Is the Heresy series too apologist

[Hyaenidae]

Well, if we're gonna analyze it that deeply, then there are no primarchs without a sob story of some sort or another, or at least a shade of nobility and honor. Not sure what else you're looking for. A betrayal, by it's nature, is going to be tragic and sorrowful. Curze was born nuttier than a squirrel turd, and despite his brand of natural justice, he and his sons still murdered billions of innocent or surrendering people. Hell, in one case, right in front of the Imperial Fists (you'd have to read Shadow Knight to know that.) That still makes him evil, whether it was sanctioned or not.

[Marshal Rohr]

Isnt Shadow Knight an audio book?

[Dinks]

Hell, in one case, right in front of the Imperial Fists (you'd have to read Shadow Knight to know that.)

Suprising the Imperial Fists didn't kick his arse there and then.

[Grimtooth]

I really think that most of all the Traitors were pretty weak in their fall. They essentially become just tools for Chaos.

 

I think the true evil arises in Space Marines that do not go Chaos, but instead flat out go renegade. They are not tools of Chaos being manipulated and lied into falling. The fall for their own reasons, they turn their back on humanity on their own, not out of any whispered promise from Chaos.

[Ring-around-the-roses]

Therefore Curze is the only true evil, and is the most awesome.(i'm pretty damn sure the Chaos gods didn't want him to get killed, as he seems to kick the butt of every primarch he goes against. Fear the 30k Batman, for he can pounce like a frog and strike like a honey bear!)

[Dinks]

I can't see why anyone would consider him awesome, he for me at least, is the worst primarch so far as story and background.

[augustmanifesto]

Well, if we're gonna analyze it that deeply, then there are no primarchs without a sob story of some sort or another, or at least a shade of nobility and honor. Not sure what else you're looking for. A betrayal, by it's nature, is going to be tragic and sorrowful. Curze was born nuttier than a squirrel turd, and despite his brand of natural justice, he and his sons still murdered billions of innocent or surrendering people. Hell, in one case, right in front of the Imperial Fists (you'd have to read Shadow Knight to know that.) That still makes him evil, whether it was sanctioned or not.

 

Was the campaign in Shadow Night the same incident that The Dark King and Lightning Tower references in which Curze almost kills Dorn? (I'm just reading Shadow Night now).

[Hyaenidae]

Isnt Shadow Knight an audio book?

 

BL 2009 Chapbook. It was a short 20 pg or so story that first introduced me to Talos and First Claw. Pretty cool story, PM me if you want to know anything about it.

 

Edit: @august: I couldn't say; I'm mostly deaf, so audio books and I don't really get along. ^_^

[Ring-around-the-roses]

AAAGH, YOU CANNOT BEHOLD THE MAJESTY OF PRIMARCH BRUCE WAYNE, BLOOD CONDOR IS THE ONLY WORTHY PUNISHMENT

 

Personally, i am holding my 'whose most awesome' debate until the HH is over. In terms of kickass, i would say Curze though. Not the best, by far, but best bad-ass-pisses-off-the-good-guys, definetely Curze.

[Unintentional Batman]

They all are tragic, fallen heroes

 

And that, right there, is the whole point of the story of Heresy. They all are tragic, fallen heroes.

 

It would be fun to have one guy who turns just for the evulz (and Mortarion is pretty much closest to being this one), but how the mythology of the Heresy is built, they need to be tragic, fallen heroes. It wouldn't - and I'll use a metaphor you can get - be as meaningful to see Guilliman put down his brothers and former comrades in arms if they were just black & white Evil, but now as they are tragic, fallen heroes it means so much more when brother goes against brother.

 

If Darth Vader was be just a generic dark lord of the Sith and not former heroic comrade in arms of Kenobi who fell tragically (well, it would have been tragic if Lucas knew how to write) to the dark side, Star Wars would be much less. This is nine Vaders and nine Kenobis.

 

Curze was born nuttier than a squirrel turd, and despite his brand of natural justice, he and his sons still murdered billions of innocent or surrendering people. Hell, in one case, right in front of the Imperial Fists (you'd have to read Shadow Knight to know that.) That still makes him evil, whether it was sanctioned or not.

 

And if it was sanctioned, the Imperium that sanctioned it is at least as Evil as Cruze and his merry bunch. Starting to throw around the word "evil" in objective meaning in the 40K universe is not a good idea. The "good" guys end up being smeared at least as badly as the "evil" ones when you do that.

 

Except Alpharius, of course, he's above such petty concerns as "good" and "evil" :D

[Ring-around-the-roses]

I cannot believe you said Primarch and Star Wars in one post. Just...Can't.

 

(Walks into a dark room. Single gunshot echoes out)

[Unintentional Batman]

Heh, I know. But Star Wars provides us with such a big load of iconic pop-culture ideas that using it as a comparison is often a very quick way of illustrating a point :D

[Captain Idaho]

Thing is, a tragic hero who becomes Darth Vader is cool, but 10 of them is boring and a little tiring.

[Jim Shady]

Perturobo, for example, can easily be a character who is just a power hungry, callous individual

and and that genocide he committed on his home planet turns out to not bother him at all.

 

I thought Perturabo was sickened that he could not keep his home planet from rebelling as it were and went to end it to stop the Big E from pimp slapping him into the next millenium.

[Marshal Rohr]

You can never have enough Darth Vaders.

[The Emperor's Champion]

I hear what you're saying, Idaho, but I firmly believe that Curze and Angron will have no sob story whatsoever. I have faith that they are just evil because they are evil.

Curze isn't though. He never was really evil at all. Curze is brutal and haunted, not evil. Hell, he's like a reverse version of Dexter Morgan.

If you've never seen Dexter, Dexter Morgan is a guy who basically has no conscience, and he has a deeply rooted urge to kill people. He was raised carefully by his detective father to always hide his nature, trained to kill only evil people who the law couldn't touch, and never ever get caught. He seems like a friendly and fairly easy going guy.

Curze, on the other hand, grew up on a world of murderers and criminal and was haunted from birth by visions of his father having him killed. He didn't want people killing each other or being evil, so he set himself off on a ruthless crusade where he openly and brutally murdered murderers and terroised criminals until he became a legendary thing that haunted the night that absolutely everyone was sure existed and no one wanted to piss him off....so peace came to his world. And that's what he wanted. Eventually he became the world's leader, and the world remained at peace.

Basically, if you made Batman into a Super Soldier and took away his reluctance to kill, you'd basically have Curze. A Batman so effective that he scared Planet Gotham into behaving.

 

Curze for me was just broken from birth.

 

You just need to read Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver to know that. In those books Curze is just deluded and paranoid far beyond what was in the Night Lords IA, so much so that some of Curze's closest found him almost insufferable. Curze went so far as to make make up threats that weren't there and then go on to fully beleive them to be real.

But not necessarily. he could actually see the future. Threats didn't necessarily have to exist yet for him to eliminate them ahead of time.

 

For me, Curze is not a 'Big Baddie' as it is insinuated that he knew that the Emperor was going to kill him for pretty much his whole life. I personally choose to think of him like this; As Sanguinius had visions of nobility and heroic sacrifice on Baal and in the Imperium, Curze had visions of the dark deeds that was comitted on his planet, and later in the Imperium, all of it in his fathers name, and this was the father that he knew was going to kill him. Knowing all this, he still chose to fight for the Imperium, as he thought Humanity could be redeemed. Eventually, his need for redemption clashed so much with the sins he had commited that he chose to 'split' himself, either voluntarily or as a self-defence mechanisn, into Curze and the Night Haunter. The Night Haunter was the culmination of Curze's sins, polluted by Chaos, while Curze was the side of him who hated Chaos, his father, the Imperium and all the evil that was commited. This is why he sought vindication, as a justification of why he was so broken, and slowly turning to Chaos.

 

mostly conjecture, but its my two cents, and i like it. :)

That's not how he was split. Night Haunter was his instinctive need for justice, and his hate for criminals and murderers, allowed to run free and do what it needed to do to mercilessly cleanse his home of corruption. No human morals or mental blocks placed on himself by outside forces. The Night Haunter, insofar as anything about a Primarch can be called natural, was a natural force of justice and peace. Those were things he naturally wanted and sought to enforce.

 

Konrad Curze was the "human" persona he adopted as a facade for dealing with the Imperium. Konrad Curze is the polite, public face of Bruce Wayne that hides the Batman beneath it (seriously, Bruce Wayne is his cover identity, not the other way around. In his mind he doesn't call himself "Bruce". He calls himself "Batman".).

Konrad Curze was the Night Haunter caged and forced to tolerate the world around him.

 

Curze was never evil, and certainly never corrupted by Chaos. He was just unhindered by the system of morals constructed by mankind and lived by the morals he was born with. And if you really consider that, you might realize that that actually makes him kind of a "natural" good guy. Like an angel of justice who doesn't give a damn about anyone's meaningless mortal excuses. He's going to smite them anyways, and those criminals not corrupt enough for him to slay, he just made himself into a thing of terror and forced them to reconsider their lives.

 

Judge, jury, executioner, and damn good reason to rethink your life.

 

 

Therefore Curze is the only true evil, and is the most awesome.(i'm pretty damn sure the Chaos gods didn't want him to get killed, as he seems to kick the butt of every primarch he goes against. Fear the 30k Batman, for he can pounce like a frog and strike like a honey bear!)

His Legion was the only true evil. It's sort of sad. He was the natural and brutal force for good, and he brought peace to his world, but when he went out into the galaxy at the head of his Night Lords his homeworld no longer had a merciless justicar to fear...so they slipped back into their evil and murderous ways.

As the Night Lords continued recruiting from the world, the Legion's new recruits weren't those who had been reformed and trained to fight alongside the Terran Night Lords, they were the most corrupt and murderous of Nostramo's population given superhuman form and super weapons.

That's why, when Curze found out Nostramo had slide back into evil and that it had corrupted his Legion, the Night Haunter returned to his homeworld and he destroyed it. Dude was pissed.

 

 

I can't see why anyone would consider him awesome, he for me at least, is the worst primarch so far as story and background.

Because he's awesome.

[Greyall]

Well, even if it's not my favourite Primarch, from what I saw Curze has been aptly written. Actually, I can't remember any instance in which he has sounded sane, which means he's never conveyed as a role model. I can see how his Batman-esque story is atractive, though. But I don't think anyone can fully understand and apologize him defecting from his father's Imperium to join a bad of corrupted bloodthirsters - not that he isn't one. He ranted about the Imperium's lies, but he ruled Nostramo with an iron, spiked, sharp fist. So, there you go, apologies not accepted for the dark boy.

[Dinks]

But not necessarily. he could actually see the future. Threats didn't necessarily have to exist yet for him to eliminate them ahead of time.

Not all of them were real thats the problem, Curze himself said that they didn't always pan out the way he saw, eventually though even the ones that were wrong he beleived were real and in some cases he thought they had happened. He kept forgetting things and getting confused, many times being corrected or reminded by his Captains.

[Captain Idaho]

Perturobo, for example, can easily be a character who is just a power hungry, callous individual

and and that genocide he committed on his home planet turns out to not bother him at all.

 

I thought Perturabo was sickened that he could not keep his home planet from rebelling as it were and went to end it to stop the Big E from pimp slapping him into the next millenium.

 

So says the Index Astartes. The Heresy series might have a different interpretation.

[Ring-around-the-roses]

Me want more HH. NOW!

 

I crave vindication for my beliefs.

[Yogi]

If I punch you in the face, you can bet I justified it in my mind. No one thinks they are the bad guy. As cool as it sounds to have a stone cold scumbag Primarch. It kinda doesn't make sense.

 

Everyone has a motive.

 

2nd Primarch "Commander, I want you to stab to death everyone on the planet below."

 

Equerry "Why Lord? They have just joined the Imperium."

 

2nd Primarch "No reason."

 

Equerry *Salutes, grabs bayonet and heads for drop pod*

 

If the above 'no reason' response is really for no reason, then the character is ridiculous. If he is doing it because he is hateful, deluded, corrupt, resentful etc then it makes sense, and he has a motive.

 

Also in fiction, if a character is just evil its considered bad writing.

 

Angron will have a reason. Even Mortarion will have a reason. The saddest thing for me is that Alpharious before Legion, had a purely selfish reason of wanting to prove himself against his brothers and showing up those who thought themselves superior. Now after Legion, he did it *maybe* because the Cabal told him to. IMO the IA reason of proving himself was better.

[Ring-around-the-roses]

This discussion about Primarchs is starting to remind me about a discussion on John Constantine's morality.

[Codicier Lucion]

But they have certain redeeming qualities. Angron's honour and Curze's strive for justice can be considered good and they are mostly product of their sh*tty upbringing. What Idaho wants is some despicable, selfish and inherently evil Primarch regardless of his childhood.

 

So, Guilliman? [/joke]

 

Though honestly I sort of like some of the approaches thus far.

The evil side are clearly evil but the fact many of them seemed like good people makes the events of the heresy all the more tragic and works well in contrast with the traitor legions of M41. Each to their own though.

[Lord_Caerolion]

That's not how he was split. Night Haunter was his instinctive need for justice, and his hate for criminals and murderers, allowed to run free and do what it needed to do to mercilessly cleanse his home of corruption. No human morals or mental blocks placed on himself by outside forces. The Night Haunter, insofar as anything about a Primarch can be called natural, was a natural force of justice and peace. Those were things he naturally wanted and sought to enforce.

 

Konrad Curze was the "human" persona he adopted as a facade for dealing with the Imperium. Konrad Curze is the polite, public face of Bruce Wayne that hides the Batman beneath it (seriously, Bruce Wayne is his cover identity, not the other way around. In his mind he doesn't call himself "Bruce". He calls himself "Batman".).

Konrad Curze was the Night Haunter caged and forced to tolerate the world around him.

 

Curze was never evil, and certainly never corrupted by Chaos. He was just unhindered by the system of morals constructed by mankind and lived by the morals he was born with. And if you really consider that, you might realize that that actually makes him kind of a "natural" good guy. Like an angel of justice who doesn't give a damn about anyone's meaningless mortal excuses. He's going to smite them anyways, and those criminals not corrupt enough for him to slay, he just made himself into a thing of terror and forced them to reconsider their lives.

 

Judge, jury, executioner, and damn good reason to rethink your life.

 

I prefer the idea that the split was actually Curze as the traumatised child, and Night Haunter as the mask he put on to allow himself to survive. Basically, he's Batman if Bruce Wayne had never had an Alfred or any other family to give him some actual emotional development, but after watching his family get gunned down, he had to scavenge for the rest of his life with noone to protect him. Night Haunter is driven, focused and uncompromising. Curze is... the little child growing on a planet of murderers, watching his own death each and every night with noone to comfort him, always scared, always alone. When around others, Curze was distant and untrusting. In times of stress, like when he "woke up" after attacking Dorn, Curze was terrified. The Night Haunter was a survival mechanism he developed, pushing his terror into the deepest parts of his mind. Even after all these years, Curze is still that same child, deep, deep down.

 

 

As to having a "pure evil" Primarch, I just can't agree with that. Everybody has some reasoning behind their actions. This isn't an "excuse", in that it means what they did wasn't wrong, but it means you can understand why it happened. Nobody suddenly goes "you know what? Screw everything!" The closest I can come to having the "pure evil" Primarch is Perturabo, in that he was always disturbed, cruel and cold. He was incredibly paranoid, seeing insults where there were none, making enemies of what should have been friends, and when the civil war broke out, he just snapped, and decided that the galaxy was a cruel place, so it wasn't wrong for him to be cruel too.

I don't see the current backstory of the Primarchs as excusing them of what they did, it just means we can see why they did what they did. Seriously, none of the Primarchs should be turned into moustache-twirling cartoon villains. Those are cheap parodies of actual characters, and the Primarchs should have more depth than "why do I do all this? Meh, who cares, I'm evil! Mwahahahaha!"

[Ring-around-the-roses]

Remember, Primarchs are the peak of humanity, not inhuman. Still human, just the best, and worst that humanity could be.