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Currently reading Fulgrim and I gotta admit, Ferrus is damn impressive. How much would the tide of the Horus Heresy changed had he lived?

His survival would definitely would have made a difference, because if he had escaped somehow with the rest of the Iron Hands survivors like Meduson it would have spared the Iron Hands from the massive trauma of losing their primarch and much of their direction as a legion. While not necessarily all of the Iron Hands would have rallied back to Ferrus (some may still have gone off with survivors of the other shattered legions), their chain of command wouldn't have been as mangled and would allow a coherent attempt to rebuild or recover rather than going off on their own as guerilla units.

Unfortunately, the Iron Hands' numbers were still severely depleted, as their veteran Morlocks would have been practically wiped out regardless of Manus' survival (they'd probably try to cover his escape). So in the grand scheme of things they may have been able to contribute to some level in slowing down the traitors or slightly bolstering Terra but not to a significant enough degree to change the war IMO.

The bigger question would be whether or not Ferrus would have cleared his head from his obsession of exacting vengeance on Fulgrim. If he didn't then I think the main issue would be him trying to hunt him down personally for another face-off, Fulgrim's existence being a stain upon his honour for Fulgrim's presumption that he would turn traitor for him. He'd be a wild card that would vainly attempt to bring him to justice which would either lead to his death (again) or just be baited away from Terra.

 Grimskul wrote:
His survival would definitely would have made a difference, because if he had escaped somehow with the rest of the Iron Hands survivors like Meduson it would have spared the Iron Hands from the massive trauma of losing their primarch and much of their direction as a legion. While not necessarily all of the Iron Hands would have rallied back to Ferrus (some may still have gone off with survivors of the other shattered legions), their chain of command wouldn't have been as mangled and would allow a coherent attempt to rebuild or recover rather than going off on their own as guerilla units.

Unfortunately, the Iron Hands' numbers were still severely depleted, as their veteran Morlocks would have been practically wiped out regardless of Manus' survival (they'd probably try to cover his escape). So in the grand scheme of things they may have been able to contribute to some level in slowing down the traitors or slightly bolstering Terra but not to a significant enough degree to change the war IMO.

The bigger question would be whether or not Ferrus would have cleared his head from his obsession of exacting vengeance on Fulgrim. If he didn't then I think the main issue would be him trying to hunt him down personally for another face-off, Fulgrim's existence being a stain upon his honour for Fulgrim's presumption that he would turn traitor for him. He'd be a wild card that would vainly attempt to bring him to justice which would either lead to his death (again) or just be baited away from Terra.

Good call. I don't think he would have had as much impact as theother Legions simply being delayed, but he is as actually one Primarch I would have loved to see survive, same with Dorn (although I know Down isn't necessarily gone).

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
His survival would definitely would have made a difference, because if he had escaped somehow with the rest of the Iron Hands survivors like Meduson it would have spared the Iron Hands from the massive trauma of losing their primarch and much of their direction as a legion. While not necessarily all of the Iron Hands would have rallied back to Ferrus (some may still have gone off with survivors of the other shattered legions), their chain of command wouldn't have been as mangled and would allow a coherent attempt to rebuild or recover rather than going off on their own as guerilla units.

Unfortunately, the Iron Hands' numbers were still severely depleted, as their veteran Morlocks would have been practically wiped out regardless of Manus' survival (they'd probably try to cover his escape). So in the grand scheme of things they may have been able to contribute to some level in slowing down the traitors or slightly bolstering Terra but not to a significant enough degree to change the war IMO.

The bigger question would be whether or not Ferrus would have cleared his head from his obsession of exacting vengeance on Fulgrim. If he didn't then I think the main issue would be him trying to hunt him down personally for another face-off, Fulgrim's existence being a stain upon his honour for Fulgrim's presumption that he would turn traitor for him. He'd be a wild card that would vainly attempt to bring him to justice which would either lead to his death (again) or just be baited away from Terra.

Good call. I don't think he would have had as much impact as theother Legions simply being delayed, but he is as actually one Primarch I would have loved to see survive, same with Dorn (although I know Down isn't necessarily gone).

Oh yeah, definitely, he's one of the cooler Primarchs for sure, especially since we never know exactly what Asirnoth was (hints towards it being a Necron construct but its never fully revealed) and despite having a silly name he's one of the more fleshed out Primarchs in the Heresy. It would have been really interesting to see if he sided with Dorn or Roboute when Guilliman first proposed the idea of splitting up into Chapters in the aftermath of the Heresy.

Well basically all of them have at least a "they might be alive", outside of Curze and Horus of course.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Well basically all of them have at least a "they might be alive", outside of Curze and Horus of course.

...No I'm pretty sure Ferrus is flat out dead-dead.

 jreilly89 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Well basically all of them have at least a "they might be alive", outside of Curze and Horus of course.

...No I'm pretty sure Ferrus is flat out dead-dead.

Indeed, Ferrus had his severed head delivered to Horus personally by Fulgrim (well technically a daemon possessing Fulgrim at the time). There's no two ways about it, he's dead Jim.

 Grimskul wrote:
His survival would definitely would have made a difference, because if he had escaped somehow with the rest of the Iron Hands survivors like Meduson it would have spared the Iron Hands from the massive trauma of losing their primarch and much of their direction as a legion. While not necessarily all of the Iron Hands would have rallied back to Ferrus (some may still have gone off with survivors of the other shattered legions), their chain of command wouldn't have been as mangled and would allow a coherent attempt to rebuild or recover rather than going off on their own as guerilla units.

Unfortunately, the Iron Hands' numbers were still severely depleted, as their veteran Morlocks would have been practically wiped out regardless of Manus' survival (they'd probably try to cover his escape). So in the grand scheme of things they may have been able to contribute to some level in slowing down the traitors or slightly bolstering Terra but not to a significant enough degree to change the war IMO.

The bigger question would be whether or not Ferrus would have cleared his head from his obsession of exacting vengeance on Fulgrim. If he didn't then I think the main issue would be him trying to hunt him down personally for another face-off, Fulgrim's existence being a stain upon his honour for Fulgrim's presumption that he would turn traitor for him. He'd be a wild card that would vainly attempt to bring him to justice which would either lead to his death (again) or just be baited away from Terra.

I mostly agree. I'd just love to see how Ferrus would have dealt with the Adeptus Mechanicus. When he first took over his world, he was inventing all kinds of crazy tech; I can't imagine him just stopping. He'd probably be able to completely reverse the Imperium's general decay of technology (not that the AdMech is losing knowledge in every field, but overall technology is worsening due to inability to replace much of the tech that gets destroyed in war).

Ferrus was one of the primarchs who could really have really turned things around for the imperium, not only would the iron hands and their successors not be purely spiteful moody marines but the whole imperium would benefit from his technological skill

On the other hand there is no chance he leaves without killing
Fulgrim

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Well basically all of them have at least a "they might be alive", outside of Curze and Horus of course.

Ferrus Manus and Sanguinius are also most definitely confirmed dead. Dorn is also likely to be dead, but unconfirmed.

Ferrus is one of the more interesting characters in 40k.
He would probably have done a lot for the AdMech and its technology after the Heresy.

 Grimskul wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Well basically all of them have at least a "they might be alive", outside of Curze and Horus of course.

...No I'm pretty sure Ferrus is flat out dead-dead.

Indeed, Ferrus had his severed head delivered to Horus personally by Fulgrim (well technically a daemon possessing Fulgrim at the time). There's no two ways about it, he's dead Jim.

To add to that, one of the Forgeworld HH writers had his in-game idea for a mechanical headless zombie Ferrus shot down, so we don't have that possibility, either.

Mechanical, headless, zombie Ferrus would be awesome. Shame is one of the most definitely dead Primarchs, was there not some Warp explosion/psychic death scream emanating from his beheading?

 Sir Samuel Buca wrote:
Mechanical, headless, zombie Ferrus would be awesome. Shame is one of the most definitely dead Primarchs, was there not some Warp explosion/psychic death scream emanating from his beheading?

He was never one of the more "psychic" Primarchs. Sanguinius, whenever written about, is specifically said to have some kind of special Psychic connection with his "sons", so much so that he literally feels their deaths every time that one of them dies (source: Fear to Tread). Psychically-attuned Primarchs (like Magnus, Russ and Sanguinius) are the only ones that would really have enough access to the Warp to have a Psychic death scream.

Would fulgrim have given himself over to the daemon if ferrus lived?

The problem is Ferrus was a brilliant inventor, but he was hot headed and ultimately a failure. Other Primarchs that have been bested in single combat haven't got themselves killed. (Unlike Roboute that was up against Lorgar and Angron). So I'm not sure he would have been such a shining beacon to Humanity.

He was also fighting a demon enhanced Fulgrim, kinda puts him at a disadvantage.

The problem was that he really should not have been fighting Fulgrim. As soon as it became clear that the dropsite was a trap, every other legion retreated and their primarchs worked to protect the retreating space marines. Ferrus went full Leroy Jenkins and charged the heart of the traitor forces to try and fulfill a personal vendetta, losing his legion's elite warriors as they tried to keep up with his insane charge.

Ferrus was smart, and he would have probably been useful leader for the Imperium if he had survived the heresy. During the heresy though, I feel that he would have wasted his crippled legion trying to get revenge on Fulgrim, accomplishing relatively little.

revenge and rage are powerful emotions and the primarchs were all humans with a lot of issues.

 the Signless wrote:
The problem was that he really should not have been fighting Fulgrim. As soon as it became clear that the dropsite was a trap, every other legion retreated and their primarchs worked to protect the retreating space marines. Ferrus went full Leroy Jenkins and charged the heart of the traitor forces to try and fulfill a personal vendetta, losing his legion's elite warriors as they tried to keep up with his insane charge.

Ferrus was smart, and he would have probably been useful leader for the Imperium if he had survived the heresy. During the heresy though, I feel that he would have wasted his crippled legion trying to get revenge on Fulgrim, accomplishing relatively little.

tbf, Graham Mcneil completely made up Ferrus's "Medusan rage" to justify the way he acted. The other HH material on Iron Hand made him seem cold and calculating, yet every time he was mentioned in Fulgrim, he had a "towering Meduan rage" that dominated his character but wasn't really supported at all in other material. It seems like McNeil just got lazy with Iron Hand and didn't feel like actually trying when he wanted to come up with a good reason for Ferrus getting offed by Fulgrim.

I thought it was a bit of a cop out but it was believable. His closest friend betrayed him, betrayed their father. Fulgrims actions defied logic, defied rationality because chaos by its nature is illogical. Faced with such a sequence of events it makes sense that he responds in the way he did.