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Anyone else thinks it's odd the IOM is always made out to be in awful shape, hopelessly beset from all sides?

But then we see that anything Chaos /the Xeno's can throw at them is simply cakewalked over.

- Empy was capable of killing all 4 chaos gods simply as collateral damage.
- He also beat the biggest baddest C'tan in existence into being his pet.

- Primarchs and chapter masters beating the crap out of avatars left and right.

- Space marines soloing Waaaghs

How are we supposed to believe the IOM is under threat from anything at all? Everyone of their heroes is beyond Godlike, capable of curbstomping the enemy's worst.

In fact, their worst threat is their own troops gone rogue….

Am I making too much out of something which is simply GW favouritism? Or is the IOM really filled with nothing but demigods?

 Ascalam wrote:

I think you might be mixing your battles up there.

Horus gets downed by a Plasma blast, and Big E stands over him to defend him, but IIRC that was a different fight.

I'm just passing on information people have gotten from (I think) the new Forgeworld? book.

Popenfresh wrote:But I still think that when the fate of the entire human race is at stake someone of his stature and power would be able to assess the situation more clearly and not latch on to silly emotional attachments. The guy has literally seen billions of people die during his life time and has always fought to preserve mankind as a whole.

I think the whole point was that it wasn't a conscious decision to hold back.
[quote=]Primarchs and chapter masters beating the crap out of avatars left and right.

Popenfresh wrote:
Anyone else thinks it's odd the IOM is always made out to be in awful shape, hopelessly beset from all sides?

But then we see that anything Chaos /the Xeno's can throw at them is simply cakewalked over.

- Empy was capable of killing all 4 chaos gods simply as collateral damage.
- He also beat the biggest baddest C'tan in existence into being his pet.

- Primarchs and chapter masters beating the crap out of avatars left and right.

- Space marines soloing Waaaghs

How are we supposed to believe the IOM is under threat from anything at all? Everyone of their heroes is beyond Godlike, capable of curbstomping the enemy's worst.

In fact, their worst threat is their own troops gone rogue….

Am I making too much out of something which is simply GW favouritism? Or is the IOM really filled with nothing but demigods?

This is the problem that comes from half of the codices in the game coming from the Imperium. Though since the Emperor is essentially dead are the primarchs are gone, the Imperium is decaying. Also, consider the scale of the galaxy the Imperium is in. Their heroes are few and far between, and they're losing as many battles as they win, it's just that no one writes about the losses. If you consider the fluff in the codices to be legends attributed to the heroes in question by their fans, I guess that would make them more reasonable as well.

Popenfresh wrote:- Empy was capable of killing all 4 chaos gods simply as collateral damage.
- He also beat the biggest baddest C'tan in existence into being his pet.

But he's basically dead, so he's not really contributing a huge amount to the Imperium's safety beyond being a psychic lighthouse and an idol.

- Primarchs and chapter masters beating the crap out of avatars left and right.

Cross reference a single Craftworld wiping out an entire sector's fleet. It's not unbelievable that a hardened chapter master could knock out a (already wounded, if you're talking about the Calgar fluff) Avatar with a power fist. Primarchs even less so.

- Space marines soloing Waaaghs

I assume you mean a single chapter, right? Which would be fair enough, there aren't that many of them about. Unless you're refering to the Space Marine game, which we could probably dismiss quite easily. The games have always sacrificed fluff veracity for fun - as well they should.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
I think the whole point was that it wasn't a conscious decision to hold back.

Oooh, I hadn't thought of that. I suppose that explains it quite nicely. Silly me.

They're supposed to be capable of taking on the vast majority of creatures that can be thrown at them.

Not just the vast majority, nothing and I mean nothing in the universe could go toe to toe with the Primarchs. So the only plausible enemy you could come up with was themselves. It just makes every other race utterly irrelevant.

In fact, from a different point of view it's even more ridiculously OP. It means that even if you distil and water down Empy's/the Primarch's DNA a million times you still get warriors far superior to anything the enemy has.

As for treacherous humans being the Imperium's greatest threat, that's the whole point. Humanity's greatest danger is itself. It has the power to destroy its opponents or itself. Chaos only has such power in the Materium because of those who embrace it. The Imperium crumbles from within and from without, but it's always been itself that is its greatest foe.

I would agree if it was full-scale rebellion and disparity.

But as it stands now rebellions and demon incursions outside of the Eye are handled by the Imperium with the ease of squashing a bug. A couple of Grey Knights or normal space marines take care of those on a daily basis between breakfast and brunch.

It's nowhere near falling apart into little bits, the Ecclesiarchy makes sure of that. The biggest threat are the renegade space marines and their Primarchs attacking out of the Eye, ergo the remnants of the HH, not the risk of the Imperium crumbling from within.

Popenfresh wrote:

Not just the vast majority, nothing and I mean nothing in the universe could go toe to toe with the Primarchs. So the only plausible enemy you could come up with was themselves. It just makes every other race utterly irrelevant.

....

I think your attachment to the imperium blinds you. Just take a look at what happened on Signus Prime. A bloodthirster broke both of Sanguinius' legs with one crack of his whip and then released a shriek of psychic energy that killed 500 blood angels, making Sanguinius pass out from the psychic shock.

I realize that the bloodthirster was then killed by Sanguinius on the siege of Terra, but it just makes me think that if a bloodthirster could do this, the primarchs aren't as unbeatable as you seem to think.

Food for thought.

Huh, interesting indeed.

Just so you know I'm not overly attached to the Imperium or any other 40k faction, though I do dislike GW's 2 most recent releases.

Just out of curiosity, was that fluff written recently or back in the olden days?

Also, didn't the Sanguinor swat him out of material existence too?

Boohoo. The IoM is kicking my xenos' butt...

First. There are billions upon billions of humans, a decent percentage of whom are in the Imperial Guard. Still the IoM is balancing on a knife edge of defeat. Most wars won by the imperial guard is won by pouring guardsmen at the enemy in their tens of thousands. I've hardly read any IG centered novels where it's not an underlying theme that the imperium is slowly running out of fighting bodies.

Second. Space Marines are the greatest warriors the universe has seen. Trouble is that there are a few hundred thousand of them, and they're slowly getting fewer.

Third. The Primarchs were Demi-Gods. It says so in every book they're featured in. Of course they're going to kick butt. Who else was a Demi-God? Hercules. He kicked butt too, and he couldn't be killed. I also seem to remember that the Primarchs all either died or became daemons.

@sgtSixkilla

If you don't like your Xenos butt getting kicked in the fluff by the IoM then you probably shouldn't get into 40k in the first place.

My beef is with how we're supposed to believe the Imperium is under any kind of threat when you have space marines roflstomping everyone.

I haven't read any of the horrid BL novels but maybe the guard stuff is more interesting. Either way, everyone knows that when a Xenos needs to shine GW has them slaughter a regiment of IG, hardly a loss. And that was my original point, we're told the IoM is in decline but we never get to actually see any of it.

To your second point, whether or not there are "many" space marines is irrelevant since they always show up when it really matters. The overwhelming majority of IoM fluff is about space marines even though they constitute less than a percentage of its population.

Also who says they're shrinking in numbers? Or are you refering to their geneseeds degenerating?

Third, did I ever ague otherwise? What's your point exactly?

I love it when xenos get their butts handed to them. With the exception of orks, all the xenos species are pansies.

Space marines don't always win, but the only battles worth reading about are the ones where they do. Of course we mostly hear about battles where IoM wins. They're humans, we're humans. We can't expect to understand an Eldar society, for example. They're an immortal alien species, how can we possibly relate to that? And as for tyranids, the problem just increases. It's an alien hive mind. We wouldn't even know where to begin, in order to understand how it works. Also, how can an author write an engaging novel about a hive mind which exists only to digest bio-mass?

How do you know BL novels are horrid if you haven't read any of it. It's like saying you don't like a movie you haven't seen. I'm tempted to call that stupid, but I'd just get a warning.

How do you know that the IoM is on the decline? You've read it somewhere, yes? So it is written somewhere. Also, if you haven't read any of the "horrid BL novels" how do you know that there's no indication there that the IoM is on the decline? It's like saying that you haven't read any scientific papers, but you still know that there are no scientific papers that concludes that climate change is happening. Again. I'd say that was stupid, but I won't.

Who says the number of Space Marines is declining? Well, there's no more geneseed being produced. Only way to create a new Marine is to take the progenoid gland from one, and inserting it into a normal human. That's okay as long as they can harvest the progenoid glands from ALL Marines who die. But they can't do that, because some of them are eaten by 'nids, some are blown up, some fall into volcanoes, some get thrown into the void when their ship blows up, some are lost in the warp. None of these can be harvested, so all of these cases represents one less Space Marine.

Third, who says I replied to you?

I just want to read a BL book where it is an ork view. I know thats unlikely, but I just wish to read an ork victory? Couldnt care less for all the other xenos really. cept for nids

Nearest Xenos get to a victory in BL is that they land, feht over a world, then the SM show up and they lose/are driven back etc.

Even unconditional Xeno wins have a habit of getting rewritten, or not getting to be written as novels.

Battles the SM/IG LOSE don't sell well, because upwards of half the playerbase play IOm in some capacity.

*shrug*

Nature of the beast really. Bolterporn sells. Splinterporn might, so a select market. Sluggaporn wouldn't.

Frankly i'm amazed that the Space Marine game showed Orks as well as it did, considering. Sure, you get to wade through them, but those Nobs are actually threatening.

the Bomb Squigs are now feared by my local FLGS, as they are all big into the video game. They still aren't great in-game, but folk will go to any length to kill those Tankbustas off before they can let them off the leash

 SgtSixkilla wrote:

How do you know BL novels are horrid if you haven't read any of it. It's like saying you don't like a movie you haven't seen. I'm tempted to call that stupid, but I'd just get a warning.

I've heard from people who have pretty similar literary tastes they're not worth the read. You can call not wanting to read through something you're not likely to enjoy stupid for all I care.

How do you know that the IoM is on the decline? You've read it somewhere, yes? So it is written somewhere. Also, if you haven't read any of the "horrid BL novels" how do you know that there's no indication there that the IoM is on the decline? It's like saying that you haven't read any scientific papers, but you still know that there are no scientific papers that concludes that climate change is happening. Again. I'd say that was stupid, but I won't.

Or you know, I might've read White Dwarf, Codices, rulebooks… I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Heck, you yourself said they're running out of fighting bodies and balancing on the edge of defeat. Inconsistent much?

Third, who says I replied to you?

Given the layout of your post, which was mostly a responds so my earlier posts, making your third consecutive point a reply to some else's post would render it pretty illegible. Was it stupid to expect a cohesive answer too you think?

But hey, you're allowed to make your posts as scrawled as you like for my part.

Who says the number of Space Marines is declining? Well, there's no more geneseed being produced. Only way to create a new Marine is to take the progenoid gland from one, and inserting it into a normal human. That's okay as long as they can harvest the progenoid glands from ALL Marines who die. But they can't do that, because some of them are eaten by 'nids, some are blown up, some fall into volcanoes, some get thrown into the void when their ship blows up, some are lost in the warp. None of these can be harvested, so all of these cases represents one less Space Marine.

Last time I checked, geneseeds were still reproducible, albeit very time consuming. You could recreate an entire chapter out of a single marine given enough time. The Adeptus Mechanicus uses thousands of test-slaves to grow and harvest new seeds to found new chapters all the time. The only restraint is the codex astartes.

Anyway, I've derailed this thread enough as it is.

Well since all chaos gods are on an even par with each other in some way weather its strength, speed, toughness, or magic all chaos gods are equal that's why they haven't killed each other yet, however; Slaannesh for a small amount of time at least was on a power high which allowed him to kill all of the eldar gods, yet even then Khain was almost able to kill him which I think shows that he was on par with all other chaos gods. Although i think think that the strongest god will be Ynnead, that is when he is born at least, for he is the eldar god of death and is destined to kill Slaanesh, or thats what the eldar codex says at least. But if this is true his abilaty to kill a chaos god would make him stronger than all other gods

Gork and Mork are definitely strongest. Here's some reasons why

1. Gods get strength from worship and deeds and orks outnumber humans and all of them believe in Gork and Mork
2. Orks are more psychic than humans
3. Gork and Mork are older than the Chaos gods.

Personally, I vote Tzeentch. He lays plans with plans, within plans.etc... until there is web of conspiracies that no one can unravel. "If knowledge is power, then to be unknown is to be unconquerable"

I'm gonna say Khorne because if you put a bloodletter and an orkboy in a one-on-one match, bloddletter would win every time.

CourageAndHonor wrote:
I'm gonna say Khorne because if you put a bloodletter and an orkboy in a one-on-one match, bloddletter would win every time.

.... Ummm... Bloodletters are made by the power of khorne. ork boyz are mortals. Its like saying bloodletter agaisnt gaurdsman. slaughter. or cultitst against ork... slaughter. Its not about the quality of the gods followers in combat. Its about the number of followers that gods and how much they believe in that god. Now then some cultists might turn away from the chaos gods to save their skins but an every day ork boy would never turn from Gork and Mork. Thier fatacism makes space marines look bad.

Popenfresh wrote:

I've heard from people who have pretty similar literary tastes they're not worth the read. You can call not wanting to read through something you're not likely to enjoy stupid for all I care.

Not wanting to read it is one thing. Saying that you know it's horrible when you haven't read it is another. No matter how many people you've heard it from. For example, when working at a bookstore, I heard from literally dozens of people that Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" was a great read. I read it, and found that I didn't think so.

Or to quote somebody (probably the internet): "800 billion flies can't be wrong, eat sh*t."

Popenfresh wrote:

Or you know, I might've read White Dwarf, Codices, rulebooks… I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Heck, you yourself said they're running out of fighting bodies and balancing on the edge of defeat. Inconsistent much?

How is this inconsistent? I know the imperium is failing. I've read about it in countless BL novels.

Popenfresh wrote:

Last time I checked, geneseeds were still reproducible, albeit very time consuming. You could recreate an entire chapter out of a single marine given enough time. The Adeptus Mechanicus uses thousands of test-slaves to grow and harvest new seeds to found new chapters all the time. The only restraint is the codex astartes.

The creation of the Space Marines were the Emperor's second greatest achievement, after the creation of the Primarchs. It's a technology not understood by anyone else. Why? Because it's heresy to mess about with the geneseed. Even for other space marines. This at least according to the HH novels and a few other novels not of the HH series. If you've read otherwise, please tell me where you read it, I'd very much like to know.

thisisnotpancho wrote:
I think your attachment to the imperium blinds you. Just take a look at what happened on Signus Prime. A bloodthirster broke both of Sanguinius' legs with one crack of his whip and then released a shriek of psychic energy that killed 500 blood angels, making Sanguinius pass out from the psychic shock.

I realize that the bloodthirster was then killed by Sanguinius on the siege of Terra, but it just makes me think that if a bloodthirster could do this, the primarchs aren't as unbeatable as you seem to think.

Food for thought.

This fluff is not only misleading, but sort of outdated.

First of all, that "bloodthirster" was Ka'Bhanda, whom is the mightiest of all Bloodthirsters (Only An'ggrath the Unbound can contest this position, and both have been beaten by Primarchs). He isn't a standard Bloodthirster.

Second, according to Fear to Tread, even after having his legs broken and suffering from the psychic death screams of his sons, Sanguinius managed to beat Ka'Bhanda, and went on to decapitate a Slaaneshi Greater Daemon soon after.

If the C'tan weren't the way they are now, the galaxy would be fethed. The only force that could stop them in the full form were the old ones...

Eldar gods are either destroyed, imprisoned, shattered or mere reflections of themselves.

Chaos gods are strong... but Gork n' Mork are better.

Old universe: C'Tan... the rest either didn't exist or were too weak.
Current Universe: Gork n' Mork

 SgtSixkilla wrote:
Not wanting to read it is one thing. Saying that you know it's horrible when you haven't read it is another. No matter how many people you've heard it from. For example, when working at a bookstore, I heard from literally dozens of people that Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" was a great read. I read it, and found that I didn't think so.

Or to quote somebody (probably the internet): "800 billion flies can't be wrong, eat sh*t."

Meh, fair enough.

The creation of the Space Marines were the Emperor's second greatest achievement, after the creation of the Primarchs. It's a technology not understood by anyone else. Why? Because it's heresy to mess about with the geneseed. Even for other space marines. This at least according to the HH novels and a few other novels not of the HH series. If you've read otherwise, please tell me where you read it, I'd very much like to know.

I was getting this from the 2nd - 5th edition space marine codices and the nr. 248 White Dwarf article "Index Astartes, Rites of Initiation".

It's probably pretty outdated compared to the HH novels but, personally, I've been trying to ignore much of the recent fluff chances.

 ENOZONE wrote:
I vote Tzeentch. Any conflict engaged with that monster is a swift invitation to doom - He knows every possible move before his opponent does and has 10^10^10^10^10^10...^10... plans to utilize at any point of the galaxy - all of which have been coiling and building for almost all eternity. I mean really, the only reason why Tzeentch would be in open conflict in the first place is if he wanted to, and it'd likely be for some other purpose (like having his brother's get a beatdown, Mork accidentally stabbing Gork, or the Nightbringer going toe to toe with the Void Dragon.)

It would take a being of such tactical geni .... CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

None can stand the might of the emperor! glory to the imperium! Death to the heretics!

 Backspacehacker wrote:
None can stand the might of the emperor! glory to the imperium! Death to the heretics!

I agree on principle, but I'm not sure I believe it.

Gork and Mork aren't older than the chaos gods. They were made by the Orcs and the Orcs being made by the old ones aren't that old, i mean they were only made to fight the necrons and the eldar were made earlier than they were, so Gork and Mork are by no means old. The chaos god have been around for a much longer time, except for Slaanesh hes younger then the Orcs. But it is true that the orc gods are some of the strongest yet I think Khron would be the most powerful, in combat, since hes had many hundreds of thousands of years of worship. Plus the emotions that feed him anger and rage are some of the most powerful I can think of.

The Chaos Gods are younger than the Ork race, Chaos didn't even exist until after the Old Ones created the Orks for the War in Heaven, which spawned Chaos.

 Eldrad wrote:
Gork and Mork aren't older than the chaos gods. They were made by the Orcs and the Orcs being made by the old ones aren't that old, i mean they were only made to fight the necrons and the eldar were made earlier than they were, so Gork and Mork are by no means old. The chaos god have been around for a much longer time, except for Slaanesh hes younger then the Orcs. But it is true that the orc gods are some of the strongest yet I think Khron would be the most powerful, in combat, since hes had many hundreds of thousands of years of worship. Plus the emotions that feed him anger and rage are some of the most powerful I can think of.

First off, orks where made in the war in heaven. This is with the eldar. Once they started to use the eldar and orks more often in the battles this started to send tidal waves of bad energy through the warp, now then the warp already had creatures living in it, but the bad energy started to corrupt them. This is where Enslavers and such came out of the warp and attacked all the races. Daemons where not even made then I believe. Daemons are creations of a chaos god so they couldnt be there cause the gods weren't there yet. Khorne is supposedly borne around Earths middle ages. Gork and Mork where around long before then. Also Gork and Mork are the gods of the WAAAAAAAAGGHH!!! and all orks participate in WAAAAAAAGGGHHS!!! Plus Orks are the most numerous, individually sentient, awake, race in the galaxy, and almost all orks worship Gork and Mork. Means even more power to them. No matter how you look at it they are indeed the strongest, out of all the gods.

 Popenfresh wrote:
I suppose that's one way to look at it.

I guess you could also say he was more arrogant than he was weak.

But I still think that when the fate of the entire human race is at stake someone of his stature and power would be able to assess the situation more clearly and not latch on to silly emotional attachments. The guy has literally seen billions of people die during his life time and has always fought to preserve mankind as a whole.

Putting it all at risk because he liked one single person so much just doesn't seem very strongwilled to me.

Funny, I thought it was just a father expressing his inability that his favorite son had become an irredeemable monster. And like a good father he tried to struggle against the demons that compelled his son knowing it was probably futile to see if he could pull his jewel of the primarchs away from the Gods of Chaos... or you can just think he's a Derpucles i suppose. Because their is a difference between killing a man you like and killing one of your own sons.

Anyway onto the topic in question I would like all other sane people here give my vote to Gork n' Mork as well. As far as why these behemoths haven't taken over the warp is very simple and shocks me that no one has said this yet. Gork and mork don't wipe out the 4 chaos gods for a very simple reason because 9 times out of 10 they are fighting the best fight ever ... themselves. Why fight Khorne when you can fight someone biggah, and strongah!? Why face Nurgle when you can decapitate your enemy and he'll pick up his head and snap it back into place? Why face Tzeeentch when within the swirling chaos of the warp Mork's traps and tricks can stop even the mighty Gork dead in his warpath, and why face slaneesh when your enemy is your exact equal?

Gork n Mork smile and blessed Ghazzy according to his delusional fluff (which i completely support!). And because of this crazed mentality he has become so amazing within 40k, an icon of fear to all races where no army would willingly accept Ghazzy's anger instead they just hope he attacks someone else. True may terra could wipe him off the face of the earth, the nids could devoure his warbands or the Necron could exterminate them all but I know that the process will not be swift, will not be efficient nor will it be military strength well spent. It will galvanize the orks to replace him and with each slain master the desire for WAAAGH continues to grow more and more producing harder and more killy bossess with each generation.

GORK and MORK simply represent the bravado of the ork race, being the most numerous intelligent race within 40k (if you make the nid argument it's still valid cause the vast majority of nids are smart as a special needs panda ) take these two disturbing factors and combine them into the largest belief within the galaxy so it should be obvious who wins. demons might feed on an orks desire for waaagh but so pure is that mindless desire it never matures into the passionate madness of a human with delectable hints of rationalization, muttering, guilt, and fear. Instead the humble ork only wants one thing other than to crack a joke, and that is to be ... ORKY

Tzeentch wins. Whoever wins.