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 GaroRobe wrote:


Stolen from Reddit

Rak'gol?

didnt they say there was a chaos assassin coming?

 Formosa wrote:
didnt they say there was a chaos assassin coming?

That would be cool. Imagine if there was an assassin that was corrupted by Chaos but somehow also a pariah, and the whole schtick was that they were in absolute agony the entire time? It could be like a Khorne Berserker crossed with an Eversor (I do know that Eversors aren't pariahs, I'm referring to their ferocious temperament due to being pumped with extreme amounts of combat stimulants).

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Rak'gol?

Does that strike you as being particularly "Horus Heresy-y"?

Not enough arms/legs for Rak'gol, anyway.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Imagine if there was an assassin that was corrupted by Chaos but somehow also a pariah...

I'd rather not imagine that, to be honest.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Geifer wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Imagine if there was an assassin that was corrupted by Chaos but somehow also a pariah...

I'd rather not imagine that, to be honest.

Spear says hi..

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Spear_(Assassin)

Initially he was a human Pariah, experimented upon and augmented by Clade Culexus in an attempt to create a potent and more powerful form of Culexus assassin. Whether it was these augmentations or his original nature that made him a Black Pariah is unknown; whatever the case, he was deemed unstable and dangerous by his masters, and they accordingly placed him on a Sisters of Silence vessel bound for the heart of a sun. This vessel was intercepted by a rebel ship carrying Erebus of the Word Bearers Legion. Erebus and his forces boarded the ship and, with the exception of Spear, killed all aboard. Sensing Spear's usefulness, Erebus forced Spear to endure a Chaotic ritual, during which a minor daemon of the warp was bonded to the latter. The bonding of the two produced a highly dangerous predator, one capable of turning a target's psionic force directly back upon it. This ability did, however, require Spear to first obtain a sample of a target's blood, as this was necessary in order for him to gain the synchrony with his target's psionic abilities that allowed Spear to reflect those back at his target.

Eh. There's only so low my opinion of the Horus Heresy fluff can get, so what's one more?

On the other hand we were promised we'd learn what really happened at the end of the Siege of Terra. That's going to be a hoot, I'm sure.

Old-Four-Arms wrote:
Sensing Spear's usefulness, Erebus forced Spear to endure a Chaotic ritual, during which a minor daemon of the warp was bonded to the latter.

This is terrible fluff. They took the thing that is described to be anti-daemon, being a pariah, and made it an even stronger force. Then they somehow made a daemon bond to something that is counter to its existence.

Just horrible schlock.

Nemesis is not a good book and you miss absolutely nothing by not reading it. Like most/all of the Salamanders novels.

 Geifer wrote:
On the other hand we were promised we'd learn what really happened at the end of the Siege of Terra. That's going to be a hoot, I'm sure.

I'm sure the psychic attack Big E uses to finish off Horus will be the thing that triggered the slow awakening of the Necrons, or something equally as unnecessary.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
On the other hand we were promised we'd learn what really happened at the end of the Siege of Terra. That's going to be a hoot, I'm sure.

I'm sure the psychic attack Big E uses to finish off Horus will be the thing that triggered the slow awakening of the Necrons, or something equally as unnecessary.

Clearly the Emperor tapped into the power of Malice in order to cancel the blessings of the other dark gods in Horus.

Have to agree with the sentiment that the Spear fluff is hot rubbish.

Spear reads like some pre-teen's OC where they try to fit every idea they think is cool into a single character instead of just creating a cast of characters(or in this example, Chaos Assassin Clades).

90-95% of the Horus Heresy lore is not worthy using to protect the floor from Cat urine. Much of it is utter tripe thrown together by authors who are often actively contemptuous of the fanbase.

 blood reaper wrote:
90-95% of the Horus Heresy lore is not worthy using to protect the floor from Cat urine.

I guess that’s what happens when you spin out a book series to around ten times the length it probably should have been.

On the other hand, the good parts are really very good.

 jojo_monkey_boy wrote:

Old-Four-Arms wrote:
Sensing Spear's usefulness, Erebus forced Spear to endure a Chaotic ritual, during which a minor daemon of the warp was bonded to the latter.

This is terrible fluff. They took the thing that is described to be anti-daemon, being a pariah, and made it an even stronger force. Then they somehow made a daemon bond to something that is counter to its existence.

Just horrible schlock.

Pariahs are pretty much a trap for bad writers - they have 2/3 of your standard Mary-Sueism already baked in because they automatically come with setting-bending special powers, are literally one in a billion or rarer, and on top of that had a mysterious origin that fundamentally tied them to one of the biggest powers in the setting for a significant amount of time before that was changed. Even if a writer resists the temptation to make their particular pariah even better and yet more special, a 'standard' Pariah is already a resource and a power factor that alone could easily drive the plot of a novel or short story, more of a plot device than a character really. And of course, almost no author and especially not supposedly good ones like Abnett can resist that particular temptation, and so you get canon-smashing stuff like burned out pariahs, pariah clones, pariah marines or even weirder stuff.

Gert wrote:Nemesis is not a good book and you miss absolutely nothing by not reading it. [u]Like most/all of the Salamanders novels.

Can we just not talk about those atrocities....

 blood reaper wrote:
90-95% of the Horus Heresy lore is not worthy using to protect the floor from Cat urine. Much of it is utter tripe thrown together by authors who are often actively contemptuous of the fanbase.

This is undeniably true. I feel bad saying it out loud because so many people enjoy it, but the majority of warhammer lore is just awful. The best of it is excellent, imo, and that's enough for me to still love the setting, but I'm happy to pretend upwards of 80% of it doesn't exist.

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:
90-95% of the Horus Heresy lore is not worthy using to protect the floor from Cat urine.

I guess that’s what happens when you spin out a book series to around ten times the length it probably should have been.

On the other hand, the good parts are really very good.

This is a major reason for why it's so bad - another major cause is that you have multiple authors who clearly don't coordinate or cooperate properly, so whole plotlines just get forgotten. There's also clearly the desire to "surprise" the audience with pointless, often self-referential twists. It just results in a mess.

This is undeniably true. I feel bad saying it out loud because so many people enjoy it, but the majority of warhammer lore is just awful. The best of it is excellent, imo, and that's enough for me to still love the setting, but I'm happy to pretend upwards of 80% of it doesn't exist.

Personally I don't mind telling people what they love is just pig slop - but I always add the prefix that plenty of 40k lore is very good (the Fabius Bile books, for example).

Tsagualsa wrote:

 jojo_monkey_boy wrote:

Old-Four-Arms wrote:
Sensing Spear's usefulness, Erebus forced Spear to endure a Chaotic ritual, during which a minor daemon of the warp was bonded to the latter.

This is terrible fluff. They took the thing that is described to be anti-daemon, being a pariah, and made it an even stronger force. Then they somehow made a daemon bond to something that is counter to its existence.

Just horrible schlock.

Pariahs are pretty much a trap for bad writers - they have 2/3 of your standard Mary-Sueism already baked in because they automatically come with setting-bending special powers, are literally one in a billion or rarer, and on top of that had a mysterious origin that fundamentally tied them to one of the biggest powers in the setting for a significant amount of time before that was changed. Even if a writer resists the temptation to make their particular pariah even better and yet more special, a 'standard' Pariah is already a resource and a power factor that alone could easily drive the plot of a novel or short story, more of a plot device than a character really. And of course, almost no author and especially not supposedly good ones like Abnett can resist that particular temptation, and so you get canon-smashing stuff like burned out pariahs, pariah clones, pariah marines or even weirder stuff.

Pariah Carey.

GW are happy to provide swill at a regular rate. Its been a staple of the company for many years now.

The sooner people accept that 40K is and always has been sci-fantasy pulp, the easier it is to accept that the quality is all over the place.

 Platuan4th wrote:
The sooner people accept that 40K is and always has been sci-fantasy pulp, the easier it is to accept that the quality is all over the place.

Just like with other beloved media from almost 40 years ago, like 2000 A.D., a lot of its appeal relies on the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, people remembering the occasional brilliant bits and forgetting the oceans of slop they came embroiled in And as ever, one man's slop is another man's treasure

 blood reaper wrote:


Personally I don't mind telling people what they love is just pig slop - but I always add the prefix that plenty of 40k lore is very good (the Fabius Bile books, for example).

Yes, Reynolds was one of their best, I don't know if any of his books are in my warhammer top ten but I enjoyed pretty much everything he did so he's among my favourites.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Rak'gol?

Does that strike you as being particularly "Horus Heresy-y"?

There were a lot of interesting aliens running around at that time. Maybe it could be a xenos mercenary.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Rak'gol?

Does that strike you as being particularly "Horus Heresy-y"?

There were a lot of interesting aliens running around at that time. Maybe it could be a xenos mercenary.

- They said a traitor assassin was in the works
- It got the classic assassin 'ach, ah crapped me pants' pose -first shown on the scottish eversor-
- It looks vaguely eversory in the body and culexusy in the head portion
- There are almost no mentions of xeno mercenaries or stuff like that in the Heresy, let alone on Terra

It is pretty likely to be an assassin. Not guaranteed, but likely. It's certainly a humanoid, so probably a human or transhuman.

Also, it has 'hoof-heels' and spikey stockings, which probably means that the character in question is another model that's heavily based on a Blanche sketch.

Nemesis was a red hot trash comet I couldn’t make it a third of the way through before the act of masochism couldn’t be borne any further.

Old HH Background before the Novels was better....

More MTO stuff coming up:

Bout time, need a bunch of the 18th torsos...