The Outcast D.. wait did that just happen?

[[TA]Typher]

If you're reading this get ready for spoilers..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok.. so my question is how in the Emperors name did Terska (The WE Sgt) Kills a custodian who had armor and a power weapon when he was naked? How was he actually able to break into artificer ceramite armor and pierce the custodians chest with just his hand? I call BS.

 

This really ruined the whole book for me.

 

Did anyone else have a scrunched up face while rolling their eyes when that happened?

 

 

 

Also.. at the end the last two WE defeating a custondian (Even though they died in return). He was in power armor and they had scavenged crappy armor and broken weapons. I thought the custodians were suppose to be better than Astartes. This book really made them look pathetic.

 

I liked the thunderwarior part of the story and would like to read more about them. I also thought the Emperor parts were very intriguing. The thought that he knew how it would end was great, but  It makes me wonder if he can see the long game.

[Kol Saresk]

Well apparently, its because the Custodes armor is paper thin.

 

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/a/a8/Companions.jpg/800px-Companions.jpg

[KhorneFlakes]

Custodes are uber badass, under no circumstances any match for an astardes, big time BS!!!

[Kol Saresk]

And yet Garro could beat one. Because they are a match. Their training is not meant for warfare. Its meant to kill as a bodyguard. That's why they do things like the Blood Games, the sole purpose of which is to identify weaknesses in the Palace's defenses and how well the defense could respond to the threat of an intruder once identified. They are to Lions as the Astartes are to Wolves. Their strengths might be different to those of an Astartes, but their weaknesses even out the balance.

 

Still, that doesn't justify a barehand punching through power armor.

[AdamR]

Wasn't the first Custodian only a prison guard because injury made him no use for front line duty? Or am I misremembering?

In that case knackered Custodian vs Angry Astartes, the outcome doesn't sound too farfetched.

[Marshal Rohr]

There is no longer a hierarchy between the two.

[Chaeron]

Although perhaps not implausible in terms of the story, we mustn't think of Custodes as the best of the Astartes, but rather as a force in their own right. Often people directly compare them, which isn't entirely a fair comparison. It's less like the Grey Knights or say the Deathwatch.

[Stormborn]

graham mcneill wrote it, every time I see his name on a dust jacket I expect these sought of things.  maybe it was his next ultramarine novel and he just changed the names.

[Inquisitor Kravin]

I'm sure there was a story that contained a statement that the Custodes were so formidable that even a Primarch would think twice about going up against them. Argel Tal needed a daemon inside him to stand up to a custodian in the training cages.

 

Garro is clearly a superb fighter, in rules terms he would be a praetor and since he was able to fight a totally psychotic berserk Loken and come out alive I think he sets a high standard. He recognised in his duel with Korrarin that despite his own best blade work the Custodian was toying with him and still driving him back relentlessly. It was only becuase Garro was smart enough to recognise that Korrarin was overconfident and had contempt for Garro that he was able to disarm him.

 

For me Custodes are still significantly superior to astartes but not so much that there isn't an overlap. The best Custodians are better than the best Astartes and the regular Custodians are better than the regular astartes but get a regular Custodian against an excellent Astartes and the outcome can be in the Astartes favour.

They are also quite different - as noted above. The custodians are more individualistic. They are also diplomats and bodyguards, moving in "polite society" and acting as intelligence agents and observers. The marines are more focused on the brutal direct aspects of warfare on a battlefield as part of a squad and an army.

[Visitor13]

I assume the World Eater had the Nails? This would make the whole thing a little less implausible.

[[TA]Typher]

Nail or not... a fully functioning Custodian, armed with a power weapon and artificer armor should be able to kill ANY naked, unarmed Astartes. It's simply straight math.

 

 

Now, don't get me wrong there are factors that could change things...IE: the custodian was crippled mentally or physically, he was on fire, he was being attacked by several people, he really really had to pee ...etc etc.. none of these were the case. It was straight fight and the world eater crushed him. Not only did the WE win, but he broke his armor with his bare hands and pulled his spine out.

 

This would be like you punching through my car and pulling my fanbelt off while my car was driving down the road. Implausible to the point of impossible. The other custodian fight was more believable, but still disappointing. Why the Emperor would have these guys guard him when the Thunder warriors (or even a girl scout troop) would do a much better job is beyond me. From everything I've read the custodians are suppose to be better than the astartes. Sure, they are more individuals, unlike the Legions, but they were made for a different purpose. If you want to siege a world you take the legion. It you want to kill 1 person, a custodian would be the right tool. The are suppose to be master assassins (the book Nemisis I believe) and astarte-like warriors.  If you remove this and the other custodian fight from the book it was actually pretty good.

 

Over all not the worst. Those honors go to "Fulgrim" and "Deliverance lost". The book had some good scenes with the Big E and the Thunder warrior story was very cool.

 

Dorn's cameo was bland but he only had the smallest of parts.

[helterskelter]

Gal vorbak. That was a pretty funky fight. Its swings and roundabouts, every fight is such. I could kick Harris, another day fail miserably, its the same with anything, down to angles at which uou strike an opponent. However its a novel. Read what they write or ignore. All circumstance, all speculative. Kobayashi maru

[Kol Saresk]

There is also the fact that the Nails do nothing to improve physical strength.

 

The reality is, the World Eater should not have been able to PUNCH through armor that is able to stop 0.75 armor piercing rocket propelled high explosive bullets.

[I Legion]

I would offer the opinion that those considering this an unlikely outcome are correct, with a caveat.

 

In a contemporary setting, one cannot argue that a US Special Forces Operator is far superior in most regards when compared to his Afghani tribal enemy. He is better equipped, has far better technology, is better educated, better fed and has far more tactical tools to call upon in a fight. On paper, one would assume that the US soldier would win a fight each and every time he encountered the Afghani fighter on the battlefield. Recent history and the casualties suffered by the US Special Operations community would give call that lie to the light of day.

 

An Astartes warrior is specifically bred to find, fight and destroy the most horrific foes the galaxy can throw at humanity. He is made to go toe to toe with foes that would crush entire regiments of the Imperial Army. He is the proverbial 1 among a million, even one among a billion. There is literally no task that an Astartes warrior cannot accomplish on the battlefield.

 

The Horus Heresy books refer to the Custodians as "made from the same stuff, only refined" leading one to believe that the Custodians have had the raw brutality and aggression of an Astartes removed and replaced with something else. The custodians are reportedly much more skilled, perhaps even more intelligent than their Astartes cousins. They are fewer in number because their life long training is more arduous, their armor finer, their weapons more deadly. But they're not Astartes.

 

 

 

The Custodians are a fine chisel where the Astartes are a rough chainsaw. They are a better man for superhuman man fighter, thinker and tactician. They are chosen as the guardians of the Emperor. But as the above US/Afghan example showed, even the hardiest, most skilled warrior can be felled in combat, often by an "inferior" foe.

 

In the Outcast Dead, the WE is a motivated, enraged warrior with decades of close combat experience, and his Custodian opponent is portrayed as arrogant and over confident. The WE leveraging his rage and experience to overcome incredible odds isn't that far of a stretch. 

 

 

All that aside, punching a bare hand through a Custodians breast plate and ripping his spine out is bollocks of a prime quality only possible by McNeill. Seriously, that move was popular in 1995, when "Mortal Combat" was new and special. 

[Visitor13]

Look, the whole thing's just a badly realised "World Eaters = brutal" trope. Yeah, it's not plausible at all, I should have used another word. Basically, the World Eaters' tag is "brutal", so they have to do things that are brutal even by Astartes standards, Mortal Kombat style brutal, as the poster above me noticed. So there is a kind of logic to this, even if it ultimately still doesn't make sense.

[Excessus]

Well, he failed his armoursave, that's it basically. Can happen to the best of them. He had probably spent his entire time in capture analyzing his armour and planning/training for it with diligance.

 

 

 

 

It was more the http://25.media.tumblr.com/e5dbc56ca6d5c6239d1c20682063d438/tumblr_n0ah0mx8QQ1t67t9wo1_250.gif moment of missing the timing of the razing of Prospero that was dissapointing to me...

 

The book was rather cool in general and depicted some places that don't really get put in the spotlight that often, much like Mechanicum did with mars.

[Wade Garrett]

There is also the fact that the Nails do nothing to improve physical strength.

 

But in those earliest days, the Nails were a virtue. None of the newly renamed World Eaters would face the fact that their Primarch carried a curse from his homeworld. They focused on his prowess, on the speed and strength granted to him by the archeotech implants...

Betrayer, p. 159

 

The Nails stole pain, gave him serenity, and lent him strength, but Khârn cursed them every time he went into battle.

p. 71

 

And as far Custodian superiority goes, Dan Abnett's short story "Blood Game" explicitly states matters are rarely as cut and dried as Astartes < Custodian.

 

For that matter, the Space Wolves in Prospero Burns were able to resist "Amon's" warp powers much better than that Custodian on Nikea, who was paralyzed and had the knowledge of how to wield a Guardian Spear stripped from his mind by the equerry.

[Conn Eremon]

I always assumed that it was adding figurative speed and strength. The kind you get when mad, furious, uncontrollably berserk.

 

Rather than literally boosting it. The Nails don't make for bigger biceps. They just make what you already have do a bit more.

[Kol Saresk]

Or the kind you get when you're able to ignore certain limitations, like the loss of an arm or fatigue, basically things that would normally make even a Space Marine think twice about going on, it really puts you in mind of the old Norse berserkers Ulfhoenar. Not literally stronger, just more able to access the strength now that they have zero fear of pain.

 

Which still does not explain how a naked hand was able to punch through tank armor, rip out a spine and only lose some knuckle skin.

[Trevak Dal]

The book was co-authored by CS Goto.  They took out the parts with the Multilasers.
 

All joking aside, this is why I don't read the :cussty HH stories.  I didn't  need to read EVERY SINGLE VIEWPOINT of the Istvan battle.  Just the highlights and cliffnotes so I can get to the good stories (Legion, Fear to Tread, Betrayer, Deliverance Lost, etc.)

 

The stuff about the Pre-Imperial times is what fascinates me the most.  Everything else...is really irrelevant considering we already know how it ends.

[Deus Imperator Vult]

The way I've always understood the Nails as being comperable (but to an astartes standard) to the stories you hear about mothers being able to lift cars when their child is trapped. All of us have much more strenght than we realise but our bodies will pull us back from using it because of the pain and the fact it's damaging you in the long run. So in the context of this fight the Nails should have stopped the WE from feeling the armour plates breaking every bone in his hand and ripping up his knuckles but not made clawing through them possible.

 

I absolutly know what you mean though that was a book ruining moment for me. There were still a couple of interesting bits after, like the conversation with the Emperor, I did enjoy when the World Eater was talking to the religious child in the church but after that moment I was really reading it just to get to the next book. There have been a few moment's like that in the series though; the Drunkard Space Wolves in Battle for the Abyss, Corax seemingly being blind for THE WHOLE Deliverance Lost book to name a few.

[incinerator950]

BL writing, no need to discuss it in such detail.

[Wade Garrett]

To be fair, I got nothing for how even a stronger than normal Marine can rip up power armor with his bare hands.

 

Malcador: "You're making them able to do WHAT? Why even give them chainswords then?"

 

Emperor: +Mal. Bro. Chainsaws that are swords.+

[Felix Antipodes]

While I found this a head scratching moment when I read it, I put the defeat of the custodian down to a very experienced warrior beating a relatively new chum, called BS on the armour punch and moved on.

 

Enjoyed the 'home front' setting of the book the most as I felt there wasn't enough focus on that previously in the series.

[Brother Heinrich]

Normally I take issue with stuff like this, but honestly I rode the rule of cool train all the way to the station on this one. Straight up Kali Ma'd that fool. 

 

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l331t5H6TK1qbzahao1_500.jpg