Nephilm posted:

Well, it's implied that for all that time he had been more subtlety aiding humanity, and seeing how that turned out in the end he decided that total control was the only way to achieve his ends, and he also had to manage it quickly before the chaos gods found a way to undo his work. The foundation of a 10 thousand old Imperium was set down in just a couple centuries, after all; that's how efficient the method was, even if cruel.

He also didn't count on dying and being unable to actively influence it anymore.

Nephilm posted:

Well, it's implied that for all that time he had been more subtlety aiding humanity, and seeing how that turned out in the end he decided that total control was the only way to achieve his ends, and he also had to manage it quickly before the chaos gods found a way to undo his work. The foundation of a 10 thousand old Imperium was set down in just a couple centuries, after all; that's how efficient the method was, even if cruel.

He also didn't count on dying and being unable to actively influence it anymore.

JerryLee posted:

The Emperor isn't just a bad dad, he's a really bad savior, too. His grand master plan to keep humanity from falling under the sway of Chaos seems to have amounted to 'prohibition, ignorance, and xenophobia' which even I, with the benefit of about 28 fewer millennia of human history to look back on, could have told you was a horrible idea.

He's a very Old Testament sort of leader, which actually makes sense given the (if it's still canon) story of his origin as the product of prehistoric tribal shamans. Still doesn't explain why he didn't learn anything since then though.

Demiurge4 posted:

One theory I've heard (and the one I subscribe to) is that since the warp is a reflection of the thoughts of every sentient in the galaxy, it's possible to influence it by controlling the thoughts of sentients. So what sentients believe essentially becomes fact, god's exist because we believe in them. This is sort of how ork science works, it's complete bollocks but it works because the orks, who are a gestalt, believe it works.

So the Emperor set out to destroy every sentient species in the galaxy that wasn't humanity, so that he could directly control what exists in the warp. If humanity stops believing in gods, the chaos gods disappear.

Sephyr posted:

I felt that was a very clever twist as well, a decent take on the whole "bring about the prophecy you fear" theme otherwise known as the Anakin-Padmé Gambit.

Fuzzy Pipe Wrench posted:

Unless he totally knew he could never succeed because chaos=entropy and figured that 10K+ years of endless GRIMDARK and DECAY is the best humanity could hope for.

I really wish the concept of the emperor was addressed by a really good author to set it all in stone (or at least as close to stone as good writing gets). What there is on him is so inconsistent its hard to have a solid discussion without stepping into territory that is fanwanky as all hell or just plain inconsistent.

Nephilm posted:

None of them do. They're vague existences created by aligned ideas/emotions, not by specific believes in themselves; as long as you're doing something aligned to their natures, it empowers them and they care little if you're doing it intentionally.

Nephilm posted:

Also, I don't know how ADB's take on Angron will be for Betrayer, but the short story After De'shea on Tales of Heresy (alongside Blood Games by Dan Abnett) is pretty good.

EyeRChris posted:

Isn't it implied in the fluff somewhere that Zeech creates plans that could end the war but then works against those plans so that the war against Chaos marches on because once Humanity falls the universe wouldn't change any more and he'd lose power. Could have swore I read that in the fluff some where when reading up on the thousand sons but now can't find it.

Schneider Heim posted:

I've read this before, but I forgot the source too

Anyway, what's the worst BL cover you've seen, guys? I was looking at the BL website and saw this, which has some of the more hilarious proportions BL cover art could offer.

Schneider Heim posted:

Anyway, what's the worst BL cover you've seen, guys? I was looking at the BL website and saw this, which has some of the more hilarious proportions BL cover art could offer.

EyeRChris posted:

Isn't it implied in the fluff somewhere that Zeech creates plans that could end the war but then works against those plans so that the war against Chaos marches on because once Humanity falls the universe wouldn't change any more and he'd lose power. Could have swore I read that in the fluff some where when reading up on the thousand sons but now can't find it.

bunnyofdoom posted:

So, Sandy Mitchell (he of the Ciaphas Cain stories) had a couple of books about an inquistorial warband, which ended on a cliffhanger. I expected the third book to come out, but it seems the previous two don't even exist on BL's site anymore. Anybody know what's going on?

Mowglis Haircut posted:

Most of the Heresy books have terrible CG covers. They'd get my vote. All of them.

quote:

So, Sandy Mitchell (he of the Ciaphas Cain stories) had a couple of books about an inquistorial warband, which ended on a cliffhanger. I expected the third book to come out, but it seems the previous two don't even exist on BL's site anymore. Anybody know what's going on?

Schneider Heim posted:

I was planning to buy those!

berzerkmonkey posted:

Legion of the Damned

rocket_Magnet posted:

You pretty nailed what my opinion of that book was, as for your last spoiler bit I wasn't so sure about the drop coffins, I felt that the LOTD were essentially everywhere/nowhere at once, the coffins were just some kind of tradition or artistic license from the author or some such (they had the date the marine died on it I think). They're ability to phase on the battlefield, and the scourge seeing one following him about (who was actually "there") led me to that conclusion but I can have the intelligence of an ork when it comes to "getting it" with some BL authors.

I was more interested in what ship the lotd had with them, if I recall the book says the defence monitor captain said it dwarfed the battleship class vessels in the chaos armada, I've never heard of anything bigger than a battleship before with the one or two exceptions (black stone fortess/phalanx), but then the book had a system defence force monitor manage to destroy several astartes strike cruisers, so who knows. Oh, the scrouge gladius/dornsblade switcheroo was also dumb as all hell.

quote:

After being nearly driven to extinction during the Badab War, the Fire Hawks' mobile fortress-monastery, the ancient Void Fortress Rapturous Rex, was lost in the Warp in 963.M41. It is now believed that the survivors of this disaster became the cursed Astartes known collectively as the Legion of the Damned.

Arquinsiel posted:

The more information there is about the Legion the less awesome they get

Also, losing more than one Strike Cruiser is kind of crippling for a chapter.... wow.

quote:

History

The Fire Hawks have long been a byword for devastation and wrath. In their history they have seen great victories, bloody deeds and terrible reversals, being one of only a very few Chapters on record known to have survived the destruction of two separate home worlds, and being brought back from the brink of extinction many times.

The Chapter itself claims antecedence from the renowned Ultramarines gene-seed, although certain defects and variations in the samples held in the archives of the Adeptus Terra speak against this, and the Lords of Macragge have never publicly acknowledged kinship.

Notable Battles

The Fire Hawks have also long been notably embroiled deeply in the wars of the Age of Apostasy. In one of their first actions they fought alongside the Black Templars, Imperial Fists, Soul Drinkers, and the Martian Skitarii against Goge Vandire. They did not escape unscathed, as during these battles their homeworld of Zhoros was destroyed by Thermal Bombs. At the conclusion of the Age of Apostasy they were rewarded for their actions in his support by Sebastian Thor himself, who issued them with the right to use the Great Crusade-era mobile void-fortress, Raptorous Rex as their fortress monastery. The Fire Hawks became a fleet-based chapter as a result.

They were also the first loyalist Chapter to become engaged in the Badab War after one of their vessels, the Red Harbinger was attacked and captured by the Mantis Warriors in 904.M41. The Fire Hawks quickly became fully engaged in the conflict, with an effective frontline brethren fighting strength of 86%, a projected Chapter maximum at the start of the war. Despite the power of their fleet, the Fire Hawks suffered terrible losses in the early years of the war, both in terms of battle-brethren and vessels. Eventually casualties reduced the Chapter's effective strength to an estimated 22% by the war's third year, and Lazaerek was forced to bow to Loyalist command pressure to withdraw his remaining forces or risk his Chapter's extinction. The Chapter was relegated to the sidelines until the very closing stages of the war when Lazaerek successfully petitioned the Loyalist Command for his Chapter's involvement again in the fight, and the star-fortress Raptorus Rex, the single-most powerful warship in the Maelstrom Zone, was used as a lynchpin of the Angstrom blockade.

Disappearance of the Fire Hawks

The beginning of the end came when the Fire Hawks were called to the Crows World subsector in 963.M41 to deal with Dark Eldar Pirates. The entire chapter fleet, as well as the Raptorus Rex, attempted a warp jump from the Piraeus system, 120 light years from Crows World. The space fortress, five ships, over 800 brethren and 2,000 other personnel were expected to reach Crows World within no more than 12 hours. They never arrived.

In 983.M41 the chapter was officially declared lost in the warp and assumed destroyed. The Bell of Lost Souls tolled a thousand times, and it is said that the Emperor himself ordered a black candle to be lit in the Chapel of Fallen Heroes.

Rumours fed by a long line of coincidences have been said by conspiracy theorists to implicate the Officio Assassinorum in the loss of the Fire Hawks' fleet, though nothing has ever been substantiated.

Arquinsiel posted:

Yeah, but I remember when they were "Yeah, they're Space Marines in black armour with fire and even MORE skulls. They turn up sometimes and kill poo poo and then just vanish. I don't know either" and they hadn't really bothered to go any more into depth with it.

berzerkmonkey posted:

Actually, they started off with the cool fluff, then GW decided to gloss over that for some reason. I think, for a time, GW had lost all its creative people and were focusing on dumbing everything down. Black Library is a good thing - they're using creative people to expand and detail the universe.

One of the fluffy bits was that all of the Chapter's officers had died, so now the highest ranking Marines were sergeants. One of the sergeants, Centurius, carried a skull (an officer's - you can tell by the service studs) around that would suck an enemy's soul and resurrect a LotD Marine.

Plus, it was always cool to see a page in WD or something that showed different chapter paint schemes, and the Fire Hawks were always partially hidden with some ominous "stamped" warning like "Classified: Lost in the Warp. See cross ref. datafile 9456.35324M re: Reported sightings" or something. It kind of gave an air of mystery to them - you knew something was going on, but weren't quite sure if there was a link between them and the LotD.

Donnerberg posted:

Cream_Filling posted:

Also, they were in the fanboy feedback loop, where their new intake was already fanboys of the franchise. Which is fine, except the one thing fanboys crave is resolution for all the unanswered questions, since this is part of how you entice fans to keep reading. But, like most things, it's better to want something than to actually have it, and what happens is that the fun bits that caught the eye of the fan who's now working there get turned to mush.

berzerkmonkey posted:

Actually, they started off with the cool fluff, then GW decided to gloss over that for some reason. I think, for a time, GW had lost all its creative people and were focusing on dumbing everything down. Black Library is a good thing - they're using creative people to expand and detail the universe.

Donnerberg posted:

I really like what they're doing with the cover for the Ravenor vs Eisenhorn trilogy. The metal art and the reflective red surface for Pariah is cool and all, but they run with that and make it even more badass for Penitent as I'm sure those of you who read Pariah have already seen at the back of the book.


Not a spoiler, just

I didn't even realize that the faces in the middle of Pariah were not mirrored before I saw that sketch and took a closer look on the original. Many goosebumps were had during this little discovery.

Arquinsiel posted:

Apparently this is the first ever reference to them, but it's clearly just a lame "marines what am a bit wrong but bettar at being marines" article rather than the later ghost marines they turned into, followed by way, WAY too much adding to it. Centrius was already later than when I got bored of them IIRC.

McCoy Pauley posted:

So I just finished Pariah, and was left confused by something that I assume was supposed to be a significant character reveal at the end. Who is Alpharius? The way it was presented I assume I was supposed to recognize that character, but I didn't. For context, I've read the Eisenhorn and Ravenor omnibuses, the first Gaunt's Ghosts book, and Brotherhood of the Snake. I haven't read any of the Horus Heresy books.

EDIT: To clarify, a little googling provided me some information on who that is, but I'm not understanding the connection in the book. Perhaps I'm not meant to?