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I see a lot of comments about how the introduction of perpetuals in the HH series was really bad and has spoiled the setting to some degree. I hit a brick wall with the HH series when I got one particularly bad novel, so I only know of three perpetuals:

The emperor
John grammaticus
Vulkan

The idea of immortals, true immortals that can’t be killed, isn’t the craziest idea in the 40K universe (or is it?). The emperor has always been thought of as being around “forever”. The exploitation of John grammaticus by the cabal is good story telling, each time he does for them he prays it’s the last one. And for vulkan, well of the emperor is immortal it makes sense that one of the primarchs inherits the power.

I’m not defending the concept but from the above I haven’t seen anything that I think is that bad.

Who are the other perpetuals, are there only human perpetuals? Do we know why they are perpetual.

The big one you've missed is Ollanius Persson / Ollanius Pius, the retcon of the lone Imperial soldier who tried to defend the Emperor from Horus during the siege.

The list from Lexicanum is:
The Emperor
Erda
Vulkan (artificial)
John Grammaticus (artificial)
Oll Persson
Anval Thawn
Damon Prytanis
Alivia Sureka
Cyrene Valantion
Mordrac
Malcador the Sigillite
Dalia Cythera (artificial)

They're missing the pre-unification tyrants mentioned in Saturnine, like Cardinal Tang.

How is malcadore a perpetual, the golden throne killed him after about 5 mins

I think mrFickle is right that Malcador wasn't a perpetual. At least I see no mention of it on his wiki page, it could be somewhere else.

I think my issue, personally, with perpetuals is it just lowers the stakes for that character. If they're in a conflict there can obviously still be consequences for being shot to bits and "dying", but they don't actually die.

Topic got dinged by another poster, saw thread title and immediately had.. flashbacks. False alarm thankfully.

Malcador has always been a powerful psyker who may or may not have had his lifespan enhanced by the Emperor, or through his own psychic powers.

Biggest problem with them is, if it were just one or two, sure. But the setting is more or less flooded with them and their little side stories that drag and detract from an already bloated and convoluted series of novels.

It also dehumanised Ollanius Pius and so the Emperor.

Being a Perpetual doesn't mean you can't die, it just means you'll regenerate from most forms of harm. Malcador probably had his soul ripped apart or some gak.

It is a bland, binary power. Either it is ridiculously powerful allowing regeneration well in excess of what almost any encounter could inflict or the opponent has a special way around it so now getting wounded means even more than it would without powers. If it was a weaker power it would be far more interesting. So much of it being used as a plot device is simply in the not-aging bit, which could have just been a thing on its own and doesn't need or imply super regen to work.

It allows characters to break plot armor without consequence. Normally protagonists run through crazy situations largely unharmed even if it would be harmful or lethal to an equivalent non-character. When the protagonists can regenerate so well many authors use it as an excuse to dance around without plot armor. It feels contrived to just show off how cool the power is, like when a newly-born superhero just *happens* to turn a back alley into some violent criminals who attack allowing the hero to use their powers and get right to saving the day within minutes! It also calls out the plot armor on the other characters, which just makes it stick out and look ugly.

But Emps is a living god; he gets special gak and it doesn't break the rules.

They are also all written in a samey way. "Oh, I am so old, I've seen so much and am so knowing" "wink!"

And the Heresy as a series has a crapload of fat already. These guys are the goosegrease on top of the lard. They should have been cut, and I think are only included to make up the (suspiciously consistent) page counts.

I agree 100% that it undermines consequence in the setting. For me, Vulkan is the worst example. Consider the impact of the deaths of Sanguinius, Manus, Curze, Apharius/Omegon....and then you have Vulkan.

Frankly, I find the idea that Primarchs can be cloned (including somehow the Warp energy they were infused with), equally teeth-grindingly awful.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Being a Perpetual doesn't mean you can't die, it just means you'll regenerate from most forms of harm. Malcador probably had his soul ripped apart or some gak.

Doesn’t vulkan regenerate entirely from a single cell?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 harlokin wrote:
I agree 100% that it undermines consequence in the setting. For me, Vulkan is the worst example. Consider the impact of the deaths of Sanguinius, Manus, Curze, Apharius/Omegon....and then you have Vulkan.

Frankly, I find the idea that Primarchs can be cloned (including somehow the Warp energy they were infused with), equally teeth-grindingly awful.

Isn’t it all to do with genetic memory or something? Doesn’t fulgrim (as a clone) always remember killing ferrus? And still makes the same decisions as the real one?

So the primarchs did what the did by design wether on purpose or not. Or maybe there are so many authors the stories will never properly align ha!

mrFickle wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Being a Perpetual doesn't mean you can't die, it just means you'll regenerate from most forms of harm. Malcador probably had his soul ripped apart or some gak.

Doesn’t vulkan regenerate entirely from a single cell?

40k makes a massive distinction between the soul and the body. Getting reduced to a single cell is (comparatively) not a big deal. Getting your soul shredded is game over for pretty much everyone, no matter how they're evading death.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 harlokin wrote:
I agree 100% that it undermines consequence in the setting. For me, Vulkan is the worst example. Consider the impact of the deaths of Sanguinius, Manus, Curze, Apharius/Omegon....and then you have Vulkan.

Frankly, I find the idea that Primarchs can be cloned (including somehow the Warp energy they were infused with), equally teeth-grindingly awful.

Isn’t it all to do with genetic memory or something? Doesn’t fulgrim (as a clone) always remember killing ferrus? And still makes the same decisions as the real one?

Well, we don't actually know. Fabius Bile put the kibosh on the latest Fulgrim clone before it got to that point. He was more worried about the clone's influence over others than its memories. And he quite rightly feared the Cult of Personality effect, as even his own creations were suborning themselves to the cloned primarch without question, and that much deference to authority was not in his plans, but rather a flaw to fix.

NinthMusketeer wrote:It allows characters to break plot armor without consequence.

Kind of? Its more a super-powered version OF plot armor, imo.
It allows the characters to act without consequences, which is much worse, as it both cheapens the achievements and makes other characters pointless. There is no reason for other characters to risk anything when the immortal can just go out and fix problems without danger.

---
@Da Boss. Yeah, that too. They don't add much beyond a 'wink' reference to Olde Timey things, but they move the narrative even further from a human scale, understandable one. There's no benefit to tossing them in, just more gak that has to be explained or exists just to muck up the narrative.

It's also a concept which could very easily have built upon or linked to existing older background (Sensei), but just doesn't, and replicates the basic idea unnecessarily.

 Llamahead wrote:
It also dehumanised Ollanius Pius and so the Emperor.

Not in any meaningful way to the setting.

He still dies, inspires sacrifice, yadda yadda yadda. It's just that he knows he'll come back.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Llamahead wrote:
It also dehumanised Ollanius Pius and so the Emperor.

Not in any meaningful way to the setting.

He still dies, inspires sacrifice, yadda yadda yadda. It's just that he knows he'll come back.

It's not really a sacrifice if he doesn't expect to die.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Llamahead wrote:
It also dehumanised Ollanius Pius and so the Emperor.

Not in any meaningful way to the setting.

He still dies, inspires sacrifice, yadda yadda yadda. It's just that he knows he'll come back.

It's not really a sacrifice if he doesn't expect to die.

It is in the eyes of others, who don't know that he'll just come back to life.

And this is where the problem seems to lie with the Pius story. We were totally okay with the idea that some lone Imperial Army trooper somehow got onto Horus' flagship and made it so far in...yet the part that people are balking at is that the dude was secretly a Perpetual, who could come back to life?

The problem with them is it’s lazy and very cliched. Not in a good way like retro cool cliche but in a these will sap all the peril and jeopardy from the situation.

Pius is a classic example of how badly it’s done. The whole point of him was he was a normal simple human, the most basic and vulnerable thing going and he sacrificed himself to save the emperor and what horus did to him, the very person horus was built to serve and protect, showed to the emperor how far horus had fallen a nod that there was no saving him. So the emperor killed him. Pius was an example of the importance of simple humanity. The best part of the story was that it may well have been entirely false or changed to give the average human a hero like them. A normal human who could change the universe. The fact he got on the flagship and all that, well the story changed a lot over the years. It was initially on the walls the teleport to the flagship etc grew out of the story later. What mattered was the legend that a normal human changed the course of the war.

Instead they wrote him as an unkillable superhero who was mates with the emperor and had been at every important event in the twentieth century. And to top it all off they made his name some crappy pun on old person.

Perpetuals are an example of the dumbing down and loss of nuance and subtlety of the back ground. It’s the “marvelfication” of 40K.

I've mostly only read the Grammaticus stuff. Personally, I don't really mind perpetuals, but they feel slightly out of nowhere. Like, 40k has tons of bonkers stuff, but most of it feels more or less at home in the setting.

When I first met Grammaticus in Legion, I was just like, "Oh. I guess this is a thing that also exists but isn't important enough to have come up in anything else I've read."

It's sort of like that sapient... nanite... AI... super weapon thing that shows up in one of the Battles of the Space Marines books. Or better example, the chatty AI inside the super advanced pre-dark age ship that shows up in Daemon World. They're conceptually neat enough, but they aren't allowed to actually impact the larger setting, and they're too rare to become frequent fixtures of the larger setting, so all you can really *do* with the knowledge that they exist is go, "Oh. Neat."

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Llamahead wrote:
It also dehumanised Ollanius Pius and so the Emperor.

Not in any meaningful way to the setting.

He still dies, inspires sacrifice, yadda yadda yadda. It's just that he knows he'll come back.

It's not really a sacrifice if he doesn't expect to die.

It is in the eyes of others, who don't know that he'll just come back to life.

And this is where the problem seems to lie with the Pius story. We were totally okay with the idea that some lone Imperial Army trooper somehow got onto Horus' flagship and made it so far in...yet the part that people are balking at is that the dude was secretly a Perpetual, who could come back to life?

Well, a bunch of troops teleported up with the Emperor, Sanguinius and Dorn (and were scattered because warp magic, then died horribly). So being up there isn't a mystery.
But yes, strangely not actually sacrificing undercuts the symbolism of the sacrifice. Even if its just to the readers.


But really, the original version of the story (without him at all) was better. The focus was entirely on the emotional conflict between the Emperor and Horus.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I've mostly only read the Grammaticus stuff. Personally, I don't really mind perpetuals, but they feel slightly out of nowhere. Like, 40k has tons of bonkers stuff, but most of it feels more or less at home in the setting.

When I first met Grammaticus in Legion, I was just like, "Oh. I guess this is a thing that also exists but isn't important enough to have come up in anything else I've read."

It's sort of like that sapient... nanite... AI... super weapon thing that shows up in one of the Battles of the Space Marines books. Or better example, the chatty AI inside the super advanced pre-dark age ship that shows up in Daemon World. They're conceptually neat enough, but they aren't allowed to actually impact the larger setting, and they're too rare to become frequent fixtures of the larger setting, so all you can really *do* with the knowledge that they exist is go, "Oh. Neat."

Exactly; the moment he is no longer a normal human it kills the importance. Even giving him a name or any sort of identity starts damaging it; the entire meaning lay in him being some unidentified human that did not matter in anything except that moment.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I've mostly only read the Grammaticus stuff. Personally, I don't really mind perpetuals, but they feel slightly out of nowhere. Like, 40k has tons of bonkers stuff, but most of it feels more or less at home in the setting.

When I first met Grammaticus in Legion, I was just like, "Oh. I guess this is a thing that also exists but isn't important enough to have come up in anything else I've read."

It's sort of like that sapient... nanite... AI... super weapon thing that shows up in one of the Battles of the Space Marines books. Or better example, the chatty AI inside the super advanced pre-dark age ship that shows up in Daemon World. They're conceptually neat enough, but they aren't allowed to actually impact the larger setting, and they're too rare to become frequent fixtures of the larger setting, so all you can really *do* with the knowledge that they exist is go, "Oh. Neat."

Exactly; the moment he is no longer a normal human it kills the importance. Even giving him a name or any sort of identity starts damaging it; the entire meaning lay in him being some unidentified human that did not matter in anything except that moment.

Eh. I think anyone who looks for any significant 'meaning' or inspiration or a place in the world from their tabletop wargame would be better placed looking elsewhere. Even when it comes down to the best stuff, 30K or 40K , it's effectively reading the equivalent of a McDonalds cheeseburger. Sure, sometimes it really hits the spot, but sometimes you ingest it because there's no better option at that moment. Either way, it usually doesn't fill you up properly, and it's all trash at the end of the day, good or bad experience. Great culinary/literary input it is not.

The trick is to just pick a book up, see if you can wring enjoyment from it personally, and if not move on to the next. Too many authors, too variable a plot, and too big a universe to take seriously. It's a bit like reading new books about Sherlock Holmes written by fans.Maybe good, maybe bad. Sure, whatever. Doesn't add or detract much from my setting as a rule of thumb. The Wyldhunt guy above has the right of it. Onto the next book....

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Llamahead wrote:
It also dehumanised Ollanius Pius and so the Emperor.

Not in any meaningful way to the setting.

He still dies, inspires sacrifice, yadda yadda yadda. It's just that he knows he'll come back.

It's not really a sacrifice if he doesn't expect to die.

It is in the eyes of others, who don't know that he'll just come back to life.

And this is where the problem seems to lie with the Pius story. We were totally okay with the idea that some lone Imperial Army trooper somehow got onto Horus' flagship and made it so far in...yet the part that people are balking at is that the dude was secretly a Perpetual, who could come back to life?

I wasn't particularly ok with that narrative, actually; because that wasn't the actual narrative.

Pius was presented as a character who in-universe was regarded as special because he got to Horus etc., but we didn't actually have a narrative saying that he actually did what was claimed of him (instead we had an Imperial Fist and a Custodian, depending on source).

In fairness, we still might not have Pius intervene in the final showdown between Horus and Big E, but I'm not holding my breath that he won't, and/or that we won't have our eXpectAtiOns SubvErTeD by the final battle.

 Ketara wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I've mostly only read the Grammaticus stuff. Personally, I don't really mind perpetuals, but they feel slightly out of nowhere. Like, 40k has tons of bonkers stuff, but most of it feels more or less at home in the setting.

When I first met Grammaticus in Legion, I was just like, "Oh. I guess this is a thing that also exists but isn't important enough to have come up in anything else I've read."

It's sort of like that sapient... nanite... AI... super weapon thing that shows up in one of the Battles of the Space Marines books. Or better example, the chatty AI inside the super advanced pre-dark age ship that shows up in Daemon World. They're conceptually neat enough, but they aren't allowed to actually impact the larger setting, and they're too rare to become frequent fixtures of the larger setting, so all you can really *do* with the knowledge that they exist is go, "Oh. Neat."

Exactly; the moment he is no longer a normal human it kills the importance. Even giving him a name or any sort of identity starts damaging it; the entire meaning lay in him being some unidentified human that did not matter in anything except that moment.

Eh. I think anyone who looks for any significant 'meaning' or inspiration or a place in the world from their tabletop wargame would be better placed looking elsewhere. Even when it comes down to the best stuff, 30K or 40K , it's effectively reading the equivalent of a McDonalds cheeseburger. Sure, sometimes it really hits the spot, but sometimes you ingest it because there's no better option at that moment. Either way, it usually doesn't fill you up properly, and it's all trash at the end of the day, good or bad experience. Great culinary/literary input it is not.

The trick is to just pick a book up, see if you can wring enjoyment from it personally, and if not move on to the next. Too many authors, too variable a plot, and too big a universe to take seriously. It's a bit like reading new books about Sherlock Holmes written by fans.Maybe good, maybe bad. Sure, whatever. Doesn't add or detract much from my setting as a rule of thumb. The Wyldhunt guy above has the right of it. Onto the next book....

I don't think that analogy works very well. Lower quality food is about price to consume and convenience, which doesn't translate. Even if it did, going from a cheeseburger to an empty bun is a pretty big downgrade.

But then it does work in a certain way. 'High quality' writing, like 'refined' art in general is very much similar gourmet food; a tiny amount of content that has been surrounded by decoration to look fancy. That or it is written so as to be obscure enough that people can read into it indefinitely, which is like saying a muddy puddle must be deep because you can't see the bottom.

And finally, really? The 'this is all trash and I am above it' argument? Really?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I don't think that analogy works very well. Lower quality food is about price to consume and convenience, which doesn't translate. Even if it did, going from a cheeseburger to an empty bun is a pretty big downgrade.

But then it does work in a certain way. 'High quality' writing, like 'refined' art in general is very much similar gourmet food; a tiny amount of content that has been surrounded by decoration to look fancy. That or it is written so as to be obscure enough that people can read into it indefinitely, which is like saying a muddy puddle must be deep because you can't see the bottom.

And finally, really? The 'this is all trash and I am above it' argument? Really?

Nice strawman. Never said I was above anything. And if you honestly read Ciaphas Cain or Gaunt's Ghosts and don't see the copy paste hack job from Flashman and Sharpe, or you flick through the latest adventures of Uriel Ventris and consider it a thought provoking and masterful use of the written word, that's entirely your department.

As far as I'm concerned, it's trash. But I like trash. Nothing wrong with liking rubbishy stuff. That cheeseburger is surprisingly satisfying a lot of the time. As is a Snakebite when you're half-pissed. And many other crap things. There's a reason my mum buys Heat magazine to read over a full English. Not every book has to be the finest literature to be downright enjoyable. Only pretentious people get upset about defending the relative merit of things like factory-mill write-to-order paperback sci-fi. And that's because they're insecure and think it demeans them somehow if something they enjoy is rubbish.

I like rubbish books. I like trashy music. I like art as subtle as a shotgun to the face. I draw pleasure from these things, and I'm not ashamed to say so. It doesn't mean I don't like fancier stuff as well. It doesn't mean that I have poor taste. I just know what I enjoy. So when I flick open my latest trashy 40K spinoff crap from Gav Thorpe or whoever, I'll either enjoy it or I won't and then I'll shelve or resell it accordingly.

To come full circle, the Perpetuals were alright. They didn't add much, but they didn't really take anything away from my setting. Because my setting is ultimately trashy sci-fi. I just don't take it seriously enough to care if there's a slightly mediocre plot twist. On account of the fact that that's what makes up half the sodding stories! If that was a problem for me, I wouldn't be reading them!

I like a McDonald's cheeseburger. First thing I ate when I was on leave from the sandbox. Thing is, I don't like pickles on my cheeseburger, and the Perpetuals are the pickles on my otherwise very satisfying HH cheeseburger. If I could special order my HH, I would ask them to hold the Perpetuals.

Anybody else really want a cheeseburger right about now? I know I do.

 Ketara wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I don't think that analogy works very well. Lower quality food is about price to consume and convenience, which doesn't translate. Even if it did, going from a cheeseburger to an empty bun is a pretty big downgrade.

But then it does work in a certain way. 'High quality' writing, like 'refined' art in general is very much similar gourmet food; a tiny amount of content that has been surrounded by decoration to look fancy. That or it is written so as to be obscure enough that people can read into it indefinitely, which is like saying a muddy puddle must be deep because you can't see the bottom.

And finally, really? The 'this is all trash and I am above it' argument? Really?

Nice strawman. Never said I was above anything. And if you honestly read Ciaphas Cain or Gaunt's Ghosts and don't see the copy paste hack job from Flashman and Sharpe, or you flick through the latest adventures of Uriel Ventris and consider it a thought provoking and masterful use of the written word, that's entirely your department.

As far as I'm concerned, it's trash. But I like trash. Nothing wrong with liking rubbishy stuff. That cheeseburger is surprisingly satisfying a lot of the time. As is a Snakebite when you're half-pissed. And many other crap things. There's a reason my mum buys Heat magazine to read over a full English. Not every book has to be the finest literature to be downright enjoyable. Only pretentious people get upset about defending the relative merit of things like factory-mill write-to-order paperback sci-fi. And that's because they're insecure and think it demeans them somehow if something they enjoy is rubbish.

I like rubbish books. I like trashy music. I like art as subtle as a shotgun to the face. I draw pleasure from these things, and I'm not ashamed to say so. It doesn't mean I don't like fancier stuff as well. It doesn't mean that I have poor taste. I just know what I enjoy. So when I flick open my latest trashy 40K spinoff crap from Gav Thorpe or whoever, I'll either enjoy it or I won't and then I'll shelve or resell it accordingly.

To come full circle, the Perpetuals were alright. They didn't add much, but they didn't really take anything away from my setting. Because my setting is ultimately trashy sci-fi. I just don't take it seriously enough to care if there's a slightly mediocre plot twist. On account of the fact that that's what makes up half the sodding stories! If that was a problem for me, I wouldn't be reading them!

Yeah, I forgot that on the internet posts are more commonly taken as literal without a reading of tone or passive-aggressive phrasing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
IAnybody else really want a cheeseburger right about now? I know I do.

While Dakka may destroy many things, I did not expect that to include my diet!

TangoTwoBravo wrote:I like a McDonald's cheeseburger. First thing I ate when I was on leave from the sandbox. Thing is, I don't like pickles on my cheeseburger, and the Perpetuals are the pickles on my otherwise very satisfying HH cheeseburger. If I could special order my HH, I would ask them to hold the Perpetuals.

Anybody else really want a cheeseburger right about now? I know I do.

Sometimes the worst thing is when you try eating a new variant of cheeseburger for the first time and it doesn't give you that satisfying feeling. Because you sit there and go, 'Hang on a minute, this is crap, I was supposed to enjoy this! It's why I'm here! Give me my greasy buzz! I didn't pay five quid for the Mcwhopper Bacon Deluxa Pastrami Limited Edition to not enjoy it!' Then for the next five times you're in there, you very deliberately only order your favourite type, because if you're going to eat gak, you want to feel you're doing it right!

Much like trashy paper-mill sci-fi. You try the new author once, maybe twice; and then you learn that no matter how shiny the packaging, how good the description, he makes crap burgers. So you skip 'em in favour of the greasy goodness you know you enjoy next time. It's why I don't buy any new books by Nick Kyme. Or anything by Gav Thorpe about Dark Angels.

Sometimes your tastes change a bit too. It's why I went off Graham McNeill. When I was younger and had tried less other stuff, his stuff seemed flavorful enough. But once you've tasted Abnett and Mitchell's quarter-pounder with bacon, the McNeill version just tastes plain and overcooked by comparison. Like, I'll still eat it if I've nothing else to do and I won't outright hate it, but I really want certain other people in the kitchen grilling for me if I can arrange for it.

NinthMusketeer wrote:
While Dakka may destroy many things, I did not expect that to include my diet!

The only diet worth having is one you enjoy. The key is to make sure you also get appropriate nutrition and round it off with exercise.

I'll leave it to someone else to stretch that into another cheeseburger/book analogy though.

It's a bit unfair to call all GW fiction 'trash' I think. Sure, the quality can be a bit hit and miss in places, but really, the better novels really do stand up awfully well compared to other SF / military SF out there.

Hmmm, not sure I'd agree with that actually. The stand up well compared to other sci fi written for a franchise, definitely. In terms of franchise sci fi they are some of the best, I would say.

But they aren't holding a candle to decent sci fi bar MAYBE a couple of exceptions.