The Emperor's Geneseed

[Grandmaster Anaziel]

The new Grey Knight Codex basically confirms that they use the geneseed of the Emperor.

It implies that the reason for their incorruptibility is their connection to the Emperor.

Which begs the question of why the Emperor did not do that in the beginning.

Why did he bother with the Primarchs and their varied forms of geneseed when he could have just used his own from the beginning?

Why didn't he create 20 Legions of marines with his own geneseed?

 

As a counterpoint, I would say that he didn't have the technological capacity to do so.

It was only by the grace of the Emperor that they managed to use his geneseed at all before it was too late.

[Generating Random Name...]

Did he not use his geneseed to make the Primarchs?

[Grandmaster Anaziel]

Did he not use his geneseed to make the Primarchs?

 

That is true. However why not simply make Legions of his own geneseed and skip making primarchs altogether?

[Perrin]

Maybe it would have taken longer than he had, didnt Titan vanish into the warp for a while then come back out with the GK Chapter ready made? I havent read the codex but does it say how long they were in the warp for? And in warp time it could have been centuries.

[calgar101]

I personally doubt the Emperor used his gene-seed to create the Primarchs let alone the Grey Knights.

[curnow]

the primarchs are like hand made bugatti all unique all top of the range .

the Legio Custodes are like porsche super fast extreamly well made but not unigue to each other.

the adeptus astartes are like the humvee of 40k built for what it dose able to be adapted multi tasking and built on a production line.

the grey knights are like the custodes but designed for a far differnt role wheres the custodes are there to protect and laydown there lives for the emp

the grey nights are there for one porpose to hold back the warp and i see there untouchability as a trade off with the custodes long life {a lot longer then marines}

wheres there souls are more powerfull {strong enough to hold back warp influence} it burns far faster so they have a reduced life {compeared to custodes}

 

so they are all built for different roles so while you mite have a porsche in the garrage your not gona use it to take the kids camping !

[Codicier Lucion]

Due to the sheer volume of contradictions, headache inducing leaps in logic and the other aspects of that book which just seem to ignore the bits of 40K the author didn't like; just call it non canon. Trust me, it would be easier than trying to actually invent reasons to make sense of this recent development.

 

Plus he used his own genes to make the Primarchs, or was heavily involved in their developments to make them very enhanced humans so he presumably used himself as a basis, and yet fully half of them fell to Chaos. So his gene seed apparently only makes people immune to the Warp when they're not demi-gods...?

 

Yeah, just ignore it.

[Generating Random Name...]

I personally doubt the Emperor used his gene-seed to create the Primarchs let alone the Grey Knights.

But are the Primarchs not described as being the different parts of the emperor + his personality?

 

Plus he used his own genes to make the Primarchs, or was heavily involved in their developments to make them very enhanced humans so he presumably used himself as a basis, and yet fully half of them fell to Chaos. So his gene seed apparently only makes people immune to the Warp when they're not demi-gods...?

Do the GK not get mind wiped when they are inducted? If so they wouldn't have as much 'personality' or 'humanity' as the Primarchs, would they?

[Codicier Lucion]

But are the Primarchs not described as being the different parts of the emperor + his personality?

 

That was something said in the opening of Prospero Burns where the roles of each legion is outlined and in First Heretic where Kor Phaeron and Erebus are trying to give pep talk to Lorgar.

 

Do the GK not get mind wiped when they are inducted? If so they wouldn't have as much 'personality' or 'humanity' as the Primarchs, would they?

 

They still have personalities and humanity, even mind wipes don't turn them simply into machines. They still have their humanity and some individual characteristics, otherwise they would have no characters in the codex and no option for customisation of armour on their models. And that's before you start looking at the fluff outside this fanfiction which shows they do have individual personalities.

 

Let's just highlight the problem a bit more shall we:

He decides not to give the demi-gods which act as instruments of his will any form of immunity against the warp, even the one who is aware of the warp and is highly psychic and does nothing to prevent them being corrupted. Instead he decided to give that ability to a last minute backup plan he threw together in five minutes as a result of one of Malcador's ideas.

 

According to this codex the great and mighty God Emperor of mankind is a bloody idiot unable to see the blindingly obvious solutions to things.

[ICHD?]

Cos he'd end up looking like this:

 

 

http://nick.mtvnimages.com/nick-assets/video/images/spongebob-squarepants/100great-tea-treedome.jpg?height=80&width=140&matte=false&format=jpeg

[Leonaides]

If I recall, it took the Emperor and best scientists on Terra hundreds of years to collect, identify, splice, grow and perfect the genetic code for each primarch. Note that collect bit - they didnt just ask for a phial of blood from the Emperor.

 

And this:

The new Grey Knight Codex basically confirms that they use the geneseed of the Emperor.

It implies that the reason for their incorruptibility is their connection to the Emperor.

disproves itself. implication by wording (which is itself reader-dependant) is not the same as 'confirms'.

[Generating Random Name...]

But are the Primarchs not described as being the different parts of the emperor + his personality?

 

That was something said in the opening of Prospero Burns where the roles of each legion is outlined and in First Heretic where Kor Phaeron and Erebus are trying to give pep talk to Lorgar.

 

Do the GK not get mind wiped when they are inducted? If so they wouldn't have as much 'personality' or 'humanity' as the Primarchs, would they?

 

They still have personalities and humanity, even mind wipes don't turn them simply into machines. They still have their humanity and some individual characteristics, otherwise they would have no characters in the codex and no option for customisation of armour on their models. And that's before you start looking at the fluff outside this fanfiction which shows they do have individual personalities.

 

Sorry, I wasn't specific, I thought they were mind wiped and had their 'something' replaced with 'unshakable faith', or something similar, making them like the SoB, out of whom only ever one has fallen to chaos? Would this not make it a combo of Emp's Geneseed and training?

 

Let's just highlight the problem a bit more shall we:

He decides not to give the demi-gods which act as instruments of his will any form of immunity against the warp, even the one who is aware of the warp and is highly psychic and does nothing to prevent them being corrupted. Instead he decided to give that ability to a last minute backup plan he threw together in five minutes as a result of one of Malcador's ideas.

Perhaps the thought that none of his greatest creations could ever be influenced by chaos? Slightly Naive (sp?), but possible, no?

 

But I agree that it is probably all -_- anyway.

[Grandmaster Anaziel]

But are the Primarchs not described as being the different parts of the emperor + his personality?

 

That was something said in the opening of Prospero Burns where the roles of each legion is outlined and in First Heretic where Kor Phaeron and Erebus are trying to give pep talk to Lorgar.

 

Do the GK not get mind wiped when they are inducted? If so they wouldn't have as much 'personality' or 'humanity' as the Primarchs, would they?

 

They still have personalities and humanity, even mind wipes don't turn them simply into machines. They still have their humanity and some individual characteristics, otherwise they would have no characters in the codex and no option for customisation of armour on their models. And that's before you start looking at the fluff outside this fanfiction which shows they do have individual personalities.

 

Let's just highlight the problem a bit more shall we:

He decides not to give the demi-gods which act as instruments of his will any form of immunity against the warp, even the one who is aware of the warp and is highly psychic and does nothing to prevent them being corrupted. Instead he decided to give that ability to a last minute backup plan he threw together in five minutes as a result of one of Malcador's ideas.

 

According to this codex the great and mighty God Emperor of mankind is a bloody idiot unable to see the blindingly obvious solutions to things.

 

I'm with you, some parts(quite a lot actually) does not fit into canon or even make any sense at all.

I am really glad GW has said that there is no such thing as canon in 40k so I can ignore most of the fluff.

Grey Knights=Sorcerors??? o_O

[Iron_Adam]

First off, the grey knights are selected using very simple means. look for someone who is a psyker, but has a strong faith in the emperor.

next, they are completely mind wiped and psycho-doctrinated for years until what ever they had before is completely gone(including their name) leaving only their faith. i picture it like the painting of the light house on the rock being battered by waves, but it isnt going anywhere ever; it's un-shakable.

they recieve their name when they recieve their power armor.(or when they are accepted into the chapter as brothers) or something like that

 

one thing to take into account is that the imperium at the time was in a state of growth, unlike m41 which is basically static, this was the last big thing that the emperor had for humanity before he was entombed. i dont necessarily believe that their geneseed was rendered from the emperors mainly because taking into account the growth the imperium was experiencing it is totally acceptable that this was just the next new toy in a line of inovations that never saw the light of day.

 

and finally, the grey knights armour is by no means customized by the marines themselves. the entirety of the armour is designed to use runes, relics, blessed silver and etched prayers to repress the warp in as many ways as possible. every token has a purpose over individualisation. the only exception is the heraldry shield on the left pauldron, and i think you need to become a justicar do have that.

[Lord_Caerolion]

The whole problem with the "they use the Emperors geneseed" is of course the fact that the Emperor doesn't have geneseed. He's a normal person, physically, albeit an Alpha infinity-plus level psyker, but still a normal human. He doesn't have any extra organs, he doesn't have a black carapace, he doesn't have progenoids, or any of those things. The Grey Knights might use geneseed created in a different way, with no Primarch source, but they certainly don't use the Emperor as their source.

As others have said, the Primarchs are a closer link to the Emperor, and they don't have the warp-immunity seemingly granted to the Grey Knights, but then again, Ward throws around the word "incorruptable" for just about every single thing, having things more incorruptable than other incorruptable things, giving us stuff like the Purifiers, who're even more incorruptable than the Grey Knights, and Crowe, who's even more incorruptable than the incorruptably incorruptable Purifiers, and Grey Knights killing Sisters of Battle, so they can create a ritual to protect the inherently incorruptable Grey Knights from corruption, even though they're already incorruptable.

Really, the man has no idea whatsoever about what he's talking about. It seems he has the memory of a goldfish when writing about the Grey Knights, making claims about things but obviously forgetting he's made a contradictory claim only two pages ago, or made the exact same claim about something that's an either/or thing (you can't be more or less incorruptable, you either are or you aren't. If you're incorruptable, but something's more incorruptable than you, then obviously you can be corrupted, so you aren't incorruptable).

 

And dammit, I don't want to know how many times I used that word in this post. Still, it can't be more than it was used in the Grey Knights codex. It's like he's a kid who just discovered a really big word in the dictionary, and wants to show how smart he is by using it all the time, even though he's saying it wrong and not using it properly.

[Billuriye]

GK codex is a bunk.

[Iron Lord]

It's phrased as "geneseed, that lacked the flaws of that which had gone before, and which carried the gift of the Emperor's own flesh and soul".

 

So, it's possible that, after discovering just how flawed the Primarch/Space Marine geneseed was, he embarked on a project to replace it- which was completed late in the Heresy.

 

In the novels, it's suggested (admittedly by daemons which may be lying) that the Primarchs incorporate the stolen power of the Chaos gods within them.

 

That the Chaos gods are just as much their "parents" as the Emperor is.

[Pulse]

In the novels, it's suggested (admittedly by daemons which may be lying) that the Primarchs incorporate the stolen power of the Chaos gods within them.

 

That the Chaos gods are just as much their "parents" as the Emperor is.

Sounds feasible. :D

[Codicier Lucion]

First off, the grey knights are selected using very simple means. look for someone who is a psyker, but has a strong faith in the emperor.

next, they are completely mind wiped and psycho-doctrinated for years until what ever they had before is completely gone(including their name) leaving only their faith. i picture it like the painting of the light house on the rock being battered by waves, but it isnt going anywhere ever; it's un-shakable.

they recieve their name when they recieve their power armor.(or when they are accepted into the chapter as brothers) or something like that

 

I meant that they didn't just become combat servitors who were very good at killing daemons. Their past personality was destroyed but there were enough elements of each Knight's humanity left, and their differences in abilities, to not make them fully identical to one another.

 

one thing to take into account is that the imperium at the time was in a state of growth, unlike m41 which is basically static, this was the last big thing that the emperor had for humanity before he was entombed. i dont necessarily believe that their geneseed was rendered from the emperors mainly because taking into account the growth the imperium was experiencing it is totally acceptable that this was just the next new toy in a line of inovations that never saw the light of day.

 

Except that the Emperor still could have passed on a message saying "use this gene seed in the loyalist legions" to the Grey Knights when he had Titan go into the Warp until the second founding. It wouldn't have been that hard to pass on a recorded message or even just mention to Dorn, Khan and Sanguinius "oh, by the way, you'll run into a group known as the Grey Knights in a few years..."

 

Not to mention Lord_Caerolion's comment that he apparently doesn't have any geneseed, though this is the first time i've heard it suggested that his body wasn't enhanced like other space marines.

 

and finally, the grey knights armour is by no means customized by the marines themselves. the entirety of the armour is designed to use runes, relics, blessed silver and etched prayers to repress the warp in as many ways as possible. every token has a purpose over individualisation. the only exception is the heraldry shield on the left pauldron, and i think you need to become a justicar do have that.

 

In the past codex yes, though looking at a lot of the new Grey Knight models I don't think Ward or the group working on the new codex got the memo for that.

 

In the novels, it's suggested (admittedly by daemons which may be lying) that the Primarchs incorporate the stolen power of the Chaos gods within them.

 

That the Chaos gods are just as much their "parents" as the Emperor is.

 

So he allowed for Chaos to be a basis of power for his chosen sons, the ones he was sending out to reunite humanity in a major effort to weaken or destroy chaos, and made them particularly susceptible to corruption by drawing upon their power. And he doesn't consider trying to replace the flawed gene seed of the legions with his own one (which apparently does not exist) or working to make sure they're immune to Chaos or using his own genes in the creation of the primarchs so they will be protected against any Chaos influence.

Nor make his own Custodian Guard which do come from his own 'gene seed' immune to corruption when they were guarding the primarchs and making sure they not turn or become corrupted in come cases, Lorgar for one example.

 

There does seem to be quite a large plot hole here.

[Iron Lord]

The Primarchs are sometimes called "the Emperor's clone-sons"- so, his genetics were used.

 

If the "grey knight method" can only be done on a small scale, that might be why it wasn't done until after evidence started appearing that the Primarchs, and their Marines, were corruptible.

 

We don't know how the Primarchs were created, but the "it required warp power to make them" hypothesis does seem fairly logical.

Quite apart from their long exposure to the warp when they were abducted by the Chaos Gods- which left Sanguinius with wings, and Magnus huge and red-skinned, among other things.

 

So- what makes the Grey Knights different from the Primarchs/Marines, could be that they have none of this "warp taint" and they have "the gift of the Emperor's own flesh and soul"- somehow, the Emperor put some of his own soul into the new geneseed.

 

Which is different from Codex Daemonhunters, which said "their geneseed was said by some to have come from the Emperor's own flesh".

[Don the Oiler]

The Emperor's actions seem most plausible when you assume it's his goal to let mankind die a slow, painful death that lasts thousands of years and wastes as many resources as possible.

And that whole "chapter from a warp bubble" business reeks of "Deus Ex Machina" like nothing else i know, and for science fiction in general and Warhammer 40K in particular, that means a lot.

I think it's just the attempt to associate the Grey Knights more with the extremely popular Horus Heresy sub-franchise.

[DarKnight]

Did you guys read Nemsis? Wouldn't be wise for the Emperor to have his genetic material out there in great numbers or anything with his DNA which could be used to fuel any kinds of crazy rituals. Exactly why he goes by "The Emperor" and not his actual given name.

[Codicier Lucion]

The Primarchs are sometimes called "the Emperor's clone-sons"- so, his genetics were used.

 

Hence they should be incorruptible and Horus should not have fallen.

 

If the "grey knight method" can only be done on a small scale, that might be why it wasn't done until after evidence started appearing that the Primarchs, and their Marines, were corruptible.

 

Except that doesn't quite work as in Visions of Heresy he only meets the eight original Grey Knights right before he goes off to fight Horus. Meaning either he foresaw their coming and prepared the "Grey Knight method" before hand, unlikely as Chaos Gods were supposedly using nearly all of their power to block his foresight, or he performed the method on the spot.

 

Actually, that doesn't work either due to the new fluff of Titan having to depart into the Warp before the battle of Terra. Not to mention the fact that it specifically notes psychers are required for the process and only one of the original Knights we know of was a librarian.

 

We don't know how the Primarchs were created, but the "it required warp power to make them" hypothesis does seem fairly logical.

Quite apart from their long exposure to the warp when they were abducted by the Chaos Gods- which left Sanguinius with wings, and Magnus huge and red-skinned, among other things.

 

Yeah, but there's still the obvious plot hole of the fact they should have been immune to such corruption and, if Draigo is anything to go by, more or less capable of creating their own Gellar Fields because they used the Emperor's genes.

 

So- what makes the Grey Knights different from the Primarchs/Marines, could be that they have none of this "warp taint" and they have "the gift of the Emperor's own flesh and soul"- somehow, the Emperor put some of his own soul into the new geneseed.

 

And yet that would imply the use of the method used to make astropaths, and to my knowledge all Grey Knights still have their eyes when they don their armour for the first time. Plus, again, due to their link with using the Emperor's DNA they shouldn't have been able to be corrupted.

 

Actually, if your theory is correct and all space marines are Warp tainted then there should be a massive amount of mutations and flesh changes within each chapter even long after becoming full battle brothers. Like the Thousand Sons were.

 

Which is different from Codex Daemonhunters, which said "their geneseed was said by some to have come from the Emperor's own flesh".

 

But that was only a hint, we never explicitly knew that was the source. They also weren't naturally incorruptible back then either and had to rely upon their willpower and abilities not to become corrupted and fall to Chaos.

 

Did you guys read Nemsis? Wouldn't be wise for the Emperor to have his genetic material out there in great numbers or anything with his DNA which could be used to fuel any kinds of crazy rituals. Exactly why he goes by "The Emperor" and not his actual given name.

 

And yet according to Ward none of that should work because his gene seed is incorruptible and immune to Chaos. I'm just trying to figure out the sheer size of the plot canyon he's created is. And how many he has created.

 

In addition to this, technically his DNA and aspects of his soul are going about the galaxy en mass when you take the Grey Knights into account. Who are numbered only a few thousand, or one thousand according to Ward, but constantly going after major chaos cults who could possibly use the blood from one for one such ritual.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Not to mention Lord_Caerolion's comment that he apparently doesn't have any geneseed, though this is the first time i've heard it suggested that his body wasn't enhanced like other space marines.

 

Well, seeing as he was born from human parents, rather than created in a lab, and is human-sized under all the psychic glamour, I don't see how he could have geneseed. Physically, he is human, the reason he's lived so long is because of his amazing psychic powers, nothing more.

 

The Primarchs are sometimes called "the Emperor's clone-sons"- so, his genetics were used.

I don't think they're ever called his clone-sons (Abaddon's the only being rumoured to be a clone to my knowledge), rather as his gene-sons. They're based off of his genes, but their superiority comes from the amazing warp-science that the Emperor infused them with.

 

And yet that would imply the use of the method used to make astropaths, and to my knowledge all Grey Knights still have their eyes when they don their armour for the first time. Plus, again, due to their link with using the Emperor's DNA they shouldn't have been able to be corrupted.

Except that many other psykers are soul-bound to the Emperor and don't have their senses burned out. The reason why Astropaths commonly have no eyes is because they weren't psychically strong enough to handle the amount of power, so it overloaded their senses. For example, you have the Sanctioned Psykers and Primaris Psykers, who are both soul-bound, but only rarely have their senses burned out.

 

Except that doesn't quite work as in Visions of Heresy he only meets the eight original Grey Knights right before he goes off to fight Horus. Meaning either he foresaw their coming and prepared the "Grey Knight method" before hand, unlikely as Chaos Gods were supposedly using nearly all of their power to block his foresight, or he performed the method on the spot.

 

Actually, that doesn't work either due to the new fluff of Titan having to depart into the Warp before the battle of Terra. Not to mention the fact that it specifically notes psychers are required for the process and only one of the original Knights we know of was a librarian.

And yet according to Ward none of that should work because his gene seed is incorruptible and immune to Chaos. I'm just trying to figure out the sheer size of the plot canyon he's created is. And how many he has created.

Congratulations, you're learning just how pants-on-head stupid the background in this new codex is. It's obvious he barely checked previous background before writing. That, or he just plain didn't care about letting facts get in the way of how pants-wettingly awesome!!1! the Grey Knights are.

 

 

This entire thing can be summed up by the fact that Mat Ward doesn't let facts get in the way of making stuff awesome!!1!, and instead of actually thinking up good reasons for why the Grey Knights are so powerful he uses things that don't exist and throws around the word "incorruptable" like crazy, despite obviously only having a slight understanding of its actual meaning.

What we're left with is an abomination of contradictory statements, fluff that doesn't make sense given other fluff (which is too necessary to be retconned), characters who are the epitome of Marty Stu-dom, new units whose reason for existance is invalidated in the same codex, special characters who only exist because the Grey Knights got handed the Idiot Ball, and cheap, juvenile and imbecilic attempts to make the Grey Knights more awesome by having them act in ways entirely contradictory to their reason for existance.

The codex reads like a child making a superhero, who's better at everything than everyone, with no downsides, because he's a SUPERhero, and he's better than you, so there! Draigo is the best, because he's the absolutely most incorruptable of the incorruptable Grey Knights, even more incorruptable than the Purifiers, or even Crowe, who's more incorruptable than them, and doesn't need to bathe in blood to make himself even more incorruptable than he was five minutes ago, because he's DRAIGO!!1! and he's the most incorruptable and awesome and he gave Mortarion a wedgie, and beat up Nurgle, and lives in the Warp, and can't be corrupted because he's incorruptable where even the other incorruptable Grey Knights would be corrupted because they aren't as incorruptable as he is, but they're still incorruptable even though that makes no sense, but we can't let that get in the way of them being AWESOME because they're the GREY KNIGHTS, and he beats up daemons with no trouble whatsoever, even though Dreadknights were created explicitly so the Grey Knights could beat the Greater Daemons Draigo has no trouble with, and he uses forbidden sorcery because he's so incorruptable, and, and, and... What? Why are they like this? Because they're the Grey mother-fething Knights, that's why, and they're AWESOME!!

 

Isn't the new fluff so awesome!!1! guys? Huh! Huh!?! Look! They even have a monkey! They're so AWESOME! Now all they need is some ninjas... oh wait they have the Assassins! Is there nothing they don't have?!? They even have a MECHA now!!1! Aren't Mecha's AWESOME?! Now to give it the finishing touches, we'll attach fireworks to every codex, to be lit when it's sold, and it'll blare out a guitar-solo! Oh wait, that's kinda illegal... oh well, it's AWESOME enough anyways! It has everything AWESOME in it in the history of EVERYTHING! They even have their own! MOON!! Do you have your own moon? No? Well, that's because you aren't as AWESOME as the Grey Knights!

 

 

And dammit, I'm going to stop ranting now, before I lose myself forever. I almost lost myself to the rant for a while.

[Azekai]

Lord_Caerolion is just jealous because he isn't incorruptible and awesome!!1! Seriously, I laughed long and hard at that rant. It was overstated, but not by much.

 

It just doens't seem logical that some (albeit powerful) psykers are so capable of thrashing warp entities. These are beasties formed of raw hate, fear and lust, and have existed for millenia. They were formed by the nightmares and atrocities or mortals in eternity past and are now getting all of thier collective hineys whupped by . . . slightly more magical space marines. Heck, some of the GK heroes make the Emperor seem impotent by comparison- after all, even the Emperor got crippled by Horus.