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

[Kol Saresk]

 

 

Raum is like Angron. Keep him on a leash. Otherwise, point, say "fetch" and steer clear until he's done.

Cause that worked out so well for the Highriders, brother.

They didn't keep him on the leash.

[Stonerhino]

The genius of Betrayer is what is actually not said.  Rather then what is writen.

 

For example in the scene of the shield wall charge.  As writen it does not work for me.  But fans that want to believe that the World Eater's rage is so strong that no one (except the Emperor's Children in Galaxy in Flames and powered armoured humans in False Gods) can stop them.  It works perfectly.  However by leaving a gap in time when Khârn appears to be nails lost.  We can add in what ever we as readers need for the scene to play out as it did. 

 

To lay it out:

The location choosen by the Ultramarines would have been at a bottleneck to eliminate the World Eaters numbers adavntage (Think 300).  Then they would have had a tactical reserve to fill holes in the shield wall.  Behind this would have been the Vindicaters and most likely a few Imperial Army units in support.  Ideally creating a kill box just in front of the Ultramarine's line. 

 

The Imperial Army units are never mentioned and can be forgotted from that list.  I however see the Last stand as a tactical desision rather then just line up the astartes we have left and hope for the best.  This view point is supported by the Ultramarines provoking the charge.

 

Its going to take more then just "Mad" to break that shield wall.  Especially when the enemy is provoked into a broken charge.  (Think Troy when the Greeks conduct a disordered charge against Trojan's shield wall).

 

Now the World Eaters have everything they need to break the shield wall.  The problem is coordinating the different elements to do it.  For example when Khârn calls for genades on the charge but most of his warriors were already lost.  Because of the lack of coordination the World Eaters then need time for the different eliments to do their jobs.  Which means far higher casualties.  Because of the lost time we can include multiple charges all failing to do break the wall until the Ultrasmarine's tactical advanges are all overcome.  The World Eater's armor would eventually get there to destroy the Vindicators (there is no mention of the vindicators during the later parts of the battle), assult squads would eventually get into position to flank/ attack the rear (the Ultramarines are fully enveloped at the end) and the casualties would eventually thin out the Ultramraines enough that World Eaters could get close enough to rip aways shields and the likes (Why Khârn is not gutted by the Ultramarine next to the one he rips the shield from).

 

If we were given the play by play.  Then the book would not appeal to both sides of the argument as it does.

[Wade Garrett]

No, what really happened is this:

 

Everything in Betrayer after the XII charge the shield wall is a hallucination by Khârn as he bleeds to death after the Almighty Shield Wall destroys his company, all the other World Eaters, the Word Bearers, Legio Audax, Lorgar, Angron, and both kingships.

 

Because Shield Wall.

[Veteran Sergeant]

Well yeah at its barest facts I'm sure the Emperor would have considered that... the second he saw that they'd enslaved, abused, and mutilated his son you wouldn't think he would stand for that. I mean I'm sure the slavers on Khiovar were also quite happy to go 'Oh Imperium erm yes we would like to give you lots of money to live please.' as Corax appears behind them and igniting his lightening claws.

 

I get that he wouldn't have wanted to murder and entire world but he could very easily have crushed the army and offered Angron a way to save his people that might have been enough. Either way it just seems that nearly every other Primarch got a far more favourable first encounter with their father.

Angron was a lunatic, leading an army of deranged savages. The Great Crusade was about reesablishing mankind's dominance of the galaxy, not resolving planetary political debates.

 

The reality is, the government on the planet was stable and prosperous. The Emprah was in command of legions of brainwashed, genetically engineered super soldiers. It isn't like he was terribly bothered by slavery. And it wasn't like Angron's grand plan was to overthrow the government and bring democracy and happiness. In fact, it's unlikely he had any plan at all other than revenge, and then anarchy. The Emperor got a working planet, and his primarch back out of the deal.

 

Ultimately, this is the story that makes the least sense of all the primarchs, so it's somewhat of a lost cause to delve too deeply into the reasons and motivations behind anybody's actions. Two primarchs were apparently too lost to be saved, but the one with the Always On crazy button in his head was apparently okay. Despite the fact that he was continuously surly, disobeyed direct orders, and effectively ruined the Legion he was given command of. All of this before he turned traitor, lol. 

 

 

Yeah, I'm sorry but the point of books are to be filled with characters. Otherwise they're not stories and let's face it, BL is about stories. So I fully support the creation and development of well-written characters.

I fully agree. Though I think Legatus makes the point that there shouldn't have been any stories about the World Eaters in the first place, because the World Eaters are terrible characters. The Orks of Space Marines, if you will. Fun to play and model, and make decent antagonists. But you're not supposed to pretend they have realistic and believable motivations, because they don't, lol.

[Kol Saresk]

And yet most people who are unbiased or biased towards the World Eaters love the fact they have characters. An betrayer has received many positive reviews with the well-built characters cited as part of it. So te morale of the story becomes if you want undeveloped protagonists, don't read A D-B.

[Wade Garrett]

If Jack London could write good stories where the main characters are timber wolves, I don't see why the World Eaters should be forever locked into "Non viewpoint character shouty angry men".

[Veteran Sergeant]

Let's just agree to disagree. 

[Vesper]

 

Hell in the wars against Napolean, Kings German Legion Hussars broke several French squares and that was supposed to be impossible.

 

Yeah well, let's talk about something else. Let's talk about Austerlitz, alright ?

 

You'll note that it's actually pretty easy to make a shield wall / phalanx crumble. Just follow the diagonal phalanx example, where you put massed elite troops on the left side of your phalanx to shatter the weak flank of the enemy, and attack the side where he isn't protected by his shield (the right one).

Pretty much like this : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Phalange_oblique.gif

If you manage to exploit a weakness in the enemy shield wall, well, the said shield wall becomes pretty much useless.

[Kol Saresk]

I don't recall making an attack. Just pointing out that AD-B writes well-developed characters and that maybe if one doesn't like that, or the characters being developed, it might be best to not read AD-B. I give the exact same advice to those who don't want to read about sparkly vampires when it comes to Twilight.

 

And that this development of characters has resulted in many reviews in favor of Betrayer. It's not like I told anyone to buzz off.

 

EDIT: Of course, that's the great weakness of the internet. People read the first thing that actually pops into mind, not necessarily what the writer/poster actually did write.Apologies if you felt that was directed towards you as an attack.

[Sevatar]

I agree in particular with the space battle/fight on Nuceria/fight on Armatura. Though I enjoyed the bits on Armatura, I think it could have been cut down significantly - 200 pages for a battle (plus extra bits) is a long time, especially that we can understand the World Eaters' combat style within 100 pages (if that)

 

Nuceria also bugged me. Looking back at it, it makes little sense at all, and felt quite contrived. We have Gulliman, who, for some reason, decides to leave with only the vanguard of his fleet....why? I mean, the WE/WB were not going anywhere any time soon - they still had to eradicate a world, and that must have taken days/weeks more. Moreover , they were against an entire Titan Legio, a substantial amount of legionaries, and two Primarchs, so wouldn't it have made sense to wait for the bulk of their fleet/men to arrive...in which case they would have definitely won the space battle.

 

Also, the space battle was annoying. Why did the UM launch their pods on the surface?  They don't have orbital supremacy, so, as shown, their pods/landing craft were shot down. Why didn't they 1) wait until they had won/lost the fight or 2) launched them into the opposing ships, rather than launching them into Nuceria? Both would have been more prudent options since they would have conserved men and material in the first option/or potentially won the space battle in the second. As it was, they 1) lost the ground war because so many of their landing craft were shot down. 2) they lost the space battle.... 3) and because they lost the space battle, presumably left some Ultramarines were left on Nuceria/WB ships/WE ships.

 

Of course, in Gulliman's defense, he would have assumed the WB/WE were just about to leave....but in that case, with his (I assumer from the descriptions) smaller amounts of men/ships (in terms of an overall sum)  he should have waited, rather than lose men/ships against a numerically superior foe.

 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this book, I found the Magos very entertaining, Lhorke was great, as were the other characters...but the battles really bugged me. If someone could provide reasoning it would give me peace of mind.

 

Thanks.

[Kol Saresk]

Actually the World Eaters and Word Bearers were on the last city of Nuceria and were just finishing up when Guilliman and the Ultramarines arrived. And then some hours later, the Ruinstorm was complete and Angron was ascended. So there wasn't really days or weeks left because they ha already spent days and weeks butchering the planet.

 

EDIT: As for the space battle, their tactic was to send all the ships without troops to tie up the Abyss-class as Guilliman wasn't sure of its capabilities(no survivors from Armatura after all) while those with troops were to make a run for it and drop troops the fastest way available: Drop Pods, followed by drop ships as there probably weren't enough pods. This actually worked for a decent bit as the Ultramarines did land enough troops to put up a decent fight. And as a side objective, the UM fleet attacked the Conqueror and the Fidelitas Lex. They did succeeded in sinking the latter while heavily damaging the former. IIRC, it was described as needed several weeks in drydock being repaired. At least.

 

And he only left with the "vanguard" because those were the ships that survived Calth that he didn't send after Kor Phaeron or to other parts of Ultramar to fend off the dozens if not hundreds of other attacks happening virtually simultaneously across his territory. That's the thing, the whole of Ultramar was under siege.

 

And way back when in the Battle for the Abyss, the Abyss class was described as a fleet killer armed with weaponry that hadn't even been seen by the Imperium, such as frag torpedoes(think the 2009 Star Trek) and a plasma lance which was capable of shearing through a ship with fully armed shields like a falling axe through air. That is pretty much one of the few problems I have with Betrayer. We are only seeing a fraction of everything that is going on. Then again, that is the Heresy in a nutshell. Granted, its a bigger fraction than what we had in the past, but it is still a fraction. And its just barely large enough to give us an idea of the scope, but still fails to show us just how large the conflict, even "minor" ones like the burning of the 500 worlds, really is.

[Sevatar]

Ok, that's fine. However, I still have issue with space battle itself - as in, the tactics used.

[Kol Saresk]

Ok, that's fine. However, I still have issue with space battle itself - as in, the tactics used.

That's actually reasonable. It wasn't a sound strategic move. It was an act of desperation. And it came across as such. One Guilliman is preparing for a large-scale campaign. The next thing he knows, he's being ambushed. And not just form the front door, but the back door, the east window, the west window, the basement, the roof, the garage, heck he has enemy troops landing in his swimming pool. Not only that, but the other 499 properties he owns and takes care of are being ambushed as well. And the majority of his retainners are at Calth. So once they break free of Calth, he scatters them towards the most recent calls for aid(since the older ones are probably dead by now while heading towards Nuceria. He knows enough from Kor Phaeron and Erebus that something fishy is going on and he needs to stop Lorgar. So he finds out Lorgar has been attacking Nuceria and he heads there in a desperate bid to stop him. Nothing about this attack was supposed to represent a well-organized, well-directed attack. It was a desperate last stand to stop the Ruinstorm. And personally, I think that came across rather well.

[Wade Garrett]

I believe there's some mention that Guilliman's astropaths are tracking Lorgar due to the whacky Warp antics he's pulling...if all Rob's pet psykers are shouting in his ear that Lorgar is going to unleash a heaping horde of hoodoo buju voodoo ANY SECOND NOW then Hail Mary chunking troops and Titans towards Lorgar's location planetside may well seem like a good idea.

[DIDM]

 

 

And so it's an OK thing to reduce an entire faction to cardboard cutouts because they're the bad guys?  Or because people will still root for them?

 

Yes. That is entirely acceptable for "the bad guys". You don't need to see their inner monologues or their point of view. You only need to see how badass and evil they are.

 

 

> 

From a story standpoint, there'd be no reason why you couldn't do a find/replace and change them into Orks.

 

I would find ork protagonists much more viable than Khorne Berserker protagonists. You can have Orks squabbling among themselves or even communicate with the enemy. However, when you have a heavy armoured red berserker warrior from a hell dimension that can singlehandedly tear apart an entire base of Guardsmen, it looses a lot of the appeal once he start's talking "Yarr, I'ma gonna kill you to get more favour from ma god!"

 

Yeah, you can have a talking Berserker act in a story. But he is a lot less effective as a mortal threat from an sinister outworldly dimension.

 

Unfortunately, with the "pre-Chaos" Legions in the Horus Heresy series, with the Imperial Armour books about the Red Corsairs, and perhaps even with the past few Chaos Codices, a lot of that "hell dimension" theme has been downplayed.

 

I'm not sure you understand story development.  ALL stories need characters, ones of all kinds, good and bad.  Reduce the bad guys to unimaginative beings and you literally lose half your story line.  YOU can sum up a crowd of blood thirsty savages in a paragraph, books tend to have a lot of those that need to be filled

[depthcharge12]

But do you twirl your mustache at *me* sir?

[Kol Saresk]

But do you twirl your mustache at *me* sir?

I do not twirl my mustache at thee, but I do twirl my mustache.

 

Ow! I pulled a hair.

[Legatus]

 

I'm not sure you understand story development. ALL stories need characters, ones of all kinds, good and bad.  Reduce the bad guys to unimaginative beings and you literally lose half your story line.

 

Clearly the 'Friday the 13th', 'Halloween' and 'Alien' Franchises spawned so many sequels because you cannot have antagonists without dialogue. Thank you for telling me that those stories simply don't work.

[Kol Saresk]

Those aren't stories though, those are slasher and horror movies. If movies had as much story as books, Return of the King would have been 24 hours long.

[depthcharge12]

 

But do you twirl your mustache at *me* sir?

I do not twirl my mustache at thee, but I do twirl my mustache.

 

Ow! I pulled a hair.

 

 

 

I enjoy these Shakesbeardian tete-a-tetes with you Kol lol :D

[Karthak]

As to how tough the WB king-ships are...How was the Furious Abyss killed? It's been years since I read that book.

 

Ps. I just thought of a possible new way to destroy enemy ships. How much mass can be transported via teleporter? If it's a lot, then instead of teleporting boarding parties onto enemy ships when their shields go down, couldn't you just send a couple of pocket nukes over?

[depthcharge12]

As to how tough the WB king-ships are...How was the Furious Abyss killed? It's been years since I read that book.

 

Ps. I just thought of a possible new way to destroy enemy ships. How much mass can be transported via teleporter? If it's a lot, then instead of teleporting boarding parties onto enemy ships when their shields go down, couldn't you just send a couple of pocket nukes over?

 

 

Well a loyalist world eater named skraal grabs a melta bomb and jumps in a manly fashion into the main generator iirc, which blows it up

 

[Wade Garrett]

As far as sending nukes over via teleport, remember that's not exactly reliable.

 

Guilliman's kill team in "Know No Fear" is described as making a good jump because only three Astartes wind up fused to the walls and floor.

 

If the wrong proportionate mass of a warhead suffers a similar fate you've done nothing but send the enemy a big paperweight.

[Kol Saresk]

 

 

As to how tough the WB king-ships are...How was the Furious Abyss killed? It's been years since I read that book.

 

Ps. I just thought of a possible new way to destroy enemy ships. How much mass can be transported via teleporter? If it's a lot, then instead of teleporting boarding parties onto enemy ships when their shields go down, couldn't you just send a couple of pocket nukes over?

 

Well a loyalist world eater named skraal grabs a melta bomb and jumps in a manly fashion into the main generator iirc, which blows it up

 

Even then, the infrastructure of the ship still survived and its hulk is floating above Macragge. And it took the combined firepower of several dozen ships, defense stations and orbital fortresses just to break the shields on these things.

 

[Captain Idaho]

Regarding Guilliman's assault on 2 Legions with weaker forces - he was drunk on the desire for vengeance, and he almost won. Had the Emperor Titan fired it's main guns the Traitors would be destroyed.

 

The only disappointment is the stage of the Heresy we're in. The Loyalists are just going to lose at every turn.

 

Hopefully we'll see the Traitors take a mauling one day. Retribution after Terra is likely going to see some pain for the Traitors, hence why they flee.