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One major comparison between Batman and Curze that seems to have been missed out is that they both have their 'mask' (Night Haunter and Batman) that actually consumes their lives and becomes their 'real' identity. Batman isn't the mask for Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne is the mask for Batman. Night Haunter was at first a mask for Curze, but it came to dominate his personality. It doesn't quite match up though, since Batman wholly embraces his alter ego and Curze wavers. He's definately one of the cooler Primarchs for me. The two Primarchs I'm most interested in though are Sanguinius and Angron. Their more detailed characterisation should be very interesting.

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:Curze a military general? I'm not seeing it....

O_o

This is just one of these situations where if the occupation of the Primarch of a Space Marine Legion isn't painfully obvious, there are just no words I will ever be able to use to describe it for you in terms simple enough.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:Curze a military general? I'm not seeing it....

O_o

This is just one of these situations where if the occupation of the Primarch of a Space Marine Legion isn't painfully obvious, there are just no words I will ever be able to use to describe it for you in terms simple enough.

Ah so based on the fact he's a primarch = military general...

Not sure I agree with that...

Doesn't that require some tactical prowress? I mean Lorgar wasn't really a tactical primarch, with his legion he was basically it's figurehead, the father. He wasn't much of a military general in fact he said so himself.

Primarch != military general
but
Primarch does equate to some sort of patriarchal leader, whether or not they lead as a military general (perhaps Roboute or the Lion), or something else (Magnus, Lorgar)

As far as i,m concerned Curze made a good military general. After all, fear is a blade which sharpens with use...

Lorgar thought he wasn't as good as his brothers. He was still a general. He just wasn't a master like Horus or Guilliman. If a Primarch is ultimately the senior military commander of a large semi-autonomous military organization, what else do you call him? I guess you could give him other, secondary titles, but in the end, he'll still be a general too.

Curze, however, as a Primarch, was definitely a military leader and not a vigilante. He just was more unorthodox than some of his brothers. Fabricating a plan that involves fear and shock tactics is still strategic planning. Kurtz, the character he is based on, was a Special Forces colonel who went native in Cambodia and was waging a brutal war of terror and assassinations on the Vietnamese. During the Great Crusade, Curze embraced terror tactics and total warfare... pretty much the exact same character profile. Sure, he liked to pretend that he was punishing those who had done wrong, but really all he was doing was killing the gak out of people and xenos by any means necessary.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Lorgar thought he wasn't as good as his brothers. He was still a general. He just wasn't a master like Horus or Guilliman. If a Primarch is ultimately the senior military commander of a large semi-autonomous military organization, what else do you call him? I guess you could give him other, secondary titles, but in the end, he'll still be a general too.

Curze, however, as a Primarch, was definitely a military leader and not a vigilante. He just was more unorthodox than some of his brothers. Fabricating a plan that involves fear and shock tactics is still strategic planning. Kurtz, the character he is based on, was a Special Forces colonel who went native in Cambodia and was waging a brutal war of terror and assassinations on the Vietnamese. During the Great Crusade, Curze embraced terror tactics and total warfare... pretty much the exact same character profile. Sure, he liked to pretend that he was punishing those who had done wrong, but really all he was doing was killing the gak out of people and xenos by any means necessary.

I guess, makes sense.

I guess it depends on the definition of a general vs the connotations&annotations of a general

I would assume that any Primarch is at least a *decent* chess player. Curze was probably a better-than-average tactician, but no it wasn't his specialty. Fear tactics and morale warfare were his deal for sure. The whole point of having 20 guys is so each can have at least some unique ability, so no he wasn't designed to command galactic strategies, but yes he was intended to scare the poo out of the enemy. That's the impression I get anyway.

I dunno, I don't think the Emperor "intended" for Curze to end up how he did. After all, he censured him and that led to Curze turning traitor. The Emperor was pretty clear with whom he favored (Horus, Guilliman, Sanguinius, etc), and none of them used terror tactics, or incidents of unprovoked civilian reprisals.

Curze was a product of his environment. He became who he was, but he wasn't created that way.

So essentially Curze was a vigilante who fell off his rocker and just killed for the sake of killing and then realized what he had done and allowed himself to be killed?

Ignatius wrote:
Cooler than Lorgar? Definately.

How original, you chose to bash Lorgar.

I'm not a fan of Kurze. I don't particularly like his style, although I do enjoy reading about him. He's an interesting character, but he doesn't really appeal to me.

LoneLictor wrote:So essentially Curze was a vigilante who fell off his rocker and just killed for the sake of killing and then realized what he had done and allowed himself to be killed?

Essentially Curze was Casey Jones from TMNT, who turned out to be the son of a really powerful dictator, and was given nepotistic control of a legion of genetically engineered warriors and he, unsurprisingly, chose to use them to butcher his enemies because that was the only way he knew.

Then, because he'd watched one too many screenings of a recovered Apocalypse Now DVD, he allowed an assassin to kill him because he thought it would be cool. Little known fact: His last words were "The horror! The horror!" The assassin then went back to Terra, where Curze's old girlfriend had relocated after the destruction of Nostromo, and tells her that he died speaking her name.

Castiel wrote:

Ignatius wrote:
Cooler than Lorgar? Definately.

How original, you chose to bash Lorgar.

I'm not a fan of Kurze. I don't particularly like his style, although I do enjoy reading about him. He's an interesting character, but he doesn't really appeal to me.

Sorry. I just read ADB's The First Heretic.

I don't try to be original or creative. I just voice my opinion. It has nothing to do with what other people like or dislike. I just don't llike him. Hence why I said that.

Hes pretty cool, there are a fair few Primarchs I would pick over him. Space batman isnt all that appealing to me to be completely honest.

What was Kurze officially censured for?
I like the idea that the Emperor was dedicated to the Golden Path enough to be ruthless and create ruthless agents like Angron, Kurze... and Russ. Kurze would have run a great Ordo Malleus

Scambone wrote:What was Kurze officially censured for?
I like the idea that the Emperor was dedicated to the Golden Path enough to be ruthless and create ruthless agents like Angron, Kurze... and Russ. Kurze would have run a great Ordo Malleus

Killing lots and lots of people

More specifically he beat the crap out of Dorn and then ran home and blew up Nostramo. Plus a lot of the terror/killing sprees started to add up and weren't doing anyone any good

Scambone wrote:What was Kurze officially censured for?
I like the idea that the Emperor was dedicated to the Golden Path enough to be ruthless and create ruthless agents like Angron, Kurze... and Russ. Kurze would have run a great Ordo Malleus

Again though, like Curze, the Emperor didn't create Angron the way he was. And Russ was ruthless, but only to an extent. Russ would have been the perfect mold had the Emperor wanted someone ruthless. He was like, well, a trained attack dog. He'd attack whatever you wanted, and savage the gak out of it, but would always return when called.

Angron was made angry because he was lobotomized with an angry maker as a child. The Emperor merely found him. Now, one could say that the Emperor chose not to de-lobotomize him, but the Emperor of the old days fluff apparently wasn't so forward thinking.

Ignatius wrote:

Castiel wrote:

Ignatius wrote:
Cooler than Lorgar? Definately.

How original, you chose to bash Lorgar.

I'm not a fan of Kurze. I don't particularly like his style, although I do enjoy reading about him. He's an interesting character, but he doesn't really appeal to me.

Sorry. I just read ADB's The First Heretic.

I don't try to be original or creative. I just voice my opinion. It has nothing to do with what other people like or dislike. I just don't llike him. Hence why I said that.

There are two flavours of Lorgar. I agree with you, after First Heretic I though was a whiney little daddy's boy, with very little to redeem him as a character, even though I enjoyed the book as much as any other HH novel (and I've read them all)

Aurelian though.. Let's just say he goes through some changes, which if maintained should make him a much stronger character and more of the villain the HH series is setting him up to be.


As for Curze, he always struck me as Batman from The Dark Knight Returns, plagued by doubt, not perhaps in total control of his mental faculties, but still in possession of a great deal of power and potential to do harm.

Kind of like a toddler with a machine gun.

GreatGunz wrote:He's based pm Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, which was based on Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad. Hence Conrad Curze. He's assassinated by M'Shen, named after Martin Sheen, who plays a government assassin in Apocalypse Now. In the movie, as in 40k, the renegade super soldier allows himself to be assassinated because he's sick of life. No doubt GW has found a way to retroactively sue Francis Ford Coppola for stealing their stolen intellectual property.

/thead.

The key to Curze is his backward, nihilistic concept of justice. Instead of punishing an offender for what he has already done, Curze inflicts punishments that transform his targets into criminals. The issue here is whether Curze is actually precognizant or merely a madman. Upon meeting his father, Curze had a vision that the Emperor would murder him. His choices after that point, to engage in tactics that would repulse his brothers and to ultimately join Horus, forced the Imperium to assassinate him. Curze then allowed himself to be assassinated to justify all of his actions against the Imperium. Would they have sent M'Shen if Curze had acted more like Sanguinius or Guilliman? We'll never know. The Night Lords illustrate a similar cause-effect ambivalence: when you make laws, you inevitably also make criminals. Put it another way, when the Emperor made Space Marines he also inevitably made CSM.

I want to believe in the concept that all the Primarchs originally had a purpose on the Golden Path that got twisted, Magnus being the easiest example. Angron was mentally-messed-with, you're right Vet. Sarge. But its not like he had psyker abilities or had a unique ability like Ferrus or Corax. He did what he was good at when he got cornered, as did Kurze. All conjecture, of course, but as I say I *like* to believe that Kurze was meant to be a weapon against enemy morale. Or batman.

*where can I read more GW bg on the Dorn/Kurze confrontation?

Scambone wrote:I want to believe in the concept that all the Primarchs originally had a purpose on the Golden Path that got twisted, Magnus being the easiest example. Angron was mentally-messed-with, you're right Vet. Sarge. But its not like he had psyker abilities or had a unique ability like Ferrus or Corax. He did what he was good at when he got cornered, as did Kurze. All conjecture, of course, but as I say I *like* to believe that Kurze was meant to be a weapon against enemy morale. Or batman.

*where can I read more GW bg on the Dorn/Kurze confrontation?

Its in the HH audiobooks "The Dark King and The Lightning Tower"

Scambone wrote:What was Kurze officially censured for?

\
Nearly killing Dorn.

The atrocities of the Night Lords were something that they wished didn't happen, but it wasn't until Curze was covered in Dorn's blood that he was taken into custody.

Kurze... I pity him more than like him. I mean, he lived on a planet of criminals, forced justice onto them by using fear, the only language they understood. Then when his father forced (maybe, he certainly wasn't eager after trying to tear out his own eyes seeing the Emperor for the first time) him to leave the planet, his brothers looked down on him for applying the lessons he had learned from his upbringing to the galaxy at large, and when he returned to his home planet he found that it had slipped back into depravity. After destroying it, he found that the same was happening to his legion after the Heresy, and then he got possessed to top it all off. I wouldn't like him, but I have to respect him.

Durza wrote: and then he got possessed

Source?

Hmm... it appears I remembered wrongly. Apologies.

Not as cool as Khan but cooler than Perturabo.

I feel so bad for him....I hate Primarchs that had it easy (Girly Man comes to mind).

Curze is sort of the Osama Bin Laden of 40K. He lived to spread fear and terror, driven by rather crude, black-and-white vision of morality that knew no shades of grey. And he was gunned down by assassins in his hideaway, providing "proof" with his death that his enemies claiming to be disgusted by his methods were just as willing to adopt extra-juidical violence to make ends meet. Death is nothing compared to vindication.

LoneLictor wrote:The only Night Lords book I've read is Soul Hunter and most of my info on Curze comes from Lexicanum, but his motives seem kind of weird. At time he seems like a vigilante, motivated by his insane version of justice. Other times he seems just like a crazy guy who kills for the sake of killing, kind of like Angron. Could someone clarify this?

From what I have heard (I haven't gotten around to reading up on Curze honestly), Konrad Curze is heavily implied to suffer from dissociative identiy disorder, which is why he can go from the vigilante standing up for his own brand of justice (Hence the "Death is nothing compared to vindication" line he said on his death, he took the Imperium attempts at assassinating him to prove that he was always right, that the false Emperor was merely doing what Curze thought he did, punish those who had done wrong), to a vicious lunatic who eats hearts and gak.

Also, Curze is cool, but not my favorite.

Zweischneid wrote:And he was gunned down by assassins in his hideaway, providing "proof" with his death that his enemies claiming to be disgusted by his methods were just as willing to adopt extra-juidical violence to make ends meet.

Want to know a major difference? Kurze embraced his death. He let the assassin kill him. He was also unafraid to face his enemies. Arguably, he also benefited his greatly while he was still present on it.