Rune Priests and Psychic Nulls

[Kol Saresk]

And thus the Wolves were true Loyalists, straying neither to the left nor the right, except in the matter of Magnus the Red.

[daveNYC]

If you don't like how Russ is turning out, do what I do and blame Prospero Burns.  PB and ATS were pitched as two sides of the same story, yet ATS does a great job of showing the personality of that legion, and the traits of their primarch that led to their downfall.  It also showed the Wolves as primitive screwheads, but that's because the 1k Sons did view the Wolves as primitive screwheads.

 

Unfortunately PB totally dropped the ball.  Did we get any story about why the Wolves are so hidebound?  Do we get any stories of Russ growing up?  His 'father', his time in the wild, or even his version of his battle with the Emperor to see who was more macho?  Maybe some formative battle during the crusade?

 

If ATS was the story of how pride and a unquenchable thirst for knowledge led a legion into damnation, then PB should have been the story of how a loyal legion was led into disobeying the Emperor's orders because the alternative instructions proposed by Horus and Valdor meshed so well with the Legion and their Primarch's personality.  If you give them a good backstory to support their motives it would work.  

 

Instead you have zippy the historian guy hanging out with some generic Astartes (who in a twist end up not being that generic), listening to some of their stories, and only a few short scenes with Russ (and Russ not looking too hot in some of them).  Also, 'wet leopard' is used way too much as a descriptor for voices. 

[Conn Eremon]

Did Prospero Burns really need to be all that? Why? Because Thousand Sons did? That is a terrible reason. That'a like saying the initial trilogy was terrible because we saw nothing of Horus' discovery, only the lead up to his fall.

 

What we got was fine. Amazing, even. Like many of Abnett's books, it was an outsider account being drawn in and accepted. It isn't like there will never be another Space Wolf book.

[daveNYC]

The initial trilogy also gave us heaps of character development of Horus, Abaddon, the other Mournival dudes and the rememberancers.  We get additional motivation for Horus, other than just CHAOS!, and we see why some people follow him and others don't.

 

I don't see how you can say that PB is about an outsider becoming accepted. 

 

At the end of the book, he's been accepted into a cryopod because the SW don't know if he's been tainted, and it turns out that the only reason he's been allowed to hang with them is because they think he's a spy from the 1k Sons.  He's only been accepted in the 'keep your enemies closer' sense of the word.

 

[Peter the Hermit]

Yeah, people felt butthurt because PB wasn't about PB...Instead it was 13-th warrior portrayal of the wolves....And it was awesome.....

[Conn Eremon]

And? He was accepted. He listened to their stories, was included in their traditions and rituals. It wasn't a cut and dry "You! I like you! Be one of us!" situation, but it would have been boring if it had.

 

And I fail to see how Prospero Burns didn't provide the same for the Space Wolves. And look at the alternative you are suggesting. A Space Wolves battle of Prospero right after the Thousand Sons book detailing the same would have been horrible. At least the Emperor's Children book, Fulgrim, had other aspects of the Isstvan battles to discuss. Prospero doesn't have that. It would have been the exact same battle with a different perspective. Instead we got the perspective without the copy pasta battle. That's a win-win right there.

[daveNYC]

There was no perspective.  After reading Prospero Burns, could you say why the Wolves attacked the Thousand Sons?  And I don't just mean because they were ordered to.  Why did they come in hot and burn the entire planet down?  What drives their intense hate for sorcery?  Why did they go with Horus' revised orders instead of those that they got directly from the Emperor?  If we don't see that, then we are missing a huge part of the story.

 

And I'm going to have to say that Mr Cormac is totally wrong about the main character being accepted.  The Wolves

thought that he was an agent of the Thousand Sons.  Even more so, they thought (or at least Russ did) that he was a psychic conduit through which the Sons could see and hear everything he did.  A person like that is never going to be accepted, and will never be shown what the Legion is really like, because everthing they say and do in front of him will be filtered through the knowledge that everything he sees and hears will be going directly to those they they consider, at best, rivals.

 

Example: Ahriman and Wyrdmake.  Magnus told Ahriman that Wyrdmake was a potential ally, and Ahriman should show him all the mojo he feels is useful in order to get him on their side.  Wyrdmake then used that information against them at Nikea.  Now consider how Ahriman would have behaved had Magnus told him that Wyrdmake was a spy sent by Russ to gather information to use against them.  The situation in Prospero Burns is nearly exactly that second scenario.

 

 

Just from this I would say that Prospero Burns told us relatively little about the Wolves, simply because their entire behavior around our narrator is suspect.  It'd be like having a Word Bearers novel told from the viewpoint of one of the Custodes.

[Kol Saresk]

And yet instead of killing poor little Hawser, they put him in a cryopod.

[daveNYC]

Given the events at the end of the book, and the other Space Wolves who were witnesses, they probably decided it was the least bad decision out of a host of bad choices they could make regarding him.

 

That said, it still happens at the end of the novel, which means all that he witnesses prior to that in the legion would still be subject to that filter.

[Conn Eremon]

Then I'm afraid you might have missed the point. There was no filter. That was their ploy. To show the enemy everything, because they had nothing to hide. No perceived weaknesses, in their own eyes. Look upon the true us and know fear. That was the role the Rout had intended for Hawser. To show their enemy, believed to be Magnus, exactly what is coming for him.

[Kol Saresk]

Out of curiosity, how did we get from the OP to the portrayal of the Space Wolves in Prospero Burns?

[Conn Eremon]

Technically the two are related, as Prospero Burns is a primary reference for 30k Rune Priests.

 

However, I can take the hint and let this minor debate go.

[Kais Klip]

This "issue", if it is that, can be broken down into the fact that Prospero Burns wasn't a space wolf book, but rather a Kasper Hawser book, whereas the community/you guys was expecting it to be a wolves book, correct? 

 

I think its typical of Abnett; he takes his signature out-of-the-box approach and presents it from a human side of view, to that end somewhat frustratingly treating it like a piece of art instead of a codex of lore that we have gotten to treat the HH books as. To that end I reckon there is a balancing act going on within BL; keep it as artsy as possible while still dripping factual lore, as factual as it can be given in-narrative sources. Part of me wonders if they would do better going full out PB on the heresy, alienate the Astartes from the reader, and bring about factual, 100% concrete lore (something which many avoid) in the form of visions-of-heresy books. I wouldn't be a fan of that, but at the same time I was somewhat frustrated with how little Astartes were portrayed in PB, given Abnett's future work such as Know No Fear which completely avoided that.

 

As a piece of literature PB was great, as an informative source on the wolves it was lacking. 

[daveNYC]

Technically the two are related, as Prospero Burns is a primary reference for 30k Rune Priests.

 

However, I can take the hint and let this minor debate go.

 

Indeed, I seem to have gone rambling far from the original subject matter.

[Wade Garrett]

There was no perspective.  After reading Prospero Burns, could you say why the Wolves attacked the Thousand Sons? 

 

Because the Avatar of Tzeencht had been laying the groundwork to get the Wolves to go to war with the Thousand Sons for a long time.

 

Just in the novel we see how Hawser was shaped by a Tzeencht cult, "Amon" of the Thousand Sons pulling those stunts at Nikea, and even the twisting of a Rune Priest into a daemonic werewolf.

 

I actually like PB for those reasons, it gave the sense of the Dark Gods as very patient, very thorough forces that have been pulling strings for centuries, weaving the skeins of fate around the upstart Emperor and his godsons.

[Conn Eremon]

Godsons. That made me laugh.

 

But in all seriousness, yes that book did show a clear picture about why. It showed us how they felt about the Sons and how they behaved around them. It showed us their thoughts on their purpose, their role in the Imperium. And it showed us how, with the simple words added in by Horus, by then already corrupt, the Wolves could so easily be unleashed on an otherwise loyal, if utterly misguided, foe. It showed us that the Wolves were completely aware of the true, hidden threat behind the magicks of the Thousand Sons but were not as prepared to meet it as they thought.

 

Remember, Prospero is a Space Wolf victory only in a thoroughly biased history. It has always been a true victory for Chaos.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

Agreed Cormac. It was a great book that gave brief insights to their culture, upbringing, spiritual beliefs and most importantly their views on maleficarum. While it didnt have a pushing-shoving match on some skybridge ala A Thousand Sons, there was plenty of tension that was made evident by the Wolves orders from Lord Gunn at the council of Nikea to put a kill-stroke to anything that looks at them weird if things go sour. From the Wolves point of view they were just the ones chosen for an unsavory job like the Ultras at Monarchia. Like Cormac said, when Horus the Head-Honcho says put an axe-stroke into the world of Prospero, it burned. Throughout the book their are hints about the Wolves being wary of many things the Thousand Sons are known for such as the endless search for knowledge or the answers to secrets or acquisition of lore.

[Peter the Hermit]

Guys do you remeber Fulgrim ? You know, the pretty one ? He was on Nikaea soothing Magnus and in orbit supporting Russ and Valdor ? ...I mean what a guy.....

[Greyall]

Well, Sanguinius also helped escort Magnus to his..."chambers". But yes, Fulgrim is a master of cynicism.

[daveNYC]

Agreed Cormac. It was a great book that gave brief insights to their culture, upbringing, spiritual beliefs and most importantly their views on maleficarum. While it didnt have a pushing-shoving match on some skybridge ala A Thousand Sons, there was plenty of tension that was made evident by the Wolves orders from Lord Gunn at the council of Nikea to put a kill-stroke to anything that looks at them weird if things go sour.

 

Not sure what the Wolves would have been expected to do had things gone pear shaped.  Between the Emperor, Magnus, the other primarchs in the chamber, the various other psykers in the room, the various flagships in orbit, and the fact that the whole thing was taking place in an active volcano, any move towards violence would have led directly to 'rocks fall, everyone dies'.  

[Greyall]

Aye, and with the Emperor there, TS Marines would start dying by the droves in no-time. Still, one howl by Russ and a few Sisters leaping into the fray would've shut down most of the Thousand Sons contingent.

 

I don't remember that part about Lord Gunn (who is he, by the way?), but it goes to show how badly regarded Magnus is due to his dabbling in sorcery. Which makes sense since the Emperor was always against such things, but hits a brick wall since the Emperor himself employs psychic powers every day. You'd expect one of his sons to receive the benefit of doubt. This is all made worse by the fact that we (and we alone, no matter how sympathetic Sanguinius truly is) know how loyal the Thousand Sons are. In fact, the whole book is heartbreaking, especially after Magnus warpowerslams the Golden Throne.

[daveNYC]

I figure it would have gone one of two ways.  Either the Emperor shuts Magnus down hard within a few seconds, or it gets goofy all Dragonball Z style, with their powers clashing and turning into a hurricane of force blasting everything around them, which would leave everyone swimming in lava right quick.  And considering that the Emperor was able to blast Horus out of existence even though he had the support of all four chaos powers, I've got a pretty good guess as to how the battle would have gone.

 

The biggest problem with the Sisters of Silence is that at the end of the day they're still squishy humans.  Their payload, the null field, might be great, but the weapon platform itself, them, is pretty weak.  They're basically T3 with a 5+ or so on the table.  They die like anyone but they need to be within say ten feet before their aura hits their target, and the second the enemy knows they're there they become target numero uno.  Not to mention the irony that their null aura actually makes them easier for psykers to spot them.

[Angel of Solitude]

Having just finished re-reading ATS, the big thing that I didn't pick up on the first read was that each member of the 1k Sons had a tutelary. Whilst it is not explicitly stated in the book, my interpretation is that these tutelaries were essentially daemons from the warp, who were able to exist in the real world due to their connection with their respective 1k Son. And, towards the end of the book in the battle of Prospero, you end up seeing these daemons overpowering their 1k Son "hosts", almost as if they had been waiting, latent, ready for the right time to exert their power - in this case, the Wolves vs 1k Sons eradication battle that Chaos wanted the battle of Prospero to be.

 

On this point, the 1k Sons overtly displayed their tutelaries in front of other legions, and essentially I believe that this is the main element of the "sorcery" claim made against the 1k Sons in that they have done deals with the darker works of Chaos...even if the 1k Sons refuse to believe it themselves. Therein lies the tragedy of the 1k Sons.

 

So on that basis, Wyrdmake is perfectly in reason to claim that his form of power is completely different to that of the 1k Sons.

[Greyall]

@Angels: The form and usage is indeed, but he goes one step further and starts saying his is derived from the essence of Fenris...

 

Yes, the tutelaries were just the cherry on top of the sh*toglicerine clake the Thousand Sons were cooking. Of course, they couldn't know at the time, they didn't know what daemons were, but reading about the little guys you just KNOW are daemons masked as pokemon for the entire book is cringe-worthy. Actually, though, Magnus knew about Daemons, or at the very least about immatherium beings. He could've warned his sons, forbidden the damned things, but he thought to outsmart them. Went all, as we all know.

 

@Dave: One of the sister in A Thousand Sons gives a Legionnaire a run for his money, and actually hurts him a good deal. He only manages to kill her by letting her stab him. Probably an especially adept Sister, but either the armour or themselves clearly have some augmentation.

[daveNYC]

Having just finished re-reading ATS, the big thing that I didn't pick up on the first read was that each member of the 1k Sons had a tutelary.

 

Tutelaries were only for those above a certain rank, not every Son had them.  They seem ubiquitous in the novel because we were mostly following high ranking members of the legion.

 

I'm not sure if there was any indication if the tutelaries were daemons (as in warp entities aligned with one of the big four) or 'natural' warp entities that turned on them when they got the opportunity.  An initial guess would be that they were Tzeentchian daemons with instructions to lay low, but then they turned on the Sons during Prospero, which doesn't seem very Just As Planned.

 

I don't think the tutelaries existed in realspace.  The book is iffy, as it does have them interacting with things in the material world, but on the other hand, by all accounts, manifesting any sort of warp entity in the real world is a very serious business and either requires some sort of physical entity for possession or a warp rift to supply energy; and once that's done, you still can end up with reality warping problems due to spillover effects from the manifested warp presence.  The fact that the tutelaries seem to be able to come and go as they please makes it seem that they never actually materialize in the materium, and the descriptions are due to the Sons using their ability to view the warp (or at least the tutelary in the warp) constantly.

 

As the book is, the tutelaries don't really add all that much, they're a way to show how deep into warpstuff the Sons have gotten, they make a useful bit of color regarding when the tutelaries run for the hills, and they provide a mechanism to get rid of the Warlord at the end.  It would have been nice if the author had found a way to use the tutelaries as a counterpoint to the Wolves wolves.  So the Sons have warp entites that hang with them and help, while the Wolves have real wolves that hang with them and help out.  It'd help drive home the inherently untrustworthy nature of everything warp related when the tutelaries turn, and the wolves keep trucking.  Still doesn't do much for the main theme, which is the hubris (and required downfall) of believing that you can know and master all knowledge.