Nature vs. Nurture, the What If? edition

[Ace Debonair]

Godking: The Fist King as a nickname just makes me giggle and think of the Slab King from Borderlands II.

 

Could I instead suggest 'The Fist of Fear'?

 

Balthamal: Damn, that's quite a tale!

Wouldn't mind learning more about the Blood Angels that would follow your nightmare Sanguinius, though... That'd make for quite an interesting Legion!

[Kol Saresk]

 

 

I vote that he be the brightest shade of Violet. Seems like a fair compromise.

I see what you did there

 

 

I feel stupid. It took me this long to realize you thought I was making a Willy Wonka reference.

[Balthamal]

Thank you all for the positive reception. I'd like to say it was easy to write but it wasn't. Certain parts actually left me a tad sick have gotten them on the screen but there we go lol.

 

As for the IX Legion suffering under the strain of such a wretched father, who knows I might even dive in there again.

 

My vote still goes to Dorn on Nostromo though. Was literally speechless in awe after reading it

[Saa]

 

"We fight to silence anyone that dares draw breath and whisper a different opinion from ours. We fight because the Emperor wants every world in his hands. All he knows is slavery, painted in the inoffensive cloak of compliance. The very notion of freedom is a horror to him."

A Primarch describes the Great Crusade

Really, neither abolitionist Lorgar or canon Corax swooning over Big E's vision for the galaxy makes a lick of sense. Did both you guys not notice every ship in your Space Dad's fleet is crewed by press ganged slaves? Did you miss that the weapons and armor you bear were crafted by human beings lobotomized into cyborg thralls?.

Well colour me 'enlightened'......

 

Cos the penal colonies in 30k are so well fleshed out. Cos 'lobotomised slaves' would never be criminals that served no function in the Imperium of man other than gun loaders and floor moppers. Summary execution for all!!!

 

Mon ami, I wrote a different slant on Lorgar. You have a plethora of Lorgar Cleftjaw refs in the tales of others and my intention was nothing more than a piqued interest in writing a different slant on my favourite primarch. Attacking the only person to challenge 'your' Fenrisian interpretation only serves to make you look like a douche.

 

I didn't say mine was better, I was expressing an interpretation.

 

Saa

 

....or something like that

[Conn Eremon]

Saa, Wade was pointing out one of the common hypocrisies built into the setting, whether canon or not, as seen by those who favor the Chaos side of things. That is, that the Imperium is a dictatorship built on slave labor and founded on the blood and bones of all who fail to meet the Emperor's standards, and yet it is an Imperium that the most caring of Primarchs strive to uphold. I don't believe he meant it as a criticism of your piece, nor as an attempt to promote his own. After all, his own version of Lorgar is a lapdog in his own right.

[Hyaenidae]

This is turning into a "I'm better than you" match.

 

'Even though in the shadow I could not see, by it's touch, I knew it to be evil.'

 

I wash my hands of this.

[godking]

Godking: The Fist King as a nickname just makes me giggle and think of the Slab King from Borderlands II.

 

Could I instead suggest 'The Fist of Fear'?

 

Balthamal: Damn, that's quite a tale!

Wouldn't mind learning more about the Blood Angels that would follow your nightmare Sanguinius, though... That'd make for quite an interesting Legion!

My Dorn is inspired by the Kinpin and Raoh from Hokuto no ken i was thinking of the fist of death a s a nickname but your right fist of fear would have been better.

[Ace Debonair]

This is turning into a "I'm better than you" match.

'Even though in the shadow I could not see, by it's touch, I knew it to be evil.'

I wash my hands of this.

Yeah, it might be worth taking a step back and not getting too involved with our characters / interpretations.

We can save any voting on interpretations for another thread at another time, maybe, and just keep this to fleshing out the possibilities.

There's a ton of cool stuff that could be done with lots of the Primarchs, and it's fun to just mix things up once in a while.

[no I'm alpharius]

The siege had gone on for weeks. Shells had been lobbed from nearby peaks, mines dug and vast chasms blown out of the mountainside. Thousands perished, hundreds had broken. And still the Black Castle endured.

 

Dammekos stood at a grand table and swept his hands over the map pinned to it. Two staff officers flinched.

"The 35th Grenadines? Where are they again?"

"most of them lie broken in.... That ravine. The bridge was blown while they were crossing", the taller of the officers said, as he pointed out the closely spaced lines that indicate a sheer drop.

"and General Malik? I hope he's at the bottom of the pile"

Dammekos turned to a wall bearing tactical organisation charts.

"I still have reserves. And we've made progress over the southern flanks?""

"yes sir, but at some cost"

"expected. Now, tell me one more thing. Where is that idiot son of mine"

The two officers glanced at each other nervously.

"He... We don't know. He took that unit you gave him and vanished"

 

Dammekos waited for the medics to pick the officers off the dirt before striding out of his command tent. Clouds and mist swirled around the flat peak but he had a good view of his target. He could see the broken bridge. He could see where three atomic mines had detonated, ripping valleys all the way to the walls of that castle. That DAMNED castle.

 

The first explosion took him by surprise. It blossomed up from an outlying wall, opening a crack in the defences. Three more explosions cut terraces into the hillside. Another explosion ripped through the mainkeep. Dammekos knew when opportunity presented. He tapped orders into his command pad, directing a reserve unit to the still smoking staircase of rock.

 

Within the hour, he was in the castle. Corpses lay strewn around the ramparts, the only troops moving wore a mixture of uniforms, with a black sash over their right arms. They barely glanced up as he strode at the head of his elite guard to the main keep. He wanted to see that dog grovel before he took his head. The door was thrown of its hinges by two massive guardsmen and Dammekos strode in, head held high, sneering at...

 

"WHAT?! What are you doing here?"

 

His jaw hung open. Corax. That daydreaming, idiot boy lounged on the Black Thron. He raised an eyebrow then idly tossed the severed head of the old master of the keep at his father's feet. Without saying a word, he picked himself off the throne and signalled. Four men appeared from out of the shadows, guns all trained on Dammekos.

 

The small group eased out of the keep. It was then that Dammekos swore. Loudly.

[Kol Saresk]

Okay, I believe I currently have every story and related post organized into the table. The code is still giving me trouble so I'm going to go ahead and make a thread to ask for help on that. When it's fixed, I'll go ahead and post the table in a different thread and then just keep updating it from this thread so I don't have to keep digging back and forth for it.

By the way, I hate you all.

And by hate I mean there are some amazing pieces in here.

Except you Alpharius. I thought I was this close to being done.

[Conn Eremon]

If you want to criticize someone's work, make sure it is within the framework of their idea. If you disagree with something strongly enough to find it wrong, do not argue the issue. Just write your own. Godking did that, at the end, and I approve. Let's not bicker among ourselves. If you got ideas that are radically different from someone else's, put them down in your own version. We, as a community, will vote on our favorites later on.

[no I'm alpharius]

Think that's my usual method of operating. :)

Think that's my usual method of operating. :)

[no I'm alpharius]

Yeah, I thought that about Khan on Nuceria so I wrote what I think is my personal favourite. It needs an edit,I need to make it clearer that his Dad is played by Brian Blessed, but I like it.

[Wade Garrett]

Mon ami, I wrote a different slant on Lorgar. You have a plethora of Lorgar Cleftjaw refs in the tales of others and my intention was nothing more than a piqued interest in writing a different slant on my favourite primarch. Attacking the only person to challenge 'your' Fenrisian interpretation only serves to make you look like a douche.

 

Basically, what Cormac said.

 

For all his babbling about "Protecting the weak" my alt Lorgar is fighting void battle after void battle in support of....the way I've always pictured it is a Motivational Poster of an Imperial Battle ship conducting an Exterminatus on a planet with the caption of: 

 

THE GREAT CRUSADE

 We're gonna liberate and protect the HELL out of you!

 

My issue is not "WAAAAH MAH LORGAR IS BETTUR THAN YURS!", more of a general "Death to the False Emperor! Let the Galaxy Burn!" I thought I hinted at that when I ran off on at the mouth about canon Corax as well, but whatever. Not trying to pick fights or hate on your John Brown Aurelian, dude.

 

All my kibitzing at Cormac aside, I don't think (for instance) Gree's Alexander the Great Angron is "wrong" and my Tubercular Trenches and Flame Obsessed Angron is "right".

 

DO NOT HATE!

APPRECIATE!

[Hyaenidae]

This is turning into a "I'm better than you" match.

'Even though in the shadow I could not see, by it's touch, I knew it to be evil.'

I wash my hands of this.

Yeah, it might be worth taking a step back and not getting too involved with our characters / interpretations.

We can save any voting on interpretations for another thread at another time, maybe, and just keep this to fleshing out the possibilities.

There's a ton of cool stuff that could be done with lots of the Primarchs, and it's fun to just mix things up once in a while.

You misunderstand me. I am pulling out of this project enitrely, and my stories go with. This is the reason I don't participate in the Liber, as too many people ridicule instead of offering constructive advice. I don't tolerate such actions, by principle.

Best of luck folks, and enjoy.

[Kol Saresk]

And before anyone jumps on Heathens, let me point out that part of the idea behind this was "What if". What that means is, whatever happens in the story is specifically how that specific author would interpret that specific event. No one person has the right to tell another person that their what if is wrong, inconceivable or whatever. Feel free to offer advice in order to help one write their what if, but leave it at that. No more "Curze is bipolar" or "Dorn is a maffia leader" or anything else. The most difficult thing I had to do today was not put the table together, but tear it apart and not for the reasons many of you will assume why. So please do us all a favor and stop all hostility here and now.

 

EDIT: Oh, and as it stands now, there are no Perturabo or Magnus stories.

[Conn Eremon]

*Sigh* Why can't we all just get along?

 

Heathens, I would implore you to reconsider. I would hope that the appreciation the majority of us have shown you for your participation would over rule the lack thereof from the so far small minority.

[Kol Saresk]

On another note, I was a little slow and Heathens was quick on the draw. Does anyone happen to have copies of Heathens' stories? I'd like to get them for posterity.

[Wade Garrett]

A few more ideas I had. Includes MY OWN PERSONAL INTERPRETATION OF SANGUINUS ON NOSTROMO, WHICH IS NOT MEANT TO IMPUGN OR LESSEN ANYONE ELSE'S TAKE ON SANGUINUS ON NOSTROMO OR ANYWHERE ELSE.

An angel wept over a corpse, its lips moving as it whispered to itself. The enforcers who had burst into Underboss Karsavi's office after his dying screams woke the entire hab building were frozen in terror of the most spiritual kind. How do you react when a messenger of divinity violently intrudes into your day to day routine? Balthus was the closest to the winged giant...less out of any personal courage than because he'd been the first through the door and the bodyguards who'd tried to crowd in after had pressed him closer and closer to the scene with every pajama clad pistolero that had pushed their way into the office.

And so he was the only one close enough to make out the words the angel murmured in a voice as soft as raindrops pattering against the Spiretops. "...guide this lost soul so far gone from your light, and take it to you so that its sins may one day be..."

"A lotta folks would say he didn't deserve any kinda forgiveness." said a voice, and Balthus winced when he realized it was his own. His tongue had a tendency to leap far ahead of his thoughts. It had danced him close to a back alley execution on more than one occasion, but to interrupt an angel at its prayers...

"I do not pray for this man's soul." The angel answered him, looking up with eyes left blood red from weeping. "We may only ask forgiveness for our own sins, and this is one of mine. If I could have found the words to sway him..." It was the sight of those blood red eyes that made Balthus realize he was dead. They ALL  were.

"The Weeping Angel..." he hissed, pressing back against the crowd behind him in a futile attempt at escape"Am I so terrible to you, then?" the angel said, the barest hint of a smile creasing its face.

"We angels deliver judgment and wrath, yes, but we are more than that, we must be. We are messengers, and that message is one of hope and redemption. Anyone, no matter how wretched, can find forgiveness if they but truly repent from their wicked ways. Balthus knees hit the floor and he folded his hands in front of him, trying desperately to call words to mind from the rare occasions his aunt had dragged him to the ruined chapel in the rotting slum where he'd grown up.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER
"We've entered realspace, Father." The novice squeaked, awe of the mighty figure kneeling in the Jure Divinus's main reclusiam radiating off him. The mighty form did not acknowledge him, but remained kneeling, staring straight ahead while he repeated the Litany of Duty once more, seeking clarity for the task he would soon have to perform. He could scarcely credit the Warmaster's orders, but the evidence his armada had collected as they had followed in the wake of his brother's Legion left little room for doubt.

The Angels of Mercy had completely withdrawn from the Crusade, only stopping their pusillanimous drive towards their dark homeworld to ravage various IMPERIAL planets along the way. The high riders of Nuceria, the Tech Guild of Deliverance...the Ninth Legion had left a trail of mas executions and eviscerated societies in their wake, and only the Emperor Himself could know what insanity they were plotting in Nostromo's serpentine alleyways.

"And the Master of Mankind shall know you, not by your glories and your triumphs, but by your scars." Rogal Dorn, the Martyr King of Colchis, finished the familiar refrain, but his mind still roiled with the unaccustomed emotions of uncertainty. To go to war with his brother seemed blasphemous, yet what choice did he have? He was oathed to the moment, his orders to drag Sanguinus back to Terra, dead or alive. The thought of his oath to the Emperor settled it.

He would take this burden on his shoulders as he had so many others, as he had done on Colchis so long ago, when he had demanded the Covenant take their sacrifice from HIS flesh instead of the pre selected victims gathered on the temple steps. Servos in his armor groaned as he stood, the mighty war plate etched with a hundred thousand scars, cracks, and burn marks, each one a silent remembrance of a moment when he had shielded his little brothers with his own divine form. The Emperor's will be done.

Elsewhere

The threads of fate spooled out before his sightless eye, and he smiled. The pieces were in position...Dorn, so eager to sacrifice himself and his sons for an imagined duty, and the Angel, even now working desperately to repair the corruption that had seeped into his planet while he had been waging war among the stars.

Both of them unaware that they truly did the bidding of the Master of War, soon to be Emperor of Mankind, and after that...well. Perhaps one day the gods themselves would learn the lesson the shamans who first tutored him had been taught so long ago had been taught, that the Allfather, for all his supposed insight and power of prophecy, had utterly failed to grasp:

In the end, Grimman One Eye, Ring Giver of Fenris, would kneel to no one and nothing. He would have it all, or he would perish in the attempt.

[Wade Garrett]

On another note, I was a little slow and Heathens was quick on the draw. Does anyone happen to have copies of Heathens' stories? I'd like to get them for posterity.

I had cross posted Dorn on Nostromo and some of the other stories from this thread to another sci fi forum I frequent, I wouldn't mind going and digging for them if it isn't stepping on Heathen's toes.

 

For that matter, if it's that big a deal to him I don't mind deleting them from the other forum too...I think it would be a shame but his creations, his call.

[Conn Eremon]

I have pages 1-16 saved as of yesterday ~ 2 pm, -8 GMT.

 

But if he wants them pulled, go by his wishes.

[jeremy1391]

Sanguinius

Planet Colchis

 

Primarch of the Legio Cruentis (bloody hands) .

 

"There are no gods, nor spirits, or deities. There is only the truth."

 

Like his brothers Sanguinius was cast through time and space like the rest of his brothers.

 

The young primarch landed upon the arid world of Colchis, a backwards society ruled by an unrelenting brutal theocracy. The primarchs pod landed in Colchis's last bastion of reason. The city state of Althiun. Whereas the rest of the planet had taken to the teachings of the High Cardinal Kor Phareon the people of Althiun had embraced science and reason. While their technology far outstripped the medieval implementations of Kor Phareons zealots tey lacked numbers. Surrounded on all sides the city it's residents thought that sanguinius's capsule was a weapon of Kor Phareons horde. However when they discovered the beautiful infant Sanguinius in the pod they knew otherwise.

 

Sanguinius grew at a rapid rate within a year he was the size of an average 18 year old man his mighty wings were viewed by the people of Althiun as a genetic mutation which was potentially a hint at the next stage of human evolution.

Sanguinius soon joined his fellow citizens in the fight against Kor Phareons hordes victory after victory stacked up in Althiuns favor and soon Kor Phareon had been pushed back to his cathedral stronghold beyond Althiuns borders. It was at this point in a rage Kor Phareon embraced his planets old gods and gained monumental power to match the young sanguinius. Personally leading a cohort of warp tainted sorcerers they captured sanguinius. Deep within Kor Phareons stronghold sanguinius was shackled and tortured almost to his breaking point, it was then that Kor Phareon took up his warp tainted blade and hacked sanguinius's wings from his back. At a genetic level this awakened a beast within Sanguinius a darkness came across his angelic features and the psychic shriek of pain broke the bonds that were restraining him. In an instant Sanguinius had Kor Phareon by the throat, his daemonic power drained from his body and at that moment Sanguinius bit the throat of te zealot in a splash of blood and gore Kor Phareon died, left as a heap of torn flesh and gristle for the rats to finish. Over the course of the next night Kor Phareons command structure was reduced to nothing. Leaderless the Zealots hordes were broken. In the months that followed all colchisians who did not renounce their oaths of faith were publicly executed by exsanguination, their blood staining the streets red.

 

After being reunited with the emperor Sanguinius's legion adopted their primarchs ideation against those who would not embrace the imperial truth putting entire populations to the sword.... Truth above all else.

[lokkorex]

jeremy1391: that's a nice and cool take on sanguinius in my opinion.

 

i'm sad to see Heathens leave this thread, but i understand his reasoning.

 

though i'm happy to have read his stories which have already given me much inspiration.

[Wulfkry]

It is amazing to me how much this thread has grown since the OP put it up and how much awesome writing is housed within it.  Thank you to all the writers truly some excellent reading.

[no I'm alpharius]

Likewise. This thread has made me think creatively for the first time in ages.