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One of origin stories about the emperor was that he was a perpetual who made a bargain with the chaos gods for huge amounts of psychic power, he then flipped them off by not delivering his end of the bargain, all of humanity.

Since perpetuals can be made from normal humans, why bother with the primarchs and space marines in the first place? An army of immortal, near impossible to kill special forces would have caused less trouble than super human killing machines. Power armor can be made human size and there are a wide selection of pistols that can blow up tanks.

Their longevity would have also helped rediscover the lost tech better, imagine if Einstein or Tesla were still alive today.

Normal humans would've accepted them in time and the Horus heresy might not happened.

Well as you can see, the Emperor has been crippled for multiple millenia despite being a perpetual.

Being able to live forever doesn't mean you can shrug off a few blows to the head from Kharn. Your body being able to continuously creating new cells and repair tissues forever doesn't mean you won't get blown up by a tank shell.

I think it was that he needed to make flag ships, banner bearers what you call it, to bring forward the advance of man. The masses need something to help dedicate their superiority.

Look at the thunder warriors, stronger than a space marine, but they were basically power armored killing machines. Not the poster boys needed to maintain a won order over earth and expand it to the stars.

However, stuff gets grimdark when we see fallen idols.

Do we know how the perpetuals appeared. My understanding was they just appeared randomly, same as nulls and psykers.

Natural perpetuals no - but they can apparently be made.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Perpetual

I can't imagine perpetuals being as easy to control as space Marines, and if they aren't as loyal, easier to tempt to chaos. Also, I think that the Emperors perpetuity might have been destroyed in his fight with Horus? Or maybe that's old canon.

The whole idea of the "perpetuals" is relatively new, and didn't exist (as a term in 40k) until the HH novels were being published.

Space Marines are stronger, tougher, can fight in almost any terrain or environment.

There perfect for when you do not know what you face.

 mondo80 wrote:
, tanks.

Their longevity would have also helped rediscover the lost tech better, imagine if Einstein or Tesla were still alive today.
.

It's possible that was the original purpose of primarchs. originally, they were a separate project, and the space marines came later.

"The development of [space marine] genetic tissue took many centuries of work. This research was itself a spin- off from the aborted Primarch project, which was an early attempt at genetic re-structuring with the aim of creating god-like creatures called Primarchs...

"The Emperor had lost the Primarchs and the first action of his renewed war against the Chaos Powers. The Primarchs could not be recreated and even if this were possible there was not time to do it. The birth pangs of Slaanesh grew louder and louder as the time of his waking grew near. The Emperor evolved another plan. Using genetic material which had been imprinted from the Primarchs into laboratory gholems, some of their qualities could be reproduced as discrete biological organs. By implanting these organs into a young growing body a person with some of the qualities of the Primarchs could be created..."

It is pretty apparent from the above quote that primarchs were almost finished and had been lost when the Emperor came up with the idea of space marines.

So there must have been some other purpose for Primarchs. I believe that they were supposed to be avatars of different parts of society, "God like creatures," who acted like what would happen if Einstein or Tesla could never die. The idea would be that every time that the natural society of humanity produced an Einstein or Tesla, there would be a Primarch who could work with them and befriend them, so that he could learn all the ideas that their unique experiences had allowed them to discover. Then, when decades or centuries later the Primarch could work with the next Einstein or Tesla, the Steven Hawking, and be a much more direct conduit of intellectual discourse than people who live less long.

This actually has some advantages over just taking Einstein and making him a perpetual, because Einstein would have a personal attachment to his body of work. There are important parts of modern science that Einstein objected to, and that he might think conflicted with the work he was so personally invested in. This is a way primarchs could hugely improve the flow of ideas. In many parts of academia, as well as politics and other parts of public life, there are multiple opposing camps, and the big figures in those camps sometimes hate each other. There will be two scientists who are Titans in their field and absolutely hate each other, they will fight at conferences and one will sleep with the other's spouse. Primarchs don't have this problem because in this scenario they aren't the ones who come up with the ideas and hate everyone who questions them, and they don't have spouses or personal affairs.

Then you have primarchs for all corners of society. For instance, Corax is clearly interested in the cause of oppressed classes. You could have someone who interacted with John Brown, Gandhi, and Gloria Steinem (for example), and also didn't have the complicating problems of one of them being a violent failure, and of Ganhi having made some unflattering comments about race. Instead, you'd have a very effective platform for issues of social conflict, but one that wasn't responsible for originating and leading social movements.

All the primarchs of course have overlapping fields and can exchange memes between themselves, for instance just like your example of Tesla and Einstein, who worked on different ideas and levels and applications, there are several different science and technology primarchs like Mannus, Vulkan, and Perturabo, who would all have different but related fields and be able to transmit ideas between them.

 mondo80 wrote:
One of origin stories about the emperor was that he was a perpetual who made a bargain with the chaos gods for huge amounts of psychic power, he then flipped them off by not delivering his end of the bargain, all of humanity.

Since perpetuals can be made from normal humans, why bother with the primarchs and space marines in the first place? An army of immortal, near impossible to kill special forces would have caused less trouble than super human killing machines. Power armor can be made human size and there are a wide selection of pistols that can blow up tanks.

Their longevity would have also helped rediscover the lost tech better, imagine if Einstein or Tesla were still alive today.

Normal humans would've accepted them in time and the Horus heresy might not happened.

I have said it before and i will say it now.

The emperor should not have done away with the thunder warriors.

If Arik Taranis with limited resources was able to stabilize his condition the empeor could have done so as well.

Had the emperor perfected his thunder warriors and used them there would have been no need to make deals with the powers of the warp.

It would have taken longer probably to build the imperium but alot of the problems with the primarchs and space marines would have been avoided.

How is an army of immortals with potentially millenias of experience less trouble than totally killable superhuman kimling machines ?

None of it, Primarchs or Astartes or even perpetuals, were strictly necessary. You could do it all with overwhelming numbers of humans with lasguns, tanks and artillery, backed up by the might of a vast Imperial Fleet.

That said, what's the fun of not including legions of posthuman genetically engineered badasses known as Space Marines each led by an even more ridiculously OP Primarch? (With apologies to "40k lore in (about) a minute".)

Regarding perpetuals, I doubt there were ever enough of them to rely upon for military purposes. Those that were mucking about were doubtless extrordinary individuals who were both stubborn and quirky and may well have resented the likes of Da Emprah trying to get them all to cooperate as members of his team following his rules. Most would probably see themselves as rivals rather than allies of the Emperor and his plans.

I suspect the Emperor had to 'deal with' many Perpetuals on his ascent to power and during the Great Crusade. I also suspect entombment in a stasis field or simply cementing them into the foundation of the Imperial Palace figured heavily in his plans for the more intractable ones.

I'm sure that if the Emperor found perpetuals he felt he could trust he would incorporate them into his heirarchy. They'd probably be at the highest levels of the Imperial pyramid, engaged in whatever task best engaged their skills and interests... scientists, administrators, military commanders, captains of industry or whatever. You don't want to waste all that talent and experience by trying to make them into grunts.

Grunts are expendable, after all. Thousands of years of experience is not.

My two cents.

Warboss Gorhack wrote:
None of it, Primarchs or Astartes or even perpetuals, were strictly necessary. You could do it all with overwhelming numbers of humans with lasguns, tanks and artillery, backed up by the might of a vast Imperial Fleet.

That said, what's the fun of not including legions of posthuman genetically engineered badasses known as Space Marines each led by an even more ridiculously OP Primarch? (With apologies to "40k lore in (about) a minute".)

Regarding perpetuals, I doubt there were ever enough of them to rely upon for military purposes. Those that were mucking about were doubtless extrordinary individuals who were both stubborn and quirky and may well have resented the likes of Da Emprah trying to get them all to cooperate as members of his team following his rules. Most would probably see themselves as rivals rather than allies of the Emperor and his plans.

I suspect the Emperor had to 'deal with' many Perpetuals on his ascent to power and during the Great Crusade. I also suspect entombment in a stasis field or simply cementing them into the foundation of the Imperial Palace figured heavily in his plans for the more intractable ones.

I'm sure that if the Emperor found perpetuals he felt he could trust he would incorporate them into his heirarchy. They'd probably be at the highest levels of the Imperial pyramid, engaged in whatever task best engaged their skills and interests... scientists, administrators, military commanders, captains of industry or whatever. You don't want to waste all that talent and experience by trying to make them into grunts.

Grunts are expendable, after all. Thousands of years of experience is not.

My two cents.

Take out the primarchs/astartes and replcae them with stabilized thunder warriors and you get more or less the same result in conquering WITHOUT making deals with the gods of the warp and the issues that primarchs brought and very possibly no heresy.

Warboss Gorhack wrote:

That said, what's the fun of not including legions of posthuman genetically engineered badasses known as Space Marines each led by an even more ridiculously OP Primarch? (With apologies to "40k lore in (about) a minute"

Totalbiscuit

Astartes were entirely necessary. In that universe, there's stuff out there that your average GI Joe guardsman would run screaming from, regardless of how many mates he's got with him.
Throw a legion of Astartes with a Primarch leading them, and gak gets done(unless you're Lorgar, in which case you spend ages building shrines etc)

Nope, not needed at all.

You could get the same fearlessness with less than half the work using AdMech methods that have a much lower chance of killing the recipient and don't require deals with devils.

In space-fantasy war, equipment far outstrips personal ability unless your character is actually a wizard.

Ullanor would be the first Armageddon type war with out them. A endless meat grinder probably would have halted the whole crusade at the time.
Generic humie's didn't have the overwhelming numbers or strength back then. That's why they were created.


As for creating perpetuals instead.
Imagine them a bit like necromancer's in the old world. Because they had extended lives and didn't fear of death they took a long time to get anything done. A I'll do it next century thing. Then probably get locked into one way of thinking.

The big E wouldn't have been able to make the gains he did in such a relatively short time span without the astartes. Them being more durable, able to battle for months on end with hardly a break or sleep, on nearly any given planet due to what they require to eat...

Humans just aren't that durable, they also aren't the shock troops marines are.

It's easy to think of humans as an infinite resource in the 41st millennia, but they are not... Far from it actually. Marines, no matter how much they cost and take to train are in some ways more economical than just throwing humans into the meat grinder, because at some point you will run out of humans to throw at them, at least with marines there is a good chance you will get them back, even if they are damaged, they are much easier to repair due to them being able to stay alive. The amount of equipment that would have been wasted and unable to recover from the dead humans could also prove an issue, a huge one at some point.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Astartes were entirely necessary. In that universe, there's stuff out there that your average GI Joe guardsman would run screaming from, regardless of how many mates he's got with him.
Throw a legion of Astartes with a Primarch leading them, and gak gets done(unless you're Lorgar, in which case you spend ages building shrines etc)

Stabilized thunder warriors could have been used for the tasks that normal guardsmen where not equipped for..

My understanding was that Astartes are the stabilised Thunder Warriors.

I've heard Astartes were supposed to counter the Orks. Think about it. Armor to resist the thousands of bullets shot at you. Powered armor to allow you to fight them in CC. Bolter rounds are supposed to cause massive cavitation, highly effective against light armor and flesh. Orks tend to be lightly armored, or not armored at all. I'm guessing the Primarchs were supposed to counter large warbosses. Think about how long the Imperium/Ork rivalry has lasted.

For every person saying thunder warriors but stabilized. He did that, he created Marines

pm713 wrote:
My understanding was that Astartes are the stabilised Thunder Warriors.

They are not every astartes and every primarch was partially created with warp lore the emperor gained in a deal with the four great powers in the warp.

godking wrote:

pm713 wrote:
My understanding was that Astartes are the stabilised Thunder Warriors.

They are not every astartes and every primarch was partially created with warp lore the emperor gained in a deal with the four great powers in the warp.

Don't see how that stops them being a stable version of the Thunder Warriors.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Nope, not needed at all.

You could get the same fearlessness with less than half the work using AdMech methods that have a much lower chance of killing the recipient and don't require deals with devils.

In space-fantasy war, equipment far outstrips personal ability unless your character is actually a wizard.

I don't think the Emperor entirely trusted the Mechanicum lol.

godking wrote:

pm713 wrote:
My understanding was that Astartes are the stabilised Thunder Warriors.

They are not every astartes and every primarch was partially created with warp lore the emperor gained in a deal with the four great powers in the warp.

This information comes courtesy of those deceitful Chaos Gods though.

SideSwipe wrote:

godking wrote:

pm713 wrote:
My understanding was that Astartes are the stabilised Thunder Warriors.

They are not every astartes and every primarch was partially created with warp lore the emperor gained in a deal with the four great powers in the warp.

This information comes courtesy of those deceitful Chaos Gods though.

Emperor using stabilized thunder warriors equals no deals with the chaos gods no issues with primarchs super human warriors loyal to the emperor alone no divied loyalties an no treachery for the chaos gods to take advantage of.

Very possibly no heresy.

Maybe I missed something but I thought originally the astartes were only a reaction to the Primarchs disappearing.

They were not planned for otherwise.

TheWanderer wrote:
Maybe I missed something but I thought originally the astartes were only a reaction to the Primarchs disappearing.

They were not planned for otherwise.

Indeed. After the Primarchs were abducted by the Ruinous Powers the Emperor used the research he had to create the Space Marines. It's possible he was going to do it anyway I guess but it is implied that he wouldn't have done so. Not sure why; perhaps the Primarchs, raised by the Emperor, would have been as sufficient to lead unenhanced soldiers against the wider galaxy. Or he had another plan which required the Primarchs themselves and he was surprised at just how effective the Space Marines were and so didn't bother to revisit it once he'd reclaimed the Primarchs.

They would have had unenhanced sldiers, but te entire Imperium would have had the technology, research, and manufacturing led by Perturabo, Vulkan, and Ferrus Mannus. The army logistics, the civil services and civil engineering would have been led by Guilliman. The entire Imperium would have been a powerhouse of efficiency, science, and probably human rights and self improvement as led by Sangunius and Corax. There wouldn't have been any need for rapid invasion and shock tactics if the Imperium were an inexorably expanding golden city that xenos and corruption just bounced off of.

But that's the point.