Nature vs. Nurture, the What If? edition

[Ace Debonair]

Darn that Heathens coming back. I could have knocked up a quick Perturabo at 5 to 8 and got one in by default

"Perturabo landed on Inwit and was awesome. He took over the planet like a boss and made the whole system kneel before him. Then he made a badass ship called the Phalanx and would smash it through planets that didn't wanna join his empire 'cause unlike Lorgar he didn't believe in gravity and physics and all that other hot garbage.

The Emperor wanted him to join the Great Crusade, but Perturabo told him he'd only join if his title could be 'Foremost Badass'.

...Don't put this on the table.

If anyone voted for this I'd have to crash a ship through their house.

EDIT:

Took about two minutes to write. It's getting easier!

EDIT EDIT:

Perturabo on Inwit could be pretty spectacular if handled with more care than I just did, as an aside for anyone who wants to have a serious shot at it.

[Balthamal]

When it comes to the voting, how are we going to go about it?

 

Are we voting on the best Primarch story? Or are we taking into account the planet it is set on and incorporating it all into one cohesive whole? 

[jeremy1391]

Wow heathens!!! Love your stuff !!!! Thank the emperor you've returned!

[no I'm alpharius]

1) I've got a cheeky alternative one that I'll draft ( ... what if one of the established primarchs was actually one of the missing ones ... its a riff on the II story given but less awesome sword fights and more sad :( ... ). I think the idea is strong but no idea how it'll translate. You can also happily ignore my Angron given that he gets put down at the end of it. Another empty plinth. Sad.

 

2) Strikes me that you've got two strong motives and outcomes for the thread.

 

First is a place where people can play with ideas and throw anything about, no matter how far out or sketchy.

 

The second is to possibly generate a whole alternate universe where we have a self-consistent set of primarchs and planets that interact. And a Heresy. And stuff. Certain characters have cross-pollinated and for good reason. Others have struggled to fit in quite the same way.

 

The first is easy and is this thread. It's superb.

 

The second - ah, you see, I'm not sure its going to be easy.

[lokkorex]

1000Heathens: i'm glad you returned, but if i in any way offended you, or if something i wrote made you walk away from this thread, i apologise humbly.

[Conn Eremon]

Welp, the time for submissions is done. For the purposes of the vote, anything originally submitted between pages 1 through 23 will be included. When I have everything in order, will create a new thread for everyone to begin voting in. That will be the general public discussion thread, specific to the Alternate Heresy. I have been thinking and I want everyone to be aware that they won't just be voting for a Primarch-World combo, but for the author of that combo as well. When the voting is done, we will have our cast and we will have our writers. A third thread will be started that will be the Alternate Heresy in which the writers post, while the second thread continues to be the Heresy's general discussion, for everyone to post. I am doing that for two reasons. One, it looks neater and is easier to read. The Guilliman Heresy threads are long and hard for newcomers to get into, because the whole thing was one long general discussion. I'd like to avoid that, but without taking away people's opportunities to discuss it. Two, it provides a level of separation between the work of the writers and the criticism of the readers, constructive or otherwise. Those writers who look for criticism of their work, such as I do and I'm sure veteran Liber veteran Ace does, will remain part of the second thread and in doing so allow everyone to remain feeling involved. Those who don't, don't have to read it. They can just stick to the final Heresy thread. Hopefully this will let us retain the positive impact C&C can have for some of us while lessening the negative impact it can have on others.

 

That said, this threadbis not being closed. Though anything written from page 24 on will not go to vote, you can still submit stuff and explore the Primarchs.

[Ace Debonair]

Haha, yeah.

Three years in the Liber means even if someone does C&C my stuff down to it's component atoms and / or curse me for ten kinds of idiot for wasting my ideas I can pretty much go 'oh, ok'.

On the other hand, when people ignore my stuff I get nervous because generally that only happens in the Liber when there's too many faults to C&C without a run-up.

Then again, I'm a bit weird in the first place, so I dunno if that's really down to the Liber or just my natural paranoia kicking in.

...Back on topic, surprised nobody went and wrote a Sanguinius on Fenris. I stopped myself from writing one 'cause I have no idea how I thought someone else was bound to cover it.

[Balthamal]

Write it anyway, this thread can always use more creativity even if it doesn't make it into the vote :D

[Ace Debonair]

Write it anyway, this thread can always use more creativity even if it doesn't make it into the vote

Maybe once the vote thing is all sorted out.

Like I said and crossed out above, I don't really know where I'd go with the character. What would make him any different from Russ?

EDIT:

This is my clumsy way of throwing that idea out there for other people to run with. The more primarchs and views on primarchs in different situations the better.

[Conn Eremon]

I, for one, would love to see a valkyrie-inspired Primarch. Or a Fenrisian culture inspired by the days when the Vikings were being converted en masse to Christianity.

[Balthamal]

And thus do the choosers of the slain descend from the lightning wreathed peaks of Asahiem on gilded chariots to seek those most worthy of ascension, all the while Ride of the Valkyries blaring around the world...

[Ace Debonair]

Dunno how you make a Valkyrie-based Primarch myself, but I'd be very interested in reading about it!

Lorgar on Caliban could also be pretty awesome.

Someone who is conditioned to really believe in honour and chivalry and all that, to the point where he makes canon-Dorn look half-hearted about the whole loyalty thing.

Then again you could take the 'raised in the wild' route and make him a malevolent fiend who marshals the beasts of the forest and turns Caliban into a nightmare world.

Or have him raised out of the way in a tiny village somewhere where there is nobody to protect his adoptive kin from the monsters except himself, although that's basically Lorgar on Nocturne.

So many possibilities...

[no I'm alpharius]

…  just for fun …

 

-------

The man lay on his bed, blood seeping from a wound on his neck. He was old, he'd lived a long life and he'd seen everyone he’d ever loved wither and die. It was just him, in his house, by the side of a lone, dusty road that connected nowhere to nothing. While he had been on this planet for nearly one hundred years, he looked younger than his years. He had always put that down to his active life.
 

But he had nothing now. In a moment of deep despair, he'd taken his razor, rubbed some of the poison that he used to clear wasps from the timbers of his house onto the blade and taken it to his throat.

As he gagged on the blood, as his body struggled to repair the damage, he thought back.

 

1995

 

The love of his life was gone. For nearly eighty years, they'd been companions, even if oceans had separated them at times. He had been nothing but loyal even if they had never had experienced the joy of children and had sometimes argued when he seemed incapable of understanding her moods and tempers. He'd seen other people cry their hearts out at this moment but he couldn't. But that didn't stop the emptiness from gnawing at him.

 

 

1983

 

She had broken something in her leg a few years before. They couldn't afford to really patch her up properly so he had improvised and they had struggled along. Well, she had. He’d barely felt any older. Sometimes, he sat on the edge of the great plain that now covered all but one or two buildings of the town he called home and looked up at the stars. Did she know any of what he had seen?

 

1974

 

Two Indians had come out of the desert one day and demanded to talk to him. Normally, he'd have shrugged them off with some dry wit but the way they spoke to him compelled him to follow them. They took him into the hills, to a place he had never been before. A fire burnt in the centre of an amphitheatre of stone.

 

They sat him down and gave him a stone bowl. He drank from it and stared into the fire. Shapes formed, men in ornate armour fighting an endless war. Some had twisted into inhuman shapes, with claws and horns and bat like wings. There were greater men that shared something with him. Some stood tall, like walls of granite. Others seemed to swoop through the sky. And one looked like evil incarnate, a giant of a man that cast the others asunder. Brother struck down brother as humanity tore itself apart.

He woke alone, smoke rising from the embers of the fire. He returned to his house and sat on the balcony for what seemed like days … It was obvious something was wrong but his friends put it down to what he’d seen in the years previous. He didn’t really share his thoughts at the best of times but what he had seen had chilled him.

 

1963

She was growing older than him. He had settled into a routine, keeping his town - although it was possibly now a village - safe from harm. Sometimes there were crimes, and he was resolute in finding the culprits and bringing them to justice. One time, a man had come from the city, with blood on his hands. In desperation, the man had run through the streets waving a gun, firing off rounds into the air. He had dived in front of an old friend, taking the bullet in his chest, then picked himself up and wrestled the man to the ground. State troopers came, newspapers came and he was branded a hero but, really, he was doing what he’d always done.

 

1955

The town was smaller now. People had moved away and the desert had started to come up and swallow some of the houses on the edge of town. His love was still there, older and frailer but he could still see the glint in her eyes when she opened the door. He had left her for twenty years and barely aged. She had grown hunched and grey but was not bitter. He volunteered to serve at the Sheriff's office, keeping an eye on his own little kingdom, tucked away on a road no one used now that Eisenhower was building the highway over in the next valley.

 

1954

He dragged the officer through the jungle, as bullets cut through the undergrowth. Another war, another name, and he was back with the white capped brothers in arms. This one had been a disaster; he had found himself on the wrong side of justice. The officer was injured but not seriously. He would survive. Hauling the deadweight onto his shoulders, he resolved to go home.

 

1950

The shells slammed down around him. He was pressed against the dirt, yards from his tent. Somehow, he'd found himself back at war, as if that was his destiny in life. The boys around him looked to him for guidance. And, once again, he stepped up to the plate. He barked orders at those that could and cajoled those that were frozen with fear into acting. He had found himself in the logistical corps due to his age on a piece of paper. Not strictly accurate, but it meant he was far from the action. But in wars like this, sometimes the frontline found him. The bleak, rocky landscape was like some alien planet from the cinema serials. As wave upon wave of attackers flooded up the black hills, he directed the counter attacks, supplied ammunition and roused tired young heads. Minutes turned into hours, night fell and still his marines did not break. They had one job: hold the line. And they did.

 

1945

 

He had somehow known that great power had been unleashed even before the news had come through. The tens of thousands of souls had not gone quietly into the night and somehow, he had felt them screaming.

He had found himself in Spain in the late 30s, fighting for neither side but trying to keep a small village from being swallowed up in the carnage. And then the second Great War started and he had found himself fighting alongside other waifs and strays, wearing their white caps and marching, always marching as brothers fell beside him. The war had opened up that other side of him once again. In the calm after battles he was told of stories where he had decapitated an enemy with a single punch, of when all seemed hopeless, he had stood taller and firmer and somehow changed the tide of battle, of how he was the one amongst them that everyone looked to and rallied around.

 

1933

 

After his parents had both died and the crops failed across the state, he had packed a small bag and set out down the drive, down the road and towards the horizon. He had left behind him tears and sadness but the valley had started to feel like a prison.

Miles passed underfoot as he walked up through several states and found his way to a bustling harbour. A boat was advertising for crew and he signed up. His strength and endurance ensured that the captain kept off his back, while the rest of the men sometimes found it hard to connect with him. He'd always had that problem. But he kept himself to himself, working and hard and being the pillar when things were at their worst.

The years passed and the world turned. The boat took him from Japan to the Phillipines, from the seediest bars in the far east to closed cities in the middle east to steaming jungles in Africa and then deserts and then Europe.

 

1921

He had come back to his parents and tried to settle back down into a normal life. Something had awoken in him in those months in Flanders and it was sometimes hard to keep it bottled up. When he angered, he appeared taller and broader than his already great stature. A girl he had known from school often walked with him out in the fields and plains. She had been a sickly child and he'd kept the bullies away. While he did not reciprocate every feeling, she was devoted to her 'little war hero' and he kept her safe from harm. They married and settled in their town, keeping their plot of land immaculately turned out.

 

1918

Mud. Endless mud.

He had been drawn to the recruiting stand in town and passed through the medical screenings with flying colours. While his parents had been poor folk, living off the land in a remote part of the world, he had grown into a fine young man, star of track, field and classroom, handsome but not pretty. He still tried to be a greyer man than he knew he was capable of.

But out in the sea of endless mud, he had found a place where he excelled. The blood, the violence, the pain. Where man was reduced to his lowest point, that was where he was strongest. He organised and he rallied and he fought. It was as if he was created for such warfare.

 

1900

His parents never knew that he could remember everything. The pod, their innocent faces as they pulled him from the fires the impact had caused, his first days where he found his feet and found his tongue, the days at school where he found himself holding his strength and speed in check but still excelling. He had realised he was different and it seemed wiser to try and act smaller, to fit in. But when needed, he stepped forward, to silence a bullies tongue or help a friend through tough times. The right words came to him easily at all times. People rallied around him and he seemed to instinctively lead them in a way that he did not quite understand.

 

His parents had named him Robert and, while he knew he had some different name written down somewhere, it seemed close enough.

As the last dregs of blood seeped from the poisoned wound, he understood that for his whole life, he had known he was different. For everything good he'd done, for every life he'd saved in a half dozen battlefields and many more fights, for every person he had helped, there was still the sense he'd been waiting for something greater.

-----

 

On the other side of the planet, high up a vast mountain, a man who was not yet a god opened his eyes. He couldn't work out what he had felt, just then. A momentary sense of loss had swept over him. He resumed his position of meditation. His own journey, his own plans, they were not near completion.

 

But his time would come.

 

------

 

 

yeah, Roboute Gump.

[lokkorex]

that... that was beautiful in a way, actually.

 

a truly different take on it all, which i applaud!

[Wade Garrett]

Alt Roboute had me...then you said "Roboute Gump" and all I could hear was "Lieutenant Ferrous, what happened to your hands?"

[Ace Debonair]

Wow, dude.

That was pretty awesome.

[no I'm alpharius]

Alt Roboute had me...then you said "Roboute Gump" and all I could hear was "Liutenant Ferrous, what happened to your hands?"

 

Just be glad I cut out the "Roboute the Shrimp Boat Captain" years.

[Ace Debonair]

I wonder if Magnus on Nuceria would have been powerful enough to avoid having the butcher's nails put in his head?

You know, for example using his mind to detect and explode any would-be installers of said nails.

I also wonder if the nails would have had a different effect on any of the primarchs. Wasn't there something somewhere that implied Perturabo (or Mortarion or... er, one of the traitors) was genetically highly resistant to pain? Maybe they would have just made him irritable?

Just floating some more concepts for fun and profit.

[Grimdarkness]

It was Perturabo.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

has voting for this begun?

[Conn Eremon]

Nope. I'm using this weekend to be with visiting family and to make sure I got an accurate list. I'm shooting for putting something up this weekend, but we will see. Please be patient, but continue discussing ideas.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

no worries, I hadn't seen anythings either way and was worried I had missed the start of the voting :D

[Conn Eremon]

Just an idea I had:

 

-------

 

In the edges of the forests surrounding the walled fortress, a child was often seen. Search parties would ride out to find this lost child, but would be forced to give up the quest as night fell, lest the horrific beasts come after them. And yet, as morning breaks the following days, still the child could be seen, just inside the treeline, watching them. No one believed him normal, for not even a full grown warrior can be safe in those woods. Some thought him a guardian spirit, like the legendary Watchers. Others thought him a strange new beast, more devious and terrifying than any other, for it looked like them. During the night, the thick forests would come alive with loud activity and strange lights. Most disturbing of all was not the roars and shrieks of the fell beasts that rampaged in the blackness, but the cries of an animal victorious over its foe, of a bloody battle concluded with finality, its winner releasing its anger and relief to all. Cries and shouts that sound for all the world like they had come from a human throat.

 

Finally, after years have passed, questing knights arrive to cleanse the town of its surrounding horrors. Twelve warriors, wearing battered, ancient mechanical armor and weaponry, walk deep into the jungle, to their final fates or eternal glory. Over the course of three weeks, they pile the corpses of the beasts at the gates to show their progress, while the wounded are tended within. Their progress is good, but these are not the great heroes of their order, merely lesser knights. They meet their match in a Calibanite Lion, a ferocious beast of terrible claws and poisoned quills. The beast strikes half of their party down before those still standing have a chance to strike back. The response proves inadequate, and more are cut down. As a lone warrior remains standing, holding his ground over the fallen forms of his peers, his life is saved by the watcher. A blur as fast as the Lion itself cracks with thunderous force into its side, sending it careening. A child, young in appearance but tall and large in body, pounces upon the beast. Hands grip the damned thing's jaws and forces them apart as it claws and thrashes in his grip until, with a savage wrenching motion, the beast's neck snaps and the body goes limp. The warrior stands still, disbelieving, as the large young man tosses the corpse aside and looks at him, head cocked. The warrior extends a single gauntleted, shaking arm out, fist closed and pointing up in the traditional sign for victory as the child approaches. With deft, intuitive fingers, the child unclasps the gauntlet and takes it, his attention wholly on the ancient piece of technology. The warrior studies the child with the same fascination. The child was caked in mud, leaves and mud, but it appeared deliberate, as if he was mimicking clothing. Blood could be seen everywhere, but worse of all was his arms and hands. Dark with dried blood, they were bulky with muscle but also lumpy, as if they had been severely broken and shattered all over and healed improperly. The child's back was, in comparison, remarkably bare of wound or scar.

 

The child was taken by the warrior to civilization. For the first time, the watcher saw what was within the tall walls. Of particular interest was the blacksmith, working to repair the armor and weapons left to his care from before. Unable to move the child, the warrior left him to the blacksmith's care for the time being. The child stood there and watched as he worked the metal and attached it to the mechanical devices he was careful with, as if afraid it could be broken further than it was. Though the finished product was still clearly in poor shape, the armored plating appeared all that the smith could repair. When night fell and the smith closed his shop, still the child stood still, staring at the armor with complete focus. The child was left there, alone.

 

When dawn broke and the smith led a trio of recovering warriors to his shop, the child was seen kneeling in the dirt of the floor, an entire suit dismantled completely before him as he scrutinized it. One of the warriors had to be forcibly restrained when they saw the sacrilege done to the lost technology. The child merely stared, unblinking and silent before standing and turning to the forges. Mimicking the smith's actions from the previous day, the child began to forge. Shockingly, the child used none of the smith's tools. He hammered metal with his fists and reached with bare hands to pull it red hot from the fires. The smith, confused but curious, watched as the child worked.

 

A month passed, with the child fully taking over the forge. Piles had formed of his failures and cast offs, as a pile of smooth, intricate shapes gathered separately. Whenever a piece was finished, the child would compare it to one of of the broken pieces of ancient armor and then place it in a pile according to some unknown standard. When the still living warriors had recovered enough to travel back to their fortress keep, they entered the smithy to retrieve their equipment and the strange child, who had been given the name Llew o'Gham, the Light That Never Dims, for his ceaseless chore in the smithy. When the warriors entered, they found the shattered armor reassembled. Next to it was an ugly contraption in comparison to the suits baroque appearance, but clearly it had been built as a copy of it.

 

When the Emperor landed on the barren, industrious world of Caliban, Llew o'Gham stood to receive him in the ashen wasteland where the Great Forest once stood, clad from head to toe in an ugly, beaten iron armor suit. Behind him stood a small army of warriors in similar armor, Llew's elite Ironwing.

 

-------

 

And thus, I give you Calibanite Ferrus Manus.

 

I am less than pleased with it, to be honest, but I liked the idea.

[Adra'Melek]

Cormac, interesting. Not sure about the bit wig his arms. Was it relating to the fact he didn't use weapons and kept shoving them down various creatures throats to rip their insides out? It read a bit weird with him being referred to as child when he was bigger than everyone else. I like the idea that he reverse engineers at least a version of the powered armour. Perhaps leads the war on chaos spawn with improved technology. Certainly some nice concepts. I think pretty much all the ideas on here are pretty cool. It's just a matter of fleshing them out.

 

I've got one for Perturabo that I'm going to start and expand on. I'm not 100% on him or Colchis (the planet) so a bit of reading is required.

[Hyaenidae]

 I'm not 100% on him or Colchis (the planet) so a bit of reading is required.

 

Think of Colchis as Mecca, but on a planetary scale. You won't be far off.