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This is something that's been weighing on my mind for some time....

Periodically, a publication/novel will refer to the Primarchs as being representative of fundamental parts of the essence of the Emperor - so each one is not the sum of all of the Emperor's attributes, but only a portion. This makes a bit of sense.....

....until you bring in their upbringing! By being scattered in their infancy and raised in such unbelievably different (and/or hazardous) settings, it could be argued that they are far more likely to have been shaped by the place than the genetic makeup.

A perfect example is Angron. He had "the butcher's nails" implanted into his head and from that day on he was SO ANGRY! Are we to believe that he was always going to be that way because the Emperor's wrath had become concentrated into one being?

What do you think?

-RD

I think it likely that the nails simply enhanced his bloodthirsty rage, turning him into an even more uncontrollable berserker god.

Well, nature, nurture... the touch of chaos at their infancy is certainly the most significant force.

 lcmiracle wrote:
Well, nature, nurture... the touch of chaos at their infancy is certainly the most significant force.

Really hoping I didn't just repeat what you just said (sorry if I did) but...

This is only a theory and may be shot down quickly but what if the warp changed the primarchs biologically (complete DNA rewrite), what they could have gained through nurture could have changed in the warp. Wouldn't that mean the "nature" part was wiped out and rewritten while the "nurture" part shaped them more?

 SkavenLord wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:
Well, nature, nurture... the touch of chaos at their infancy is certainly the most significant force.

Really hoping I didn't just repeat what you just said (sorry if I did) but...

This is only a theory and may be shot down quickly but what if the warp changed the primarchs biologically (complete DNA rewrite), what they could have gained through nurture could have changed in the warp. Wouldn't that mean the "nature" part was wiped out and rewritten while the "nurture" part shaped them more?

With the warp, anything is possible!

I guess the main reason why I end up defaulting to the "nurture" side of the coin is that all of the Primarchs were successful, regardless of the environment. They each became what they most needed to be in order to survive. Space viking became an awesome space viking, prisoner became a great prison break engineer, guy dropped on fire planet gets really good at forging and using fire......etc. etc. etc.

Ultimately, I always felt that the whole "they represent an aspect of the Emperor" thing was a cover for the fact that they were lost against his wishes and warped by their environments.

I mean, seriously, have any of the Primarchs in any way really not matched up to the world upon which they ended up?

SUB QUESTION: did "Chaos" spread them across the universe, or was that really the plan all along? (answer: yes, it was chaos, but this would be more fun if it were true....)

-RD

 Roger Dorn wrote:
I guess the main reason why I end up defaulting to the "nurture" side of the coin is that all of the Primarchs were successful, regardless of the environment. They each became what they most needed to be in order to survive. Space viking became an awesome space viking, prisoner became a great prison break engineer, guy dropped on fire planet gets really good at forging and using fire......etc. etc. etc.

Ultimately, I always felt that the whole "they represent an aspect of the Emperor" thing was a cover for the fact that they were lost against his wishes and warped by their environments.

I mean, seriously, have any of the Primarchs in any way really not matched up to the world upon which they ended up?

SUB QUESTION: did "Chaos" spread them across the universe, or was that really the plan all along? (answer: yes, it was chaos, but this would be more fun if it were true....)

-RD

They might have had their fates in the hands of the Chaos Gods, or perhaps, it was a gradual process... why were exactly half of the remaining Primarchs before HH turned and the other half didn't? Perhaps it was another scheme of the Gods. How much influence the big four had over each Primarch.

One would argue that the fate of Magnus was sealed the moment had made that pact with Tzeentch, or maybe it was his potent psychic ability that doomed him to begin with. Alternatively, one would argue that all the steps brings Magnus closer to the allure of Chaos, but had Leman Russ not arrogantly burnt the homeworld of Thousand Sons the Crimson King would have never turned to Chaos. Regardless, of course, Leman Russ nailed the fate of the Sorcerer in the coffin'.

And alternatively, had Russ' personality been part of the big fours doing? Had he not landed on Fenris would he been as much as a werewolf he became? Or perhaps it was just coincidence and Tzeentch merely exploited the weakness in the Primarch's personality?

Horus' path to ruin was not an easy one; it involved many plot devices and inter-woven plots, and perhaps weren't all as intended for him initially. ...Or was it?

Concerning Chaos, you can pretty much understand it your anyway you want (so long as it adhere to basic fluffs, that is).

The only real traits they got from the emperor were their physical prowess and their innate abilities.

Their personalities were completely obtained from their upbringings and the environment they grew up in.


Magnus was a super psycher because the emperor genengineered him to be one. Big E originally planned for magnus to sit on the golden throne and power his astronomicon beacon after humanity took over the galexy.

His desire to learn and his arrogance over the chaos powers were all gained during his time growing up and experiencing the warp.


All the primarchs were destined for some scheme or another from the start. Very few ended up doing what was planed, cause chaos.............

I recently watched a documentary where they touched on the Nature v Nurture debate and stated that both are true and false.

So nature plays a significant role but only if activated by external (nuture) factors. Take Curze for example, his visions of his death and the end of the imperium were clearly sources of his eventual madness. However, had he had been brought up with people around him to teach him humility and kindness, instead of violence and solitude, he may have grown up a sorrowful but honourable individual. Or Lorgar, had he grown up in a culture of reason and advancement, his natural curiousity and philosophical nature could have lead him to be a great asset to the imperium, instead of a Fanatic.

In short, they all had traits that set them on a path but their enviroments determined the direction they walked on that path.

Eihnlazer wrote:
Magnus was a super psycher because the emperor genengineered him to be one. Big E originally planned for magnus to sit on the golden throne and power his astronomicon beacon after humanity took over the galexy.

Ironically the exact same fate the Emperor was destined for. Apparently, the process of being entombed in the Throne is incredibly painful, so it really makes you wonder at the amount of empathy the Emperor even had for his sons. Were they simply tools for his own mysterious use? Can you even blame the majority of them for rebelling? Depends on personal perspective, but if I were Magnus, I wouldn't feel even a hint of remorse.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:

Eihnlazer wrote:
Magnus was a super psycher because the emperor genengineered him to be one. Big E originally planned for magnus to sit on the golden throne and power his astronomicon beacon after humanity took over the galexy.

Ironically the exact same fate the Emperor was destined for. Apparently, the process of being entombed in the Throne is incredibly painful, so it really makes you wonder at the amount of empathy the Emperor even had for his sons. Were they simply tools for his own mysterious use? Can you even blame the majority of them for rebelling? Depends on personal perspective, but if I were Magnus, I wouldn't feel even a hint of remorse.

Well let's see what ol' Emps has already done to a couple of his sons:

- Magnus was planned by birth to sit on a very painful device for who knows how long

- Lorgar was humiliated and had one of his favorite worlds burned down because he loved papa emperor too much

- Perturabo was being looked down upon by his brothers. What did Emps do? Pretty much nothing.
Father of the year ladies and gentlemen! By the looks of it, it looks like it would have been even worse if the primarchs stayed with the Emps.

Ummm... no to pretty much everything in this thread. It's all nurture.

On a real life note as well it is also almost all nurture just most of it happens before the age of three so it appears natural. The idea of inherent traits mentally is the dumbest thing in the entire world. A chemical imbalance that can make you prone to something? Yeah yeah, but no deterministic formula can be applied to make someone a maniac. In 40k maybe, but people aren't even "born" with talents for anything. It's a total fallacy that modern science has debunked and it just hasn't reach the masses yet because the idea is not popular because it takes away the excuse of every failure. "Oh I wasn't born that way" It's a cop out. Man and woman up people and get your gak together. Also being a psyker is not a mental trait in the way that being "angry" is. It's irrelevant to the main post

Edit: Gak? What the f do? I used a word for poo poo not gak.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
I recently watched a documentary where they touched on the Nature v Nurture debate and stated that both are true and false.

So nature plays a significant role but only if activated by external (nuture) factors. Take Curze for example, his visions of his death and the end of the imperium were clearly sources of his eventual madness. However, had he had been brought up with people around him to teach him humility and kindness, instead of violence and solitude, he may have grown up a sorrowful but honourable individual. Or Lorgar, had he grown up in a culture of reason and advancement, his natural curiousity and philosophical nature could have lead him to be a great asset to the imperium, instead of a Fanatic.

In short, they all had traits that set them on a path but their enviroments determined the direction they walked on that path.

No it's not nature and nurture. It's Nature*Nurture meaning nurture is far more important. You must have misinterpreted that part of the doc. Genetic traits do way less than people think. A lot of times people develop a skill in their infancy and as a toddler by being predisposed to it and people think that it is genetics because it looks that way but it's not. My family are terrible athletes by my next door neighbors on both sides were excellent athletes and I spent most days in the afternoon there exposed to it. From the earliest age possible. I became an excellent athlete. Starting varsity freshman year all three seasons of the school year. It's just an example, but I've read countless books on this subject.

There is an automated swear filter on most forums, Jake. Attempting to circumvent it is generally a Warnable offence.

Some people are born a certain way. Others aren't. The power genes have over someone varies from person to person.

That said, the violinist experiment was fairly conclusive regarding 'talent'.

Musical talent goes no further than whether or not someone's hearing is good enough to determine pitches accurately, and to some extent, that can be trained too. That said, a dyspraxic might have extreme difficulty playing anything requiring precise fingering, such as the guitar or flute.

Actually no some people aren't born a certain way. There is literally no scientific proof for the besides the most basic physical traits. Even eye color can be altered by nurture and is not deterministic. What you just said is not accurate in any way whatsoever. It's not just musical talent it is everything. Ted Williams wasn't born the best hitter in baseball. He sucked as a youth. Same with Michael Jordan. Contrary to what Iverson says it's all about not just practice but the way you practice. You can't practice in a way the only reinforces your current skill set. You have to push yourself. In this way a dedicated person can learn more through failure than success and is why most childhood prodigies end up average. People simply are not born to be what they are. Race, sexual orientation and such excluded obviously. Genes have an effect on people but are in no way deterministic. Some of your traits may be set in stone by the time you are old enough to decide you don't like them, but you can blame that on those who were around you at an extremely young age that you learned them from

And I circumnavigated nothing. I used substitutions. I didn't just change an i for a 1 or a lowercase l

Even dyspraxia isn't a deterministic genetic trait. It can all be influenced in the womb. Some things like diseases or disorders can occur anyway there is a small chance but saying just about anything comes down to genetics is a cop out. Genetics can only increase the probability of something and not by as much as people think

 Roger Dorn wrote:

I mean, seriously, have any of the Primarchs in any way really not matched up to the world upon which they ended up?

Well, did any of the baby primarchs arrive at gas giants, the surfaces of a stars, the cores of planets, or more likely the depths of inter-stellar space?

It is hard to say with Dorn or with Alpharius. However, there are a limited number of primarchs, and it is explicit that the large majority of them were delivered into the atmospheres, not just of planets, not just of inhabitable planets, but of inhabited planets.

There is obviously an effect that caused primarchs, which are very much like humans and were created by a human culture, to arrive at planets filled with humans, organisms which are very similar to to primarchs with regard to breathing oxygen and speaking vocalized language.

Also, the fellow with extremely obvious mutations arrived at a planet (a moon), where mutation is a huge deal, the one with a pronounced psyker gene arrived at a planet where psykers are a big deal, and the one with lupine DNA arrived at a planet where wolves are a big deal.

As I read the books, the more I think about the primarchs.....and I have a new opinion of Perturabo. Read "Angel Exterminatus" and you'll know what I mean.

Perturabo in every other book I've ever read is portrayed as a bloodied rapacious ogre bashing his way through the universe for the pure eff of it.

However, in "Angel Exterminatus," he is portrayed completely differently. His pragmatism is very human, his hate not the act of a madman but the tortured soul of the misunderstood. Plus, what drove him over the cliff? The fact that he could FEEL the hate of the Chaos gods from afar for his WHOLE FLIPPING LIFE. I mean, he gave the universe the term "Eye of Terror." Well done, sir!

I run an Imperial FIsts army, and I thought I would hate reading about the Iron Warriors, but the sad part is that I see more in common with the Iron Warriors and the Imperial Fists than any other group. Seriously, without the total lack of trust, Perturabo and Rogal Dorn would have been best buds and Horus wouldn't have gotten beyond Jupiter.

-RD