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So, I know that Roboute Guilliman is currently sitting in a stasis field due to having been mortally wounded. Technically, that should mean that he's frozen in time, but still alive? Is there any reason that a particularly capable staff of Techmarines, Apothecaries and Ad Mech Magi couldn't build a Primarch caliber Dreadnought chassis, turn off the stasis field and install him? He wouldn't be the same, but the Ultramarines would get their Primarch back and the Imperium would likely get a new supreme military commander.

Unfortunately, the very fact that Guilliman is a Primarch is what is preventing him from being saved/ being interred in a Dreadnought.

If he was a normal Space Marine with such a wound, there wouldn't be a problem -- the Techmarines + Apothecaries could easily stabilize him and then set him up to go into a Dreadnought.
The difference is that no-one at the current time understands a Primarch's physiology and so the Apothecaries wouldn't be able to stabilize him, he'd just die inside the Dreadnought casing.

If you were to put him in a Dreadnought wouldn't he have the vulnerabilities of one? So he would be up and about, and no doubt wanting to kick some Chaos ass, but if he were to get destroyed on the battlefield imagine what it would do to the Ultras and the other Chapters that revere him.

At least having him in stasis on Macragge or wherever he is they constantly have him as a symbol.

Wait. Who let Kriswall out of YMDC?!?

On topic: A primarch is as different from a Space Marine as a Space Marine is from a human. Given the inability for pretty much anyone to come up with new technology, it's doubtful even the best Tech Priest would be able to design a Dreadnought capable of supporting a primarch. We can, however, always hope that someone from the Dark Age of Technology somehow foresaw the creation of the primarchs and created a mobile life support system for them. Now all we need to do is find the STC . . .

 EnTyme wrote:
Wait. Who let Kriswall out of YMDC?!?

On topic: A primarch is as different from a Space Marine as a Space Marine is from a human. Given the inability for pretty much anyone to come up with new technology, it's doubtful even the best Tech Priest would be able to design a Dreadnought capable of supporting a primarch. We can, however, always hope that someone from the Dark Age of Technology somehow foresaw the creation of the primarchs and created a mobile life support system for them. Now all we need to do is find the STC . . .

I'm allowed out of YMDC once in awhile. The current rules questions are a little boring.

I guess it sounds like it's a technical possibility, but that nobody would have the necessary knowledge or skill to pull it off. I just thought it would make a neat short story to follow a crazed Ultramarines Techmarine trying to build a Dreadnought chassis fit for his Primarch.

 EnTyme wrote:
Wait. Who let Kriswall out of YMDC?!?

On topic: A primarch is as different from a Space Marine as a Space Marine is from a human. Given the inability for pretty much anyone to come up with new technology, it's doubtful even the best Tech Priest would be able to design a Dreadnought capable of supporting a primarch. We can, however, always hope that someone from the Dark Age of Technology somehow foresaw the creation of the primarchs and created a mobile life support system for them. Now all we need to do is find the STC . . .

The entire AdMech is about fusing man and machine. I can't imagine the physiology of a primarch (who is still human shaped) being so significantly different that they can't dreadnought him.

Making a new primarch from scratch is one thing. Adapting one to a dreadnought is another. Assuming they still eat and breathe and have a circulatory system, what's the challenge? They literally build servitors out of biological spare parts. The real challenge is just figuring out how to stop whatever poison it was that Fulgrim used to incapacitate him in the first place.


I, for one, think the Imperium will welcome its Roboutenator Overlord.

There's also the consideration of time. I would've thought that the poison would finish killing him before he can go into the Dreadnought.

There's also the fact that his head is about to fall the feth off his body. They put him in stasis while there's a spray of arterial blood jetting out of his neck. The descriptions of him on Macragge often reference the torrent of blood pouring down his chest and hanging in the air like a cascade of rubies. It's just frozen in time.

 Psienesis wrote:
There's also the fact that his head is about to fall the feth off his body. They put him in stasis while there's a spray of arterial blood jetting out of his neck. The descriptions of him on Macragge often reference the torrent of blood pouring down his chest and hanging in the air like a cascade of rubies. It's just frozen in time.

The Adeptus Mechanicus are capable of keeping brains alive in jars. Surely that involves cutting the patient's head off. I'm sure they'd be happy that part of the work is already done.

Wasn't he poisoned? If they don't have an antidote, being made into a dreadnought will probably not save him from still dying from the poison.

It would make the most badass dreadnought ever though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EnTyme wrote:
Wait. Who let Kriswall out of YMDC?!?

One day every 10 years... Isn't that part of the bargain?

pm713 wrote:
There's also the consideration of time. I would've thought that the poison would finish killing him before he can go into the Dreadnought.

Exactly, don't the tech priests stabilise the pile of goo and brain that a severely injured SM has become and inter this into a Dreadie? If RG is taken out of stasis he will just die, no brain left to power anything

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Wasn't he poisoned? If they don't have an antidote, being made into a dreadnought will probably not save him from still dying from the poison.

It would make the most badass dreadnought ever though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EnTyme wrote:
Wait. Who let Kriswall out of YMDC?!?

One day every 10 years... Isn't that part of the bargain?

He was poisoned, and it was a poison they didn't know how to stop. I also remember there being a line somewhere that said he was put in stasis basically at the moment of death, so they've got zero time to work with.

The IA Ultramrines article says

Billowing clouds of heady musk enveloped the Primarchs as they met in single combat on the red fields of Thessala. None who were present on that day can say for sure what happened, yet when the cloying musks cleared, the Emperor's Children were gone and Roboute Guilliman lay unmoving, a single bright slash of blood across his throat. Not even the Primarch's god-like physique could halt the spread of Fulgrim's poison and, as Guilliman died, the Apothecaries set up a stasis field and transported their leader back to Macragge.

Since this was written Fulgrim has come into possession of the Anathame that laid Horus low, so it possibly could be that.

It does mention

There are those who claim that the Primarch's wounds are healing, but this is clearly impossible within the time-locked bubble of a stasis field. Despite this self-evident fact, many believe such tales and await the time when Guilliman will be fully recovered.

Although as impossible as it would seem.

The pod in Angel Exterminatus is a normal pod, however Branthan has a Dark Age device strapped to him that is supposed to convert his life energy into healing for the body. It is that device that could be causing the healing and not the stasis pod.

DarthDiggler wrote:
The pod in Angel Exterminatus is a normal pod, however Branthan has a Dark Age device strapped to him that is supposed to convert his life energy into healing for the body. It is that device that could be causing the healing and not the stasis pod.

why exactly haven't they strapped that thing onto Guilliman, instead?

 dusara217 wrote:

why exactly haven't they strapped that thing onto Guilliman, instead?

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Perhaps it was destroyed, perhaps it was unable to heal Gulliman as he was a Primarch and due to the injury. Or maybe it just takes an extraordinarily long time.

Theoretically they could do it. However his wound was far too severe to stabilize, so their only option was to stick him in stasis.

In order to get put in a dreadnought you need to at least be stabilized. IE: Not in danger of dying.

Dreadnoughts tend to be marines who have been so severely crippled they can no longer fight, but also aren't immediately dying. Basically you gotta be important and have injuries which leave you a paraplegic.

The scenario in Angel Exterminatus is an example of a BL author not understanding what a "stasis pod" in 40k does.

These are devices from the DAOT that remove their contents from the flow of time entirely. Put something in it, it is forever frozen in time (until the stasis field is turned off). No device you put into the stasis field is going to function, because nothing functions frozen in time. Electrons do not move, gravity does not function, cellular activity ceases entirely... you're perfectly preserved forever (so long as the stasis field holds).

Why a dread ?

Why not mount him in a proper machine.

I love the idea of calgar sitting on the emperor's lap saying "this year santa I want my daddy back"

My thoughts - an idea that I may start a thread on (psykers and their healing abilities) - is that a psyker well beyond the abilities of your average psyker, like on a Malcador the Sigilite sort of level, could apply their abilities to heal Roboute. I would say that they could then put him in a Dreadnought (or a variation of or something else entirely), but that would depend greatly on the psyker's abilities as well as how potent the poison from the Anathame is.

Which also got me thinking on a side topic of: Does a psyker on that sort of level (Malcador the Sigilite) even exist in the 41st Millennium?

There are definitely psykers on that level. Weather they can actually use those abilities to heal or not is another question, plus they'd need to know exactly what to do when the field was turned off. You're not going to get a second chance at it.

 IllumiNini wrote:
My thoughts - an idea that I may start a thread on (psykers and their healing abilities) - is that a psyker well beyond the abilities of your average psyker, like on a Malcador the Sigilite sort of level, could apply their abilities to heal Roboute. I would say that they could then put him in a Dreadnought (or a variation of or something else entirely), but that would depend greatly on the psyker's abilities as well as how potent the poison from the Anathame is.

Which also got me thinking on a side topic of: Does a psyker on that sort of level (Malcador the Sigilite) even exist in the 41st Millennium?

Eldrad most definitely, but no Humans since Malcador got turned to dust. There are some powerful Astartes psykers like Mephiston or Tigurius, but even they are not powerful like Malcador was.

Really power isn't the main concern, its just having healing abilities in general and being of moderate power. If Tigerius and Mephiston had healing abilities they could probably do it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Really power isn't the main concern, its just having healing abilities in general and being of moderate power. If Tigerius and Mephiston had healing abilities they could probably do it.

The main reason I bring power into it is because we're (obviously) talking about a Primarch. I'm just not comfortably familiar with the fluff regarding psykers enough to say that - whether or not they have the ability aside - Tigerius or Mehpiston would be able to do it.

 Psienesis wrote:
There's also the fact that his head is about to fall the feth off his body.

Well, that's noooot really how it's been depicted. It's just a slash across his throat, not a near-decapitation. It's been pretty clear it was poison that was killing Guilliman, not the wound itself.

I love how people just say "healing" like that's really going to be anywhere near as simple as power levels. In order to "heal" Roboute Guilliman, you would need to somehow figure out a way to psychically neutralize the poison that's eating through him, which would require a fundamental knowledge of the poison, its make-up, and precisely how it kills, along with the different side-cases in which the poison reacted in a weird way (these are what we call "side effects"), which we can't do without removing the Primarch from stasis in order to analyze the poison; thereby killing him. If it were as simple as just saying "BOOM!!! I'M MAGIC, YOU'RE HEALED, YOU FILTHY SCRUB!!!!", then Roboute wouldn't have been left in stasis for very long in the first place, since the UM would have immediately sought out the most powerful Psyker they could find in order to heal him.

 dusara217 wrote:
I love how people just say "healing" like that's really going to be anywhere near as simple as power levels.

Am I getting condescension here? I'm not necessarily saying it's as simple as "He's powerful: Let them do it!". I'm just saying that it's definitely going to be a factor as to whether or not they're able to do it (especially since - as I mentioned before - we are dealing with a Primarch: a very powerful and complex entity in his own right).

 dusara217 wrote:
In order to "heal" Roboute Guilliman, you would need to somehow figure out a way to psychically neutralize the poison that's eating through him, which would require a fundamental knowledge of the poison, its make-up, and precisely how it kills, along with the different side-cases in which the poison reacted in a weird way (these are what we call "side effects"), which we can't do without removing the Primarch from stasis in order to analyze the poison; thereby killing him.

Again, I'm not entirely familiar how psykic healing is supposed to work here, but it's not a stretch by any means to imagine that it works differently to this strictly medical approach to the problem. I mean, we are talking about fictional psykic abilities after all...

 dusara217 wrote:
If it were as simple as just saying "BOOM!!! I'M MAGIC, YOU'RE HEALED, YOU FILTHY SCRUB!!!!", then Roboute wouldn't have been left in stasis for very long in the first place, since the UM would have immediately sought out the most powerful Psyker they could find in order to heal him.

Seeking out a psyker who is powerful enough as well as one who has the necessary skill to perform the required healing and actually finding one (let alone one willing and able to help Roboute) are two entirely separate things. Plus there there recurring issue of time, so an extreme amount of faith and confidence has to be placed in the chosen psyker(s).


I'm not saying this is as simple as saying "Let's go find ourselves a powerful psyker and let them heal Roboute", but being powerful enough (and obviously skilled enough) to do it is a pretty important precursor to he healing being done. And assuming there was capable, willing and able psyker available, I doubt it'd be as simple as skipping down the Yellow Brick Road to go have a friendly visit with your friendly neighborhood Primarch.

 IllumiNini wrote:
I'm not saying this is as simple as saying "Let's go find ourselves a powerful psyker and let them heal Roboute", but being powerful enough (and obviously skilled enough) to do it is a pretty important precursor to he healing being done. And assuming there was capable, willing and able psyker available, I doubt it'd be as simple as skipping down the Yellow Brick Road to go have a friendly visit with your friendly neighborhood Primarch.

Would power level even come into the equation, though? It's not like they'd be towing a ship with their mind (like in Talon of Horus) or anything of that magnitude, it seems like intelligence and education would be the deciding the factors in this.

 dusara217 wrote:
Would power level even come into the equation, though? It's not like they'd be towing a ship with their mind (like in Talon of Horus) or anything of that magnitude, it seems like intelligence and education would be the deciding the factors in this.

I agree with you in the sense that intelligence and education would definitely play a big role here, but for me it will always come back to the fact that we're talking about healing a Primarch on the verge of death. Imagine it like this (very general) real world example:

Somebody is brought into the ER with a gunshot wound to their chest. Now - despite having lots of education and intelligence, the person's local pharmacist isn't going to cut it with some bandages out of a box and some ibuprofen. The patient is going to need a surgeon.

Same sort of deal here where the surgeon is the equivalent of a very powerful psyker and the pharmacist is akin to your average psyker, and we're dealing with a Primarch who physiology even Space Marine Apothecaries supposedly don't understand at all (even when they were up and about during the GC, only the Emperor really knew how Primarchs' bodies ticked).