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The Emperor's Geneseed


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I believe the Primarchs were in fact made from the emperor's own flesh (and therefore with a touch of chaos)

Huh?

 

I think he means that the Emperor may have "borrowed" power from chaos to create the Primarchs, which would make the Primarchs and the marines belonging to their Legion creations of chaos. I don't agree with this, but I might be completely wrong and ProteanSun might have meant something else.

 

On 40kforums there is a topic called "Space Marines are all Chaos?" Linky if anyone is interested

 

On-topic, I think that the Emperor was naive/arrogant and didnt believe he would need to protect his armies from chaos because he believed he had outsmarted the chaos gods once already. But that doesnt explain why he wouldnt make all his spacemarines with this geneseed in the first place. Maybe because of the length of time it took for the first 1000 GK to be created on Titan (not sure if the codex mentions the length of time but it could have been centuries in the warp) or maybe the GK are inferior to normal marines in an unknown way, possibly the loyalty to a sole leader like a Primarch or maybe the special gene-seed means that they lack conviction when fighting enemies that aren't chaos daemons, such as eldar. It would explain the GK having dealings with the Eldar (havent read the codex but im sure i read somewhere that they do).

Of course it's for our consumption. We're not 41m citizenry. Or are we?

Beside the point, all data is subject to change (as GW does - inarguable) and all fluff data is written, often in a heroic style, but not always but it's not 'recorded'. Nowhere in the fluff are we addressed as players/consumers. The wall is there and ignored like any theater fiction. These days, compared to the past, it's far more serious and uses formal English. Doesn't mean it aint propaganda or propaganda based. And, as a propaganda connoisseur, I'll state the best propaganda is that couched in formal language alongside the heroic as intelligence.

Again beside the point as propaganda doesn't mean it must be a lie. If it is propaganda, it could be anything and therefore nothing is 100% reliable. In short, we can believe what we like and be right and wrong which brings us back to faith... which I'll state again, is the point.

 

So many novels make it clear that the source is not the guy's name on the cover. The Inquisition War is quite a classic example as in the first chapter of one of the books it describes how the book itself is found wrapped in leather and jammed in a crevice somewhere. There are even references to machines that write novels for the populace based on 'real' events. What we read and take as gospel in codexes is not immune to this possibility.

 

It doesn't need to be stated that we're readers. It doesn't state that we're readers rather than 'characters' in the dictionary or an encyclopaedia, but that doesn't change its perspective. You still haven't adressed the point that if everything's ignorable then the universe collapses under not having any actual rules to it. Otherwise, every discussion needs to be started with "ok, so what do people think of Abaddon? By the way, in my version of 40k, Abaddon led the 13 Black Crusades, has the daemon sword and Talon, and leads the Black Legion", because we wouldn't know what parts of GW lore they take as true or not.

This doesn't happen, however, because people don't assume that everything's potentially false, and it's all propaganda, but they take it as the baseline truths of the 40k mythos. Orks are part fungus. It's information we get from a codex and novels, but if you choose to ignore that fact, then you're right only in your own personal interpretation of the 40k mythos, which is not the official one.

 

You're free to pick and choose between what you believe, but what's printed in the books by GW is what happened. You're free to play "what if", but Huron officially went traitor. The Horus Heresy officially happened as is described in the books. Some books may choose to present themselves as in-universe sources, but that in no way means they all are. It's like arguing that my car is blue, so every single car is actually a shade of blue. 40k books being in-universe is the exception, not the norm. The vast majority are impersonal, word-of-god, omnipresent statements of fact, no matter how melodramatic they may be. Saying "Lo, and then did Calgar smite the Avatar about it's head, and the Eldar gave out a great and terrible wail, and did soil themselves", doesn't change the fact that Calgar hit the Avatar, and the Eldar broke from the battle. You're getting confused between something being written in a certain style, and it being written for a certain purpose. Something can be written "heroically" without it being propaganda.

GW has said this is the case, dude. Canon doesn't exist as far as GW is concerned. It's been said!

It's their baby and they'll do what they like.

 

Instead, their eyes twinkle and they pretty much state: Everything you're told is fallible as it's the Imperium talking... and it can be dishonest because they're people who don't care as it's a grim and dark future. Their interest is only pushing you like meat into a grinder. You can worm through the holes screaming or roaring with zeal. Up to you. You can believe what you like, as long as it's the Imperial truth.

 

We can certainly, as enthusiasts, piece together what is more likely true (about total fiction) and in the end, still be wrong as GW isn't in the truth telling business. They tell an ever-adapting and expanding story.

 

Why do you think the Emperor never delivers internal monologue? The closest I've seen was in The Inquisition War, and even then we're not really sure if it's Him or fragments and therefore less than Him. Although I doubt that will last... anyway... it was just the protagonists memory of events... most likely. *chuckle*

 

Your rant above really missed the mark of my gist if you ask me. And with that, I quit this as it's not serving the topic.

I find it interesting that people will lock on to one word, and ignore the message. I was just stating that GW writes future mythology, with all the consistancies there in, not future history (which tends to be written by the victor, btw). So, when we read the Grey Knight novel, and note all those dropships and chaplains yet our codex has neither, where is the truth? Nowhere. Its just stories, told by different people, from different points of view.

 

As to how the universe can function without "canon", just ask every modern culture other than the USA. Stories and facts are not the same thing, and should never be confused as such.

 

Now, the rules section shoes us how to play this army, while all the fluff sets the tone of the army so we can have the right mind set for playing them. Same's true for every codex. That said, we should not get hung up in all the inconsistant fluff, but use the stoies as fables and metaphores for how the army should be played: that is, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, burn it ... its a daemon!

 

SJ

The OP was originally more concerned with why a similar process to retain loyalty/purity against Chaos wasn't used within previous incarnations of the space marines and the primarchs, not whether the source of the geneseed comes from the Emperor. That's a different issue. Let's keep it on track here before we get dragged into an irrelevant debate regarding the overall sincerity of fluff.
What i have wondered. Is if the emperor needed marines specifically tailored to fight chaos. Why not use humans who have the pariah gene. In almost all GW material,the pariahs are the anti-warp. Chaos demons,psykers,all abhore being near them. powers cant be used around them. So why would you make your premier anti-demon force from people with psykic powers. We know that the warp feeds on those with these powers and are more open to corruption by chaos. Am i wrong? or am i missing something?

In the grimdark future, you fight fire with fire, not with water. :D

Maybe AD-B or any other BL authors that might browse these forums can settle it once and for all but i see the books as exactly what they are, books. They are told from a narrators view, an omnipotent narrator that can show us everything and everyone thats relavent to the story, if it was Imperial Propaganda there would be no stories about Chaos marines or daemons, because the common men and women of the Imperium don't need to know they exist, there would be no Soul Drinkers books, because no Imperial source would have known about what happened to them fully, there would be no Eldar books, because how would an Imperial propaganderist know anything about the ways of the Eldar unless they were =][=

The only possible exceptions to this are books told from a first-person view like Ciaphas Cain.

Maybe AD-B or any other BL authors that might browse these forums can settle it once and for all but i see the books as exactly what they are, books.

Did A D-B not comment in this thread already, I think he's already said something on the subject anyway.

I meant about novels/fluff/stories/canon being Imperial Proganda or narratived stories, not the Emperors gene seed.. thought that would have been clear from the opening sentence of my last reply. Ill have to write in bold next time.

Ah, ok. What I was meaning was that A D-B has already posted here, in relation to the E's Geneseed (Which I think you understood?)

I meant about novels/fluff/stories/canon being Imperial Proganda or narratived stories, not the Emperors gene seed.. thought that would have been clear from the opening sentence of my last reply. Ill have to write in bold next time.

Ah, ok. What I was meaning was that A D-B has already posted here, in relation to the E's Geneseed (Which I think you understood?)

 

Yeah i understood that, sorry that my previous post was snappy, it was late and i was tired :P

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