Iota vs Spear... * Nemesis SPOILERS!*

[Iron_Adam]

I'm still not convinced that's a conflict. Look at the grey knights for example, they use wards and magicks to protect themselves from the warp, why cant other ones guarantee the boon of the warp. I know it's tricky, nothing so far in this universe is absolute, even though everyone in it claims everything is. I think more needs to be discussed before anyone points fingers at the author

[Jim Shady]

The Warp is a strange thing remember. Considering the Chaos Gods have been around pretty much since the middle ages, you'd have to asume that they'd have the knowledge to give to Erebus to bind a deamon (be it, one that's insane enough!) to Spear. Think outside the box on this.

[eyescrossed]

I just don't get how he turned Iota's (lack of) powers against her. It makes no sense.

 

Also, I don't know if it was just my copy of the book but it kept referring to Iota as a Psyker and I nearly threw the book against the wall after the 5th time. Pariahs are the exact opposite of Psykers and Swallow kept referring to them as Psykers.

Edited April 19, 2011 by eyescrossed

[spu00sed]

Pariahs are anti psyker, but what does that actually mean?

 

The few descriptions I remember about them is that their mere presence sucks away the local power of the warp, just like a whirlpool sucks away surface water, but there is still an ocean below it.

 

They are also stated as having no soul, though this is an in universe description and the lore doesn’t fully describe what a soul is.

 

How I see how Pariahs work, is that they effect the warp in a negative way. Rather than using their powers to draw upon the warp to create things, they use their powers to beat down the warp, pushing it further away from the material universe.

 

This will make it harder for pyskers to draw on the warp, since it is further away, and can damage those linked to the warp, by stretching out their connection to it (their soul?)

 

So if we acknowledge that both pariahs and psykers manipulate the warp then they could both be seen as part of the same scale. With Alpha plus at one side and black pariahs on the other side and blunts in the middle.

 

So a high rating pariah will snuff out the abilities of most psykers, similarly very few pariahs will be able to stop an alpha plus.

 

On top of this linear table we would have a second variable, the connection of the individual to the warp. This relationship isn’t fully related to their psychic potential (some souls taste better). This soul factor is also effected by a Pariahs ability. Streching and damaging the souls link to the body. This is seen more in psychic individuals.

 

In theory it is possible that if the pariah is strong enough then the soul’s connection is severed from the warp and the person dies. Now it is possible that pariahs have souls of sorts, though different, since it is stuck in a whirlpool where the local warp level is lower and more unstable than the normal (taking the 3D example of a whirlpool in water). If this is the case then a string Pariah will be able to disrupt and even rend the souls of lesser pariahs.

 

 

Finally it is possible that the Pysker Pariahs relationship isn’t a single linear relationship, rather they are two separate axis, x being Pariah ability and y being pysker ability.

 

Most individuals are at 0,0 or move up one axis or the other, with the occasional divergence into the second axis; For example the position 2,18 would be a high ranking pysker with some pariah tendency. Since they are using the power of the warp the whirlpool effect that they create will bring warp energy to them to gather, though they might find it harder to focus.

 

Similarly a psyker with a reasonably high Pariah rating could focus and create a null zone, focusing on the Pariah tendencies and stopping local warp activity.

 

On such a 2D graph a black Pariah would have both a high psyker and high Pariah level, enabling them to stop others from using their warp abilities, then using their own.

[Lord Ragnarok]

Adding spoiler notification to the title.

[2000AD]

A pariah is not a psycher......... no ifs.... no buts....... no maybes..... THEY ARE NOT.

 

To be a psycher means you have a psychic ability........ having no soul precludes having a psychic ability.

 

A Culexus Assassin is a pariah specifically designed to assassinate psychers....... there voidness means they are immune to psychic attacks and also cannot be directly detected as well as dampening any active psychic ability in close proximity. The Animus Speculum draws in psychic energy and turns it against its user.

 

Iota did not have any ability that could be turned against her because SHE WAS NOT PSYCHIC!!!

[Lord_Caerolion]

I gotta agree with 2000AD here, there's no "seperate axis of psychic ability and pariah ability". Pariah's are inimical to the Warp. Daemons get banished in their presence, the warp energy drained away. They aren't psychic, as they cannot draw and focus warp energy.

By the very fact of what a Pariah is, a daemon cannot bind to it, as there's something unbinding it all the time. They can't use their Animus Speculum to reflect the energies of another pariah, because there's nothing to deflect.

 

I'm sure it might make sense if we're given more information, but at the moment the only information we have to go in is that a Pariah did stuff that it inherently stops happening.

[Perrin]

Is having no warp presence the same as having no soul? Having no soul would make me think of something with no feelings, like a machine, or someone who the automatic sliding doors at the Kwik-E-mart won't open for, but the Silent Sisters in FotE and in the short story in ToH don't seem to be what i would think was "soul-less".

They are pariahs right? Cause i'm gna be feeling pretty foolish if they arent <_<

[Iron_Adam]

I think from a 30k perspective the pariah is just anti warp, but i bet from a 40k perspective, its literally soulless. And the way this argument is going about the Iota vs Spear, i think someone needs to call up Mr Swallow and ask him to clarify, cause no one seems to want to cede either way.

I think it was perfectly reasonable how he killed her myself.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Is having no warp presence the same as having no soul? Having no soul would make me think of something with no feelings, like a machine, or someone who the automatic sliding doors at the Kwik-E-mart won't open for, but the Silent Sisters in FotE and in the short story in ToH don't seem to be what i would think was "soul-less".

They are pariahs right? Cause i'm gna be feeling pretty foolish if they arent :D

 

A warp-presence is pretty much the same thing as a soul. It doesn't mean what it does now, although pariahs have this innate aura of "wrongness" around them.

Think of it like a sliding scale though. There's Blanks, who merely have no warp-presence, so they can't be detected or affected by warp-energy. Then you've got Pariahs, who are actually along the lines of a black hole within the warp, so 'empty' that they actually suck in psychic energy around them, so it's literally impossible to effect them or anyone around them, but it's easy to detect them (a massive hole in warp-space is kinda easy to notice, as opposed to a merely 'empty' part).

To be fair though, with a true pariah their aura is so strong that often people automatically block out the fact that they exist.

 

@Iron-Adam, let me explain it another way. Imagine that psykers shoot fire, and pariahs are innately fire-proof. Then, we've got the Culexus Temple, who have developed a way to absorb fire, and shoot it back. However, the problem is that even though the Culexus are still fire-related (they're immune), they don't give off any fire to be absorbed and reflected. There isn't anything for the Animus Speculum to catch and shoot back.

Swallow attempts to get around this by describing Pariahs as psykers at numerous points in the book, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Pariahs are anti-psykers. They're the water to the psykers fire. If he'd explained it as the Black Pariah being able to manipulate the "emptyness" of the Culexus, and do something with that, then that would be fine. Sadly, that isn't the case. Spear destroys Iota by absorbing and reflecting warp-energies back at her that she has absolutely no way of causing.

It's the same with the daemonhost part. Having a daemon bound to a pariah is like having a fire covered in water. The pariah, by its innate nature, destroys the energies of the daemon.

[2000AD]

A warp-presence is pretty much the same thing as a soul. It doesn't mean what it does now, although pariahs have this innate aura of "wrongness" around them.

Think of it like a sliding scale though. There's Blanks, who merely have no warp-presence, so they can't be detected or affected by warp-energy. Then you've got Pariahs, who are actually along the lines of a black hole within the warp, so 'empty' that they actually suck in psychic energy around them, so it's literally impossible to effect them or anyone around them, but it's easy to detect them (a massive hole in warp-space is kinda easy to notice, as opposed to a merely 'empty' part).

To be fair though, with a true pariah their aura is so strong that often people automatically block out the fact that they exist.

 

I would have to partly disagree with you here - it seems that those who dont have souls (ie those that have the pariah gene) all have as a side effect an ability to reduce psychic activity within a given radius. The Sisters of Silence are pariahs too and also have psychic dampening effect.

 

I cant think of an example of a plain old fashioned psychic blank in the fluff.

 

But suffice to say........ Have psychic powers = Have soul........ Dont have soul = Cant have psychic powers.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Well, there may not be examples, but that's exactly how the fluff describes it. A blank is simply not effected by psychic powers (some might even be effected by particularly strong ones), but they aren't strong enough to protect others. It's a sliding scale, down from Phi (average human) which goes up to Alpha (and even Omega Plus, technically, but nothing more than Delta Plus have been observed), and down to Omega (full-on black-hole Pariah). We don't have any named examples of any Theta-level psykers, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, because they're described in the background. We also don't have the name of the 46th member of the Ultramarines Second Company, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a name, or doesn't exist.

To use your description though, yes, they all blank out psychic ability within a radius, it just doesn't always extend beyond them.

Edited April 24, 2011 by Lord_Caerolion