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von Metternich posted:This is kind of a follow-on from when they decided that you can make space marines in a few months now instead of it taking 10+ years. The losses the traitors took at Istvaan 3, (or the ones the Ultramarines took on Calth for that matter) don't mean much when you can just Juicero more marines. Why not have the loyalists kill dozens of them at a time? I agree that this wasn't a good story element to introduce, but I did like the scenes in The Solar War with the rapid-process Son of Horus who nearly got his rear end handed to him by an unaugmented human. Also I'm now visualizing an Apothecary carefully placing a progenoid gland into a Juicero and watching it squeeze the geneseed out 
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May 15, 2024 10:51
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Telsa Cola posted:I don't they ever out right explain how this actually fucks a lot of things up, but there are lines dropped here and there that imply/state that as a result of the heresy a lot of induction processes changed, like indoctrination, that meant that post heresy marines are kinda a breed apart from the pre-heresy ones. I saw it mentioned out in a youtube video that the space marines in Heresy are very different from 40K. There isn't a whiff of that insane "5 minutes of free time to worship the emperor" thing and they're just hanging out doing whatever like enjoying their secret chaos worshiping societies or something.
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May 15, 2024 14:06
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they're still boys that have been surgically modified and indoctrinated into living weapons, they just lack the layer of hypno-therapy and religious fervour that the Chapters have in 40K.
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May 15, 2024 14:11
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Most of them but there's still several characters that were regular people with fully formed personalities that also somehow got turned into space marines for reasons.
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May 15, 2024 14:16
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You can turn an adult into a space marine, it just has a higher chance of killing them (which to be fair the Imperium is unlikely to care about) and wasting the geneseed they got implanted with (a much greater concern).
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May 15, 2024 14:26
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It was also probably easier to do in 30K with the actual architects of the process still alive and communicating. And even then the end result is implied to be not quite as good as a "normal" marine.
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May 15, 2024 14:31
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von Metternich posted:This is kind of a follow-on from when they decided that you can make space marines in a few months now instead of it taking 10+ years. The losses the traitors took at Istvaan 3, (or the ones the Ultramarines took on Calth for that matter) don't mean much when you can just Juicero more marines. Why not have the loyalists kill dozens of them at a time? It never took like 10+ years to produce a marine pre-Heresy. Even during 40k times it usually takes about six years (start between 10 and 14 years, finish usually around 16 to 18). They did it somewhat differently and were better at the job during 30k. The Heresy lasted seven years. That's enough time to produce new marines the "normal" way, and it's only as the actual siege nears everyone gets desperate to produce more marines at any cost. The inductii are not quite cannon-fodder, but they are more power armored rabble than power armored super-soldiers. They are far less capable than Marines trained the normal way, because they cut a lot of corners with them in the creation process, and their training was rushed, even with forcing them to eat the brains of fallen veteran marines. Another issue is wargear, they got what was available, at whatever state Siege of Terra sort of retcons that the Imperial Fists don't have acid spit and suspended animation anymore because they left those out to speed up the process to build up for the siege, and afterwards couldn't salvage enough of the OGs to get it back..
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May 15, 2024 14:33
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Lostconfused posted:Most of them but there's still several characters that were regular people with fully formed personalities that also somehow got turned into space marines for reasons. Kylaer posted:You can turn an adult into a space marine, it just has a higher chance of killing them (which to be fair the Imperium is unlikely to care about) and wasting the geneseed they got implanted with (a much greater concern). It's pointed out in the Khan's Primarch novel that for some reason his gene-seed seems to be unusually compatible with aspirants who've reached physical maturity and there were far less fatalities than anyone expected. That might be why him and his closest confidants were so reasonable and well-adjusted. Gravitas Shortfall posted:It was also probably easier to do in 30K with the actual architects of the process still alive and communicating. And even then the end result is implied to be not quite as good as a "normal" marine. You're getting that mixed up with "pseudo-Astartes" like Luther and Kor Phaeron, who received extraordinarily expensive and tailored modifications to make them about equal of Space Marine physically, but missing some of their abilities. Russ' old buddies volunteered for the process as adults, and he didn't have the heart to tell them no, and while they had 80 to 90% fatality rate, the rest became fully functioning marines.
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May 15, 2024 14:37
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Warden posted:Russ' old buddies volunteered for the process as adults, and he didn't have the heart to tell them no, and while they had 80 to 90% fatality rate, the rest became fully functioning marines. I wasn't aware of this, and it's stupid. 
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May 15, 2024 14:45
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I wasn't aware of this, and it's stupid. It's 40k, stupidity is the only option. In fairness, I did forget the part where the Curse of Wulfen supposedly first appeared among them specifically, but it was not limited to them.
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May 15, 2024 14:52
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I wasn't aware of this, and it's stupid. I was aware of this, and it's awesome
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May 15, 2024 14:52
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I was under the impression that Erebus was a regular dude with power armor, like he was too old to be made a space marine
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May 15, 2024 14:59
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Actual people being SM can be more interesting then mind wiped monks with identical motivations
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May 15, 2024 15:01
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Miguel Prado posted:I was under the impression that Erebus was a regular dude with power armor, like he was too old to be made a space marine Close, Kor Phaeron is like you're describing. Erebus, The Hand of Destiny, beloved of the Pantheon, is fully Astartified and loving it.
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May 15, 2024 15:06
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the main reason why enhanced adults shouldn't be as good as normal marines is that it is another avenue for drama
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May 15, 2024 15:08
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Only just started Path of the Archon but it seems to be an improvement over Incubus, more of the stuff I liked from the first book and it feels more focused toom
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May 15, 2024 15:10
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Kylaer posted:Close, Kor Phaeron is like you're describing. Erebus, The Hand of Destiny, beloved of the Pantheon, is fully Astartified and loving it. If you called Erebus a tool he'd laugh and agree. This is why he is my favorite villain.
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May 15, 2024 15:15
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:the main reason why enhanced adults shouldn't be as good as normal marines is that it is another avenue for drama They aren't, and they aren't astartes. Luther, the novel, makes it very cleart that Luther, the man, cannot match a true Astartes head to head in a physical confrontation. Kor Phaeron gets away with by using specially made Terminator armour to make up for what he lacks. That, and Chaos magic.
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May 15, 2024 15:16
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OPAONI posted:If you called Erebus a tool he'd laugh and agree. This is why he is my favorite villain. Well he's definitely a plot device for sure.
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May 15, 2024 15:27
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Arc Hammer posted:https://twitter.com/GrahamMcNeill/status/1790450587017880021?t=m44sd1bs4ABo0TKAx7DHBQ&s=19 I can't believe that's the actual finished portrait. Wtf I thought the red was supposed to be some fine art version of slapchop.
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May 15, 2024 15:35
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Kylaer posted:Close, Kor Phaeron is like you're describing. Erebus, The Hand of Destiny, beloved of the Pantheon, is fully Astartified and loving it. That’s the one, thanks. I keep getting those two confused
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May 15, 2024 15:43
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Warden posted:They aren't, and they aren't astartes. Luther, the novel, makes it very cleart that Luther, the man, cannot match a true Astartes head to head in a physical confrontation. Kor Phaeron gets away with by using specially made Terminator armour to make up for what he lacks. That, and Chaos magic. See that's what I thought, but then this was pointed out: Warden posted:Russ' old buddies volunteered for the process as adults, and he didn't have the heart to tell them no, and while they had 80 to 90% fatality rate, the rest became fully functioning marines. ..which if accurate is 
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May 15, 2024 16:15
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:See that's what I thought, but then this was pointed out: I don't really get what the issue is here. Russ' buds were young, hotheaded men who volunteered for the process to be turned into Astartes even when they got told that they would most likely die. Kor Phaeron was old-old, not just an adult, he was already a grown man when Lorgar was a baby, whom he raised. Luther was 26 when he met the Lion, and it was something like a couple of decades until the Emperor arrived. So, you can try to turn young, adult men into Astartes, and it might work, but they're more likely to just die (unless your Daddy is the Khan, for some reason). You cannot do it with a middle-aged men, but you can give them muscle-crafts, bone-reinforcements, neural-enhancements and bionics, it's just expensive as balls and doesn't get you to a level of an astartes. Warden fucked around with this message at 16:36 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 16:29
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:See that's what I thought, but then this was pointed out: Different processes. Luther and Kor Phaeron got special custom upgrades that aren't the actual Astartes process but produce pretty close results without risking killing them. Russ's besties underwent the actual Astartes process and it killed most of them and left the remainder as actual Marines.
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May 15, 2024 16:30
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Lostconfused posted:Well he's definitely a plot device for sure. Exactly! He's basically the only human that's having any fun at all because he knows he's just a pawn to make things worse.
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May 15, 2024 16:52
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I wouldn't argue if someone were to suggest that the black library authors are the real gods of chaos, or warp entities toying with reality in 40K. Can even extend it to the people moving plastic toys around on the table.
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May 15, 2024 16:59
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Warden posted:I don't really get what the issue is here. Russ' buds were young, hotheaded men who volunteered for the process to be turned into Astartes even when they got told that they would most likely die. Kylaer posted:Different processes. Luther and Kor Phaeron got special custom upgrades that aren't the actual Astartes process but produce pretty close results without risking killing them. Russ's besties underwent the actual Astartes process and it killed most of them and left the remainder as actual Marines. I mean it's fine because it's 40K and it's made up and the scores don't matter, but my thought is that part of what makes Space Marines interesting and tragic and a little inhuman is that they never got a chance to grow up before being crafted into living weapons of war and set apart from the rest of humanity*. Psuedo-Astartes like Luther and Kor Phaeron are interesting because they've sacrificed themselves on the same altar but ultimately came up short, and it must eat away at them even if (maybe especially if!) they're not treated any different by "normal" marines. Not to mention they would have a vastly different mindset to their "brothers" just through wealth of human experience. I think there's more meat to those concepts than just "it works perfectly on adults but has a high fatality rate", though there is an interesting survivor's guilt angle that is almost certainly never explored. *except the Salamanders I guess
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May 15, 2024 17:02
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I mean it's fine because it's 40K and it's made up and the scores don't matter, but my thought is that part of what makes Space Marines interesting and tragic and a little inhuman is that they never got a chance to grow up before being crafted into living weapons of war and set apart from the rest of humanity*. Psuedo-Astartes like Luther and Kor Phaeron are interesting because they've sacrificed themselves on the same altar but ultimately came up short, and it must eat away at them even if (maybe especially if!) they're not treated any different by "normal" marines. Not to mention they would have a vastly different mindset to their "brothers" just through wealth of human experience. I think there's more meat to those concepts than just "it works perfectly on adults but has a high fatality rate", though there is an interesting survivor's guilt angle that is almost certainly never explored. It "doesn't work perfectly on adults" if there's like a 90% fatality rate when you do it on adults.  As for the rest, Luther and Kor Phaeron absolutely were treated differently. True Astartes disdained Kor Phaeron and saw his high position as a result of nepotism, not ability. Luther got sidelined into garrison duties Caliban, and even though he was nominally in charge, he had to walk a very fine line because of the immense egos of true Astartes. And yeah, they very much had a different mindset than normal Astartes. Kor Phaeron was the same scheming bastard he always was, and Luther was spiritually eaten alive by his jealousy of his adopted brother Lion. The Space Wolves who originated from Russ' drinking buddies formed their Great Company nicknamed "the Greybeards", and apparently they were the first ones to exhibit the Curse of the Wulfen, and they also got lost in the Warp after Prospero, and partially resurfaced 10 millenia later, only almost all of them were suffering from the curse by then, either wholly or partially. The few named White Scars who had grown into adulthood with the Khan and managed to become Astartes were immensely respected within the Legion for their wisdom and experience, and seen as something special, and their deaths almost broke the Khan because he felt needed their support so badly.
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May 15, 2024 18:35
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Luther kinda had that whole almost blew up the lion by deliberately ignoring a bomb thing so he may have earned a bit of that. most of the novels describe Luther as incredibly charismatic and a born leader even by astartes
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May 15, 2024 19:03
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Recently read Longshot, by Rob Young, about an imperial guard sniper in a war against the tau. I thought it was really good actually, and the author I think managed to write the astra militarum in a way that makes them look like a real army. It felt way tighter and more, idk, realistic, in its depiction of a large army fighting an urban war than say, early to mid Gaunt's Ghost's. I give it 4 out of 5 eight-pointed stars.
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May 15, 2024 19:11
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Biplane posted:I give it 4 out of 5 Per a beautiful throwaway line in The Infinite and the Divine, it's canon that the Imperium uses skulls as flag-rank lapel insignia the way the American military uses stars 
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May 15, 2024 21:06
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Kylaer posted:Per a beautiful throwaway line in The Infinite and the Divine, it's canon that the Imperium uses skulls as flag-rank lapel insignia the way the American military uses stars I never imagined it being anything other than skulls.
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May 15, 2024 21:22
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Kylaer posted:Per a beautiful throwaway line in The Infinite and the Divine, it's canon that the Imperium uses skulls as flag-rank lapel insignia the way the American military uses stars And to imagine it all started because Keeler got high on warp juice and started seeing skulls everywhere.
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May 15, 2024 21:46
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Warden posted:It "doesn't work perfectly on adults" if there's like a 90% fatality rate when you do it on adults. I feel like I'm going crazy repeating myself, am I not being clear? Luther and Kor Phaeron = Good! yes! this! The 90% fatality rate for adult astartes = Would be good if that was the narrative focus which it doesn't seem to be, everyone just talks about how cool they are! which is boring!
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May 15, 2024 22:02
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I feel like I'm going crazy repeating myself, am I not being clear? The adult Astartes conversion thing is vanishingly rare, not because it's dangerous to people but because there's too great a likelihood of wasting the geneseed. Can always recruit more people but geneseed is way too rare to throw away 90% of it, except in the case where it's a special request from a primarch for some of his closest bros. I don't think it's fair to say that the 90% fatality rate isn't the narrative focus because the narrative focus isn't on adult-converted Astartes at all, they exist in only the smallest corners. I don't think there's a single named character who is one, at least not that I can name. Edit: the closest I can think of is (spoilers for Ravenor and The Emperor's Gift) Zael, who is late-teens IIRC when he gets uplifted to the Grey Knights, but he's a really powerful psyker so I guess he gets more leeway than the average recruit. Kylaer fucked around with this message at 22:12 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 22:08
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Question: I know that there's a scene in the Heresy novels where Garro first tells Dorn of Horus's turning (and almost gets killed by a disbelieving Praetorian). Is there also a scene where the Emperor and/or Malcador get told about the Heresy for the first time, or does it happen off-screen?
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May 15, 2024 23:01
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NihilCredo posted:Question: I know that there's a scene in the Heresy novels where Garro first tells Dorn of Horus's turning (and almost gets killed by a disbelieving Praetorian). Is there also a scene where the Emperor and/or Malcador get told about the Heresy for the first time, or does it happen off-screen? Yes, in A Thousand Sons 
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May 15, 2024 23:02
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NihilCredo posted:Question: I know that there's a scene in the Heresy novels where Garro first tells Dorn of Horus's turning (and almost gets killed by a disbelieving Praetorian). Is there also a scene where the Emperor and/or Malcador get told about the Heresy for the first time, or does it happen off-screen? I believe within that same novel (Flight of the Eisenstein) there is Malcador finding out, he goes to Luna where Garro and his compatriots are being held and questions them to learn what happened and if they are lying or not, then the book ends with the stinger that he's going to recruit them for his private proto-Grey Knights/Deathwatch/Inquisition or whatever force due to their "inquisitive nature."
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May 15, 2024 23:22
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i goddamn imagine malcador breaking the fourth wall and winking at the reader with that loving cheese.
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May 15, 2024 23:27
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TehRedWheelbarrow posted:i goddamn imagine malcador breaking the fourth wall and winking at the reader with that loving cheese. They re-use that joke in TEATD, too, with Moriana. One of the Morianas, anyways. I wish we’d gotten more high-level strategy meetings during the Heresy itself, they were pretty rare on the loyalist side before about book 40. Unless they were in a short story or audiobook or something that I missed.. Then, by the Siege, all those mostly-anonymous commanders in Dorn’s command center could have had a little character. von Metternich fucked around with this message at 00:58 on May 16, 2024 |
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May 16, 2024 00:55
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