The Emperor's Geneseed

[DerekLee688]

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

 

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.

 

 

Perhaps the Primarchs were ment to be given the Greyknight training/agumentation/wards/etc. but were whisked away. Maybe DNA of the emperor isn't enough to ensure protection. Asking children in iron wombs to produce effective Gellar Fields is a little much. A trained augmented GK in blessed powered armor with psycik hood sounds alot more "incorruptable" if we were to use Matt Ward's six degrees of incorruptability.

 

The chaos gods knew if the Primarchs were given geene seeds that they would have no chance to corrupt them as the geene seed would change them into lil' emperahs. Hense they were taken away and grew up without guidence/augmentation. The emperor just shelved his geene seeds until he got them back. For whatever reason didn't carry out putting them in when he got the Primarchs back, maybe he couldn't because the risk of death or he thought of them as sons instead of Astartes. The GK's are a finnished product of a more refined process to create the incorruptable soldier with the additions of knowldge of Chaos and unquestioning worship of the emperor.

[Lord_Caerolion]

But the Primarchs weren't inherently corrupted by their journey through the Warp. Plus, if the Emperor did have these magical warp-McGuffins to protect his beloved Primarchs, why weren't the first words he said upon finding each Primarch "Hey there, I'm your father, you're a Primarch, now for the love of Me put these on to stop you getting corrupted!"

 

Put simply, I much, much prefer the original background on the Grey Knights, where their protection came from knowledge, ritual and sheer, unadulterated willpower. They weren't inherently better, they were better because every single piece of equipment was crafted to be harmful to Chaos, and their minds had basically been sculpted to make our most hardline religious zealot look like a weak-willed aesthete compared to them. Instead, we've got Marines who are incorruptable because of the element of Plot and they've been implanted with something the Emperor didn't have.

 

They should be able to be corrupted, after all, some Primarchs were, it's just that it took a lot of effort to corrupt the Primarchs, and would take similar effort for a Grey Knight, but they just aren't worth as much. Corrupt a Primarch, and you have an entire Legion. Corrupt a Grey Knight... and you've got a guy who's going to be put down by the 9 guys standing right next to him who you didn't corrupt, and who dedicate their lives to destroying what you just did.

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

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.

 

somewhere Michael Bay is making this rant into a movie, with help from Uwe Boll.

 

WLK

[Lord_Caerolion]

Dear gods what have I done!?!

[Don the Oiler]

Matt Ward's six degrees of incorruptability.

 

I like that term, together with Lord_Caerolion's in-depth explanation.

[Adarul Greystalker]

If the Grey Knights use the Emperor's geneseed and are truly incorruptable and pure and act only out of faith in the Emperor, why aren't there more of them? Normal chapters stay around 1500-2000 marines out of adherence to the codex or respect for one of its guiding principles - that being the desire to prevent heresy from leading to large-scale civil war again - but if the Grey Knights have literally never lost a single member to heresy and are theoretically or even practically immune to corruption then surely that restriction should not apply to them. Their mandate comes not from Guilliman's codex but from Malcador or even the Emperor himself. They have a massive recruiting base, considering how many psykers are collected by the black ships, and they've had 10,000 years (not counting time spent in the warp) to build up their numbers from the security of Titan. Why wouldn't they be Great Crusade-era legion strength at least?

[Lord_Caerolion]

Because originally noone knew how big the Grey Knights were, and it was assumed that they were friggin massive in order to deal with their intended purpose. Sadly, the latest abomination of a codex came along and put their numbers at 1000, probably because as awesome!!1! as Draigo is, he still isn't an Ultramarine...

[Oiad]

This all assumes that the Emperor knew the Primarchs could be corrupted. He seemed pretty surprised to me.

 

With the Grey Knights he simply went back to the drawing board and started with the base ingredients, similar to the Custodes. He never lasted long enough to witness if the new stock worked and continue his work with it.

[A D-B]

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.

 

Argh. Kind of. It's not quite that cut and dried.

 

Apologies for the cut and paste from when I was banging on about this elsewhere:

 

As some folks have noted, there's some confusion over this because of the terminology being used. But, back to basics:

 

None of the primarchs had gene-seed in their bodies, in the sense that it was "stuff" to be taken out and implanted elsewhere. When a Space Marine says "I am of Rogal Dorn's gene-seed", they don't mean they have gene-seed from Rogal Dorn's body inside them, they mean that their Chapter's gene-seed was originally created and grown in a lab, using Rogal Dorn's DNA.

 

There is one Chapter that claims no biological descent from the twenty primarchs. The Emperor didn't use primarch DNA when he made their gene-seed. He used his own DNA to make the gene-seed organs.

 

If it's true, it means, in the literal sense, that the Emperor of Mankind is the primarch of the Grey Knights.

[Son of Rawl]

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.

 

somewhere Michael Bay is making this rant into a movie, with help from Uwe Boll.

 

WLK

 

I can see that now...a Hundred Million Dollar explosion that goes on for 3 and half hours and is somehow racist, boring, and offends every fan of 40k who has ever existed.

[Codicier Lucion]

This all assumes that the Emperor knew the Primarchs could be corrupted. He seemed pretty surprised to me.

 

With the Grey Knights he simply went back to the drawing board and started with the base ingredients, similar to the Custodes. He never lasted long enough to witness if the new stock worked and continue his work with it.

 

Well, supposedly they shouldn't due to the primarchs being made from the Emperor's genetic data due to this new fluff about the Grey Knights being incorruptible due to simply using his gene seed. They had exactly the same thing as the Knights did, they were all psychic to some extent and all had his genetic data, and yet they were somehow corrupted.

 

Assuming your second point is correct there's also the problem in relation to how quickly he was able to create the new gene seed with the same basic ingredients to be immune to frigging Chaos. The Emperor made the Primarchs from scratch to be demigods who were apparently not immune to Chaos, and yet it took the Emperor only a fraction of the time to make a group of mortals capable of shrugging off corruption and freely using sorcery with no problems.

 

That then raises the question of why the hell he didn't just use this stuff on the Thousand Sons if he understood how to make them immune to any corrupting force- *head explodes*.

 

None of the primarchs had gene-seed in their bodies, in the sense that it was "stuff" to be taken out and implanted elsewhere. When a Space Marine says "I am of Rogal Dorn's gene-seed", they don't mean they have gene-seed from Rogal Dorn's body inside them, they mean that their Chapter's gene-seed was originally created and grown in a lab, using Rogal Dorn's DNA.

 

There is one Chapter that claims no biological descent from the twenty primarchs. The Emperor didn't use primarch DNA when he made their gene-seed. He used his own DNA to make the gene-seed organs.

 

If it's true, it means, in the literal sense, that the Emperor of Mankind is the primarch of the Grey Knights.

 

Assuming of course this chapter was not just talking about the eighteen primarchs we know the names of or having their gene seed be a combination of all of them rather than from one single primarch.

 

Actually, using his gene seed in this manner just raises the question of why he didn't just do that in the first place rather than the primarch project. If he has enough of his own 'gene seed' to create two elite fighting forces on short notice, the latter somehow being naturally incorruptible despite many things suggesting otherwise, then why didn't he just clone his own genetic data and produce warriors en mass?

 

It would have saved him the time and effort spent on creating the primarchs, and he would have had warriors who would not turn to Chaos and risk corruption like the astartes.

 

Sweet heaven, trying to figure out Ward's fanfiction is like watching Lost all over again! Trying to figure out the plot holes just creates more, bigger, plot holes and getting answers just creates even more questions!

[2000AD]

It seems to me that the Grey Knights were created through simply taking the most loyal space marines available, albeit from specific legions...... therby lending specific DNA benefits to the eventual melting pot that would create the first Grey Knights.

 

Garro, Loken et al provided the base DNA but are not themselves the first Grey Knights...... I believe they are the first Inquisitors.

 

 

The Custodes on the other hand are different.... they can really say that the Emperor is their father. Their loyalty is ingrained straight from Day 1.

[Oiad]

I dunno. Is this a school-of-thought that lends itself to the belief that - 'only the Custodes can be that awesome'?

 

Loyalty seems to be portrayed as an aspect of nurture over nature imo. A Space Marine's genes don't tell him where his loyalties lie, it's the indoctrination, training and the way he disseminates relevant information from those he comes into contact with. If loyalty lied purely at gene-seed level then why did Garro & co, remain loyal when their comrades didn't?

 

While they've shown great resilience and loyalty I'm doubtful that they're completely incorruptible. But because they were amongst the first and foremost experts on dealing with traitors and daemons physically and mentally, it made them perfect candidates for teaching a new chapter that would soon specialise in such matters.

 

Well, supposedly they shouldn't due to the primarchs being made from the Emperor's genetic data due to this new fluff about the Grey Knights being incorruptible due to simply using his gene seed. They had exactly the same thing as the Knights did, they were all psychic to some extent and all had his genetic data, and yet they were somehow corrupted.

 

Assuming your second point is correct there's also the problem in relation to how quickly he was able to create the new gene seed with the same basic ingredients to be immune to frigging Chaos. The Emperor made the Primarchs from scratch to be demigods who were apparently not immune to Chaos, and yet it took the Emperor only a fraction of the time to make a group of mortals capable of shrugging off corruption and freely using sorcery with no problems.

 

That then raises the question of why the hell he didn't just use this stuff on the Thousand Sons if he understood how to make them immune to any corrupting force- *head explodes*.

It all lends itself down to the belief that the Emperor verges on being all-knowing, had completely perfected the science or had even considered the need to make them completely immune. The Primarchs are often seen as a crowning achievement but proved to be imperfect. Something went wrong, whether the Emperor misjudged his creation or the Dark Gods did managed to influence the experiment it goes to show that somewhere along the line his practice was fallible.

 

When it came to Grey Knights perhaps skipping the Primarch element made it quicker. Perhaps the Emperor had become quicker with experience. It's anyone's guess. But I don't believe Grey Knights are necessarily a perfection in his experimentation either. They've held out until now but there's a lot of speculation over the internet as to whether they really are unbreakable. We only know that the Emperor 'believed' them to be purist and they've had all the assistance the Imperium can provide to make sure they remain so. So far that's been proven to work but can we all say for sure that it will last? There are groups of fans out there who don't believe so. Still, I'm sure if the Emperor had been granted the time they would would have been Primarch-like in ability too. :P

 

As for why the Emperor never used this against the TS, give the guy a chance! The GK's did not see action until after the Heresy and their initiation must have cut close to the invasion of Terra. Maybe if the Grey Knights had been battle ready right at the beginning of the heresy it may have been different. The codex implies the Emperor knew they'd be his last experiment and given the times I don't blame if he didn't have room to make something else out of it. If only warriors of purity could be summoned up in seconds... :)

[Iron_Adam]

One quick thing I'd like to add about the purifiers thing, maybe there's a degree of incorruptibility that protects the marine, and once it hits that max, it becomes offensive incorruptibility. I'm not sure if I'm making sense to you all, but it makes sense in m head. The purifiers are as protected as possible, and the excess protection becomes anathema to the warp beings within like 10meters or something.

[DerekLee688]

I'm still sticking to my theory that the reason why the Primarchs were corrupted was because they were an unfinished product. Grey knights got everything the primarchs didn't Geeneseed, aegis, RIGOROUS training, constant prayer, knowledge of the 4 chaos gods, etc.

 

Had the Emperor not been on a time table to start the Great Crusaide or unwilling to risk the loss of one of his full grown baby boys, then they would have been mind whiped like all the other astartes and impanted with his geene seed. Chaos didn't corrupt the babies, they gambled on the Emperor getting soft and not wanting to finish the process and/or the Emperor gambled that the life/tactical experience the primarchs gained during seperation was worth more than finishing the astartes process. Either way we got the HH, and Grey Knights.

 

This is how I choose to fill in the plot holes.

[Jehoel]

I'm still sticking to my theory that the reason why the Primarchs were corrupted was because they were an unfinished product. Grey knights got everything the primarchs didn't Geneseed, aegis, RIGOROUS training, constant prayer, knowledge of the 4 chaos gods, etc.

 

Had the Emperor not been on a time table to start the Great Crusaide or unwilling to risk the loss of one of his full grown baby boys, then they would have been mind whiped like all the other astartes and impanted with his geene seed. Chaos didn't corrupt the babies, they gambled on the Emperor getting soft and not wanting to finish the process and/or the Emperor gambled that the life/tactical experience the primarchs gained during seperation was worth more than finishing the astartes process. Either way we got the HH, and Grey Knights.

 

This is how I choose to fill in the plot holes.

 

Maybe the reason the Primarchs were an "unfinished product" was because the Chaos Gods stole them away before the Emperor could finish. After all, they were stolen and scattered by Chaos, so there were probably other steps in the Emperor's plan that he never got a chance to do.

[Iron_Adam]

 

Maybe the reason the Primarchs were an "unfinished product" was because the Chaos Gods stole them away before the Emperor could finish. After all, they were stolen and scattered by Chaos, so there were probably other steps in the Emperor's plan that he never got a chance to do.

 

i buy that. hell, they were birthed from their incubation tanks right into the wild, maybe they were premature or something, maybe there was some more stuff left to do of them

[DarKHaZZ13]

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.

 

YOU ARE MY HERO!

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

Dear gods what have I done!?!

 

i think you angered more fanboys than the phantom menance. or crusher's boy from ST: TNG.

 

or them combined!

 

WLK

[Codicier Lucion]

I dunno. Is this a school-of-thought that lends itself to the belief that - 'only the Custodes can be that awesome'?

 

It's not exactly a bad school of thought considering how powerful they are they'd never be allowed in the game. Especially after what we saw of them in First Heretic and other novels.

 

While they've shown great resilience and loyalty I'm doubtful that they're completely incorruptible. But because they were amongst the first and foremost experts on dealing with traitors and daemons physically and mentally, it made them perfect candidates for teaching a new chapter that would soon specialise in such matters.

 

Are you talking about the Knights or Custodes here?

 

]It all lends itself down to the belief that the Emperor verges on being all-knowing, had completely perfected the science or had even considered the need to make them completely immune. The Primarchs are often seen as a crowning achievement but proved to be imperfect. Something went wrong, whether the Emperor misjudged his creation or the Dark Gods did managed to influence the experiment it goes to show that somewhere along the line his practice was fallible.

 

If he wanted something truly perfect he would have just directly cloned himself multiple times rather than perform the genetic manipulation and editing he did. If the Emperor can just add a few cells and some genetic material, gene seed, to someone to make them immune to the corruption of the warp then the primarchs would have already been immune before they were swept across the galaxy.

 

When it came to Grey Knights perhaps skipping the Primarch element made it quicker. Perhaps the Emperor had become quicker with experience. It's anyone's guess. But I don't believe Grey Knights are necessarily a perfection in his experimentation either.

 

Considering they seem to be something he threw together in the last few years of the Heresy, assuming he even knew Malcador was forming such a force in the Imperium, it would be difficult for them to be as perfect as the new codex presents them to be. In addition to this, skipping the primarch element would make it faster but it would probably make their 'incorruptibility' weaker. The primarchs were experimented upon from before birth and were directly born with his genes in them rather than being manipulated at puberty and having new organs shoved in them.

 

They've held out until now but there's a lot of speculation over the internet as to whether they really are unbreakable. We only know that the Emperor 'believed' them to be purist and they've had all the assistance the Imperium can provide to make sure they remain so. So far that's been proven to work but can we all say for sure that it will last? There are groups of fans out there who don't believe so.

 

I'd like to agree with them, but considering who wrote them this is highly unlikely to say the least. If they are regarded as being fallible and not entirely pure it will most likely be noted its because they're not being codex adherent enough or don't also have Guilliman's gene seed within them.

 

Still, I'm sure if the Emperor had been granted the time they would would have been Primarch-like in ability too. :P

 

Please don't give Ward ideas. Draigo's bad enough without the next codex claiming he's a 'new primarch' as well.

 

As for why the Emperor never used this against the TS, give the guy a chance! The GK's did not see action until after the Heresy and their initiation must have cut close to the invasion of Terra. Maybe if the Grey Knights had been battle ready right at the beginning of the heresy it may have been different. The codex implies the Emperor knew they'd be his last experiment and given the times I don't blame if he didn't have room to make something else out of it. If only warriors of purity could be summoned up in seconds... :)

 

You misunderstand, I meant use it for the Thousand Sons. If he already was aware of the risks Magnus was taking, had access to this and knew of the anti psycher sentiment then he could have just used the Grey Knight gene-seed in them instead. Both making them invulnerable to corruption, at least according to Ward's stuff, and replacing Magnus' unstable one. In addition to this he did have a battle ready force of Grey Knights; the Custodes, who from what we know based upon the new fluff would be unaffected by corrupting influences.

 

And again, even if we assume he did this after Horus' uprising and after the Eisenstein had returned he'd still have produced something better than the primarch project in a much shorter space of time with far more flawed subjects.

 

Maybe the reason the Primarchs were an "unfinished product" was because the Chaos Gods stole them away before the Emperor could finish. After all, they were stolen and scattered by Chaos, so there were probably other steps in the Emperor's plan that he never got a chance to do.

 

That's assuming that it was the Chaos Gods who stole them and what we saw in First Heretic was accurate. Daemons are known to lie to manipulate others after all, and they tend to make very unreliable sources of information.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Argh. Kind of. It's not quite that cut and dried.

 

Apologies for the cut and paste from when I was banging on about this elsewhere:

 

As some folks have noted, there's some confusion over this because of the terminology being used. But, back to basics:

 

None of the primarchs had gene-seed in their bodies, in the sense that it was "stuff" to be taken out and implanted elsewhere. When a Space Marine says "I am of Rogal Dorn's gene-seed", they don't mean they have gene-seed from Rogal Dorn's body inside them, they mean that their Chapter's gene-seed was originally created and grown in a lab, using Rogal Dorn's DNA.

 

There is one Chapter that claims no biological descent from the twenty primarchs. The Emperor didn't use primarch DNA when he made their gene-seed. He used his own DNA to make the gene-seed organs.

 

If it's true, it means, in the literal sense, that the Emperor of Mankind is the primarch of the Grey Knights.

 

But we already know that the Primarchs have their own unique organs, which I'd thought the Marine implantations were crude copies of. After all, the apothecaries who operate on Horus have absolutely no idea what half the stuff inside him is, which I can't imagine being the case if Horus' body had no super-organs, and like the Emperor merely warp-modified people.

 

The Emperor doesn't have these super-organs to make simplified copies of, only his normal human ones. To me, creating marine-producing geneseed from the Emperors own DNA would basically require the creation of another Primarch, or at least the DNA of one.

[LordOfSkyfall]

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.

 

 

Oh My God-Emperor, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

You just made my day :)

[NightrawenII]

If the Grey Knights use the Emperor's geneseed and are truly incorruptable and pure and act only out of faith in the Emperor, why aren't there more of them? Normal chapters stay around 1500-2000 marines out of adherence to the codex or respect for one of its guiding principles - that being the desire to prevent heresy from leading to large-scale civil war again - but if the Grey Knights have literally never lost a single member to heresy and are theoretically or even practically immune to corruption then surely that restriction should not apply to them. Their mandate comes not from Guilliman's codex but from Malcador or even the Emperor himself. They have a massive recruiting base, considering how many psykers are collected by the black ships, and they've had 10,000 years (not counting time spent in the warp) to build up their numbers from the security of Titan. Why wouldn't they be Great Crusade-era legion strength at least?

Because Matt Ward has fallen in love with Codex and forces it on every SM codex he is making. Look at BAs, their codex reads like they are more codex than Ultras'.

 

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.

 

Argh. Kind of. It's not quite that cut and dried.

 

Apologies for the cut and paste from when I was banging on about this elsewhere:

 

As some folks have noted, there's some confusion over this because of the terminology being used. But, back to basics:

 

None of the primarchs had gene-seed in their bodies, in the sense that it was "stuff" to be taken out and implanted elsewhere. When a Space Marine says "I am of Rogal Dorn's gene-seed", they don't mean they have gene-seed from Rogal Dorn's body inside them, they mean that their Chapter's gene-seed was originally created and grown in a lab, using Rogal Dorn's DNA.

 

There is one Chapter that claims no biological descent from the twenty primarchs. The Emperor didn't use primarch DNA when he made their gene-seed. He used his own DNA to make the gene-seed organs.

 

If it's true, it means, in the literal sense, that the Emperor of Mankind is the primarch of the Grey Knights.

You are sort of incorrect here.

 

The gene-seed was made from leftovers of the genetic material, after the Primarchs disappeared on their little field trip.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Primarchs had all the organs the Astartes have - minus the Progenoids and maybe Black Carapace - plus a lot of additional stuff. Thus if it's said "It is Dorn's gene-seed" it actually refers to organs copy-pasted from organs of Dorn. The Primarchs have the gene-seed, ie. the organs making them superhuman, but they don't have the Progenoids, ie. the glands which are used for re-creation of Space Marines.

 

The Emperor doesn't have any such organs. He was born from human woman and althought it's possible that he did something with his DNA at some point, I don't think he has the organs required for gene-seed creation.

 

Therefore, Emeperor's gene-seed is fallacy. Gene-seed made from Emperor's own flesh is correct.

[A D-B]

If the Grey Knights use the Emperor's geneseed and are truly incorruptable and pure and act only out of faith in the Emperor, why aren't there more of them? Normal chapters stay around 1500-2000 marines out of adherence to the codex or respect for one of its guiding principles - that being the desire to prevent heresy from leading to large-scale civil war again - but if the Grey Knights have literally never lost a single member to heresy and are theoretically or even practically immune to corruption then surely that restriction should not apply to them. Their mandate comes not from Guilliman's codex but from Malcador or even the Emperor himself. They have a massive recruiting base, considering how many psykers are collected by the black ships, and they've had 10,000 years (not counting time spent in the warp) to build up their numbers from the security of Titan. Why wouldn't they be Great Crusade-era legion strength at least?

Because Matt Ward has fallen in love with Codex and forces it on every SM codex he is making. Look at BAs, their codex reads like they are more codex than Ultras'.

 

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.

 

Argh. Kind of. It's not quite that cut and dried.

 

Apologies for the cut and paste from when I was banging on about this elsewhere:

 

As some folks have noted, there's some confusion over this because of the terminology being used. But, back to basics:

 

None of the primarchs had gene-seed in their bodies, in the sense that it was "stuff" to be taken out and implanted elsewhere. When a Space Marine says "I am of Rogal Dorn's gene-seed", they don't mean they have gene-seed from Rogal Dorn's body inside them, they mean that their Chapter's gene-seed was originally created and grown in a lab, using Rogal Dorn's DNA.

 

There is one Chapter that claims no biological descent from the twenty primarchs. The Emperor didn't use primarch DNA when he made their gene-seed. He used his own DNA to make the gene-seed organs.

 

If it's true, it means, in the literal sense, that the Emperor of Mankind is the primarch of the Grey Knights.

You are sort of incorrect here.

 

The gene-seed was made from leftovers of the genetic material, after the Primarchs disappeared on their little field trip.

 

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Primarchs had all the organs the Astartes have - minus the Progenoids and maybe Black Carapace - plus a lot of additional stuff. Thus if it's said "It is Dorn's gene-seed" it actually refers to organs copy-pasted from organs of Dorn.

 

The Primarchs have the gene-seed, ie. the organs making them superhuman, but they don't have the Progenoids, ie. the glands which are used for re-creation of Space Marines.

 

The Emperor doesn't have any such organs. He was born from human woman and althought it's possible that he did something with his DNA at some point, I don't think he has the organs required for gene-seed creation.

 

Therefore, Emeperor's gene-seed is fallacy. Gene-seed made from Emperor's own flesh is correct.

 

Close, but not quite. You don't need the organs to clone them and make gene-seed. You need "unspecified genetic samples". So, naw, I was dead on.

 

As I said, regarding the Grey Knights: "The Emperor didn't use primarch DNA when he made their gene-seed. He used his own DNA to make the gene-seed organs."

 

EDIT: Primarchs, like the Emperor, aren't supersized Space Marines with all the same stuff inside them. They're their own species, almost. That's the key to remember. Their DNA was used to manufacture the Space Marines (through template organ implant badassery), and the Emperor (arguably) perfected the process with the Grey Knights. But, like the Emperor himself, the primarchs aren't basically Space Marines But Bigger. Their genetic construction is waaaaay different.

[greatcrusade08]

You are sort of incorrect here.

 

The gene-seed was made from leftovers of the genetic material, after the Primarchs disappeared on their little field trip.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Primarchs had all the organs the Astartes have - minus the Progenoids and maybe Black Carapace - plus a lot of additional stuff. Thus if it's said "It is Dorn's gene-seed" it actually refers to organs copy-pasted from organs of Dorn. The Primarchs have the gene-seed, ie. the organs making them superhuman, but they don't have the Progenoids, ie. the glands which are used for re-creation of Space Marines.

 

The Emperor doesn't have any such organs. He was born from human woman and althought it's possible that he did something with his DNA at some point, I don't think he has the organs required for gene-seed creation.

 

Therefore, Emeperor's gene-seed is fallacy. Gene-seed made from Emperor's own flesh is correct.

 

i think A-D-B pretty much answered this, but in his first heretic book it shows that the weird dudes in white coats were already working on the first legions gene-seed before thier 'little field trip'.

Ive never agreed with this idea of the primarches having all the same implants as a space marine, all the BL authors make mention of them being a breed apart and how the apothecaries would never truelly understand thier pysiology when they were injured.

the current SM gene-seed as we know it, was created using genetic material from the primarches, but was just the next step in the evolution of space marines, from the old type 'thunder troops' used during mankinds initial civil wars..

The primarches themselves were created using knowledge not undertood by mortal man, the emperor supposedly bargained for this knowledge from the gods of the warp