Jump to content

Deliverence lost text has been changed at BL-website


sponsra

Recommended Posts

8 Legions on a planet, including their attendent fleets in orbit, having ambushed the three Loyalist Legions without warning and acheived first strike, yet somehow it diminishes the Raven Guard to think they escaped destruction with outside aid?

 

Not buying it I'm afraid. Not even the Space Wolves could have fought their way out of that trap in any meaningful numbers.

 

Remember the Salamanders and Iron Hands were all but destroyed at Istvaan, having only a very few Legionaires escaping in very few numbers. The Raven Guard escaped at around 10,000 strength and kept their Primarch. Seems a little, fortunate, at the very least...

 

I think the Raven Guard players can be proud they survived an Alpha Legion plot, rather than be ashamed they were almost destroyed but for the Alpha Legion plot.

 

Think of it this way:

 

Raven Guard Istvaan Veteran: "Yeah we were almost destroyed by those traitors but for the heroic sacrifice of our brothers, Corax's own inspiring prescence and no small amount of extraordinary luck spoiling the cowardly traitors' fun. We have reason to believe the Alpha Legion had caused this "luck", as we discovered they had their own nefarious plans for us later on. Joke is on them, since we spoiled their fun too!"

 

Judging the feasibility of the infiltration right now is a little pre-mature. Admittedly there is a bit of a barrier to be reconciled, but I have faith the author will do the series proud and not gloss over it.

 

If not, then I too will be disappointed with that aspect of it. Though I can suspend disbelief a little, I do want a little of believability and consistency with established fiction.

Have a spoiler.

 

I wonder how the Alpha Legion infiltrators mimic the albino trairts of the Raven Guard Marines.

Probably cosmetic surgery. In Legion it's stated that they make use of it to better resemble Alpharius.

 

What about the biometric scanners the fact that marine's have perfect recall of everything they've seen or heard or read. So new faces should be a big red flag. The explantion should be fun to read.

Can someone help a brother out, I can't see the WarSeer post because the site is blocked at work <_<

Here:

"

At the end of the book, Omegon declares to the representative of the Cabal that he has no need of the Cabal any more, and throws him/it out of an airlock. But throughout the book, the Alpha Legion were prosecuting a war against the Raven Guard, explicitly for the purpose of following the Cabal's plan, or so it seemed.

 

However, the Raven Guard themselves had been attempting to rebuild their legion using gene data obtained from the Emperor, and as such were able to turn 10-year-old boys into full-grown Marines within just over three days... which was completely silly, frankly, but that's what happened in the book. Anyway, the machinations of the Alpha Legion led the Raven Guard to incorrectly believe the gene data was unstable (creating mutant Space Marines called Raptors into the bargain, only these were the good kinds of mutants... It's not clear if they were supposed to be the precursor of Chaos Space Marine Raptors, one would assume so given the name, but that doesn't fit what I understood of their background) so they stopped using it, or at least paused; but the Alpha Legion stole the gene-data and, we must presume, would then have been able to create literally tens of thousands of new Astartes over the course of the next few months. How this doesn't make the Alpha Legion the most numerous and powerful Legion in the galaxy is not clear.

 

[edit] I've just double-checked the history of Corax. Many of you will probably know this, but I'd forgotten it; he eventually kills all the mutants in his Legion (the "Raptors" I mentioned above) and heads off to the Eye of Terror in shame, with the cheesiest poetry reference in 40K history as his final words. So no, the "Raptors" in the book are not Chaos Space Marine Raptors; but as they were all killed, neither can they have any connection with the Raptors Successor Chapter, apart from the name. This leaves the question of what the Alpha Legion are going to do with the super-fast-growing-Space-Marine gene data, though; previously established history suggested the rapidly developing Marines were inherently unstable, the book makes clear that that was only because of the interference of the Alpha Legion, there was no fundamental problem with the gene data. [/edit]

 

I'm going to be honest: I was disappointed in the book, as it all seemed a bit silly. (The infiltration of the Raven Guard by Alpha Legion spies was a cool idea, though). It's strongly implied that the Emperor stopped creating Primarchs because he threw a childish strop once the first 20 got abducted by the warp (possibly contradicting the implications/claims in other books that it was because he relied on tricking the Chaos Powers into making their creation possible, so with the support of the Chaos Powers withdrawn, primarchs were no longer an option); so he created Marines instead, because they were quicker to create, but chose to overlook (or for some other reason not use) the apparently obvious change in the genecode that Corax and the Raven Guard used, so Marines now take a decade to make instead of under a week... despite the fact that the reason the Emperor went for Marines not more Primarchs was speed of development. It didn't seem to make much sense to me.

 

Anyway: at the end of it all, the Alpha Legion appear to have positioned themselves to be independent of the Cabal (who seem not to have foreseen this betrayal, despite their ability to predict events thousands of years into the future with a high degree of certainty) and also have the capability to outnumber all the other Legions put together within a year or two, if they so chose. One must presume their story does not end there... but it seems clear they have their own agenda, neither entirely allied with Horus, nor entirely following the instructions of the Cabal.

 

"

Personally, I pre-ordered this book for some Raven Guard love, not Alpha Legion Trickery.

My Two Cents.

I do like the Raven Guard, so I hope that the novel focuses on them, and that the book correctly portrays them. I think people are forgeting that there were 8 traitor legions on Istvaan. It might not be as cool as it was originally, but even if they only escaped because the AL turned a blind eye to them, the fact that they still managed to evade detection by 7 other legions, purely through their skill at hit and run warfare and covert operations, and then later (presumably) evaded the AL's plans for them, is no small feat, and is not to be sniffed at! ;)
I do like the Raven Guard, so I hope that the novel focuses on them, and that the book correctly portrays them. I think people are forgeting that there were 8 traitor legions on Istvaan. It might not be as cool as it was originally, but even if they only escaped because the AL turned a blind eye to them, the fact that they still managed to evade detection by 7 other legions, purely through their skill at hit and run warfare and covert operations, and then later (presumably) evaded the AL's plans for them, is no small feat, and is not to be sniffed at! :D

 

Exactly!

 

Weeell, the Raven Guard supposedly only survived because the Alpha Legion steered away the traitor ships in the area, allowing the remaining Raven Guard ships to evacuate the remainder of the Legion. The Alpha Legion even actively sabotaged a World Eaters ship so it wouldn't be able to intercept the Raven Guard ships. The Alpha Legion did not merely chose to not pursue and finish off the Raven Guard when they apparently had the chance, they actively derailed the other Legions and thus enabled the Raven Guard to get away in the first place.

If the Raven Guard then turns out to thwart the Alpha Legions plans, that would be some of a saving grace, but for now it does indeed put them in a bad light. Not to mention that the Alpha Legion is apparently responsible for their genetic defects (or for them not finding a proper cure) and manages to steal the super advanced gene tech, so it seems the Alpha Legion wins out in the end after all.

 

I really love how this story makes a lot of stuff not even make sense in the 41rst mill.

 

Yea. What more can I say? Bad concept, won't be picking it up at all.

 

Not sure what stuff it makes not make sense? Or bad concept?

Castiel, sorry, my bad. I kind of figured the "Age of Darkness" stuff was already old news. And I forgot about th enew bits.

 

WLK: I kind of feel the Alpha Legion already is beyond "everyone wants to be like them", but maybe that's just me. :)

I really love how this story makes a lot of stuff not even make sense in the 41rst mill.

 

Yea. What more can I say? Bad concept, won't be picking it up at all.

 

Not sure what stuff it makes not make sense? Or bad concept?

 

 

I dunno, making a Space Marine in a week is a bad concept. It also would have a hard time explaining why the Alpha Legion aren't the hugest legion ever (And they aren't).

Said Gene data probably isn't solely for Alpha use though. How doesn't this concept make sense in the current timeline? we just assume that this data remains safe and sound for the rest of the series? Good thing there isn't a massive galaxy spanning conflict occurring that could cock these plans up.

 

Oh wait....

 

Let's stick that cart behind the horse for now folks.

Well, maybe the Alpha Legion are the most numerous around, ever, and we just don't know? They also can turn companies of loyalist Chapters without much difficulty (and have done so to destroy loyalist Chapters in two stories so far), so they wouldn't even need to have advanced Marine creation procedures. They can just get reinforcements from the loyalists.

Though, if the Alpha Legion had acquired the quick creation technology during the Scouring, that could perhaps explain their easy victory against the Ultramarines on Eskrador. (That is, if that actually happened, and was not just a made up story.) Perhaps the Ultramarines killed droves and droves of Alpha Legionnaires in the gulched and ravines of that planet, but they did not perceive it as making much progress since the Alpha Legion allways kept coming back with more. Kind of like the turtle and the hare story. The Ultramarines saw newly attacking Legionnaires and mistook them for the ones they had though to have killed earlier, prompting them to think that they were not really doing any damage to the Alpha Legion at all...

Barring some overuse of Alpha Legion, I really think the "Raven Guard owes its survival to a traitor Legion" plot is pretty good. I get that it upsets Raven Guard fans, but it's one of those good annoyances, like when your favourite badass character in a movie dies in a backstabbing move by the much-weaker bad guy you know he'd trample if he'd just seen it coming.

 

Come in, the Heresy series has been full of this kind of dichotomy and jarring moments when you just can't come to grips with how grey-toned the 40K setting is.

 

Plus, every Legion has a moment of defeat that leaves a mark, almost to the point of "humiliation" (in the Chapter's point of view):

 

Ultramarines - beat by Alpha Legion

Imperial Fists - Iron Cage / Dorn gets his ass handed by Kurze

Night Lords - Being sullen outcasts, never respected, now being so fragmented they don't even resemble a Legion. At least World Eaters can still join under BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD etc.

World Eaters - Primarch got beaten, along with a dozen Bloodthirsters, by 100 "normal" Grey Nights.

Black Legion - "We're halfway through the second half, and it's still 13-nil for the Imperium"

Thousand Sons - They've taken so many beatings from the Space Wolves it's not even funny anymore.

Dark Angels - Primarch got beaten by an augmented human, plus they hide a terrible secret involving traitors among their ranks - forever.

Blood Angels - Sanguinius got mauled by a Bloodthirster - almost twice. Say what you will, it does dent a Primarch's pride. Accounts from Signus show Sanguinius was certainly affected by the defeat, and not just from the massacre of his men, I'd say.

Word Bearers - Kneel before the Emperor! And Malcador! And Guilliman! And a detachment of his Ultramarines!

Iron Hands - Bet those Morlocks welcoming Fulgrim and the EC didn't see that coming, anymore than their Primarch did. Then Ferrus tried to make things right and got killed.

Emperor's Children - Their demigod was kind of weak willed. As in "vacating his body" weak willed.

White Scars - Well...they'll get their moment, I'm sure.

Salamanders - I'd say Isstvan. Again, not an humiliation by any means, but traumatizing.

Raven Guard - Until now, Isstvan.

 

Don't take the tone seriously, please, although I mean the above instances as truly traumatizing, they're not necessarily humiliating. The Raven Guard - broken, reduced to a few, their Primarch bloodied - certainly cannot be blamed for falling to an Alpha Legion scheme that is pretty much unthinkable in the context of the Space Marine Legions. If it makes you feel bad as a Raven fan, think it's for the good of the story. Like Idaho said, someone has to lose. No condescendence there...it's a lesson History teaches everyone.

I think you're right in pointing out that the Raven Guard are about as in extremis as they could get at the time. It's the whole reason why Corax took such drastic measures, ones he wouldn't normally touch with a fifty-foot barge pole. Huge chunks of their Legion dead at the hands of their brothers and barely escaping with their injured Primarch...even the staunchest of marines is unlikely to be thinking straight.
Dark Angels - Primarch got beaten by an augmented human, plus they hide a terrible secret involving traitors among their ranks - forever.

Luther had a lot of power handed to him by the Chaos gods, you realize. And the Lion probably wasn't on top form, what with being shot at when he expected a nice cup of tea and cookies, and having his home planet being destroyed.

The "harsh", not-entirely-objective tone was intentional, mate, but it was a defeat, and it was a pivotal point in a shameful process for the Legion. The point is, everyone gets a wound that won't close no matter how many millenia of licking is performed on it.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.