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Ok, I'm fine with Draigo's perpetual struggles in the warp. It's a stalemate essentially. But, the Mortarion bit is over the top. I believe in the codex he is described as "single handedly smashing through the primarchs body guard and bearing him to the ground, where he carved Geronimo's name into his black heart." Or something like that. That, that is wrong. No one tackles a primarch. Not only that, but to hold him still and sign his heart? I think a coalition of like 20 chapter masters managed to RESTRAIN a daemonic Fulgrim, and lost several members at that time. And that was because Fulgrim basically let them.

Here's what it should be. Kaldor Draigo leads a strike Force of Paladins that overcome the bodyguard, and in the end Draigo manages to wound Mortarion by throwing his sword into his chest. The resulting banishment creates a warp portal that sucks them both into the warp. Of the other Paladins, only Draigo survives.

Im hoping the "write his name" part is just to make it sound cool. I could understand, with maybe 50 paladins distracting Mortarion, Draigo sneaking in a blow that knicked his heart.

Kaldor wrote:How could the size of the force he destroyed possibly matter? Think of the smallest possible splinter fleet: A single ship. Now explain to me how on earth a single person is going to be able to destroy that ship?

Ever play against Tyranid armies?

As Hans Gruber would say......

Shoot....
The....
Synapse...
Creatures. ........
( it was even easier before as they had way less SC, mostly Hive Tyrants.

jifel wrote: I think a coalition of like 20 chapter masters managed to RESTRAIN a daemonic Fulgrim, and lost several members at that time. And that was because Fulgrim basically let them.

Where did you hear that? I mean Fulgrim's a badass (knocked out Ferrus Manus, later cut his head off, strangled an Avatar of Khaine to death, as a daemon slit Girlyman's throat, and lives on a pleasure world, a true pimp), but as far as I know he hasn't left the warp since he poisoned Guilleman.


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LunaHound wrote:

Kaldor wrote:How could the size of the force he destroyed possibly matter? Think of the smallest possible splinter fleet: A single ship. Now explain to me how on earth a single person is going to be able to destroy that ship?

Ever play against Tyranid armies?

Shoot
The
Synapse
Creatures.
( it was even easier before as they had way less SC, mostly Hive Tyrants.

Knowing him he probably picked off the synapses creatures from hilarious ranges and if one assumes he has to kill everything, spends the next few months hunting down the remnants of the hive fleet.

BlaxicanX wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:Not quite, clearly states in the fluff (funnily enough I read that story a few hours ago) that the tyranid survivors were hunted and elimated, although it does state it was a one sided battle it is hardly 'that ended the fight' unless the remaining, which would be a LOT, tyranids put the white flag up?, it even states the remaining tyranids revert back to their base instinct.

I stated that the death of the Tyrant "broke the back" of the Tyranid forces on the Craftworld, thus, everything you've said here is irrelevant to my post.

You are assuming you know the size of the tyranids on Stormvald you dont

I specifically said in one of my posts above that we don't know how big the Tyranid force was on Stormvlad, so you're being rather disingenuous here.

but it the other fluff it shows how adaptable the tyranids are and how they view the gaunts as cannon fodder, the synpase creature wont show himself until he thinks he will win.

Maugan Ra was the only enemy opposing the Tyranid on the entire planet. That is obviously a scenario in which the Tyranid would "think it's won". You're speaking nonsense here, sir.

Your exact words were "He basically just cut a swathe through the Tyran'ts guard and then killed it in single combat, and that ended the fight." As I said it hardly "ended the fight"

Then you go on to say Maugan Ra would only need to kill one synpase creature to end the fight without knowing the size of the TYranid army you cannot know how many synpase creatures there would be

I disagree with your last point as well your telling me they will send the biggest creature to consume Maugan ra when most of the fluff states they use the Gaunts as cannon fodder thats hardly nonsense

Also, would the nids really bother sending their most nasty bug against 1 guy?

Anyway, after reading for a bit, this is how I'd repair it.
Draigo isn't actually Draigo.

Long Version, Tzeentch (Spelling) wants to control the Grey Knights, but they can't possess the Grand Master. Instead, they lock him up.
He then replaces him with a Daemon on the battlefeild. This is a strong Lord of Change so it can withstand the wards the Grey Knights use.
Being a daemon, though, it can't last for ever in the Materium, and, with the Grey Knight's wards weakening it, returns to the Immaterium.
All that stuff about Draigo doing all that stuff is just:
a. Draigo bragging, cuz he's like that
b. Draigo's daily exercise Tzeentch gives him, even prisoners are entitled to 1 hr of exercise everyday!
c. Made up stories by the Lord of Change to make the other Grey Knights respect him.

Matt.Kingsley wrote:Also, would the nids really bother sending their most nasty bug against 1 guy?

Anyway, after reading for a bit, this is how I'd repair it.
Draigo isn't actually Draigo.

Long Version, Tzeentch (Spelling) wants to control the Grey Knights, but they can't possess the Grand Master. Instead, they lock him up.
He then replaces him with a Daemon on the battlefeild. This is a strong Lord of Change so it can withstand the wards the Grey Knights use.
Being a daemon, though, it can't last for ever in the Materium, and, with the Grey Knight's wards weakening it, returns to the Immaterium.
All that stuff about Draigo doing all that stuff is just:
a. Draigo bragging, cuz he's like that
b. Draigo's daily exercise Tzeentch gives him, even prisoners are entitled to 1 hr of exercise everyday!
c. Made up stories by the Lord of Change to make the other Grey Knights respect him.

That sounds stupid "Hurr, the most incorruptible humans to chaos are all actually being controlled by chaos hurr." Just take it at face value, he is trapped in the warp, can never escape for more than a battle, and everything he does in there is meaningless. You killed all of Slaanesh's personal handmaidens? Well they just respawn back at Slaanesh's pleasure palace. You just stabbed a greater daemon in the face? He just respawns with no injuries. The whole point behind Draigo is that his battle is futile, whenever he wins a battle in the warp it means nothing, he isn't saving lives, he isn't stopping the daemon for good, he is simply forcing it to respawn back at their base. I see chaos as trying to corrupt him by simply breaking him slowly, they aren't directly controlling him, they aren't hoping to bring down the Grey Knights, they are just chaos gods, and this is how they roll. Plus a chaos grey knight would be a very powerful force alone.

I would make him the son of a mortal and a greater daemon, that way you could actually explain his stats.

Make it so that Mortarion was proving a point to the grey knights as he and his legion simply get back up, re-attach their nurgly limbs and walk back into the warp laughing with nothing changed.

Make it clear that his actions in the warp are favored by the gods rather than abhorred. The guys starts killing Khorne's daemons, Khorne is gonna want him to get some more skulls. He's not that picky. Slannesh reveling in Draigo's devotion to the emperor as he goes through the temptations. etc

Buttons wrote:

jifel wrote: I think a coalition of like 20 chapter masters managed to RESTRAIN a daemonic Fulgrim, and lost several members at that time. And that was because Fulgrim basically let them.

Where did you hear that? I mean Fulgrim's a badass (knocked out Ferrus Manus, later cut his head off, strangled an Avatar of Khaine to death, as a daemon slit Girlyman's throat, and lives on a pleasure world, a true pimp), but as far as I know he hasn't left the warp since he poisoned Guilleman.

It's in The Primarchs anthology. Long story short:

Best way to repair the Draigo fluff? Change it so that he was able to banish Mortarion, but remove any talk about carving his name in any organs, that bit is just juvenile in tone. Then change the story so that it was the banishment of Mortarion that caused him to be pulled into the Warp, that changes things so that he was still able to take out a daemon primarch, but the primarch still got in the last hit, makes it more of a pyrrhic victory.
For bonus points they could give Draigo the daemon special rule and force him to be deployed from reserve and deep striking (with adjustments points and to rules so he can't mishap). That would set things up so that he's a GK Legion of the Damned (or whatever those SM dudes are) type guy, and gets rid of the issue of how he is able to walk around the warp without being shredded into his component atoms.

daveNYC wrote:

Buttons wrote:

jifel wrote: I think a coalition of like 20 chapter masters managed to RESTRAIN a daemonic Fulgrim, and lost several members at that time. And that was because Fulgrim basically let them.

Where did you hear that? I mean Fulgrim's a badass (knocked out Ferrus Manus, later cut his head off, strangled an Avatar of Khaine to death, as a daemon slit Girlyman's throat, and lives on a pleasure world, a true pimp), but as far as I know he hasn't left the warp since he poisoned Guilleman.

It's in The Primarchs anthology. Long story short:

Spoiler:

Post Istvaan, a bunch of the honchos of the EC have decided that Fulgrim isn't really Fulgrim, so they jump him, tie him up, and torture him to try and kick the daemon out. At the end of the story Fulgrim breaks out of his restraints with such ease that it's obvious that he was just toying with them. And yeah, he beats everyone down without even breaking a sweat, and that's with him holding back so he can monologue and because he doesn't actually want to kill everyone.

Best way to repair the Draigo fluff? Change it so that he was able to banish Mortarion, but remove any talk about carving his name in any organs, that bit is just juvenile in tone. Then change the story so that it was the banishment of Mortarion that caused him to be pulled into the Warp, that changes things so that he was still able to take out a daemon primarch, but the primarch still got in the last hit, makes it more of a pyrrhic victory.
For bonus points they could give Draigo the daemon special rule and force him to be deployed from reserve and deep striking (with adjustments points and to rules so he can't mishap). That would set things up so that he's a GK Legion of the Damned (or whatever those SM dudes are) type guy, and gets rid of the issue of how he is able to walk around the warp without being shredded into his component atoms.

Basically, this. This would be good. Mayben not a daemon rules wise, but yeah make him die and go back into the warp. Then again, they already have the one dude who randomly comes back to life.

Surtur wrote:I would make him the son of a mortal and a greater daemon, that way you could actually explain his stats.

Make it so that Mortarion was proving a point to the grey knights as he and his legion simply get back up, re-attach their nurgly limbs and walk back into the warp laughing with nothing changed.

Make it clear that his actions in the warp are favored by the gods rather than abhorred. The guys starts killing Khorne's daemons, Khorne is gonna want him to get some more skulls. He's not that picky. Slannesh reveling in Draigo's devotion to the emperor as he goes through the temptations. etc

Yepp

Buttons wrote:

Matt.Kingsley wrote:Also, would the nids really bother sending their most nasty bug against 1 guy?

Anyway, after reading for a bit, this is how I'd repair it.
Draigo isn't actually Draigo.

Long Version, Tzeentch (Spelling) wants to control the Grey Knights, but they can't possess the Grand Master. Instead, they lock him up.
He then replaces him with a Daemon on the battlefeild. This is a strong Lord of Change so it can withstand the wards the Grey Knights use.
Being a daemon, though, it can't last for ever in the Materium, and, with the Grey Knight's wards weakening it, returns to the Immaterium.
All that stuff about Draigo doing all that stuff is just:
a. Draigo bragging, cuz he's like that
b. Draigo's daily exercise Tzeentch gives him, even prisoners are entitled to 1 hr of exercise everyday!
c. Made up stories by the Lord of Change to make the other Grey Knights respect him.

That sounds stupid "Hurr, the most incorruptible humans to chaos are all actually being controlled by chaos hurr." Just take it at face value, he is trapped in the warp, can never escape for more than a battle, and everything he does in there is meaningless. You killed all of Slaanesh's personal handmaidens? Well they just respawn back at Slaanesh's pleasure palace. You just stabbed a greater daemon in the face? He just respawns with no injuries. The whole point behind Draigo is that his battle is futile, whenever he wins a battle in the warp it means nothing, he isn't saving lives, he isn't stopping the daemon for good, he is simply forcing it to respawn back at their base. I see chaos as trying to corrupt him by simply breaking him slowly, they aren't directly controlling him, they aren't hoping to bring down the Grey Knights, they are just chaos gods, and this is how they roll. Plus a chaos grey knight would be a very powerful force alone.

It's meant to be stupid. I could never take Draigo seriously, even if I could repair his fluff!

Without drastically changing it;

Ahh, new brothers. Let me tell you the story of our grand master.
*insert bit from back of the WD re: finding the kid, replacing his name with Kaldor Draigo*.
Keep the first 2 paragraphs more or less. Third paragraph remove the heart writing bit, have him beat mortarion back from the corpse of the old GM and save the body instead, in doing so was knocked into a warp rift by the butt of Mortarioon's scythe or something.
Began his timeless crusade, despite his efforts all his successes were undone, all his advances stymied by the powers of the warp. Despite this, with faith as his sword and the emperor as his shield, he continues his battle against Chaos, and will until his dying day.

There, no heart-writing or destruction of super important things in the warp (even if they do get remade), be non-specific, let the reader imagine what he has managed to destroy and then had to watch regrow, emphasizes the pointlessness of it, no major world ending changes.

Kaldor wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:I've never understood why it's so incomprehensible that a guy who can just hurrrr his way through everything Chaos throws at him is laem.

It would be, but that's not what Draigo is.

After a titanic clash of forces, Draigo banished Mortarion. So what? That's pretty much exactly what happened during the first war for Armageddon and no one complains about that.

Later, Draigo was trapped in the Warp, where he is a toy for the Chaos gods. You think they couldn't just disintegrate him if they wanted? Of course they could.

But they don't want to. They have all eternity to make him repeat the same battles over and over, and see just how long it takes for his will to break.

Yeah but when they banished Angron, it took 100 grey knights to do it, and only a few survived. Draigo did it all by himself. And now he wanders the warp inexplicably not turning into a chaos spawn like everyone else who's ever been sucked into the warp.

Manchu wrote:It's reviled because it's relatively new. In nine years, kids will think Draigo is awesome and talk about Fifth Edition was a golden age for 40k.

Nah, in 9 years Dragio will probably be upgraded to the new Emperor.

And for those people who think Kharn doesn't have a bad side ... he kills everyone he knows! How is that not a bad side? Why anyone would bother to fight along side him is beyond me.

Have ADB write a book about the confrontation between the GK and Mortarion and its immediate aftermath, we should get something decent going then.

Harriticus wrote:Have ADB write a book about the confrontation between the GK and Mortarion and its immediate aftermath, we should get something decent going then.

I agree.

Noisy_Marine wrote:Yeah but when they banished Angron, it took 100 grey knights to do it, and only a few survived. Draigo did it all by himself.

Oh really? He was just wandering along on some planet, all by himself, and happened to see Mortarion on the other side of the street?

No.

And now he wanders the warp inexplicably not turning into a chaos spawn like everyone else who's ever been sucked into the warp.

Gosh, I wonder why? Maybe the Chaos Gods want him there?

How would I fix it?
I'd make this canon:
Maybe NSFW

While this would require a substantial "reskinning" of the Draigo backstory, I think you could make him interesting and heroic, without sounding so hyperbolically awesome.

First, remove him from the warp. Instead, Draigo has been granted access to the Black Library and has been given secret routes within the webway. People believe that he is able to vanish within the warp, and he allows this belief to spread, because it protects the truth (no one goes looking for webway portals when they think warp rifts are involved). The Harlequins and Draigo have come to some understanding, but no one, not even other members of the Order, are privy to precisely what this agreement entails.

Second, treat Mortarion's heart like the one of a mummy, embalmed in a canopic jar, or like a liche's phylactery, for those of you D&D players. Draigo didn't actually jump Mortarion and whack open his rib cage and autograph one of his organs. Instead, his superior knowledge of the daemonic allowed him to locate the Primarch's heart. Mortarion, bloated with the horrible vitality granted to one of Nurgle's servants, isn't really killable in any normal means, and banishment is, at best, a temporary solution for any daemon. However, by carving these names into Mortarion's indestructible heart, Draigo costs Mortarion a lot of 'face'. His calculated insult both enrages Mortarion, and makes him, his legion, and his patron look weaker and less capable to other Chaos powers and renegades. It's basically a calculated insult, and a big "FU" to a Traitor Primarch. Perhaps Mortarion even used his excised, but still mortal heart, as an anchor to the material world, making him impossible to banish. The carving could have been used to break or weaken this connection (or could even be part of a larger ritual working that the Grey Knights are still engaged upon).

Thus, Draigo remains pretty cool. He also has a mysterious backstory and questionable alliances (which now seem required for Grey Knights). The 'heart carving' becomes less of a moment of sheer badassery and more of an example of Grey Knights exploiting their knowledge of the Daemonic (like researching True Names).

Well, to be fair, angron IS the best fighter of the primarchs, so it's need an absurd amount of GK to banish him

Harriticus wrote:Have ADB write a book about the confrontation between the GK and Mortarion and its immediate aftermath, we should get something decent going then.

He already put down OP -Gk in Emperor's gift - but I' agree and btw very smart answer,hats down to you Sir


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Exalted Pariah wrote:Well, to be fair, angron IS the best fighter of the primarchs, so it's need an absurd amount of GK to banish him

that's just like your opinion,dude

I dont think the Draigo stuff is TOO bad, there have been other worse ones (canis wolfborn springs t mind).

All I think needs to be done is to remove the heart-carving bit, a small "scratch" would be OK. They should also make it clear that it is Draigo's Soul and not his physical body which fights eternally in the warp (It helps to explain why he can never return to the material universe). As mentioned, standing unprotected in the warp would be like jumping into a plasma reactor.

Ignore Draigo and talk about a character with "character"....

I would make him able to fly, make him 3 feet taller, and call him the II Primarch coming back to whoop the gak out of his fallen brothers

Read The Emperor's Gift. The Draigo Mortarion is about a million times worse after reading the description of the attack on Angron.

You put a primarch in a story, you better bring the grade-A writing.

daveNYC wrote:Read The Emperor's Gift. The Draigo Mortarion is about a million times worse after reading the description of the attack on Angron.

You put a primarch in a story, you better bring the grade-A writing.

Oh really, and how would you propose to do that in a single paragraph?

Kaldor wrote:

daveNYC wrote:Read The Emperor's Gift. The Draigo Mortarion is about a million times worse after reading the description of the attack on Angron.

You put a primarch in a story, you better bring the grade-A writing.

Oh really, and how would you propose to do that in a single paragraph?

Book on that matter maybe !?

DarthMarko wrote:

Kaldor wrote:

daveNYC wrote:Read The Emperor's Gift. The Draigo Mortarion is about a million times worse after reading the description of the attack on Angron.

You put a primarch in a story, you better bring the grade-A writing.

Oh really, and how would you propose to do that in a single paragraph?

Book on that matter maybe !?

Do you mean he should have written a book on the topic? He can't, it is codex fluff. Everything is a 1 paragraph thing really, it would severely limit any writer.

motyak wrote:

DarthMarko wrote:

Kaldor wrote:

daveNYC wrote:Read The Emperor's Gift. The Draigo Mortarion is about a million times worse after reading the description of the attack on Angron.

You put a primarch in a story, you better bring the grade-A writing.

Oh really, and how would you propose to do that in a single paragraph?

Book on that matter maybe !?

Do you mean he should have written a book on the topic? He can't, it is codex fluff. Everything is a 1 paragraph thing really, it would severely limit any writer.

Although... getting ADB to do a book on the subject would rock my socks off!

And mine. Our socks would be well rocked off.

Kaldor wrote:

daveNYC wrote:Read The Emperor's Gift. The Draigo Mortarion is about a million times worse after reading the description of the attack on Angron.

You put a primarch in a story, you better bring the grade-A writing.

Oh really, and how would you propose to do that in a single paragraph?

If you can't write such a huge, momumental conflict between a primarch and Draigo in a piece of writing bigger than a paragraph, don't try and cram it into one, simple.