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I don't know if this is interesting to anyone, but recently I was arguing with Imperium fans on reddit (and some of them were real jerks) and they try proved to me that the Emperor held back during the battle with a powerful orc so that Horus could save him. So I just asked the author on Twitter and he confirmed that the Emperor was in fact in danger.


https://imgur.com/a/N9tqeFg

I can't read that at all

McNeill said in his opinion the Emperor was in danger. I'd hardly call that a confirmation.

I don't really see any reason why he wouldn't have been in danger though. Orks can become monstrously powerful, and the beast at Ullanor seems to have been something Ghazgull aspires to be.

He's probably right. Authors usually aren't smart enough to think "Why doesn't the guy who can telekinetically lift a starship just do that to the big ork with a big axe?" Or at least they are willfully ignorant of the ramifications of the abilities the characters they've written have for the sake of the narrative.

To my knowledge there isn't any evidence that warbosses are especially resistant to psychic powers beyond the durability the Waagh energy's growth has granted them to direct damage.

To be fair Horus saving the Emperor on Ullanor predates the embiggening of the Emperors power. And the entirety of the Black Library branch of GW.

Here’s a thought plucker for you.

All Orks are psychically active. We know it’s their sheer belief that can make some of their weapons work, provided it looks the part.

I don’t think it’s a stretch that given the scale of Ullanor, it being the Orky Homeworld so far as anyone can tell and the size of that Warlord, to suggest that the Warlord could well have been protected by his own self-belief, and the belief in how big and hard he was emanating from his Waaagh!

We see Sisters of Battle do miracles, including turning aside kill shots. So their is precedence for faith based shenanigans.

It’s entirely possible such faith, whether sheer self belief, Gork and Mork intervening, collective belief or a mix of all three, could’ve negated The Emperor’s psychic shenanigans, at least in part.

Remember, this is pure speculation from my part, but is picking certain bits of well known and established background to make some sort of case.

Hell, if we push it a bit more? The death of a Warlord/Warboss at the hands of a non-Ork (because such a death does nothing to diminish Green Is Da Best, Might Makes Right belief) could represent a genuine shattering of faith, causing some form of psychic backlash among the Waaagh!, shaking the usual Orky self belief enough for confusion and rout to take place and ruin things.

I've also heard theories that the Emperor's powering the astronomicon effectively made him less able to bring his power to bear, being more and more a problem the further we went from Terra.

This in fact could tie into why he choose to retire after Ullanor. he could realize he was becoming TOO weak to effectively lead the crusade

Of course, it’s entirely possible the Warboss was just genuinely that ‘ard, and no shenanigans were involved.

I genuinely feel we shouldn’t ignore that.

In M32 we had Orks that rivalled Primarchs in strength and were powerful enough to coordinate galaxy wide attacks on the imperium - and this was after they had to rebuild their strength because of losing their homeworld and the Beast. So if Orks were left alone before the Great Crusade I'd say it's possible to have an even stronger Warboss than in M32 that's as strong as the emprah.

 Gert wrote:
McNeill said in his opinion the Emperor was in danger. I'd hardly call that a confirmation.

Are you doubting the authors own interpretation of his own work? He wrote it.

And of course the empower was in danger, because at the heart of it the emperor is a man (a “new man”), that’s the point! He isn’t a god. As soon as you start to think he is you miss the whole point.

Why is it so hard to imagine that a waaaaagh big enough could rival the emperor’s psychic powers and reduce him to fighting for his life. Otherwise why was he ever in danger one on one with Horus, it all becomes ridiculous if he’s that untouchable.

Why did he need an army he could have just gone planet to planet completing the crusade himself.

The problems are, imo: too many people still see orks as a comedy horde army and we have never been given a working example of what orks become if their empires are allowed to grow big enough. Just rumours.

Next edition ghaz should achieve krork status

The Emperor has always been written as holding back against the Patheon empowered Horus as despite everything, the Emperor still loved his favoured son. When Horus was abandoned by the Gods, he begged his father to destroy him and the Emperor did so but with great sorrow.

mrFickle wrote:
Why is it so hard to imagine that a waaaaagh big enough could rival the emperor’s psychic powers and reduce him to fighting for his life. Otherwise why was he ever in danger one on one with Horus, it all becomes ridiculous if he’s that untouchable.

Why did he need an army he could have just gone planet to planet completing the crusade himself.

The problems are, imo: too many people still see orks as a comedy horde army and we have never been given a working example of what orks become if their empires are allowed to grow big enough. Just rumours.

Next edition ghaz should achieve krork status

We saw what Orks were capable of with enough time and opportunity to build up their forces in the War of the Beast series. And they brought the Imperium to its knees and nearly broke it. Anyone who considers Orks as "comedy" should check that series out, as it shows that they're definitely no joke.

Tygre wrote:
To be fair Horus saving the Emperor on Ullanor predates the embiggening of the Emperors power. And the entirety of the Black Library branch of GW.

Not really? If anything he is portrayed as more vulnerable and human now than he was when the meme "myths and legends" gak flew. After getting nearly killed he annihilated Horus mind body and soul with a blast that's power was compared to a supernova and that's fairly old fluff, before the HH. To say nothing of the fact that alpha plus psykers have always been described as capable of snapping an Emperor Titan in half with a gesture or other crazy gak.

And here's the thing: it isn't so much that the Emperor is way more powerful than a Warboss. It's that, to my knowledge, the Warboss would have no resistance against many avenues of attack the Emperor has access to. Telekinesis. Telepathic assault. The ability to stop time.

I'm basically saying that if you aren't given meme plot resistance to psychic powers (like Leman Russ vs. Magnus) then nothing should be able to save you in a one on one fight with a sufficiently powerful psyker. That's why Leman Russ was arbitrarily given psychic resistance by an author, as an attempt to justify him being able to fight Magnus at all. Indeed, we see this when Lorgar easily tosses Angron around with enuncia in Betrayer as well as when Kor Phaeron fething 1v1 blows the feth out Guilliman in Know No Fear (hilarious btw). It doesn't really matter how big and 'ard you are when the other guy can with a thought rob you of your ability to even stay standing, much less defend yourself.

I'm not saying that it particularly bothers me that an Ork Warlord was able to threaten the Emperor's life. It's one of those things in a story I can just kind of shrug off. But these attempts to justify and rationalize it as being natural are simply boloney. It's just a bit of thoughtless bad writing. It's relatively tolerable bad writing, certainly more than a lot of other writing in BL novels, but bad writing nonetheless.

Assuming that there isn't some narrative justification, like if McNeill or whoever wrote that "The creamy Waagh juice throbbing in the Warlord's turgid and vascular body acted as a ward to the Emperor's psychic assault" or something.

darkoms wrote:
I don't know if this is interesting to anyone, but recently I was arguing with Imperium fans on reddit (and some of them were real jerks) and they try proved to me that the Emperor held back during the battle with a powerful orc so that Horus could save him. So I just asked the author on Twitter and he confirmed that the Emperor was in fact in danger.


https://imgur.com/a/N9tqeFg

How do you dare to put the author authority over that of the fanbase!!!

This is the 2022

All power to the Net Crowd

The Emp is all mighty, his is just taking a nap and when he returns the Galaxy would turn into Utopia (except for xenos, mutants, free thinkers - IE heretics-, etc) which will be obliterated.

Sounds like the emprah got krumped and had to be rescued by his kid. In any case the orks didn't actually lose that battle, or any battle since.

A lot of these discussions completely fail to take into account countermeasures. It is a common fan discussion, whether it is military equipment, fighting techniques or fantasy characters.

A lot of the time in a fight, or a war, or a campaign, you are in fact trying not to lose. Fencing? Yeah it is easy enough with your very long waggly rapier to stab the other guy. But the trick is stabbing him without getting stabbed yourself. Because health care is a quack with a leech and you will have lost (died horribly of infection and damage). This applies all the way up to nukes.

That is before you get into all the stuff you do to negate the enemies advantages. Imagine your standard magical fantasy world - your nations would pour money, dragonsblood and eye of newt into magical countermeasures. The damn pointy hatted crazies are just too good if not countered. The general populace would be wandering around carrying at least rocks with holes in if not charms and wards that I am sure would be important family heirlooms.

Going to the Orks, if the leader of their race, and it appears they are somewhat organised at this point, is empowered by the psychic belief of billions of the little green monsters old emp is going to be having to focus all his energy on ensuring a green foot doesn't materialise and crush him, as well as the blocking the regular dangers of gargant belly gun shells dropping on him, snotlings materialising inside him or a big squig looking hungry.

And he is going to be very cautious, being the single point of failure in his scheme. Everyone bar him is disposable and he has planned for millennia. Don't want an Ork you underestimated getting you, time for all those expensively produced primarchs and terminators to do something.

Of course here is where we face the reality of BL bolter porn, vs the complexity of even present day situations, never mind mental ones like that.

 PaddyMick wrote:
Sounds like the emprah got krumped and had to be rescued by his kid. In any case the orks didn't actually lose that battle, or any battle since.

There’s also the possibility The Emperor wanted Horus to assist, to give him the boost needed for others to accept Horus as Warmaster. Not just a competent commander, but he who saved Dad. A little bit more heroism just to get him Over.

This is where, despite removing a lot of ambiguity, the Horus Heresy series has got it right in leaving certain things ambiguous.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 PaddyMick wrote:
Sounds like the emprah got krumped and had to be rescued by his kid. In any case the orks didn't actually lose that battle, or any battle since.

There’s also the possibility The Emperor wanted Horus to assist, to give him the boost needed for others to accept Horus as Warmaster. Not just a competent commander, but he who saved Dad. A little bit more heroism just to get him Over.

This is where, despite removing a lot of ambiguity, the Horus Heresy series has got it right in leaving certain things ambiguous.

But in this case there’s no ambiguity really as the author says that isn’t what happened. And in my opinion I don’t feel the series got anything right.

I'm basically saying that if you aren't given meme plot resistance to psychic powers (like Leman Russ vs. Magnus) then nothing should be able to save you in a one on one fight with a sufficiently powerful psyker. That's why Leman Russ was arbitrarily given psychic resistance by an author, as an attempt to justify him being able to fight Magnus at all. Indeed, we see this when Lorgar easily tosses Angron around with enuncia in Betrayer as well as when Kor Phaeron fething 1v1 blows the feth out Guilliman in Know No Fear (hilarious btw). It doesn't really matter how big and 'ard you are when the other guy can with a thought rob you of your ability to even stay standing, much less defend yourself.

It's.....sort of....addressed. The fight takes place in the ship's engine core which means between the ambient warp static and the sheer scale of the waaaaaagh! energy the Emperor is having trouble focusing his energy. He'd still be able to kill the Warlord IF he had a few seconds to focus it but he doesn't - any psychic energy he has is continuously being used to fend off ludicrous-scale weaponry.

Chugging rotor cannons battered the Emperor’s armour even as claws of lightning tore portions of it away. It was taking every screed of the Emperor’s warrior skill and psychic might to keep the mech-warlord’s weaponry from killing him.

The moment Horus manages to disable two of the limbs and give the Emperor a breather, he basically vapourises the thing, but he wasn't able to create the space to do that on his own.

Basically, a high level psyker is near unstoppable once they can marshal their powers. The Emperor never got a chance to do that before this thing was all over him.

Was Magnus ever in danger? He was almost as powerful as the emperor, so if we can believe that Magnus was genuinely facing peril then why not the emperor?

Raw power doesn't make up for poor fighting skills. Magnus had the first but not the second and relied too heavily on his psychic prowess to win fights which is why Russ beat the snot out of him on Prospero.

 Gert wrote:
Raw power doesn't make up for poor fighting skills. Magnus had the first but not the second and relied too heavily on his psychic prowess to win fights which is why Russ beat the snot out of him on Prospero.

Leman Russ beat Magnus because he has very high resistance to psyker powers (shown several times in A Thousand Sons, most poignantly when Auramagma blasts him and his attack is passively reflected back at him, and remarked upon by Leman himself in a later story I can't recall), he ganged up on him with his giant wolf bros who crippled Magnus' legs, and all this while Magnus was blasting the entire Space Wolves Legion to protect his sons and channeling the spell of the century to save his Legion tbh. And Leman Russ still only barely won.

Because no, raw power does in fact make up for being a worse fighter, particularly when that raw power comes with a far larger amount of versatility than your opponent. Why would skill matter when you can slow down or even stop time and attack your opponent at your leisure? Or with a thought lift them off of their feet and render them helpless? If Leman Russ didn't have a passive resistance to psychic powers per his own words many of Magnus' attacks would have killed him, and would have killed his other brothers. We see similarly powerful psykers and how they perform against Primarchs. Malcador knocked Angron out with a touch and at one point strangled Horus telekinetically, with Jaghatai Khan literally begging Malcador to not kill his brother. Do you imagine Malcador is nearly as skilled a fighter as Horus is?

Magnus also wasn't an especially poor fighter among the Primarchs. Only Lorgar is noted to be especially poor as a fighter (he gets better tho). Magnus is more average for a Primarch, along the lines of Alpharius or Dorn (though Dorn might be below average he kind of sucks tbh) while not matching up to particularly good martial combatants ala Sanguinius, Angron, or Russ.

Magnus also wasn't an especially poor fighter among the Primarchs. Only Lorgar is noted to be especially poor as a fighter (he gets better tho). Magnus is more average for a Primarch, along the lines of Alpharius or Dorn (though Dorn might be below average he kind of sucks tbh) while not matching up to particularly good martial combatants ala Sanguinius, Angron, or Russ.

and your source on Dorn sucking is what exactly? We've rarely seen Dorn fight but when he does he's given a good accounting of himself. He is to date the ONLY Loyalist Primarch with a Primarch kill to his credit. He also fought Fulgrim and did pretty good against him, he didn't kill Fulgrim but only on accout of Fulgrim being ya know.. a deamon,

so yeah Dorn may not be as flashy as Sangy etc but I'd say he's actually one of the better loyalist primarchs in a duel.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Raw power doesn't make up for poor fighting skills. Magnus had the first but not the second and relied too heavily on his psychic prowess to win fights which is why Russ beat the snot out of him on Prospero.

Leman Russ beat Magnus because he has very high resistance to psyker powers (shown several times in A Thousand Sons, most poignantly when Auramagma blasts him and his attack is passively reflected back at him, and remarked upon by Leman himself in a later story I can't recall), he ganged up on him with his giant wolf bros who crippled Magnus' legs, and all this while Magnus was blasting the entire Space Wolves Legion to protect his sons and channeling the spell of the century to save his Legion tbh. And Leman Russ still only barely won.

Because no, raw power does in fact make up for being a worse fighter, particularly when that raw power comes with a far larger amount of versatility than your opponent. Why would skill matter when you can slow down or even stop time and attack your opponent at your leisure? Or with a thought lift them off of their feet and render them helpless? If Leman Russ didn't have a passive resistance to psychic powers per his own words many of Magnus' attacks would have killed him, and would have killed his other brothers. We see similarly powerful psykers and how they perform against Primarchs. Malcador knocked Angron out with a touch and at one point strangled Horus telekinetically, with Jaghatai Khan literally begging Malcador to not kill his brother. Do you imagine Malcador is nearly as skilled a fighter as Horus is?

Magnus also wasn't an especially poor fighter among the Primarchs. Only Lorgar is noted to be especially poor as a fighter (he gets better tho). Magnus is more average for a Primarch, along the lines of Alpharius or Dorn (though Dorn might be below average he kind of sucks tbh) while not matching up to particularly good martial combatants ala Sanguinius, Angron, or Russ.

Well if Psykers in 30k/40K are a "magic button" without any drawbacks or any countermeasures besides other spykers (or blanks) the setting would be reduced to Spykers and Cheerleaders... Which it obviously isnt (besides some BL profesional fanboism).

If that was the case, how would an absolutely non psiquic race as the Tau survive even a few years in the setting (a setting were disbelieve dosent protect you from magic, like in real life)???

BrianDavion wrote:

and your source on Dorn sucking is what exactly? We've rarely seen Dorn fight but when he does he's given a good accounting of himself. He is to date the ONLY Loyalist Primarch with a Primarch kill to his credit. He also fought Fulgrim and did pretty good against him, he didn't kill Fulgrim but only on accout of Fulgrim being ya know.. a deamon,

so yeah Dorn may not be as flashy as Sangy etc but I'd say he's actually one of the better loyalist primarchs in a duel.

Dorn was beaten so badly by Curze that he literally subconsciously forced himself to forget Curze existed because it traumatized him so much. He was gettinhg dismantled by Alpharius (the smallest and physically weakest Primarch btw) and had to be aided by one of his Marines to win.

I didn't read the Fulgrim fight so maybe something has changed but what I have seen hasn't impressed me. I would bet on the Lion, Russ, the Khan, Sanguinius, Guilliman, and probably Ferrus Manus at minimum being more formidable than him which leaves like, Corax and Vulkan lol. Vulkan too prolly honestly.

Stepping back from the particulars, the idea of an omnipotent Emperor is a lot less exciting than a mortal that faced genuine peril fighting during the Great Crusade.

The Emperor could have found himself in peril in combat with a Warboss. Perhaps he was wounded prior to facing the Warboss, perhaps his armor was failing him, perhaps he overexerted himself psychically. There are many ways to explain this.

Something like that would be a simpler explanation than a plan for engineering his salvation at the hands of Horus. While I realize the Emperor is capable of great acts of guile in the name of forging relationships with his Sons, Horus would have known if this was anything but genuine.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Here’s a thought plucker for you.

All Orks are psychically active. We know it’s their sheer belief that can make some of their weapons work, provided it looks the part.

.

Uh no. That's been in fluff mentioned once. By ad mech priest making such a theory.

It's like me making theory The Force exists. Doesn't make it exists.

The emperor vs ork been always tricky piece of fluff as there's no real way to make it make sense. No reason emperor has to appear in danger but guy that is threat to gods shouldn't be in danger vs orks.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

mrFickle wrote:
Was Magnus ever in danger? He was almost as powerful as the emperor, so if we can believe that Magnus was genuinely facing peril then why not the emperor?

Depends on opponent. Another primarch? Of course he can be in danger as all are warp powered beings. Any primarch could beat any primarch.

Was magnus ever in danger vs non-warp powered thing? Nope.

So only the family of the Emp are active protagonist in 40K (the chosen ones) ... So the setting has be reduced to the miserable state of the "Skywalker Saga". :(

Why do people want to reduce 40K to its most juvenile and vodevil aspects just for the sake of "winning" an internet argument??

I could made like a ton of analogies about such an attitude, but I really dont want to exit my chill mode.