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.

 Just Dave wrote:

Hey, we came to a very reasonable conclusion IMHO; I'd take that and run if I were you.

We came to reasonable conclusion. ScreamPaste, not so much.

There's no space in ScreamPaste.

 Sparks_Havelock wrote:
As I said I view things from the perspective of the 40k era, not from the era when it may have happened, when much has been forgotten and what is remembered is distorted & bloated with the telling over so many thousands of years. Yes it may have happened but when you look at it from the perspective of the 41st millenium, did it really happen that way or is it just propaganda to help bolster faith in the God-Emperor?

That's not the point, I am talking from OUR point of perspective - the reader's pow. While people inside 40k universe have never been there and witnessed that we as readers of BL books and officilal codex script were because writers took us there and told us: "this happened". And they cannot tell propaganda to us because when we read the book we read from 3'rd point where the only thin you can see are true facts adn not just some random telling.
By same logic Battle of Terra never happened, because it is a myth to 40k people - even to the Space Marine chapters who's ancestors were part of it. Same can be told for Grey Knights - they don't exist in 40k lore because nobody except few individuals knows about them. No matter if we as readers know almost everything about it.

 ScreamPaste wrote:
There's no space in ScreamPaste.

Edited.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Alexander, there are many pieces of GW fluff that are written from similarly neutral perspective, yet they contradict each other. It all cannot be true at the same time.

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:
While people inside 40k universe have never been there and witnessed that we as readers of BL books and officilal codex script were because writers took us there and told us: "this happened".

Except that's not true. Read the quote from one of the BL authors saying that their books are NOT absolute truth, and contain various lies/exaggerations/etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ScreamPaste wrote:
Then it wouldn't be mobile, of course not. You can however have muscle tissues with high flexibility as well as incredible tensile and compressive strengths, however.

So do you actually have any evidence that the primarchs were made out of some kind of advanced heavy-metal super-muscle rather than being the flesh and blood creatures they're portrayed as?

I'm mostly quoting this to make sure you actually typed it. Superman is so blatantly non-magical he specifically has no resistance to magic in universe.

The fact that some magic is specifically called "magic" in-universe and other magic isn't has nothing to do with whether it's magic or not. What you're doing is the equivalent of taking a priest's statement as absolute truth when he says that casting "remove demonic possession" is a divine miracle while casting "make her fall in love with me" is satanic magic. And that's just pointless nitpicking over terms, functionally they're both magic.

No explosive to damage important components, disable weaponry not directly hit, or rock the tank? Way too espenive and costly for use?

I thought we just said that power weapons were the best way of destroying a tank?

Power weapons are effective against tanks... When properly used by strong enough wielders. Due to their powerfields.

I thought that the whole point of a power weapon is that you DON'T need high strength to cut through things. You know, because you have a power field doing all the cutting work while you just have to get the sword to hit the target.

But one shot missiles that stick a spike into a tank would be pointless.

Unless of course you use a power field to penetrate the armor and an explosive warhead to do the damage once it gets through.

 Peregrine wrote:

Except that's not true. Read the quote from one of the BL authors saying that their books are NOT absolute truth, and contain various lies/exaggerations/etc.

That same quote says the exact same about the Codexes as well. It's basically a cop-out explaining contradictions and such. There are general truths accepted about 40K. The majority that we 'know', however, is said (if I recall correctly) to not necessarily be true.

So do you actually have any evidence that the primarchs were made out of some kind of advanced heavy-metal super-muscle rather than being the flesh and blood creatures they're portrayed as?

There's evidence that they're basically Warp constructs. As I recall when Ferrus Manus was beheaded there was an explosion of Warp energy. They're not just flesh and blood (and besides, most of the background about them being hit by weaponry has them surviving what would kill or cripple a Space Marine. Artificer armour isn't that good.).

I thought we just said that power weapons were the best way of destroying a tank?

Not necessarily the best way. But a good way.

I thought that the whole point of a power weapon is that you DON'T need high strength to cut through things. You know, because you have a power field doing all the cutting work while you just have to get the sword to hit the target.

The power field doesn't cut (in most background, at least). It 'softens' armour. Force is still necessary. A power sword would probably cut easier than a power fist but it affects less of an area.

 Peregrine wrote:

Except that's not true. Read the quote from one of the BL authors saying that their books are NOT absolute truth, and contain various lies/exaggerations/etc.

So you missed the genius quote right bellow it:

"Which is essentially him copping out and refusing to commit to anything, in the event of bad continuity or things being revised. However since this board is about fluff. I think we need to accept the cannon as being truth, in order to discuss it. To turn up and say 'it's all lies' undermines the whole idea."

They are basically contradicting themselves, books should show us the ultimate truth when we read the story from our perspective. If they are not 100% accurate then they are nothign more than fanfiction when compared to the rest of franchise.

 rems01 wrote:
Heresy Betrayal sheds more light on this event.

To paraphrase the Emperor with a force of Custodes led the Luna Wolves and Horus on an attack on an Ork planet. Now this ork planet was rather special, it was entirely artificial, constructed from scrap etc and held together through some piece of Dark Age gravity tech. It was essentially a planet sized space hulk or ork rok.

On this planet the orks were of an immense size, nobs were as large as dreadnoughts. So a warboss of these was truly terrifying.

During the battle the emperor and his custodes become separated from the Luna Wolves and surrounded by orks. Battling for hours the Emperor is temporarily dazed/overcome be the sheer amount of firepower etc directed at him. (I assume his psychic shields gave out under the immense stress they were under). In his moment of weakness a warboss of these exceptional orks wrapped his paws around the emperor's neck. An instant later Horus was there and cut the ork's arms off.

It never says that the emperor was choking to death, or in mortal peril.

I'm not sure if it is still so but that ork warboss was known only as "the Beast" and was said to be the strongest ork in history.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
That same quote says the exact same about the Codexes as well. It's basically a cop-out explaining contradictions and such. There are general truths accepted about 40K. The majority that we 'know', however, is said (if I recall correctly) to not necessarily be true.

Exactly. Nothing in 40k is absolutely certain, so how valid a bit of fluff is depends on how plausible it is. A story saying "100 guardsmen attacked a position, 99 of them died but the last one managed to raise the regimental banner before being shot by enemy reinforcements" is plausible and there's no reason to doubt it. A story saying "primarch X survived a lascannon shot to the face" is not plausible so it makes more sense to dismiss it as part of the heroic legend of the primarchs, not a real event.

There's evidence that they're basically Warp constructs. As I recall when Ferrus Manus was beheaded there was an explosion of Warp energy. They're not just flesh and blood (and besides, most of the background about them being hit by weaponry has them surviving what would kill or cripple a Space Marine. Artificer armour isn't that good.).

IOW, "it's magic".

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

There's evidence that they're basically Warp constructs. As I recall when Ferrus Manus was beheaded there was an explosion of Warp energy. They're not just flesh and blood (and besides, most of the background about them being hit by weaponry has them surviving what would kill or cripple a Space Marine. Artificer armour isn't that good.).

So basically, Warp magic, which is even sometimes called magic in-universe. Lol.

 Peregrine wrote:
IOW, "it's magic".

Basically, yes. Which makes it plausible within the setting. Primarchs were\are not just a bit better than Space Marines. They're powerful creatures capable of challenging the more powerful (and prepared) Greater Daemons in their right.

On the other hand, I wish Greater Daemons (and lesser Daemons, actually) were more powerful than they're generally portrayed as (I'm still not against Primarchs defeating them). But still, how the background typically portrays it is how it probably should be seen. And in the vast majority of background about them, Primarchs are ludicrously tough against, well anything that doesn't have a power field or is Daemonically-enhanced. Or a massively powerful Psychic attack. Which are the only ways a Primarch has been 'definitively' killed.

 Peregrine wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
That same quote says the exact same about the Codexes as well. It's basically a cop-out explaining contradictions and such. There are general truths accepted about 40K. The majority that we 'know', however, is said (if I recall correctly) to not necessarily be true.

Exactly. Nothing in 40k is absolutely certain, so how valid a bit of fluff is depends on how plausible it is. A story saying "100 guardsmen attacked a position, 99 of them died but the last one managed to raise the regimental banner before being shot by enemy reinforcements" is plausible and there's no reason to doubt it. A story saying "primarch X survived a lascannon shot to the face" is not plausible so it makes more sense to dismiss it as part of the heroic legend of the primarchs, not a real event.

There's evidence that they're basically Warp constructs. As I recall when Ferrus Manus was beheaded there was an explosion of Warp energy. They're not just flesh and blood (and besides, most of the background about them being hit by weaponry has them surviving what would kill or cripple a Space Marine. Artificer armour isn't that good.).

IOW, "it's magic".

It does not fall to you to determine how other readers are or are not allowed to interpret fiction. The very definition of fiction could be summarized as "not real", which means that "Real" logic need not apply.

In reality, occam's razor is a valid (if not a little trite) way of determining if something is plausible or not. In 40k, Occam's razor is perhaps the most foolish way of thinking I can imagine.

Our world does not contain the bulk of the elements found in this fiction (magic, daemons, alien hordes, sci-fantasy lasers, etc). Following that line of logic, we can't dismiss a Primarch being killed by a lascanon just because that same weapon would have killed a guardsman. There is nothing to say that the Primarchs could not just will the attack to redirect, or nullify it's effect with a psychic barrier or some other perfectly viable defense that logically exists in that universe.

During the siege of Terra at the steps of the Imperial Palace, the mightiest Bloodthirster of Khorne bellowed out insults to the defending Space Marines and smashed Sanguinius to the ground. Sanguinius proceeded to leap into the sky, hoist the titanic creature over his knee like a ragdoll and snap him in two, throwing his corpse back the legions of chaos! How is that even remotely typical of a guardsman? how can that kind of act be called "normal"... It can't!

Plot armor only applies in a situation where the character it protects would otherwise have died. If I, a normal man, were shot by a bullet, the only defense would be plot armor... I would have to survive because I poses no other means of living through a bullet to my cranium. Primarchs are not vulnerable to that, and thusly, need no plot armor to shrug off a bullet, or in this case, a lascanon


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
IOW, "it's magic".

Primarchs were\are not just a bit better than Space Marines.

Actually no.

As I recall, the Emperor is the Primarchs what a Primarch is the Space Marines. It's tough to gauge the scale but it's hard to reason it being a "small step" from SM to Primarch when if that same step from Primarch to Emperor suddenly means so much more.

Space Marines are not typically able to revive the dead by psychic might. Or (from a completely broken body) summon the strength of will enough to completely erase a person from existence (and in so doing manage to scare the piss out of all four chaos gods at once).

En Excelsis wrote:
During the siege of Terra at the steps of the Imperial Palace, the mightiest Bloodthirster of Khorne bellowed out insults to the defending Space Marines and smashed Sanguinius to the ground. Sanguinius proceeded to leap into the sky, hoist the titanic creature over his knee like a ragdoll and snap him in two, throwing his corpse back the legions of chaos! How is that even remotely typical of a guardsman? how can that kind of act be called "normal"... It can't!

And this is exactly what the author is talking about: 40k fiction is full of wild exaggeration and in-universe propaganda. The novels are an attempt to present the heroic tales of legendary figures as a person in the 40k universe would hear them, not an objective account of purely factual events. Rather than attempt to explain things like this the simplest answer is just that, if it happened at all, the real event was much less impressive.

that would make an amazing epitaph. "Here lies the God Emperor of Mankind, ruler of the holy Terran Empire. Greatest living psychic, warrior, orator and just general badass wizard. Choked by Grotznutz, a disgruntled Ork latrine digger, for sandwich theft most dire"

oh and isn't most of the fluff about the history of the imperium supposed to sound like the bible, like wild as stuff that's been exaggerated over time (i fully accept i may be asked to leave the forum for suggesting this, no offence intended )

So do you actually have any evidence that the primarchs were made out of some kind of advanced heavy-metal super-muscle rather than being the flesh and blood creatures they're portrayed as?

A lot more of it than you have evidence that their flesh is soft and vulnerable.

Crashing through the crust of a planet, crawling out of a volcano as an infant, surviving on Caliban, where the local wildlife frequently brought down multiple men in power armout single handedly for over a decade as just a child, taking thunder hammer blows to the skull, being shot with anti tank weaponry, being shot with macro cannons, physically dominating a blood thirster, ect, ect.

Primarchs were made of very tough stuff.

The fact that some magic is specifically called "magic" in-universe and other magic isn't has nothing to do with whether it's magic or not. What you're doing is the equivalent of taking a priest's statement as absolute truth when he says that casting "remove demonic possession" is a divine miracle while casting "make her fall in love with me" is satanic magic. And that's just pointless nitpicking over terms, functionally they're both magic.

Everything you just said is ridiculous, and largely irrelevant.

Superman is not magic, he's a super durable alien. Period.

I thought we just said that power weapons were the best way of destroying a tank?

Not only is that not what I said, you're strawmanning.

ScreamPaste wrote:Crashing through the crust of a planet, crawling out of a volcano as an infant, surviving on Caliban, where the local wildlife frequently brought down multiple men in power armout single handedly for over a decade as just a child, taking thunder hammer blows to the skull, being shot with anti tank weaponry, being shot with macro cannons, physically dominating a blood thirster, ect, ect.

Don't forget that they can also pick up entire mountains with one arm, and then carry them across oceans to set them down on another continent again. Because that's totally what the old texts say, and they are never wrong!

[edit] Actually, this reinforces the idea that the Primarchs must truly have been 20 feet high too. After all, you'd need a fairly big hand for a mountain. /philosoraptor

 Peregrine wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:
During the siege of Terra at the steps of the Imperial Palace, the mightiest Bloodthirster of Khorne bellowed out insults to the defending Space Marines and smashed Sanguinius to the ground. Sanguinius proceeded to leap into the sky, hoist the titanic creature over his knee like a ragdoll and snap him in two, throwing his corpse back the legions of chaos! How is that even remotely typical of a guardsman? how can that kind of act be called "normal"... It can't!

And this is exactly what the author is talking about: 40k fiction is full of wild exaggeration and in-universe propaganda. The novels are an attempt to present the heroic tales of legendary figures as a person in the 40k universe would hear them, not an objective account of purely factual events. Rather than attempt to explain things like this the simplest answer is just that, if it happened at all, the real event was much less impressive.

it is just as fallible that we should just write it of on the pretense that it was written with some sort of bias. Everything is.

I won't get too esoteric here but that's why religion in our world still even exists. The contents of the Christian Bible are no more or less factually validated than any other piece of human history. If those events could be genuinely disproven than religion as we know it would not exist. Since no man alive today was present 2000 years ago than the only means we have of understanding history at all is the written or verbal record of it. What you choose to believe is based on choice not the availability of factual evidence. It's the continuation of knowledge that my father taught me what his father taught him. No one alive today can validate anything that my grandfather's father was taught.

If you look at everything from the perspective that it is incorrect (or just greatly exaggerated) based solely on the grounds that time has passed between the event and the telling of it, than you can discount the entire sum of human knowledge. Or in this case, the entire fictional background of WH40k.

By your logic the Horus Heresy wasn't really a civil war, and Horus never really dueled the Emperor, it was all just an arm wrestling competition. How many other parts of the game's history are "just exaggerated"?

En Excelsis wrote:
If you look at everything from the perspective that it is incorrect (or just greatly exaggerated) based solely on the grounds that time has passed between the event and the telling of it, than you can discount the entire sum of human knowledge.

Sigh.

This isn't about supposed age of the knowledge, it's about the fact that we have a statement from a BL author saying "we exaggerate and portray heroic adventures that didn't actually happen in the 'real' world in 40k". Therefore when we see events that go way beyond what makes any sense the obvious explanation is that it is one of those admitted cases where we're looking at in-universe heroic exaggeration.

 Peregrine wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:
If you look at everything from the perspective that it is incorrect (or just greatly exaggerated) based solely on the grounds that time has passed between the event and the telling of it, than you can discount the entire sum of human knowledge.

Sigh.

This isn't about supposed age of the knowledge, it's about the fact that we have a statement from a BL author saying "we exaggerate and portray heroic adventures that didn't actually happen in the 'real' world in 40k". Therefore when we see events that go way beyond what makes any sense the obvious explanation is that it is one of those admitted cases where we're looking at in-universe heroic exaggeration.

Sounds like the easiest way to just discount whatever conflicts with your point of view.

En Excelsis wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:
If you look at everything from the perspective that it is incorrect (or just greatly exaggerated) based solely on the grounds that time has passed between the event and the telling of it, than you can discount the entire sum of human knowledge.

Sigh.

This isn't about supposed age of the knowledge, it's about the fact that we have a statement from a BL author saying "we exaggerate and portray heroic adventures that didn't actually happen in the 'real' world in 40k". Therefore when we see events that go way beyond what makes any sense the obvious explanation is that it is one of those admitted cases where we're looking at in-universe heroic exaggeration.

Sounds like the easiest way to just discount whatever conflicts with your point of view.

Actually I think what you just did was easier.

En Excelsis wrote:
Sounds like the easiest way to just discount whatever conflicts with your point of view.

Yeah, I'm clearly just trying to dismiss something I don't like when I believe an author who says "we exaggerate and lie about the 'real' events to make a heroic story, don't take this literally".

 Peregrine wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:
Sounds like the easiest way to just discount whatever conflicts with your point of view.

Yeah, I'm clearly just trying to dismiss something I don't like when I believe an author who says "we exaggerate and lie about the 'real' events to make a heroic story, don't take this literally".

So than why argue about the contents of the story at all? Would not be equally logical to just dismiss everything in this same way? Where does that line get drawn?

 Peregrine wrote:
And this is exactly what the author is talking about: 40k fiction is full of wild exaggeration and in-universe propaganda. The novels are an attempt to present the heroic tales of legendary figures as a person in the 40k universe would hear them, not an objective account of purely factual events. Rather than attempt to explain things like this the simplest answer is just that, if it happened at all, the real event was much less impressive.

By that reasoning daemons aren't real either. In fact most of the stuff in 40k is too fantastical to exist in our universe. Why pick and choose?

Furthermore it is part of the narrative that the Emperor is a supreme being with immense psychic power, and dark knowledge of sciences far beyond anything we have now. And the primarchs were his masterpiece. He created them to be super weapons, that would enable him to conquer the galaxy. You can't say what kind of physics was involved in their construction. Even to people in the 40k universe it is a mystery. No one else has been able to reproduce his work. and Fabius Bile has spent the last 10,000 years trying. That alone speaks of how unique and extraordinary it was.

Your explanation isn't the simplest, because it not only fails to explain but contradict huge parts of the narrative.

1: If the Primarchs are much less impressive, then why did the Emperor create them in the first place?
Your theory fails to explain this. The Emperor wanted super weapons. If all he was going to get was mediocre weapons, why would he bother?

2: Why were the Chaos gods so scared of them that they united to destroy them?
Again if they are unimpressive, why would the gods care? Let alone put aside their differences and team up.

3: If the Emperor is less impressive, how come all 4 Chaos gods combined are still too weak to destroy his creation.
They wanted them dead, but had to settle for scattering. This suggests that the Emperor is indeed very powerful.

4: Why did the Emperor put so much energy into finding them?
If the were unimpressive, why bother? or why not make them again? Or try something else?

5: How come they conquered that galaxy?
They did which would indicate they were capable of doing so. The fact that the Human empire still exists is testament to this.

A correct theory should explain the fantastical feats mentioned in the fluff, and answer all of the above. Yours does not.

 Crimson wrote:
How can a power sword decapitate a being that is can shrug off lascannon shots?

Well, probably the best answer I can think of is that M'Shen, as a Callidus Assassin, doesn't wield a fething power sword. She wields a C'tan Phase Blade, also known as the weapon of a friggin' star god, which are defined by their ability to cut through [/I]any[/I] material within the setting, regardless of their durability.

Consider this a checkmate.

How can such being challenged by a mere chaos marine?

"Although the Primarch possessed immense
power, the two opponents were equally matched, for Luther's
abilities were enhanced by vast forces gifted to him by the
Dark Gods. What followed was a fight of titanic proportions.
As tl1e two adversaries traded blows, shock waves shook tl1e
monastery, causing chunks of masonry to crash down around
them."
- Dark Angels codex, page 9

Luther was explicitly gifted with power rivaling Jonson's by the Dark Gods. This is true of exactly no other Chaos Champion, you can speculate all you want, but that is all it will ever be.

If that still does not convince you:

"Upon hearing that sound, the Chaos Gods realised
that, once more, they had been denied. They howled in
frustration, and across the galaxy psykers fell to their knees.
So powerful was the cry that a rent appeared in the fabric of
space and a Warp storm emerged to engulf what remained
of Cali ban. Those 'Fallen' Dark Angels who had served
under Luther were sucked from the broken surface into
the Warp and cast throughout time and space. The remains
of Cali ban, weakened by the bombardment, were ripped
asunder, destroyed in a last apocalyptic explosion."
- Also page 9

Strange, I don't recall this ever occurring during Abaddon's failed Black Crusades... Clearly they had a lot to gain through Luther.

Fasten your seatbelts boys and girls, I'm about to destroy this thread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Yes. This is simple physics here, heavy weapons that turn tanks into smoking wrecks do even worse things to meat. The only way to have a primarch survive that kind of fire is if their bones/internal organs/etc are all made out of tank armor. And since we see primarchs that look like giant humans with normal human flesh/blood/etc it just isn't possible. Nitpick all you want about whether it would take an RPG or something heavier, but a battlefield is full of things that will do the job. And if all else fails there's always nukes/orbital bombardment/etc.

This argument hinges on the hilarious notion that 40k is at all grounded in reality. It isn't. Not when you have normal human men snapping the necks of Tyranid Warriors, or guys like Yarrick who can take a headbutt from an Ork the size of a dreadnought.

And as ScreamPaste has repeatedly pointed out, no, metal>meat is not in fact a scientifically grounded argument, and is entirely irrelevant anyway, considering the Primarchs were created partially from the Warp. Aka, they're made of magic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sparks_Havelock wrote:
Actually it is a case of differing interpretations. I've not read, nor do I wish to read, the BL Horus Heresy books and I've no wish to delve into 30k. For me the Horus Heresy is a collection of myths, legends, extorted tales of deeds, heroism, darkness, woe, sacrifice, suffering and ultimately 'victory' for the Imperium & the God-Emperor. For me the Horus Heresy is shrouded in mystery, the tales of it bloated and exaggerated, the few names remembered, where they are remembered, are used to frighten children into obedience. The Primarch's, where people know of them, are seen as demi-Gods, the disciples of the great and holy God-Emperor, unmatched in battle, incredible leaders of humanity, strong and powerful individuals - and whilst they were powerful compared to humans/Astartes, the tales of their prowess are exaggerated for religious propaganda, when in reality they were incredibly powerful compared to a human or Astartes but not on par with Greater Daemons.

The Primarchs have never been portrayed as less than Greater Daemons.

"Might rivaling the Primarchs" was 1e's official description of Bloodthirsters.

You can ignore the fluff if you want for your personal canon, but your "interpretation" has no foundation on a fluff discussion forum.

If you refuse to discuss what the fluff actually states, why do you comment on it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vir6 wrote:
Sorry but the idea of it all is just as stupid as superman getting shot in the eye in that terrible movie, I can buy a primarch never getting shot in the face or getting hit with what ever the feth because of his "experience" but I cant buy that if it happened they just shrug bullets and rockets to the face off, its to much for me even for scifi and even for poorly written scifi.

This isn't really related to the topic, but deserves commentary: There seems to be a point of view that simply because a work of fiction contains a high level of power, it must be "stupid", or "juvenile".

This is a very shallow viewpoint, just as shallow as people who only read fiction for LOLMICHAELBAY11!111!EXPLOSIONS!!!OVER9000!!!1111!! feats of raw power, since it refuses to look deeper than the surface of a work.

Kingdom Come is a great work of fiction, one that is testament to the whole medium it is a part of. It also contains Superman taking a nuclear missile to the face and surviving. All Star Superman is also great, and has Superman punching a planet into another dimension (There might be some context here...).

I guess what I am saying is: Please keep petty biases from eroding your objectivity, please.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
This argument hinges on the hilarious notion that 40k is at all grounded in reality. It isn't. Not when you have normal human men snapping the necks of Tyranid Warriors, or guys like Yarrick who can take a headbutt from an Ork the size of a dreadnought.

Fine. Nothing in 40k is realistic, therefore any argument is as valid as any other. Marbo kills the emperor and all of the primarchs with a laspistol shot. /thread

Well Void_Dragon certainly cleared up this threat good. Merciless as ever

 Lynata wrote:
But that's what the background suggests - by omitting anything special about it.

The background doesn't suggest anything, because it says almost nothing on it. That's just what you want it to be.

Surely you have read about the circumstances of Dorn's last fight, and that the Chaos vessel "Sword of Sacrilege" was just one of many in a fleet which the Imperial Fists tried to board in a series of hit&run actions to give their outnumbered strike cruisers a chance?

One of many Battleship class starships? Man, this must have been some Black Crusade...

It may also be of note that the second wave of Dorn's Marines were able to successfully capture that ship, which is how they were able to recover his remains after all - so if there really were "a hundred lascannons" installed on that small bridge as you suggest, apparently they've all been removed in the short time it took the remaining Imperial Fists to arrive.

Clearly Dorn destroyed the vast majority of them.

Regardless, this is a piece of non-evidence. You have no context, no actual examples to disprove the other fluff examples of the formidability of a Primarch. Only a vague passage where a Primarch happened to die. Most of the Loyalist Primarchs tend to have their disappearance not described very thoroughly, likely to create a sense of mystery towards what happened, and in some cases what they could be doing now.

Oh, and the very article you clutch to, in descriptions of the Iron Cage, describes Dorn as a "colossus who personally turned back attack after attack".

You are still taking all that word for word?
We already had this debate before: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/499171.page#5154127

Provide contradictory showings of Primarchs.

I still think you're taking that stuff way too literal - just like in that other thread where you tried to defend the realism behind a Space Marine literally taking a millionth of a second to stab another guy because that's what it said in the novel.

Well you see Lynata, unlike you, I don't like at 40k and see a "realistic" setting. When I want my gritty realism, I'll watch Gran Torino or There Will Be Blood, I won't read 40k.

And to answer your question in that thread that I forgot to respond to, yes, I know how fast someone would be to swing a sword in a millionth of a second. Mach 3,000, for a lower end figure.

Though you recall the thread wrong, I did that in response to Spartan supporters wanting to make this a book-based feat war, and demonstrated in such a debate the Marine is not chanceless.

Honestly, if you absolutely want to delve into such a "hyper-emphasised" version of the setting, knock yourself out - as mentioned, neither of us can be wrong here. I still think it's a bit silly, but that is of course merely a matter of personal preferences.

In that instance Dan Abnett really wanted to hammer home the "millisecond" thing. He did the same in his useo of nanosecond.

I'll leave that to the people who actually read it - but I do know that the HH novels apparently cannot even decide on a Primarch's hair colour.

Ah, Sanguinius. Yes, that is an example of a contradiction (Or of a Primarch dyeing his hair because he's kind of a prima donna, I'd believe both), but it is a very minor one, and I still have yet to hear a major contradiction towards the prowess of Primarchs.

This is 40k - we have no "canon" here. We cannot just pretend because then we'd spend half our time debating which of the many conflicting accounts and contradictory books we should go by.

Yes, it really sucks for discussions about the background, but them's the breaks. For what it's worth, most of the time we still manage to find some sort of common ground, although that depends greatly on what level of detail we'd be talking to.
It's why I tend to phrase most of my posts regarding the fluff more like suggestions ("well in GW's books it says that [...]") or questions ("don't you think that [...]") rather than attempting to state facts. Not always, but it is something I try to keep in mind.

That's true, 40k explicitly has a very loose definition of canon.

But provide those conflicting accounts of Primarch formidability please?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Fine. Nothing in 40k is realistic, therefore any argument is as valid as any other. Marbo kills the emperor and all of the primarchs with a laspistol shot. /thread

Your strawman has no power over a being of my standing.

There is no fluff to really justify a claim that Marbo can kill the Emperor and the Primarchs with a laspistol, whereas there is a lot of fluff pointing to the Primarchs being walking demigods, much like Greater Daemons are.

It's almost as if a superhuman being who can hold back the flow of Chaos and happens to be worshipped as a deity by a signifigant portion of the setting created them from his own body... Oh wait...

 Void__Dragon wrote:
There is no fluff to really justify a claim that Marbo can kill the Emperor and the Primarchs with a laspistol, whereas there is a lot of fluff pointing to the Primarchs being walking demigods, much like Greater Daemons are.

Your argument based on realism has no place in 40k. Marbo could effortlessly kill all 20 primarchs with one pistol shot.

It's almost as if a superhuman being who can hold back the flow of Chaos and happens to be worshipped as a deity by a signifigant portion of the setting created them from his own body... Oh wait...

Yeah. Marbo created the primarchs, Marbo can kill the primarchs.

Selym wrote:
Actually, I think the reason why primarchs seem so powerful is in a large part due to their martial skill. Any man could kill 10 others in a pub brawl if he is skilled enough, and the same concept applies to the primarchs. What a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that the Primarchs weren't gods at all, they could be blown apart fairly easily with the right weapons. But they wore artificer armour (making them tougher than a tank), they had the martial skill to best a hundred men in CC, not simply infinite strength.
Thier power in the HH series is a mix of being slightly genetically superior to a normal SM, skilled enough in combat to fight things successfully, tactical geniuses to avoid being shot at by orbital bombardment, and having the best tech ever made by mankind.

They are not superman. They are not indestructible. They are only slightly magical (only if the're psykers). They, and presumably the emperor, as he made them out of his own DNA, could be given a run for their money by a warboss who's bigger and stronger than they are.

The Primarchs were indeed incredibly skilled and intelligent warriors, capable of processing information at speeds no human mind could rival, and all, even Lorgar, were supremely skilled warriors.

But the fluff still dictates they are not "slightly" genetically superior to Marines. Konrad Curze, in The Dark King, by Graham McNeill (Who only sort of, you know, has actually written codices for GW, not that that matters), actually karate chops a Space Marine's head off, and punches his fist into the chest of another, before ripping his spine out. He dismembers a room full of Marines in Terminator Armour (His jailers) with his bare hands. Which he in fact did in the Index Astartes fluff as well, his cell was found with the guards butchered and dismembered. No, it does not explicitly state that he did so unarmed, but let's think about this rationally: Konrad Curze has just nearly beaten killed Rogal Dorn, a fellow Primarch, and he needed to be detained. Why would you lock him up with his weaponry?

No one believes Primarchs are invincible, at least no one I've seen in this thread.

But numerous fluff examples dictate that they are Greater Daemon tier, at the very least.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
There is no fluff to really justify a claim that Marbo can kill the Emperor and the Primarchs with a laspistol, whereas there is a lot of fluff pointing to the Primarchs being walking demigods, much like Greater Daemons are.

Your argument based on realism has no place in 40k. Marbo could effortlessly kill all 20 primarchs with one pistol shot.

It's almost as if a superhuman being who can hold back the flow of Chaos and happens to be worshipped as a deity by a signifigant portion of the setting created them from his own body... Oh wait...

Yeah. Marbo created the primarchs, Marbo can kill the primarchs.

My argument is not based on realism, only what the fluff actually states.

Do you need some wine with those sour grapes?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
I would like to point out that a lot of this is RUMOR, even if it is in a horus heresy novel. Like the main rulebook says, it could be true or it could be myth. No one knows and the guys from the chaos side of things can't be trusted to tell the truth.

On another point, didn't Mortarion take that anti-tank weaponry to the face AFTER he became a Daemon Prince? Because that surely makes a difference.

No actually, he tanked it during the battle of Istvaan III, where he was still very much "just" a Primarch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:
What certainly happened that Sanguinius defeated a mighty Khornate Daemon. He may have even snapped it's back. This does not mean that he was stronger than a Bloodthirster, merely that he was really skilled and possibly quite lucky.

The biggest and strongest Bloodthirsters hover around the size of a Warhound Titan.

To have actually lifted such a creature up over his head and snapped its back would require tremendous physical strength beyond any Marine that isn't named Draigo.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:
This doesn't matter. We've been over this. It can still be a myth.

Things you posted seem ludicrous to me, but in any case the Primarch powerlevel seems to vary so wildly that it stops making sense if we try to take it all to be literally true. Either they can shrug off thunder hammer and lascannon hits to the unarmoured face or they can be decapitated by power swords and challenged by normal chaos marines. Both of these just cannot be true at the same time.

It doesn't vary by much.

I have gone out of my way not to include many Horus Heresy feats (There was this time Magnus the Red fought a couple Titans...), and you should appreciate the kindness I have dealt your side of the argument.

But even restricted to non-BL, the fluff is still very consistent on the Primarchs as Greater Daemon+ beings.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
My argument is not based on realism, only what the fluff actually states.

Of course it's based on realism. Your argument is based on the premise that a laspistol will behave in a realistic manner and not suddenly get billions of times its usual firepower just because Marbo holds it. If you want to declare that realism has no place in 40k then you can no longer object to Marbo killing all of the primarchs.

Fortunately there's an easy way out, you just accept that realism belongs in 40k. Too bad you'll also then have to accept that the most likely explanation for the ridiculous primarch feats is the exaggeration the BL authors admit they do.