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So with Vulkan now becoming a perpetual, don't say other wise the guy was beheaded and stuff, it makes me think why else did the Emperor not bother to engineer the rest of the Primarchs to be perpetuals?

what makes Vulkan so special and so needed that he alone becomes a perpetual? When creating his sons, each was specific in a certain area, I.E Magnus his physic son and Angron his butcher/murder. Surely Sanguinius would be better as to become the new ruler when the Emp. stood down?

The only reason as to why this happen was because he didn't mean too, but as he genetically engineered the the Primarchs on a molecular scale, surely it couldn't have been an accident, right?

Each Primarch was one aspect of the Emperor embodied in a single person.

Vulkan got his immortality.

Well, I guess they came up with that because it would fit the chapter name. Salamanders. Salamanders can regrow limbs, y'know.

Do we know for sure that he was intentionally created as a perpetual? That could be another explanation. Tech and science in 40k is a difficult thing at best and when you're talking about engineering demigods, even the emperor can't be perfect all the time

We have no idea, because this is the first time in all of 40K that Vulkan has been presented as a Perpetual. Such immortals have been background fluff in various editions, but never a Primarch.

They never have been a big thing in the fluff before. We simply do not know much about them.

Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

Yeah If Vulkan got his immortality, surely the guys on terra must know this, and should therefore take a heavy flamer to the emperors still living remains, because he will get back up just as awesome as ever when he actually does die!

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

Agree.

Only one thing though: I wouldn´t blame all the fault on Abnett. I think they all joined and do some brainstorming to see what to do next after The First Heretic / Prospero Burns and A Thousand Sons. I read it somewhere, perhaps in ADB´s blog.

They didn´t want to move the story forward because "the people want to know more stuff" and they didn´t want to do "origin of Primarch X" style books because "the people dislike them" (I guess they were thinking on the Dark Angels books, because all "origin" books -Fulgrim, TFH, ATS, even Legion- had been a massive success). So they decided to explore the setting in "new and exciting ways". I am rephrasing it but it is more or less what I think I read.

Thus the "Angel Exterminatus" subplot, the "Shadow Crusade" subplot, the "Second Empire" subplot and the "Perpetuals" subplot, all of them brand new to the background. "Signum Prime" and the "Battle on Calth" were the two other, "canonical", subplots involved, and Signum Prime was completely revised, since the original story had the Space Marines getting defeated. No way the nowadays fans will tolerate that. There was also a willingness to give the fans what they "wanted", like explaining that the Lion was loyal, getting the Dark Angels to do something, lots of senseless "dragon ball z"-style fights between Primarchs, lots of spotlight for the survivors of the Drop Site Massacre suddenly turned into superheroes, hated characters like Erebus getting punished over and over in senseless ways... This sort of stuff. The result was as expected.

They thought themselves able to rewrite the original story, changing it all to make it more accesible to fans.

They failed miserably.

I was surprised to learn that the person who wrote the Collected Visions (Alan Merret) was (and is) supposed to be "the overseer of all intellectual property development" in GW. Either he has stop caring about his own job or he has no choice but allow his work to be defiled and turned into a shameless money-grabber.

 da001 wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

Agree.

Only one thing though: I wouldn´t blame all the fault on Abnett. I think they all joined and do some brainstorming to see what to do next after The First Heretic / Prospero Burns and A Thousand Sons. I read it somewhere, perhaps in ADB´s blog.

They didn´t want to move the story forward because "the people want to know more stuff" and they didn´t want to do "origin of Primarch X" style books because "the people dislike them" (I guess they were thinking on the Dark Angels books, because all "origin" books -Fulgrim, TFH, ATS, even Legion- had been a massive success). So they decided to explore the setting in "new and exciting ways". I am rephrasing it but it is more or less what I think I read.

Thus the "Angel Exterminatus" subplot, the "Shadow Crusade" subplot, the "Second Empire" subplot and the "Perpetuals" subplot, all of them brand new to the background. "Signum Prime" and the "Battle on Calth" were the two other, "canonical", subplots involved, and Signum Prime was completely revised, since the original story had the Space Marines getting defeated. No way the nowadays fans will tolerate that. There was also a willingness to give the fans what they "wanted", like explaining that the Lion was loyal, getting the Dark Angels to do something, lots of senseless "dragon ball z"-style fights between Primarchs, lots of spotlight for the survivors of the Drop Site Massacre suddenly turned into superheroes, hated characters like Erebus getting punished over and over in senseless ways... This sort of stuff. The result was as expected.

They thought themselves able to rewrite the original story, changing it all to make it more accesible to fans.

They failed miserably.

I was surprised to learn that the person who wrote the Collected Visions (Alan Merret) was (and is) supposed to be "the overseer of all intellectual property development" in GW. Either he has stop caring about his own job or he has no choice but allow his work to be defiled and turned into a shameless money-grabber.

Some of the subplots that have been written have been fantastically executed in my eyes, the Angel exterminatus one, purely because it fleshed out Perturabo so much and made him more than the guy who simply liked blowing up walls. The whole Perpetuals was a great idea, but instead it has been more poorly executed than the allies matrix in 40K

The books are progressively getting worse especially the gak written about the Primarchs becoming demon Primarch, Angrons promotion to demonhood was acceptable, purely because I have soft spot, but Fulgrims was just awful. I always thought that when the gates on terra were assaulted, everyone was still in standard primarch mode, just having a few benefits, instead they've made two Primarchs into demon Primarchs and frankly how they actually became them was pretty poor to, Fulgrim even failed in killing Perturabo and still got given demonhood!

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

Perpetuals were good when they were the literal, biological children of the Emperor, and it should have stayed that way. For example, Pius would be made a lot more interesting if he was a biological child of the Emperor, eternal, then sacrificed himself attempting to defend his biological father to explain him referencing ancient battles.

 tomball0706 wrote:

 da001 wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

Agree.

Only one thing though: I wouldn´t blame all the fault on Abnett. I think they all joined and do some brainstorming to see what to do next after The First Heretic / Prospero Burns and A Thousand Sons. I read it somewhere, perhaps in ADB´s blog.

They didn´t want to move the story forward because "the people want to know more stuff" and they didn´t want to do "origin of Primarch X" style books because "the people dislike them" (I guess they were thinking on the Dark Angels books, because all "origin" books -Fulgrim, TFH, ATS, even Legion- had been a massive success). So they decided to explore the setting in "new and exciting ways". I am rephrasing it but it is more or less what I think I read.

Thus the "Angel Exterminatus" subplot, the "Shadow Crusade" subplot, the "Second Empire" subplot and the "Perpetuals" subplot, all of them brand new to the background. "Signum Prime" and the "Battle on Calth" were the two other, "canonical", subplots involved, and Signum Prime was completely revised, since the original story had the Space Marines getting defeated. No way the nowadays fans will tolerate that. There was also a willingness to give the fans what they "wanted", like explaining that the Lion was loyal, getting the Dark Angels to do something, lots of senseless "dragon ball z"-style fights between Primarchs, lots of spotlight for the survivors of the Drop Site Massacre suddenly turned into superheroes, hated characters like Erebus getting punished over and over in senseless ways... This sort of stuff. The result was as expected.

They thought themselves able to rewrite the original story, changing it all to make it more accesible to fans.

They failed miserably.

I was surprised to learn that the person who wrote the Collected Visions (Alan Merret) was (and is) supposed to be "the overseer of all intellectual property development" in GW. Either he has stop caring about his own job or he has no choice but allow his work to be defiled and turned into a shameless money-grabber.

The books are progressively getting worse especially the gak written about the Primarchs becoming demon Primarch, Angrons promotion to demonhood was acceptable, purely because I have soft spot, but Fulgrims was just awful. I always thought that when the gates on terra were assaulted, everyone was still in standard primarch mode, just having a few benefits, instead they've made two Primarchs into demon Primarchs and frankly how they actually became them was pretty poor to, Fulgrim even failed in killing Perturabo and still got given demonhood!

That "gak written about the Primarchs becoming demon Primarchs" is actually the original fluff. They were always in daemon form when they assaulted Terra. Plus this means we get badass models of them from forge world eventually.
On a side note does anybody have any idea if and when the Black library HH series will get to the battle of Terra?

 tomball0706 wrote:

Some of the subplots that have been written have been fantastically executed in my eyes, the Angel exterminatus one, purely because it fleshed out Perturabo so much and made him more than the guy who simply liked blowing up walls. The whole Perpetuals was a great idea, but instead it has been more poorly executed than the allies matrix in 40K

The books are progressively getting worse especially the gak written about the Primarchs becoming demon Primarch, Angrons promotion to demonhood was acceptable, purely because I have soft spot, but Fulgrims was just awful. I always thought that when the gates on terra were assaulted, everyone was still in standard primarch mode, just having a few benefits, instead they've made two Primarchs into demon Primarchs and frankly how they actually became them was pretty poor to, Fulgrim even failed in killing Perturabo and still got given demonhood!

I agree with Perturabo being fleshed out in a rather interesting way. It is more a general feeling of quality going down, but there is some good stuff to be saved.

That book failed partly because the way Fulgrim ascended Daemonhood, but mostly because the Drop Site survivors became stupidly powerful. There is a point when Perturabo sees a bunch of Iron Hands survivors attacking and, after a careful evaluation, reaches the conclusion that they are able to kill both his legion and Fulgrim´s. And the plot involving them! They are detected because one of them starts doing experiments during an infiltration mission. And those characters moved 10000 years into the past and still having more or less the same positions in the army!. Just to name a few inconsistencies. The list is long, and it is still one of the best books recently published.