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Title says it all, do you believe the council of Nikaea was correct to outlaw Librarians?

NO SPOILERS - PARTICULARLY FOR A THOUSAND SONS. (everybody knows what happened anyway so the title doesn't give it away IMHO)

After just reading through A Thousand Sons:

Your Thoughts?

Had the Impression the Emperor wasn't happy with his decision.

The librarius IS a aprt of the SM now, and keeps the danger under control.
If its possible to do this after the heresy , why should it be impossible pre-heresy?
With magnus and his legion was not a risk taken care of, instead the archenemy caught their prize and bereft the IoM of its
knowledge and high ranking psykers. Again a case where the emperor should have dealt with personally, IMO he would
see the real issue there.
But the council followed the fear and the as of yet unknown intentions of the SW and the custodes (Valdor).

So it was not correct, as it should have followed the suggestions of the psykers speaking up.

Emps probably should have stepped in himself with Magnus and all of the thousand sons instead of the Council of Nikea, however there were likely other pressures upon him to have the council instead of just telling them 'you know, there are bad things in the warp'.

You'd think Emps would have known that Magnus

Emps probably should have been more open with his sons (not necessarily the rest of the human population) about the true nature of the warp and what inhabited it. That would have likely inured them to it to some degree. Look at the Grey Knights, they know absolutely everything about the warp and Daemons, because they are taught through 666 trials of detestation, and none of them have fallen to the honeyed lies of the daemonic.

daedalus-templarius wrote:Emps probably should have stepped in himself with Magnus and all of the thousand sons instead of the Council of Nikea, however there were likely other pressures upon him to have the council instead of just telling them 'you know, there are bad things in the warp'.

You'd think Emps would have known that Magnus

Spoiler:

dealt with terrible warp entities to stabilize his chapter's gene seed.

Emps probably should have been more open with his sons (not necessarily the rest of the human population) about the true nature of the warp and what inhabited it. That would have likely inured them to it to some degree. Look at the Grey Knights, they know absolutely everything about the warp and Daemons, because they are taught through 666 trials of detestation, and none of them have fallen to the honeyed lies of the daemonic.

Actually, I have to agree with most of this. Along with Hadhq's comment, yeah the emperor did mess up in a lot of cases. But once again, is he better off telling them about Chaos? He can't train every member of the Imperium like the Grey Knights and this would only serve to make people more aware and therefore vulnerable to Chaos. Once again, better safe than sorry?

Before I read A Thousand Sons, I had the impression that the council was a psyker hate-fest, which is what the SW and DG tried to make it out as. I thought all psykers were banned, which would've been idiotic. I would have voted against the decision, if I could.

In the end though, I can understand the Emperor's decision. He banned only Librarians (i.e. Space marine psykers). I believe his reasoning would be that lesser psykers (Navigators, Astropaths, Taro readers, etc.) were more easily controlled, less susceptible to warp dangers and were very important (for warp travel, interstellar communication, etc). On the Librarian side, why would he need his most powerful warriors to be even more powerful for such a great risk? Librarians, due to the nature of their power, are constantly enticed and exposed to warp dangers, leaving a weakness in the Legions which they did not even fully understand, yet (even the TSons didn't realize the FULL extent of the danger).

I, perhaps, would have made a different decision, to closely monitor the Librarians and reduce their numbers, but I can understand the judgment made at Nikea. If I had to vote yay or nay, I would now vote yay, agreeing with the Emperor. Besides, He had plans for Magnus and his Legion using their powers.

Fiend wrote:In the end though, I can understand the Emperor's decision. He banned only Librarians (i.e. Space marine psykers). I believe his reasoning would be that lesser psykers (Navigators, Astropaths, Taro readers, etc.) were more easily controlled, less susceptible to warp dangers and were very important (for warp travel, interstellar communication, etc). On the Librarian side, why would he need his most powerful warriors to be even more powerful for such a great risk? Librarians, due to the nature of their power, are constantly enticed and exposed to warp dangers, leaving a weakness in the Legions which they did not even fully understand, yet (even the TSons didn't realize the FULL extent of the danger).

For me: This Is It.

Just Dave wrote:

Actually, I have to agree with most of this. Along with Hadhq's comment, yeah the emperor did mess up in a lot of cases. But once again, is he better off telling them about Chaos? He can't train every member of the Imperium like the Grey Knights and this would only serve to make people more aware and therefore vulnerable to Chaos. Once again, better safe than sorry?

Perhaps he wouldn't have had to train them to be exactly like Grey Knights, but some knowledge to arm themselves against the predations of the warp would have likely helped them. The Librarians knew there were predators in the warp, I guess they just figured they were primal beasts, not the kind of galactic destroying intellect and planning that a greater daemon is capable of.

However, since he was not going to explain that to his sons, banning librarians, and not lesser psykers, was probably the best decision. Although, you only have to look at the Death Guard to see that a legion with no psykers can still be corrupted. (I'm pretty sure it was the DG that didn't have any psykers in their ranks, and the Rune Priests saying their power comes from Fenris' mountains and not the warp is just silly talk)

To me the answer's obvious. Based on the fluff I've read the council mandated the Librarians not use their powers and be moved back to the line squads and Magnus was supposed to stop using his powers.

If the council had never made the ruling, E would have said thanks for the heads up from Magnus and had 2 more legions (SW and TS) to defend the Imperium. Instead, E ends sending the SW to destroy Prospero and makes an enemy of the TS.

Hind sight being 20/20, no, not a good call on the Council's part.

The Emperor's attitude towards to the warp and his minions does take an unintuitive position, although it has been consistent. He preferred the "Don't even go there because I say so" approach as opposed to the "Don't even go there because this is why" approach. Perhaps he believed that even revealing the power to be had within the warp could be corrupting and that, as stated above, better safe than sorry.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Gamble: In all fairness, if Magnus had obeyed E's judgment, regardless of whether or not we agree, then the TSons and SW would have been available loyal legions.

Gamble wrote:To me the answer's obvious. Based on the fluff I've read the council mandated the Librarians not use their powers and be moved back to the line squads and Magnus was supposed to stop using his powers.

If the council had never made the ruling, E would have said thanks for the heads up from Magnus and had 2 more legions (SW and TS) to defend the Imperium. Instead, E ends sending the SW to destroy Prospero and makes an enemy of the TS.

Hind sight being 20/20, no, not a good call on the Council's part.

Well, when Magnus did give the heads up the Emperor punished Magnus (due to council) but also refused to believe him (no link to council), suggesting the Emperor wouldn't believe him even if Psykers were banned, although he may have been clouded by rage?

hmmm

I don't remember who had said it(in this thread) but just to clear up a mistake; the Emperor did not send the SWs to destroy Prospero, he asked horus to send Russ and crew to bring Magnus before him. Horus then lied to Russ et al and told them daddy wants the cyclops dead, and his legion decimated.

I do not know if A Thousand Sons "ret-cons" this, but it is in GWs official Fluff on the heresy(and I do not take BL books as Canon).

What the Kommissar said is true, Russ was not supposed to attack Prospero, but was told to do so by Horus.

I'm sure Prospero Burns will detail the Horus/Russ interaction.

Yeah, Magnus was being punished for disobeying the Council of Nikaea, begging the question, was the council right to ban Librarians?

reds8n wrote:hmmm

Spoiler:

Do you not think that the Emperor had no choice but to destroy Magnus after he contacted him ? The story mentions the complete exchange of information between the two of them when Magnus' astral body arrived on Terra. Presumably this would have included the fact that Magnus had already made a deal with a chaos power ( to save his legion), so, from the Emperor's perspective, Magnus had already fallen to chaos and had to be destroyed, as ANY dealing with chaos, ultimately, results in the corruption and ruination of the mortal involved. The physical mutations the legion suffers later merely proving this to be the case.
Horus, aside from being the Emperor's favourite, had thus far shown no signs of chaos activity or leanings, so the Emperor really could only conclude ( his view perhaps coloured by his love for Horus especially) that this was merely another part of the deception that Magnus had fallen for.

aaaah, very true Reds8n - I hate your intellect - does this back up Nikaea's decision then? after all, as you said, the Emperor may have seen Magnus' pact with Chaos and that this has occurred within the most Psyker-heavy legion cannot be a coincidence, as apparently, there's no such thing.

Maybe there Emperor would've been better to fully inform and warn the Primarch's about Chaos (emphasising their manipulative/bad side) and cautioned them to keep an eye on any signs of corruption within their Legion? Atleast they go out into the galaxy then with only the (apparently) strongest individuals knowing of Chaos?

Fiend wrote:On the Librarian side, why would he need his most powerful warriors to be even more powerful for such a great risk?

A little note here: Librarians are not actually any more powerful than human psykers. They're just far more durable and tend to live longer, so they become more and more skilled with what power they do have as time goes on. A prodigious human psyker can outdo a librarian one on one, though they're probably far easier to put down than a librarian is.

Assuming they aren't corrupted and gifted with mutations that make up for their human physiology.

Of course it was correct. Its always correct. The Emperor is never wrong.
Praise be unto him.