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Mind wiped primarchs?


Drazzo

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I've been thinking recently about the whole hersery thing. When the primarchs crashed on whatever world they were found on, they seem to have an inate understanding of tactics. They also seem to have no social skills/values, like their schooling had not go5tten that far and they took on the morals of the worlds they were raised on.

So the question I've been asking myself is why did the Emperor mind wipe his sons and reteach them? Or he could have just wiped their social skills and put better ones in place. Like taking Logar's need to worship or the nLion's need to keep secrets. The empire may not have had the tech to do this but the Emperor sure could have, he mind smacked the Word Bearers down when he needed to.

I can hear the arguments that the Emperor did not know his sons would go rogue, but he surely had to know somet5hing was wrong when he found Logar and Cruz, for example.

Any thoughts or am I just crazy...lol

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Afaik, the Lion's need to keep secrets was because it took 7 years (iirc) before he was found.

As stated elsewhere, the Primarchs matured in a matter of months where humans would take years.

The simply fact that he had no-one else to talk to meant that he had to keep his own council.

 

Plus, it fits with the english-myth thingy the Dark Angles got going on.

Specifically, an old poem called "The Wanderer".

There's a big difference in ordering a Legion of Marines who adore you fanatically to kneel and trying to brainwash someone like Angron or Mortarion. The ones most in need of such personality alteration are also the ones who would fight to the death if they caught even a hint that the Emperor had such a thing planned for them.
I personally believe it is not possible whether the gentics(or something like that :devil: ) of the primarch wouldnt allow it or i can definately see most of the primarhs being against their mind being wiped. I feel if it was possible to mind-wipe a primarch the big E would have done it so he could keep a tighter hold on his great generals or atleast thats reasoning as why it may not be possible but my view can be changed!
Mind wiping a Primarch seems like the sort of thing you would have to continue to do over the course of their life. I feel as though their minds would heal eventually, or some stimulus would knock the mental block loose, therefore an Emperor level psyker would have to be in close proximity to the Primarch at all time. Probably easier to kill them outright or imprison them.
I think that, rather than them being taught this and then having had their minds wiped, they are just so hyper-talented and post-human in their ability to absorb knowledge as well as thinking through potentials and come to the right decision, that they learned tactics/strategy after they crashed rather than before.

It's actually pretty well covered in Deliverace Lost (and elsewhere) during some of Corax's flashbacks.

 

He remembers the stasis chambers, he remembers the memory programming, and so on.

 

What it shows is that as the embryonic or infantile Primarchs were being vat grown, they were also having their minds pumped full of info. It strongly suggests that they never got as far as actually "learning" what it meant/how to be human as they ripped away from the lab by the "event" and scattered across the galaxy.

I think that mind wiping them wouldn't have been the answer. Instead, he should have removed the human parents from the equation. I mean, who is it that Lorgar listened to? The people who raised him on his world, because he trusted them. Remove them, and he would have had no one to listen to.

Interesting question. It does prompt a few more.

1. Can they be mind-wiped or is this beyond even the Emperor? After all, we know that Chaos Psykers can corrupt marines (see latest Chaos Codex which mentions a geyser of blood and every marine touched by it instantly becoming fanatically devoted to Khorne) but the Chaos Gods themselves had to manipulate and deceive all of the traitor Primarchs into choosing to betray the Emperor, they couldn't just compel them. Maybe the E engineered them to be psychically resilient to the the extent than even he would struggle to mind wipe them.

2. Would he want to? This really leads on to the next question:

3. Who scattered the incubation capsules?

 

The traditional explanation was that the Chaos Gods were fearful of the potential power of the Primarchs but they couldn't destroy them so they scattered them. What always seemed odd to me was that the scattering was so helpful. The Chaos Gods may not have been able to destroy the incubation capsules directly but they could have deposited them in the gravity wells of black holes or stars and let physics do its work. Instead each Primarch landed on a world that seemed to suit his personality. The Primarchs' seem to be a result of a mix of nature and nurture. Magnus was a strong psyker and landed on a world with high levels of psykers for example, no other primarch would have prospered so well on that world, just as if Magnus had landed on Fenris the people would have been suspicious of his "maleficarum".

 

I think either Tzeentch was playing a longer term game or the Emperor and/or Malcador arranged the scattering so that the Primarchs would grow up in places that would make them strong and then be glad to be reunited with their father rather than keeping them all on Earth where such a big group of brothers would have squabbled and wanted to break free from their father's influence.

 

It's said in a few of the Heresy books (eg. Prospero Burns and The First Heretic) that each Primarch had a different role to play - diplomat, regent, praetorian, executioner, spy master etc. I think the Emperor found the diverse skills useful. Also, did the Emperor plan the Heresy? I've personally long thought that the Emperor planned the Heresy, he just miscalculated the way it would play out, for example he never intended for Magnus to turn. The Grey Knights, psyker marines, are basically a replacement for the 1k Sons. Had the 1K Sons stayed loyal they would have been one of the Imperium's greatest assets against daemons. This is why the daemons engineered the burning of Prospero. The Emperor didn't want to go down that route. At Nikea he had to bow to political pressure from multiple other factions including several Primarchs and he had to gamble on losing Magnus for the sake of the Imperium and its a gamble he lost.

The glimpse of the Primarch Project genetic coding we get from Deliverance Lost indicates that each Primarch was specifically gene-built with certain character traits. As in, mind wiping wouldn't do any good because, say, Lorgar's need to believe in something greater than himself may have been hard-wired into his genetic code.

 

How many of those traits are wipe-able or are built-in, we don't and probably can't ever know. However, I do think it's an interesting idea.

The glimpse of the Primarch Project genetic coding we get from Deliverance Lost indicates that each Primarch was specifically gene-built with certain character traits. As in, mind wiping wouldn't do any good because, say, Lorgar's need to believe in something greater than himself may have been hard-wired into his genetic code.

 

How many of those traits are wipe-able or are built-in, we don't and probably can't ever know. However, I do think it's an interesting idea.

 

Well lets go back to Lorgar. You said his sense of belief could have been hardwired, and if it was you could mind wipe his belief system from when he was growing up (where he was taught that gods existed), and instead redirect that firm sense of faith into the Imperial Truth. That way he believes in what the Emperor taught him, not what Colchis did.

What makes you think erasing their minds and stuffing in a bunch of Emperor approved stuff would have made things better? The Emperor raised Horus from an infant and was in mind to mind contact with Magnus since the Crimson King was an embryo in a pod. We all know how THAT turned out.

 

Honestly it seems that the Primarchs who turned out the best were the ones given a good upbringing by people who WEREN'T the Emperor. Konor Guilliman, the High Karl of Debris, the Inwit headman...one could even make a case that Kor Phereon was a better father than Emps, since Kor's beloved son never shoved a lightning claw through his chest.

The Emperor raised Horus from an infant

 

Umm. I don't recall that detail - I was under the impression Primarchs grew up pretty damned quickly. Even if Horus was found reasonably fast (less than ten years into the GC, let's say) he wouldn't have been an infant when the Emperor found him, I don't think.

The Emperor raised Horus from an infant

 

Umm. I don't recall that detail - I was under the impression Primarchs grew up pretty damned quickly. Even if Horus was found reasonably fast (less than ten years into the GC, let's say) he wouldn't have been an infant when the Emperor found him, I don't think.

 

In one of the HH novels Horus talks about having grown up working in the mines of Cthonia. And speaks to his marines in the Cthonic dialect several times.

While Horus does speak Cthonic to his gene sons in Horus Rising, he also tells a touching story to the Mournival about the Emperor giving him a book on the ancient Zodiac signs to study, which I always read as an interaction between a child Horus and the Emperor, since with a grown man Horus it would be either comical or creepy.

 

Source on Horus growing to adulthood in a mine?

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