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.
Got done re-reading LotN (Still a good book imo) and was wondering as to where exactly is the First Captain, Zso Sahaal in the HH events? Surely he must be leading his raptors/NL elements somewhere in the First Company, correct?
Actually, he isn't in an HH books, but he is in one of the Night Lords books in a Horus Heresy flashback very briefly. I won't say anymore for fear of spoilers.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/08 02:22:52
"Most mortals will die from this procedure...and so will you!"
Sahaal was created by Simon Spurrier for that book.
If I recall it correctly, Aaron Dembski-Bowden didn´t like the book at all, and he didn´t like Sahaal, so he scratched him off the Heresy. Which is great, actually. If he ever writes something about him, it will be just for mocking the character and it would be ackward.
And since he is in charge of the NL in the Heresy books, Sahaal would probably be nowhere to be seen or reduced to a nobody.
TheCrazyCryptek wrote: Actually, he isn't in an HH books, but he is in one of the Night Lords books in a Horus Heresy flashback very briefly. I won't say anymore for fear of spoilers.
Why don´t you use spoilers then?
Spoiler:
I think Talos has a flashback and he briefly sees Sahaal in Tsagualsa, near curze. Talos despised him, and Sahaal was.... sick? suffering an hallucination? I don´t remember... It was about a couple of sentences.
‘Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. (…) When this campaign is won, you and I will have words’
Rogal Dorn, just before taking the beating of his life.
from The Dark King, by Graham McNeill.
Actually ADB said the opposite. He liked Lord of Night but felt that Sahaal was Spurriers character and wanted to keep his Night Lords seperate. All NL characters aside from Curze, were created for their books.
As for the comments that Sahaal was sick or crazy, ADB also sets up the idea that every single Night Lord has his own view on who is doing the "right" thing as the Legion has no unified goal. Many consider Talos a self righteous fool as he seems to be the only NL that remembers Curze as having an honourable goal. Uzas, Xarl and (several thousand years earlier) Sevatar, all realise that he was broken and inconsistent and that his sense of justice was always a delusion. Almost all of them hate each other, they just stick together because they have no one else.
In the HH Sevatar is captain. I think it was mentioned in Void Stalker that Sahaal was only recently promoted near the end or post heresy. His appointment was controversial (although not because he was Terran, the NL seem to care less about that than other Legions) but because they felt that the role of 1st Captain would always belong to Sevatar.
Most likely he is a captain of minor note at this point. I don't think many Night Lords from 40k will be included in the HH series. Most only became important post heresy. Vandred was only a Sergeant at the seige of terra, Talos only an apothecary, the first of first claw, just line warriors. I think Malcharion should make an appearance at the Seige of terra because he was the hero of the Night Lords, slaying champions from all 3 defending legions before he was critically wounded and placed in a Dreadnought and he was a member of Curze's inner circle.
KorPhaeron77 wrote: Actually ADB said the opposite. He liked Lord of Night but felt that Sahaal was Spurriers character and wanted to keep his Night Lords seperate. All NL characters aside from Curze, were created for their books. (...)
Interesting, didn´t know that.
The answer by ADB I knew was this:
Spoiler:
The whole Sahaal debate stems from the fact that because there was precious little Heresy lore around back when that novel came out, you were allowed to make massive and bold claims without affecting anything else. But now one Night Lord claiming he was the one to invent Raptors sort of rings a little false and silly, given that it was much more likely to be Curze, and so on. And people love the "Heresy-era Marine tells it like it is to the deluded 40K folks" which worked a lot better then, too. It worked with Angels of Darkness ("The Lion was a traitor!") and it worked with Lord of the Night ("The Emperor betrayed us!"). But that stuff is a little hokey now. Times have changed. It's the nature of the best when dealing with licensed fiction. In another ten years, everything we've done now will be hokey.
One of the Circle of Life things.
(...)
There'd still be the vocal minority that complained I'd made Sahaal have any flaws at all. That I'd made him deluded. That I'd made him insane. That I was jealous and wanted to ruin the perfect character. That I was just ragging on another author's work. That I blah blah blah.
It's just ugly, and it's lame. Some of the reviews for Soul Hunter I've seen slate the book almost entirely because it's not about Sahaal, and he doesn't come out of it smelling like roses, like some perfect avatar of What The Legion Should Be. There's no room for nuance. There's no space for compromise or evolution or balance. There's just "WAAAAHHHHHHHH SAHAAL IS THE BEST" and irritating weeping when I don't make him some flawless Wolverine clone who Tells It Like It Is.
And that's the problem. Sahaal, like Talos, was probably wrong. That's the tragic point of LotN's ending, when the rest of the Legion is laughing at him. But rather than see it as a cool tragedy, some fans take it that everyone was lying, and Sahaal was really correct. Again, that doesn't work these days. We're seeing the Heresy ourselves. We'll see it in the novel series. We'll see for ourselves whether that attitudes was right or not, and an Unreliable Narrator isn't a necessary voice for a narrative.
So I'd rather not touch him anymore. Let him recede into legend. He can be perfect there, just as the vocal minority want him. I have loads of other things to be focusing on, anyway. Things I find way more interesting.
Some people (including myself, I must admit) concluded that it was some kind of dislike of the character/author. I mean, this can apply to all characters in the series. Imagine what would have happened if Dan Abnett or Graham McNeill had scratched off Arhiman, Mortarion or Abaddon. Rewriting star wars without Darth Vader because "no matter what you do some vocal minority will always claim you did it wrong" sounds odd. And Sahaal was deluded/insane already in Lord of the Night, everything he said or remembered is unreliable. Same with Astelan in "Angels of Darkness".
Hope he eventually integrates both new and old background.
‘Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. (…) When this campaign is won, you and I will have words’
Rogal Dorn, just before taking the beating of his life.
from The Dark King, by Graham McNeill.
I understand where you are coming from. I think the key thing is that ADB gave his own Night Lords the same treatement; In Soul Hunter we (or at least I) get a glimpse of Talos; the last noble thinker in a legion of scum. Cyrion, a cheery (for a Night Lord) warrior who is likeable because he is the comedian of the group. Xarl, the cold measured Psychopath, who is loyal to the bone with zero illusions of grandeur. Mercutian, the quiet new guy, and Uzas... the nutcase, the monster, the fool. Yet by the end of Void Stalker, we realise that virtually no one shared Talos's beliefs, he does some pretty monstrous things by this point too, shattering some of that "nobility" I thought he had. Cyrion was a depraved coward, the worst of all of them, Xarl was right to hate him all along. Uzas, just as loyal to Talos as anyone, but hopelessly lost, isolated and hated by his only brothers, I bloody loved Uzas. Only Mercutian and Xarl proved to be the men they said they were. Xarl was the one with the most realistic view of the legion by the end.
I think also, whereas Ahriman or Typhus are woven into the fabric of 40k, Sahaal was an esoteric bit of lore from an old novel. It must be so confining, writing 30k, knowing that you have to include characters and trying to think of reasons to keep them around. With Sevatar, ADB has a character he can kill off at anytime, perform acts of heroism or infamy, or be as vague as he likes about his ultimate fate. With Sahaal anything ADB could have done would have been "wrong" to someone. It's hard to write a character that has to end up vilified by his legion but also remain in the most respected position right through until 40k. If it weren't for his inclusion in 40k I think Kor Phaeron should have been killed off by now, as the only way to keep him around at the moment was a the bumbling villian who reveals his plan and his thwarted at the last second, over and over.
The great thing will the NL trilogy was that anyone could die and we weren't tied to these Codex Special characters who have plot armour that can't ever be beaten. Leaving Sahaal's fate a mystery stayed true to Lord of Night whilst allowing for a very different interpretation of the Night Lords.
I hope Sahaal gets a mention at some point in HH but i think ADBs comments were more directed at his own trilogy. There is nothing to stop another author using Sahaal as an antagonist somwhere along the lines.
KorPhaeron77 wrote: I understand where you are coming from. I think the key thing is that ADB gave his own Night Lords the same treatement; In Soul Hunter we (or at least I) get a glimpse of Talos; the last noble thinker in a legion of scum. Cyrion, a cheery (for a Night Lord) warrior who is likeable because he is the comedian of the group. Xarl, the cold measured Psychopath, who is loyal to the bone with zero illusions of grandeur. Mercutian, the quiet new guy, and Uzas... the nutcase, the monster, the fool. Yet by the end of Void Stalker, we realise that virtually no one shared Talos's beliefs, he does some pretty monstrous things by this point too, shattering some of that "nobility" I thought he had. Cyrion was a depraved coward, the worst of all of them, Xarl was right to hate him all along. Uzas, just as loyal to Talos as anyone, but hopelessly lost, isolated and hated by his only brothers, I bloody loved Uzas. Only Mercutian and Xarl proved to be the men they said they were. Xarl was the one with the most realistic view of the legion by the end.
I think also, whereas Ahriman or Typhus are woven into the fabric of 40k, Sahaal was an esoteric bit of lore from an old novel. It must be so confining, writing 30k, knowing that you have to include characters and trying to think of reasons to keep them around. With Sevatar, ADB has a character he can kill off at anytime, perform acts of heroism or infamy, or be as vague as he likes about his ultimate fate. With Sahaal anything ADB could have done would have been "wrong" to someone. It's hard to write a character that has to end up vilified by his legion but also remain in the most respected position right through until 40k. If it weren't for his inclusion in 40k I think Kor Phaeron should have been killed off by now, as the only way to keep him around at the moment was a the bumbling villian who reveals his plan and his thwarted at the last second, over and over.
The great thing will the NL trilogy was that anyone could die and we weren't tied to these Codex Special characters who have plot armour that can't ever be beaten. Leaving Sahaal's fate a mystery stayed true to Lord of Night whilst allowing for a very different interpretation of the Night Lords.
I hope Sahaal gets a mention at some point in HH but i think ADBs comments were more directed at his own trilogy. There is nothing to stop another author using Sahaal as an antagonist somwhere along the lines.
Hmm, very interesting point and I would love to see ADB's current view/stance with the fluff out today.
That said, what is the likely hood of seeing a mention/appearance of Sahaal to give us more info on the character, given that ADB is now writing Sev as the First Captain like they have done with Ahriman, Typhus, Lucius etc... (They become avatars of their legion imo) In a strange way, it is almost fitting for the NL too now have two First Captains.
This must also mean that Sahaal, during 30k, was a what and will we ever learn more about Sahaal and the Raptors of the NL?
Sevatar is marked for death and according to flashbacks in Void Stalker, was no longer first captain when Curze died. Even if he doesn't die, at the current point of 30k fluff he is sitting pretty in a cell aboard the Lion's flagship. I imagine the Sahaal is captain of another company right now. I can't comment on the raptors as they haven't been mentioned.
I think it's funny that certain people on this site love to champion ADB as the defender of GW's "no-canon" policy. Almost everything he says implies pretty heavily that he believes in a universal canon.
BlaxicanX wrote: I think it's funny that certain people on this site love to champion ADB as the defender of GW's "no-canon" policy. Almost everything he says implies pretty heavily that he believes in a universal canon.
That he constantly ignores?
Most of his work is groundbreaking, showing full factions in a completely different light. This is neither bad or good. It depends. If you really liked the previous background, you may not like it. His take on Night Lords or World Eaters ignored everything written before. Same goes for his Black Templars.
Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. He is also a champion for the "there is no official fluff" concept, something I like.
Or he was just one of many champions, and decided to take command of the First Company; whom he later abandons anyway in Lord of the Night. Besides, he doesn't become First Captain until after the Heresy.
As Engel mentioned, I didn't want to touch that sacred cow too much. I brought him slightly back into balance by exalting him a bit (making him First Captain after Sevatar dies) and bringing him down slightly (not everyone loved him, which makes sense given how he treats the Legion in Lord of the Night), but I'm pretty much leaving him at that. He won't show up much in the Heresy at all; if I made him too good, people would whine he's a perfect Mary Sue, if I didn't make him perfect, other people would whine that their beloved Sahaal wasn't as good as they demanded, and ultimately he's just one fish in a pretty massive ocean.
I did actually mail Simon Spurrier about a year ago asking if he had any input or or preference (see? I can be nice...), but since he didn't reply, I feel pretty pleased and justified in not touching Sahaal at all.
Spurrier was not in good terms with GW/BL, or so the Internet says. Perhaps there was a problem there. He didn´t answer back and ADB just ignored his stuff.
Anyway, I will rather see nothing on 30k Sahaal by another writer. I liked the character a lot and it is already established (by ADB) that he was not that important in 30k, which is fine because it fits the LotN novel.
This is from Index Astartes:
Spoiler:
It is thought that the assassin M'Shen was consciously allowed to infiltrate Night Haunter's grotesque palace on the world of Tsagualsa, an edifice constructed entirely from still-living bodies. (...)
Sitting in a pool of shadow upon a throne made from the fused bones of his victims, a carpet of still-screaming faces leading up to gnarled, naked feet, sits Night Haunter himself. His madness and hate radiate from him, palpable even through such a remote medium as a vid-log.
Tsagualsa was made of living people, a concept taken from legends & fairy tales. This reeks of sorcery and chaos corruption. Curze was insane, hallucinating and brooding. In LotN, Sahaal is one of the warriors always near his master, with many entries in the book being flashbacks to a nightmarish Tsagualsa. Whatever Curze and his sorcerers were doing there, it probably turned all warriors around insane, at least temporarily. So it is Ok that he is delusional and confused.
All these flaws make the character more interesting in my eyes. Better not to touch it.
‘Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. (…) When this campaign is won, you and I will have words’
Rogal Dorn, just before taking the beating of his life.
from The Dark King, by Graham McNeill.
BlaxicanX wrote: I think it's funny that certain people on this site love to champion ADB as the defender of GW's "no-canon" policy. Almost everything he says implies pretty heavily that he believes in a universal canon.
I'll have to disagree with you here. ADB has gone into great detail on how 40k canon is 'all real, and none of it is real'
Tsagualsa was made of living people, a concept taken from legends & fairy tales. This reeks of sorcery and chaos corruption. Curze was insane, hallucinating and brooding. In LotN, Sahaal is one of the warriors always near his master, with many entries in the book being flashbacks to a nightmarish Tsagualsa. Whatever Curze and his sorcerers were doing there, it probably turned all warriors around insane, at least temporarily. So it is Ok that he is delusional and confused.
I think Kurze is one of the killer opportunity characters. He's not space batman, he's space Lecter. If you take in the concept he's eroding, and in a complete downworld spiral. I consider his nice little manual surgery room to show what he is.
He's a few books away from tucking it in with a flesh suit, and a primarch. He doesn't need Chaos to commit those atrocities.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/12 18:32:53
Vulgar wrote: (...)
He's a few books away from tucking it in with a flesh suit, and a primarch. He doesn't need Chaos to commit those atrocities.
This is because you are thinking of Chaos as if it were a collection of monsters. Chaos is the madness and the monsters yelling inside a human´s soul, and atrocities such as Tsagualsa were supposed to be born from the abyss that is Chaos. They were clearly inspired in the movie Apocalypse Now, which in turn is inspired in Joseph Conrad´s "Heart of Darkness", which in turn is inspired in real events with real characters. It is humanity´s dark side. Which is Chaos.
The Warp is the spiritual dimension of the setting, and the Chaos Gods are made of emotions (anger, lust, despair).
‘Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. (…) When this campaign is won, you and I will have words’
Rogal Dorn, just before taking the beating of his life.
from The Dark King, by Graham McNeill.
BlaxicanX wrote: I think it's funny that certain people on this site love to champion ADB as the defender of GW's "no-canon" policy. Almost everything he says implies pretty heavily that he believes in a universal canon.
I'll have to disagree with you here. ADB has gone into great detail on how 40k canon is 'all real, and none of it is real'
Vulgar wrote: (...)
He's a few books away from tucking it in with a flesh suit, and a primarch. He doesn't need Chaos to commit those atrocities.
This is because you are thinking of Chaos as if it were a collection of monsters. Chaos is the madness and the monsters yelling inside a human´s soul, and atrocities such as Tsagualsa were supposed to be born from the abyss that is Chaos. They were clearly inspired in the movie Apocalypse Now, which in turn is inspired in Joseph Conrad´s "Heart of Darkness", which in turn is inspired in real events with real characters. It is humanity´s dark side. Which is Chaos.
The Warp is the spiritual dimension of the setting, and the Chaos Gods are made of emotions (anger, lust, despair).
I just don't see it the same way. I see the warp as the energy of the emotional output, the entities within the collected debris. Also; I think we're capable of finding an abyss all on our own.
I just don't think Kurze needed the influence, to be a being of disgust and atrocity. He was already there. Serial killers seem to get a bit more flamboyant towards their end.
There'd still be the vocal minority that complained I'd made Sahaal have any flaws at all. That I'd made him deluded. That I'd made him insane. That I was jealous and wanted to ruin the perfect character. That I was just ragging on another author's work. That I blah blah blah.
It's just ugly, and it's lame. Some of the reviews for Soul Hunter I've seen slate the book almost entirely because it's not about Sahaal, and he doesn't come out of it smelling like roses, like some perfect avatar of What The Legion Should Be. There's no room for nuance. There's no space for compromise or evolution or balance. There's just "WAAAAHHHHHHHH SAHAAL IS THE BEST" and irritating weeping when I don't make him some flawless Wolverine clone who Tells It Like It Is.
Its strange for trying to avoid writers jealously he comes off as having some jealously issues.
I don't Sahaal was written as a perfect character, I mean the guy was soaking in the screams of the people his father throne room was made of like everyone else. Sahaal was a great character because he was a character of compromise, a murdering bastard who people actually liked and wondered if he was right.
ADB did a good job though, I liked how he created the gang life of nostramo and how it impacted the legion.
If anyone butchered the Night Lords its nick Kyme, he makes the Curze seem like the joker.
From the guy who was right, to apocolyspe now(which I don't mind) to Batman and the Joker. Kyme also did a bad job on the Word Bearers too.
Vulgar wrote: (...)
He's a few books away from tucking it in with a flesh suit, and a primarch. He doesn't need Chaos to commit those atrocities.
This is because you are thinking of Chaos as if it were a collection of monsters. Chaos is the madness and the monsters yelling inside a human´s soul, and atrocities such as Tsagualsa were supposed to be born from the abyss that is Chaos. They were clearly inspired in the movie Apocalypse Now, which in turn is inspired in Joseph Conrad´s "Heart of Darkness", which in turn is inspired in real events with real characters. It is humanity´s dark side. Which is Chaos.
The Warp is the spiritual dimension of the setting, and the Chaos Gods are made of emotions (anger, lust, despair).
I just don't see it the same way. I see the warp as the energy of the emotional output, the entities within the collected debris. Also; I think we're capable of finding an abyss all on our own.
I just don't think Kurze needed the influence, to be a being of disgust and atrocity. He was already there. Serial killers seem to get a bit more flamboyant towards their end.
We are able to find an abyss all on our own. In the setting, the abyss is alive and is called Chaos. The entities inside are our own Anger, our own Despair, our own Rage, our own Hopes... About Curze being influenced, it is humans who search Chaos, not the other way around. But in the case of the Primarchs Chaos tried to contact them an modify their behavior. I guess they tried to "touch" Curze, and they succeded.
Its strange for trying to avoid writers jealously he comes off as having some jealously issues.
I don't Sahaal was written as a perfect character, I mean the guy was soaking in the screams of the people his father throne room was made of like everyone else. Sahaal was a great character because he was a character of compromise, a murdering bastard who people actually liked and wondered if he was right.
ADB did a good job though, I liked how he created the gang life of nostramo and how it impacted the legion.
If anyone butchered the Night Lords its nick Kyme, he makes the Curze seem like the joker.
From the guy who was right, to apocolyspe now(which I don't mind) to Batman and the Joker. Kyme also did a bad job on the Word Bearers too.
Agree with all that.
Both Spurrier and ADB did a really good job. Same for Peter Fehervari. But I am not sold with the Kyme / McNeill interpretation of Curze. They write about Primarchs as if they were Marvel Superheroes. I like Marvel but... well, I think Curze has a lot of potential, apart from being a bad guy. The character should get some depth again. He looks mono-dimensional to me in the new book, and this is something Curze is clearly not.
‘Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. (…) When this campaign is won, you and I will have words’
Rogal Dorn, just before taking the beating of his life.
from The Dark King, by Graham McNeill.
The word should be illegal when used improperly does anyone know what esoteric actually means anymore? People seem to be throwing it around whenever they don't like something. Chris Christy said that libertarianism is wrong because its esoteric. Sorry for bringing up politics but the over/misuse of the word is getting on my nerves.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
we realise that virtually no one shared Talos's beliefs, he does some pretty monstrous things by this point too, shattering some of that "nobility" I thought he had.
Mercurtion, Malcarion(I know I'm spelling them wrong), Cyrion share Talos's beliefs, I think Xarl eventually comes around to Talos's way of thinking in Viod stalker.
What Talos did isn't any worse than what the Imperials do on a regular basis. I'd rather be one of the populace whose butchered with gladia than a guardsman sent to a labor camp on Armageddon, arguably the astropaths had a pretty horrific fate but so do Imperial citizens who are put in penitent engines(strangely its the less heretical ones who earn this fate).
Hell i'd even say nobility itself isn't noble, the very word comes from the code of chivalry which basically meant giving certain rights to those who you have familial or religious ties to.
Not saying that Talos is a great guy but he's not exceptional in the 40k universe and if you were to downsize them his atrocities are not really that rare for our universe.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/14 00:57:19
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever
I do actually like Talos and don't condemn the things he did. But he did definitely have rose tinted glasses when viewing Curze. Talos thinks that their "father" had all these noble aims for the legion after his death when the truth is that by the end he was mad, hated the legion and couldn't have cared less what happened to them. The point isn't that Talos's beliefs weren't valid, just that they weren't in line with Curze. They were perhaps in line with what he preached but certainly not what he practiced. Making a fortress out of screaming faces is hardly justice. Regardless of the original intention the Legion came to spread terror for the sake of spreading terror. Some of the Legion were more honest about that than others.
I do actually like Talos and don't condemn the things he did. But he did definitely have rose tinted glasses when viewing Curze. Talos thinks that their "father" had all these noble aims for the legion after his death when the truth is that by the end he was mad, hated the legion and couldn't have cared less what happened to them.
Depends on you believe, your information about what Curze thought is from Talos who believed that Curze hated and loved them at the same time.
But back to Sahaal I really hope he doesn't end up forgotten though I have the feeling he will be. You'd think they could bring him back as at least a petty warband leader in 40k and a captain in 30k
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/14 20:45:26
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever
Bumping this thread to fulfil my obligation of providing the interview where ADB talks about Sahaal and uses the word "canon".
James Nicolau asks: “Will Talos or any of 10th Company find Zso Sahaal and kick his ass for running off like a punkass?” Nope, because Sahaal resurfaces a decade or two after the series is set. I was careful about that. Really, with a Legion having done so much in ten thousand years, it’s unlikely Sahaal’s return would mean that much, and he’d (at best) be just one warlord among a Legion that didn’t like him very much. As much as some fans love him, they’re not looking at it from an in-universe perspective. All canonical Night Lords lore states that Sahaal’s viewpoint is incorrect. That means, well, that it’s incorrect. The subversive “But we were really betrayed” theme works great in BL’s annals a few years ago (and sells books like crazy, as fans love conspiracy theories, and villains who are wronged heroes out for revenge), but now we’re detailing all of those ancient eras more clearly, and according to the lore. This is part of the reason why, in the Night Lords series, he’s not as popular as some fans might have imagined, and why I avoided detailing too much about him. His story is done. He’s not as great as he said he was. He’s just as tarnished as Talos, Xarl, and all the other characters in the series.
So, ADB believes in canon lore and canonical interpretations of the lore. Good to know.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/03/15 18:56:38
Most of his work is groundbreaking, showing full factions in a completely different light. This is neither bad or good. It depends. If you really liked the previous background, you may not like it. His take on Night Lords or World Eaters ignored everything written before. Same goes for his Black Templars.
"Most mortals will die from this procedure...and so will you!" 
