Battle for the Abyss and other BL novels

[A D-B]

inb4 ADB himself eviscerates this guy

 

 

Hell naw. I agree with Vet Sarge more than I disagree with him in general, but I try to save my eviscerations for people being specifically wrong about stuff. Not for opinions.

 

One thing that I do like in novels, despite how it can feel like a lame duck deal, is troops dragging their generals away when wounded. That was a strikingly common practice in warfare of the Ancient World, and that's what 40K largely is. It's phalanxes and trenches and the Age of Sail, not Fallujah. It's narrative badness to overdo it, but it was also insanely common and illustrates the kind of warfare going on, so even if VS isn't a fan I'm fine with it happening once or twice.

 

But no. No eviscerations. Not for someone's opinion, positive or negative. You guys should probably talk slightly nicer to each other, though. I sense modding, otherwise.

[Wade Garrett]

You know, it's possible to provide a dissenting voice without being incredibly condescending. Even when you're talking to 40K fans.

 

 

YOU LIE! ;)

 

Now, to return to the subjects of Nuceria...it's very easy to look at the end results of the battle (Ruinstorm birthed, Ultramarines fleet takes heavy losses, Rob takes a Butcher's Nails fuelled :cuss kicking) and Monday morning quarterback it as the Ultramarine Primarch being a vainglorious numbskull.

 

Easy...but not altogether fair to Rob.

 

To begin with, this was perhaps the XIII's best chance at ending both Lorgar and Angron, who had seperated from the bulk of their forces.

 

And they came within a knife's edge of doing it. Of the three ships that made up the enemy orbital assets, Fidelitas Lex was shot out of the sky, Conqueror was left all but dead in space.

 

The Abyss class warship was ultimately the decisive factor, and it seems very unfair to castigate Roboute for not being intimately familiar with how much punishment those can deal out and take considering they'd only been deployed twice ever, on Armatura and during Zadkiel's banzai charge at Maccrage.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Vet Sarge, I agree with some of what you said and not some other stuff, but I'll respect someone presenting their opinion at length. I'm a big movie fan as well as novels, and I always hate it when I ask someone about their opinion on a new movie or even worse, one that I suggested, and they come back with something like "It sucked".

 

"Why do you think so?"

 

"I dunno, it just did."

 

If you can't articulate your like or dislike of something with more than a single sentence or a even a few words, I got no time for ya. Put down a thousand words about it? Even if I disagree with every point, I'll still respect the opinion.

 

Speaking of expressing an opinion at length, Wade's post above this one made me think of something else that irked me about BFtA. The whole plan to destroy the moon and use the debris to take out the orbital defenses and deal a crapload of damage to the planet, while at first glance seems like a pretty good way to get around the tactical prowess of Guilliman, looking at it a bit longer just makes it stand out as yet another completely idiotic thing about the book, and something even larger that bugs me about the primarchs: their supposed superhuman minds.

 

I touched on this in another thread that was talking about what people wanted in a Curze figure, and of course it digressed into the mental state of the guy, and for all of their vaunted physical and mental might, pretty much every primarch seems more like an angry, selfish child and nothing at all the closer-to-perfect-than-us-mortals that are supposed to be. If the Big E can engineer fear out of his Astartes, why can't he engineer teen angst out of his "sons". Would it be too boring at that point? Could the authors not come up with compelling stories if the primarchs were really what we're told they are?

 

I mean, we're lead to believe that they are magnified versions of us, strengths, flaws, and all, but the problem is the only strengths I see magnified are the physical ones and the flaws are the crippling mental ones. Take Curze for example. Wouldn't you think a superhuman mind, even with the upbringing he had, be able to cope with all the stuff that kinda made him a whiny bitch? And don't even get me started on Lorgar.

 

Back to Guilliman and the moon of Macragge that featured so heavily in the plot of BFtA - if he was really the brilliant tactician he's made out to be, I'm really supposed to believe that he never once considered the moon to be a possible liability in their defense of the planet? The Guilliman I imagine in my head would have already considered such an attack from a hundred different angles and had twenty different contingency plans in place for just such a thing with another 10 or so for redundancy. I think I would been a little less hard on the book if the Furious Abyss actually made it to Macragge's space and was summarily blasted to pieces as Gulliman's long-implemented countermeasures that the Word Bearers had no idea of,  came online and dealt with it in the blink of an eye. "Oops!"

 

In fact, with the lengths that things will be taken to in this setting - like the Imperial Palace or the construction of the big to-do at Ullanor - I could easily see Guilliman destroying the moon himself to remove it as a weak point in the defense so that no one else could exploit it, and then call in the Mechanicum to build some huge network of machines all across the ocean floor of Macragge to replicate the tidal effects the moon used to have.

 

I realize I'm probably looking way too hard at this, but if these twenty eighteen ridiculously flawed beings were what the Emperor was going to rebuild the Imperium of Man with, he was using a flimsy deck of cards for his foundation and he should have known that better and sooner than anyone else.

[Volt]

Vet Sarge, I agree with some of what you said and not some other stuff, but I'll respect someone presenting their opinion at length. I'm a big movie fan as well as novels, and I always hate it when I ask someone about their opinion on a new movie or even worse, one that I suggested, and they come back with something like "It sucked".

 

"Why do you think so?"

 

"I dunno, it just did."

 

If you can't articulate your like or dislike of something with more than a single sentence or a even a few words, I got no time for ya. Put down a thousand words about it? Even if I disagree with every point, I'll still respect the opinion.

 

Speaking of expressing an opinion at length, Wade's post above this one made me think of something else that irked me about BFtA. The whole plan to destroy the moon and use the debris to take out the orbital defenses and deal a crapload of damage to the planet, while at first glance seems like a pretty good way to get around the tactical prowess of Guilliman, looking at it a bit longer just makes it stand out as yet another completely idiotic thing about the book, and something even larger that bugs me about the primarchs: their supposed superhuman minds.

 

I touched on this in another thread that was talking about what people wanted in a Curze figure, and of course it digressed into the mental state of the guy, and for all of their vaunted physical and mental might, pretty much every primarch seems more like an angry, selfish child and nothing at all the closer-to-perfect-than-us-mortals that are supposed to be. If the Big E can engineer fear out of his Astartes, why can't he engineer teen angst out of his "sons". Would it be too boring at that point? Could the authors not come up with compelling stories if the primarchs were really what we're told they are?

 

I mean, we're lead to believe that they are magnified versions of us, strengths, flaws, and all, but the problem is the only strengths I see magnified are the physical ones and the flaws are the crippling mental ones. Take Curze for example. Wouldn't you think a superhuman mind, even with the upbringing he had, be able to cope with all the stuff that kinda made him a whiny bitch? And don't even get me started on Lorgar.

 

Back to Guilliman and the moon of Macragge that featured so heavily in the plot of BFtA - if he was really the brilliant tactician he's made out to be, I'm really supposed to believe that he never once considered the moon to be a possible liability in their defense of the planet? The Guilliman I imagine in my head would have already considered such an attack from a hundred different angles and had twenty different contingency plans in place for just such a thing with another 10 or so for redundancy. I thing I would been a little less hard on the book if the Furious Abyss actually made it to Macragge's space and was summarily blasted to pieces as Gulliman's long-implemented countermeasures came online and dealt with it in the blink of an eye.

 

In fact, with the lengths that things will be taken to in this setting - like the Imperial Palace or the construction of the big to-do at Ullanor - I could easily see Guilliman destroying the moon himself to remove it as a weak point in the defense so that no one else could exploit it, and then call in the Mechanicum to build some huge network of machines all across the ocean floor of Macragge to replicate the tidal effects the moon used to have.

 

I realize I'm probably looking way too hard at this, but if these 20 18 ridiculously flawed beings were what the Emperor was going to rebuild the Imperium of Man with, he was using a flimsy deck of cards for his foundation and he should have known that better and sooner than anyone else.

IIRC, the problem was already addressed in the Horus Heresy books. By magnifying humanity, you magnify all its flaws as much as you increase its greatest strengths.

 

(Bearing homage most clearly to Greek deities and other similar pantheons, which behaved like humanity increased tenfold, for all of its greatest glories and flaws folded together.)

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I don't buy that. I might could excuse it for a culture with little knowledge of science and the world around them, but If a demi-god can genetically engineer a bunch of giant superhumans to spread throughout the vastness of space to reclaim a lost empire by racing through an alternate dimensions in ships the size of small continents... yeah... no.

[Volt]

I don't buy that. I might could excuse it for a culture with little knowledge of science and the world around them, but If a demi-god can genetically engineer a bunch of giant superhumans to spread throughout the vastness of space to reclaim a lost empire by racing through an alternate dimensions in ships the size of small continents... yeah... no.

Science doesn't suddenly eliminate the condition of the human mind unless you lobotomize the parts of that person's brain responsible for emotion in the first place. Plus the Emperor exhibits traits pointing to autism, so he almost certainly has a shoddy social skills and wouldn't make a half decent father in the first place.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

That's just it, though. They're not human.

 

A being as powerful as the Emperor shouldn't even be able to relate to us at all. How often do you stop and have conversations with ants? In fact, it's hard to imagine he would have anything other than contempt for the entire human race, and his genegineered "offspring" should also be a few cognitive levels above us well. I mean, he made his Astartes to know no fear and not panic and not get PTSD and all that, so why aren't the primarchs above being corrupted by some stupid sword whispering in their ears?

[Chaeron]

 

I don't buy that. I might could excuse it for a culture with little knowledge of science and the world around them, but If a demi-god can genetically engineer a bunch of giant superhumans to spread throughout the vastness of space to reclaim a lost empire by racing through an alternate dimensions in ships the size of small continents... yeah... no.

Science doesn't suddenly eliminate the condition of the human mind unless you lobotomize the parts of that person's brain responsible for emotion in the first place. Plus the Emperor exhibits traits pointing to autism, so he almost certainly has a shoddy social skills and wouldn't make a half decent father in the first place.

 

 

That's a pretty bizarre comment to make - he's a God...

[Lucien Eilam]

This honestly doesn't bother me in the slightest. Heck, if it was still year one, I would be happy as all get out. But that's more because this Heresy series seems to be all we will get of the Unification/Great Crusade era. I am in no rush for the Siege. The further out that is, and the more fillers we get, the better in my mind.

I'd go a step farther - I'd like them to go back and fill out some of the early events to the same level of detail we get now. Compared to, say, Calth, Isstvan III and V look a little underdone now. A couple of anthologies to cover all the stuff going on away from the POV characters in the novels would be great.

 

Events like Mortarion leading the trench warfare against the Loyalist Death Guard, that were covered in ~1 paragraph in the novels. The 98 days of the Traitors hunting down the last survivors on Isstvan V. There must be stories to be told there.

 

We already know how the story ends. What's the rush?

[Chaeron]

 

This honestly doesn't bother me in the slightest. Heck, if it was still year one, I would be happy as all get out. But that's more because this Heresy series seems to be all we will get of the Unification/Great Crusade era. I am in no rush for the Siege. The further out that is, and the more fillers we get, the better in my mind.

I'd go a step farther - I'd like them to go back and fill out some of the early events to the same level of detail we get now. Compared to, say, Calth, Isstvan III and V look a little underdone now. A couple of anthologies to cover all the stuff going on away from the POV characters in the novels would be great.

 

Events like Mortarion leading the trench warfare against the Loyalist Death Guard, that were covered in ~1 paragraph in the novels. The 98 days of the Traitors hunting down the last survivors on Isstvan V. There must be stories to be told there.

 

We already know how the story ends. What's the rush?

 

 

Definitely. Even in a short, I'd love to explore that - Legion against their own Legion particularly.

[Wade Garrett]

Re: The Primarchs, Lorgar in particular

 

Let's say you get a phone call saying that your business, the company you built from the ground up, is on fire. You race over there, and the first thing you see is your older sibling holding a gas can and matches.

 

While you are yelling "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" at them, your dad shows up and says "Kid, you suck. Everything you've ever done sucks. You need to be more like daddy's favorite arsonist."

 

I believe that it is, in fact, NOT mere "teen angst" if you react in a way besides "Gosh, Pops, you're absolutely right. Thank you so much for calling me worthless and spitting on my every accomplishment."

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

And just like an angry teen, you conveniently forget all the warnings of stopping and the consequences if you kept going that you received about it from your father and believe that nobody loves you and the whole universe is out to get you.

 

 

And this is a superhuman being that makes astartes nearly faint with awe.

 

 

 

 

Yeah...

[Wade Garrett]

So...your idea of a superior being is one that responds to having a jackboot put in their face with "Thank you sir! May I clean this with my tongue while you have it there?"

 

Well then. I think it's safe to say that we have very different ideas of what constitutes a superior being, as opposed to a boot licking slave so broken it worships its own shackles.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Way to jump to a ridiculous conclusion.

 

My conception is it should never have happened in the first place to someone with a mind that's supposed to be so much more elevated than our own, or least been a little more difficult than some mortal whispering in his ear, "Hey you want something else to worship? I know a guy.". The Emperor did away with religion because he knew the dangers of zealotry and had witnessed it firsthand for the last 48 thousand years. I think the better story would have been for Lorgar to man up a little bit and, oh, I dunno... maybe use his superior intellect to see the reasons behind Daddy's warnings and actually start to change, and then the Chaos slowly starts to seep in from something other than a mortal selling Chaos  in the shadows like a crack dealer in a ghetto.

 

It's a fundamental flaw of the whole series that I can't un-see but I try not to think too hard about it so I can still enjoy the majority of the novels.

[Wade Garrett]

Given that his Big Plan for the galaxy involved creating hundreds of thousands of psychotically loyal supersoldiers, if the Emperor truly used "the dangers of zealotry" as a justification for the Imperial Truth then he is either achingly obtuse or the most enormous hypocrite in the history of life.

[Archaon9]

That's just it, though. They're not human.

 

A being as powerful as the Emperor shouldn't even be able to relate to us at all. How often do you stop and have conversations with ants? In fact, it's hard to imagine he would have anything other than contempt for the entire human race, and his genegineered "offspring" should also be a few cognitive levels above us well. I mean, he made his Astartes to know no fear and not panic and not get PTSD and all that, so why aren't the primarchs above being corrupted by some stupid sword whispering in their ears?

With the primarchs I'd assume that how they are massively relates to how they were brought up on the worlds they grew up on. They learned by their interacts with humans. They had knowledge implanted into them but had to learn the social side from the local culture. Plus knowing how something is and understanding why it's that way isn't the same thing.

 

Perhaps it would have been different if they had grown up together with the Emperor. Even then I'd not be sure. The Emperor like you say is above petty mortal concerns so raising children probably wouldn't be high on his do to list. They'd probably be tutors he'd pawn them off on. They're just weapons to him. I can understand why the Emperor might be like that. I mean if you're almost a god then you'd feel pretty isolated. There's hardly anyone close to your level intellectually and you've got the weight of humanity's future existence on your shoulders. Makes small chat with humans or even primarchs seem unimportant. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

It just bothers me that they're supposed to be these bastions of strength and will, and they fell to chaos as easily, or moreso, than their Astartes.

[Volt]

That's just it, though. They're not human.

 

A being as powerful as the Emperor shouldn't even be able to relate to us at all. How often do you stop and have conversations with ants? In fact, it's hard to imagine he would have anything other than contempt for the entire human race, and his genegineered "offspring" should also be a few cognitive levels above us well. I mean, he made his Astartes to know no fear and not panic and not get PTSD and all that, so why aren't the primarchs above being corrupted by some stupid sword whispering in their ears?

The GEOM isn't that poshuman. While an immensely powerful psychic entity, he still has the biological body of a man and is stuck in one.

 

EDIT

 

And that's the entire point of the GEOM. He is a hypocrite. In the Last Church he ultimately amounts to just being another man with a dream too blind to see its impossiblility, essentially commenting "yeah well, I'm not going to make the same mistakes as everyone else, I'm better than them!".

[Wade Garrett]

Well, over half of them (Perturabo, Curze, Angron, Mortarion, and Alpharius) started off by turning against the Emperor, and actual Fall to Chaos came later.

 

Side track:

It kind of bugs me that (so far) the only Primarchs to question the morality of the Great Crusade are Lorgar and Angron.

 

We are constantly told of how noble and honorable Roboute Guilliman, Dorn, Corax and Sanguinus are, yet not one of them seems to have ever taken a step back and even contemplated "Hold on, maybe we shouldn't force everyone to pay taxes to Terra at the business end of a chainsword."

 

Of course, that's me with my 21st century USA morality talking, and it might indeed be an unfathomable idea to a denizen of Space Rome, Space Prussialaska, and Planet Fallout, but you'd think that the guy who grew up fighting for the rights of political prisoners and slaves to not be horribly oppressed would at least occasionally have second thoughts about throwing in with the most oppressive organization in the galaxy.

 

I suppose you could say the Khan questioned the Crusade, but his gripes seem to have been more rooted in "Taking makes you strong, keeping makes you fat" than any qualms about violent conquest.

[mc warhammer]

Horus questioned it quite famously with the Interex.

[JeffJedi]

Questioning the Great Crusade is pretty well illustrated in the Dark Angels books. 

 

For those who don't like the story going on for so long, why not? It's really the story of 18 legions and Imperial Army, Admech, etc. Remember when people said the Ultramarines did nothing at all during the Horus Heresy? Well there are a good 18 Legions and Primarchs to write about. I'm about to read Scars, the White Scars history hasn't even been touch on yet and I'm on book 27. So yes there need to be a lot of books to show what everyone is doing.

[Volt]

Horus questioned it quite famously with the Interex.

I always have wondered why people didn't feel bad for the Laer.

 

"Hey, we found a completely stable population of chaos cultists that live in absolute paradise and aren't pscyhopaths. LET'S KILL 'EM!"

[b1soul]

Yes, the old lore Roboute Guilliman would never do something as reckless as a full drop pod assault into the heart of an enemy force to kill the enemy Primarch without sufficient preparation ahead of time.

 

Except for that time he did exactly that at Eskrador in Index Astartes: Alpha Legion.

 

Does Guilliman know that both Lorgar and Angron are there? Trying to take on two primarchs by himself (one of them being nigh-unstoppable Gladiator King Angron) is a tad foolhardy 

[Archaon9]

Well, over half of them (Perturabo, Curze, Angron, Mortarion, and Alpharius) started off by turning against the Emperor, and actual Fall to Chaos came later.

 

Side track:

It kind of bugs me that (so far) the only Primarchs to question the morality of the Great Crusade are Lorgar and Angron.

 

We are constantly told of how noble and honorable Roboute Guilliman, Dorn, Corax and Sanguinus are, yet not one of them seems to have ever taken a step back and even contemplated "Hold on, maybe we shouldn't force everyone to pay taxes to Terra at the business end of a chainsword."

 

Of course, that's me with my 21st century USA morality talking, and it might indeed be an unfathomable idea to a denizen of Space Rome, Space Prussialaska, and Planet Fallout, but you'd think that the guy who grew up fighting for the rights of political prisoners and slaves to not be horribly oppressed would at least occasionally have second thoughts about throwing in with the most oppressive organization in the galaxy.

 

I suppose you could say the Khan questioned the Crusade, but his gripes seem to have been more rooted in "Taking makes you strong, keeping makes you fat" than any qualms about violent conquest.

In defence of some of the primarchs you mentioned they didn't willingly join chaos. Most were tricked into it. This depends on whether you're talking about corruption and being traitors to the Emperor as being the same thing. Lorgar, Horus, Fulgrim fell to chaos but others slowly slid bit by bit. Angron and Curze always disliked the Emperor. The rest were tricked/persuaded by Horus.

 

Perturabo was tricked by Horus into thinking the Emperor was going to ground his legion to dust in siege war whilst others took the glory (like the Dark Angels).

Angron thought the Emperor was a tyrant, he says something like "I'm not on Horus's side, I just fight against the Emperor".

Horus used Mortarions dislike of psykers to get him on side.

Alpharius joined Horus because from the future knowledge he was given.

Magnus didn't have much of a choice with the wolves after him.

 

As other have stated above several primarchs have questioned the Great crusade. Part of them not could be down to thinking that the humans will be better off under the rule of the Imperium. They look at the big picture and think this generation won't like us taking their independnce but in a few generations they'll have better lives. At this point the Imperium is actually not a bad empire for a citizen to live in. Some probably just didn't care, they just wanted to fight.

In modern day we overthrow other governments that we view as not as good as ours, we just don't try to get them to stay in our empire any more.

[Wade Garrett]

At this point the Imperium is actually not a bad empire for a citizen to live in.

Unless you're a psyker getting sacrificed to the Astronomicon, a child born in a subterranean dungeon like those the original Night Lords were recruited from, a child that is slated to be lobomotized and augmented to create a cherub, anyone outside the upper class living on a Forge World or a Hive World, someone living on Baal, Fenris, or Medusa being forcibly kept in barbarism so that your kids will be suitable recruits for the Legio Astartes....and so on. And so forth.

 

If this is "not a bad empire to live in", I would hate to see what a bad one looks like.