guilliaman and the Lion both re-established their Librariums as soon as it became apparent that the warp was the best weapon they had against the daemonic forces of the traitors, The Lion even going so far as to murder his closet Brother Redemptor when he voiced opposition to the order. Russ completely ignored it from the start out of the ignorant belief that his Rune Priests were somehow not using the warp, which is obviously false as the 1k sons could see their priests in warp form when using their second sight, They all broke the order as soon as THEY decided that it would do more good for the cause, which is exactly what Magnus was trying to do when he broke into the webway. So if Magnus displayed Hubris in thinking he knew better than the Emperor then so did Guilliman and The Lion.
The Edict was an arbitrary rule that was bowing to the superstitious and the ignorant and it's clear that the only Primarchs that lobbied for it. Hell even Angron, who hated psykers did not disband the few remaining Librarians in his legion.
Just as with Lorgar at Monarchia, The Emperor created problems because rather than just have a simple conversation with his sons, he humiliated and shamed them in front of an audience. Any person with the smallest modicum of people skills would see that as poor judgement. Even middle managers in office jobs around the world realise that it is far more effective to call an unruly employee into private and discuss problems rather than loudly condemn them in front of their colleagues. He was the worst kind of boss, lauding the cocky show boaters like Horus and Fulgrim, failing to acknowledge the quiet hard workers like Perurabo, ignoring the disablities of those with obvious handicaps like Angron and failing to reprimand the total pyschopaths like Curze as long as he was getting the job done. All of those things would make for a terrible middle manager let alone a galactic leader.

 Formosa wrote:
Magnus doesnt feel tragic for me, it was his own arrogance and hubris thinking he knew better than the Emp and his brothers that led to his fall, the Wolves are just the Effect not the cause, he brought it on himself.

also he was a traitor through and through, he was told not to dabble by the emperor, then nikea was another chance from the emperor to bring him into line, both were completely ignored, he may have meant well but he damned himself through his own actions and deserves no sympathy for that, if anything its his sons that deserve the sympathy as they were not to blame.

He broke Nikea trying to save the Imperium because it was the ONLY way to reach Terra in time. Astropathic messages take time and they are so imprescise that the correspondence would have actuallly taken almost as longer as properly traveling through the warp

I still to this day will never understand why the Emperor ignored Magnus. You killed a bunch of people and ruined my experiment to tell me frantically my favorite sons betrayed me? No impossible its not like I am almost all knowing about the warp and its dangers and its not like my son was wounded on davin and its not like there weren't signs of corruption on that planet, and its most certainly not like he was revived by a cult, these things point to nothing Magnus. You spilt the my first chemistry set I was playing with, go home and russ will be by later to get you.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
I'm always perplexed at the hate levelled at Magnus for breaking the edicts of Nicea. Mainly because virtually everyone seems to forget or ignore the fact that virtually all the loyalists did exactly the same as soon as they were drawn into the Heresy. Guilliaman and the Lion both re-established their Librariums as soon as it became apparent that the warp was the best weapon they had against the daemonic forces of the traitors, The Lion even going so far as to murder his closet Brother Redemptor when he voiced opposition to the order. Russ completely ignored it from the start out of the ignorant belief that his Rune Priests were. They all broke the order as soon as THEY decided that it would do more good for the cause, which is exactly what Magnus was trying to do when he broke into the webway. So if Magnus displayed Hubris in thinking he knew better than the Emperor then so did Guilliman and The Lion.

The difference is, i believe, that they did know better. They had experienced it first hand, after obeying the rule of the Emperor. They didn't break the Edict without cause other than necessity, Guilliman doesn't even know if there is an Emperor to obey anymore. That's the difference between them. There were other ways of taking his message to Terra, they might not be as reliable or quick, but Magnus chose to do the one thing that he was specifically asked not to do, the Edict of Nikaea was also known as the Trial of Magnus the Red, it was aimed more at him and his action over any other Primarch.

It probably wouldn't have made any difference if Magnus has sent his message by Astropath as according to the Wolf Hunt audio drama



I agree with you in regards to the Wolves though, Russ is a hypocrite in my opinion, but his get out of jail free card is that the Russ did not have a Librarius department therefore did not have to stop his Runepriests from using their powers. If you ask me the Edict was wrong to just ban a Librarius. The previous editions of fluff had the Emperor ban the use of Psychic Powers, which made much more sense.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
Hell even Angron, who hated psykers did not disband the few remaining Librarians in his legion.

Maybe Angron knew deep down that he needed the psykers kept around, he quite likely could have died if he hadn't been for them and we only have details of one instance.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:

Just as with Lorgar at Monarchia, The Emperor created problems because rather than just have a simple conversation with his sons, he humiliated and shamed them in front of an audience. Any person with the smallest modicum of people skills would see that as poor judgement. Even middle managers in office jobs around the world realise that it is far more effective to call an unruly employee into private and discuss problems rather than loudly condemn them in front of their colleagues. He was the worst kind of boss, lauding the cocky show boaters like Horus and Fulgrim, failing to acknowledge the quiet hard workers like Perurabo, ignoring the disablities of those with obvious handicaps like Angron and failing to reprimand the total pyschopaths like Curze as long as he was getting the job done. All of those things would make for a terrible middle manager let alone a galactic leader.

But the Primarchs were created to be generals and conquerors, they weren't created to be chaperoned around having their hands held.

No doubt he did handle certain situations and Primarchs very bad. It makes you wonder sometimes, what was his true intention for his Sons after the Great Crusade had ended. He wasn't going to be awarded father of the year awards by many of them. Curze was already rogue and likely to be number 3 to be deleted, who would have been next if the heresy had never had happened.

Magnus, "hell is full of good meanings, heaven is filled with good works".

At the point of the heresy, Magnus had no reason to believe, no concrete reason, that he was doing anything wrong. He had mostly defeated the flesh change, started the librarius, and participated in the crusade.

While his hubris was his downfall, other than just blindly listening to empy(like he was a god), there was too much of a veil over chaos for him to know how deep the pool was.

I would say Horus which I know is a weird thing but in the Horus heresy novels he's made to be a really likable character but I think the obvious one is Magnus simply because he was disliked simply because of what he was and that's one reason why I don't like the imperium, the fact they hate and fear pykers so much. the rest of the traitors I don't feel any sympathy for, angron is crazy, fulgrim is a ponce, konrad is crazy, and everyone is mind of meh

I actually would put Horus second. His fall was enhanced and aided magically, and was directly influenced by the Gods of Chaos. He doesn't get poisoned by the blade, he doesn't fall to Chaos. Poor dude got ruptured out of existence because of it. Tsk tsk.

How can anyone find Fulgrim sympathetic. He was the most treacherous primarch out their,, turned on the Emperor because the Emperor was less than perfect, then turned on the Iron Warrirors to become what he saw as a perfect being, then betrayed the other legions so his troops could rape and murder while the siege of Terra was going on, then betrayed the other legions in the eye to support the exsperiments of Fabius and to make more snuff films. Fulgrim and his Legion were the most worthy of having the Wolves sent after them.

Magnus is the only traitor primarch who went traitor due to getting screwed, but then DIDN'T go on to do something that erases all that sympathy.

There are other sympathetic Primarchs, Perturabo is one, even Angron to an extent. But that they're both also insane murderous psychopaths kills off a fair amount of any sympathy one can have for them.


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Ironclad Warlord wrote:
turned on the Emperor because the Emperor was less than perfect

According to what?

Fulgrim turned on the Emperor because he was being mind-controlled by a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh.

As a testament to Graham Mcneil's poor writing in this specific instance, Fulgrim's quest for perfection in all things had very little to do with his fall to Chaos. Having the Laer sword be the catalyst for the EC's degradation was a mistake, imo.

Didn't Fulgrim also purge the Daemon that possessed his body, thus attaining true Daemonhood himself and also erasing whatever sympathy you could've had for him?

I could see being sympathetic to Fulgrim after he killed Ferrus and was claimed by the Laer's Sword, but afterwards? Hell no! He made his choice.

Magnus is the only one who not only was legitimately screwed on all ends, but even in his status as Daemon Primarch, is STILL revolting against the powers that birthed him, namely Tzeentch.

I have argued the position that such is Magnus' brilliance and foresight and his defiance of Chaos, that he not only set Ahriman on the path to undo all that has been done, but also (without getting into the debate) also put the Blood Ravens in a position to survive in the Loyalists ranks and also help to undo the Legions Infernal.


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I could also feel sorry for Curze. From what I've heard, he's just too crazy for his own good.

I think there were a number of factors Mortarion chose to ride with Horus over the Emperer personally. The primary being Mort abhorred Psykers. now how logical that is...questionable when you look at the fact that Horus and his ilk were siding with the very fuel those Psykers use...

Mort never really liked the Emp though in the grand scheme. the dude shows up on a planet that he had unified and trained to fight the freaks who lived on the mountain including his adopted father, and straight up tells him i'm not following you unless you can prove you're better than me. Some hints right there as to Mortarion's inner workings imo. The Emp wins so Mort, true to his word, signs on but then proceeds to neglect nearly every member of the Death Guard not from Barbarus again shows his inherent self-centered nature.

so imo it was only a matter of time for him, he saw a chance to escape something he was never truly fully on board with and took it. off topic so i apologize...even as a big Mort fan i cannot find any sympathy for him.

i personally voted Magnus (1k sons was a great novel imo)...i recognize that his path was not necessarily pure or wholesome but, at the same time his Legion was cursed from day one and a lot of his decisions to break regs and dabble in the Warp was to help save his brethren. Hhe didn't follow orders and ended up paying the price but the sequence of events that lead to their fall was just brutal and you could nearly feel his heart breaking as the snowball grew with each step he took. Ahrimann remains one of my favorite characters.

 TheRedWingArmada wrote:
Didn't Fulgrim also purge the Daemon that possessed his body, thus attaining true Daemonhood himself and also erasing whatever sympathy you could've had for him?

Yes. However, that merely puts him in the camp of other Primarchs who had a sympathetic fall but then went on to be douchebags immediately after their fall and therefore vilify themselves.

It's hard to take seriously the assertion that Fulgrim was most "villanous" of traitor primarchs before and during his fall, considering people like Curze, Lorgar, Mortarion and Angron exist.

Fulgrim didn't purge the daemon. He told Lucius and the other captains that he had but was later forced by Lorgar to tell the truth.

Wut, really? What story is that in? Aurelian?

Whilst I voted Magnus, I think pretty much all of the traitor primarch's were screwed with in one way or another. Whether it was the Big E being a crap dad, chaos putting them in an unwinnable situation so they had to turn to chaos, or the other primarch's just being dicks to them in general, they all have pretty sad stories in the end.

 StarTrotter wrote:
I'd argue with you that the Emperor was somewhat stupid about it though. Hey second mightiest psyker in the entire world. Don't use your powers, the things you've been raised sense youth to do NO NOT AT ALL DON'T DO IT! Oh all the while using it yourself.

Empy was a pretty big dick, but so far BL hasn't covered those parts.

He warned Magnus so severely, yet rebuked Lorgar. Did he forget that Lorgar was raised on a heretical planet?


So far the only time the Empy appears in BL is when he helps Horus on Gorro. And Horus is reduced to a babbling 12 y o in his father's presence.

Russ and Mortarion aside, Magnus seemed to get along quite well with his brothers. In every HH book I've read (up to mid Angel Exterminatus), he's giving counsels or listening to his brothers. His hubris is noticeable, but still he never tries to humiliate his siblings - he wants to give them honest directions. He seems to be the 'old, experienced brother', always with a forethought.

Under this light, I feel what happened to him to be even more tragic; the Librarius program was to help the cause of the Imperium, and Prospero's education/living was something even the Tau would envy.

I feel a bit for Perturabo as well; always seem as the second option, as the one who came after his brothers to do menial work. Still, he could do different instead of waiting for his father's approval.

Kurze was mad and needed more steering than what the Emperor could spend with him. I believe Magnus would be quite the help; alas, they had very little interaction (AFAIK).

"Fulgrim" was one of the most shocking stuff I've read. I'd never let anyone 'innocent' near that book... The man was mind-fethed forever. He didn't even had a serious choice in the matter.

Alpharius and Omegon were bastards already (Legion book). I was revolted by their actions in the book. Deliverance Lost painted an even worse case. I don't pity them.

Horus could have followed a different path, but his hubris and pride made his choice for him. I don't think he could have escaped the fate that has befallen him.

Lorgar, as much as the others tried to steer him out the 'god-emperor' path, couldn't listen. With vipers like Kor Phaeron and Erebus, he wouldn't remain in the Imperium's grip for long anyway. Erebus is the most sniveling bastard I've read about, regarding 40k.

Angron and Mortarion were lost causes; they'd betray Emps sooner or later.

I don't think any of them really deserve any sympathy. I know that some of them grew up in really troubled planets and it had an result on the upbringing but to turn on your brothers (who some had strong brotherly ties to), the Empire you helped build, the Emperor who built you, and your legion that idolized you. There is no coming back. Some are more damning than others. Fulgrim and Horus come to mind.

 Inkubas wrote:
to turn on your brothers (who some had strong brotherly ties to), the Empire you helped build, the Emperor who built you, and your legion that idolized you.

Not all of them WANTED to lead a legion. Not all of them wanted a place in the Imperium. Not all of the wanted to be worshipped.

To some (Angron springs to mind) the Emperor's "kindness" was tantamount to slavery. Just because the Emperor created them didn't mean he owned them.

Just because someone is evil doesn't mean we can't feel pity or sorrow for them, or to share a connection through a common, identifiable set of feelings. There are tons of us with parent issues who can completely relate to being unable to live up to unrealistic expectations; of doing something we legitimately believed would please our parents/loved ones only to be crushed by their disappointment; of being faced with a loved one that we would always be compared (unfavorably) to--a friend or relative that we loved but who we would never be able to measure up to.

Granted, we didn't (most of us didn't, anyway) murder our brothers/friends/parents and burn their house down, but it's pretty easy to feel an understanding for the circumstances that led to the Primarchs to give in to be corrupted by these same feelings.

 Inkubas wrote:
I don't think any of them really deserve any sympathy. I know that some of them grew up in really troubled planets and it had an result on the upbringing but to turn on your brothers (who some had strong brotherly ties to), the Empire you helped build, the Emperor who built you, and your legion that idolized you. There is no coming back.

The Emperor did little to earn the loyalty of some of his sons - in Angron's case he did nothing. He took it as read that they would serve his vision, and when they did not he enforced his will by brutal demonstrations of power that left no room for debate, such as Monarchia.

If there is no coming back from Istvan V then why do the Wolves get a pass on Prospero? Brotherly loyalty was not an absolute even during the Great Crusade. The Wolves tried to wipe out the Thousand Sons at a time when the Sons still considered themselves loyal. That wasn't even the first time Russ had led his legion into battle against another - even ignoring what might have happened to the missing legions Russ fought the World Eaters before the Heresy, and he did so without even the weak excuse of having been ordered to do so by the Emperor. Isstvan V was brutal certainly, but it was not unprecedented.

Some are more damning than others. Fulgrim and Horus come to mind.

In this I half agree. Fulgrim seems the most unforgiveable - driven by egotism and hubris and with only the most passing regrets. Horus on the other hand did not fall by his own choice, but was actively brought down, poisoned in mind and body by the concerted effort of a conspiracy. Any of the primarchs might have fallen in the same circumstances.

I'd vote Magnus or Perturabo. Magnus for obvious reasons, trying to warn the Emperor and instead getting the Space Mutts sicced on him for using sorcery. Perturabo because the IWs were always given the most menial, backbreaking assignments and got zero credit for any of it, just constantly being crapped on, so it's no wonder they decided to side with Horus.

I feel bad for those loyal to a corpse who kills millions so his bones don't disappear. The emperor made 2 primarchs disappear horus never did that he asked them to join him. Who is the real evil one here.

OgreChubbs wrote:
I feel bad for those loyal to a corpse who kills millions so his bones don't disappear. The emperor made 2 primarchs disappear horus never did that he asked them to join him. Who is the real evil one here.

That would be the side selling their souls to the hellish "gods" of the warp who thrives on human misery and embody the worst in us. The Emperor sacrifices people for an end (that is, keeping humanity free from Chaos and ultimately alive) whereas the "gods" sacrifice people because they feel like it.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

OgreChubbs wrote:
I feel bad for those loyal to a corpse who kills millions so his bones don't disappear. The emperor made 2 primarchs disappear horus never did that he asked them to join him. Who is the real evil one here.

That would be the side selling their souls to the hellish "gods" of the warp who thrives on human misery and embody the worst in us. The Emperor sacrifices people for an end (that is, keeping humanity free from Chaos and ultimately alive) whereas the "gods" sacrifice people because they feel like it.

How do you know the chaos gods do not have an end? The set up the whole primarch kidnap where to put them how to get logar to find them scheme.

People want to feel sorry for Horus, except for one thing; While he was conspired against and even fell to the Anathema on Davin's Moon, he ultimately fell to Chaos because of a choice.

The choice was, believe in Erebus' vision (which was true, however Erebus never said HOW his vision was to become true, which was in fact with the Fall of Horus and the Emperor so Imperial Truth would vanish) or believe in Magnus, who really did show him the Truth.

Unfortunately, like so many arguments go these days, Erebus spoke first and painted an image identical to what Magnus was prepared to warn him of, so when Horus saw the two visions, he could only think "WELL ONE OF YOU IS LYING, AND EREBUS HAS BEEN HERE WAY LONGER!" Which was stupid because his reason for NOT trusting Magnus was "Our father said you couldn't do this, and now here you are doing this....wtf?" too which right afterwards, Horus goes "Feth my Father!"

So...get this.

Erebus says, "Careful! Someones lying to you!"
Then Magnus says, "Yeah! Someone IS lying to you! It's Erebus!!"
So Horus goes, "But Erebus is my bro! And you're doing what Dad told you not to do! YOUR CHAOS!!"
Then Horus goes onto say, "But feth Dad, I can do it better anyways."

SPIT-TAKE? You just chastized Magnus for going against Daddy, but then you decide you're going to kill Daddy anyways?

Failure goes to Horus for being a constipated child. lol

They've all got their fair share, but I'd probably go for Fulgrim. Before they retconned him to just be point blank evil, that is. In that case, I'd say Magnus. Especially after the nonsense of the Council of Nikaea.

The funny thing is that it ultimately comes down to daddy issues. The Emperor was a terrible father to them all, but the Traitors are the ones he gave actual reason to resent him. The only two who he didn't were Horus and Curze - and it was The Emperor's mistake to recognise Curze's obvious mental instability and handle it by basically saying "Stop being crazy, I'm The Emperor, now here's a Legion, go off and Crusade". Horus was corrupted by Chaos, but this was a result of Erebus who was a result of Lorgar, and Lorgar's resentment was entirely The Emperor's fault.

Think of it this way, because the Primarchs all have the mentality of needy teenagers. You spend all your savings and work your hands raw to build a gift for your father. It's an excellent gift, the greatest thing you have ever crafted. When your father comes home and sees it, his reaction is to shout at you before calling for your older brother and his friends to hack it apart with a chainsaw (while laughing at you the whole time). After this is done, your father forces you to kneel before your gloating brother and embarrass yourself in front of his friends. Your father makes it clear to you that you are inferior to your brother and that your hard work is not appreciated. That's what The Emperor did to Lorgar. That is why the Heresy began.

EDIT: Here's a question. Why didn't The Emperor make more Primarchs? He clearly had the technology, and he clearly had great plans for them. When he lost them all (a bit of fluff that is very silly but nevertheless must be accepted because it's so crucial), why didn't he just make replacements?

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Wut, really? What story is that in? Aurelian?

Yes it's in Aurelian.

OgreChubbs wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

OgreChubbs wrote:
I feel bad for those loyal to a corpse who kills millions so his bones don't disappear. The emperor made 2 primarchs disappear horus never did that he asked them to join him. Who is the real evil one here.

That would be the side selling their souls to the hellish "gods" of the warp who thrives on human misery and embody the worst in us. The Emperor sacrifices people for an end (that is, keeping humanity free from Chaos and ultimately alive) whereas the "gods" sacrifice people because they feel like it.

How do you know the chaos gods do not have an end? The set up the whole primarch kidnap where to put them how to get logar to find them scheme.

Because we're not part of the story. Seriously, what part of the fluff paints Chaos as a good thing for the survival of humanity without simultaneously being very wrong?

Let's not forget that the majority of traitor Primarchs weren't fighting for Chaos, they were fighting with Chaos. Most of them had their own agendas. Even corrupted Horus believed that the Emperor was bad and he needed to save humanity from him.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

OgreChubbs wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

OgreChubbs wrote:
I feel bad for those loyal to a corpse who kills millions so his bones don't disappear. The emperor made 2 primarchs disappear horus never did that he asked them to join him. Who is the real evil one here.

That would be the side selling their souls to the hellish "gods" of the warp who thrives on human misery and embody the worst in us. The Emperor sacrifices people for an end (that is, keeping humanity free from Chaos and ultimately alive) whereas the "gods" sacrifice people because they feel like it.

How do you know the chaos gods do not have an end? The set up the whole primarch kidnap where to put them how to get logar to find them scheme.

Because we're not part of the story. Seriously, what part of the fluff paints Chaos as a good thing for the survival of humanity without simultaneously being very wrong?

Stories are always much more interesting if you try to see the shades of grey. Chaos is much like the Imperium in many respects but foremostly in 'join us or die.' Joining Chaos in a symbiotic way is more about borrowing power to complete a goal or even avoiding an inevitable doom for the whole civilization ala the Eldar than being 'mwhahaha eeeevil.' One of my favorite interpretations of the Emp is that he himself is trying to become a god in the warp, hence the whole soul feeding thing and rise of Emp worship. Remember that the warp isn't just an evil alternate dimension. Its the dimension of emotions. Its just the strongest most prevalent emotions that run the warp. The warp is full of 'hellish' things because it reflects the hellish nature of the people in the galaxy.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
(...)
Because we're not part of the story. Seriously, what part of the fluff paints Chaos as a good thing for the survival of humanity without simultaneously being very wrong?

Those written from the point of view of the Chaos followers, before 2012. The novel 'Pawns of Chaos' is a good example, but at the end of the day all Chaos followers thought they were doing the 'right' thing. Many of them were insane though, so their definition of 'right' was not really 'right'.

An example: if you think about it, Lorgar just refused to follow an entity he believed was a good, because he thought the Emperor was a liar and a tyrant too. So he embarked in a search of the ultimate truth about the meaning of life, not caring about glory, power or wealth. Once the truth was revealed, he fully committed himself to join humanity together with their true gods, aiming to create an alliance that will dominate the galaxy.

Also, Chaos was not in war with humanity until the Great Crusade and the Emperor´s attempt at destroying all forms of religion. Gods do nothing unless seriously provoked.

There has been a change in the background, making Marines more heroic, the Emperor a good guy and the Imperium a harsh, but inevitable need. At the same time, Chaos has been moved from Lovecraft/Moorcock/classic mythology to a bunch of incredible dumb villains-of-the-week idiots. I liked it when there were shades of grey in every faction, and see this change as a really bad move.

So now we have full heroic, shiny, white-knighty loyalist Primarchs, and we are supposed to feel sympathy for the fallen ones because they were misleaded or mistreated by their dad?.

None of thede devious traitors deserves a drop of pity or such things, they more or less set about the downfall of mankind! Damned traitors one and all

Trondheim wrote:None of thede devious traitors deserves a drop of pity or such things, they more or less set about the downfall of mankind! Damned traitors one and all

I would probably go back and read what AlmightWalrus just posted above you. This pretty much explains everything you need to know about the relationship between Chaos, Chaos Space Marine and the Imperium.

And if you were to think about it for more than a second, which is really bad because I know I'm in this bracket, would you really NOT side with the Chaos Marines who were in service to observable Gods and not the demi-God, Emperor-thing?

I know we look at them like "UGH! BAD BAD BAD," but some perspective and context.

Here is a really goofy example, but worth mentioning: Nurgle. Ok, so he makes everything rot and die....but he makes his followers happy about this and they feel no pain? Pretty sweet deal from an eternal God, wouldn't you think? I mean yeah, it's yucky, you smell and everything buzzes all the time... but you're happy, you feel none of the pain (and infact rejoice in the pestulance and cycle of death and rebirth), and you are in service to a God that rewards you for your service.

Best quote ever that should paint the picture of Chaos followers is the quote takin from the CSM dex about Chaos Lords: "I killed millions in service of the Emperor and he gave me nothing but his damning silence. Now his sons yelp for every life I take, while the Gods promise me the galaxy."

PRETTY SWEET DEAL, IF YOU ASK ME.

This can also be rolled up with the Daemon Worlds that have cities and civilizations living on them.

Want a better example of how a bad thing could be not-such-a-bad-thing? Look at Darkseid from Superman. In the end of one of the Superman cartoons, he gets into a final squall with Darkseid. Superman beats the ever loving crap out of Darkseid and throws him from his palace and amongst the peasants and says "See? You're free now! Your god is dead!" and what do the followers turn around and do? They pick the monster up (which is impossible because he ways thousands of pounds if not tons) and start codling him like a puppy with a broken foot. "Oh, master! Are you ok, Master? We'll take care of you, oh Lord."

To which Darkseid says the one thing that would piss any hero off and make them wanna take the cape off: "I told you Cal'el. I am many things, but here, I am God."

PWNT*

da001 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
(...)
Because we're not part of the story. Seriously, what part of the fluff paints Chaos as a good thing for the survival of humanity without simultaneously being very wrong?

Those written from the point of view of the Chaos followers, before 2012. The novel 'Pawns of Chaos' is a good example, but at the end of the day all Chaos followers thought they were doing the 'right' thing. Many of them were insane though, so their definition of 'right' was not really 'right'.

An example: if you think about it, Lorgar just refused to follow an entity he believed was a good, because he thought the Emperor was a liar and a tyrant too. So he embarked in a search of the ultimate truth about the meaning of life, not caring about glory, power or wealth. Once the truth was revealed, he fully committed himself to join humanity together with their true gods, aiming to create an alliance that will dominate the galaxy.

Also, Chaos was not in war with humanity until the Great Crusade and the Emperor´s attempt at destroying all forms of religion. Gods do nothing unless seriously provoked.

There has been a change in the background, making Marines more heroic, the Emperor a good guy and the Imperium a harsh, but inevitable need. At the same time, Chaos has been moved from Lovecraft/Moorcock/classic mythology to a bunch of incredible dumb villains-of-the-week idiots. I liked it when there were shades of grey in every faction, and see this change as a really bad move.

So now we have full heroic, shiny, white-knighty loyalist Primarchs, and we are supposed to feel sympathy for the fallen ones because they were misleaded or mistreated by their dad?.

When given the choice of joining a God of Torture-Rape and unfullfiled excessive longing I think I'll pass, thankyouverymuch. The Emperor was at least trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity, the Chaos Gods have no care for those who are "too weak" to carve their own little niche out.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
When given the choice of joining a God of Torture-Rape and unfullfiled excessive longing I think I'll pass, thankyouverymuch. The Emperor was at least trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity, the Chaos Gods have no care for those who are "too weak" to carve their own little niche out.

Indeed, at the end of the day no matter how you rationalize how "great" the boons of chaos may be, at the very end of the day you are deluding yourself into believing that service for the Dark Gods is anything but evil and self-destructive. Not only are the Chaos Gods fickle and are just as likely to give you tentacles for eyes as they will give you enhanced strength, but your life ironically becomes increasingly one-dimensional as you fall deeper and deeper into devoting yourself towards their ends (willingly or not). For every Daemon Prince there are millions that die unremembered and in horrible agony, their souls being picked apart by daemons, for you to think that you're any different is the trap that has captured fools throughout the ages.

The Imperium, decrepit as it is, has kept mankind alive for 10 millennia, and has legitimately pleasant worlds like those in Ultramar or Agri-worlds. What daemon worlds can one name where normal human beings could actually live in relative peace without fear of their souls being devoured in the Eye of Terror? I can't think of any that can come near to the worlds I have mentioned, and even in the hellish death worlds of the Imperium you don't have to suffer fates like those in the Realm of Chaos.

 Grimskul wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
When given the choice of joining a God of Torture-Rape and unfullfiled excessive longing I think I'll pass, thankyouverymuch. The Emperor was at least trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity, the Chaos Gods have no care for those who are "too weak" to carve their own little niche out.

Indeed, at the end of the day no matter how you rationalize how "great" the boons of chaos may be, at the very end of the day you are deluding yourself into believing that service for the Dark Gods is anything but evil and self-destructive. Not only are the Chaos Gods fickle and are just as likely to give you tentacles for eyes as they will give you enhanced strength, but your life ironically becomes increasingly one-dimensional as you fall deeper and deeper into devoting yourself towards their ends (willingly or not). For every Daemon Prince there are millions that die unremembered and in horrible agony, their souls being picked apart by daemons, for you to think that you're any different is the trap that has captured fools throughout the ages.

The Imperium, decrepit as it is, has kept mankind alive for 10 millennia, and has legitimately pleasant worlds like those in Ultramar or Agri-worlds. What daemon worlds can one name where normal human beings could actually live in relative peace without fear of their souls being devoured in the Eye of Terror? I can't think of any that can come near to the worlds I have mentioned, and even in the hellish death worlds of the Imperium you don't have to suffer fates like those in the Realm of Chaos.

That´s a matter of interpretation.

Many worlds 'liberated' by the Emperor during the Crusade were doing just fine before being forced to abide by the rule of a bloodthirsty tyrant. Chaos was around during the Dark Age of Technology and during all stages of human history, and it was only when a non-human entity used humanity as a weapon against them that things turned really bad for everyone.

Also, the Imperium is described as 'the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable'. Most of their worlds are described as Hell for most of its inhabitants. Compare it with the few non-imperial human worlds we know, and you will see a big difference. Even in some of the few Daemon Worlds described you will find better places to be.

Coming to think of it, Chaos worlds are mostly medieval-fantasy worlds. Read 'Daemon World', by Ben Counter, for example. Or the worlds described in Hammer of Daemons. They look like something taken from Moorcock, Howard or George R R Martin. And they sure look exactly as the world of WFB, which includes a gate to the Eye of Terror. Sure, there is a lot of suffering, but there is also hope, dreams and a lot of things you will not find in the ruthless tyranny of the depths of a Hive World. The only exception is when a Chaos Space Marine, or a Primarch, is in charge. But this is supposed to be really rare.

And Slaanesh is just the god of obssession. Aphrodite, Venus, or Freya are the obvious reference here, just like Mars, Ares, or Tyr are Khorne equivalents. Sure the gods are really nasty when at war, but they have been around since forever and it hasn´t been that bad, at least not compared with the hell of a life the average imperial citizen endures. This is mostly because the gods completely ignore humanity most of the time.

Also... what do we know about the true motivations of the Emperor? He turned the galaxy into a nightmarish hellhole for 10000 years, and justifying that by saying that he was trying to do the best for humanity sounds odd. What if he is a god? What if he were merely a powerful psyker trying to do what the Silent King did to the C´tan? What if he were a tool used by other force?

Another vote for Magnus from me.

 da001 wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
When given the choice of joining a God of Torture-Rape and unfullfiled excessive longing I think I'll pass, thankyouverymuch. The Emperor was at least trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity, the Chaos Gods have no care for those who are "too weak" to carve their own little niche out.

Indeed, at the end of the day no matter how you rationalize how "great" the boons of chaos may be, at the very end of the day you are deluding yourself into believing that service for the Dark Gods is anything but evil and self-destructive. Not only are the Chaos Gods fickle and are just as likely to give you tentacles for eyes as they will give you enhanced strength, but your life ironically becomes increasingly one-dimensional as you fall deeper and deeper into devoting yourself towards their ends (willingly or not). For every Daemon Prince there are millions that die unremembered and in horrible agony, their souls being picked apart by daemons, for you to think that you're any different is the trap that has captured fools throughout the ages.

The Imperium, decrepit as it is, has kept mankind alive for 10 millennia, and has legitimately pleasant worlds like those in Ultramar or Agri-worlds. What daemon worlds can one name where normal human beings could actually live in relative peace without fear of their souls being devoured in the Eye of Terror? I can't think of any that can come near to the worlds I have mentioned, and even in the hellish death worlds of the Imperium you don't have to suffer fates like those in the Realm of Chaos.

That´s a matter of interpretation.

Many worlds 'liberated' by the Emperor during the Crusade were doing just fine before being forced to abide by the rule of a bloodthirsty tyrant. Chaos was around during the Dark Age of Technology and during all stages of human history, and it was only when a non-human entity used humanity as a weapon against them that things turned really bad for everyone.

Also, the Imperium is described as 'the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable'. Most of their worlds are described as Hell for most of its inhabitants. Compare it with the few non-imperial human worlds we know, and you will see a big difference. Even in some of the few Daemon Worlds described you will find better places to be.

Coming to think of it, Chaos worlds are mostly medieval-fantasy worlds. Read 'Daemon World', by Ben Counter, for example. Or the worlds described in Hammer of Daemons. They look like something taken from Moorcock, Howard or George R R Martin. And they sure look exactly as the world of WFB, which includes a gate to the Eye of Terror. Sure, there is a lot of suffering, but there is also hope, dreams and a lot of things you will not find in the ruthless tyranny of the depths of a Hive World. The only exception is when a Chaos Space Marine, or a Primarch, is in charge. But this is supposed to be really rare.

And Slaanesh is just the god of obssession. Aphrodite, Venus, or Freya are the obvious reference here, just like Mars, Ares, or Tyr are Khorne equivalents. Sure the gods are really nasty when at war, but they have been around since forever and it hasn´t been that bad, at least not compared with the hell of a life the average imperial citizen endures. This is mostly because the gods completely ignore humanity most of the time.

Also... what do we know about the true motivations of the Emperor? He turned the galaxy into a nightmarish hellhole for 10000 years, and justifying that by saying that he was trying to do the best for humanity sounds odd. What if he is a god? What if he were merely a powerful psyker trying to do what the Silent King did to the C´tan? What if he were a tool used by other force?

What if the Chaos Gods are in fact Killer Rabbits from another dimension that needs humanity to eat every other existing universe?

If you think that's a silly proposition, it's because it is. Likewise, we've got 25 years of fluff saying that the Emperor was trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity and that the Chaos Gods care little for humanity at large. Ignoring that just because you feel like it is perfectly fine, but it's not the foundation of a good argument.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 da001 wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
When given the choice of joining a God of Torture-Rape and unfullfiled excessive longing I think I'll pass, thankyouverymuch. The Emperor was at least trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity, the Chaos Gods have no care for those who are "too weak" to carve their own little niche out.

Indeed, at the end of the day no matter how you rationalize how "great" the boons of chaos may be, at the very end of the day you are deluding yourself into believing that service for the Dark Gods is anything but evil and self-destructive. Not only are the Chaos Gods fickle and are just as likely to give you tentacles for eyes as they will give you enhanced strength, but your life ironically becomes increasingly one-dimensional as you fall deeper and deeper into devoting yourself towards their ends (willingly or not). For every Daemon Prince there are millions that die unremembered and in horrible agony, their souls being picked apart by daemons, for you to think that you're any different is the trap that has captured fools throughout the ages.

The Imperium, decrepit as it is, has kept mankind alive for 10 millennia, and has legitimately pleasant worlds like those in Ultramar or Agri-worlds. What daemon worlds can one name where normal human beings could actually live in relative peace without fear of their souls being devoured in the Eye of Terror? I can't think of any that can come near to the worlds I have mentioned, and even in the hellish death worlds of the Imperium you don't have to suffer fates like those in the Realm of Chaos.

That´s a matter of interpretation.

Many worlds 'liberated' by the Emperor during the Crusade were doing just fine before being forced to abide by the rule of a bloodthirsty tyrant. Chaos was around during the Dark Age of Technology and during all stages of human history, and it was only when a non-human entity used humanity as a weapon against them that things turned really bad for everyone.

Also, the Imperium is described as 'the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable'. Most of their worlds are described as Hell for most of its inhabitants. Compare it with the few non-imperial human worlds we know, and you will see a big difference. Even in some of the few Daemon Worlds described you will find better places to be.

Coming to think of it, Chaos worlds are mostly medieval-fantasy worlds. Read 'Daemon World', by Ben Counter, for example. Or the worlds described in Hammer of Daemons. They look like something taken from Moorcock, Howard or George R R Martin. And they sure look exactly as the world of WFB, which includes a gate to the Eye of Terror. Sure, there is a lot of suffering, but there is also hope, dreams and a lot of things you will not find in the ruthless tyranny of the depths of a Hive World. The only exception is when a Chaos Space Marine, or a Primarch, is in charge. But this is supposed to be really rare.

And Slaanesh is just the god of obssession. Aphrodite, Venus, or Freya are the obvious reference here, just like Mars, Ares, or Tyr are Khorne equivalents. Sure the gods are really nasty when at war, but they have been around since forever and it hasn´t been that bad, at least not compared with the hell of a life the average imperial citizen endures. This is mostly because the gods completely ignore humanity most of the time.

Also... what do we know about the true motivations of the Emperor? He turned the galaxy into a nightmarish hellhole for 10000 years, and justifying that by saying that he was trying to do the best for humanity sounds odd. What if he is a god? What if he were merely a powerful psyker trying to do what the Silent King did to the C´tan? What if he were a tool used by other force?

What if the Chaos Gods are in fact Killer Rabbits from another dimension that needs humanity to eat every other existing universe?

If you think that's a silly proposition, it's because it is. Likewise, we've got 25 years of fluff saying that the Emperor was trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity and that the Chaos Gods care little for humanity at large. Ignoring that just because you feel like it is perfectly fine, but it's not the foundation of a good argument.

The Emperor was a terrible man that crushed many under his foot with little regard and was absolutely idiotic despite his "intellect"
The Chaos Gods care little for humans besides being fed by them but largely treat humanity at best like playthings. Under them crazy things happen and your planet might develop only to be destroyed or not with an extremely random reasoning behind it that is unfatomable.

Both options are terrible. Despite my love for chaos, the Emperor is the only choice. If we are going to suffer at least let us suffer under the heel of a "human" whom has good intentions gone horridly wrong.

Alpharius, follow by Curze, Magnus and Angron.

Alpharius joined Horus out of loyalty to the Emperor in a true moral quandary kind of way. Curze and Angron were already pants-on-head-crazy and were more tragic; Angron already had reason to hate the Emperor, and Curze was already toeing the line prior to the Heresy, but for doing what he thought was most effective. Magnus has already been mentioned heavily.

 da001 wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
When given the choice of joining a God of Torture-Rape and unfullfiled excessive longing I think I'll pass, thankyouverymuch. The Emperor was at least trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity, the Chaos Gods have no care for those who are "too weak" to carve their own little niche out.

Indeed, at the end of the day no matter how you rationalize how "great" the boons of chaos may be, at the very end of the day you are deluding yourself into believing that service for the Dark Gods is anything but evil and self-destructive. Not only are the Chaos Gods fickle and are just as likely to give you tentacles for eyes as they will give you enhanced strength, but your life ironically becomes increasingly one-dimensional as you fall deeper and deeper into devoting yourself towards their ends (willingly or not). For every Daemon Prince there are millions that die unremembered and in horrible agony, their souls being picked apart by daemons, for you to think that you're any different is the trap that has captured fools throughout the ages.

The Imperium, decrepit as it is, has kept mankind alive for 10 millennia, and has legitimately pleasant worlds like those in Ultramar or Agri-worlds. What daemon worlds can one name where normal human beings could actually live in relative peace without fear of their souls being devoured in the Eye of Terror? I can't think of any that can come near to the worlds I have mentioned, and even in the hellish death worlds of the Imperium you don't have to suffer fates like those in the Realm of Chaos.

That´s a matter of interpretation.

Many worlds 'liberated' by the Emperor during the Crusade were doing just fine before being forced to abide by the rule of a bloodthirsty tyrant. Chaos was around during the Dark Age of Technology and during all stages of human history, and it was only when a non-human entity used humanity as a weapon against them that things turned really bad for everyone.

Also, the Imperium is described as 'the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable'. Most of their worlds are described as Hell for most of its inhabitants. Compare it with the few non-imperial human worlds we know, and you will see a big difference. Even in some of the few Daemon Worlds described you will find better places to be.

Coming to think of it, Chaos worlds are mostly medieval-fantasy worlds. Read 'Daemon World', by Ben Counter, for example. Or the worlds described in Hammer of Daemons. They look like something taken from Moorcock, Howard or George R R Martin. And they sure look exactly as the world of WFB, which includes a gate to the Eye of Terror. Sure, there is a lot of suffering, but there is also hope, dreams and a lot of things you will not find in the ruthless tyranny of the depths of a Hive World. The only exception is when a Chaos Space Marine, or a Primarch, is in charge. But this is supposed to be really rare.

And Slaanesh is just the god of obssession. Aphrodite, Venus, or Freya are the obvious reference here, just like Mars, Ares, or Tyr are Khorne equivalents. Sure the gods are really nasty when at war, but they have been around since forever and it hasn´t been that bad, at least not compared with the hell of a life the average imperial citizen endures. This is mostly because the gods completely ignore humanity most of the time.

Also... what do we know about the true motivations of the Emperor? He turned the galaxy into a nightmarish hellhole for 10000 years, and justifying that by saying that he was trying to do the best for humanity sounds odd. What if he is a god? What if he were merely a powerful psyker trying to do what the Silent King did to the C´tan? What if he were a tool used by other force?

The biggest example I can think of Chaos actually not being all that bad for a planet is the Laer. The Laer were a group of perfectly happy Xenos rolling about in gigantic orgies while praciting fine arts and seemingly not having anything to support having gone to war in the recent past. Then The Emperor's Children pop by and massacre them.

Angron for me.

I just don't believe that it was impossible to remove the nails. Regardless of how arcane their workings were, the Emperor's knowledge of biosciences combined with the Admech's skills with cybernetic brain interfaces should have been able to solve the problem, given time. Without the nails, Angron and the War Hounds would have had a very different story.

Horus gets my second vote.

Torquar wrote:
Angron for me.

I just don't believe that it was impossible to remove the nails. Regardless of how arcane their workings were, the Emperor's knowledge of biosciences combined with the Admech's skills with cybernetic brain interfaces should have been able to solve the problem, given time. Without the nails, Angron and the War Hounds would have had a very different story.

This. I like the paranoid-persecutory eternal question of "Did the Emperor leave Angron this way as a means to an end in some long-term nefarious purpose? Or did he just see what Angron had become and decide he wasn't worth the effort to fix?"

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
(...)
What if the Chaos Gods are in fact Killer Rabbits from another dimension that needs humanity to eat every other existing universe?

If you think that's a silly proposition, it's because it is. Likewise, we've got 25 years of fluff saying that the Emperor was trying to make the Galaxy a better place for humanity and that the Chaos Gods care little for humanity at large. Ignoring that just because you feel like it is perfectly fine, but it's not the foundation of a good argument.

I mentioned some sources... actually just about any source that it is not written from the point of view of an imperial propagandist. 'Pawns of Chaos', 'Daemon World', 'The First Heretic' (about Lorgar´s motivations), 'The Sabbat Worlds Crusade', the Liber Chaotica, the Index Astartes... there are many sources that depict the Emperor and the Imperium in a rather bad light, and that develope Chaos´ characters beyond the 'they are just eeeeeeevil' you seem to enjoy.

Have you got any Black Library book? Open it and find the Introduction. You will find a page that starts with 'It is the 41st millennium'. Keep reading and you will eventually get to the point I quoted you, where it talks about the Imperium being 'the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable'.

We´ve got 25 years of fluff saying that the Imperium is a hellhole and that nobody cares about humanity. Ignoring that becase you feel like it and want the Imperium to be a 'good place' is perfectly fine, but it´s not the foundation of a good argument. Mentioning official sources supporting your point of view (like I do with mine) could make it more interesting.

First and foremost among the rare sources supporting your view of the Emperor as a good guy is the 7th edition Rulebook. And the 6th edition Rulebook did something similar. This is why I talked about the background before 2012. We have moved from 'the Emperor was a bloodthirsty maniac, and the Imperium an all-out nightmarish regime worse than any other mankind has known' (1985-2012) to 'Space Marines are good guys and the Emperor a benevolent tyrant' (2012-2014). It was rather gradual, but the change is there.

Lorgar more than Magnus for me.

Magnus was explicitly told not to use his powers, and in using them he ruined the Emperor's Webway Project, which I believe was directly linked to the fact Malcador/Emperor had to sit on it during and after the battle of Terra to stop the Daemons pouring through.

Lorgar was trying to impress his father and was simultaneously warned as he was punished and humiliated, which was hardly fair when for all the injustice and stupidity caused by the Imperial religion, in modern 40k it is significant in preventing Chaos from taking root.

That's a bit of a catch-22. The Imperial Creed is protecting humanity from a threat that exists only because Lorgar brought it upon them in the first place. If the Heresy hadn't happened, there would be no breach in the webway and the Emperor would be fine.

I'd say that Lorgar is ultimately one of the least sympathetic Primarchs. The Emperor outright told him to stop worshiping him, but that's the only stimulus that was required to bring about his fall. He wasn't abused, he didn't have a gak life, there were no nails in his head pushing him to incite violence, no torturous nightmares about his own death or the Eye of Terror like Curze and Perturabo. He wasn't an outcast, he and Magnus were best friends, and the only Primarch he was ever explicitly at odds with was Guilliman.

So what exactly drove Lorgar to chaos? Nothing but his own neurotic obsession with worship; and once he'd found something that would accept his worship, he had zero compunction about throwing all of Humanity under the bus.

Even Magnus, despite being a pretentious idiot, didn't explicitly turn against the Emperor until his entire planet was razed to the ground and thousands of his sons were slaughtered by the hypocrite Space Wolves. Up until that moment, he was still firmly on the Emperor's team, despite everything that had happened.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
That's a bit of a catch-22. The Imperial Creed is protecting humanity from a threat that exists only because Lorgar brought it upon them in the first place. If the Heresy hadn't happened, there would be no breach in the webway and the Emperor would be fine.

I'd say that Lorgar is ultimately one of the least sympathetic Primarchs. The Emperor outright told him to stop worshiping him, but that's the only stimulus that was required to bring about his fall. He wasn't abused, he didn't have a gak life, there were no nails in his head pushing him to incite violence, no torturous nightmares about his own death or the Eye of Terror like Curze and Perturabo. He wasn't an outcast, he and Magnus were best friends, and the only Primarch he was ever explicitly at odds with was Guilliman.

So what exactly drove Lorgar to chaos? Nothing but his own neurotic obsession with worship; and once he'd found something that would accept his worship, he had zero compunction about throwing all of Humanity under the bus.

Even Magnus, despite being a pretentious idiot, didn't explicitly turn against the Emperor until his entire planet was razed to the ground and thousands of his sons were slaughtered by the hypocrite Space Wolves. Up until that moment, he was still firmly on the Emperor's team, despite everything that had happened.

You should check out The First Heretic.

Lorgar doesn't just skip merrily into the arms of Chaos. He may not have been abused physically as a child, but he DID grow up on a planet that had been touched by Chaos hundreds of years ago. The seeds of his downfall had been planted even then; the society of Colchis made his dependence on faith a given. The society he grew up with also began the poisoning of his soul.

Lorgar is in many ways ruled by his fear. He fears disappointing those around him, fears being a failure, fears not being able to measure up to his brothers. Erebus and Kor Phaeron play on these fears to steer him towards the Chaos forces that they themselves have already been corrupted by.

Is there any big event that corrupts Lorgar? Not so much. Really, he is corrupted a little at a time over the course of his entire life. The destruction of the worlds he brought into compliance aren't the event that drove him to Chaos; they were just the excuse that his treasonous advisors had been waiting for to reave him from the Emperor and into their corrupt little circle. Lorgar is like a kid brought up in a cult. He wasn't corrupted in one fell swoop like some of the others. Instead, he was brainwashed so slowly (and thus, so thoroughly) that he wound up being one of the truest believers.

I'm not so sure it makes him one of the most sympathetic Primarchs--he's a hard guy to like. But it absolutely makes his fall the most believable, at least to me.

The First Heretic is where I'm getting my information from.

Lorgar's planet was touched by chaos? So was the Lion's; most of the Primarchs had interactions with Chaos before the Emperor found them.

I think you're right that his fall wasn't sympathetic so as much as believable. I'd even go so far as to say that it was much better written than Horus' fall.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
The First Heretic is where I'm getting my information from.

Lorgar's planet was touched by chaos? So was the Lion's; most of the Primarchs had interactions with Chaos before the Emperor found them.

I think you're right that his fall wasn't sympathetic so as much as believable. I'd even go so far as to say that it was much better written than Horus' fall.

Oh, absolutely better than Horus's. Bottom of the believability ladder has to go to Fulgrim, though.

Alright. Here's what I would say. Let's try to see it from the perspective of the Emperor. He unites mankind through the worst time in it's history when humanity was going to burn out in the old night and proceeds to unify humanity by destroying religion (either to unify humanity or to stop chaos or even both). He does so with conquest and through might because humanity cannot come together in peace and SUCCEEDED!
He then decides to conquer all the stars and unit all the lost colonies of humanity in the same way. As he cannot do this solo, he builds 20 genetic 'sons' with his own DNA and the help of the Chaos gods. He doesn't uphold his bargain and the chaos gods toss his sons all over to piss him off (also making it so that they can be susceptible to chaos).
Emperor goes WTF and starts to look for his sons through the stars. Is he attached to them? Not in anyway apparent but he does have a connection with them seen through how he likes Horus (the first one found) and his discussion and talks with Magnus pre and post separation. The previous army he used to unify the world was destroyed because why leave such a dangerous tool to start up things back home.
The Emperor makes the space marine legions and each time they find a lost son assigns him to the legion based on the primarch's genetic makeup. Does he care about if they all like him? Not really they just need to follow and obey. During this crusade worlds are conqured and mankind has pushed xeno threats and unified planets with force or just diplomacy.
We are almost complete unifying the world. There are no religions because of the Imperial Truth and the Xeno races are being pushed back. All is good. However, we still have chaos travel which is dangerous and unstable. The Emperor's solution is to create or access the webway. Keep in mind that the Eldar were mortified that humanity did no know of chaos and it's influence. He cannot trust this grand scheme so he just's up and leaves.

Horus (his most trusted son) falls and turns to chaos. His reason was to strengthen the Imperium and quickly evolves to just a mad power dash with no nobility behind it. His brothers follow him for varying reasons. Some because they were tricked and others because it's in their best interest. It doesn't matter the end result is that the loyalists and traitors fight and die against each other. This leads to the fight with the Emperor. During that time massive sacrifice is done. Sanguine sacrifices himself to allow a chink in Horus' armor knowing he would die in the process (he was able to see future events), the sigilite scarified himself by keeping the golden chair running and burning out into nothing both in soul and body (wasn't strong enough but knew that anyway) and the Emperor HESITATES to kill/destroy his loved son Horus and then CHOOSES to be tied to the Golden throne where he suffers non stop holding back the forces of chaos and acting as a light house for humanity.

His last order before he goes on the chair is to exterminate the traitorous forces.

So history lesson aside the Emperor was willing to sacrifice everyone and everything (himself included) to unify and save humanity. He proved this by doing this pre-heresy. Will he have used Magnus as the beacon. Probably but it sounded like it was going to be a temporary thing. Even if it wasn't it's not like he wasn't above doing it himself.
There are moments in the interactions between characters in the HH and the Emperor that you see a fatherly figure for humanity. He is upset that Horus rebels, he does want to help his loyalist sons and feels that burden, he was disappointed with Magnus when he broke the Edith of Nikeah and later came to warn him of Horus' betray. Even with that he had sent the Wolves to bring back Magnus but Horus switched that message to destroy Magnus something Ferrus was prepared to so as the 'executioner'.

The Emperor is portrayed as a detached figure because, depending on the book, the perspective is based on the Legion and the perception of him. Ultimately, anything that contradicts that is just Chaos propaganda. Finally, there's is no advancement in Chaos. Chaos exists in constant conflict, pure indulgence, disease or decay or the pursuit of self destructive knowledge. The eye of terror is poison to the mortal form and any sane individual would avoid that with the plague. Why people seem to think that Chaos society can thrive and exist is beyond me.

I get that you're trying to make a point there, Inkubas, but you've got a big wall of text with a lot of composition errors in it, and I'll admit that I'm not entirely sure what you're saying beyond that you like the Emperor and don't understand why other people don't agree with you.

If there's something else, I think you might want to give the post a quick edit. You might be the victim of some bad auto-correcting or some tablet/smart phone issues.

In any event, Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Master of Mankind novel should clear up any lingering doubts about how benevolent/evil the Emperor really was! (Or leave us with more deliberate confusion.)

Yea. I'll look over my wall of text and make it more reader friendly when I get home.

Here's the TL;DR version for you.

The Emperor was/is a benevolent ruler that was willing to do anything and everything to ensure that humanity ruled the stars. He was not devoid of emotions and the whole HH destroyed that dream of unity and prosperity.

I also exalted your post as it gave me a book to look forward to

I caught that you were trying to say that the view of the Emperor as an aloof, manipulative, psychopathic madman is just Chaos propaganda.

I think the corollary is true to: any of the stories about his 'heroism' are told from an inherently Imperium-friendly perspective, and are equally unreliable.

I think one of the points of the whole Horus Heresy series is that the stories are conflicting, sometimes contradictory, and not always a hundred percent accurate. It leaves a great deal (especially concerning motivation) open to interpretation.

Just like Jimsolo says, it is all propaganda. One of the sentences that defines the setting is 'Everything you have been told is a lie'. From there on, we work with what we have.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
That's a bit of a catch-22. The Imperial Creed is protecting humanity from a threat that exists only because the Emperor brought it upon them in the first place. If the Great Crusade hadn't happened, there would be no breach in the webway and Humanity would be fine.

Fixed it for you .

Humanity co-existed with the gods for thousands of years without any problem. It was only when the Emperor betrayed them and actively tried to destroy them that they reacted, declaring a truce in their eternal war against each other. The Heresy, and 10000 years of carnage, suffering and terror, are the final results of the Emperor´s attemp at destroying all forms of religion.

In this regard, Lorgar was just a tool, a prophet of the gods like countless others along the history of mankind. Perhaps more important than others, but not different from the rest of prophets.

So what exactly drove Lorgar to chaos? Nothing but his own neurotic obsession with worship; and once he'd found something that would accept his worship, he had zero compunction about throwing all of Humanity under the bus.

So what exactly drove Lorgar to chaos? Nothing but the belief that he was doing the only right thing to do.

He believed in gods, and was absolutely sure of the divinity of his father. When the Emperor denied this, Lorgar tried to find answers elsewhere. He was not a warrior, but a priest. He cared nothing about victories, personal power or wealth, only about the truth. After a pilgrimage, he actually found the gods. And they gave him the answers he was searching for. So he fully committed to what he believed was the right thing to do, and set the galaxy on fire.

Lorgar is a religious fundamentalist, with the only difference between him and the countless others religious fundamentalists in both the setting and the real life being that he actually talked with the gods.

And... which was the other option? Follow a tyrant? Keep conquering the galaxy in the name of a set of moral values he didn´t share? He didn´t believe the Emperor was in the right. Lorgar was a religious fanatic and the Emperor was trying to destroy all forms of religion. It should have been pretty obvious what was going to happen.

That´s something to think about: Mortarion, Angron, and Lorgar didn´t share the Emperor´s vision. They saw him as a tyrant and a monster. Why should they follow him? Would you follow a psychotic, bloodthirsty tyrant that it is murdering billions just because he gave you an army?

I'm not so sure it was "without any problems".

There's no lore to back that up.

The lore talks about a golden age for humanity in the distant past, stopped by the coming of the Age of Strife.

More telling, the current age is part of the setting. We have religion now. And we had (still have somehow) equivalents of a god of wrath, a god of lust and so on. I mean, Tzeentch is pretty much another name for Thoth, and the ancient Egyptians, while being all-out pagans, didn´t indulge in endless suffering for everyone. None of the pagan cultures did...

...unless you believe the propaganda written by monotheistic religions. During the Middle Ages, pagans were identified with evil, and all pagan gods merged with Satan, a word that means 'the Enemy'. Every source coming from the church pictured pagans as insane, brutal, feral and more...

Which mirrors the Imperium / Chaos situation in the setting. The Imperium even has an Inquisiton searching for witches that worship polytheistic gods, in case someone missed the reference.


Nevertheless, when I said 'without any problems' I actually meant 'without any problems, compared with the hellish nightmare that is 40k´s setting'. The War of Troy as written by Homer is a god example of the kind of problems the gods had with humanity in a religious / polytheistic setting.

Fine then, examples of the Chaos Gods being evil? The Fall of the Eldar. I'm sure that worked out just fine for the majority of the Eldar race. "She who Thirsts" is probably just parched after a long day of working out, and just needs excessive amounts of Kool Aid. There's a reason for why the Eye of Terror is named what it is.

The 4th edition Codex: Eldar describes Daemon worlds as:

Codex: Eldar 4th edition page 5 wrote:[...]Daemon Princes and the worshippers of Chaos rule over planets turned into nightmare worlds of fire and darkness.

The reason the Emperor exists in the first place, according to "old fluff", is because the Warp became too dangerous, preventing Shamans and the like on Terra from reincarnating. So yeah, Chaos started eating people's souls, the people at risk create the Emperor by collective suicide. Hardly humanity making the first move.

 StarTrotter wrote:

The Emperor was a terrible man that crushed many under his foot with little regard and was absolutely idiotic despite his "intellect"
The Chaos Gods care little for humans besides being fed by them but largely treat humanity at best like playthings. Under them crazy things happen and your planet might develop only to be destroyed or not with an extremely random reasoning behind it that is unfatomable.

Both options are terrible. Despite my love for chaos, the Emperor is the only choice. If we are going to suffer at least let us suffer under the heel of a "human" whom has good intentions gone horridly wrong.

This, more or less.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Fine then, examples of the Chaos Gods being evil? The Fall of the Eldar. I'm sure that worked out just fine for the majority of the Eldar race.

The Eldar before the fall where similar to the current Dark Eldar. They were torturers and sadists of the worse kind, evil individuals who deserved total destruction. They created a god that destroyed them in the moment of its creation.

The Chaos God they created was not the source of evil here. The source of evil was the Eldar race instead. It is another example of living things falling to Chaos, instead of Chaos rising to get them. Slaanesh is the god of Obsession: the Eldar were undone by their own obsessions. This is not the fault of the emotion itself. It is the fault of the Eldar.

(...)The 4th edition Codex: Eldar describes Daemon worlds as:

Codex: Eldar 4th edition page 5 wrote:[...]Daemon Princes and the worshippers of Chaos rule over planets turned into nightmare worlds of fire and darkness.

Which still contradicts the books that actually depicts a Chaos world. They really look as a fantasy setting: the worlds of Daemon Wolrd, Pawns of Chaos, Blood Gorgons, Eye of Terror and many other novels are clear about this. Also, the Warhammer Fantasy world has a gate open wide to the Eye of Terror.

May be it is propaganda. May be not. Perhaps there are worlds that are too close to what Chaos is and are consumed by madness, and perhaps those worlds that are just inhabited by humans worshipping the gods are just fine.

The reason the Emperor exists in the first place, according to "old fluff", is because the Warp became too dangerous, preventing Shamans and the like on Terra from reincarnating. So yeah, Chaos started eating people's souls, the people at risk create the Emperor by collective suicide. Hardly humanity making the first move.

The Star-Child theory... let me check some references.

 StarTrotter wrote:

The Emperor was a terrible man that crushed many under his foot with little regard and was absolutely idiotic despite his "intellect"
The Chaos Gods care little for humans besides being fed by them but largely treat humanity at best like playthings. Under them crazy things happen and your planet might develop only to be destroyed or not with an extremely random reasoning behind it that is unfatomable.

Both options are terrible. Despite my love for chaos, the Emperor is the only choice. If we are going to suffer at least let us suffer under the heel of a "human" whom has good intentions gone horridly wrong.

This, more or less.

But the Emperor was not a man! Either he was a god or something else. It is clearly not human. And about his intentions, I still think we know nothing.

Lorgar was driven to chaos when the man he idolized as a god put a smack down on him and rode him around infront of his brother like a pony and then killed a whole city/world he made for him..... mindfuck

I had to vote for Perturabo. He marches to war on the Imperium because he's embarassed that his home world rebelled, and convinced that the Emperor won't forgive him for the actions taken to put down that rebellion. A long campaign alongside Russ would probably have given him a renewed sense of the value of being "a bent backed shoveler". He could have learned to take pride in being the hammer that sunders the walls of those who stand against his father, since regardless of how little gloss the other legions might see in the IVth, the Emperor would know his greatness.

I will agree that Magnus is a tragic character, in the classic Greek sense. He's a powerful hero of noble status with a massive character flaw (his hubris) that is his ultimate undoing. He's convinced that he's smarter than everyone in the galaxy, including the chaos gods. Tzeentch sets out to prove him wrong by giving him all the rope he wants, knowing the Crimson King will hang himself with it.

Curze is a broken toy who needed to spend some time crusading alongside Sanguinus to get comfortable with the whole psychic visions thing.

Angron was also a broken toy, though with the War Hounds on the verge of morale collapse, Big E gambled that Angron would be the boost they needed. Instead, he destroyed them.

Fulgrim was haunted by the understanding that he and his legion were and would always be an inferior copy of horus and the Luna Wolves.

Mort is kind of a mystery. I liked him in Scars. I hated him in Vengeful Spirit, since BL completely forgot to publish the book that takes place between the two and explains the radical shift in his attitude.

Alpharius. Destroy the whole of humanity to enact the emperor's dream of destroying the Chaos Gods?

Lorgar was led astray by the man who raised him.

I think people miss one notable aspect of Lorgar's character.

Namely that he was incredibly mentally unstable even before falling to Chaos. IMHO, he is one of the most terrifying Primarchs if you're a mere human. Angron and Curze are obviously unstable and dangerous, and others, like Magnus, Leman Russ and Mortarion, though mostly stable are physically intimidating.

Lorgar at face-value seems to be one of the most kind and sentimental Primarchs, a fragile flower among his brothers that might fool you into thinking him relatable. But recall this: During his mourning for Monarchia, Erebus and Kor Phaeron tried to console him, and their attempts at being his personal self-esteem team seemed to be working. Then Kor Phaeron slips, says something mildly offensive to Lorgar, and suddenly Lorgar is strangling Kor Phaeron with one hand, threatening to kill him. This bipolarity is not a one-off occurrence with Lorgar. He has another violent outburst with Argel Tal after his son becomes a Daemon, nearly killing him merely because Tal perhaps suggested him becoming a fething abomination was Lorgar's fault. Later on he angrily IIRC suggests tearing the head off a Custodian and pissing down his neck.

A human or even a Space Marine has to walk on eggshells when interacting with Lorgar, for fear of a sudden and unwarranted violent reprisal. He's a cooky guy, that Lorgar.

I'm not really sure if there's any point to this post, but I made it.

Edit: Oh, and his talk with Magnus in The First Heretic really shows off how frankly obsessive and unstable he is too. At one point Lorgar indeed is about to snap on Magnus, and Magnus says "What now? Will you strike me as you struck Roboute?", cowing Lorgar from doing so. Later on, his rant about how he needs something to worship proves how neurotic and fethed in the head Lorgar really is: He doesn't care if his road will lead to ruin, as Magnus suggests, he needs a god(s) to worship.

 da001 wrote:
Just like Jimsolo says, it is all propaganda. One of the sentences that defines the setting is 'Everything you have been told is a lie'. From there on, we work with what we have.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
That's a bit of a catch-22. The Imperial Creed is protecting humanity from a threat that exists only because the Emperor brought it upon them in the first place. If the Great Crusade hadn't happened, there would be no breach in the webway and Humanity would be fine.

Fixed it for you .

Humanity co-existed with the gods for thousands of years without any problem. It was only when the Emperor betrayed them and actively tried to destroy them that they reacted, declaring a truce in their eternal war against each other. The Heresy, and 10000 years of carnage, suffering and terror, are the final results of the Emperor´s attemp at destroying all forms of religion.

In this regard, Lorgar was just a tool, a prophet of the gods like countless others along the history of mankind. Perhaps more important than others, but not different from the rest of prophets.

So what exactly drove Lorgar to chaos? Nothing but his own neurotic obsession with worship; and once he'd found something that would accept his worship, he had zero compunction about throwing all of Humanity under the bus.

So what exactly drove Lorgar to chaos? Nothing but the belief that he was doing the only right thing to do.

He believed in gods, and was absolutely sure of the divinity of his father. When the Emperor denied this, Lorgar tried to find answers elsewhere. He was not a warrior, but a priest. He cared nothing about victories, personal power or wealth, only about the truth. After a pilgrimage, he actually found the gods. And they gave him the answers he was searching for. So he fully committed to what he believed was the right thing to do, and set the galaxy on fire.

Lorgar is a religious fundamentalist, with the only difference between him and the countless others religious fundamentalists in both the setting and the real life being that he actually talked with the gods.

And... which was the other option? Follow a tyrant? Keep conquering the galaxy in the name of a set of moral values he didn´t share? He didn´t believe the Emperor was in the right. Lorgar was a religious fanatic and the Emperor was trying to destroy all forms of religion. It should have been pretty obvious what was going to happen.

That´s something to think about: Mortarion, Angron, and Lorgar didn´t share the Emperor´s vision. They saw him as a tyrant and a monster. Why should they follow him? Would you follow a psychotic, bloodthirsty tyrant that it is murdering billions just because he gave you an army?

"From my point of view the Jedi are evil!" is essentially your argument here.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
I think people miss one notable aspect of Lorgar's character.

Namely that he was incredibly mentally unstable even before falling to Chaos. IMHO, he is one of the most terrifying Primarchs if you're a mere human. Angron and Curze are obviously unstable and dangerous, and others, like Magnus, Leman Russ and Mortarion, though mostly stable are physically intimidating.

Lorgar at face-value seems to be one of the most kind and sentimental Primarchs, a fragile flower among his brothers that might fool you into thinking him relatable. But recall this: During his mourning for Monarchia, Erebus and Kor Phaeron tried to console him, and their attempts at being his personal self-esteem team seemed to be working. Then Kor Phaeron slips, says something mildly offensive to Lorgar, and suddenly Lorgar is strangling Kor Phaeron with one hand, threatening to kill him. This bipolarity is not a one-off occurrence with Lorgar. He has another violent outburst with Argel Tal after his son becomes a Daemon, nearly killing him merely because Tal perhaps suggested him becoming a fething abomination was Lorgar's fault. Later on he angrily IIRC suggests tearing the head off a Custodian and pissing down his neck.

A human or even a Space Marine has to walk on eggshells when interacting with Lorgar, for fear of a sudden and unwarranted violent reprisal. He's a cooky guy, that Lorgar.

I'm not really sure if there's any point to this post, but I made it.

Edit: Oh, and his talk with Magnus in The First Heretic really shows off how frankly obsessive and unstable he is too. At one point Lorgar indeed is about to snap on Magnus, and Magnus says "What now? Will you strike me as you struck Roboute?", cowing Lorgar from doing so. Later on, his rant about how he needs something to worship proves how neurotic and fethed in the head Lorgar really is: He doesn't care if his road will lead to ruin, as Magnus suggests, he needs a god(s) to worship.

This is from Know No Fear:

‘He is so… changeable,’ Guilliman says. ‘He is so prone to extremes. Eager to please, quick to take offence. There is no middle to him. He’s so keen to be your best friend, and then, at the slightest perception of an insult, he’s angry with you. Furious. Offended. Like a child. If he wasn’t my brother, he’d be a political embarrassment and an impediment to the effective rule of the Imperium. I know what I’d do with him.’

 BlaxicanX wrote:
(...)
"From my point of view the Jedi are evil!" is essentially your argument here.

The Jedi? I don´t get it. Are you comparing the Imperium (the cruellest and most bloody regime ever to exist) to the Jedi?

"From my point of view the Jedi are evil" was Anakin Skywalker's ultimate argument when confronted by Obi-Wan with the accusation that the Sith were evil. It is simultaneously the pinnacle of the character's whiny attitude, and the lowest point of him making sense. (To be fair to Star Wars, I think it was perfectly in character for a teenager with near unlimited power and some serious issues with authority figures to be whiny, self-serving, and nonsensical.)

I could be wrong (I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth) but what I took from that was a humorous attempt to say that your argument didn't make a whole lot of sense.

You're crazy, Anakin Skywalker was Grand Master of the Jedi debating team. He made Obi-Wan look like a fething noob.

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!"

 Jimsolo wrote:
"From my point of view the Jedi are evil" was Anakin Skywalker's ultimate argument when confronted by Obi-Wan with the accusation that the Sith were evil. It is simultaneously the pinnacle of the character's whiny attitude, and the lowest point of him making sense. (To be fair to Star Wars, I think it was perfectly in character for a teenager with near unlimited power and some serious issues with authority figures to be whiny, self-serving, and nonsensical.)

I could be wrong (I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth) but what I took from that was a humorous attempt to say that your argument didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Oh, I get it. It means 'I think your argument makes no sense'. By the way I think the same about the character.

@BlaxicanX: what part of what I wrote doesn´t make sense to you? The part about Lorgar, for instance, is taken from The First Heretic. He was a religious fanatic who refused to fight a war he didn´t believe in and tried to search for the 'ultimate truth about life' (is there a god? what is the meaning of life?). I get the impression people expected the Primarchs to shut up and blindly obey orders regardless of their beliefs.

I am re-reading the Star Child part in the Realm of Chaos books, and I am having a bad time trying to merge it with the rest of the background. It is a lot of stuff, and it actually depicts the Emperor as a being with good intentions. By the way, it also says 'Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard Chapter fully believed that he was the herald of a new age of justice' and 'Angron of the World Eaters genuinely thought that he alone could save humanity from destruction'. In most sources (I am deliberately ignoring 6th edition), csm don´t think of themselves as 'evil guys', or at least not most of them. They believed they were doing the right thing... which is the reason why they are interesting for some people.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!"

But... everyone in 40k deals in absolutes... that means Orks are Sith!!

There is also the problem that the lore is based on the novels that are written by various authors, Each can change a vital key bit like this picture.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdjhacoFD91rgb5qno1_500.jpg

I don't get why everyone likes Magnus so much. Ok he wasn't even incarnate but he's someone who is incapable of taking any responsibility for his actions. Its everyone else s fault that his Legion was destroyed. The fact that he wanted his Legion to pay the price of his treachery, Curze may have hated his Legion but he at least cared enough about them to try to keep them alive. He talks down to Lorgar on pretty much every occasions when Lorgar may be the only friend he ever had laughing about how Lorgar "thinks were kindred spirits". Most of all is what he did to his Legion is what bugs me about him, these were his sons, and not treacherous ones, not the ones from other Legions that were conspiring against each other and their primarchs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lorgar was the most sympathetic. All he ever wanted was the truth. After Monarchia he had no choice but to try to find out what went wrong. He knew that something was wrong with the Imperium, so he set out looking for truth fearing that he was destroying the truth humanity needed to survive. He did'nt want to start a civil war he just wanted the truth, truth that was denied to him, worse than shaming him was that he left him in the intellectual dark. By the time he found out what the truth was their was no going back. Every action he took was in the pursuit of truth and a better future for mankind. If the Emperor had been more honest with the Primarchs this might not have happened.

You're all wrong about Lorgar. One of the key things is that he knew there was something else and the Emperor lied to him. I can certainly sympathize. He is chastised and has one of his worlds destroyed with people, innocent people, killed because of a "truth" he doesn't believe... the kicker is he is right and learns so. The emperor was a complete idiot for lying about chaos

 Dark Apostle 666 wrote:
I feel sorry for Lorgar - there's a lot of stuff with people calling him an emo loser, but for me, the Emperor did not treat him right at all - "My son thinks I'm awesome enough to be a god - I know! I'll crush an innocent, loyal planet to make him stop!" The guy needed a good father figure - probably why Kor Phaeron and Erebus had so much power over him. He didn't want to be a warrior either - but no choice given!

I went with Magnus, but I have to give Lorgar a second as well. He gave EVERYTHING for the Emp (including killing the priests who raised him) and the Emp threw it back in his face. Not only did the Emp tear down everything he'd come to believe and humiliate him, he massacred a whole planet just to teach Lorgar a lesson. Why does anyone think the Emperor was a good guy again?

Emperor warned him numerous times to stop worship as its counter intuitive to destroying religion. He didn't listen so he had the ultramarines evacuate everyone from the city then blew it up to get through to Lorgar.
What planet are you talking about?

 Inkubas wrote:
Emperor warned him numerous times to stop worship as its counter intuitive to destroying religion. He didn't listen so he had the ultramarines evacuate everyone from the city then blew it up to get through to Lorgar.
What planet are you talking about?

You should read The First Heretic again. There's no way everyone got out of that city okay. What's more, the people who DID get out were left without food, shelter, or support. The ones who didn't die immediately of starvation, dehydration, or exposure were left with only one resource to prey on: one another. The Emperor/Gulliman's actions towards Lorgar went well beyond punishment and into the realm of the sadistic.

No love for Mortarion?

He only sold his soul to the devil to save all his children that Typhus had trapped in the warp, while everyone else was drinking the chaos kool-aid. Since then he's done almost nothing besides brood on his daemon world knowing what he did was irredeemable instead of taking it out on humanity.

He betrayed the Emperor without needing to be mentally ill or Chaos controlling him, and seemingly without any sympathetic reason. That I recall.

He's ventured outside his Daemon world at least twice. Once when he got beaten up by Draigo, again when he turned a bunch of Orks into disease-carrying suicide bombers. He hasn't left his Daemon world as often as, say, Angron or Magnus, but more than anyone else I can recall.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
He betrayed the Emperor without needing to be mentally ill or Chaos controlling him, and seemingly without any sympathetic reason. That I recall.

He did so to save his legion from being stranded in the warp and turned into Nurgle zombies. His intention was to open fire with his fleet upon Horus' when they broke back into real-space at Terra. This is why Typhus killed all of their navigators and stranded them.

Magnus deliberately, knowingly, and voluntarily corrupted his entire legion with daemons moments after being reunited with them.

At least Mortarion had it forced upon him.

my vote for most sympathetic goes to Angron, for sure. All the poor guy ever wanted to do was RIP AND TEAR YOUR GUTS. PRIMARCHS ARE HUGE, THAT MEANS THEY HAVE HUGE GUTS! RIP AND TEAR, RIP AND TEAR

 DarknessEternal wrote:

He did so to save his legion from being stranded in the warp and turned into Nurgle zombies. His intention was to open fire with his fleet upon Horus' when they broke back into real-space at Terra. This is why Typhus killed all of their navigators and stranded them.

Magnus deliberately, knowingly, and voluntarily corrupted his entire legion with daemons moments after being reunited with them.

At least Mortarion had it forced upon him.

You have any proof for the assertion that Mortarion's intent was to fire upon Horus' ship in Terra? Because that surely wasn't in Index Astartes, nor the more recent Horus Heresy: Betrayal that I could see. Is it in Collected Visions? Or did you just make it up?

Did he now? When was that? Because he never made a pact with Tzeentch until he had exhausted every other option available to him in order to combat the Flesh Change, leading to him accepting salvation from a higher source out of desperation so he could save his sons. Just... Like Mortarion, according to you, actually. Yet you find Mortarion far more sympathetic for some reason?

Not that I'm sure why you're even bringing Magnus up to me (That's a joke, I know exactly why you are).

I have absolutely no sympathy for Magnus, his own arrogance and.pride doomed millions of innocent people and his own legion, he was warned time and again by others and his father and still he thought he knew better, it's his own fault.

If I played with fire around a petrol pump and people kept telling me to stop, I know it's dangerous but I think I'll be fine, and still people keep trying to warn me, then my Dad comes along and tells me that petrol is flammable and it could kill me AND still I choose to play with fire next.to that petrol...then booom, but it's not just me that goes poof, it's the staff of the petrol station, the people who just happen to be walking past.

Who is to blame there, cos it ain't daddy.

 Formosa wrote:
I have absolutely no sympathy for Magnus, his own arrogance and.pride doomed millions of innocent people and his own legion, he was warned time and again by others and his father and still he thought he knew better, it's his own fault.

If I played with fire around a petrol pump and people kept telling me to stop, I know it's dangerous but I think I'll be fine, and still people keep trying to warn me, then my Dad comes along and tells me that petrol is flammable and it could kill me AND still I choose to play with fire next.to that petrol...then booom, but it's not just me that goes poof, it's the staff of the petrol station, the people who just happen to be walking past.

Who is to blame there, cos it ain't daddy.

What if the only way you could alert daddy to the invading militia was to use the petrol to create a huge warning beacon? That'd be a fairer comparison, I'd say.

It's also not entirely true. No one ever told him how and why the Warp was dangerous, even his father. He was just told to stop, no explanation, no "I know you want to learn and understand everything, but this is beyond you for now". Just. "Stop doing it."

Since Magnus was an extremely intelligent and curious individual, that was probably the worst possible way to get him to actually stop delving into it. In fact, the Emperor could not have made him more curious and resolved to figure out the who what and why if he'd actively supported and guided Magnus' efforts.

That's not true either

Magnus was taken for a tour of sorts by daddy and when he asked about certain things he was explicitly told that delving too deep was dangerous, Khan also warned him that talking more than a sip from the cup (warp) was dangerous, lorgar also warned him of the dangers of.the warp, but that not from any prior knowledge just a general warning, Russ warned him too, mortarion also, so if Dad and most of.your brothers say "dude.that stuff is bad mojo" and you ignore them as misinformed idiots, your the one to blame.

Then let's add to that, he was a scholar and as such would no doubt have read.the reports of warp incursions the other legions encountered or heard about.them, he would have found evidence of the chaos gods and chosen to ignore all the links as he thought he knew.better, further he had actually met such creatures and again knew the threat.they.posed but again chose.to.ignore it.through pride and arrogance.

He brought everything on himself.

The Flesh Change that was destroying his Legion should have been evidence enough.

 Formosa wrote:
I have absolutely no sympathy for Magnus, his own arrogance and.pride doomed millions of innocent people and his own legion, he was warned time and again by others and his father and still he thought he knew better, it's his own fault.

If I played with fire around a petrol pump and people kept telling me to stop, I know it's dangerous but I think I'll be fine, and still people keep trying to warn me, then my Dad comes along and tells me that petrol is flammable and it could kill me AND still I choose to play with fire next.to that petrol...then booom, but it's not just me that goes poof, it's the staff of the petrol station, the people who just happen to be walking past.

Who is to blame there, cos it ain't daddy.

Magnus tried to warn the Emperor in the only way available that would reach the Emperor in time to make a difference. That was his only real sin. If the Emperor hadn't hidden his plans for the webway from Magnus and had been more open the issue wouldn't have happened.


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 Formosa wrote:
That's not true either

Magnus was taken for a tour of sorts by daddy and when he asked about certain things he was explicitly told that delving too deep was dangerous, Khan also warned him that talking more than a sip from the cup (warp) was dangerous, lorgar also warned him of the dangers of.the warp, but that not from any prior knowledge just a general warning, Russ warned him too, mortarion also, so if Dad and most of.your brothers say "dude.that stuff is bad mojo" and you ignore them as misinformed idiots, your the one to blame.

Then let's add to that, he was a scholar and as such would no doubt have read.the reports of warp incursions the other legions encountered or heard about.them, he would have found evidence of the chaos gods and chosen to ignore all the links as he thought he knew.better, further he had actually met such creatures and again knew the threat.they.posed but again chose.to.ignore it.through pride and arrogance.

He brought everything on himself.

But Russ and Mortarion were misinformed idiots. The Thousand Sons were right. He didn't know the threat the chaos powers posed until they tricked him while he was trying to warn the Emperor but if the Emperor had actually explained to him things would have been different. Magnus doesn't "really" understand the warp until after the moment that condemns him to the Imperium

If you don't sympathize with Magnus than you can't sympathize with any of the Primarchs. Which is fine some people don't relate well to situations they haven't been through themselves so always think it's as simple as "you get what you ask for" but that's not how 40k or the real world work. Turds happen.

jakejackjake wrote:

Magnus tried to warn the Emperor in the only way available that would reach the Emperor in time to make a difference. That was his only real sin. If the Emperor hadn't hidden his plans for the webway from Magnus and had been more open the issue wouldn't have happened.

Magnus was trying to prove a point. He could have used Astropaths. He could have sent a ship. He could have sent his projection to a place that wasn't explicitly shielded from the Warp; to one of his brothers perhaps. He also didn't provided any evidence if I recall correctly. By your own words if the Emperor had told Magnus about the Webway then he wouldn't have been able to contact the Emperor in time anyway unless he deliberately breached the wards on the human connection to the Webway.

If I recall correctly an old peace of background has the Emperor sense the virus bombing of the loyalists on Istvaan. In the 'The Outcast Dead' Magnus' message didn't even reach the Emperor before Garro did. Though I really didn't like that addition.

Magnus by far.

I think saying "if you can't sympathise with Magnus then you can't sympathise with any of the Primarchs" is a silly thing to say. Magnus broke the rules and then when people came to stop him he decided to continue to break rules. A simplified view but you get the idea.

Yet I sympathise with Angron because all his friends were killed by a man who could easily have saved them but decided he couldn't be bothered.

Didn't Horus repent right before he died? Once the demon left his body?

Also, after reading Fulgrim, you see that he too realized he made a grievous mistake for the damage he had done right before his soul is vanished within the daemon prince

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

jakejackjake wrote:

Magnus tried to warn the Emperor in the only way available that would reach the Emperor in time to make a difference. That was his only real sin. If the Emperor hadn't hidden his plans for the webway from Magnus and had been more open the issue wouldn't have happened.

Magnus was trying to prove a point. He could have used Astropaths. He could have sent a ship. He could have sent his projection to a place that wasn't explicitly shielded from the Warp; to one of his brothers perhaps. He also didn't provided any evidence if I recall correctly. By your own words if the Emperor had told Magnus about the Webway then he wouldn't have been able to contact the Emperor in time anyway unless he deliberately breached the wards on the human connection to the Webway.

If I recall correctly an old peace of background has the Emperor sense the virus bombing of the loyalists on Istvaan. In the 'The Outcast Dead' Magnus' message didn't even reach the Emperor before Garro did. Though I really didn't like that addition.

It's explicitly stated that Astropaths were being disrupted by the state of the warp for a long time, and it was intentional by the ruinous powers but Magnus didn't know that. Communication was almost completely down for the Thousand Sons to Terra so no he could not use astropaths. It is stated that there was no way for his message to get to Terra in time.


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pm713 wrote:
I think saying "if you can't sympathise with Magnus then you can't sympathise with any of the Primarchs" is a silly thing to say. Magnus broke the rules and then when people came to stop him he decided to continue to break rules. A simplified view but you get the idea.

Yet I sympathise with Angron because all his friends were killed by a man who could easily have saved them but decided he couldn't be bothered.

That's not a simplified view it's actually just completely inaccurate. When people came to stop him he saw his mistake, even though it was really the Emperor's fault for lying, and he took all of the defences of his home world away and allowed all of the people to be slaughtered and his legion decimated.

It is the duty of any citizen of any nation or world to challenge unjust laws and rules. He shouldn't be looked at negatively for breaking a unjust law but should be applauded for the courage.

Let's not forget that Magnus believed Russ' assault was Emperor-approved. He thought that his father wanted him and his Legion dead for what he had done, and he didn't resist.

That speaks of a really unhealthy father/son relationship. The Emperor did tell Magnus that he would destroy him should he go against his wishes.

The Emperor wrote:If you treat with the Warp, Magnus, I shall visit destruction upon you. And your Legion's name will be struck from the Imperial records for all time.

This is how you discipline your children when they do something you don't approve of.

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pm713 wrote:
I think saying "if you can't sympathise with Magnus then you can't sympathise with any of the Primarchs" is a silly thing to say. Magnus broke the rules and then when people came to stop him he decided to continue to break rules. A simplified view but you get the idea.

Yet I sympathise with Angron because all his friends were killed by a man who could easily have saved them but decided he couldn't be bothered.

That's not a simplified view it's actually just completely inaccurate. When people came to stop him he saw his mistake, even though it was really the Emperor's fault for lying, and he took all of the defences of his home world away and allowed all of the people to be slaughtered and his legion decimated.

It is the duty of any citizen of any nation or world to challenge unjust laws and rules. He shouldn't be looked at negatively for breaking a unjust law but should be applauded for the courage.

pm713 wrote:

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pm713 wrote:
I think saying "if you can't sympathise with Magnus then you can't sympathise with any of the Primarchs" is a silly thing to say. Magnus broke the rules and then when people came to stop him he decided to continue to break rules. A simplified view but you get the idea.

Yet I sympathise with Angron because all his friends were killed by a man who could easily have saved them but decided he couldn't be bothered.

That's not a simplified view it's actually just completely inaccurate. When people came to stop him he saw his mistake, even though it was really the Emperor's fault for lying, and he took all of the defences of his home world away and allowed all of the people to be slaughtered and his legion decimated.

It is the duty of any citizen of any nation or world to challenge unjust laws and rules. He shouldn't be looked at negatively for breaking a unjust law but should be applauded for the courage.

Yet we have the Battle of the Fang and who smashed the laboratory? Oh yeah Magnus that's some great surrender there. It's his fault for intentionally breaking the law which was done for his protection.

He should be applauded for being told something is bad by the expert on the subject and then doing it.....right.

Just saying for someone who surrendered he did an awful lot of war like things that don't seem to go with surrendering.... like fighting back.

Obviously and clearly Magnus.

The poor bastard was loyal!

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

The Emperor wrote:If you treat with the Warp, Magnus, I shall visit destruction upon you. And your Legion's name will be struck from the Imperial records for all time.

One thing that's interesting about the HH series is that, by accident or design, they've often avoided one of the all too common failings of fantasy and sci-fi writing - that is to give the characters modern/21st century views and attitudes. The Emperor in particular behaves far more like many of the gods and heroes of classical mythology in that he appears entirely oblivious to, or above, conventional morality or psychology.

Ironically, given his abhorrence to being worshipped as a deity, the Emperor seems to behave most like the God of the Old Testament - all lofty commandments and disproportionate retribution.

I'm looking forward to Master of Mankind to see if ADB tries to delve deeper into this incredibly difficult character, though part of me hopes that he keeps him as a distant, unknowable presence.

That's the thing, though. While I don't think this is bad writing or bad characterisation, it makes the Emperor an idiot. He's supposedly been manipulating human history (which requires a great deal of predicting how humans will respond to things, also known as psychology) for countless years, but he is so careless and obtuse in how he treats his sons that the Horus Heresy was inevitable. He allowed them to fracture, develop personal rivalries and allegiances (how he personally worsened Perturabo and Rogal Dorn's relationship, even knowing how Perturabo was feeling unappreciated, without so much as sitting his upset son down and having a father-son talk about how he values his contribution, or anything), and taught them almost nothing. He was a completely terrible father to them, and a father is what they needed.

His logic was that things would always go his way because he's the Emperor, regardless of how it might seem. Curze, for example, was obviously insane and unstable and the Emperor did not attempt to manage this at all before handing him control of a Legion. How he handled the recovery of Angron and Mortarion from their respective worlds was also awful and hugely short-sighted - he expected they would get over their bitterness because hey, he's the Emperor. All Magnus ever got was "Stop using magic or else I'll kill you", and how he dealt with Lorgar's faith was abysmal.

Then he appoints Horus Warmaster (cementing the feeling among the Primarchs that Horus was dad's favourite, which is never a good thing), and then abandoned them without explanation, leaving them all feeling bitter and neglected. The Emperor gave his various sons a lot of reasons to dislike him, and very little to make them think positively about him other than giving a few his personal authorisation to lord over one of their brothers and get in gloating - Roboute Guilleman to Lorgar and Dorn to Perturabo.

So, in short, what you said is a good thing - but the Emperor has no excuse as to how he would not know psychology, even if he was personally above it. He should know how to manipulate people, and you'd think he would take a lot more care in handling his Primarchs.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
That's the thing, though. While I don't think this is bad writing or bad characterisation, it makes the Emperor an idiot. He's supposedly been manipulating human history (which requires a great deal of predicting how humans will respond to things, also known as psychology) for countless years, but he is so careless and obtuse in how he treats his sons that the Horus Heresy was inevitable.

So what makes you think he DIDN'T foresee the Heresy? Maybe everything went exactly the way he wanted. Maybe everything is STILL going exactly according to plan...

pm713 wrote:
Just saying for someone who surrendered he did an awful lot of war like things that don't seem to go with surrendering.... like fighting back.

You mean after his world was already lost and there was no chance for victory? After he shut down all of the planets defenses? The Thousand Sons very well could have won that engagement if the planetary defense systems like the orbiting warships, weapons platforms and such that would have crushed a solid portion of the opposition before they even hit the grounds hadn't been shut down and the forces would have been well prepared for an attack instead of doing it last second. He gave the Wolves the fight. That's what happened in the stories but you're free to believe what you want.

There are plenty of times that breaking a law or rule isn't only justified it's flat out the best course of action. I feel bad for anyone who has lived their entire life how they are told. Never breaking laws, going from high school, to university/college, to a job that isn't a dream and never straying enough to really experience life. Just living how they are told. That's probably the saddest existence I could possibly imagine. The ability to decide right from wrong for yourself and not based solely on selfishness and not based solely on laws in rules is a big deal. It's pretty essential to the forward movement of society too.

jakejackjake wrote:

It's explicitly stated that Astropaths were being disrupted by the state of the warp for a long time, and it was intentional by the ruinous powers but Magnus didn't know that. Communication was almost completely down for the Thousand Sons to Terra so no he could not use astropaths. It is stated that there was no way for his message to get to Terra in time.

Yet the other Loyalist Legions were generally capable of moving sufficient distances to combat the Traitors. His message was unnecessary anyway. He was played by Tzeentch into trying to prove that his methods were superior.

You also didn't say what would have been different had he known about the Webway project. Either he decided that sending the message was less important or he would have broken the Webway project anyway.

The thing people need to realize about Magnus is that he only ever began treating with Warp creatures to save his Legion. If he didn't make that pact with Tzeentch, his Legion would have been put down as a failure, making Magnus the only Primarch who failed his Legion. He doomed himself when he made a deal with Tzeentch, and made a lot of bad decisions, but his motives were irreproachable. That's what makes him sympathetic.

Compare Angron, who while being driven mad by the Nails, is also a total donkey-cave to people who had nothing to do with De'Shea, even when calm. Whether or not this makes it hard to sympathize with him is a matter of opinion. Personally it makes it hard for me to.

I voted for Konrad Curze.

he helped create an imperium he could never be apart of, and he knew that. They were used to hunt the monster within the Imperium, and because of that they became monsters.

"Because he's the hero the Imperium deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we'll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. Night Haunter."

Jimsolo wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
That's the thing, though. While I don't think this is bad writing or bad characterisation, it makes the Emperor an idiot. He's supposedly been manipulating human history (which requires a great deal of predicting how humans will respond to things, also known as psychology) for countless years, but he is so careless and obtuse in how he treats his sons that the Horus Heresy was inevitable.

So what makes you think he DIDN'T foresee the Heresy? Maybe everything went exactly the way he wanted. Maybe everything is STILL going exactly according to plan...

Perhaps it was all an elaborate scheme to fake his "death" so he could nap for tens of thousands of years.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

jakejackjake wrote:

It's explicitly stated that Astropaths were being disrupted by the state of the warp for a long time, and it was intentional by the ruinous powers but Magnus didn't know that. Communication was almost completely down for the Thousand Sons to Terra so no he could not use astropaths. It is stated that there was no way for his message to get to Terra in time.

Yet the other Loyalist Legions were generally capable of moving sufficient distances to combat the Traitors. His message was unnecessary anyway. He was played by Tzeentch into trying to prove that his methods were superior.

You also didn't say what would have been different had he known about the Webway project. Either he decided that sending the message was less important or he would have broken the Webway project anyway.

It's possible that he would have instead taken up arms against Horus, or relayed his message through some means close to the Imperial Palace (Rogal Dorn, maybe). Either way, if the Emperor had informed his sons that he knew about the traitor before Magnus found out, then it wouldn't have happened. Even if he personally did not want to believe that his favourite son could fall to Chaos, his decision to completely ignore the problem rather than confront Horus about it (one of those "Son... you know you can tell me anything, right?" talks) allowed it to spiral out of control. He didn't even hesitate in sending the Space Wolves to bring Magnus back to Terra; rather than asking Magnus to come (as he would have), he purposefully sent the Primarch who not only absolutely hated Magnus and his Legion, but was known for a thirst for violence almost as strong as Angron's. He could have sent Sanguinius, who could be trusted to be fair and as diplomatic as possible, but still strong enough to handle the situation if Magnus resisted.

Magnus knew that the Emperor would kill him for using his powers. Not only did the Emperor explicitly say so, but Magnus obviously believed it (and believed that it was justified), as evidenced by how he received the Space Wolves while believing they were his father's retribution. He knew, and he told him about the traitor anyway.

Magnus' only failing was trusting in the Emperor. He should have used his power to warn his brothers about Horus, which would have prevented a lot of death.

 Formosa wrote:
I have absolutely no sympathy for Magnus, his own arrogance and.pride doomed millions of innocent people and his own legion, he was warned time and again by others and his father and still he thought he knew better, it's his own fault.

If I played with fire around a petrol pump and people kept telling me to stop, I know it's dangerous but I think I'll be fine, and still people keep trying to warn me, then my Dad comes along and tells me that petrol is flammable and it could kill me AND still I choose to play with fire next.to that petrol...then booom, but it's not just me that goes poof, it's the staff of the petrol station, the people who just happen to be walking past.

Who is to blame there, cos it ain't daddy.

Fine point, well presented.

Ive changed my mind then..

I suppose I'll go with Horus, he seemed totally loyal until he get fethed by the warp gods in that snake lodge, maybe he would never have turned at all if they didn't brainwash him with magic.

And then loads of the traitor Primarchs lived, poor old Horus got completely wiped out of existence.



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 Toeko wrote:
I voted for Konrad Curze.

he helped create an imperium he could never be apart of, and he knew that. They were used to hunt the monster within the Imperium, and because of that they became monsters.

"Because he's the hero the Imperium deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we'll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. Night Haunter."

Mate read an Unremembered Empire. Ten books ago I would have agreed with you maybe, there is no such ambiguity now.

Curze turned into Alan Rickman in Robin Hood, he was total utter scum.

As in, "enjoys killing old women with his bare hands so people watching will suffer" scum.

He went from being a complex character, to Ted Bundy inside 6 novels.

It's almost like he's suffering from a debilitating mental illness or something.

Mate read an Unremembered Empire. Ten books ago I would have agreed with you maybe, there is no such ambiguity now.

Curze turned into Alan Rickman in Robin Hood, he was total utter scum.

As in, "enjoys killing old women with his bare hands so people watching will suffer" scum.

He went from being a complex character, to Ted Bundy inside 6 novels.

Well, that sucks. I need to read it. I always liked the "batman"/ Necessary Evil aspect that I grew up with.

 Toeko wrote:
Well, that sucks. I need to read it. I always liked the "batman"/ Necessary Evil aspect that I grew up with.

Aaron Dembski Bowden has said he'll be writing an HH novel about the Night Lords which is something to look forward to. Personally I didn't think much of his portrayal in The Unremembered Empire. He's shown to be very very dangerous and gets some effective action sequences, but, much like the non-flashback scenes in Vulkan Lives, his characterisation doesn't really rise above that of a one-dimensional supervillain/serial killer.

Pretty much most of the traitor primarchs were wronged or got screwed. Horus and Fulgrim look like the only two off the top of my head that really turned for no reason of their own control. Magnus was a good guy trying to warn his father and he got screwed. Angron lost all of his brother and sister warriors when the Emperor zapped him up to space and left them to die. Mortarion sided with Nurgle in order to save his Legion from a disease. Still haven't figured out Apharius and Omegon and even whose side they are on. Kurze did exactly what his father wanted him to do and exactly what his father wanted him to be and yet even before the Heresy the Emperor was sending assassins to kill him, for doing his job. I don't remember what the deal was with Perturabo but I remember reading somewhere he wasn't happy when he realized exactly what the Heresy really was. The Word Bearer guy was underappreciated, but then who ever cared about the most boring of Legions the Word Bearers anyway.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 StarTrotter wrote:
I'd argue with you that the Emperor was somewhat stupid about it though. Hey second mightiest psyker in the entire world. Don't use your powers, the things you've been raised sense youth to do NO NOT AT ALL DON'T DO IT! Oh all the while using it yourself.

Empy was a pretty big dick, but so far BL hasn't covered those parts.

He warned Magnus so severely, yet rebuked Lorgar. Did he forget that Lorgar was raised on a heretical planet?


So far the only time the Empy appears in BL is when he helps Horus on Gorro. And Horus is reduced to a babbling 12 y o in his father's presence.

And in Outcast Dead. Actually played a decent sized role in that book. Not that the book was all that great, but you get the idea the Empy did all this to produce the stalemate at the end.


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 Jimsolo wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
That's the thing, though. While I don't think this is bad writing or bad characterisation, it makes the Emperor an idiot. He's supposedly been manipulating human history (which requires a great deal of predicting how humans will respond to things, also known as psychology) for countless years, but he is so careless and obtuse in how he treats his sons that the Horus Heresy was inevitable.

So what makes you think he DIDN'T foresee the Heresy? Maybe everything went exactly the way he wanted. Maybe everything is STILL going exactly according to plan...

Best I can tell, that was exactly how it goes down according to Outcast Dead. That book really messes with the HH, and is of questionable writing. Best part of it is the two Thunder Warriors.

I 'one of the few who voted Mortarion' have sympathy for him because he would be in the exact position that I would never want to be in....backed into a corner with literally no other option but to suffer inevitably through the plague and die a horrid and painful death...or transform into bloated sacs of filth and disease that all of your brothers hate....Sounds pretty tragic to me...

I think Dorn said it best in the short story - crimson fist.

‘We are made to serve. That is our purpose.’ Dorn’s voice echoed off the raked stone tiers of the amphitheatre. He was shaking as if huge forces were straining inside him. It was the most terrifying thing Sigismund had ever seen. ‘Every primarch, every son of a primarch exists to serve the Imperium. Our existence has no other meaning.’ Dorn took a step forwards, his presence seeming to tower taller than the statues of his brothers. ‘Our choices are not our own, our fate is not ours to choose. Your will is mine, and through me the Emperor’s. I trusted you and you squandered that trust on pride and superstition.’


Everyone exists as tools for the prosperity of man kind. The Emperor included. When they deviate from that purpose then bad things happen.

We are made to serve. That is our purpose.’ Dorn’s voice echoed off the raked stone tiers of the amphitheatre. He was shaking as if huge forces were straining inside him. It was the most terrifying thing Sigismund had ever seen. ‘Every primarch, every son of a primarch exists to serve the Imperium. Our existence has no other meaning.’ Dorn took a step forwards, his presence seeming to tower taller than the statues of his brothers. ‘Our choices are not our own, our fate is not ours to choose. Your will is mine, and through me the Emperor’s. I trusted you and you squandered that trust on pride and superstition.’

He brought us the soul drinkers. The idea of this guy talking about superstition when his successor chapters are some of the most superstitious of them all. I don't know what to think of Dorn, he strikes me as bland more than anything.

The Word Bearer guy was underappreciated

More than that his favorite planet was destroyed to make a point.

Perturabo

No one liked him, that's pretty much it. We hear about the Night Lords being isolated but Curze had his share of friends. The Night Lords also abandoned a bunch of Iron Warriors to be killed by orks showing that even Curze was farther up the food chain of favored and respected primarchs than Perturabo.

Horus

Thought the Emperor had abandoned both him and the Imperium in a quest for godhood, he says this many times.

Fulgrim

Because of his friendship with Horus, I didn't think they needed all that talking sword crap.

Ironclad Warlord wrote:

Fulgrim

Because of his friendship with Horus, I didn't think they needed all that talking sword crap.

Holy gak, NO! Fulgrim's "fall" is, for my money, possibly the single worst moment in the Black Library. Just awful. That ploy was so transparent a child could have seen through it. I still hope they retcon that and make Fulgrim's corruption something actually legitimate.