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Agreed, if he's dead like a zombie anyway I'm sure he keeps his heart on a shelf, in which case Draigo carving "draygo woz ere m41" into it doesn't mean much other than humiliation

Draigo carved Geronitan's name into the heart, not his own.

Pedantic. Lol

It's in the Warp, where conventional physics and rules don't really apply and the thoughts and emotions of men are able to birth gods. For all we know, Draigo's thoughts of "RAARGH HOLY STOMP!!!" overpowered Mortarion's thoughts of "note to self: must brood more".

Daemons have funny rules and have weird vulnerabilities to heroism. Like that Bloodthirster getting it's back broken over Sanguinius's knee.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Index Astartes IV, first page of the Sons of Horus Legion article is the version I have.

Wow, I own IAIV, and didn't even remember that. Now that I look it up, it was such an insignificant blurb no wonder I forgot it.

Some jacked up Warlord was choking out the Emperor and Horus hacked the Ork's arm off. Where exactly were the Custodes if this was an open engagement and this Warlord got close enough to manhandle the Empy? I hope they were taken off payroll if they were alive.

That Ork Warboss was probably nearly the equivalent of an Ork Primarch. THere is no known limit whatsoever to how big an Ork Boss can grow, so for all we know (and IIRC it's stated or implied), maybe Emps and Horus fought a Warboss if ridiculously epic giant proportions never seen.

...too bad they don't let us field such warbosses in Apocalypse.

Anyways, there's a short story for the Black Library coming out called "Mortarion's Heart" which is exactly what you'd think it is. I guess we'll see if it's badly written or if it actually justifies the incident in a believable fashion.

TiamatRoar wrote:

Anyways, there's a short story for the Black Library coming out called "Mortarion's Heart" which is exactly what you'd think it is. I guess we'll see if it's badly written or if it actually justifies the incident in a believable fashion.

So it begins. The final battle over good (fluff) and evil (fluff)!

Okay Draigo managed to best Mortarion in battle. Okay it'd be a stretch but I can follow it. It would have be to a supreme battle of wills and tests of strength for a Grey Knight to even survive long enough to go Toe to Toe with a Demon primarch. Oh it was Draigo AND the other Grey Knight Grand Masters? Okay now the fights getting interesting. Mortarion probably has the Host of Plagues made up of 8 Great Unclean ones and they're in a hall that is just saturated by Nurgle's filth to the point that even a normal space marines enhanced biology would be rendered worthless were they to take their helmet off making it even more of a desperate battle on the part of the Grey Knights. One by one they would have to combine their respective strengths and abilities to beast each of the greater daemons in order to weaken Mortarions power and actually get to it, and then it's only Draigo and 2 or 3 of the other Grand Masters to stand against the Primarch of Death, all of them ready to give their lives to banish the monster from the realm of man...


wait... Draigo carved his name into Mortarion's heart? The hell?! So literally that's all it says, that he managed to carve his name into Mortarion's heart? Really? Um, there's a word I would like Ward to study up on next time he goes to write fluff: Context. As in give us some context of the events. Don't just say "And he did this". It's like saying "At the end of the Crusade the Emperor killed Horus." You're kind of skipping over a little detail known as "THE HORUS HERESY".

 Zweischneid wrote:

We had a simple Ork nearly killing the Emperor in his prime. It took the combined might of both Horus and the Emperor to drive off (not kill, drive off) said Ork.

This is factually incorrect, I am afraid.

There was nothing simple about this dreadnought-sized Ork, and Horus killed it in one stroke after it managed to ambush an injured Emperor.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

We had a simple Ork nearly killing the Emperor in his prime. It took the combined might of both Horus and the Emperor to drive off (not kill, drive off) said Ork.

This is factually incorrect, I am afraid.

There was nothing simple about this dreadnought-sized Ork, and Horus killed it in one stroke after it managed to ambush an injured Emperor.

Got a quote on the dreadnought size? I believe they would've made a mention of it, if the reader was to "imagine" the scene with anything other than a "regular-sized" Ork.

Edited by AgeOfEgos

What's so hard to believe about an Ork - which are pretty savage beings - injuring or killing the Emperor or a Primarch? Do you really need some fixed, un-changing power-hierarchy in 40K? Doesn't that take all the peril and tension out of it?

And Horus didn't kill it either, at least not in the version I have. A quote would be welcome...

There has to be some level of heroism otherwise it's just a bunch of people doing exactly what's expected of them in every scene.

I know this is primarily about consistency within the lore, but that's where the extraordinary exists, when someone does something inconsistent with what's possible.

Science is pretty good at approximating what might happen regarding the human body, but that's because it goes by large amount of data and outliers are usually ignored. If 99.9% of the time a person will die of dehydration then they're not particularly concerned because someone didn't die as it's most likely that death is certain.

Watch "I shouldn't be alive" there are some stories in there that are super-human by any stretch. There's a guy who fall off a sheer cliff, breaks his pelvis along with other bones, has internal bleeding and has no food, water or shelter. Yet he spends two days climbing up that same sheer cliff by dragging himself up the side of it without a rope. Most healthy people would not be able to climb that cliff on any given day, and even pro climbers would shy away without using a rope.

But this guy on the verge of death, with half his body being dead weight, climbs it, falls again, and then re-climbs it! That is a level of force of will that doesn't occur on any normal basis. I don't know what kind of adrenaline his body produced but it's pretty nuts.

Basically, all I'm saying is that in the WH40k universe you have even more variables, implants, psykers, mutated genes, drugs and so on. If all these things spike in response to some heightened reaction from a space marine's body who knows what the result could be? It wouldn't be something reproduce-able. The people in that show aren't super-human everyday, they just didn't die and pushed beyond what the human body should be scientifically capable of.

My assumption is that science, no matter how advanced, is always going to rely on data and ignore fractional outliers. So while it is improbable that any given marine or grey knight could take on a daemon primarch, I'd say we don't truly know the limits of current human ability let alone the limits of fictional super-soldiers.

Also, muffins.

Yeah, I haven't seen anything that says the Ork was dreadnaught sized or that Horus killed it with a single blow. It was choking the life out of the Emp and Horus saved him. I'm sure it was probably a pretty tough Ork, but I don't see any reason it has to be some stupidly oversized god-ork. I actually think the biggersizing on Primarchs in recent fluff is really, really dumb.

I believe that there is a tendency to confuse the plot-driven survivability of key-protagonists (e.g. Primarchs) with some sort of physical invulnerability.

Of course, no Primarch in the 40K lore actually dies to a stray shot from a Bolt Pistol or a lucky axe from an unnamed Ork grunt. To do so would - from a narrative point of view - be rather anti-climatic.

But that doesn't mean that these "heroes" would truly be impervious to these kind of damage. Infact, if we'd assume they were, it would only lessen their victories and achievements on the battlefield, seeing how they'd (most of the time) only triumphed against foes who wouldn't be able to hurt them either way.

The whole thing of Horus saving the Emperor from a "mere ork" is brought into perspective I believe with the fleshing out of the story in the new Forgeworld book Horus Heresy: Betrayal called the " The Gorro Hollowing" on page 81. Here the Orks were are on par (if not more so in some ways) with the Orks on Ullanor where they had such a large bloated empire that their technological prowess and size had risen to far-above average proportions. So much so that they had a readily available amount of yet-unseen versions of unique plasma weaponry created by the dominant tech-caste of Mekboyz and I quote "The Orks of Gorro were huge and augmented with scrap bionics. Some stood taller than dreadnoughts their weaponry burned through power-armour like a candle-flame like parchment."

Also another quote that brings in the context of how the Emperor was taken off guard by one of the Ork leaders which given the context of how huge and destructive the average ork there seemed to be it sure as hell doesn't seem to be just "fanboism" to see that this was no ordinary kind of Warboss/Nob. "It is said at the height of the battle the fury of the Orks split the Emperor from his guards. Alone he slew hundreds of them until a blast from an Ork plasma weapon opened his guard and one of the Ork leaders seized him. The tales say that the creature's strength was so great that as it took hold of the Emperor it buckled his armour. As the creature's grasp closed Horus stormed through the press of battle and cut the Ork's arms from its body in a single blow."

Now Zweischeid I know you are a major supporter for Ward, for whatever reason that may be, but even you can't truly think that his fluff is "good" in the sense that it is coherent and well-written? I mean doesn't even bother providing any real context for his fluff for people to understand various events written in the codices and just saying that it being obscure adds "mysteriousness" and "legendary myth" to it is a poor excuse for bad writing. The fact that so many people are averse to his horrible prose style of hyperbole and lack of subtlety when writing the established fluff of various factions just demonstrates how much you have to compensate for his fanfictiony way of writing by rationalizing what really happened in his stories.

I'm more concerned that he survives in the warp at all.

Let's think about it. There are plenty of weapons in 40k, that open up a tiny portion of the warp, for a split second, and they tend to be strength 10, ap1. This is due to just how deadly the warp is to mortals, even just the briefest touch.

Draigo has been walking about in this. Tanking strength 10 AP1 hit's every second of his existence for hundred's of years.

Eating? Psh, who need's to eat, i'm draigo!
Drinking? Psh.
Breathing? Psh.

He can't have even removed his armor for a bathroom break, so it must be filled to the brim with centuries worth of...well...Eww.

I vehemently hate this character, because he single handedly destroy's the image of the warp as a dangerous place.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Got a quote on the dreadnought size? I believe they would've made a mention of it, if the reader was to "imagine" the scene with anything other than a "regular-sized" Ork.

"As they attacked, the Ork resistance they felt was near overwhelming. The Orks of Gorro were huge and augmented with scrap bionics. Some stood taller than dreadnoughts and their weaponry burned through power armour like a candle burned through parchment.

As the surface assault fought to break through to the deeper levels, the speartips fought toward the center of Gorro. It is said that at the height of the battle the fury of the Orks split the Emperor from his guard. Alone he slew hundreds of them until a blast from an Ork plasma weapon (These Orks are explicitly said to be wielding plasma weaponry beyond what the Imperium could produce) and opened his guard and one of the Ork leaders seized him. The tales state that the creatures' strength was so great that as it took hold of the Emperor it buckled his armour. As the creature's grasp closed Horus stormed through the press of battle and cut the Ork's arms from its body with a single blow."
- Horus Heresy Betrayal, page 81

One of the Ork leaders, whom we can assume would be on the larger end of the size spectrum on this battle (And in a narrative sense, bringing up the Ork dreadnought+ size makes little sense were it not relevant to the story). Oh, and I suppose one could attack the anecdotal nature of this fluff, but then one could do the same with what Index Astartes says, considering the articles are written as in-universe excerpts detailing the histories and tails of the Great Crusade.

All these fan-boy musings in this thread about "super-sized-Orks" for Apoc-setting are pretty pathetic to be honest.

Watch who you insult there son.

What's so hard to believe about an Ork - which are pretty savage beings - injuring or killing the Emperor or a Primarch?

Nothing, really, provided it was a sufficiently large and powerful Ork, which this one might have been, though it ultimately failed to kill the Emperor.

Do you really need some fixed, un-changing power-hierarchy in 40K? Doesn't that take all the peril and tension out of it?

My preference means nothing. What the fluff actually says does.

Are Primarchs omnipotent? No. They are on par with powerful Greater Daemons. This is what the fluff says, and has always said.

Not that I ever said Draigo beating Mortarion in principle is bad, mind you. The way it was written is bad. Ward is a bad writer. He is technically incompetent.

And Horus didn't kill it either, at least not in the version I have. A quote would be welcome...

Well I guess it could be running around without its arms, sure. Abaddon seems to manage.

Nevertheless, the Emperor and Horus certainly did not have to combine their strength to defeat this single Ork Warlord.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Zweischneid wrote:
I believe that there is a tendency to confuse the plot-driven survivability of key-protagonists (e.g. Primarchs) with some sort of physical invulnerability.

Of course, no Primarch in the 40K lore actually dies to a stray shot from a Bolt Pistol or a lucky axe from an unnamed Ork grunt. To do so would - from a narrative point of view - be rather anti-climatic.

But that doesn't mean that these "heroes" would truly be impervious to these kind of damage. Infact, if we'd assume they were, it would only lessen their victories and achievements on the battlefield, seeing how they'd (most of the time) only triumphed against foes who wouldn't be able to hurt them either way.

Well no, what makes these heroes truly impervious to those kinds of damage would be the multitude of instances of bolt rounds being stopped dead on the hide of a Primarch, of surviving starship weaponry, of Titan weaponry, of surviving landing in a volcano or taking blows from greater daemons that can tear tanks in half.

Lol.

That Forge World stuff sounds even more abysmally horrible than their usual drivel.

Haven't read their Horus Heresy book, but that is just beyond pathetic!

And you guys still think Ward is a bad writer... after reading gak like THAT???????????????????????????????????


Holy!!

Better give Ward a Literary Nobel Prize right now if his works have to share the book-shelf with stuff like that.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Lol.

That Forge World stuff sounds even more abysmally horrible than their usual drivel.

Haven't read their Horus Heresy book, but that is just beyond pathetic!

And you guys still think Ward is a bad writer... after reading gak like THAT???????????????????????????????????


Holy!!

Better give Ward a Literary Nobel Prize right now if his works have to share the book-shelf with stuff like that.

Why is it bad?

 Void__Dragon wrote:


Why is it bad?

'Cause Orko-cyber-zillas. Except for 11-year olds I guess.

Why do you think the Draigo stuff bad (or worse, allegedly "inconsistent" after reading just a blatant violation of the time-honoured Index Astartes work)?

 Zweischneid wrote:

'Cause Orko-cyber-zillas. Except for 11-year olds I guess.

Hmmm, Ork-cyber-zillas the size of a dreadnought? This sounds familiar... Oh wait:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1251639_99110103092_ORKGhazghkullmain_873x627.jpg

That's why.

Precedence.

Try to keep immature insults out of this discussion please.

Why do you think the Draigo stuff bad (or worse, allegedly "inconsistent" after reading just a blatant violation of the time-honoured Index Astartes work)?

Draigo's little tiff with Mortarion is badly written because it has no sense of the epic, Homeric struggle that Ward means to convey (40k is essentially one long Greek tragedy). It reads off not as a hero managing to, through valiant effort, skill of arms, and sheer grit defeat an enormously powerful foe, but rather as a superpowered clown bowling through Mortarion's guard, forcing him on his back with biceps practically oozing machismo, and making him his nancy. That is why this particular bit of Draigo's fluff is bed.

On why his other fluff is bad? Other than the disingenuous "Oh but eventually stuff in the Warp repairs itself", he doesn't come off as the Sisyphean hero he is meant to. He smites his foes with contemptuous ease in each appearance he has (Except, ironically, M'kar, whom made him work for it), has feats that far outstrip any character that isn't explicitly a deity-like figure, and is even above the will of the Chaos Gods themselves. All this is only made worse by the fact that he has no character attributes, only ridiculously incredible feats of prowess (I am aware that the same could be said of a few codex characters, but none of them really have stuff to equal Draigo's exploits). He is a non-character, a hollow shell with no personality who just beaterizes faces with his testosterone-spewing fists. He is poorly written.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:


Why is it bad?

'Cause Orko-cyber-zillas. Except for 11-year olds I guess.

Why do you think the Draigo stuff bad (or worse, allegedly "inconsistent" after reading just a blatant violation of the time-honoured Index Astartes work)?

Considering the Mechanicus' own penchant for replacing a buttload of their own organs with cybernetic replacements as well as other "cyber-zillas" as you say it from guys like Iron Hands and otherwise I don't see how it's for 11 year olds when its for Orks yet you don't seem to care when it comes to the Imperium and other race's predilection for technological enhancements.

Plus you know, Orks already do that, as I said.

Ghazghkull is one big Orky bionik monstrosity.

I can remember the second edition Chaos Codex, when I think it was Doombreed was the first Daemon Prince of Khorne. There was the Daemon Prince of Nurgle that was a gigantic toad monster and so on. That was cool, because these guys were one step down from the Chaos Gods themselves.
I'm cool with the Big E being supercharged by sacrificial psykers and the collective worship of countless billions of fanatics to the point where he is becoming a warp entity of significant power.

What is ridiculous to me is the idea that the Primarchs all have to be gigantic in size for some reason, and that they've all got to have stat lines on par with a Daemon Prince. But yeah, okay, they've made the fluff that way, I guess. I still think it's dumb and it really makes me think "Where do they go from here?" it's past gritty far future fantasy into the realms of the ridiculous to me, now.

Not sure why you always get so butthurt about it VD, but it's the way the fluff is these days, I guess.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Plus you know, Orks already do that, as I said.

Ghazghkull is one big Orky bionik monstrosity.

Indeed. It baffles me how he could disregard something that has basically been established Ork-canon for so long on a whim simply because of his dedication to Ward's "uberleet writing skills". He also hasn't explained or shown any counter-arguments as to how Ward actually makes Draigo a believable and well-rounded character as well as proving otherwise that his "great saga" has nothing more to it than a person writing their fantasies out ala fanfiction.net.

Draigo is Slaanesh's boy-toy now anyhow

It's all good

 Da Boss wrote:

Not sure why you always get so butthurt about it VD, but it's the way the fluff is these days, I guess.

What are you talking about?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
What is ridiculous to me is the idea that the Primarchs all have to be gigantic in size for some reason,

They are on average ten feet tall.

That's big, but not incredibly so, IMO.

 Da Boss wrote:
I can remember the second edition Chaos Codex, when I think it was Doombreed was the first Daemon Prince of Khorne. There was the Daemon Prince of Nurgle that was a gigantic toad monster and so on. That was cool, because these guys were one step down from the Chaos Gods themselves.
I'm cool with the Big E being supercharged by sacrificial psykers and the collective worship of countless billions of fanatics to the point where he is becoming a warp entity of significant power.

What is ridiculous to me is the idea that the Primarchs all have to be gigantic in size for some reason, and that they've all got to have stat lines on par with a Daemon Prince. But yeah, okay, they've made the fluff that way, I guess. I still think it's dumb and it really makes me think "Where do they go from here?" it's past gritty far future fantasy into the realms of the ridiculous to me, now.

Not sure why you always get so butthurt about it VD, but it's the way the fluff is these days, I guess.

Well to be fair, there are variation in sizes for the primarchs, particularly Alpharius and Omegon who are small enough to be able to meld in with the rest of the Alpha Legion so that they can't just be spotted due to their height difference. Similarly Angron is supposedly one of the stockier, smaller primarchs. I think the main reason why they're generally so huge is mainly because it emphasizes the golden age of the early fledgling Imperium where demigods like the Primarchs walk amongst mankind openly and incalculably powerful and capable geneticists like the Emperor is able to engender practically an entire sub-species of humanity with his research through the Primarchs and Space Marines. Though I am surprised to see that size out of all things seem to be the ridiculous thing when we have blatant "magic"/sorcery through the warp with daemons and outrageously powerful star vampire C'tan running around so I wouldn't think Primarchs would be too far back out of the realm of possibility in the wacky setting such as this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ascalam wrote:
Draigo is Slaanesh's boy-toy now anyhow

It's all good

It does look like Phil Kelly tried to heavily imply it was Draigo just to do some measure of damage control for fluff after the whole Grey Knight reboot by Ward. Which is why I hope to sweet Mork that Ward doesn't go anywhere near the Ork codex; him getting his grubby mitts on it would lead to classic fluff murder for one of his least favourite factions. Deffskullz would suddenly paint themselves blue because they were awed by the blue power armour of the Ultramarines and the Blood Axe klan will end up learning all their 'umie tactics from a looted copy of the Codex Astartes! *shudders* THE HORROR!

Ghaz is one (!) exceptional Ork Warboss that would fit that description. He's also the goddamn prophet of the WAAAAGH!.

Just because there is one of these, doesn't mean an entire Ork-sub-species of them isn't full-slow.

That's why the Forge World stuff is so outrageously "11-year-old-fanboy-stuff". It's the most childish notion of "Ghaz-is-cool, let's make 1000000 more of him".

It's like saying "I like Mephiston, so I'll just make an entire Chapter full of only Mephistons". But I guess I am just giving the hacks at Forge World ideas now

I don't think it was a case of "Ghaz-is-cool, let's make 1000000 more of him", but rather an attempt to try and describe that situation to more befit the Emperor's status/skills/reputation.

I got the impression that they included that story to elucidate the story of the Emperor being strangled by an Ork: to show that the Emperor is far above near killed by a generic Ork.

 Zweischneid wrote:
"I like Mephiston, so I'll just make an entire Chapter full of only Mephistons". But I guess I am just giving the hacks at Forge World ideas now

An entire chapter of overpowered, power armoured psykers, weilding force swords? Psh, don't be silly.

Now if you will excuse me, gonna go paint up my new grey knights