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I don't know, I think Prospero Burns confirmed wholeheartedly that the SW were engineered to go after traitor legions. I really don't see how anyone can read A Thousand Sons and not learn that Magnus was an incredibly arrogant catspaw of Tzeentch AND (as a related but separate matter) a willful traitor, whatever his intentions/justifications.

Well chock full o'pride I can definitely get behind. Pride is the core weakness of both the good and bad guys in the setting.

Rest of it, less so, but that's neither here nor there.

So, just to recap what I've garnered at this point.

Psychics are defined on a scale (for understanding) of purity which determines there definition as a Sorcery (Less pure, more Chaos) or the opposite, which is Grey Knights, Rune Priests etc (not baby sacrificing to Lords of the Warp).

So, they all start as psychics (genetics correct?), then at some point throw in their allegiance (or not allegiance, but turn to them for aid) with the Warp bounds.

Follow questions:
Are Rune priests all recruited from Fenris, or do they get some black ship love? (Numbers of psychers to non psychers, here.

Have any Rune Priests fallen?

For discussion. Heretical question:
Could the Emperor be a warp being at this point, and thus the Grey Knights have "fallen" to him, protecting them from the influence of the other Chaos Lords?

The Emperor still being 'alive' prevents him becoming a warp deity. Whether he will become a god on his death is more... controversial. I'd say it's not true, since Tzeentchian cultists were the ones who put the claim forward in the first place IIRC.

CpatTom: I don't think any SM psykers are recruited via the Inquisition (i.e., Blackships). SW have definitely fallen. Whether there were Rune Priests among them is not clear but certainly possible.

Also, I would like to thank y'all for the responses. Very interesting stuff, and I appreciate the knowledge.

CpatTom wrote:
Are Rune priests all recruited from Fenris,

All Space Wolf rune priests are. Fenris is their only recruiting world.

The Wolf Brothers' rune priests probably came from their world, if they actually managed to recruit any before they were disbanded.


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daveNYC wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:
Chaos wasn't a concept grasped by anyone in the Imperium until well into the actual Heresy.

To be accurate, there was at least one person who had a very strong handle on the concept of Chaos, and as Emperor, he would have been the one to sign off on the original Librarian program. The Emperor has made a lot of boneheaded moves in the HH books, but I'm not going to buy that he let daemon pacts slip into a training program that was in use by all (not including Space Wolves) legions.

Well, it wasn't all. Not all the legions and a Librarium. Also, the Emperor did make exactly these kind of stupid decisions throughout his history. Although he probably wasn't even aware it was going on. The Emperor actually took very little interest in the operation of his Imperium, as we've been shown.

CpatTom wrote:Psychics are defined on a scale (for understanding) of purity which determines there definition as a Sorcery (Less pure, more Chaos) or the opposite, which is Grey Knights, Rune Priests etc (not baby sacrificing to Lords of the Warp).

So, they all start as psychics (genetics correct?), then at some point throw in their allegiance (or not allegiance, but turn to them for aid) with the Warp bounds.

Follow questions:
Are Rune priests all recruited from Fenris, or do they get some black ship love? (Numbers of psychers to non psychers, here.

Have any Rune Priests fallen?

For discussion. Heretical question:
Could the Emperor be a warp being at this point, and thus the Grey Knights have "fallen" to him, protecting them from the influence of the other Chaos Lords?

Isn't GK being soulbound still part of the fluff? That could be considered to be something similar (in result) to a daemonic pact. Fluff basically says that some of the Emperor's strength goes with the soulbound individual.

I don't think the Wolves recruit anyone not from Fenris.

Sorcerers don't necessarily need to be psykers, indeed I think the key use for sorcery in the 40k universe is as a tool to allow anyone to be able to unleash the warp. Luther rocks some sorcery, and there's never been any indication that he's a psyker.

Personally, I don't think you can have something as simple as a sliding scale of what's sorcery vs regular psyker power and have pure/impure on the same axis. Like I said upthread, there's a lot of stuff that the GK do in the current codex that's pretty far out there, yet they're considered the purest of the pure.

So, how many Rune Priests are there?

So, you dont have to be a psycker to be a sorcerer?

CpatTom wrote:So, you dont have to be a psycker to be a sorcerer?

People with no psychic ability to speak of can use Chaos sorcery. (We saw this in Prospero Burns.)

As many Rune Priests as the fluff requires. Rough ballpark, there'd be at most five per company, and even that's just guessing. They're the Wolves, they do what they want when it comes to the org chart.

And no, you don't. It helps, and it's useful for explaining how you started down the path in the first place, but part of sorcery is that it's a shortcut to power that comes at a horrible price. You can say it's through the assistance of a warp entity, the use of other people's life essence to allow temporary access to the warp, or just through crazy words and diagrams that eventually erode ones sanity, but it's power for the people, at a price.

And it even helps things make sense, since psykers are so rare, and the Inquisition does a pretty good job keeping a lid on them, having sorcery open to everyone helps explain why every planet seems to have at least a half dozen daemon summoning cults running around at any given time.

Manchu wrote:

CpatTom wrote:So, you dont have to be a psycker to be a sorcerer?

People with no psychic ability to speak of can use Chaos sorcery. (We saw this in Prospero Burns.)

Only if they've found a way to talk to the daemons IIRC

Ok, so psychic and sorcerer are not mutually exclusive. So, thats not a scale there at all.

So is there more psykers born on fenris then? Wouldnt they need a larger population percentage in order to fulfill those Rune Priest roles? (Or am I overestimating the number needed ).

CpatTom wrote:Ok, so psychic and sorcerer are not mutually exclusive. So, thats not a scale there at all.

So is there more psykers born on fenris then? Wouldnt they need a larger population percentage in order to fulfill those Rune Priest roles? (Or am I overestimating the number needed ).

On psychic-sorcery, it kind if depends. A lot of what Sorceror marines do seems to just be amplified versions of the Librarian powers, like Doombolt. (not sure how good of a comparison that is, but Librarians can shoot lightning, right?) Summoning daemons and whatnot is also sorcery though, so you could just subdivide it.

I'd guess that the choosers of the fallen are just good at choosing potential rune priests.

Durza wrote:

Manchu wrote:

CpatTom wrote:So, you dont have to be a psycker to be a sorcerer?

People with no psychic ability to speak of can use Chaos sorcery. (We saw this in Prospero Burns.)

Only if they've found a way to talk to the daemons IIRC

No, they can be taught by other totally human cult members.

Rune Priests just like all other Space Wolves come from Fenris. Space Wolves don't recruit based on latent psychic ability either so it can't be that.

I believe there's mention in the Space Wolves codex that awakening the Rune Priest abilities is sort of random where it literally just manifests in certain individuals on Fenris.

So I guess in the end the theory about the planet empowering those with latent psychic talent is what's supposed to be inferred.

Russ Mandarin wrote:Rune Priests just like all other Space Wolves come from Fenris. Space Wolves don't recruit based on latent psychic ability either so it can't be that.

I believe there's mention in the Space Wolves codex that awakening the Rune Priest abilities is sort of random where it literally just manifests in certain individuals on Fenris.

So I guess in the end the theory about the planet empowering those with latent psychic talent is what's supposed to be inferred.

Also don't forget Space marines in general live for hundreds of years. So even if Fenris' entire planet population produced only one individual capable of becoming a Rune Priest a generation, thats still 4-5 individuals per 100 years, so in a 400 year lifespan 20 new RPs have shown up before even 1 living RP dies of a non-combat related death.

daveNYC wrote:This is a serious weak spot in the HH books. In Horus Rising, you've got a marine getting posessed, and the marines are all freaked out, but a bloody regular mortal is just like "Oh yeah, daemons, those things happen." Yet in Legion, Alpharius knows enough about the stuff to be able to explain how that planet's population had been able to hold off the army for as long as they did (plus, it informs his decision at the end of the novel), and in the first DA book, one Librarian manages to build a bomb to close a warp rift.

Well, to be fair, Horus was well aware of the existence of Daemons in Horus Rising, and even explained to Loken that he knew of the beings, and calling them "Daemons," a seemingly superstitious term, was mostly out of convenience.

What mortal just shrugged off Daemons in Horus Rising? Oh, and keep in mind, what bothered the Marines most was that it could make their Battle Brother turn against his brothers, which as constantly emphasized in the series was unthinkable back then. Actually, Loken even mentions he had fought beings from the Empyrean before and was used to them, it was the fact that the Daemon could so easily possess an Astartes that frightened him, since that was unheard of before then.

Manchu wrote:I don't know, I think Prospero Burns confirmed wholeheartedly that the SW were engineered to go after traitor legions. I really don't see how anyone can read A Thousand Sons and not learn that Magnus was an incredibly arrogant catspaw of Tzeentch AND (as a related but separate matter) a willful traitor, whatever his intentions/justifications.

I don't think anyone who read the book can honestly deny that Magnus was arrogant. This is the same man who wholeheartedly spouted "There is no power beyond my control," and believed he was more powerful than the Emperor himself.

He did betray willingly, but... Well, when a moron like Fulgrim believes sending the Space Wolves after the Thousand Sons is a bad idea, it probably is.

I haven't read Prospero Burns I'll admit, so I might have a biased perspective.

I don't think he actually believed that he was more powerful than the Emperor. I'm definitely sure he believed he knew better than the Emperor regarding the use of psykers in the Astartes. The standard 'I'll show them for stopping my research, bwa-ha-ah!' that you get from every mad scientist.

It was that one mortal librarian dude that Loken or whoever talked to. Really don't have the book on me at the moment, but I do remember there was one guy who was all over it. I might be on drugs though.

Prospero Burns is a good book that is a horrible Horus Heresy book. Main thing you learn is that Russ doesn't like to talk to people. You learn this because Russ doesn't talk to the book's narrator. Actually, he does show up like two or three times, but if what you liked about A Thousand Sons was learning about Magnus, Ahriman, and the ways of the Legion, you'll be less happy about Prospero Burns. Plus the actual battle in the title only takes up like ten pages at the end.

You learn a huge amount about the Space Wolves and their customs in Abnett's book. Abnett doesn't like to have Russ in the foreground all the time because he's such a powerful character. McNeill had Magnus on so many pages that he got to be indistinguishable from any other character in terms of impression. When a primarch shows up in the scene, it should be a bit more special. If I were to write for BL, I would never describe the inner monologue of Space Marines for fear of making them mundane much less have the reader constantly privy to the inner-life of a primarch.

Manchu wrote:I don't know, I think Prospero Burns confirmed wholeheartedly that the SW were engineered to go after traitor legions.

I think it confirmed that some folks certainly believe that's their role. I'm not so sure I buy it. There are some primarchs/legions who would've run circles around the Wolves.

Could they have been engineered to be a check on certain other legions' power? That I see as a little more plausible. And it would account for why there are so many similarities of approach/purpose amongst other legions; Raven Guard/Alpha Legion/Night Lords, Imperial Fists/Iron Warriors, etc. Checks and balances.

Manchu wrote:You learn a huge amount about the Space Wolves and their customs in Abnett's book.

I already have the Space Wolves codex and the first SW omnibus. I'm already good on their customs.

Abnett doesn't like to have Russ in the foreground all the time because he's such a powerful character.

Not sure if he's actually come out and said that, but in most stories, powerful characters are usually a good thing. The mortals in most of these stories are there for contrast, to reinforce the image of Space Marines being that much more than human.

If I were to write for BL, I would never describe the inner monologue of Space Marines for fear of making them mundane much less have the reader constantly privy to the inner-life of a primarch.

Do you realize how cardboard like that would make the characters? If all you show is what they say and what they do, and with Space Marines and certain Primarchs the saying is minimal and the doing is mostly punching, then the characters would never develop. Plus any explanation of their motives would have to involve them actually saying what their motives are, which would be pretty silly.

I get that everyone looks for different things in a novel. In the HH books, I'm interested in finding out what made the Primarchs and the traitor legions tick. If you're writing about a legion that already has plenty of stuff writteng about it, and then gloss over the Primarch, you might as well be writing a 40k novel, IMO.

If all you show is what they say and what they do, and with Space Marines and certain Primarchs the saying is minimal and the doing is mostly punching, then the characters would never develop.

I think you have a rather linear imagination if you can't see the benefits of my hypothetical approach. First, SM are post-humans. If you write them like open books you're throwing away their strangeness and the theme of them being inhuman. I think BL novels that constantly intrude upon Space Marines' inner monologues have a strong fan-fictiony flavor. Space Marines are not supposed to be relatable. Their main purpose is to show us that "good" is terrifying in this setting.

Second, engaging the reader's imagination in interpreting the motives of a character who is acting is far, far better than simply telling them, via third person omniscient narration, "Garro felt lonely/mad/contempt." A character does not need to say "I am enthusiastic about fighting heretics" in order to get the point across -- which should be pretty obvious. These are violent scifi adventure novels -- the characters need to be doing things as their top priority, not telling us how they feel about everything. HH books like A Thousand Sons are way too much like soap operas. (As an example, I used to watch True Blood. Someone told me it was a show about vampires. Turns out it was a romance drama where the characters happened to be vampires. I don't watch it any more.) I don't know why people think action and depth of characterization are mutually exclusive. Even in real life, we learn more about the people around us from what they do than what they tell us about themselves.

Manchu wrote:I don't know, I think Prospero Burns confirmed wholeheartedly that the SW were engineered to go after traitor legions. I really don't see how anyone can read A Thousand Sons and not learn that Magnus was an incredibly arrogant catspaw of Tzeentch AND (as a related but separate matter) a willful traitor, whatever his intentions/justifications.

That's a pretty effective way to silence debate. Just say that no one could possibly disagree with you and you win the argument.

I read A Thousand Sons as a pretty clear indictment of the Space Wolves and the loyalists as a whole. Everything Magnus did was self-sacrificing for his legion and the Imperium. Even when he knew his actions would violate the letter of Nikaea, he sacrificed himself to warn the Emperor of Horus' treachery. In response, the Space Wolves decided to wipe the Thousand Sons from the face of Prospero. When finally confronted with the choice of losing his entire legion, Magnus agreed to join Tzeentch, damning himself to save his sons.

It's a level of personal sacrifice that the Loyalists would never make or even understand.

Obviously Ahriman fethed it all up with the Rubric.

Magnus made a lot of decisions that caught up to him. His arrogance and ambivalence about the consequences could make him appear to have sacrificed himself but that is contradicted by his characterization. Magnus believes himself to know more than the Emperor about the Warp and to know better than the Emperor what is good for mankind. He therefore gets himself tied up with Chaos -- that is, he actively makes the decision to deal with Tzeentch and arrogantly dismisses that the cost will be too high for him to pay. Later on, when the gak hits the fan, he doesn't "give himself up to Tzeentch to save his Legion" he just pays the piper.

biccat wrote:

Manchu wrote:I don't know, I think Prospero Burns confirmed wholeheartedly that the SW were engineered to go after traitor legions. I really don't see how anyone can read A Thousand Sons and not learn that Magnus was an incredibly arrogant catspaw of Tzeentch AND (as a related but separate matter) a willful traitor, whatever his intentions/justifications.

That's a pretty effective way to silence debate. Just say that no one could possibly disagree with you and you win the argument.

Actually, the really good way to silence debate is to link to the ten page trainwreck of a thread where this was already hashed out, and the only opinions that were changed were related to the the posters' opinions of each other.

Actually, 1hadhq and I get along pretty well. That thread was hardly a trainwreck. That was one of the most interesting discussions I've ever had about 40k and it forced me to read a bunch of stuff and master the source material in a way that I hadn't before. Then Graham McNeill and Dan Abnett came along and confirmed all the points I made. I can't really take credit for those points, since as I illustrated in that thread with numerous sources, I didn't make the stuff up -- that's what was already written by GW-employed authors.

Any way, neither post of mine was meant as a way to silence debate or actually managed to do so as you both just proved.

Manchu wrote:Magnus made a lot of decisions that caught up to him. His arrogance and ambivalence about the consequences could make him appear to have sacrificed himself but that is contradicted by his characterization.

That's taking the entire book out of context. The history of Magnus isn't "arrogance and ambivalence," it's study and careful consideration of his options and selecting the best one. Look towards the end of A Thousand Sons where he could have used his power over the warp to divert or destroy Russ' ships, knowing what was in store.

Manchu wrote:Magnus believes himself to know more than the Emperor about the Warp

You're confusing Magnus with Russ. Russ is the one who deliberately ignored the edict of Nikaea, Magnus told the Thousand Sons to abide by the rule, and only violated it when the fate of the Imperium was at stake. Russ, on the other hand, naively and arrogantly believed that the edict didn't apply to him or his pups and ignored it with impunity.

Manchu wrote:and to know better than the Emperor what is good for mankind. He therefore gets himself tied up with Chaos -- that is, he actively makes the decision to deal with Tzeentch and arrogantly dismisses that the cost will be too high for him to pay. Later on, when the gak hits the fan, he doesn't "give himself up to Tzeentch to save his Legion" he just pays the piper.

I don't know where you get this from, because it's completely wrong. He doesn't get tied up with Chaos based on "what is good for mankind." He gets tied up with Chaos to save his legion from the flesh change. Remember, even the Emperor didn't understand the full scope of the Chaos Gods, his creation of the Primarchs involved dealing with and betraying the Chaos Gods.

And at the end of A Thousand Sons he doesn't "pay the piper," he obviously has a choice whether to accept defeat and erratication by the (traitorous) Space Wolves or to accept Tzeentch's aid.

Manchu wrote:Magnus made a lot of decisions that caught up to him. His arrogance and ambivalence about the consequences could make him appear to have sacrificed himself but that is contradicted by his characterization. Magnus believes himself to know more than the Emperor about the Warp and to know better than the Emperor what is good for mankind. He therefore gets himself tied up with Chaos -- that is, he actively makes the decision to deal with Tzeentch and arrogantly dismisses that the cost will be too high for him to pay. Later on, when the gak hits the fan, he doesn't "give himself up to Tzeentch to save his Legion" he just pays the piper.

Considering that the deal with Tzeentch was to stop the flesh change that was destroying his legion, it's not like you can really fault him. You really think that any other Primarch, if faced with the destruction of their sons, and provided with the same level of support from the Emperor, wouldn't have ended up doing anything to stop it?

Magnus' story is basically being put in bad situations, then making bad decisions for the best of reasons to get out of them.
1) Flesh change -> Emperor isn't helping, Magnus can't stop it on his own, ends up making a deal with Tzeentch.
2) Horus being corrupted -> Burns thralls to attempt to have an intervention with Horus. Fails, first actual documented use of what I would call sorcery by Magnus in fluff, and the result is Horus knows that Magnus is loyal and using sorcery. Step one for bringing Wolves down on Prospero.
3) Warning the Emperor -> I believe he traveled the warp and webway under his own power, but had to accept help from what was most likely Tzeentzch to bust into the web (Tzeentzch probably did it for free, just for the LOLs). End result, warp gate is busted, throne is a mess, daemons pouring into the palace basement and the Emperor isn't happy. Step two for bringing Wolves down on Prospero.
4) Realizes he's been played -> Knows Wolves are coming, so he sends away all defenses so that at least the Wolves won't be totally crippled by losses when they attack Prospero. Probably should have just up and run instead, and then maybe rolled into Terra at the siege to help save the bacon.
5) Final sacrifice -> To prevent the very last of his legion from getting Wolfed, he discoroprates his body, and the energy from that is used to transport the surviving Sons to the Eye. End result is he prevents their deaths, but they're now stuck playing for Tzeentzch. Also too, the Flesh Change is back and better than ever, leading to the Rubric, which literally turns Magnus' small gain of saving his legion to dust.

It's a character arc that goes from confidence (arrogance), knowledge and optimism to fatalism and surrender.


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Manchu wrote:Actually, 1hadhq and I get along pretty well. That thread was hardly a trainwreck. That was one of the most interesting discussions I've ever had about 40k and it forced me to read a bunch of stuff and master the source material in a way that I hadn't before. Then Graham McNeill and Dan Abnett came along and confirmed all the points I made. I can't really take credit for those points, since as I illustrated in that thread with numerous sources, I didn't make the stuff up -- that's what was already written by GW-employed authors.

Any way, neither post of mine was meant as a way to silence debate or actually managed to do so as you both just proved.

Silence debate was a bad choice of words, I actually took your earlier post to mean "guys, this horse has been beaten in this other thread, if you want to start this up again go there".

The Emperor made it perfectly clear that the edict at Nikaea was of the gravest importance, a matter of loyalty. Magnus told his Legion to cut out the parlor tricks and then himself proceeded to cast a spell that destabilized the wards of the Palace itself. If you think he did it just "to save the Imperium" then you have totally misunderstood the character. He was proving a point to daddy. Yes, he claimed that this egregious example of trafficking with Tzeentch -- and that's what it was, whether or not Magnus was too arrogantly blind to notice -- would save the Emperor. But it was "just as planned" and moved the Heresy along very nicely as far as Horus and the Ruinous Powers were concerned. Magnus played his role perfectly from the beginning. What was the price for stabilizing his Legion? -- that eventually he would send the psychic message to Terra, distract Russ and the Wolves, undermine the palace defense, and ultimately knowingly kneel to Tzeentch.

When faced with accepting the fate he had called down upon himself and finally obeying the Emperor, even if it meant his death

-OR-

declaring openly that he was a traitor (he had been one all along; now it was just a matter of admitting it) who was badly treated by an ungrateful father

... Magnus chose the latter. He did no "sacrifice himself." He saved himself. He did not do what was best for his father or for mankind. He joined the fight to destroy his father and subjugate mankind to the deprivations of the Ruinous Powers.


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Silence debate was a bad choice of words, I actually took your earlier post to mean "guys, this horse has been beaten in this other thread, if you want to start this up again go there".

No, I posted it because I'm pretty proud of it. Just like our current discussion here, this is what keeps me interested in 40k and makes me love Dakka. Being a mod is tremendously tiresome but chatting the 40k perspectives with intelligent fans like you and biccat is great!