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 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Immortality has already been a thing in 40k. Now, if the complaint was "I don't like existing characters being made retroactively immortal" or "there's too many immortal characters now", I'd understand, but it's not like immortality is something that's never cropped up.

Yup, but compared to the other examples of immortals, it just seems really lame and handwavey. Daemons are immortal, but the extent to which they are individuals at all is debateable, and the same would apply to the Tyranids. Drukhari Coven immortality has it's own rules and is depends on their wacky dark science. I guess it's somewhat semantic, and and matter of taste, but to me the Perpetuals are an inexplicably gak idea.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Why the perpetual hate? I think they're a cool idea.

The last two posters summed it up pretty well, but on top of that they feel very shoehorned in as well. As far as we can tell, there was no precedence for this in the old fluff and it undermines the whole aspect of Daemon Princedom to begin with, as most forms of attaining "immortality" in 40k requires Faustian bargains, ala the Path of Glory for Chaos followers which have a lot of risks besides just death because they could be reduced to gibbering spawn. Furthermore, even once the individual attains Princedom, you effectively lose your soul and individuality as you are permanently subsumed by your patron diety, so you're forever bound to the whims and wants of that Chaos God for the Great Game. On the Imperial side, you only have rejeuvenats (which give diminishing returns) and cybernetics which can only take you so far, which is why Coteaz's whole B-plot is that he wants to find a successor but can't and is tempted to give into the darker options of extending his life but at the cost of potentially corrupting himself. With Perpetuals, you take away that dichotomy and struggle, because all of a sudden being immortal with pretty much no drawbacks is a thing.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Why the perpetual hate? I think they're a cool idea.

The last two posters summed it up pretty well, but on top of that they feel very shoehorned in as well. As far as we can tell, there was no precedence for this in the old fluff and it undermines the whole aspect of Daemon Princedom to begin with, as most forms of attaining "immortality" in 40k requires Faustian bargains, ala the Path of Glory for Chaos followers which have a lot of risks besides just death because they could be reduced to gibbering spawn. Furthermore, even once the individual attains Princedom, you effectively lose your soul and individuality as you are permanently subsumed by your patron diety, so you're forever bound to the whims and wants of that Chaos God for the Great Game. On the Imperial side, you only have rejeuvenats (which give diminishing returns) and cybernetics which can only take you so far, which is why Coteaz's whole B-plot is that he wants to find a successor but can't and is tempted to give into the darker options of extending his life but at the cost of potentially corrupting himself. With Perpetuals, you take away that dichotomy and struggle, because all of a sudden being immortal with pretty much no drawbacks is a thing.

You also have the Craftworlder immortality where you can live forever but trapped within a ships power system with barely any awareness or getting to keep awareness but your life is just training, war or a weird sleep after you die and go dormant until you get revived by another person.

I mean all other sorts of 'immortality' have explicit reason for existing, and they have limitations and costs. The perpetual are: 'We're immortal just because and no drawbacks, LOL!'

Why are perpetuals perpetual? Are only humans perpetual?

 Da Boss wrote:
Why are perpetuals perpetual?

There literally is no reason besides some BL author forgetting whether they were writing a 40K novel or Highlander fanfiction.

Are only humans perpetual?

IIRC, all known perpetuals are humans.

Really, no reason? Pfft. I remember that showing up in some HH book I was reading and thinking "Huh. Hope there is a good reason for this and all of them die off in the Heresy."

Oh well.

And all of them are human? Okay.

Most of them seem to add very little to things to be honest.

And the dumbest thing is then they backpedal half the time on their immortality by having them either lose it or die through literal plot macguffins like the fulgurite shard. Pretty sure the only perpetual that matters in the overall scheme of things (outside of guys like Emps and maybe Malcador) is Vulkan, or at least until what we see Pius actually does when he gets onto the Vengeful Spirit.

The other issue with Perpetuals is that they reduce the uniqueness of the Emperor. He went from being the one-and-only to just the longest lived and most powerful of the perpetuals. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing is personal.

There’s an interesting snippet in book 3 of the Siege of Tera (The First Wall) where Horus says that he needs to destroy the Emperor both physically and psychically otherwise he may show up again in another century. That suggests the Emperor doesn’t get a melta to the face then stand back up again 10 minutes later. The Emperor might stay dead long enough for there to be no humanity when he comes back, particularly without the Astronomicon.

At the time of The Emperor’s death the warp was to chaotic to allow reincarnation. Another perpetual had died moments before and ceased to exist. The Emperor couldn’t take the risk of the same thing happening to him.

He needs to guide the psychic evolution of humanity into a race free of daemons to calm the warp and allow his rebirth.

The warp being chaotic doesn't stop perpetuals reincarnating. Otherwise they'd all have died the second Chaos formed.

Could Blackstone be a solution? Would it be possible to get some Blackstone and use it to seal the breach on Terra?

I'm not massively up to date on blackstone since they seem to have invented it recently for some reason but I'd guess not. The Cadian Pylons were breaking so I imagine a primitive version of them would fare even worse.

I think it is a simple issue that, assuming the Emperor can regenerate, reincarnate, reform, or come back to life, just how long does it take for this to happen? Given the quote from the Last Wall, apparently not all that fast. The Emperor being dead for a few weeks yet alone a century would plunge the Imperium back into Old Night. At the end of the Horus Hersey, that would have been tantamount to a Chaos Victory. And the timing hasn't gotten any better in the 10,000 years since.

 Da Boss wrote:
Really, no reason? Pfft. I remember that showing up in some HH book I was reading and thinking "Huh. Hope there is a good reason for this and all of them die off in the Heresy."

Oh well.

And all of them are human? Okay.

IIRC all Eldar are "perpetuals" as their souls can survive death and then be reborn, as chaos rose in the warp they started to die true deaths as Slaanesh consumes them.

The first "perpetuals" were the shamans (unless retconed), they were similar to the Eldar in that they died and retained their souls to be reborn, they kept all of their memories too, we can assume that the current version of the perpetual human could be descendants of these Shamans or in some way linked, if not then it would also stand to reason that the human race can throw up these individuals from time to time.

Eldar and Orks are designed races so that could explain the lack of the human type perpetual, other races such as the Tau lack a key part of the process and that is the connection to the warp in a meaningful amount, Tyranids do have this ability but it manifests in a different way (swarmlord), so again we can assume other races could possibly have a perpetual type being in some manner.