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I'm not a fan of the Primarchs returning in general.

Primarchs were supposed to be mythic figures shrouded in mystery, beyond history, beyond legend, beyond understanding.

The 40k narrative that has driven this universe for so long was built upon a post-apocalyptic wasteland where nobody mattered, where insanity reigned and the world was beyond order or saving. Bringing back the Primarchs flies in the face of that. It's been one of my constant issues with 30k (and the ultimately terrible pettyness of the Primarchs and their motivations in many instances), but at least that was a distinct setting widely separated from the "40k" narrative.

This is what 40k is about.

Warhammer 40,000 Intro wrote:To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed. ..."

Bringing back the Primarchs really kinda poops on that in a lot of ways. Suddenly there is hope of progress and understanding, there are people who will be missed, there is the power of technology and science and rediscovery.

Blech.



(But seriously, at least keep the definitively dead primarchs dead).

Warhammer 40,000 Intro wrote:To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Cawl is the worst offender in this regard, not only relearning old tech but also making advancements and spreading them far and wide in the Imperium. Where are the inquisitors? Why has his execution not been scheduled already? Whether Guilliman is going to protect him or not there should be internal conflict as a result of his heretical actions.

 Vaktathi wrote:
(But seriously, at least keep the definitively dead primarchs dead).

Don't worry so much about death. Abaddon has died about a thousand times in games I've fielded him or gone against him. He always seems to get better.

I have heard from someone who claims to have a source high up at GW. All the surviving Primarchs will get released eventaully, only the deader-than-dead 4 will not be coming out and those are Horus, Curze, Ferrus and Sanguinius.

The reasoning for this is that their deaths are fundemental parts of the fluff to the point that their deaths define their "sons" even more than their lives did.

Take with a large pinch of salt of course but like all the best rumours, it sounds plausible.

Curze coming back as a Spirit Host Primarch would be cool. Perhaps his whole life he existed both in real space and warp space. Perhaps Spectral Curze was the source of his prescience and visions...

sossen wrote:

Warhammer 40,000 Intro wrote:To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Cawl is the worst offender in this regard, not only relearning old tech but also making advancements and spreading them far and wide in the Imperium. Where are the inquisitors? Why has his execution not been scheduled already? Whether Guilliman is going to protect him or not there should be internal conflict as a result of his heretical actions.

Considering how much of the 40k franchise is skewed towards Imperium armies, I think having more internal conflict is a good thing. I struggle to find fluffy reasons for my Space Marines to keep fighting Imperial Guard, Adeptus Mechanicus, and other Space Marines over and over and over again. It pretty much devolves into "Because of a misunderstanding, they're fighting each other to the death."

Maybe a little more conflict in a hopeful Imperium is a good thing. Bring back more Primarchs, but because of the way the Imperium has changed, maybe a returned Lion or Russ will see the solution vastly differently? Suddenly factions like Space Wolves and Dark Angels are going it their own way and they're not afraid to fight to have it their way.

I think the plot that GW is writing is evolving, and in a year or two we're going to see a very different world.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Bringing back the Primarchs really kinda poops on that in a lot of ways. Suddenly there is hope of progress and understanding, there are people who will be missed, there is the power of technology and science and rediscovery.

Blech.



(But seriously, at least keep the definitively dead primarchs dead).

To be fair Chaos is also doubling down so it kinda evens out.

It seems like the Lion will be next out the gate, what with Cypher running around and all. As for the next daemon primarch, I suspect it will be Fulgrim since he played an active role in The Gathering Storm.

After that I bet Russ and Angron will arrive, since the Space Wolves have their own codex and Angron heralds a chaos god. Russ' last quote does put a bit of doubt in my mind, but in the 40k universe "the final battle" could last a thousand years. That said, I'm glad the story is moving forward and I hope they keep pushing it.

As for the rumors of a loyalist turning traitor and a traitor proving loyal, I really think they could pull that off by leaving uncertainties where they lie. Would Guilliman be able to completely trust the Lion? Alpharius is actually loyal! Or is he... I could even see them develope a bit of a second Imperial civil war amongst the Great Rift and rampant chaos.

Personally, I would love a 40k Corax model. But I know he's not high on the list of likelies. Corax plus a Raven Guard upgrade sprue to provide some pointy Primaris heads. That'd be cool.

I really want Fulgrim to be next, but I expect Angron to be next, with all the Armageddon murmurings. Hoping that the Lion will come very soon.

Also the whole 'loyalist turning traitor' and vice versa thing has no basis in reality; the original source had no credibility, and I do not see this happening at all.

I personally think GW is ruining the dystopian setting by bringing primarchs back. But apparently they are seeing the dollar signs, so it's gonna happen regardless. I could see Russ, Fulgrim, Lionel returning, but if they brought back Ferrus or Sanguinius for me that'd be crossing the line...and i'd be very concerned about the future of how GW is treating their setting where death has no meaning.

I do wonder whether any xenos factions will get new releases interspersed with all these primarchs and updated chaos factions. I love the primarchs and personally am fine with them heading releases for the next few years, but I would feel a bit bad for those ork players, necron players, and others.

excessivemagnetization wrote:
I do wonder whether any xenos factions will get new releases interspersed with all these primarchs and updated chaos factions. I love the primarchs and personally am fine with them heading releases for the next few years, but I would feel a bit bad for those ork players, necron players, and others.

Well I would hope that something along the lines of the following will happen:

Orks - They get their rules fixed, for a start, as they're in a terrible place right now. Ghaz is already the biggest baddest Ork, so he needs a buff to primarch status (which he should be anyway), and his current position gets filled by a standard warboss or a new named character warboss, either way. They also reintroduce Zogwort as the Ork librarian equivalent character.

Eldar - Same as Orks, Eldrad is the biggest "character" they have (that I know of), so he gets buffed to primarch status (I'm not sure what he's like right now actually, but I'm pretty sure he's not at that level).

Necron - Imotek or maybe introduce a C'tan god character to be the primarch equivalent?

Tau - Actually don't know about these guys... as I recall they evolved super-fast and pretty recently, and they're all pretty "normal", so their primarch equivalent would have to be someone in a high powered battlesuit maybe. They already have a bunch of those though.

Tyranids - Well they don't really have fluff so it's easiest for them, just give them a Hive Tyrant Queen. Then you can have a Queen vs Tau Supreme Battlesuit fight. All you'd need is a necron torn in half somewhere and you'd be good to go.



Anyway you get the idea. It wouldn't be hard to give all the races a primarch equivalent, in most cases without even needed new models, just fluff and rules changes.

Though to be honest, I'd prefer if, instead of buffing ghazzy and eldrad to primarch levels, GW instead nerfed grillman down to their level instead.

I want Vect and Cegorach... even tho im making my Yncarne a Cegorach, i still want one.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I'm not a fan of the Primarchs returning in general.

Primarchs were supposed to be mythic figures shrouded in mystery, beyond history, beyond legend, beyond understanding.

The 40k narrative that has driven this universe for so long was built upon a post-apocalyptic wasteland where nobody mattered, where insanity reigned and the world was beyond order or saving. Bringing back the Primarchs flies in the face of that. It's been one of my constant issues with 30k (and the ultimately terrible pettyness of the Primarchs and their motivations in many instances), but at least that was a distinct setting widely separated from the "40k" narrative.

This is what 40k is about.

Warhammer 40,000 Intro wrote:To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed. ..."

Bringing back the Primarchs really kinda poops on that in a lot of ways. Suddenly there is hope of progress and understanding, there are people who will be missed, there is the power of technology and science and rediscovery.

Blech.



(But seriously, at least keep the definitively dead primarchs dead).

^This. GW needs to tread lightly. For many, the absence of the primarchs was the reason they were drawn to the 40K setting & not 30K. They like mankind being on the ropes, surrounded, hopeless in a empire of decay. Bringing back the primarchs & creating new technology contradicts that. It gives humanity hope. 40k is also quickly turning away from a high gothic grimdark sci fi setting into a drama. There is too much emphasis already on the primarchs & their emotional turmoils. If this continues, I can definitely see the 40K community splitting & a new "legacy" community emerging prior to Abaddon's Crusade in order to fix the travesty that is the most recent lore.

Most people aren't opposed to the story progressing. Its the way its being done.

* New technology should only be introduced via the discovery of lost STC facilities.
* Fabius Bile should have been the one to create the first primaris marines. His entire lore was about him working on them for 10,000 years. They should have been the ones to attack Cadia. In desperate response, Cawl should have reintroduced the thunder warriors.
* Primarchs could return SLOWLY. 1-2 every five real life years. Everything written about them should be from commoner/guardsman perspective. Myth, lore, legend. Keep their emotional baggage in 30K. This isn't a soap opera.

next week on "As the Primarchs Return"......

I would like to think that the Primarchs returning is a sign that scheiss IS that bad.

Many did say that they'd return when it is bad enuff, well now maybe it is bad.

Maybe something like the above slow return would work

Re some of the hints in Master of Mankind - bringin back Ferrus Manus is perfectly doable - but he's not leading the iron hands:

I'm not at all opposed to the current direction of the fluff. Maybe I'm unimaginative, but I can't really see an interesting progression of the story if things don't get a little better for the imperium (assuming a human-centric point of view). The imperium was already at rock bottom before Guilliman woke up. No amount of more chaos or tyranids or whatever would really make the state of affairs any worse. By providing mankind a little hope, GW has put stakes back into the battles. There's something that can be lost now.

But I can respect what you guys are saying about losing that grim-dark appeal.

GW's plans for the primarchs will be based on profit margins, nothing more. If they can be shoe-horned/retconned into the fluff, they will be. As long as people keep buying that plastic crack, that's all they care about.

excessivemagnetization wrote:
I'm not at all opposed to the current direction of the fluff. Maybe I'm unimaginative, but I can't really see an interesting progression of the story if things don't get a little better for the imperium (assuming a human-centric point of view). The imperium was already at rock bottom before Guilliman woke up. No amount of more chaos or tyranids or whatever would really make the state of affairs any worse. By providing mankind a little hope, GW has put stakes back into the battles. There's something that can be lost now.

But I can respect what you guys are saying about losing that grim-dark appeal.

This ^. The Imperium is already crumbling, I don't know what more they could have done without bringing the Primarchs back. If they did the whole new warp rift opening without Guilliman it would just be more of the same. Just like a new hive fleet turning up or a new massive Ork Waaggh, at this point it's basically a "Oh look another one, isn't that cute." from me. By allowing the Primachs to return they can improve things a little bit in some places and shift the story a little bit to make people actually care again. Sure Guilliman has sorted out the inner portion of the Imperium now but the parts isolated by the warp rift are unknown and in bad shape but could possibly be helped by the Imperium that isn't a wreck thanks to Lord Smurf himself. It creates an interesting story rather than the same copy and paste with replacing the name of the alien species attacking that we have had for the past 20 odd years.

I get that people like the Grim Dark, I do also, I grew up on it, it's comfortable, I understand that but I want new plot, new stories, new adventures. I don't want to be reading about fighting off Hive Fleet "We ran out of names" attacking the exact same Imperium 10 years from now.

This is 8th edition! When this edition ends, so does the universe. So all the Primarchs are waking up for judgement day. Then Horus shall return riding his three-headed daemon mount as the herald of the apocalypse and the Emperor will wake up to save the universe one last time with McGuffin no Jutsu.

I think it would be cool if when all the loyalist primarchs return that there would be some kind of internal conflict among the imperium and when they are vulnerable a new massive fleet of tyranids attack. Or the primaris guys turn out to be chaos spies or something like that.

excessivemagnetization wrote:
I'm not at all opposed to the current direction of the fluff. Maybe I'm unimaginative, but I can't really see an interesting progression of the story if things don't get a little better for the imperium (assuming a human-centric point of view). The imperium was already at rock bottom before Guilliman woke up. No amount of more chaos or tyranids or whatever would really make the state of affairs any worse. By providing mankind a little hope, GW has put stakes back into the battles. There's something that can be lost now.

But I can respect what you guys are saying about losing that grim-dark appeal.

The Imperium had massive amounts of land, and would have been easy to shift the narrative a bit if GW wanted to. They just failed and left it until it was at its worst state.

The people at the head of design have no real sense of the setting they have. You can do a lot when you have an entire galaxy to explore, in a way they chose the least interesting way to progress.
Honestly there was so much that could have been done before if they had just put some effort into it. A little thought over the years would have been better than this half assed return Narrative we have now.

 vonjankmon wrote:

excessivemagnetization wrote:
I'm not at all opposed to the current direction of the fluff. Maybe I'm unimaginative, but I can't really see an interesting progression of the story if things don't get a little better for the imperium (assuming a human-centric point of view). The imperium was already at rock bottom before Guilliman woke up. No amount of more chaos or tyranids or whatever would really make the state of affairs any worse. By providing mankind a little hope, GW has put stakes back into the battles. There's something that can be lost now.

But I can respect what you guys are saying about losing that grim-dark appeal.

This ^. The Imperium is already crumbling, I don't know what more they could have done without bringing the Primarchs back. If they did the whole new warp rift opening without Guilliman . . .

The galaxy would have changed more than it has for 10 millenia, and the Imperium would/could have been shocked into change. They could have rebooted the Guard with better equipment. They could have tossed the 1000ish limit on Space Marine chapters. They could have used the heretical affinity of faction of the Mechanicus with Necron technology to enact a plan to freeze the Warp rifts back out of reality. They could have actively sought an alliance with Eldar to attempt to out-maneuver Chaos using the webway.

But instead they brought back a primarch and made bigger marines instead. Bigger marines is good for sales, I get it, but they didn't have to bring back Guilliman.

Btw, totally fine with the Daemon Primarchs. They're immortal and it's thematic that the villains who sold their souls are still alive while their heroic counterparts are dead and gone.

Well they did actually implement one of your suggestions, the 10K Primaris marines running around for a while sort of counts as tossing the 1000ish limit on Space Marine chapters.

And besides I don't really think the 1000 limit is a big deal, there are already several chapters that outright ignore it (Black Templars) or that functionally ignore it (Dark Angels and their successors) that bring the legions back really won't change anything.

But regardless there are tons of different directions they could have gone with the story, not everyone will like the one they pick but I don't think the current direction is terrible.

 vonjankmon wrote:

And besides I don't really think the 1000 limit is a big deal, there are already several chapters that outright ignore it (Black Templars) or that functionally ignore it (Dark Angels and their successors) that bring the legions back really won't change anything.

The Black Templar do it by being split up and the Dark Angels are technically separate and still distrusted by other Imperial authorities.

Guilliman comes back to life and quickly sets about reversing his prior decisions. He becomes the sole leader of the Imperium instead of having the High Lords do it, he gets to command the Custodes because he's that awesome, he revising the previous restrictions he'd placed on the Adeptus Astartes so that he can attain more military power (why not just increase the number of Chapters?), he's turning Ultramar back into it's little empire, he's putting Primaris as the head of worlds. The amount of alarm bells ringing must be deafening the Inquisition and yet we're seeing nothing about it. The guys actions are completely counter to the ones shortly before his stasis-entombment and he was revived with the help of xenos but everybody just bows to him. Unless the Emperor has been telling everybody that Guilliman's totally legit it doesn't make sense in setting. So yeah, breaking the limits is a big deal because of the way they've done it.

I can only hope that when the next Loyalist Primarch comes they actually have some conflict because otherwise rightfully suspicious and paranoid structure of the Imperium is just doing an inexplicable 180.

I can totally see the Lion being the next loyalist Primarch as he provides the counter point to Roboute's reboot of the Imperium. With their home worlds on opposite sides of a rift, and the two brothers on opposite sides of a rift from the end of the HH (the Imperium Secundus storyline) they are nicely setup for a second stab at the feud with a repeat of Roboute's new Imperium Secundus.

I think there will definitely be conflict between Guilliman and Russ/Jonson/whoever comes next and I can't wait. The Lion and the Inquisition being suspicious of Guilliman while the Inquisition continues to be suspicious of the DA? Lots of potential for infighting and interesting narrative.

I just want my drunken space viking primarch, but without the Wulfen crap they keep drowing the chapter in.

^Amen

Many great narrative suggestions have been brought up, nearly all of which could take place in an upcoming installment. Discord among primarchs and the inquisition? I think it likely. An alliance with the Eldar? Well, yeah, sorta. I'd say resurecting Guilliman created a shaky one. Incorporating necron tech into mechanicum designs? Cawl's pretty much got free reign to do whatever he wants right now. I don't think reintroducing primarchs put many limitations on the 40k universe. Nor do I think it shrunk the scale of it. I will concede that they're presence lessens their mystique, as someone (sorry, I forgot who) mentioned. But I would argue that even that does not make the primarchs any less mythical. They are demigods among men, and they still feel so to me. It is for that reason that their reappearance has me so excited. But of course, you are welcome to disagree.