How did Eidolon ever get a position of Authority ?

[godking]

How did Eidolon ever get a position of Authority in the emperors children ?

 

He has no skills as an Astartes that plenty of guys in his own legion dont have .

 

Eidolon should at best have been  a Sergeant a vain idiot like him could never realistically have been promoted to Lord Commander.

 

Most of the other Villains in the Horus Heresy series at least have some skills to offset their personality.

 

Eidolon has no redeeming features whatsoever to warrant him being tolerated.

 

I am suprised that Eidolon did not suffer an ''unfortunate accident'' during battle.

[Elias]

Eidolon was taller than torgaddon, who by his own was big astartes. I think we was very good at hand-to-hand battle. but yes, I also hate him.

[Billuriye]

I wonder that too. Lord Commander title requires more than martial prowess. The man knows no etiquette, misjudges everything and everybody, tactically inept etc. 

[Kol Saresk]

Well to be honest, I think Eidolon was/is a perfect example of that when an idiot is put in charge of a capable group of soldiers, sometimes the officer gets carried along for the ride but still claims the glory. And while Murder may be a huge clusterbomb for his record, his assault that ended with the death of a Warsinger at Istvaan III is an example of what I mean. We associate that because he was a pompous, arrogant airhead that he must have been a tactical failure based on just one of his commands. But in all reality, we have two(maybe three if you want to count the Betrayal at Istvaan) of his commands to look at. That is not his entire record. For all we know, in his early days he was probably a great deal more humble and only became arrogant later on in his life as he rose further and further up the ranks and talk of the Emperor's Children being the superior Astartes began to prevail.

[godking]

Eidolon was taller than torgaddon, who by his own was big astartes. I think we was very good at hand-to-hand battle. but yes, I also hate him.

There are at least 4 or 5 Emperors children alone as good or better then him.

 

And good close combat skills alone are not enough to be put in a leadership position.

 

The highest he should have risen is sergeant and even that may have been to high a position for him.

 

Eidolon has no qualities required for the position that he had.

[godking]

Well to be honest, I think Eidolon was/is a perfect example of that when an idiot is put in charge of a capable group of soldiers, sometimes the officer gets carried along for the ride but still claims the glory. And while Murder may be a huge clusterbomb for his record, his assault that ended with the death of a Warsinger at Istvaan III is an example of what I mean. We associate that because he was a pompous, arrogant airhead that he must have been a tactical failure based on just one of his commands. But in all reality, we have two(maybe three if you want to count the Betrayal at Istvaan) of his commands to look at. That is not his entire record. For all we know, in his early days he was probably a great deal more humble and only became arrogant later on in his life as he rose further and further up the ranks and talk of the Emperor's Children being the superior Astartes began to prevail.

 

If you are a completly unlikeable bastard  you better be skilled or at the very least competent enough for people to overlook your unlikeability.

 

Eidolons ''skill'' is not nearly enough to overlook his stupidity arrogance and overall unlikeablity.

 

Erebus Fabius  and Lucius are unlikeable bastards but are skilled enough at what they do keep them around.

 

And talk of the emperors children being the superior astartes is not enough to completly  explain Eidolons arrogance even Lucius is smart enough most of the time to know when to shut the hell up.

[DarthMarko]

Fulgrim disagrees...

Yes - he was a glory hugger, but he had some sonic ****** inserted into him, and killed warsinger wiith that, and Fulgrim favored him

khm, ressurection in EA

....

[godking]

Fulgrim disagrees...

Yes - he was a glory hugger, but he had some sonic ****** inserted into him, and killed warsinger wiith that, and Fulgrim favored him

khm, ressurection in EA

....

I read AE Fulgrim could have had someone else do what Eidelon did.

Fulgrim favoring Eidolon does not make sense even during the heresy there where plenty of EC better then him withou the stupidity and arrogance.

[Kol Saresk]

Not entirely true. He needed someone who had been dead remember?

[Wade Garrett]

The only things we can say for sure about Eidolon are that Saul Tarvitz outgeneraled him on Isstvan and Lucius was a better swordsman.

 

I highly doubt he'd rise to the level he did if there were dozens of Marines better than he was.

[Kol Saresk]

I don't remember a fight between him and Lucius... But yes, the "outthought" part is why I think either earlier on his career he actually was a force to be reckoned with or he was lucky enough to ride on the coattails of others and claim their victories as his own. As it stands, there is a daemonworld named after him(or it at least shares the same name as him) and he isn't dead yet.

[Gamanos]

I like to think it went like this: He was one of the 200 remaining EC when Fulgrim came to the legion? I like to think the rest of the legion were made up of the 3 stoogesx199. Eidolan got the rank by default and simply lived long enough not to lose it.

[pingo]

First thing's first, we're not supposed to like Eidolon: that's sort of the point really

The way I see it, Eidolon was probably one of the most perfect warriors in the most perfect legion, hence he got make Lord Commander. By the time was see him, however, this quest for perfection had turned into vanity and superiority. Eidolon is very much embodying what is happening to the Emperor's Children generally. After all, every Legionary of the Emperor's Children looks to their superiors for guidance and inspiration. Eidolon's rot spread downwards – we see that in the Captains below him during Fulgrim.

When we see Eidolon fail during Fulgrim, every time it is due to vanity and due to glory-seeking. These can be seen as incompetant acts, yes, but they are also the actions of a warrior who has been labelled as so perfect that his is basically second only to his (perfect) Primarch and who is trying desperately to become even more perfect. That's what the Emperor's Children do: they strive to remove their imperfections and become more perfect. The problem with Eidolon was that he could not see the folly of his methods, or at least, he refused to see his mistakes or perhaps even sought to deny them. How could a perfect warrior admit that he was wrong? How could he even change his course of action or methods, for to do so would be tantamount to admitting that he wasn't perfect.

In essence, the Eidolon we are seeing the the Horus Heresy novels may not be the same Eidolon who rose through the ranks to become Lord Commander. He is a twisted and extreme version of the warrior that he must have been.

[Kol Saresk]

Exactly. All we are seeing are after-images. With the exception of the Dark Angels Characters, we haven't really seen a proper before-image.

[Veteran Sergeant]

 

But in all reality, we have two(maybe three if you want to count the Betrayal at Istvaan) of his commands to look at. That is not his entire record.

Exactly.  The successes that brought Eidolon to his command all occur before the scope of the Heresy novels.  I mean, he may be a poorly written character (I've never put a ton of thought into him, and McNeill doesn't write the best Space Marines to begin with so he wouldn't have stuck out as bad in Fulgrim, lol).  But it's hard to say what he would, or would not, have risen to in the ranks, since we don't know what he did in the process of getting there.

[LostAlone]

My guess as to why Eidolon attained his high position is because almost all the time before we run into him he had been winning. There aren't that many occasions during the great crusade where the astartes didn't just crush the bad guys; even when they made a decent fight of it the legions were continuously victorious for some two centuries. Most of that comes from the fact that they had vast superiority in weapons and armor, and bred-to-kill marines, and even without any leadership the marines would have got the job done. However, when you look at it from the top down and you see that the guy who's been leading a company (or whatever size unit) has been keeping most of his dudes alive, getting things done ahead of schedule, leading from the front and volunteering for dangerous assignments then it looks like he's doing a great job even if a cardboard cut out would have achieved the same things.

 

Exactly what it was that singled him out we may never known, but even through the debacle on murder we work out what they may have been. Qualities like 'reckless' and 'stubborn' exist only through the lens of events. When they are the cause of a victory those become 'fearless' and 'unyielding'. We can see that he has no qualms what so ever about taking his men into harms way even against unknown enemies and odds; he sees an enemy and he charges headlong at it. To me that is probably what got him promoted. 

 

My imagination says it went something like this: At some point the Emperors Children were involved in a war with a foe that were capable enough to not just crumble immediately. Things proceeded well but instead of fighting haphazardly, the enemy did the smart thing and retreated, perhaps to some great fortress in the mountains to marshall their strength, taking time to do whatever they could to slow down the advance and with some natural barrier that would prevent titans following them. A show down was on the cards but the marines were in a tricky situation, with all the defences available to them being booby trapped or blown up, and formidable defences to attack into with no titan support with frequent probing attacks coming in. At some point, Eidolon got fed up of playing defence and led his company to attack the enemy just as they exited the defences. The enemy inside were unwilling to fire into the melee with their friends in the way, or to close the gates and leave them all to die. Eidolon's attack forced the gates and the fortress fell soon after. A great victory; a masterstroke of tactical genius. Or a reckless attack that succeeded because of equal parts surprise and luck, and had it not worked would have lead to a significant proportion of marines dying. That one victory made his reputation, and put him in the position to command entire operations where just pointing in the right direction would have secured a win, so he continued to climb up. 

 

Once you have command of a formation, its next to impossible to not keep going up. This isn't a peacetime army we're talking about here, lots of people are dying and spots at the high levels of command come up a lot more frequently than you might imagine. So with a reputation as an aggressive and vigorous commander that's been re-iterated through numerous successes... Yeah you can end up with a guy who isn't exactly heroic leading the better part of a legion. Eidolon is certainly not incompetent, he's just a jerk.