Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello,

Bit like the Cawl thread but from a different angle. Cawl maybe considered a heretic for his new technology etc but he is defended by the idea that he is following the emperors ideals and possibly orders.

Fabius May have joined the heresy but now claims to hold the emperor and his goals in high regard and is following a version of the emperors atheist ideals and purpose. He doesn’t seek is own glory but to improve mankind to the point where they can be dominate the galaxy and live out the need for gods. Indeed he doesn’t recognise the god hood of the chaos lords.

I’m not going to throw the word hero or loyalist in there as he clearly isn’t loyal to the imperium but is he still truly a heretic considering his goals. He plans to die but not until he has left humanity in a better position the exist in the galaxy. Yes he’s killed untold number of people but the emperor was not shy of the odd genocide and culling. I’d argue the they both have the same utilitarian approach to the advancement of the human race.

Waddya think

He's lying to himself. By this time, he is the stereotypical mad scientist doing things "For Science!" as an excuse.

Like his mentors, the Dark Eldar Haemonculi, the experimentation has become a goal in and of itself. The Haemonculi, like Urien, have just been at it so long they can't even remember their original grand purpose, and don't feel the need to even come up with an excuse any more.

But he has the goal of his new men. Yes he uses his goals as a way to justify the horrid things he does but as I said, so did the emperor. I bet the emperor is guilty of more deaths and atrocities than bile. And bile has screwed over people and betrayed Then in horrible ways but the emperor has done that to all of creations without blinking.

Everyone is the hero of their own narrative...

Bile is heretic and a renegade, no doubt; but he sees himself as a well-intentioned extremist, he's a Magneto, a (MCU) Thanos, a (current) Seth Rollins. He sees his path, and only his path as being the correct one towards salvation for mankind.

Whether this gels with the rest of the species is for history to decide, but we all know Bile's feelings on that.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Everyone is the hero of their own narrative...

Bile is heretic and a renegade, no doubt; but he sees himself as a well-intentioned extremist, he's a Magneto, a (MCU) Thanos, a (current) Seth Rollins. He sees his path, and only his path as being the correct one towards salvation for mankind.

Whether this gels with the rest of the species is for history to decide, but we all know Bile's feelings on that.

That also describes the Emperor

Fabius mainly claims he'll stop fighting and such when "his work is done". Which will be never, he just can't admit it. He's as crazy as people like Typhus in his way.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Everyone is the hero of their own narrative...

Bile is heretic and a renegade, no doubt; but he sees himself as a well-intentioned extremist, he's a Magneto, a (MCU) Thanos, a (current) Seth Rollins. He sees his path, and only his path as being the correct one towards salvation for mankind.

Whether this gels with the rest of the species is for history to decide, but we all know Bile's feelings on that.

That also describes the Emperor

And "history is written by the victor" as they say.

Or, in another way- "History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." Napoleon.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:
Fabius mainly claims he'll stop fighting and such when "his work is done". Which will be never, he just can't admit it. He's as crazy as people like Typhus in his way.

Yup, no matter how much he denies it Slaanesh has its tendrils in him. His endless quest for perfection in his New Men is his Sisyphean task that will never be see its end due to Bile's need to constantly tinker and watch over his charges.

Do you think that, in his mind, if he could do it again he would not have taken part in the HH

mrFickle wrote:
Do you think that, in his mind, if he could do it again he would not have taken part in the HH

I think if he had a do-over he would have rebelled separately from the HH and had nothing to do with chaos, and simply been a renegade.

Bile's a perfect example of how you can garner favor from and represent the chaos gods without actually worshiping them. The man is a picture perfect representation of Slaaneshi values and goals, even if he'd never admit it.

mrFickle wrote:
Do you think that, in his mind, if he could do it again he would not have taken part in the HH

I think that would depend on what the Emperor did differently. I don't see him staying as he seems to want to make a race better than both humans and Astartes and surpass the Emperor.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Bile's a perfect example of how you can garner favor from and represent the chaos gods without actually worshiping them. The man is a picture perfect representation of Slaaneshi values and goals, even if he'd never admit it.

Eh. Maybe I'm a bit too much of grognard, but I don't see anything of Slaanesh in Bill. It's not about sensation, experience or excess and he's rather indifferent to the state of his own flawed corpus, except when his terminal illness inconveniences him.
He's cerebral and fairly mellow, except when the universe seems to do something to spite him.

He just wants to work, and only really goes out of his way to get 'research material' for his projects. He's amoral, treacherous and cluelessly hypocritical on a few subjects relating to his New Men, but if he gets what he wants (no matter how), he'll wander off and do science to it for a couple centuries.

Voss wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Bile's a perfect example of how you can garner favor from and represent the chaos gods without actually worshiping them. The man is a picture perfect representation of Slaaneshi values and goals, even if he'd never admit it.

Eh. Maybe I'm a bit too much of grognard, but I don't see anything of Slaanesh in Bill. It's not about sensation, experience or excess and he's rather indifferent to the state of his own flawed corpus, except when his terminal illness inconveniences him.
He's cerebral and fairly mellow, except when the universe seems to do something to spite him.

He just wants to work, and only really goes out of his way to get 'research material' for his projects. He's amoral, treacherous and cluelessly hypocritical on a few subjects relating to his New Men, but if he gets what he wants (no matter how), he'll wander off and do science to it for a couple centuries.

Excess is the dark side of the pursuit of perfection (something Fabius has in spades). The EC variously want to pursue perfect sword fighting, perfect highs, perfect music etc.

Fabius's pursuit is just slightly different than his fellow legionnaires.

 ScarletRose wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Bile's a perfect example of how you can garner favor from and represent the chaos gods without actually worshiping them. The man is a picture perfect representation of Slaaneshi values and goals, even if he'd never admit it.

Eh. Maybe I'm a bit too much of grognard, but I don't see anything of Slaanesh in Bill. It's not about sensation, experience or excess and he's rather indifferent to the state of his own flawed corpus, except when his terminal illness inconveniences him.
He's cerebral and fairly mellow, except when the universe seems to do something to spite him.

He just wants to work, and only really goes out of his way to get 'research material' for his projects. He's amoral, treacherous and cluelessly hypocritical on a few subjects relating to his New Men, but if he gets what he wants (no matter how), he'll wander off and do science to it for a couple centuries.

Excess is the dark side of the pursuit of perfection (something Fabius has in spades). The EC variously want to pursue perfect sword fighting, perfect highs, perfect music etc.

Yeah, the 'perfection' retcon makes no sense to me. Excess is the dark side of indulgence, not perfection. I'm honestly confused at the idea there is a relationship between the two. Obsession and perfection, sure (eight plus hours of violin practice every day, to the be the best), but that's a very different mania than excess. Excess is about going further and further to satisfy whims and desires at a larger and more frantic capacity. It can start harmless but for a Slaaneshi cultist, it spirals out of control until the excess is everything. A little cake today becomes 'all the cake,' and then the next thing and the next.

The requirements of Slaanesh worship- 'indulge every vice, overthrow all decent behavior' doesn't allow for perfection. The 'perfection' would be utterly marred by chasing distractions- the perfect singer would ruin their voice, the perfect athlete their figure, the perfect violinist would ruin their hands with one vice or another (drug-derived shakes and precision don't go together). Noise marines don't chase 'perfect music.' They go for loud, excessive riotous noise because they literally can't appreciate or respond to anything else- their senses are blown past the point they can even register such things.

The perfection idea was GW's attempt to make it more family friendly.

However while acknowledging that, it is also possible to reconcile this with the escalating extremes such as that experienced by Noise Marines. They go for loud noise because it is only such extremes can provoke any sort of emotional response in them, but in the process too their ideals are warped and changed so they perceive this riotous noise as better music. The reaching of a following of Slaanesh for more, can fulfil both urges: reaching for an unreachable perfection, and chasing for the sensation that can only be reached with ever more extreme stimulus. Normal stimulus becomes dull and boring, and gets seen as "lesser" forms of art or experience, while the more extreme gets seen as closer to perfection, even though normal people would find it grotesque.

An example is in the Dark Imperium novel by Guy Haley, when Roboute Guilliman sees a bronze gate, the Phoenix Gate, on board Fulgrim's flagship, shortly before Guilliman gets his neck wound. The original sculpture of the bronze gate had been reworked and embellished upon, but in a clashing way that was ugly to Guilliman as it destroyed the original's illusion of depth, but which probably the Emperor's Children found artfully pleasing. Just before Guilliman got to the gate, there were artworks and paintings, rendered with paints derived from bodily fluids. Left alone, a layer of mould had covered them, again something which probably normal people would find disgusting.

Of course the stereotypical image of a Slaanesh champion's realm is a combination brothel/drug den/party but there can be more to Slaanesh than the image of a dissipated nobleman. Slaanesh's domain has as one of its circles, "Paramountcy", or power. I could see a Slaanesh leader of a world act seemingly normal, and say they care about their people, instead choosing to raid or drain other worlds of resources and people in order to support a higher standard of living for their own world. It could be viewed as Gluttony on a world scale, a pocket empire of good living amidst the squalor of the downtrodden masses of the Imperium, and such a leader might genuinely have the fervent support of their people. The catch of course is that this becomes a treadmill. In order to keep the good times going, an endless supply of tribute or loot has to keep being sucked in.

GW made their life difficult with EC and slaneesh. To describe a cult of excess for an army of soldiers that are not interested in the vices or mortal people is tricky but it’s one of the things i find most interesting about them.

Slaneesh got under their skin and exposed their subconscious desires and personal flaws. Lucius starts to self mutilate because he thought himself beautiful and then someone broke his nose. Not the kind of emotional concern you’d expect of a SM but it exposes something really interesting about them. Maybe their roots in the aristocracy of old terra play a role in this.

For bile his desire to hide his contracting of the blight and preserve his own life led him to kill his battle brothers and start his heretical experiments on xenos lifeforms. But now he has renounced ideas of immortality and expects to die but does seem to be procrastinating. Will he ever accept his work is done and submit to death.

During the HH assault on terra his excess seems to have some into conflict with his own obsession. The joy through the senseless destruction was destroying resources that he needed to conduct his work. He sees each life as having potential to become greater than the sum of its parts and he seeks to gift this to those he deems worthy. It maybe that no one except his creations are worthy.

But something in him has changed and I don’t think he bound to slaneesh in any way now. His mind and soul has hardened to the option

I could see an argument that Bile kept his legion's obsession for perfection, while his brother's abandoned it in the pursuit of excess. In that way he's the only remaining member of the Emperor's Children true to the standards of the legion, while the rest went to Slaanesh to wallow in excess.

Of course, limited time and resources meant he had to focus his pursuit of perfection on his work, and abandoned it for his own body, his martial skills and etc.

I’m reading Primogenitor at the minute and it feels to me like they are setting up the idea that a few of the HH era EC warriors feel like they followed fulgrim too far down the rabbit hole of excess which allowed him to achieve deamon good but they couldn’t follow him and now they are just abandoned. And now their legion is shattered which they regret. It’s a good bit of fluff to allow for a EC codex to land eventually as it justifies them working together as a legion again. Although I’d like to see maybe some war bands in the codex a bit like Orks.

But I wonder what their goal would be as they hate Abbadon so why would they join the black Crusade

By joining the Black Crusade they get a chance to have their share of the loot, set up new territories and if they want, backstab Abbadon. You can't backstab someone if you aren't there.

Voss wrote:

 ScarletRose wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Bile's a perfect example of how you can garner favor from and represent the chaos gods without actually worshiping them. The man is a picture perfect representation of Slaaneshi values and goals, even if he'd never admit it.

Eh. Maybe I'm a bit too much of grognard, but I don't see anything of Slaanesh in Bill. It's not about sensation, experience or excess and he's rather indifferent to the state of his own flawed corpus, except when his terminal illness inconveniences him.
He's cerebral and fairly mellow, except when the universe seems to do something to spite him.

He just wants to work, and only really goes out of his way to get 'research material' for his projects. He's amoral, treacherous and cluelessly hypocritical on a few subjects relating to his New Men, but if he gets what he wants (no matter how), he'll wander off and do science to it for a couple centuries.

Excess is the dark side of the pursuit of perfection (something Fabius has in spades). The EC variously want to pursue perfect sword fighting, perfect highs, perfect music etc.

Yeah, the 'perfection' retcon makes no sense to me. Excess is the dark side of indulgence, not perfection. I'm honestly confused at the idea there is a relationship between the two. Obsession and perfection, sure (eight plus hours of violin practice every day, to the be the best), but that's a very different mania than excess. Excess is about going further and further to satisfy whims and desires at a larger and more frantic capacity. It can start harmless but for a Slaaneshi cultist, it spirals out of control until the excess is everything. A little cake today becomes 'all the cake,' and then the next thing and the next.

The requirements of Slaanesh worship- 'indulge every vice, overthrow all decent behavior' doesn't allow for perfection. The 'perfection' would be utterly marred by chasing distractions- the perfect singer would ruin their voice, the perfect athlete their figure, the perfect violinist would ruin their hands with one vice or another (drug-derived shakes and precision don't go together). Noise marines don't chase 'perfect music.' They go for loud, excessive riotous noise because they literally can't appreciate or respond to anything else- their senses are blown past the point they can even register such things.

obsession IS excess. you're making the mistake of assuming there's only one way for a chaos god to get their hooks in you, and that's not the case at all.

let's use your violin example. what if in the persuit of perfecting the violin you practice every day for 22 hours only sleeping when you collapse from exhaustion, you're playing so much your fingers are bleeding, you're suffering from lack of sleep and malnutrition, that a REASONABLE person might even note is hurting your progress, but you're so far gone into your mania you don't get that. THAT is how perfection can become excess. The drive for perfection l;eads you to obsession which leads you to excess

obsession IS excess. you're making the mistake of assuming there's only one way for a chaos god to get their hooks in you, and that's not the case at all.

let's use your violin example. what if in the persuit of perfecting the violin you practice every day for 22 hours only sleeping when you collapse from exhaustion, you're playing so much your fingers are bleeding, you're suffering from lack of sleep and malnutrition, that a REASONABLE person might even note is hurting your progress, but you're so far gone into your mania you don't get that. THAT is how perfection can become excess. The drive for perfection l;eads you to obsession which leads you to excess

Exactly, and because this is 40k you're not just practicing excessively, pretty soon you're taking drugs to stay up and practice more, surgically augmenting your hands and ears to play and hear better, obtaining instruments made of more and more exotic materials etc.

And the changes come so gradually that before you know it your perfect violin music has turned you into a drugged out, bat-eared monster pulling someone's guts out to make new strings.

The good 40k books that deal with Chaos get that and make it a sort of subtle madness that takes a person further and further down a path of destruction without them even really knowing it. And the Bile books play on that with the way he keeps persisting - it's just one more upgrade, one more piece to his work, one more New Man etc, there's never going to be 'enough' even though he keeps promising himself there'll be a point where he can stop.

They're just Flanderizing him as the atheist super scientist who denies all faith and supremacy but Knowledge.

It's a decent parallel to the Fanatics, but doesent make him any less a tool. The gods DO exist so hes willfully ignorant.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
They're just Flanderizing him as the atheist super scientist who denies all faith and supremacy but Knowledge.

It's a decent parallel to the Fanatics, but doesent make him any less a tool. The gods DO exist so hes willfully ignorant.

That's not correct. Bile doesn't deny the Chaos gods exist, but he denies 1) their consciousness as entities capable of actual decision making (contending instead that they are essentially ruled by their essential natures and thus have no self reflective capacity or free will) 2) their worthiness of worship.

In that he is closer to those ancient Greeks that did not deny the existence of entities that called themselves gods, but who denied that these entities (with all their flaws) were beings deserving of worship from humans.

Bile also seems to be aware to some extent that warp entities are a Reflection of human consciousness in the warp. When confronted by the keeper of secrets and other demons on the way to Sublime he refers to them as products of the imagination and tells the crew they only look like that because you think they do.

I think Fabius has understood the reality of the warp and knows that it’s gods are no better or worse Or worthy of worship than the mortal minds that create them. And that’s stopped or slowed is path towards slaneesh

Which would make you think that if he were to work with any legion it wouldn't be his former comrades in the Slaanesh worshipping Emperors Children, but the nihilists of the Eighth Legion.

I don’t think he cares, he will see all the reneged marines as wasting their potential. When he works with them he uses them for his own gains. Using CSM would be a good way to access primaris corpses


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mrFickle wrote:
I don’t think he cares, he will see all the reneged marines as wasting their potential. When he works with them he uses them for his own gains. Using CSM would be a good way to access primaris corpses

Just read in Primogenitor, Fabius says “humanity was on the brink of greatness and we snatched it away”. There certainly some regret within him even if he does not seek the imperium as an ally