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I've gotten the Hammer and Bolter Collection Volume 1, it's got some pretty decent stories. I particularly like the couple of stories that have the Alpha Legion being huge assholes with plans that are hilariously convoluted and impossible to beat. Just typing that, it's kind of odd that they aren't more aligned with Tzeetch, but I guess I kind of like that. Perhaps they're even waging war on the Imperium as a way to toughen it up, purge the dumb, ensure heightened security, so that the Imperium can eventually beat Chaos.
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Jul 10, 2012 22:52
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And of course, there's the point that the initial legions were many times larger than any chapter now, so even taking enormous casualties during the Heresy could still mean there's 10,000 Night Lords or what-have you. Fabius Bile is the mad scientist analogue who basically creates chaos space marines for pay. What's more Abbadon can afford to lose chaos marines, as basically most chaos marines who want to overthrow the Imperium join his dark crusades, and I imagine any separate groups that accompany him and lose a significant amount of people are folded into the Black Legion. As a unrelated question, and because I can't get on Lexicanum, what's the current world equivalent to obscura, and really all the drugs? I'm reading over Eisenhorn, and I was just wondering. I can't tell if there like opium dens or simply pot bars, or what have you.
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Dec 10, 2012 08:22
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Carrion Anthem's pretty good, if it's the one I'm thinking about. Bout how an PDF commander who doesn't have an ear for music and his attempts to defend against a Typhon engineered song that you can only sing if you hear it. Goes into how his attempted solutions are just as mad as the initial plague.
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Mar 1, 2013 08:21
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There's a couple of somewhat decent Tau stories in a row. Commander Shadow and the Arkunasha war. I really liked the long games at carcharias, as well.
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May 11, 2013 03:25
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Arquinsiel posted:It's really not compared to where Primarchs turned up first. Xenos was a 2001 release, and the first I noticed the White Consuls was in the free painting guide back in '96 or '97. Apparently they were in Codex: Ultramarines back in '95 as a successor chapter of the Legion, and they haven't really changed much of the basic fluff that was copy-pasted from that since then about how the Legions were formed and the basic Primarch history.
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Sep 3, 2013 03:59
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Well, the Deus Mechanicus symbol or however it's spelled, is a skull. Mars was around for a long time, the union of the two empires is the whole basis of the Imperium's strength.
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Sep 15, 2013 19:08
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Daemon-prince and godhood are just a difference of degrees. Both are immortal, unbelievably powerful, and unconcerned with the small going ons of the universe as a whole. A daemon prince who had as many worshipers as Khorne would probably have his strength, but they kind of cornered the market on all the good emotions. I remember something about why Abbadon doesn't let himself become a daemon prince, because once you're immortal it's kind of hard to care about the Imperium. It's only been around for what, 12,000 years? That's nothing to immortality . The Daemon princes don't really care that the war isn't going that well, cause they got their own worlds with total control to shape as they want, and they can wait out the Imperium falling. They've got billions of followers chilling in the Eye, who cares if Tyranids eat every living thing in the rest of the universe. They can just come out of it and repopulate everything. I don't think Tyranids would do too well in the Eye, because the Shadow of the Hive-mind is based on living synapse organisms, and it's hard to be living if the air is poisonous, the ground is covering in mouths that eat you, time can pass you by in a blink of an eye, there's no rules there.
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Nov 3, 2013 07:08
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pentyne posted:Every minor fluff mention prior to the HH books had the Emperor battling Horus and losing until Horus casually eviscerated a Custodes, making the Emperor realize Horus was truly lost and unleashed his full psychic might against him, eradicating Horus' soul. I always said if I ever had an sort of tiny control over a 40k MMO, the last level would you be going into that room as the Fist, shooting Horus and getting whacked almost instantly, then as you lie dying, bam, Emperor kills Horus, counter terrorists win.
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Nov 4, 2013 04:17
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Even though I haven't read it yet, I imagine it went something like "I met the Emperor. The Emperor was a friend of mine. You sir, are no Emperor."
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Feb 10, 2014 19:28
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If I had to guess, I'd say that Armageddon happened awhile ago, and they realised that killing soldiers that beat the horrible monsters was probably a bad idea. Getting rid of veteran soldiers who got to be veterans by fighting your worst enemies isn't really smart. They probably just went to a less pro-active "keep an eye on them" response...which actually ties up to how they treat Gaunt's boys when they get back from Gereon. What's more, they might have been a little over-zealous in that case because there was a Primarch involved, and the legends might still have him being a hero or not existing.
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Feb 13, 2014 05:08
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Or maybe it's because ADB knows that the Black Legion is going to conquer Cadia (but not the space around) because he's going to write about it in his new series. The final book, anyway.
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Jun 5, 2014 14:43
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You really can't imagine how Chaos could have taken the planet without space superiority? Cadia, with it's super defensible cities that are designed like warrens. That neither side wants to destroy with huge weapons because the pylons do something to the Warp. We're taking about Chaos. Billions of obedient slaves, most of the Space Marines with hundreds of years of service, in all kinds of hellish environments, and the ability to conjure daemons from the ether? I could see a particularly effective invasion force, getting dropped in, despite losing most of the fleet to Battlefleet Gothic (or running cowardly) and taking a significant part of the surface. Even if the Imperials wanted to lay waste with their fleet, Chaos could seize fixed anti-ship missile batteries and laser silos (of which Cadia has plenty) and fire back. I mean, the Vietnamese never had air superiority, but with enough anti-aircraft and willingness to take some casualties, it didn't really matter.
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Jun 7, 2014 07:18
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Yeah Mortarion's got one of the more interesting development story, where he lands on a planet with poisonous gases gathering in all but the lowest places and necromancers and sorcerers living on the peaks, except for when they come down to kill or terrorize the humans scraping a living out of the few non-poisonous places. So angron crashes down, gets adopted by the biggest necromancer, but after a few years he realizes he identifies more with the humans, so he leaves his dad and joins them, fighting off smaller necromancer armies, training an army, developing better gas masks so they can go further into the fog. It eventually culminates in a battle with his old father figure, on the highest peak with the most poisonous gases, and he finally kills him even as the poison overwhelms him. Then Emperor shows up, rescue. I always thought that if I ever made (and I won't) a planetside esque MMOFPS in 40k, I'd make a copy of that for the Death Guard's daemon world, and only the strongest fighters from there would get to became Space Marines and then travel to the other planets. I had a similar idea about the Space Wolves world. I figure it'd be a good way to limit the number of Spess Merines in the wider game, since you'd have to fight in one place till you clawed your way to the top of the pack to become a Space Marine. The rest of the players could be Guard (Lost and the Damned) fighting all over.
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Jul 9, 2014 17:08
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Yeah, I really liked that aspect. It shows how all the different forces of the Imperium deal with Titans. The Guard armour, has a plan, tanks, can technically do something, but if their titan doesn't show, they're totally screwed. The top grade PDF, from the start of the book, has a crappy scanner, can make it's way around undetected for awhile, but if a titan detects them, they're totally screwed. The low grade PDF? They're literally meat shields. But then you got the ADmech. The skitarii have got all sorts of weapons to take down titans, as well as being just crazy enough to use them. Work best when they're backing up titans though. And then there's titans. It does an excellent job of showing just how badass the Titans really are, because you see all the forces the Guard consists of. And how they lose badly. Besides, it does a fantastic idea of explaining the whole Adeptus Mechanicus are different than the Imperials, the way they interact with technology, their beliefs. Before that there were the couple of archtypes, the crazy adept who will sacrifice anything for new technology, and the reliable if a little odd enginseer.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:00
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I just want to point out that despite reading a decent amount of 40k books and Legion I only recently realized that Alpha Legion is a clear worshipper of Tzeentch and doesn't even know it. The whole Cabal of physics that tries to control the fates, but just makes more ripples, the many twisted and nefarious plots, with parts contradicting other plans. They don't seem to mutate, which is kind of odd, but the big T's not above changing it up. It helps they're not in the Eye as much. They're probably still my favourite legion, there's a couple of great short stories. I kind of liked the whole not worshipping chaos bit they had, but now it's obvious to me that the Great Changer, the planner of infinite plots, came up with to get the legion that doesn't trust anything and has all sorts of contingency plans to at least in some part support the heresy.
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Aug 25, 2014 18:35
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In the defence of the Word bearer book, and the way they handle Imperator titans, they do seem geniunely alarmed at it's appearance, but they have been fighting for 10,000 years, used the terrain excellently, and it was guarded by Guardsmen instead of Space Marines, so it makes sense that they handle it better than a huge force encountering an Imperator relatively early in the Heresy when they don't have much experience.
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Sep 14, 2014 18:19
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Have you read Emperor's Gift? That's a pretty good portrayal of Space Wolves, if you ask me.
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Jan 30, 2015 16:13
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Waroduce posted:Idk but you should read helsreach if you haven't
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Dec 12, 2015 16:13
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Which character was that again? You can put in spoilers. But as far as Titanicus, the only mention of tanith at all is a longshoreman who promptly gets killed, just so a tanith dies in every book, leading to a hilarious misadventure as the poor guy who did it in a barfight thinks all the increased police presence is looking for him rather than related to war developments, so he acts rather paranoid and gets himself killed, whilst the arbites doesn't even know or care about someone dying in a bar fight.
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Jun 17, 2017 01:51
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Yeah, there's a pretty good bit of warp fuckery with one of the Imperial Guard books. Basically they get sent after a distress call from a desert planet, which gets attacked by tyranids. Only problem is when they get there, there's nobody there. Turns out the message they sent out as they were getting overrun was the original distress call. So they got sent to rescue themselves, but they only needed rescuing because they got sent. It'd almost be better if it was just a munitorum error.
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Apr 9, 2018 17:00
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That's why Chaos is so alluring. It can actually make you superhuman, able to deflect bullets or kill people with a word. The really interesting things are the parallels between Eisenhorn and Quixos. I do like that the Emperor is such a powerful psyker that he can impart some of those type of effects on people, which is how people become living saints and such.
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Jun 11, 2018 18:22
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Warmaster came out in 2013? What the gently caress. I thought it just recently came out, how come I've never seen it at the bookstore?
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Jul 18, 2018 19:59
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I'd assume they would be knowledgeable about both, at least as a concept, since they might have been cut off by warp storms from far-flung places, but they already had a galaxy spanning empire. There's almost no chance you could go very far without encountering Orks, which is probably a hilarious first race for humanity to meet when it's finally exploring the stars. Can't imagine the first contact went particularly well. Eldar might be kind of unknown and mysterious, but that's their whole deal, and I imagine their galaxy spanning empire probably got into some contact with humanity as well, before it all came crashing down with the birth of Slaanesh.
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Aug 5, 2018 21:46
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I always wanted them to make a FPS where the different difficulty levels were different characters. Easy would be a Space Marine, Medium as a Stormtrooper, Hard as a Guardsman. Do it like Goldeneye, where the different difficulty levels had different missions, so you'd go to different parts of the level. Maybe even have it like Medal of Honor:Airborne where you could pick where you start on the level, Space Marine jumping in, or grav chutes or a slow unwieldy lander. Has to have a epilogue level where you're a Dreadnaught!
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Aug 14, 2018 04:40
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Immanentized posted:The on rails section has you operating the gun, and nothing else on a tech priest's gun servitor. Well, that's only the first one. The second has you operating the main gun on a tank, and the last has you commanding one of the shoulders of a Titan! I guess I'll reveal my idea for the greatest MMO of all time. I think I have before but it's still a good idea, drat it. Basically, it's a MMOFPS like Planetside. First, the endless war of that game does a service to the universe. Second, there are multiple different worlds that you can go to and fight on. Pretty simple, but then I'd mix it up by having guilds be the main method of advancement. So initial players would be placed with the PDF, or equivalent (for different races), and thus have to deal with orders that wouldn't be super responsive, or super efficient, since they came down from the game designers. But you'd be a blunt object, the zerg that these games tend to have. You could have minor progression, where for each kill you get a tiny upgrade to your stats, so slightly tougher, or slightly more accurate, faster reload. However, when you die, all goes away and your back at square one. But wait! That's a terrible idea! People like progression! Yes, and by the time you're good, you'll be able to go towards a guild, (I think they were called outfits in planetside), and that's where the meat and potatoes of the game are. Basically, an outfit would be like a TOE in the regular tabletop. So you'd have to have a certain amount of people necessary to start it. But then you'd make the command squad, pick sergeants etc. And then, you'd have some choice as to your actions. You could take munitorum contracts, so escort this convoy of ammunition from this base to this base, and upon successful completing them you get additional resources from the Munitorum, so you can upgrade one squad to having scopes, or maybe give them a chimera. Now, if it explodes, you get another one, since the Munitorum says you have one, you have to have one! So if you were in a good guild, you could actually have half decent gear! Maybe even an armoured company, or a tank company (This has advantages, since there might be a bit of atrophy of players, but less people would be necessary for the guild)! This way you could actually start to develop relationships between opposing guilds, as you might fight them multiple times on a single planet, or even be ordered by the uncaring machinery, to another planet where, dammit they are too! There could be items that are actually really good, and are constant. So if you die while carrying it, and no one else in your outfit picks it up, the opposing team can pick them up! So, similar to the universe, hundreds of lives may be sacrificed just to reclaim one piece of archeotech. These would be plasma weapons, or baneblades or something that can't just be remade, even daemon swords! Alright, that's enough for more. Ask me about how we'd implement space marines! Or titans! Or anything! Haha.
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Aug 14, 2018 22:54
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Senjuro posted:What I really disliked about the Black Legion books is that they gave me the impression that most Chaos Marines aren't actually Chaos Marines, just renegades.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:46
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Yeah, you have to remember what it took to take down Quixos. That's basically what Eisenhorn is becoming, and if recall correctly, it took an entire couple army group sent into a time-dilated universe.
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Jan 15, 2019 05:01
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It's actually brilliant because even today there's a bunch of people that understand how things work, and then even more people who use those things but don't know how things work. So for example, if you were having trouble with your computer getting slow, you could see if there is a memory leak, run task manager and see if there are a bunch of things running that you don't need, whatever. But when your grandma calls you about her computer slowing down or freezing, you're not going to cover all that stuff, you're just going to say "reboot it" or whatever. And then when someone ask your grandma to how to fix their computer, cause she did it, she'll just repeat "reboot it" even though that might not necessarily be the right solution. It basically becomes a mantra, and it works because it may help and if it doesn't, well, you just didn't appease the machine spirit as well as you should. Saves the computer touchers from explaining everything every time, but still helps the laymen get through some of the problems they are encountering without too much trouble. Add a couple thousand years, and you could easily have a religion out of that. I'll confess to uttering a prayer under my breath for the machine spirit when I'm rebooting something that crashed and, despite not doing anything after previous attempts to reboot it failed, having it work. I can't really explain that, but it costs me nothing to try and it's worked....a few times I've tried it.
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Sep 17, 2019 05:04
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Huh? Voke was exactly that kind of a character. Eisenhorn mentions it multiple times, and it changes how the response to chaos action if eisenhorn or voke is in command cause Voke is totally a burn it all down character.
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Oct 1, 2019 12:58
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It's been awhile, but don't most of the space marines live? It's only the mortal crew that bite it. Plus, I'm pretty sure even just hibernating in the warp is probably a bad idea....why you could wake up dead tomorrow! Good night.
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Nov 28, 2019 03:05
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I think First Heretic, Know No Fear, and Betrayer make an excellent trilogy.
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Mar 30, 2020 03:27
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euphronius posted:I loved the Hollow Mountain but at one point an imperial fist compliments a human and uh What? I mean, certain chapters are high on the smell of their own poo poo (metaphorically) but others are pretty kind to the people they are protecting. I mean, a Salamander would definitely do it, and I could see an Imperial Fist doing it as well, since I'd imagine their longstanding, being the best at making and protecting fortresses mindset would allow for positive feelings about the people they are supposed to die to protect.
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Apr 3, 2020 07:16
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The Alpha Legion is definitely the funniest. I'm reading Scars again by Wraight and it's hilarious how annoyed everyone is to fight them. Multiple Space Wolves comment on how unfun it is, nobody knows what side they are on, even themselves, they use fake battlebarges, they say nothing in combat or while dying until the very end, where they throw out a "for the emperor" and just piss everyone off again. It's even better when you get to the 40k books and the alpha legion is just clowning on chapters with elaborate plots that just wipe them out.
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Jun 16, 2020 16:40
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Dog_Meat posted:Yeah, Corax can slip about unnoticed and Curze can do the Batman "poo poo he's behind me" thing, which is impressive when you're a gigantic demigod wearing what constitutes to a battle tank. drat, maybe Alpharius actually was the planned replacement for the emperor, cause that poo poo seems confusing for confusing sake.
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Jun 19, 2020 16:14
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It's in the White Scars book, I just read it. When Jagatai goes to Prospero to decide what side to join.
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Jul 17, 2020 09:56
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Huge fan of the Orks having religion that literally does nothing but cause fights.There's two gods, and they fight. And orks fight over whether Mork represents brutal cunning or cunning brutality, and Gork hits you when you're looking. It's great.
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Aug 18, 2020 04:21
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Does anyone have some recommendations for books? I've read most of the go-to books, so something released in the last few years that's a real good read, or has the alpha legion or imperial guard being badasses? Even just your top 5 fav books of the last while, I'm going to the bookstore tomorrow.
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Aug 24, 2020 02:05
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Haha, yeah that's definitely a good one. Read and own that one already, with the hollow mountain also being read.
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Aug 24, 2020 02:14
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Has anyone read Praetorian of Dorn? I liked it, but I re-read it and I totally convinced myself that alpharius was using the psyker trick mentioned where his mind can get transferred into the bodies of his space marines, so that when they say they are alpharius, they actually could be. But then the last chapter threw that theory to the ground when Omegon notices he's alone after the one Alpharius died. But I like that he died by having a complicated plot to talk to one of the most intransigent primarchs. After reading Master of Mankind, I kind of wonder what would have happened if he went straight to the Empruh himself.
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Aug 24, 2020 16:32
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Master of Mankind is definitely pretty good, but I haven't read Plague War. For those still keeping up, I ending up buying Tallarn and Requiem Infernal.
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Aug 25, 2020 09:53
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