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They need to do a Chaos one. "Do you spill Blood for the Blood God? Turn to page 87. Do you take skulls for the skull throne? Turn to page 104."
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Jul 10, 2012 07:05
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The Alpha Legion are basically devotees of that one Chaos God that's like a fifth Chaos God of Chaos working against itself, but they can't straight up call them that or reference that entity because GW doesn't actually own it.
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Jul 10, 2012 23:15
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Olanphonia posted:I think someone in one of these threads summed up the Emperor perfectly: the greatest leader humanity has ever known; and at the same time a terrible father. "The Last Church" is probably the best insight into the Emperor that the Horus Heresy series has revealed so far. Basically, the Emperor was really good as a Big Idea guy but was terrible in dealing with individual people or even expressing his ideas, really. That makes perfect sense, if you think about it. A gestalt being who popped into existence fully formed 40,000 years ago would probably think and act very strangely from the perspective of an ordinary human. It's interesting that he generally acts through a number of intermediaries and the people he had to interact with the most (the Primarchs) turned out really weird and he ended up appointing an intermediary to deal with them, too.
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Aug 10, 2012 05:53
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S.J. posted:I think The Last Church was just awfully loving written, to be honest. I've seen kids in middle school come up with more reasonable arguments against religion. I don't think the author was making the Emperors' arguments/interactions seem weak on purpose, I think he just didn't have any idea how to write that kind of story. That may not be what the author intended but it works in the context of the series as a whole, in which the Emperor is kind of an rear end in a top hat. Also the latest Horus Heresy book, Fear to Tread, is squarely in the "meh" zone as far as the series goes. It starts off well but abandon's the series convention of depicting daemons as being mysterious, incomprehensible forces that don't really follow the way they're depicted in the tabletop. Instead, there are explicitly daemonettes and bloodletters and a Keeper of Secrets and a Bloodthirster who mention the Chaos Gods by name, which usually doesn't happen. The whole thing has a hyperviolent Saturday morning cartoon feel to it. Some of the lead up to the big battle is well done but it quickly goes into being way over the top. Sanguinius all but surfs a battle barge from orbit. I like the way that Emperor's Gift handled that, by offering descriptions for the daemons that make it obvious what they are and using euphemisms like the Sanguinary Unholiness instead of "I'll get you next time, Khorne!  "
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Aug 11, 2012 19:02
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I'm pretty sure the chronology is: 1. Erebus tries to turn Horus, Magnus interrupts. 2. Magnus realizes that Horus is being turned by the ruinous powers. 3. Magnus picks the exactly wrong time to send his message, and the psychic push needed to get it through fucks up the human webway. 4. The Emperor doesn't get the message, and sends the Wolves to sanction Magnus. 5. Horus calls on the other legions to aid him in suppressing the "revolt" on Istvaan, with the rest of the Imperium none the wiser. Magnus appearing after the dropsite massacre makes no sense, since there's not much time for the whole sanctioning thing between the massacre and the Eisenstein showing arriving in the Terran system. rocket_Magnet posted:Hyperion cannot determine attractiveness of a human female as his previous life was mind wiped. He has no point of reference for feelings of attraction as he doesn't remember what it used to feel like. Whereas the other guy old and senile as he is will remember his life as a warrior on Fenris. Why can't I remember useful stuff, rather than being full of this rubbish. Bowden touched on this theme in his Night Lords books, too. Basically, being a Space Marine sounds cool until you realize how incredibly sad it is to have your humanity stripped away. Few of the other authors ever approach that, despite how fertile that ground is for grimdarkness.
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Aug 22, 2012 02:21
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Baron Bifford posted:The human entrance? Hmmm. Why can't humans use the existing entrances like the Eldar? No one but the Eldar know where they are, and they're guarded by the Eldar, and if you can somehow find them and get past the Eldar guards you might run into a pack of raiders from Commoragh on the other side. Also, Imperial ships are all gigantic fuckhuge monstrosities, and the gateway the Emperor was building on Terra was as tall as a scout titan.
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Aug 25, 2012 21:38
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The Horus Heresy should be a little overblown. The moment when Magnus crashes the Emperor's webway gate, the second most important moment in the Heresy, should be a little pompous and overblown. That's The Grim Darkness of the Far Future being born right there, in that conversation. It's not like Magnus is going to be all like "wassup". MacNeill has genuinely improved since they started the Heresy series. His latest entries are head and shoulders above the crap he wrote before, even if it's not exactly the greatest literature in history.
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Aug 26, 2012 20:50
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I haven't read the fourth one, but MacNeill wrote a trilogy of Ultramarine books where the first one is sort of normal, the second one is increasinly weird, and the third one is balls to the wall give no fucks bizareness. His prose may not be the greatest, but I like it for its insanity all the same, the weirdness of it is part of its charm. Some of the other writers try to do the same thing, especially Counter's Grey Knights books which follow a strikingly similar plotline, but fall far, far short and just sort of peter out into a weird place where the wildness of chaos is really bland and uninteresting.
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Aug 26, 2012 23:03
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Degenerate Star posted:Plus he had his hero get thrown out of the Ultramarines, which I really hadn't expected from that series. Surprises are good. It did strike me as really weird that such a thing is even possible. I mean, they give him blank armor and tell him to shove off. That's really odd, and I've never seen it anywhere else in 40k fiction. Do marine chapters just kick dudes out and let them live?
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Aug 27, 2012 01:44
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Trast posted:Are there any books or stories about how the Emperor functions on the golden throne? Is he some sort of barely there life force focused on keeping the navigational beacon working or is he able to communicate with his inner circle? I've read on the wiki that the Sisters of Battle in their origin were shown that they were being manipulated by a corrupt clergy when their leader was brought before the Emperor. I was curious if it was just being in his presence that convinced him or something more. In short, no. The Emperor is, depending on who you ask:
*This is the correct answer. Death to the False Emperor.
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Aug 27, 2012 22:02
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Trast posted:The option involving the Emperor waking up and being supremely pissed off at the state of humanity and it's worship of him would make for some pretty interesting fluff. But I doubt they'd ever pull the trigger on it and risk the gravy train. I've heard rumors (that is to say, bullshit) of going into the even grimmer further future after the HH series is done, but those rumors are all nonsense and the HH series will continue until the heat death of the universe.
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Aug 28, 2012 03:56
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berzerkmonkey posted:Huh? There is the Star Child fluff, but basically that entails him becoming the most powerful psychic being ever who will lead mankind to a glorious age. The fifth Chaos god thing is a result of the fall of mankind, like the fall of the Eldar. The idea is that much like the Eldar reached Peak Eldar and their own emotions exploded into sentience and devoured them, the Imperium will Imperium hard enough and created a Chaos God of Fanaticism or something. If, like, everyone in the Imperium was a Sister of Battle that could probably happen. Births of Chaos Gods tend to be kind of rough. quote:You can't write the future of 40K without affecting the game itself. In addition, once you make the decision to write in the future, you pretty much can't really continue to write the present any more or else everything becomes a big confusing mess. It really doesn't work. Yeah, last thing we want is 40k to be a confusing mess. They have a lot on their plate right now and putting out a future/50k setting, even in just novels, would slow everything else to a crawl, but I'd like to see them do it. Rather than write one "canon" series I'd rather see separate continuities, like a novel series where the Emperor gets up, one where the Emperor finally dies, one where the Eldar united into Ynnead, one where the Orks finally unite into the great Waaaaagh!, one where Chaos gets its poo poo together, etc. They could even do it as an Imperial Armor type thing through Forge World and I'd still buy it.
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Aug 28, 2012 14:01
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Mechafunkzilla posted:I really have no idea why some of you are so interested in seeing the "future" of 40k. The whole point of the setting is that it's the grim and dark and there is only war -- the stagnancy and galactic stalemate is a big part of the essence of 40k. The interesting stuff is what happens in between the lines, not "who would win if the Emperor woke up and at the same time the Tyranid main force arrived." That's some Goku vs. Superman poo poo. The stagnancy gets repetitive after a while. Just reading the same bolter porn over and over will eventually lose its charm, which is why the Heresy is such a big success, and produces some of the best writing from the Black Library. There's plenty of material between the Heresy and 999 M41 that can be covered but there's no reason not to look at the future, either, other than the tabletop end of the business being scared they'll ruin their IP.
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Aug 28, 2012 15:55
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jadebullet posted:So what happened to the water in the oceans on Terra. I know it had water pre heresy, and during the siege the oceans were "boiled away" but what actually happened to the water itself? It can't just be in vapor form, since terra would have to be an unlivably high temperature in order to keep it vaporous. I am pretty sure if you flash evaporated all of the earth's oceans, they would eventually refill, unless you removed the atmosphere. (Of course, I am sure that flash boiling the oceans would cause other, more pressing issues for everyone on earth.) It was already gone by the Heresy era. The ocean basins were settled and had hives built on them. Terra was basically a hive world even then. Arquinsiel posted:The novels exist to sell more space barbies. If they don't directly advance this cause then they don't need to exist. This probably does represent the thinking of GW, since they hate money for some reason.
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Aug 28, 2012 19:38
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I know how much the models cost, trust me. I was referring more to their weird licensing practices for the intellectual property and such.
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Aug 28, 2012 19:48
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EyeRChris posted:The Cabal has forseen that if Horus was to kill his father and win. He would break down and proceed to kill the entire empire out of grief. So it would be a faster death than to square off against Chaos for 10k years if Horus were to fall. Which in turn implies a Chaos plot. A straight up confrontation is a lose/lose proposition for Chaos without an X-Factor. Either the Emperor succeeds, heals the Imperium, and continues his plan to separate humanity from the Warp, or Horus succeeds and burns it all down. The best outcome for Chaos is the current one, an eternal stalemate with lots of emotional turbulence and pyschic potential building up over time. Chaos isn't just frothing insanity, it's also slow, chilling, methodical malevolence.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:01
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Cynic Jester posted:Chaos is Chaos. T'is in the name. Change, revolution, upsetting the status quo and so forth. 10k of stagnation and 'order' isn't what they'd want. Well, maybe Nurgle, but he is such a bore. They want everything at once.  The Cabal thing screams Tzeentch. Especially if they really do oppose Chaos but have been manipulated into supporting a chaos-y outcome.
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Sep 4, 2012 03:09
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The problem with Abnett and ADB writing for Black Library is that they set up awesome stuff and the other writers can't handle it and either misunderstand it or use it in lovely, ham-handed plot twists. Legion is a great book and what he did with the pretty much undefined Alpha Legion was really clever, but we're going to end up with a lot of uncreative or nonsensical "I am Alpharius!" moments in its wake.
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Sep 5, 2012 17:16
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The Wolves were apparently in part cultivated as the assassin Legion in case one of the others went rogue, so the Emperor probably looked the other way, knowing that it would be helpful to have his chosen cleansing legion already prepared to combat warpcraft that traitors would inevitably use.
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Sep 5, 2012 22:07
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Nemesis was a bad Heresy book but it was a pretty fun 40k book. Taken out of the context of the ~terrible tragedy~ of the heresy a bunch of 40k assassins acting like assholes is pretty funny, especially the eversor. I enjoyed it.
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Sep 6, 2012 01:16
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