The Complexity of Leman Russ (Spoiler heavy)

[Kasper_Hawser]

1 - Hardly an issue. Prospero Burns made this much much better.

2 - Completely the issue.

3 - Adds to the character really.

4 - Not a problem.

5 - ....

 

For me, its all item 2.

 

Hi Scribe,

 

Hardly surprises me about your reason but I was asking for Noctus' reasons.

 

But in relation to your beef with Russ, I must admit that I'm also confused by all the executioner arguments going on. I think as someone already said, we probably will never have any clarification on the executioner argument, just one of the many reasons we love Black Library authors to do to screw with our heads.

 

Executioner argument aside, I still think Russ flawed as he was, did his best "To the best of his knowledge and wisdom" to keep the pack together, which in the broadest term, is the Imperium itself, if not just the Emperor and brotherhood of primarchs. We can all agree that he royally goofed up though in regards to Magnus and Angron.

[Conn Eremon]

Angron was a goof up of Russ', but not Magnus. In that, he was following orders. The orders were from the Emperor, by way of the Emperor's proxies.

[Stonerhino]

I may be able to buy that. I'll re-read those books (ATS/PB) and close my eyes at the executioner parts...

There are a few good instances outside of those books that protray the idea of the Wolves going further then other legions/ being executioners.

 

Know No Fear - Guillimen, gets the idea of "System Kill" from the Wolves.  Right after mentioning that only the hyperviolent Legions such as the Wolrd Eaters use it.  He even names the World Eater's name for it. 

 

Scars - Malcador names Russ the Emperor's executioner and the Khan the Emperor's warhawk.

 

Fear to Tread - Even though the Angel calls the wolves executioners.  It is not as the Emperor's devine will.  But more as you send them in when something just needs to die.  He says the same about the World Eaters.

 

Betrayer - Angron, mocks Russ as an "Executioner".  Only to be shown that the Wolves could have killed him that very day. 

 

Unremembered Empire - When the Wolves tell Guiliman that their lives are not for sparing and never have been.  (reads as "We will do what we do even if it means our deaths").  When put into the context of their previous discussion.

 

To name a few off the top of my head.

 

You also have to rememebr that the Wolves call themselves the Executioner's sons.  Which can also mean that Russ was the Emperor's executioner early in the great crusade.  Before all the primarchs were found.  Where as the War Hounds were his goto legion for elimianting other previous loyal forces before that. 

 

I'm under the impression that; as Wade puts it "Russ was a square peg in a game with only round holes.  So he made his own hole".  Rather then trying to force Russ to become "Round" the Emperor nurtchered his "Squareness".  Which is why he seems so off when compared to the other Primarchs.

[Scribe]

Re: All the entries following Prospero Burns. Just latching on to something that was successful imo. ADB could feel free to clarify of course but enough Wolf fans are out there I am sure they had nerdgasms over being 'Executions' and 'The Best Space Marines' and 'Those who would kill other Legions! Yeah!'.

 

What author wouldnt want that free ride?

 

I do just need to re-read those books I think, maybe I am just carrying on something that wasnt that bad in the first place? However if you remember from Warseer, if I do think my position is justified, lets get ready to fire up the flame throwers. :D

[Stonerhino]

Actually I hated the idea at first and even disliked Prosero Burns for sometime.  Honestly I didn't care for prospero Burns untill hearing the audio book.

[Stonerhino]

LOL Warseer. 

 

Hopefully here can discuss it with more civil outsiders commenting.  Rather then sinking this thread.

 

To piggy back my last post.  My favorite portrail of the SWs has been ATS.  They are shown as the monsters that they are portrayed as "In universe".  You really get the feeling that they deserve the hyperbolic praise that has been heaped on them.  Even during Tisca when the Wolves are really getting hammered.  You still feel the noose tightening around the Thousand Sons.  To the point that they are justifed in pushing their powers beyond their control.

 

To best show this.  Reread Phael Toron's point of view of the fighting. 

 

To paraphrase a little.  Using every trick possible (reading the enemy's commanders minds and predicting the future) to be setup the best defence posible.  The Wolves where pushing so hard that he had to change his oders and unleash his men.  Which happens to backfire and further hamper the Thousand Sons.

 

It is ATS that gives me the opinion that very few legions could have sacked Tisca and of those that could very few could have done it in a single day.

[Kasper_Hawser]

Sometimes I get the feeling that the Wolves straddle the line between professional soldiery and tactics (ultimate example being the Ultramarines) vs their own Fenrisian traditions. Yes they love getting in your face and biting your head off but at the same time, they know about tactics, objective holding and mission objectives above their own bloodlust. And of course, they will use perfectly genocidal tactics if they see the need, such as slaughtering an eldar craftworld or dropping a spacestation on a city.

 

Ah heck, better stop this line of discussion about Wolves warfare prowess. Again guys, we're suppose to be talking about Russ, not his legion.

[The Native]

Sometimes I get the feeling that the Wolves straddle the line between professional soldiery and tactics (ultimate example being the Ultramarines) vs their own Fenrisian traditions. Yes they love getting in your face and biting your head off but at the same time, they know about tactics, objective holding and mission objectives above their own bloodlust. And of course, they will use perfectly genocidal tactics if they see the need, such as slaughtering an eldar craftworld or dropping a spacestation on a city.

 

Ah heck, better stop this line of discussion about Wolves warfare prowess. Again guys, we're suppose to be talking about Russ, not his legion.

 

I don't think you can specifically just talk about Russ and not include his Legion. Each Legion is a reflection of their Primarch so it goes hand in hand.

 

I'm not going to say Russ is the most complex Primarch - but I will say he (and by extension the Space Wolves) is the most surprisingly complex Primarch insofar that pre-Black Library Russ and his Legion were considered "Vikings in Space with a Penchant for Wolves".

 

Even though he is a "good guy" I think on him as an anti-hero. I love that about him. I like my characters flawed and I especially like to see it in characters that are so "powerful".

 

Regarding the Wolves going "further" than any other Legion - I don't for one minute think that they are better than every other Legion at a particular task or as a whole but I think the distinction should be made between could they, or would they? I think every Legion is capable of everything asked of them (within reason) with more or less efficacy but only the Space Wolves would do what is asked despite any reservations or misgivings they may have to the contrary.

[Legatus]

I love the Space Wolves. Have loved them since 2nd Edition, though only started to play them myself during 3rd Edition (have about 1500 points).

 

I do think of them as being able to outfight almost every other Legion when it comes to face to face combat. And I remember observing an ongoing game in a GW store, where an SW/IG team fought against Chaos: It was a late turn, and there was only one SW Rhino left on the table, but close to the still somewhat populated enemy deployment zone. I asked "are there Grey Hunters in there?", the answer was "yup", and I remember thinking "oh boy, their opponents are in for it now". Even though it was just a single squad of Grey Hunters. I would never have thought that if it had been a Tactical Blood Angels or Ultramarines squad. Part of that may have been that Space Wolves notoriously get the best rules, but another part was just that mindset that Space Wolves just tear stuff up.

 

But all that being said, whenever I read how "the Emperor intentionally gave them dog genes" or "their genes protect them from chaos" or "they are more brutal and ruthless than any other Legion" or "the Emperor made them his executioners, to execute other Space Marine Legions if they got out of line" that just completely rubs me the wrong way.

[Greyall]

I fail to see what's so wrong about a Legion being chosen for keeping an eye on the others. It makes perfect sense, we know the notion of Astartes fighting each other was pretty shocking, but there had been previous accounts. Astartes kept their personalities, so you had a number of insufferable a-holes, bloodlusting berserkers and downright criminals. Likewise, Primarchs come in all forms, from noble generals to frothing madmen, both capable of flipping tanks.

 

Someone had to do it and the Custodes were too few.

 

Does it put the Wolves as bad guys, sometimes? Yes.

Does it lead to people thinking the Wolves are superior to other Legions as if all military policemen were automatically a notch above all soldiers? Yes

 

Does it serve a plot reason? A big YES. Russ is currently going through a very interesting phase, learning how he was duped and ended up flattening a Legion and its world. As Cormac said, this is the birth of the modern Space Wolves.

[Kol Saresk]

Yep. I mean let's face it, out of the Legions that are okay with fighting other Astartes, the Wolves are actually the least likely to go through a genocidal massacre.

 

In Betrayer, while the World Eaters are rampaging, their actually calm and controlled. In the Razing of Prospero, the Thousand Sons did just as much damage to Tizca as the Wolves did. Actually, the Sons did more damage. They were the ones with a warpflame-spewing Titan that went critical after all.

 

The fourth Legion we come to are the Night Lords. And let's face it, once Curze joins up with them, all hopes of a controlled situation go out the window.

[daveNYC]

I fail to see what's so wrong about a Legion being chosen for keeping an eye on the others. It makes perfect sense, we know the notion of Astartes fighting each other was pretty shocking, but there had been previous accounts. Astartes kept their personalities, so you had a number of insufferable a-holes, bloodlusting berserkers and downright criminals. Likewise, Primarchs come in all forms, from noble generals to frothing madmen, both capable of flipping tanks.

 

The problem with a legion that's designated to keep tabs on, and/or take down other legions is that choosing the legion to do that requires them to have traits that are good for that task, and that nearly automatically makes them 'better' than the other legions.  

 

If a legion is supposed to kill other astartes, then there's a few basic things you'd want it to have.  It'd need either superior skills or numbers in order to complete it's task without being fatally depleted, and it'd need superior loyalty to the Emperor in order to take on the task and not balk at killing its brother legionnaires.  Anything else doesn't make sense for the job at hand.  This leads to two issues. 1) We know that the legions were basically equal in their fighting ability, so the Wolves don't bring anything to the table there, so there's no reason to make them 'executioners'.  Unless you want to argue that the Wolves were actually really good at fighting other astartes, which means that other astartes were bad at fighting the wolves, which runs straight into the problem of saying some legions were better than others. 2) If superior loyalty is something that could be imbued into a legion's character, then why the hell was it only put into the Wolves makeup?  Because you know what might have been pretty freaking useful regarding the behavior of the astartes legions?  Some extra freaking loyalty!  I can imagine the conversation now:

 

Malcador: Hey boss, here's the VI legion, the last guys are adrenaline junkies, what's these guys schtick?

Emperor: I will make this legion the most loyal of them all.

Malcador: Um, that's great boss, is there a reason that by implication, you're making nineteen legions worth of slightly less loyal genetically engineered killing machines?

Emperor: Shut up.  Now lets go on to the tenth legion, I'm thinking about giving them xenomelia with a healthy dose of cyborg obsession.

 

I'm not sure why you'd say the Wolves would be less likely to not go on a genocidal rampage against another legion.  The first action at Prospero was an orbital bombardment of Tizca.  If the kine shield hadn't been up, there would have been nothing left but a giant crater with (maybe) a seriously pissed off Magnus in the middle of it.

 

And I'm not buying that the Wolves were in a position to kill Angron with their bolters.  Primarch power can change based on the needs of the story, but Corax is literally bulletproof, Angron can shoulderpress a Warhound, and Lorgar (with a little help) can get shot in the face with an anti-titan weapon (twice) and walk away from it, so saying a bunch of mooks with bolters had him cold is crazy talk.

[Daddywarcrimes]

Lorgar seemed quite convinced that half a company of bolter-wielding Astartes was enough to kill Angron.  Or at least that's what he was trying to explain to Angron through all their discussions of the incident.

[daveNYC]

Lorgar is also convinced that a bunch of semi-stable emotional parasites in the warp are True Gods and their triumph over the material universe is inevitable.  Never mind that in the same breath he will proclaim that these Gods also need humanity and that the Emperor was going to destroy them, thus putting some serious dents in the nature of their Godhood and the inevitability of their triumph.

 

To paraphrase Boondock Saints: The day I want Lorgar to do my thinking for me, I will have a tag on my toe.

 

Seriously, they're primarchs.  Bolters don't even begin to scratch the paint on their armor.  You can make an argument that Angron shows no tactical sense and ends up being at a disadvantage, but there's no way that he was ever in any mortal peril.  If dropping a primarch were simply a matter of throwing enough bolter rounds at him, then there wouldn't be anything that impressive about them.  I mean, sure, they'd be big, smart, strong, and tough, but they'd be well within what we would consider mortal.  And that just won't cut it as for a primarch.

[Kol Saresk]

No offense, but Ferrus lost his head to a sword. Vulkan was taken out by an artillery shell, died from extended void exposure and was disembowelled with a fork. Magnus died from having his back broken. Curze will die to having his head removed. Sanguinius will die from having a claw to the gut. Rogal Dorn will die beneath a hundred blades.

 

If it bleeds, it can die. And if it can die, it is mortal. And Primarchs, are mortal.

 

And their paint can and has been scratched an pierced by swords, claws and bolter rounds. Oh, and artillery shells.

[DarthMarko]

And I'm not buying that the Wolves were in a position to kill Angron with their bolters.  Primarch power can change based on the needs of the story, but Corax is literally bulletproof, Angron can shoulderpress a Warhound, and Lorgar (with a little help) can get shot in the face with an anti-titan weapon (twice) and walk away from it, so saying a bunch of mooks with bolters had him cold is crazy talk.

Damn - Vulkan was overpowered by NL squads, Dorn was killed by CM, Fulgrim was sniped in AE...Also you need to read the damn book and disregard drangonball Z pov...

Also who is to say that they needed to kill him ? Only distraction gives Russ a fair advantage (remeber Lion vs Curze???)...Anyway who knows what would happened...Maybe SW would piss Angron even more (you would like that I'm sure ), and he would kill them and Russ ??? But this makes too much rarrrghhh moment....

No

offense, but Ferrus lost his head to a sword. Vulkan was taken out by

an artillery shell, died from extended void exposure and was

disembowelled with a fork. Magnus died from having his back broken.

Curze will die to having his head removed. Sanguinius will die from

having a claw to the gut. Rogal Dorn will die beneath a hundred blades.

 

If it bleeds, it can die. And if it can die, it is mortal. And Primarchs, are mortal.

 

And their paint can and has been scratched an pierced by swords, claws and bolter rounds. Oh, and artillery shells.

Fething A brother...

[Kol Saresk]

Technically, Lorgar never got hit with the plasma blast. His kine shield got hit, he was burned by the excess heat. So..... yeah. Lorgar was smoked. Literally.

[Conn Eremon]

Plus, we now have a Primarch who could be seriously injured by ten Marines with bolters in Unremembered Empire. It is no stretch to say Angron would have died.

[daveNYC]

Magnus discorporated his body in order to use its energy to transport the survivors of his legion into the Eye.  His back was broken by the Primarch Russ.

Ferrus was decapitated by a daemon weapon (and not just any daemon in that thing, a Keeper of Secrets).  The blade was wielded by the Primach Fulgrim.

Sanguinous was killed by the Talon of Horus.  The blow was struck by the (chaos boosted) Primarch Horus.

Guilliman, last I heard, had a bad run in with Fulgrim and an anatheme.

 

Curze A) let himself be killed, and B) was killed using a C'Tan phase blade (although I'm somewhat confused about the condition of those weapons now that we've got new Necron fluff, whatever)

Fulgrim let himself get shot in order to convince Perturabo that going on his crazy quest was important.  And I'll also note that he seemed to be doing pretty good even when the bullet/needle/whatevs was rattling around in his skull, so I wouldn't discount the idea that he was hamming up his injury in order to get Perturabo to go along with him.

 

Dorn, well that's a problem.  I never liked the idea that a Primarch got taken out by some generic 'Chaos Champion'.  About the only thing I can do is claim that 1) No body!  He's only mostly dead! and 2) There's no witness to the battle, so I can claim that his opponent was something stupid like Daemon Alpharius or something.  Still, that's all weaksauce, it's true.

Vulkan, damnit I need to read that book.

 

In all seriousness, we've got three categories of Primarch deaths or serious injuries.

1) Fraticide.  They are killed by one of their brothers.  That's as it should be, godling killing godling.  The best example of that is Ferrus vs. Fulgrim, with both of them moving so quickly and with such force that their elite honor guards can only see blurs of motion and can do nothing to influence the battle.

2) Self-sacrifice.  Both Fulgrim and Curze allowed themselves to be struck down, and Fulgrim doesn't seem to have suffered much lasting harm from having a chunk of metal rattling around in his skull.

3) Lame deaths.  I can handwave something to excuse Dorn, but Vulkan drops like a bad transmission a number of times, although the flip side to the argument would be that if you manage to make a Primarch who can come back from death, than you might be excused for skimping on the bits that would let him avoid death.

 

Overall, the only consistent weakness that the primarchs seem to have is other primarchs.  Remember Nemesis?  They were going after Horus with a x-ray laser that was 15 feet long, and they weren't even sure that was going to work.  If 50 idiots with bolters could take one out, dropping the traitor primarchs would simply be a matter of sending a Vindicare assassin.  Heck, if primarchs could be killed with mass bolter fire, then none of them should have walked away from Istvaan.

[Greyall]

Indeed they shouldn't. And Horus should've just orbital-nuked Terra. And Ferrus should've retreated instead of staying alone at the vanguard, at Isstvan V. And Angron should've gotten squashed by a Titan.

 

You're applying too much real-world logic and plausibility..

[Kol Saresk]

So what it's coming down to is not the eapon involved, but who was using it.

[Scribe]

Plus, we now have a Primarch who could be seriously injured by ten Marines with bolters in Unremembered Empire. It is no stretch to say Angron would have died.

 

Assuming thats a correct reflection of a Primarchs durability, which frankly I think (obviously, as do many) IS a stretch.

[Greyall]

So what it's coming down to is not the eapon involved, but who was using it.

 

I don't go by that, I just think Primarch skin can't bend blades or deflect bullets. And I mean both of those terms literally. It surely is a loooot more dense than human or even Astartes skin, but not to that extent.

 

Come to think of it, though, a normal human surely would not be able to pierce a Primarch's skin with a fork with the same ease a Primarch does. Strength matters.

[Scribe]

I wonder if this shouldnt really be its own thread.

 

Consider the following.

 

Primarchs are hyper intelligent - true? As in cognitive ability is above Marines, which is above humans, yes?

Primarchs are hyper fast - true? I think this has been reflected upon a number of times. I assume its acceptable.

Primarchs are hyper strong - true? This has to be true re: Angron.

Primarchs are warp born/touched - true? Look at their 'innate' abilities. Corax in shadows, Magnus' psyker power, etc etc. They are not merely mortal.

 

So, are Primarchs not hyper resilient? Angron again would seem to appear to be. He walks through injuries that would have left Rob in the dust (if UE is to be taken at face value), just look at his portrayals in Istvaan III in Galaxy in Flames, or the Angron short. He blocks bolters with his face, takes chain axes to the throat, doesnt matter.

 

EDIT: And Angron, Lorgar, and Rob beat eachother up, and since we KNOW they are hyper strong, they MUST be hyper resilient, no?

 

If we can accept they are hyper smart, fast, strong, and are beings made up just as much of the warp than they are flesh vat grown mutants, why is it so hard to accept that they could/should/are hyper resilient as well?

 

Again, I think this should be its own thread though, as not to detract from what is a decent thread on Russ.

[Greyall]

They are hyper resilient. Any Marine with as many hits as Guilliman took would've been down for good. It's just that they're not bulletproof and, in this instance, neither was Rob's armour. But resiliency isn't resistance. Primarchs can take a world of hurt and either keep walking or regain their health in very short time. But they can't resist all the blows they take - in that sense, their best bet is skill.

 

Also, think about it, Bolters are incredibly powerful weapons.You stick a grenade inside a Primarch and it'll hurt any of them.