Lion El Jonson , Second finest general

[GhostMalone]

I meant on terra with the Russ comment after they arrived

[Conn Eremon]

Oh, my bad. Wasn't aware there was a second altercation.

[GhostMalone]

Tis okay, if anything angron should have been warmaster, attrition rates up by 100000%

[Kol Saresk]

I'd be surprised if there weren't four or five. The Lion don't seem like the type to forget any kind of wrong, perceived or actual.

[Conn Eremon]

Angron becomes Warmaster. Yells at everyone to stop asking him what to do and just do something. Forbids anyone to call him by his title. Everyone shrugs and does their own thing. No Warmaster to bind Legions to a singular cause against the Emperor. Chaos thwarted. Thousands of years later, there are a heck of a lot more missing Legions/Primarchs, including the Warmaster.

[GhostMalone]

See heresy solved!

 

The emperor still lives and sanguinus and Horus still have their tea party

[Conn Eremon]

If Sanguinius' fear of his sons' flaws are never realized, otherwise you would be meaning Legion IX, whose Primarch and Legion names and histories are as unknown as the II, VIII, XI, XII, XV, XVI and perhaps the XIV and XX. Also the VI, for their flaws could be seen as comparable.

 

. . . Kind of says a lot when fully half the Legions and their Primarchs could logically go the path of the missing.

[Kol Saresk]

Nah, the VIII would be like Dragons and other monsters. Nightmares of something that once roamed the void between stars but now are only bad memories and the things of legend. Gone and faded to only a memory of what they were, but a memory that is never forgotten.

[Conn Eremon]

Maybe. Maybe not. That really depends on how the Emperor goes about this sort of thing. For all we know, one or both of the current two missing could have had an even bigger impact on the human psyche across the galaxy than the VIII and yet they were erased completely.

 

It would be interesting, however, if the VIII were completely erased and yet the name Night Haunter remains a common term for bogeyman like myths.

[Kol Saresk]

Well, IIRC, the II and XI Legions were "whispered" about in The Outcast Dead amonst the Hooverville outside the Eternity Gate. So the fact that no one else remembers them or even knew they existed would say that they were "erased" relatively early in the Imperium's history. But still, the memory survives even if no one knows the truth of it.

[Conn Eremon]

I see that as meaning the memory that there was an VIII Legion and Primarch remains forever, but without any additional information attached, like their terror tactics leaving scars on the human psyche.

 

But really, this sort of contemplation depends on the specifics of the erasure of the II and XI, which we will never know.

 

That and I'm tired and not want think more.

[Wade Garrett]

And yet his is the Legion that fragments the least, retaining a near Legion status for ten thousand years without the excuses of low numbers or high mutation rates that the other Legions who resisted fragmentation used.

Lion's Legion has also spent ten thousand years putting more effort into hunting a chunk of it's own membership than defending the Imperium from non Fallen internal or external threats, and killed an alarming number of citizens, Guardsmen, Inquisitors, and brother Astartes along the way.

 

Isn't keeping thousands of Astartes from pursuing agendas counter productive to the Imperium as a whole one of the reasons Rob broke the Legions up in the first place?

 

And yet his is the Legion that fragments the least, retaining a near Legion status for ten thousand years without the excuses of low numbers or high mutation rates that the other Legions who resisted fragmentation used.

Lion's Legion has also spent ten thousand years putting more effort into hunting a chunk of it's own membership than defending the Imperium from non Fallen internal or external threats, and killed an alarming number of citizens, Guardsmen, Inquisitors, and brother Astartes along the way.

 

Isn't keeping thousands of Astartes from pursuing agendas counter productive to the Imperium as a whole one of the reasons Rob broke the Legions up in the first place?

[Conn Eremon]

Yes but then, my point was that they had retained much more of their Legion status than any other Loyalist Legion and therefore fragmented the least. Not that it was a good thing or that their purpose was for the betterment of anything or anyone but themselves.

[Beef]

 

The Lion seems to have inherited from the Big E 2 things:

 

1) A boat load of arrogance,

2) A sense of entitlement,

I love how people make comments like this but never with anything to back them up...

Well this is the interweb and its all about sweeping non fact based statements

[Greyall]

See, I don't understand what's this about the Lion killing Nemiel not making any sense...isn't one of the Lion's (and his rulership) plot traits that he has everything in him to be the best only for things to go south at the worst possible time, usually due to his own flaws?

 

He's getting a great score in the Crusade yet suddendly sends half the army home, because, you know...recruits.

 

He has the skill to slice Curze in tiny pieces yet seems to just roar at throw himself at the Haunter, putting himself at arm's length. (this is debatable and a very personal interpretation of the fight)

 

He's confronted with all this madness and, in a fit of rage/angst, punches his Chaplain's head off, no doubt lowering even more in his men's 'I Love Papa this much' scoreboard.

 

He punches Russ (who's supposed to be the savage one) out cold instead of seeing his brother's genuine laughter for what it was.

 

Of course killing Nemiel makes sense - not for us ('least I hope not), but it does for Jonson, he's the typical brightdark soul who has all the skills yet an anguished, paranoid, fragile personality that cracks at the slightest...slight. Now put such a soul in power and, when he's not performing awesomely due to his skills, he'll be raging at everything, forging grudges then settling them in an often cruel way. After that he'll be brooding over the amount of rage and grudging he must do.

 

The Lion very much has the skills to be the second best or even the best general and, personaly, I count him as probably the best technical fighter among the Primarchs. It's just that his mind isn't that technical - actually, it has a tendency to stop being technical at the worst possible time. I'm actually not sure whether the Lion's ascension to Warmaster wouldn't cause more attrition rates than Angron's. At least Angron doesn't care if he's ignored, whether Jonson's first case of perceived disobedience by one of his brothers...cue blood spatters.

[amaze07]

I hope they do the Lion punching Russ out bit down the line!!

[daveNYC]

I personally like the idea that the Lion is the 'best' general that you'd want running a battle, but his social skills are so crap that he's worthless (that's worthless for a primarch, so still a god among insects) when it comes to something like a larger war, where knowing and understanding the other side's motivation and goal (not to mention having a firm grasp of the opposing general's personality and the like) would be useful.

 

So in the second DA HH book, he's able to determine that the traitors would go for the siege weapons, he's able to run a totally brilliant space battle and ground defence of them, but after all that he's played for a sucker and hands them over for worthless promises of support.  And given what he wanted the support for, I'd have to say that the Lion is the one primarch who definitely demonstrates the Dunning Kruger effect.

 

Right now though, the Lion is a bit of a mess as a character.  Destroyed the beasts, good.  Let the Administratum turn his planet into an industrial hellhole, bad.  Brought Luthor and all the knight buddies along on the crusade, good.  Ditched half the legion (based on random dice rolls) and sent them back to Caliban in shame, bad.  We get he has trust issues and the people skills of Tom Smykowski, but damn if his actions and motives don't seem to be all over the place.

 

Ugh, Magnus and Russ: A Thousand Sons did a good job of setting up Magnus and Russ as characters with huge gaping flaws.  I thought that the attempt to contact Magnus scene in Prospero Burns was a rather ham fisted attempt to try and paper over some of the flaws that A Thousand Sons showed in Russ.

 

Supposedly I should also read Wolf Hunt, since that fixes some of the timeline issues with Outcast Dead.

 

And the only primarch who doesn't exhibit painful amounts of arrogance is Angron, so put me down as a second vote for Warmaster Angron.

[facmanpob]

daveNYC, on 12 Jul 2013 - 13:41, said:

Right now though, the Lion is a bit of a mess as a character. Destroyed the beasts, good. Let the Administratum turn his planet into an industrial hellhole, bad. Brought Luthor and all the knight buddies along on the crusade, good. Ditched half the legion (based on random dice rolls) and sent them back to Caliban in shame, bad. We get he has trust issues and the people skills of Tom Smykowski, but damn if his actions and motives don't seem to be all over the place.

The reason The Lion is in a mess is that he has had 4 different authors writing him......

[Brother-Kezek]

 

The lion had to make an example, perhaps execution was a bit extreme but nemiel was in the wrong, not the Lion.

You've even acknowledged it yourself; execution was extreme. No one denies a punishment was in order, but what is the example being sent to his men?

 

"You disobey me, even if following the orders of the Emperor, you die."

 

There are other Primarchs who did the same thing and they all sided with Horus. Regardless of intent, Johnson sent an awful message to his Legion.

Entire worlds were put to death for not obeying The Emperor. A marine being killed by his Primarch for the same thing doesn't seem strange to me.

[Conn Eremon]

That doesn't scale appropriately, Kezek. The Primarchs destroyed whole worlds too.

 

But the Emperor didn't kill any Custodes or Primarchs, that we have seen, which would be comparable to a Primarch executing one of his own Marines. It would seem strange if he did, which is why so many prople find it strange when the Lion did. It's not like he's Angron, Perturabo or Fulgrim, who have killed their Marines because of how unhinged they are. The Lion is cold and analytical, not the type to react like that.

[Kol Saresk]

But the Emperor did erase two of his sons from existence as far as the greater Imperium knows. And it was early enough in the Great Crusade that only place seen the masses even having a legend about the other two Legions was on Terra. We know Corax had to be told by the Emperor about those two. How many other Primarchs only know of their brothers in myths and half-truths? It doesn't just take effort to remove something from history, it takes determination to keep it removed.

[Conn Eremon]

Aye, but like I said we haven't seen it. We don't know the story. The only thing the Dark Angels have like that are the Fallen. A history they erased and are dedicated to keeping erased. It doesn't compare to the Lion's off-hand execution of one of his own.

[Kol Saresk]

Well, I was going for a general relative. True, we don't know their stories, just they're sad stories, but I don't imagine there's a statue of "Nemiel the Fool" standing the Rock either. In fact, I'm willing to bet the Dark Angels forgot about him. But yeah, that scene was............... Well it was written by Gav Thorpe. So there is no specific relative, but we can get close here and there.

 

EDIT: Actually, wait. We can get specific. I forgot about the Thunder Warriors. According to them, they were killed by the Emperor, or at least his orders. And the Emperor did order the execution of the survivors who made it to Cerberus, proxy the War Hounds. Senseless executions do run in the family.

[Conn Eremon]

Would that be considered senseless? The Emperor didn't do it just because, he did it for a reason. Cold and heartless, yes, but not senseless. Nemiel's death can be seen in the same light, I will grant that, but I don't see it myself. It was just senseless.

[Kol Saresk]

I don't see why the Emperor would have killed the Thunder Warriors. Personally, if I thought they were expendable, I would have just used them up rather than "Hey, you won me my greatest victory! Die."

 

Nemiel's death was caused by Nemiel doing his job as the Redemptor, or Chaplain, enforcing the Edict of Nikea. The Lion could have just smashed him up and then threw him into the brig instead of just killing him.