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I am wondering should I buy Legion?

Nurglitch wrote:I have to admit I find Angron's one-dimensional portrayl so far is kind of boring.

He's a pretty one-dimensional guy though, isn't he?

Yeah all horus had to do was offer him more blood.

The Poll's options don't really do it for me. The Big E was the let down most for me.. I mean comon stop tinkering on the webway and pay attention to your damn crazy mutant children!

If I found out that the leader of mankind was a coalescence of the shamans (really? Shamans?) of mankind's past, I would turn treacherous too.

But anyway. Lorgar - his actions proved he had no faith to begin with, but merely a desire for the worship of gods, be they false or not. If he truly had faith, he would accept the emperor's chiding as a test. A test which he failed.

And yes, Chaos is evil. Very evil. Defend them how you may, but the gods of violence, disease, change, and lust can be nothing but. Their entire existence is dedicated to bringing pain and suffering to mankind, and that is fact.

In the case of the traitor primarchs, what they may have covered over as they themselves being betrayed was nothing but their acceptance of evil in return for power. They betrayed man out of greed, arrogance, and the lust for power.

Potens pessime.

DA's Forever wrote:The Poll's options don't really do it for me. The Big E was the let down most for me.. I mean comon stop tinkering on the webway and pay attention to your damn crazy mutant children!

Yes I agree with this!

Nurglitch wrote:So what exactly would be a convincing reason to betray humanity? Just, you know, curious.

Yes, this, a thousand times this!

And considering just how foul Chaos is in the 40K Galaxy, I'd guess the Traitor Primarchs realize how badly they screwed up... and how badly they were screwed!

Miraclefish wrote:And who says Chaos is the evil one?

I'm no longer of the opinion that Chaos is evil. They want only to survive and the Master of Mankind broke his promise to them after making a deal for the gene-forging abilities to create the Primarchs and the Astartes, in return the Emperor was to inform Mankind of the nature of the Warp so that they could join together united, rather than divided by fear and war like all the other races of the galaxy have done.

They were the betrayed ones!

No, my friends, it is not as black and white as the Imperium would have you believe...

Actually, it really is.

All of these 'visions' of the Ruinous Powers making 'deals' with the Emperor? How True are they?

These are, after all, propaganda films, produced with turning the Emperor's sons traitor.

I'd say their truthfulness is very suspect, right from the start.

Asherian Command wrote:I am wondering should I buy Legion?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say... 'yes'.

Asherian Command wrote:

DA's Forever wrote:The Poll's options don't really do it for me. The Big E was the let down most for me.. I mean comon stop tinkering on the webway and pay attention to your damn crazy mutant children!

Yes I agree with this!

Im not alone!

From reading i did find that the horus herasy was not so black and white as i thought i definatly like the imperium of old better and see the new one as almost a rotting husk of its past self. Also i see horus's alpharius/omegons and big red's storys as rather sad and tragic i see it more as horus was a puppet than the lead.

Miraclefish wrote:And who says Chaos is the evil one?

I'm no longer of the opinion that Chaos is evil. They want only to survive and the Master of Mankind broke his promise to them after making a deal for the gene-forging abilities to create the Primarchs and the Astartes, in return the Emperor was to inform Mankind of the nature of the Warp so that they could join together united, rather than divided by fear and war like all the other races of the galaxy have done.

They were the betrayed ones!

And poor Slaanesh! She was brought into being by the Eldar and, in her first painful moments, abandoned by them! She only tried to live as her creators taught her and yet they left her alone, confused and hungry...

No, my friends, it is not as black and white as the Imperium would have you believe...

This would work except BL has utilised the modern, Western post-Christian belief of all daemons being inherently evil creatures who exist only to cause trickery, pain and suffering.
If they had described the denizens of the warp as being something more akin to the Eastern idea of 'spirits' (where daemons have personalities and interests as varied as living people) then you could well believe that the Emperor would get what was coming to him. As it stands, if he did indeed trick the Chaos gods into giving him powers, then his motives were still noble as he was trying to save humanity from creatures which exist for nothing other than to destroy it.

Pacific wrote:

Miraclefish wrote:And who says Chaos is the evil one?

I'm no longer of the opinion that Chaos is evil. They want only to survive and the Master of Mankind broke his promise to them after making a deal for the gene-forging abilities to create the Primarchs and the Astartes, in return the Emperor was to inform Mankind of the nature of the Warp so that they could join together united, rather than divided by fear and war like all the other races of the galaxy have done.

They were the betrayed ones!

And poor Slaanesh! She was brought into being by the Eldar and, in her first painful moments, abandoned by them! She only tried to live as her creators taught her and yet they left her alone, confused and hungry...

No, my friends, it is not as black and white as the Imperium would have you believe...

This would work except BL has utilised the modern, Western post-Christian belief of all daemons being inherently evil creatures who exist only to cause trickery, pain and suffering.
If they had described the denizens of the warp as being something more akin to the Eastern idea of 'spirits' (where daemons have personalities and interests as varied as living people) then you could well believe that the Emperor would get what was coming to him. As it stands, if he did indeed trick the Chaos gods into giving him powers, then his motives were still noble as he was trying to save humanity from creatures which exist for nothing other than to destroy it.

That does sum it up nicely.

Chaos in the 40K Galaxy is a nasty, nasty thing - there really isn't an 'upside' to it.

At all!

I disagree. Daemons are clearly portrayed as amoral rather than immoral. A Thousand Sons is a great example of the amorality of the Warp where both sides use magic and only the Thousand Sons get the short end. I think that's why they keep emphasizing the Sun in The First Heretic as an example of something that's morally neutral in itself, and yet has moral (or proto-moral) relationships with agents - too far away and you freeze, too close and you burn, and just right and all you get is a long life and cancer.

Interesting there's a total Lovecraft shout-out when Lorgar reminisces about talking to Magnus about the nature of the universe in "the halls of Leng"...

For me, the horus heresy books have done a good job of showing the idea that no man thinks he's evil.

One thing i find interesting is that originally the alpha legion was not ever swayed by chaos yet nwo they have deamons and i beleve at least one brother became a deamon prince i wonder how they were corupted. Oh and yes i read all of legion.

Kogwar:

Re-read the parts where the Alpha Legion Captains talk seditiously about the founding principles of the Imperium. Alpharius talks about allowing his Captains to engage with the Imperial Truth philosophically, so long as they uphold it.

The Cabal itself is mentioned to be on the path to corruption by Chaos, as John Grammaticus notes that in the past the Cabal was less easily moved to consider bloodshed. The Cabal's farseeing device capitalized on this when the Primarchs were told that they could prevent the fall of Humanity to Chaos if they sided with Horus so it could be destroyed entirely.

That sort of death before damnation approach is standard Imperial Truth, the sort used to justify particularly genocidal compliances. But the Alpha Legion don't hold Imperial Truth in particularly high regard, and have a rather adverserial relationship with most other Imperial organizations (so it seems). If they weren't already waging a covert war against the Imperium, the Heresy sure gave them an excuse.

Hmm definatly food for thought

Monster Rain:

I guess my problem is that this version of Angron goes full-slow on a regular basis, in the sense losing all connection with the audience. I mean while he is famous for being a ridiculously destructive spaz, we don't really get that in the Horus Heresy novels because Angron is always being a ridiculously destructive spaz. Being a one-note character takes emphasis away from that note.

Back in the day the comment was that it was easy enough for the World Eater's martial blood rituals to be directed towards Khorne. In fact for a time there was a popular notion that Khorne was an honourable God: so people were annoyed by the idea of the whole World Eaters becoming Khorne Berzerkers. Mind you, that was back when you could have Stormboyz dedicated to Khorne.

The point being that there's nothing fun and interesting about World Eaters, their adoption of bunny ears as the sacred symbols of Khorne, Kharn's epic beat poem Kill, Maim, Burn, or the significance of the skull/red blood/black iron and brass to Khorne.

Mr Nobody wrote:For me, the horus heresy books have done a good job of showing the idea that no man thinks he's evil.

Agreed! I've never really been really into the fluff before the HH series but seeing how truly tragic these guys fell and how grey the lines were in what I thought was a black-and-white universe really shifted my whole opinion of the chaos forces altogether.

That said, the chaos primarchs still strike me as a bunch of dudes with daddy-issues, but that's being unfair to oversimplify them that much. Tragically fallen evil men who don't think they're evil (with daddy issues) seems to fit much better. Even though that exact same description could fit Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies.

Nurglitch wrote:Monster Rain:

I guess my problem is that this version of Angron goes full-slow on a regular basis, in the sense losing all connection with the audience. I mean while he is famous for being a ridiculously destructive spaz, we don't really get that in the Horus Heresy novels because Angron is always being a ridiculously destructive spaz. Being a one-note character takes emphasis away from that note.

Back in the day the comment was that it was easy enough for the World Eater's martial blood rituals to be directed towards Khorne. In fact for a time there was a popular notion that Khorne was an honourable God: so people were annoyed by the idea of the whole World Eaters becoming Khorne Berzerkers. Mind you, that was back when you could have Stormboyz dedicated to Khorne.

The point being that there's nothing fun and interesting about World Eaters, their adoption of bunny ears as the sacred symbols of Khorne, Kharn's epic beat poem Kill, Maim, Burn, or the significance of the skull/red blood/black iron and brass to Khorne.

I see what you're saying. I haven't been playing 40k for as long as would be necessary to make those comparisons so maybe that's where this all stems from. My only understanding of the World Eaters boils down to MOAR CHAINAXES! I would only say that to some, mindless killing machines are fun and interesting.

Calvinus wrote:...the chaos primarchs still strike me as a bunch of dudes with daddy-issues, but that's being unfair to oversimplify them that much. Tragically fallen evil men who don't think they're evil (with daddy issues) seems to fit much better. Even though that exact same description could fit Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies.

I'm Dougie!

Nurglitch wrote:
Interesting there's a total Lovecraft shout-out when Lorgar reminisces about talking to Magnus about the nature of the universe in "the halls of Leng"...

It's very easy to see that chaos gods in the frame of Lovecraftian dieties: Perhaps the Emperor is in fact Nodens, who cast down Cthulhu himself? (And in any event, Cthulhu would whoop any of the 4 chaos Gods asses!)

The books have humanized many of the traitors but their actions speak louder than their words.

I feel the most sympathy for the loyalists within the official traitor legions. Its one thing to see your brother legion betray everything you've fought for another thing entirely to see your own do it.

Carlovonsexron:

I'm moreso referring to what H.P. Lovecraft actually wrote rather than the parasitic 'Mythos', because Lovecraft doesn't describe Cthulhu as a god, and makes no reference to a relationship between Cthulhu and Nodes, except to imply that they shared the same dreamlands of Earth.

What's more interesting is what the allusion might hint at in the context of 40k.

Pretty much, especially since the Priest in Yellow Silk is hinted to be Cthulhu, since it is the high priest of the star-spawn.

I would say the series has definitely opened my eyes to the humanity of many of the legions.

I now feel quite different about the roles of the Alpha Legion, the Night Lords, the Thousand Sons and even the Iron Warriors(though their story has yet to be told). You see a lot of the goodness in the now-traitor legions and a lot of the bad in the loyalist ones

Many of the texts in the 41st millennium paint the traitor legions as loose cannons murdering untold numbers as they slowly drifted towards madness. however when you read tales of heresy you realize that legions like the space wolves were just as guilty as the rest of their brethren when it came to committing genocide on a massive scale.

One thing that has radically changed in my mind is the opinion of the Emperor. He went from an all knowing master of humanity, to an arrogant fool with an impossible dream.

many argue the fact and say that his sons should have known their place and trusted the Emperors judgment. Thats all fine and dandy for us mortals, but for DEMI-GODS like the primarchs, need-to-know just doesn't cut the mustard. In an age of enlightenment the Emperor withheld knowledge about the most sinister threat to life in our galaxy, the primordial annihilator.

Additionally as far as Lorgar is concerned, the Emperor should have embraced and encouraged his son, not cast him down to grovel in the ashes of monuments raised to the Emperor himself. I bet he's having a custode kick him in his withered bum for that one.

The HH books have not changed my views of the 40k Universe.

Imperium = Evil

Chaos = Good

Word Bearers = Heroes

Nurglitch wrote:Carlovonsexron:

I'm moreso referring to what H.P. Lovecraft actually wrote rather than the parasitic 'Mythos', because Lovecraft doesn't describe Cthulhu as a god, and makes no reference to a relationship between Cthulhu and Nodes, except to imply that they shared the same dreamlands of Earth.

I'm 99% sure Nodens casting down Cthulhu is a Lovecraft original concept - alot of people demonize Derleth for writing in a more good/evil dualism (and they should) But the Nodens/Cthulhu thing is Lovecrafts own hand - I'm not sure if it appears in the actual story where Cthulhu awakens for a short period, but thats hardly the only story with Cthulhu, at least as a named presence, featuring in it.

Per Cthulhu being worshiped (Sure, lovecraft may not come out and call Cthulhu a 'God' but hes certainly regarded as one in the context of his eponymous short story), hes worshiped within "The Call of Cthulhu" by a swamp cult, and implied to be heavily worshiped elsewhere.

For what its worth, its actually Nodens who is the more enigmatic deity - no one knows why he cast down Cthulhu, what exact relationship he has with humanity and the earth (if any).

Carlovonsexron wrote:I'm 99% sure Nodens casting down Cthulhu is a Lovecraft original concept - alot of people demonize Derleth for writing in a more good/evil dualism (and they should) But the Nodens/Cthulhu thing is Lovecrafts own hand - I'm not sure if it appears in the actual story where Cthulhu awakens for a short period, but thats hardly the only story with Cthulhu, at least as a named presence, featuring in it.

Okay... I've read every Lovecraft compilation that's available in print at least 3 times and I would say with pretty firm certainty that there's nothing in there about Nodens casting down Cthulhu.

I could be wrong, but I would be pretty surprised about it. Politics, Religion, my childrens' names; these things I'm hazy on. H.P. Lovecraft I feel like I know a thing or two about.

H.P. Lovecraft's stuff is also available on a single page on Project Gutenberg's Australia site here.

That's just cheating.