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Wyzilla wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Avatars and Battle Sisters, these things exist in 40k fluff for one reason, it seems:

To die in order to show how badass the enemy slaying them is.

When have Sisters ever suffered from the Worf effect? That roll always seems to belong to the Blood Angels or Imperial Fists.

Sactuary 101 - Sisters obliterated to show off the Necrons.

Ben Counter's first Grey Knights novel. Sisters slaughtered to show off how dangerous the cultists were.

Blood Tide. Not the part about the GK slaughtering them, the bit where before that they were almost all killed and some of them even devolved into chaos spawn because of a lack of faith. What.

13th Legion. Sisters slaughtered by 'nids in the opening scenes to show how badass Kage was for beating them back with a rifle butt.

I'm sure there are more, but thats what come to mind initially.

SharkoutofWata wrote:
But, if anyone remembers the Inquisition War with Ordo Hydra... A super secret Ordo above Malleus that... does the same thing as Malleus but also uses a warp-fed daemon that is essentially Tzeentch boogers to devour worlds. A Callidus Assassin that becomes a Genestealer, a Rogue Inquisitor and former Space Marine dropping into the Golden Throne for a chat with the split-personality Emperor... Oh that book was an awful bit of non-canonical garbage.

Actually, they revived the "Callidus aping a Genestealer in a really good short story last year called "The Beast Within" or some such. The main focus of the book is actually about what it means to be human... and whether a Callidus assassin can even be considered such before they surgically alter her to be able to take genestealer form. Well worth a read.

TheCrazyCryptek wrote:

I've read this before and I want it to be true, but sadly I have also heard it said that any lore in a GW publication (The codex) trumps anything in a FW publication(Orpheus).

Don't get me wrong, I essential choose to ignore the Dolmen Gates lore and hope it gets retconned later.

Well, as already states, the only canon order that matters is chronological, so Fall of Orpheus overwrites Codex: Necrons. Of course, FoO doesn't deny the existence of dolmen gates, which I choose to interpret as meaning that the inertialess drive doesn't have a range of more than a few million lightyears in a single jump or so.

Iron_Captain wrote:

 farmersboy wrote:
Anything where there is talk of Space Marines rolling around or slinging a sword across their backs, the author clearly forgetting there's a chuffing great power generator on the marines back.

With slinging swords over your back there is also the issue that it may look cool but is extremely impractical as you would never be able to draw your sword unless you had really, really long arms. I just can't believe how many videogames, movies and artworks get this basic fact of physics wrong. You can't draw a sword from your back, ever. Swords were never worn on the back in real history.

Now with this pet peeve out of the way, I must say that despite all the horrible and silly 40k fluff out there, C.S. Goto's work still is the absolute epitome of nonsense.

I love it when people spout off as if they know everything.

Having worn a sword in both configurations, it is fully possible to draw a sword from a shoulder-harness. It leaves you very open to an initial attack, but provides a lot of power on the draw for a first strike. The difference is offensive vs defensive, not impossible vs possible.

Selym wrote:

When is a daemon not a chaos daemon...

When it's an Avatar, I guess, or an Imperial Daemon like Celestine, the Sanguinor or (controversial!) Draigo?

Vaktathi wrote:

TL;DR It read like Harry Potter torture porn to me.

Not words I really want to hear in conjunction. ><

Frankenberry wrote:Several things that don't make sense to me:

1 - Space Orks. They're like Klingons, they fight everyone and everything all the time because they can. How the gak did they get to the point where they're a galactic player? By all counts they should have annihilated themselves early in their creation. Apparently people like soccer hooligans in space more than actual hard-sci fi.

Ah, you missed the part where they're a deliberately seeded warrior race created specifically to fight a war against eternally regenerating undead robots. They didn't annihilate themselves because they were artificially spread around the place so much that the law of averages evened out.

Frankenberry wrote:2 - Eldar. THESE douchebags. Their numbers are so small, they make comments about it in every novel/codex/fan fiction and yet...they're willing to sacrifice entire armies for pointless gains, Mymeara anyone? If they're so amazing at running the galaxy why is it that they fix nothing? Could chalk this up to GW never letting any sort of progression happen with the story lines.

Lets not forget that Eldar Guardians are swarmy cannon fodder in game despite the fact that in the fluff, they should never see battle unless the Aspect Warriors are severely outmatched. Remember, fluff-wise, MSU Dire Avenger spam in wave serpents is canonical.

Frankenberry wrote:3 - The Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition. You mean to tell me, the Emperor's last guiding words were to his most trusted of trusted homies, "Make sure you create orders that have no checks or balances, can kill/maim/destroy whatever they want just so long as they have this nifty little piece of metal, AND let them worship me as a god."? This annoys me beyond understanding.

Not quite. The Emperor ordered the Inquisition to be founded with... rather reduced powers than that, and he outlawed religion repeatedly. The Ecclesiarchy rose out of a thousand warring cults and forced itself into power by main force after he died.

Frankenberry wrote:4 - The whole "I'm a different Space Marine than you so we can't be bros until we've murdered gak together." or the massively idiotic "Your predecessor marine-brothers did something assbag-ish like ten thousand years ago so we can't fight together. Dick." Seriously? Professional soldiers TODAY don't act like this. Why are Space Marines described as petulant children?

Because... Space Marines are basically children. Their psychological development is arrested when they're ten to thirteen years old and their implantation begins. Space Marines are highly trained, tactically brilliant, physically godlike children who never went through normal puberty.

Frankenberry wrote:
5 - The Heresy. Beyond stupid. I can't write enough on how utterly cocked this entire series of events are.

Some day, I'll do an itemised list of "Imperial cock-ups that caused the Heresy". I expect I'll breach double digits before I get through the first chapter of Horus Rising.

 Frankenberry wrote:

5 - The Heresy. Beyond stupid. I can't write enough on how utterly cocked this entire series of events are.

I like the Heresy at the key points of story: Emprah makes marines, conquers galaxy, betrayal ensues, Horus tries to kill emperor, half of humanity ruined, other half dead or chaos. Both sides keep a 10,000 year genocidal hatred.

But then they went too into detail, and made the entire thing look stupid.


...Daddy issues...


...Half the primarchs immune to headshots by WMD's...


...Tactical geniuses making childish errors...

...Emprah risking his life on the frontlines when he could easily do better elsewhere...

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:

TL;DR It read like Harry Potter torture porn to me.

Not words I really want to hear in conjunction. ><

Now you can't unsee it


I'd also agree with the sentiment about the Horus Heresy stuff in general. I'd always like it more as a vague mystic point in time, shrouded in mystery that would never be fully revealed. Now that they have revealed everything, not only is it so explained as to no longer really be interesting, most of it is flat out stupid, with often exceedingly childish behavior and reasoning amongst these gods and demi-gods, and increasingly derpy material.

The primarchs are petulant children armed with weapons of mass destruction.

The Heresy was inevitable. But I will never understand people who try to claim that Horus "didn't have a choice" because it was turn to chaos or die.

Death is always a sound option when the other is utter destruction of everything you love.

Also, for a supposedly ultra-intelligent being, he never seemed to particularly question or seem suspicious of the visions shown to him, despite them being the ultimate consequences of his choice to turn against the Emperor rather than what the Emperor had planned...

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Wyzilla wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Avatars and Battle Sisters, these things exist in 40k fluff for one reason, it seems:

To die in order to show how badass the enemy slaying them is.

When have Sisters ever suffered from the Worf effect? That roll always seems to belong to the Blood Angels or Imperial Fists.

Sactuary 101 - Sisters obliterated to show off the Necrons.

Ben Counter's first Grey Knights novel. Sisters slaughtered to show off how dangerous the cultists were.

Blood Tide. Not the part about the GK slaughtering them, the bit where before that they were almost all killed and some of them even devolved into chaos spawn because of a lack of faith. What.

13th Legion. Sisters slaughtered by 'nids in the opening scenes to show how badass Kage was for beating them back with a rifle butt.

From memory, there's also Mortarion corrupting a Waaaaagh and and using his chaos-orks to literally eat an entire Shrine world's worth of SIsters in the 6E CSM codex.

The Tyranids have eaten a minor order's worth of Sisters in a separate event from the one you listed.

A single Flesh Tearer who'd succumbed to the black rage butchered an entire squad of Sisters and an immolator, was later found and mercy-killed by one of his bros.

Space Wolves ran them off of Fenris once.

There's another one on the tip of my tongue that I can't recall.

But yeah. lulz

Oh oh! How about ALL OF HORUS' FALL TO CHAOS?

Easily the dumbest, and most mismatched writing ever.

Horus: "Oh, Erebus! You're my bro!"
Magnus: "No! Erebus is lying to you!"
Horus: "But the Emprah said you can't do this! You must be lying to me too! I'll join Erebus!"

-face palm-

Even though I understand this. I still find that I'm annoyed at the contrast between different books and authors. Some instances have space marines that are neigh indestructible. A chapter takes out a heavily fortified world with only a company. Other times a group of cultists cane take out a space marine squad.

Neither instance is common.

The portrayal of Space Marine capabilities in the Black Library is pretty consistent.

 Frankenberry wrote:
Several things that don't make sense to me:

1 - Space Orks. They're like Klingons, they fight everyone and everything all the time because they can. How the gak did they get to the point where they're a galactic player? By all counts they should have annihilated themselves early in their creation. Apparently people like soccer hooligans in space more than actual hard-sci fi

Are you talking about the old orks, are the new orks who are fungal hybrids that are actually pretty thought out.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Neither instance is common.

The portrayal of Space Marine capabilities in the Black Library is pretty consistent.

Srsly? The power of a SM even in one book can change dramatically.


And they have a tendency to justify impossible things with "because amazeballs faith".

 Selym wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Neither instance is common.

The portrayal of Space Marine capabilities in the Black Library is pretty consistent.

Srsly? The power of a SM even in one book can change dramatically.

Go on?

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Neither instance is common.

The portrayal of Space Marine capabilities in the Black Library is pretty consistent.

Srsly? The power of a SM even in one book can change dramatically.

Go on?

In an attempt to avoid claims of non-canon, here's the 5th ed Codex: Space Marines:

Ultramarines vs Eldar, Calgar pwns Avatar:

Not the worst in power contrasts, but we go from terminators being butchered as a matter of course to a higher ranking guy wearing the same armour suddenly being capable of resisting the Avatar's attacks. He still wears TDA, still has a force field (not that it ever does anything in stories), and is still made of 6-pack muscle man like every other Astartes. But unlike all other Astartes, he can take these hits and just kinda go "Eh, I've felt worse". And then we see that while other Terminators can't do much to the Avatar with a powerfist (only staggering it), Calgar is somehow far stronger than any of them, and punches a hole straight through the damn thing. Tactical genius or not, Calgar is still a space marine.
And, power levels aside, this duel is an example of writing that's fun to read at first, but after a re-read turns out to not be well written or consistent. What was the point of making the sword a centerpiece of the fight if you're not going to do anything with it? Calgar instantly goes from wrestling for the sword to shoving a haymaker into the Avatar's chest. Bolter pron much?


Ima re-read the rest of that book, to look for any more examples.

 Selym wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Neither instance is common.

The portrayal of Space Marine capabilities in the Black Library is pretty consistent.

Srsly? The power of a SM even in one book can change dramatically.

Go on?

In an attempt to avoid claims of non-canon, here's the 5th ed Codex: Space Marines:

Ultramarines vs Eldar, Calgar pwns Avatar:

Spoiler:

Page 35:
"The Avatar Strikes
[...]
Each irresistible sweep of the Avatar's flamin sword sundered armour, flesh and bone, leaving naught but unmoving bodies. Terminators of the 1st Company set upon the Avatar with power fist and thunder hammer, but their blows did little more than stagger it."


Also Page 35:
"Calgar's Triumph
[...]
The second tore a great wound from Calgar's armour. A third drove deep into his shoulder, cleaving the pauldron and driving the Chapter Master to one knee. But the fourth, intended as the coup de grace to sever Calgar's head from his shoulders, slammed into the armoured palm of his left hand."

Half a paragraph further down, still Page 35:
"For a moment, mortal and god strove for control of the incandescent sword, and in that moment the Avatar was defenceless.
[...]
The Avatar roared in pain and fury as the power fist punched clean through the molten ichor of its torso."

Not the worst in power contrasts, but we go from terminators being butchered as a matter of course to a higher ranking guy wearing the same armour suddenly being capable of resisting the Avatar's attacks. He still wears TDA, still has a force field (not that it ever does anything in stories), and is still made of 6-pack muscle man like every other Astartes. But unlike all other Astartes, he can take these hits and just kinda go "Eh, I've felt worse". And then we see that while other Terminators can't do much to the Avatar with a powerfist (only staggering it), Calgar is somehow far stronger than any of them, and punches a hole straight through the damn thing. Tactical genius or not, Calgar is still a space marine.
And, power levels aside, this duel is an example of writing that's fun to read at first, but after a re-read turns out to not be well written or consistent. What was the point of making the sword a centerpiece of the fight if you're not going to do anything with it? Calgar instantly goes from wrestling for the sword to shoving a haymaker into the Avatar's chest. Bolter pron much?

The Gauntlets of Ultramar are relics from the Horus Heresy, running on the theme that some of the older stuff is vastly superior to new it's hardly surprising that Calgar did more damage than his underlings.

They're chaos artifacts, heh.

 Selym wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Neither instance is common.

The portrayal of Space Marine capabilities in the Black Library is pretty consistent.

Srsly? The power of a SM even in one book can change dramatically.

Go on?

In an attempt to avoid claims of non-canon, here's the 5th ed Codex: Space Marines:

Ultramarines vs Eldar, Calgar pwns Avatar:

Spoiler:

Page 35:
"The Avatar Strikes
[...]
Each irresistible sweep of the Avatar's flamin sword sundered armour, flesh and bone, leaving naught but unmoving bodies. Terminators of the 1st Company set upon the Avatar with power fist and thunder hammer, but their blows did little more than stagger it."


Also Page 35:
"Calgar's Triumph
[...]
The second tore a great wound from Calgar's armour. A third drove deep into his shoulder, cleaving the pauldron and driving the Chapter Master to one knee. But the fourth, intended as the coup de grace to sever Calgar's head from his shoulders, slammed into the armoured palm of his left hand."

Half a paragraph further down, still Page 35:
"For a moment, mortal and god strove for control of the incandescent sword, and in that moment the Avatar was defenceless.
[...]
The Avatar roared in pain and fury as the power fist punched clean through the molten ichor of its torso."

Not the worst in power contrasts, but we go from terminators being butchered as a matter of course to a higher ranking guy wearing the same armour suddenly being capable of resisting the Avatar's attacks. He still wears TDA, still has a force field (not that it ever does anything in stories), and is still made of 6-pack muscle man like every other Astartes. But unlike all other Astartes, he can take these hits and just kinda go "Eh, I've felt worse". And then we see that while other Terminators can't do much to the Avatar with a powerfist (only staggering it), Calgar is somehow far stronger than any of them, and punches a hole straight through the damn thing. Tactical genius or not, Calgar is still a space marine.
And, power levels aside, this duel is an example of writing that's fun to read at first, but after a re-read turns out to not be well written or consistent. What was the point of making the sword a centerpiece of the fight if you're not going to do anything with it? Calgar instantly goes from wrestling for the sword to shoving a haymaker into the Avatar's chest. Bolter pron much?


Ima re-read the rest of that book, to look for any more examples.

It's almost like Calgar is one of if not the best Ultramarine and is skilled enough to keep himself from being mortally wounded better than far lesser warriors or something.

No but seriously, you should like, read some classic Greek literature or something. Calgar is positively tame relative to his fellow Marines compared to how Hector for example compares with his fellow Trojans.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
They're chaos artifacts, heh.

Well, yes, in the sense that Guilliman took them from a Chaos Champion during the Heresy. Not in the sense that they house a Greater Daemon of Khorne and shoot boiling rivers of blood at their enemies, at least not as far as we know.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
They're chaos artifacts, heh.

Well, yes, in the sense that Guilliman took them from a Chaos Champion during the Heresy. Not in the sense that they house a Greater Daemon of Khorne and shoot boiling rivers of blood at their enemies, at least not as far as we know.

They only do that once a month.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
From memory, there's also Mortarion corrupting a Waaaaagh and and using his chaos-orks to literally eat an entire Shrine world's worth of SIsters in the 6E CSM codex.

Cannibalistic orks? Is that a thing now?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
From memory, there's also Mortarion corrupting a Waaaaagh and and using his chaos-orks to literally eat an entire Shrine world's worth of SIsters in the 6E CSM codex.

Cannibalistic orks? Is that a thing now?

I recall that in Rynn's World, Orks were eating people.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Frankenberry wrote:2 - Eldar. THESE douchebags. Their numbers are so small, they make comments about it in every novel/codex/fan fiction and yet...they're willing to sacrifice entire armies for pointless gains, Mymeara anyone? If they're so amazing at running the galaxy why is it that they fix nothing? Could chalk this up to GW never letting any sort of progression happen with the story lines.

Lets not forget that Eldar Guardians are swarmy cannon fodder in game despite the fact that in the fluff, they should never see battle unless the Aspect Warriors are severely outmatched. Remember, fluff-wise, MSU Dire Avenger spam in wave serpents is canonical.

It actually depends on the Craftworld. Ulthwe, for example, is noted for not using much in the way of Aspect Warriors, and has a standing Guardian army. Whereas Biel-Tan has more Aspect Shrines then any other Craftworld.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
From memory, there's also Mortarion corrupting a Waaaaagh and and using his chaos-orks to literally eat an entire Shrine world's worth of SIsters in the 6E CSM codex.

Cannibalistic orks? Is that a thing now?

That wouldn't even be cannibalism, it's not humans eating humans after-all..

And yeah Orks do eat humans.

IRT the Emperor and religion...

The Emperor as arch-atheist is a relatively new aspect of the fluff. It has not always been this way (in fact, in RT/2nd Ed, he wasn't even dead, and was noted to light candles for his fallen Space Marines, especially those of the Black Templars).

More recently, the only cults he stamped out were ones that didn't worship him. His bit with the Word Bearers was not simply because they were building temples to him, but because they were taking too much time in doing so, when that was not within their mission parameters.

He certainly didn't do anything to stop the cults amongst the Imperial Army and the citizens of Terra that were going on in his active life-time.

As far as the Inquisition goes... actually, he did give them nigh-unlimited authority. That was the whole point of founding the Inquisition. The Ecclesiarchy, as it currently exists, came around much, much later.

IIRC Orks have always been willing to eat humans, and even other Orks once other food supplies have been exhausted, that's nothing new.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Well, yes, in the sense that Guilliman took them from a Chaos Champion during the Heresy. Not in the sense that they house a Greater Daemon of Khorne and shoot boiling rivers of blood at their enemies, at least not as far as we know.

A chaos artifact is a chaos artifact, no matter what powers it may display in the hands of an Astartes. But really, I am surprised that they haven't led the Ultramarines into heresy yet.

Vaktathi wrote:IIRC Orks have always been willing to eat humans, and even other Orks once other food supplies have been exhausted, that's nothing new.

Basic orkish cuisine involves various things made from squigs - squig burgers, squig beer, and so on.

Squigs grow from the same spores that Orks do.

So yes, Orks are highly cannibalistic, because they created their own ecosystem that involves eating their own children because of an accident of birth (where an ork spore lands in relation to shelter, dampness and sunlight determines what it hatches into).

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
From memory, there's also Mortarion corrupting a Waaaaagh and and using his chaos-orks to literally eat an entire Shrine world's worth of SIsters in the 6E CSM codex.

Cannibalistic orks? Is that a thing now?

It's a thing that, like fungi IRL, Orks will eat pretty much anything.

The Heresy stories fail by making Primarchs essentially superheroes with the personalities and reasoning powers of man-children.

The Heresy as a story is a direct take off of Christian mythology and the war in heaven between Lucifer (i.e. Horus) and God (i.e. Emperor). Aside from the direct pride and jealousy of the Lucifer/Horus figure, more could have been done to examine the fundamental conflict and why so many rebel angels (i.e. the renegade Legions) chose to rebel. Namely, like the mythological version, the issue of the role of Man/humanity in the grand scheme. The rebel angels were among other things jealous and contemptuous of what they viewed as a lesser creation than themselves. Likewise, the loyalist Space Marines to some extent still do from this same issue, and sometimes seem to only pay lip service to the idea of serving the common man.

The fundamental conflict of the Heresy I see as one between a civilian government and its runaway military forces, each led by essentially a warlord, as well as one between the common human and the augmented Space Marines over who would govern and administer the Imperium. The CSM viewed themselves as superior and a ruling caste over the masses of normal humans and have created such tiered societies on their daemon worlds. The loyalist Space Marines still serve humanity as a whole, and there is a good 2nd edition Blood Angel story in the 2nd edition main boxset where a Blood Angel reflects on exactly this point, of Space Marines still ultimately being servants of humanity not masters over humanity.

Now, I am picturing Gazhkull spiting a chapter master and roasting him by the fire .

 Wyzilla wrote:
Anything written by C. S. Goto or Ben Counter.

WHAT? Ben Counter is my favorite author! I consider his work to be the best of the Black Library! He's the one who got me interested in Captain Lysander, and the author of my favorite Black Library book Malodrax, which reads like it's Alice in Wonderland set in 40k.