The Talon Of Horus

[Disciple of Fulgrim]

I didn't realize Khayon predates ToH - I'll have to look him up, just like I had to look up Dark Eldar Scourges.

 

And wow, per the old IA stuff, Ahriman can move planets around???  Without any complicated preparatory rituals calling on the Chaos gods for help, but simply via his innate willpower and psychic skill?  Crazy.  (Man, is he watered down on the tabletop.  I wonder what the Warp Charge for the "Move Planet" power is?)

 

But that then leads us to the point tgjensen raised.  Khayon presumably got stomped by the Horus clone because he was still tired from dragging the Tlaloc around and tossing it at Harmony.  But when he's fresh, there's no reason whatsoever he should ever lose to traditional foes.  (Hence my "toss a loyalist dreadnaught to the moon" example.)  Unless internal consistency gets tossed by the wayside too, this is going to make him rather tricky to write in the rest of the series - kind of like Superman in the comics.  (Of course this might also help explain the framing story, and Khayon's surrender to the Inquisition - with a guy this powerful at his side, Abaddon should have reached Terra at the end of the 1st Black Crusade.)   

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

does Malcador do the same thing with Titan?

 

WLK

[Disciple of Fulgrim]

Great question. If you start ramping up what Alpha level psykers can do, where does it end? And what does that mean for all the regular dudes on the battlefield? "Oh look, it's Khayon/Malcador, we're all dead!" - ZAPP! - There go the Ultramarines/Black Legion. (Or maybe the two cancel each other out, and the whole planet blows up, taking both the Ultras and BL with them?)

 

But the answer to that already appears in a lot of the Black Library stuff, where we see the most common response to the problem of psychic Supermen - Pariahs/Untouchables/Psychic Blanks. They're the Kryptonite to the psychic Supermen of 40K. That's why Ciaphas Cain has Baldrick (oops, I mean Jurgen) as a sidekick, and Gregor Eisenhorn had Bequin and the Blanks, and the Space Wolves had to bring a a boatload of Custodes and Sisters of Silence with them to burn Prospero. (Because otherwise the Thousand Sons would have kicked their wolfy butts.) The Black Library has (broadly speaking) really written themselves into a hole when it comes to psykers, and thus needs (stinky) Jurgen and his Meltagun (or the equivalent thereof) to bail them out. (But that's what happens when you don't manage your IP, and let everybody do their own thing. Kind of like with "Codex creep" - everyone wants to top the last guy.)

[Tenebris]

 

Across the reaches of space, Ahriman burned worlds and sent souls shrieking into the Warp. As the murdered worlds spun into alignment with each other they created an arcane pattern in the stars with Dianaxis at its heart. As the great design locked into place, Dianaxis’ sun was pulled from reality, leaving a howling wound in the sky of the mausoleum world. Blood and fire spread across the heavens. The bones of the dead howled the last thoughts of their lives, and rainbow fire crawled across the ossuary towers. Daemons poured through the hole that had been the sun, tumbling onto the mausoleum world like falling stars. The defenders screamed as the children of Chaos ate their souls.

 

 

Not only he toppled a sector, killed a chapter but he also enacted a massive ritual... but this is Ahriman. He is nearing the power levels of the likes of Kairos and Magnus... and he has yet to crack the Black Library... 

 

I assume that guys like Khayon, Ahriman and Amon were te reason why the Thousand Sons achieved victories in the Great Crusade with what... 10000 marines... we also know of Thousand Sons sorcerers who were able to kill their own connection with the warp (Outcast Dead), completely reforge memories... etc. 

 

Towing a ship across the Warp (which is essentially a sea of "magic") should be considered a practice worthy of any Magister of the Thousand Sons. 

[Disciple of Fulgrim]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly okay with the Thousand Sons being really powerful.  And Khayon being one of their best.  But how exactly did Ahriman do all that stuff?  By sacrificing thousands of slaves, over the course of days or weeks, as part of a complex ritual to tap into the powers of the Dark Gods?  Or by taking a really deep breath, flexing his pecs, and then pulling godlike power out of the Warp/his butt in order to quickly further the plot?  It's all fictional nonsense, without a doubt, but suspension of disbelief is helped along by at least pretending that this sort of godlike stuff is hard to do.  

[Conn Eremon]

 

Across the reaches of space, Ahriman burned worlds and sent souls shrieking into the Warp. As the murdered worlds spun into alignment with each other they created an arcane pattern in the stars with Dianaxis at its heart. As the great design locked into place, Dianaxis’ sun was pulled from reality, leaving a howling wound in the sky of the mausoleum world. Blood and fire spread across the heavens. The bones of the dead howled the last thoughts of their lives, and rainbow fire crawled across the ossuary towers. Daemons poured through the hole that had been the sun, tumbling onto the mausoleum world like falling stars. The defenders screamed as the children of Chaos ate their souls.

 

 

Not only he toppled a sector, killed a chapter but he also enacted a massive ritual... but this is Ahriman. He is nearing the power levels of the likes of Kairos and Magnus... and he has yet to crack the Black Library... 

 

I assume that guys like Khayon, Ahriman and Amon were te reason why the Thousand Sons achieved victories in the Great Crusade with what... 10000 marines... we also know of Thousand Sons sorcerers who were able to kill their own connection with the warp (Outcast Dead), completely reforge memories... etc. 

 

Towing a ship across the Warp (which is essentially a sea of "magic") should be considered a practice worthy of any Magister of the Thousand Sons. 

 

That actually doesn't sound like Ahriman did move the planets, just burned them down, which technically doesn't need a psyker.

[Tenebris]

 

A master of subtle manipulation, Ahriman has seeded cults on a hundred worlds, and bent the desires of the powerful to achieve his ends. With conspiracies and plots spread across the galaxy, he coils between them, a puppet master pulling invisible strings. When such subtle means are impossible he wages a sorcerer’s war, forcing armies to kneel with visions of terror, shattering war machines with invisible forces, and ripping the souls from mighty heroes. He knows the true names of 9x9x9 daemons, and possesses pacts which can bring armies flocking to his call. Worlds have burned at his command, billions have fallen to the hunger of the Warp, and reality has bled at the fury of his power.

 

 

On a side note, after enacting a sector wide ritual he actually tore the plasma core from a Warlord Titan with his sorcery. 

 

The point is that the Thousand Sons are rare, very very rare, but those who are true Thousand Sons, born and bred XVth legion are nigh demigods when comes to sorcery. They have counters, Blanks, and they are vulnerable, they still need warriors and armies to achieve their goals but in truth we speak of Beta-Level Psykers honed at the height of legion might, nearing Alpha-Level due to the Warp and sorcery. 

[FashaTheDog]

That is a mistranslation error, not a nickname. In Howl of the Hearthworld, it's shown that names like above are their true names, not their birth names.

Yeah, I get the difference but the Emperor's name is not 'the Emperor' but it's implied in Prospero Burns the reason he changed whatever his real name was, was so he couldn't be controlled by sorcery.

Of course his real name is not 'the Emperor;' it is 'The God-Emperor of Mankind.'

[A D-B]

 

I don't really see what's wrong with Khayon's actions, psykers have always been incredibly powerful, and as Khayon appears to be Beta level, his actions are fully justified. Beta and Alpha Psykers are supposed to be able to obliterate enemy armies, which is why the Imperium typically kills them on the spot unless they can be immediately contained.

 

Also, biomancy is a school of power focused entirely on manipulating organic tissue, and reversing aging is incredibly easy if you have small enough tools. Given that psykers completely bypass technology, there's nothing stopping them from lengthening telomere caps on Genes or converting cells into STEM Cells.

 

But when you converse with Beta or Alpha level psykers, you don't address them by their first or last names. You call them god.

 

That's all fine, but the problem arises when these god-like beings begin interacting with other characters who are also supposed to be super-duper-awesome. Why did Khayon throw a little fire at the Horus clone? Why didn't he just blow him up, or break every bone in his body? If he can drag and direct eight megatonnes for months at a time, there is simply no way he couldn't obliterate the Horus clone at his leisure. He could have just hurled him into empty space, or the nearest sun, or the planet below them. It would have been a tiny, insignificant effort compared to what he did just hours before.

 

This is a gaping plot hole - a result more of the setting than the specific characters, to be fair. But it needs to be adressed, not ignored. It's more like comic book writing that follows the 'rule of cool' rather than internal consistency, and that just bothers some people like me.

 

 

In a lot of settings that dwell on magic, there's a staggering difference between a ritual and a spell. Rituals allow colossal results, but require immense sacrifice of one (or more) kinds, such as time, blood, effort, life, and whatever else. Spells tend to be just "what you can do off the top of your head". 40K has always shown that in abundance, in that what a psyker can do in the heat of the moment is nothing compared to what a psyker can do with months of preparation, knowledge, and focus. 

 

In this case, I thought that was fairly clear given what he goes through to achieve the feat. If you look at the codices and the Forge World books, which form the overwhelming majority of the lore, you don't see sorcerers sacrificing that much ever, really, for many of the things they do far in advance of it, in terms of what they achieve. I was actually worried people might see the consequences of his feat and think he was weak, given the context and comparisons to other sorcerers. This is someone who ranks among the inner circle of the Black Legion, and will become one of the 3-4 most powerful Chaos Sorcerers ever, after all.

 

Khayon towing the Tlaloc isn't that much of a big deal, on the galactic scale of "doing major things with magic". And even then, he literally does nothing else the entire time he's doing it, to the point he even needs to be fed and given water, because he can't even control his bodily functions. When he finally comes out of that coma state, he's so weak and malnourished that he comments several times that he's essentially out of juice. Yes, he towed a ship through a sea of energy he's already gifted at manipulating. And to do it, he was a brain-dead invalid for half a year.

 

This is one of those things where, like, on the surface... I see your point. But when it comes down to it, given all Khayon went through for what isn't really that huge of a deal... I can't see it as even remotely overpowered or incredulous. It's a significant accomplishment, no doubt. But he pays for it - and puts the effort in - pretty much far beyond what we see any other sorcerer do, ever. In my eyes that explains it and balances it. 

 

That said, you can never talk about magic too much as far as I'm concerned, and things like this are useful to know, like, in the future: "X wasn't clear last time, I'll mention it in the next book."

 

 

I didn't realize Khayon predates ToH.

 

He doesn't. 

 

Unless he's really Ygethmor or Zaraphiston, in which case, he totally does.

[tgjensen]

 

 

 

 

In a lot of settings that dwell on magic, there's a staggering difference between a ritual and a spell. Rituals allow colossal results, but require immense sacrifice of one (or more) kinds, such as time, blood, effort, life, and whatever else. Spells tend to be just "what you can do off the top of your head". 40K has always shown that in abundance, in that what a psyker can do in the heat of the moment is nothing compared to what a psyker can do with months of preparation, knowledge, and focus. 

 

In this case, I thought that was fairly clear given what he goes through to achieve the feat. If you look at the codices and the Forge World books, which form the overwhelming majority of the lore, you don't see sorcerers sacrificing that much ever, really, for many of the things they do far in advance of it, in terms of what they achieve. I was actually worried people might see the consequences of his feat and think he was weak, given the context and comparisons to other sorcerers. This is someone who ranks among the inner circle of the Black Legion, and will become one of the 3-4 most powerful Chaos Sorcerers ever, after all.

 

Khayon towing the Tlaloc isn't that much of a big deal, on the galactic scale of "doing major things with magic". And even then, he literally does nothing else the entire time he's doing it, to the point he even needs to be fed and given water, because he can't even control his bodily functions. When he finally comes out of that coma state, he's so weak and malnourished that he comments several times that he's essentially out of juice. Yes, he towed a ship through a sea of energy he's already gifted at manipulating. And to do it, he was a brain-dead invalid for half a year.

 

This is one of those things where, like, on the surface... I see your point. But when it comes down to it, given all Khayon went through for what isn't really that huge of a deal... I can't see it as even remotely overpowered or incredulous. It's a significant accomplishment, no doubt. But he pays for it - and puts the effort in - pretty much far beyond what we see any other sorcerer do, ever. In my eyes that explains it and balances it. 

 

That said, you can never talk about magic too much as far as I'm concerned, and things like this are useful to know, like, in the future: "X wasn't clear last time, I'll mention it in the next book."

 

I'm not very familiar with Forgeworld's publishings, so it's perfectly possible that there are other sorcerers out there, capable of more impressive feats. That Khayon is one of the most impressive of them is also understood. And yes, I can accept that a sorcerer that engages in extensive ritualistic preparation can enhance his abilities and perform greater feats than otherwise. In those cases, I see it more as gaining the favor of the Gods through appeasement, or exploiting magic's equivalent to the laws of physics to achieve some goal, such as Ahriman's aligning burned worlds, mentioned upthread. But I guess that depends on the specific fictional universe.

 

If that's what took place, then I can accept that. However, I don't recall any mention of Khayon engaging in any rituals before dragging the Tlaloc across the Eye. It read as though he simply reached out and began to drag it with them. That he had to exert himself a lot doesn't really mitigate my surprise. That's akin to a bodybuilder not being able to feed himself while he's lifting 1000 pounds - he's got his hands full. It's that he's capable of lifting that much weight at all that impresses me, and it's that he's soon after getting beaten up by a pasty nerd (which Horus must be, comparatively speaking, in terms of personal power projection) that breaks my immersion.

 

(What's more, I was under the impression that Space Marines were able to go for weeks at a time without sleep, when necessary. Here we have one going for months, while exerting himself maximally. But he is a powerful sorcerer after all, so that is more plausible.)

 

If I missed an important detail, please point it out. If Khayon had to summon his full might through extensive rites and rituals, then that is an adequate explanation. But it comes across as though he really needed no real preparation to drag an absolutely astounding amount of mass through space, only someone to feed him. And that certainly makes one wonder why he didn't shove Primarch-level masses around when that would have seemed prudent just a few pages later.

[A D-B]

That's akin to a bodybuilder not being able to feed himself while he's lifting 1000 pounds - he's got his hands full. 

 

It's not.... really akin to that, no. He was a brain-dead invalid for half a year, aware of absolutely nothing going on around him. I see the comparison you're making, but it's infinitely more than that. He would have died if he wasn't being sustained by others. His friends and enemies alike were around him every day for months on end. His own sister is installed as the machine-spirit in a new ship right next to him, and develops an entire new personality mere metres away from him. He knows none of this. He has no capacity to pay attention to anything beyond the immensity of what he's doing. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I see your point, but what it costs him is enough for me to take it seriously. Just saying "I did some preparation and rites beforehand and then it worked" is shorthand and kind of weak. This was a feat with serious investment required; showing yet another way of interacting with the Warp beyond "I build an altar of dead foes". As I said above, "ritual" in this context is about sacrifice more than rote or homework, ("Rituals allow colossal results, but require immense sacrifice of one (or more) kinds, such as time, blood, effort, life, and whatever else.") and Khayon plainly sacrifices more effort than pretty much any sorcerer I can name in the lore.

 

And, again, this is for kinetically dragging a ship through the Warp. Some people see that as astoundingly implausible. Some people see it as a fairly interesting event, but nothing particularly grand. No one's wrong, really. For Khayon it was an immense amount of effort that would have killed him pretty quickly without his body being kept alive by others. Conversely, most Chaos Sorcerers don't have the daemon collection that he'll eventually have.

 

I won't go around in circles too much, so suffice to say that I see what a few people don't like about it. I also see where people are aware enough of 40K's various instabilities on this stuff rather than specifically pointing to me; the trope, not the troper. But it's not something I see as implausible, especially not given the investment of effort and time he has to put into it, which is far beyond what we see from most sorcerers. 

 

The reason he makes such a big deal out of it in the novel (and notes that he was essentially an invalid that had to be looked after and protected) is because it's a massively rare event. It's not something he often does, or could repeatedly do. 

[Tenebris]

And on the other hand you have an Ultramarine Captain who using only a gladius kills SEVEN Word Bearers without breaking a stride (Battle for the Abyss) but because he is a loyalist this is expected, never ever to be questioned by anyone...

 

Neither is Eldrad, Tigurius or Mephiston ever questioned...

 

I wonder when my vaunted loyalist brethren will understand the notion of hypocrisy.

 

All this words for a ship towed... with magic, ... by a sorcerer, from a legion of sorcerers, across a sea of magic...

[Chaeron]

I love the author reiterating what I've said in terms of how I have read his work: because it suggests he's done a good job of getting that across! Ignoring 'death of the author' and 'authorial intent' theories - if we both concur like that, I'm happy.

 

Remember gang: he's a fictional sorcerer, in a fantasy setting - it's not that far fetched! (Not to mention the exertion we've listed).

 

If Khayon has a model made, I'd like that muchly.

[Loesh]

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I like Khayon or not, on one hand he's amazingly cool as a character, on the other hand he seems too unique....not too Mary Sueish, important distinction, but rather the fact there are so few Chaos Sorcerers in lore like him is....off putting? in the sense it puts too much weight on one person in a setting as mythological and huge as Warhammer 40k.

 

But then again, we haven't really touched the last 10,000 years in the slightest. so it's more a contemporary problem and one that might be resolved in future as we explore other characters in the setting.

[tgjensen]

And on the other hand you have an Ultramarine Captain who using only a gladius kills SEVEN Word Bearers without breaking a stride (Battle for the Abyss) but because he is a loyalist this is expected, never ever to be questioned by anyone...

 

Neither is Eldrad, Tigurius or Mephiston ever questioned...

 

I wonder when my vaunted loyalist brethren will understand the notion of hypocrisy.

 

All this words for a ship towed... with magic, ... by a sorcerer, from a legion of sorcerers, across a sea of magic...

 

I love the author reiterating what I've said in terms of how I have read his work: because it suggests he's done a good job of getting that across! Ignoring 'death of the author' and 'authorial intent' theories - if we both concur like that, I'm happy.

 

Remember gang: he's a fictional sorcerer, in a fantasy setting - it's not that far fetched! (Not to mention the exertion we've listed).

 

If Khayon has a model made, I'd like that muchly.

 

Like I said, it's not about him towing the ship. It's about him towing the ship, and then being helpless in the face of Horus. I think A D-B explained the hows and whys in his posts in a satisfactory manner, but my issue of contention was simply that it didn't come through clearly in the book.

 

I have experience writing lengthy texts (though not fiction), so I know it can be hard to convey a concept in text. You have a clear picture of what you want to say, and the lines of text you write certainly support and fit in with that concept, but when someone else reads it with a pair of fresh eyes, they find that you only conveyed parts of that concept. The text gives an incomplete picture compared to what you wanted to tell the readers, because they don't have the same context in their heads that the author does. Subtleties, and important details, are lost in that mind-to-text transcription, and those kinds of little flaws can be extremely hard, if not impossible, to spot as the author. Especially when you reach lengths of hundreds of pages, where proof-reading becomes an endurance test!

 

Edit: Just so it isn't all negative, I'll add that I did indeed enjoy the book. It's always easier to speak at length about the parts you care less for than those you like, and this critique is really just nit-picking at minor details.

[Chaeron]

 

And on the other hand you have an Ultramarine Captain who using only a gladius kills SEVEN Word Bearers without breaking a stride (Battle for the Abyss) but because he is a loyalist this is expected, never ever to be questioned by anyone...

 

Neither is Eldrad, Tigurius or Mephiston ever questioned...

 

I wonder when my vaunted loyalist brethren will understand the notion of hypocrisy.

 

All this words for a ship towed... with magic, ... by a sorcerer, from a legion of sorcerers, across a sea of magic...

 

I love the author reiterating what I've said in terms of how I have read his work: because it suggests he's done a good job of getting that across! Ignoring 'death of the author' and 'authorial intent' theories - if we both concur like that, I'm happy.

 

Remember gang: he's a fictional sorcerer, in a fantasy setting - it's not that far fetched! (Not to mention the exertion we've listed).

 

If Khayon has a model made, I'd like that muchly.

 

Like I said, it's not about him towing the ship. It's about him towing the ship, and then being helpless in the face of Horus. I think A D-B explained the hows and whys in his posts in a satisfactory manner, but my issue of contention was simply that it didn't come through clearly in the book.

 

That's fair enough: although it seems most of us got that, and were happy with the way it was written. Different interpretations and all that.

 

Perhaps a re-read with that greater contextual understanding (albeit, some outside the text) would give that impression more clearly.

 

I don't recall any other Sorcerer dragging a ship, from memory, anyway.

[A D-B]

Edit: Just so it isn't all negative, I'll add that I did indeed enjoy the book. It's always easier to speak at length about the parts you care less for than those you like, and this critique is really just nit-picking at minor details.

 

 

Maybe, but nitpicking makes it sound more negative than it is. I mean, at least for me personally, this is one of the kinds of things I find wicked-valuable, because you summed it up perfectly: What's obvious to Person X because of how they see the setting and/or what's in their head may be explained too vaguely or poorly to Person Y. 

 

I like clarity. In worrying about Khayon over-explaining too many things, sometimes it can go the opposite way. So I'm dead grateful for your comments, TG. It's the sort of thing that makes me go "Ahhhh, I get it. Next time, then."

[Rain]

I didn't think Khayon was a Mary Sue at all. It's just that the story was told from his perspective, so we got an inside look at his thought and motivations, and he is a rather charismatic character. As he should be, being among the greatest warrior-scholars in a legion of warrior-scholars. As for him pulling the ship through the warp, come on, he is a sorcerer lord of the Thousand Sons, and he was practically comatose from the exertion. It felt proper.

If anything, the part that miffed me was the end, where Abaddon single handedly kills what is essentially a primarch. I mean sure meta-Horus was a little wounded, but it just seemed too easy for ole Abe to do the deed. He caught ing Worldbreaker in a kung fu grip and shattered it. Like it was nothing. It just felt so cheap. I think it would have been much more interesting if Khayon and co. had a bigger part in helping him do it, as it would have cemented the theme that had been prevailing throughout the book of Abaddon being not just a megalomaniacal overlord but also a brother-in-arms to his men, and of him depending on their competence as much as they depend on his leadership. Which swings away from the earlier paradigm of a demigod primarch acing the enemy while his sons scuttle about his ankles.

The rest of the book was great though. Despite my complaints, I'm glad that Team Chaos at least has one truly talented and passionate person contributing to our faction, and reminding me why I fell in love with it in the first place.

[Conn Eremon]

I admit that I had also rather assumed, and would have preferred, if Abaddon's slaying of Horus was handled a bit differently. If the Horus clone was little more than spawn, as I believe some of the old lore put forward that it might have been, then what we saw would have been great. But this clone seemed to be everything Horus once was, before becoming Warmaster. While Abaddon had yet to become the Warmaster himself. The Abaddon we see in this book was wiser than his old self. More worldly. But he didn't seem greater, not yet.

 

I don't know. Personally, I loved how the others reacted to Horus, and how Horus was handling them. When Abaddon stepped in, I was expecting him to only slightly be on a better footing than the others. I was expecting a vicious, grueling fight scene with Horus being the physical greater, but Abaddon having the will and the determination to see Horus dead anyways. That moment of recognition between them was great, but I wasn't expecting it to be enough for Abaddon to simply put Horus down.

 

It did make that conclusion feel a bit anti-climactic, going so far from my expectations. But, I honestly don't really hold that against the book, which is easily my favorite depiction of the Eye of Terror from the inside. It's not exactly like the author had an inside track to my mind, or that the book was written specifically to pander to my expectations.

 

Though honestly, after providing one of the absolute greatest additions to the lore I've read in a long time, the conflict and turmoil of the Astronomican reaching the Eye of Terror, the rest of the book could have been terrible and I'd still list it as one of my favorites.

[Prodigal Son of Magnus]

In his IA Ahriman managed to align three planets with his will. Khayon was one of the inner circle of Ahriman. Towing a ship is considered standard practice for this guys

could you give us a pic? I've never seen or heard of Psykers that aren't the Emperor having anywhere near that level of power.

[Conn Eremon]

Given the quote provided, I don't believe he did move any planets. He attacked them, and when their alignments to each other were right, his prepared ritual went off.

[Volt]

 

 

And on the other hand you have an Ultramarine Captain who using only a gladius kills SEVEN Word Bearers without breaking a stride (Battle for the Abyss) but because he is a loyalist this is expected, never ever to be questioned by anyone...

 

Neither is Eldrad, Tigurius or Mephiston ever questioned...

 

I wonder when my vaunted loyalist brethren will understand the notion of hypocrisy.

 

All this words for a ship towed... with magic, ... by a sorcerer, from a legion of sorcerers, across a sea of magic...

 

I love the author reiterating what I've said in terms of how I have read his work: because it suggests he's done a good job of getting that across! Ignoring 'death of the author' and 'authorial intent' theories - if we both concur like that, I'm happy.

 

Remember gang: he's a fictional sorcerer, in a fantasy setting - it's not that far fetched! (Not to mention the exertion we've listed).

 

If Khayon has a model made, I'd like that muchly.

 

Like I said, it's not about him towing the ship. It's about him towing the ship, and then being helpless in the face of Horus. I think A D-B explained the hows and whys in his posts in a satisfactory manner, but my issue of contention was simply that it didn't come through clearly in the book.

 

That's fair enough: although it seems most of us got that, and were happy with the way it was written. Different interpretations and all that.

 

Perhaps a re-read with that greater contextual understanding (albeit, some outside the text) would give that impression more clearly.

 

I don't recall any other Sorcerer dragging a ship, from memory, anyway.

 

There's been tons of zany stuff in 40K, some of it for a while. Nick Kyme's Salamanders immediately jump to mind, with Dak'ir activating Super Sayain powers and cutting a battle barge in half. And pile driving a kaiju sized daemon into a volcano.

[b1soul]

I know AD-B didn't create the character

 

He didn't?

[A D-B]

 

I know AD-B didn't create the character

 

He didn't?

 

 

I did*. That mention above was probably just a mix-up. 

 

* -- Again, unless Khayon is really Zaraphiston or Ygethmor, as the Imperium believes.

[Disciple of Fulgrim]

Granted, physics (or logic) doesn't apply to fantasy fiction.

 

But since we all live in the real world, showing some acknowledgement of the former two will help with suspension of disbelief (usually a requisite of enjoying the latter.)

 

Absent some outside assistance (i.e. the help of the Dark Gods via a ritual) dragging an eight megatonne starship through space for several months will require a significant expenditure of energy (in addition to getting some water every now and again.)  Being able to call up that amount of energy at will, should also allow a bad guy to throw Beorn (or a Land Raider etc.) to the moon if he feels like it:  not really an exciting fight scene, IMO.  (Not that we've seen anything like that so far, and the details of psychic powers are vague -  but the bar has been set.)

 

So the question for me is this: given a (new?) character of Khayon's levels, how will he be written?  Stronger than Ahriman?  Unbeatable?  If so, how will he be beat? - via an army of blanks?  (If so, IMO, dullsville and predictable.  But him being unbeatable is equally dull, IMO.)

 

So we shall see, but making Khayon an Alpha psyker/psykic Superman is going to require some sort of 40K kryptonite to make him interesting.  (Though if there's any BL author who might pull this off, it's the author of ToH - though what he might have planned remains a pleasant mystery to me.)