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I caught you flat-out lying about the Space Wolves and you expect me to believe you're discussing the other Legions in good faith? Better load on some more personal insults to give your posts credibility, I guess.

 Manchu wrote:

 Omegus wrote:
Not surprising for the most obtuse person on the internet (no hyperbole!).

That is some epic hypocrisy right there.

 Omegus wrote:
then you must condemn Leman Russ for pretending it doesn't apply to him

We have the exact wording of the decree. We know for a fact that it did not apply to the Space Wolves. But don't let facts get in the way of your bluster.

I'm calling BS on this unless you can back it up with some sources. The Edict of Nikea specifically disbanded the Librarius departments of the legions, but also forbade them from using psychic powers or training psykers outside of Navigators and Astropaths. Even the primarchs (all the primarchs, not just Magnus) were forbidden from using their psychic powers.

The Space Wolves were not exempt from this but dodged it through a technicality, basically claiming the Rune Priests were sufficiently different because their shamanistic practices isolated them from the warp; i.e. what they did was "natural". This was certainly hypocritical and adds another wrinkle to the TSons/Wolves story. Trying to claim the Wolves were in the right in keeping their Rune Priests isn't just disingenuous, it's doing the story a disservice by ignoring an interesting complexity.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
I'm calling BS on this unless you can back it up with some sources.

 Manchu wrote:

The Emperor wrote:Let it be known that no one shall suffer censure, for this conclave is to serve Unity, not discord. But no more shall the threat of sorcery be allowed to taint the warriors of the Astartes. Henceforth, it is my will that no Legion will maintain a Librarius department. All its warriors and instructors must be returned to the battle companies and never again employ any psychic powers.

A Thousand Sons, p. 355, my emphasis

Again, the letter of the law is that no Legion can have a Libarius department and everyone who was in such a department may no longer use psychic powers.

So RAW, (1) whether a Chapter can have a Librarius depatment is not covered and (2) psykers who were not formerly part of such departments are not covered.

Yeah, that's from Empy's speech in that book, but the Edict was a thing in the fluff before that book was written, and covers more than just the Librarius program. It banned the use of psykers with the legions outside Navigators and Astropaths. Your excerpt doesn't change that. It's pretty disingenuous to base your entire argument on the technicalities of a passage of prose that doesn't specifically replace or even conflict with prior material.

If the decree presented in A Thousand Sons covers less than the decree as presented in previous material then there is a conflict. A Thousand Sons gives us the words as spoken by the Emperor rather than as interpreted by a narrator so I go with that. In the Emperor's own words, Rune Priests are not covered by the decree.

 Manchu wrote:
If the decree presented in A Thousand Sons covers less than the decree as presented in previous material then there is a conflict. A Thousand Sons gives us the words as spoken by the Emperor rather than as interpreted by a narrator so I go with that. In the Emperor's own words, Rune Priests are not covered by the decree.

The only thing that you have porven is that a dishonest hypocrite can use any flimsly escuse to defend his own hypocricy.

The Space wolves where dishonest hypocrites in using rune priests while condemning psykers of other legions no talking around the issue and offering up flimsy excuses will change this.

A hypocrite is the worst kind of scumbag.

You have the text. If you can read English, you know it applies only to warriors formerly assigned to the Libarius departments. You have to misunderstand the text to say it applies to the Rune Priests. And you have to assume that the Emperor is a moron to argue that he didn't know exactly what he was saying and exactly who it applied to.

You're the one assuming that the text of that speech, and that speech alone, defines the Edict of Nikea (you also assume this is the entirety of the Emperor's speech). It doesn't actually cover all the things the Edict supposedly covered according to all previous fluff, and it doesn't refute or replace the previous fluff either. You're ignoring the body of other references to Nikea throughout decades of fluff in favor of one line from this novel, and you're obviously doing it because you want to view the Space Wolves a certain way.

Try reading that passage for what it is: a not-so skilled sci-fi author attempting to write words for a god-like character that's supposed to be intelligent and powerful beyond our comprehension. Not a clear and legally precise summary of the breadth and depth of the outcome of Nikea.


Edit to be clear: past references to Nikea considered it a major benchmark for how humanity dealt with psykers, including the handling of sanctioned psykers like astropaths and navigators, and a general outlawing of sorcery. The majority of it supposedly still stood 10,000 years later and only the ruling about psykers within the space marines was repealed. I suppose if you want to interpret this speech from this novel as the whole of the Edict of Nikea, you can go right ahead, but then you're the one making the Emperor out to be a moron. The narrowness, short-sightedness, and hypocrisy is built right into this fluff interpretation.

It is what it is. Nothing in the text of that novel or its sequel implies the Emperor banned Rune Priests. In fact, the Emperor secretly had Leman Russ on hand at Nikaea.

What we know for a fact is that the Decree at Nikaea disbanded Libarius departments and forbade their members from using psychic powers.

That the decree also banned Rune Priests is something you are making up.

 Manchu wrote:
I caught you flat-out lying about the Space Wolves and you expect me to believe you're discussing the other Legions in good faith? Better load on some more personal insults to give your posts credibility, I guess.

Uh, please point out anywhere where I "flat out lied" about the Space Wolves. You don't need to make things up to make the Wolves look bad. Just like I don't have to resort to "personal insults" to make you look bad. Both the Wolves and yourself are plenty capable of doing that on your own. And they are not insults if they are observations of reality, your viewpoint is routinely warped beyond what is rational and seems to be based on your own fanfiction.

Fear to Tread - Blood Angels librarians use their powers to save their Primarch. They violated the creed, yet Sangunius helps them cover it up. Sanguinius is a traitor.
Brotherhood of the Storm - The Khan didn't care/wasn't even aware of the decree, and the Stormseers keep doing what they are doing. Khan is a traitor.
Age of Darkness short stories - The Lion decides he needs to use psychic powers, so kills a Chaplain that objected. The Lion is a traitor.
Garro audio drama - Dorn locked his psykers up and did not disperse them into fighting ranks as ordered (violation of letter of the law), and justified this as keeping them for a rainy day (violation in intent to use psychic powers later). When he found out the Sigilite was collecting psykers for his own personal little club, Dorn did nothing. Dorn is a traitor.
Unremembered Empire - Guilliman outright repeals the Edict and declares his own Empire. Guilliman is a traitor.* Sanguinius and the Lion back him up, so they are traitors again.

So the only loyalist Primarchs who didn't defy the Emperor's direct orders are Russ (who we've discussed), Corax (who didn't seem to have a Librarius department, but was still saved from Istvaan by psychic visions heeded by one of his captains, and was too busy creating mutants), Vulkan (who was too busy being murdered over and over by Konrad to give a crap), and Ferrus (whose Legion is a bunch of wannabe-robots, and who was too busy being dead).


*I'm sure you actually think Guilliman IS a traitor, despite the book taking great pains to establish context that shows his "rebellion" to be anything but (you know, like the story of Magnus tried to establish that his actions, while terrible tragedies/mistakes grounded in hubris, were well-meaning and not based on treachery or treason...). In fact, I vaguely recollect you arguing as much. But that's just another example of you clinging to the most literal and banal interpretation possible.

 Omegus wrote:
your viewpoint is routinely warped beyond what is rational and seems to be based on your own fanfiction

I guess A Thousand Sons in my own fanfiction then.

 Omegus wrote:
Uh, please point out anywhere where I "flat out lied" about the Space Wolves.

Gladly:

 Omegus wrote:
then you must condemn Leman Russ for pretending it doesn't apply to him

Also, nothing the Sigilite does is covered by the Edict which is explicitly limited to Space Marine Legions. As to the other Primarchs, I agree that they violated the Edict to the extent that they did not disband their Librarius departments and forbid former members from using psychic powers. I can't trust your summary of events for obvious reasons (see above) but at least you know my standard.

That's your definition of "flat out lying"? I'm talking about Russ and his Rune priests denying the source of their powers, and I'll thank you to remember that I was the one to point out that the Emperor specified "Librarius departments" during the first batch of discussions on this topic (edit: actually, IIRC, it may have been Brother Ramses who brought it up probably over two years ago, and I eventually came to agree with that point of view). And I enjoy how you ignore the sources and citations that contradict you, and continue clinging to a technicality. You strike me as the sort of person who has never smoked a joint, and never exceeds the speed limit, not for any health or safety reasons, but purely because "it is the law".

But I'm glad to finally have confirmation that none of your arguments are actually based on having read any of the BL material. I guess you form your hodge-podge opinions from parroting other forum warriors and Lexicanum entries? You do realize you are essentially TFG of the 40K background forum, right?

 Omegus wrote:
That's your definition of "flat out lying"?

Your purposefully mischaracterized the text to suit your argument and filled it out by insulting me, which is all you can do even now.

 Manchu wrote:
It is what it is. Nothing in the text of that novel or its sequel implies the Emperor banned Rune Priests. In fact, the Emperor secretly had Leman Russ on hand at Nikaea.

What we know for a fact is that the Decree at Nikaea disbanded Libarius departments and forbade their members from using psychic powers.

That the decree also banned Rune Priests is something you are making up.

Nothing in that novel says the Emperor banned Rune Priests. But nothing in that novel states that those words are the entirety of the edict, and things outside the novel contradict your interpretation. I'm not making things up at all, I'm calling your interpretation narrow and based on one line from one novel.

Incidentally this is exactly why I disagreed with the whole Horus Heresy series even being written when it was first rumored: you end up with ham-fisted authors introducing all kinds of accidental contradictions, missed plot opportunities, and poorly-written dialogue for demi-gods, and just generally ruining what used to be presented as 10,000 year old history half-shrouded in myth.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
Nothing in that novel says the Emperor banned Rune Priests. But nothing in that novel states that those words are the entirety of the edict, and things outside the novel contradict your interpretation.

Nothing in any source indicated that the Emperor thought Leman Russ was disloyal either before or after Nikaea. The existence of Rune Priests were not a secret before or after Nikaea. It seems to me that the text of the Edict given in A Thousand Sons explains this. And that anyone who claims that the Edict banned the Rune Priests has no evidence to support that claim.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
Incidentally this is exactly why I disagreed with the whole Horus Heresy series even being written when it was first rumored ...

I quite agree with you on that.

 Manchu wrote:

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
Nothing in that novel says the Emperor banned Rune Priests. But nothing in that novel states that those words are the entirety of the edict, and things outside the novel contradict your interpretation.

Nothing in any source indicated that the Emperor thought Leman Russ was disloyal either before or after Nikaea. The existence of Rune Priests were not a secret before or after Nikaea. It seems to me that the text of the Edict given in A Thousand Sons explains this. And that anyone who claims that the Edit banned the Rune Priests has no evidence to support that claim.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
Incidentally this is exactly why I disagreed with the whole Horus Heresy series even being written when it was first rumored ...

I quite agree with you on that.

Well the Emperor didn't exactly get down into the nitty-gritty of the legions very often, so I don't think you would ever find evidence of his displeasure. As other posters have said, many legions ended up violating the Edict at one time or another throughout the books and the Emperor never knew.

Good to know we agree about that last point though. Personally I try to make as much of the fluff jive in my head as I can and I try not to let too much hinge on the technicalities of statements in the novels when they don't seem to make sense with the rest of the material. But that's just me.

And for what it's worth, I think the Wolves are hypocritical but not disloyal. They justify their Rune Priests the same way the White Scars justify retaining their Storm Seers and genuinely don't think they're doing anything wrong by it. The post-Nikea conflict between the Wolves and the Sons over the nature of their psychic practices is much less interesting to me if the Wolves can simply fall back on the Emperor and say "we're allowed to and you're not" without finding themselves in a grey area and having to justify why.

I don't think the Storm Seers are the same as the Rune Priests. I believe it was the Khan and Sanguinius who worked with Magnus to develop the Librarius departments. It stands to reason that the White Scars had such a department and that the Storm Seers were members of it. Even if they weren't, the only way the Storm Seers could get around the Edict is if they were never members of a Librarius department.

As for the Emperor not knowing stuff, I agree that he might not know that some Blood Angels once used psychic powers post-Nikaea. But it's totally implausible that he did not know the SW had Rune Priests, especially given that Russ had repeatedly complained to the Emperor about Magnus. Russ was concerned about what Magnus was doing, not what about psykers generally. This distinction is made in the text of the Edict, where the Emperor speaks only of Librarius departments. We know why he doesn't just single out Magnus; he begins the Edict by appealing to unity.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't think the Storm Seers are the same as the Rune Priests. I believe it was the Khan and Sanguinius who worked with Magnus to develop the Librarius departments. It stands to reason that the White Scars had such a department and that the Storm Seers were members of it. Even if they weren't, the only way the Storm Seers could get around the Edict is if they were never members of a Librarius department.

As for the Emperor not knowing stuff, I agree that he might not know that some Blood Angels once used psychic powers post-Nikaea. But it's totally implausible that he did not know the SW had Rune Priests, especially given that Russ had repeatedly complained to the Emperor about Magnus. Russ was concerned about what Magnus was doing, not what about psykers generally. This distinction is made in the text of the Edict, where the Emperor speaks only of Librarius departments. We know why he doesn't just single out Magnus; he begins the Edict by appealing to unity.

The White Scars had a long psyker tradition as well, IIRC. The Storm Seers were pretty similar to the Rune Priests, except the Scars worked with Magnus and integrated the Seers into a Librarius. After the Edict they disbanded their Librarius but kept using the Storm Seers anyway.

As for the logic behind the edict as presented in the novel, there kind of isn't any, which is why I assume the text of that speech is not the end-all-be-all for Nikea and the old fluff is still valid. I mean, you have a massively psychic being who teaches his psychically crafted demi-god sons pretty much nothing about their own psychic nature or the nature of reality, then does nothing when the legions they lead start manifesting psychic powers and his sons take various steps to control and train said powers. Much later he singles out one son for crossing the line but responds by axing the program intended to train and regulate nascent psykers across all legions, and finishes by telling everyone to pretend like they aren't psychic as though it would all go away, including his own massively powerful psychic demi-god sons. Oh and one legion is exempt from all this because their psykers went by a different name, but another legion with a very similar psychic tradition is supposed to stop using their powers because they accepted a few cross-posted psychic tutors.

So in this version of things he doesn't single out Magnus, he just throws the baby out with the bathwater in order to very obviously punish Magnus, leaving a bunch of completely unregulated psykers running around on best behavior. This now includes the Rune Priests, whose practices might currently be less objectionable but whose confusion over the nature of the warp should still be alarming, and who have just been given carte blanche to do whatever because technically they weren't included in the Edict.

You can read it strictly, but it's pretty piss-poor writing.

Well the Emp did teach Magnus about psychic things, even before they met.

And according to the novel, the Emp did not throw the baby out with the bathwater. He just identified Magnus's approach, the Librarius project, as the issue.

 Manchu wrote:

 Omegus wrote:
That's your definition of "flat out lying"?

Your purposefully mischaracterized the text to suit your argument and filled it out by insulting me, which is all you can do even now.

Actually, that is what you are doing. You are focusing on the specific wording of one statement in one novel, while ignoring the larger context and what is actually transpiring in the story. It is not mis-characterization to say the Wolves believe the psyker stigma doesn't apply to them.

Do you have anything to add to either side of the argument other than crying? You've already made it obvious you haven't read any of the source material we are discussing except that one page in A Thousand Sons. Just FYI, but this sort of response...

You: everyone is wrong and I'm right!
Me: no, that's stupid and this is why.
You: waaah, you called me stupid, waaah

...does not make for a cogent argument.

Back on topic, Stormseers are quite similar to Rune Priests, in the sense that they carry oral traditions and act as guides/advisers for leaders rather than holding leadership positions of their own. As far as psychic discipline, they fall somewhere between the Thousand Sons and Space Wolves as shown in Brotherhood of the Storm. Or rather, they were more like Space Wolves, but were open to the teachings of Magnus' Librarium. In the book, during the ritual to become a Stormseer, a psyker sees four shadowy figures offering him a goblet of knowledge and a golden man urging him to turn it away; the psyker, as a properly raised Chogori, takes a polite sip and sets the goblet down, disappointing both the shadowy figures and the golden man. I would imagine a Thousand Son would chug the goblet, and then try to convince the golden man that he made the right choice. A Space Wolf would kick the goblet over, and then go lick peanut butter off the golden man's golden balls.

Now youve moved on to mischaracterizing my statements.

Lol, and you continue playing victim rather than trying to make a relevant and salient point.

You aren't engaging the text. You are only arguing with a phantom of your imagination.

This is not an argument. This is you hanging yourself and whatever little shred of credibility you thought you had.

A series of slanders doesn't get you anywhere. We have a text that says something very particular. Nothing you have brought up challenges that or its implications regarding the SW.

So either they're Psykers or they're Sorcerers, whether they want to call themselves Shamans, Druids, or the Wolf Riding Wolf-Friends of South Wolverton.

Which are Rune Priests?

The Warp is the source of all magic the 40K setting, whether that be through a Psyker or through a Sorcerer. If the Rune Priests aren't Psykers, then they can only be Sorcerers.

Edict of Nikea notwithstanding, because it obviously gets repealed somewhere along the line, as Librarians are still around 10,000 years later, the Space Wolves are hypocrites. Their Rune Priests are either Psykers, just like those of every other Chapter, including the Thousand Sons, or they are Sorcerers, making them directly analogous to the Sorcerers of the Thousand Sons.

While we will see all sorts of "creative interpretations" of semantics and pedantry throughout the setting, let's not pretend that the Space Wolves remain somehow saintly in their doing of it. Was it for the best in the end? Perhaps. Is it an underhanded tactic and hypocritical in the extreme, to sanction Magnus and his legion for something the Space Wolves themselves do? Absolutely, even if Russ, at the time, was too dim to understand the similarities between the two, because of his Fenrisian upbringing. Given the prestige and history of the Rune Priests, it is possible that Russ simply did not understand that what they did was the same thing that the Thousand Sons did, only with slightly different trappings.

That does not make him less of a hypocrite to the outside observer though.

Nikaea did not ban psykers. It banned Librarius departments and it banned former members of those departments from using psychic powers.

 Manchu wrote:
A series of slanders doesn't get you anywhere. We have a text that says something very particular. Nothing you have brought up challenges that or its implications regarding the SW.

Ah, so random stream of consciousness babble didn't work, so you're back to mischaracterizing the discussion? My point in this entire thread, backed up by about half a dozen books, was to say that if you label Magnus as a traitor for breaking the edict, then most of the loyalist Primarchs deserve the label as much or more. You are the one fixating on a wording technicality, which, as Calgar eloquently spelled out, doesn't make any damn sense if interpreted literally.

If the question is, did Leman Russ violate the Edict of Nikaea then the answer is no. It's simple.

See, this is what I'm talking about with the "creative interpretations" and such. By the same token, the Ecclesiarchy gets away with founding the Sisters of Battle because the Decree Passive prohibits them from keeping "men under arms".

I think the *intent* of Nikea was fairly plain, and I think the discussion of it not including Chapters is disingenious, because the Chapters did not yet exist, and the reason for their creation was an as-yet unforeseen event. *Especially* in the case of the Space Wolves, who were never split into Chapters. They are, by technicality, still a Legion... albeit a very, very small one.

That the Rune Priests did not fall into a group officially called the Librarius is... fairly irrelevant. If the Thousand Sons had never called them that, and instead called them Covens, would that have kept them excluded from the Edict? I don't think so.

It is my personal belief that Guilliman repeals it in the Codex Astartes, probably in a loose page badly scribbled on just shoved into the foreword section after it's obvious that the Emperor isn't getting up any time soon. Otherwise, you'd expect that he would carry on with his father's legacy, and continue the practice of the Edict in the rules he lays down for the Chapters. Alternately, you would expect them to get around the Edict by giving Librarians a different name and only using newly-recruited Psykers to further train and develop their powers, perhaps through the use of the Sisters of Silence, Malcador's people, or other, non-SM psykers... this is obviously not the case, though, as they don't even really change the name of the department, except to translate it into modern English (which they don't speak).