Betrayer. Thoughts, queries, equestions. Spoilers, duh.

[daveNYC]

As for the "horrors" that it takes to become a daemon prince, the number of planets that were burned to fuel Angron's ascension in the Shadow Crusade were nothing compared to those destroyed by the Great Crusade.

 

That argument kind of falls apart when you notice that Angron's ascension turned him into a creature that does nothing but burn planets, and will do so for all eternity.

 

There's also the bit that Lorgar no longer seems to care much for what happens to his legion.  Losing the forces at Calth doesn't bother him, Argal Tal's death didn't seem to faze him too much, there's also the short story covering the creation of more Gal Vorbak, and the rather impressive failure rate involved.  It'd be nice to see a little something covering how he turned from the philosopher primarch who really just wanted to hang in the library and became the guy who shrugged off the loss of tens of thousands of his sons, one of his few confidants, and doesn't care about the losses that will be incurred in order to meet his Gal Vorbak quota.  Pre-ascension Angron might not care a whole heck of a lot about his guys, but he's also not treating them as expendable tools.

[Kol Saresk]

Actually, he was more shaken by Argel Tal's death than you might think. Recall, it was he that pointed Khârn in Erebus' direction. As for the more Gal Vorbak, remember he wanted those who would not "stop hating the Ultramarines" to become the new Gal Vorbak. Calth was to cleanse the Legion of those who were not fit in Lorgar's eyes, a sacrifice of the sons he once deemed precious but also deemed necessary to lose. After all, what is a sacrifice if it has no value?

[daveNYC]

He thought they'd have a better chance of a successful possession, but while Argal Tal blanched at the thought of how many would still die in the process, Lorgar was more eggs -> omelettes.

 

I'm also not exactly convinced that pulling a 'lets you and him fight' with Khârn and Erebus is some great outpouring of grief at the Argal's death.  Erebus kills one of the few guys in the legion that Lorgar can actually talk to, and all he does is feed that info to Khârn?  Now feeding Erebus his own liver... that'd be good stuff.  They need to back burner Erebus I think.  The dude's a horrible combination of moustache twirling, stupid, and plot armor. 

 

Unfortunately with Calth we don't get much soul searching on why this is a necessary sacrifice.  Or even why it's that great a sacrifice.  Mostly we get the idea that he's ditching the Word Bearers who are too caught up in Ultramarines hate to keep their eyes on the prize.  He's got idiots on his team and Ultramarines that need killing.  Win-win.

 

This is Lorgar, the one primarch who never had any interest in war and is now dealing in galactic level slaughter, and he seems to be strangely fine with it.  All I'm looking for is something on how he got from point a to point b.

[Kol Saresk]

Yeah but Khârn was going to do nothing. He didn't know Erebus killed Argel Tal. Not until Lorgar said something.

 

Remember, this is the Primarch who orchestrated the burning of 100 worlds to ascend his brother into daemonhood. This is the same Primarch who sacrificed a decent portion of his Legion in "the meatgrinder at Calth", as Angron described it in Butcher's Nails. He is also a preacher. Who else would know the power a single word here or there holds?

 

Also, Calth was the start of the Ruinstorm. It was the sacrifice. It needed to be something big. By leading Erebus and Kor Phaeron into believing Calth itself was the sacrifice, he was able to place the keystone through not only Calth, but the sons he sent to die there.

[daveNYC]

But Erebus is also still kicking it in 40k, so unless Erebus has even more plot armor than we've already seen, Lorgar hasn't seen fit to do anything meaningful concerning Erebus' murder of Argal Tal.  And by meaningful, I mean feed him his own liver, although I haven't exactly seen much by way of even a stern talking too on that front.  And you don't exactly need a PhD in Behavioral Psych in order to get Khârn to do something.  As long as that something involves chopping that is.

 

Yeah, Calth and the Ruinstorm.  The thing is that Lorgar never seems to cracked up about what happens, or about having to send them off to die in the first place.  From what we've seen, there just seems to be a lot of items that fall into the category of 'things that need doing' and Lorgar just ups and gets them done, regardless the cost.  Which is fine, I get that he's 100% behind this plan to burn the galaxy down in order to something-something.  What I don't get is much sense of the internal struggle he must (hopefully) have gone through on each step of the path to becoming the guy who is totally OK with all the death and distruction he's causing, both to his enemies and his own legion.

[Phoebus]

That last sentence... times a million!

 

And again, I can't emphasize this enough:  the sentiments that I'm expressing don't translate to "I hate The First Heretic, etc."  I really, really, really liked the novels, novella, etc., that told Lorgar's tale.  At this point, as with my "criticism" in the Betrayer thread, I'm admittedly bringing up minor gripes about some very well-written novels.

Okay, that's all.  I have to get up in four hours to watch Liverpool hopefully pull it off versus City... and I doubt my eight month-old son won't wake up between now and then!

[Wade Garrett]

Well, I for one am arguing that the Imperial Truth was an epic foul up by the Emperor.

 

Chaos is very much a force of "Deeds not words". The Ruinous Powers could care less if you devote yourself to them, Zeus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the rational principles of pure logic as long as you wallow in ambition, ecstasy, despair and rage.

 

Khorne doesn't care if you kill in the name of your god, your nation, vengeance, or justice, only that you kill.

 

We have plenty of examples of faith and religous devotion that are anathema to Chaos: Euphrati Keeler banishing the daemon with a copy of the Lectio Divinatus, the shamanistic rites of the VI Legion, the Grey Knights and Sisters of Battle in "modern 40k", and even the worship of the Eldar gods, Gork, and Mork.

 

For that matter, there's the small issue that all the tools the Emperor's "Atheism or Death!" campaign is being carried out with are built by Martian cyborgs who revere him as the Omnissiah avatar of the Machine God they worship.

[Legatus]

 

The only Friday the 13th movie that got an acclaim, though, was the first one

 

They would not have produced eleven movies (and several 'Haloween' movies) if the character archetype wasn't at least somewhat popular.

[Kol Saresk]

 

 

The only Friday the 13th movie that got an acclaim, though, was the first one

They would not have produced eleven movies (and several 'Haloween' movies) if the character archetype wasn't at least somewhat popular.

Actually Hollywood has a habit of beating the dead horse. One example is the Resident Evil series. Another is pretty much any horror series. The initial movie gets amazing reviews so then they think that's justification to make nineteen more movies, each one crappier than the last. This results in a mass production of the phenomenon known as "B-Rated movies".

[Conn Eremon]

To be fair, regardless of how Hollywood is, people watched and enjoyed the other eleven movies. And they were, as far as I am aware, successful in audiences and sales. So the point does stand that people do like their faceless, personality-less horrors.

 

But I would not say such an argument means anything whatsoever to 40k.

[Kol Saresk]

To be fair, regardless of how Hollywood is, people watched and enjoyed the other eleven movies. And they were, as far as I am aware, successful in audiences and sales. So the point does stand that people do like their faceless, personality-less horrors.

But I would not say such an argument means anything whatsoever to 40k.

I never said the Jason Vorhees series specifically.

[Legatus]

I would say you can have a variety of archetypes among the various forces. A Night Lord might adress his victims gleefully and tell them, cackling, how he is going to peel the skinn of their bones. Meanwhile the World Eater will burst in, tear the guy apart, and then depart in search for the next guy, all without much conversation.

[Kol Saresk]

No, telling what is going to happen takes the fun out of it. 'Tis best to leave it a surprise. That way the victim's reaction is not colored by any kind of expectation.

[Conn Eremon]

To be fair, regardless of how Hollywood is, people watched and enjoyed the other eleven movies. And they were, as far as I am aware, successful in audiences and sales. So the point does stand that people do like their faceless, personality-less horrors.

But I would not say such an argument means anything whatsoever to 40k.

I never said the Jason Vorhees series specifically.

Neither did I, but isn't Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th? Isn't that the example being used? I don't know, never watched them. Horror/suspense movies are incredibly boring to me. Either they fail to inspire fear, like a god damn doll with a knife, how terrifying, or they succeed and why would I want to be frightened?

[Legatus]

 

No, telling what is going to happen takes the fun out of it. 'Tis best to leave it a surprise. That way the victim's reaction is not colored by any kind of expectation.

 

Aren't the Night Lords as much about spreading the paralysing fear of being horribly murdered as about horrible murder itself?

[Kol Saresk]

 

 

No, telling what is going to happen takes the fun out of it. 'Tis best to leave it a surprise. That way the victim's reaction is not colored by any kind of expectation.

 

Aren't the Night Lords as much about spreading the paralysing fear of being horribly murdered as about horrible murder itself?

 

 

Yeah, but telling a solitary victim "This is what I'm going to do to you" doesn't exactly help spread the fear. Save some time, just do it, and then show it to others. More fun, more efficient and more in line with the Night Lords' MO and Motivation.

[Marshal Rohr]

I feel like a night lord might be more inclined to tell a victim he is going to flay him and then boil him alive is more appropriate. He gets the reaction of someone thinking he's going to be flayed. Then the satisfaction of watching their terror as they try to swim to safety in boiling water.