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That's really a catch-all problem for most of the Traitor Primarchs. Angron was always the way he is in 40K (until ADB fixed him). Fulgrim was walking around with a hand rag covering his junk, being overly sexual, and being an imperious jerk. Perturabo was always paranoid. Etc, as nauseum.

 

It would've been nice for the Primarchs to actually fall from grace, instead of never having had it to begin with.

Sooo. . . I finished Damnation of Pythos about a week ago, and I had to wait a bit before posting about it because it definitely makes this list (why are the Iron Hands so :cuss ing hard to write about?!?).

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I dont think IH are hard to write, I think stories involving them may be difficult because when IH are acting as they should...the path forward is straight. :]

 

If not for Galba, or the RG/Salamanders, Atticus would have let those folks rot pretty quickly, but then we wouldnt have had the story. I think the issue is that Iron Hands done well are (seriously) too bad ass and unyielding for their own good. THAT needs to be a weakness, because I thought Atticus was great throughout. 

 

I compared the IH characters to those in Wrath of Iron, and I thought there where several (too many) parallels. 

 

I dont know, like I said it was decent half of the way, maybe even 75%, but the ending failed to wrap it well.

  On 5/30/2015 at 1:59 PM, Marshal Rohr said:

That's really a catch-all problem for most of the Traitor Primarchs. Angron was always the way he is in 40K (until ADB fixed him). Fulgrim was walking around with a hand rag covering his junk, being overly sexual, and being an imperious jerk. Perturabo was always paranoid. Etc, as nauseum.

 

It would've been nice for the Primarchs to actually fall from grace, instead of never having had it to begin with.

 

 

This, so very, very cussing much.

  On 5/30/2015 at 1:59 PM, Marshal Rohr said:

That's really a catch-all problem for most of the Traitor Primarchs. Angron was always the way he is in 40K (until ADB fixed him). Fulgrim was walking around with a hand rag covering his junk, being overly sexual, and being an imperious jerk. Perturabo was always paranoid. Etc, as nauseum.

 

It would've been nice for the Primarchs to actually fall from grace, instead of never having had it to begin with.

 

I don't know, I think some have been done better than others.

 

As you say, ADB did as good a job with Angron as can be done. He was still a psychopath, but to make him anything less would go against the core of the character, he was never going to fall that much. The same can be said of Konrad Curze. Both have always been known as severely damaged from the get-go.

 

Mr. Dembski-Bowden also did a stonking job with Lorgar in The First Heretic and Aurelian, and unlike some I really enjoyed Fulgrim's fall in his self-titled novel. Magnus' could have done with a bit more hubris, but it was along the right lines at least, and even now he doesn't feel like he betrayed the Emperor per se.

 

Mortarion we haven't really seen enough of to say, but judging by what we had in Daemonology, I'm hopeful that Chris Wraight will do more with him and give us something there.

 

While I didn't enjoy Angel Exterminatus as a whole, I did like Perturabo himself, he was much more believable than the "RAWR PERTURABO SMASH!" portrayal we'd had until then.

 

Alpharius we've never actually seen -that- much of, though it could be argued that the mystery is essential to the character.

 

Unfortunately Horus himself is probably the traitor primarch I feel has been worst done, mostly due to False Gods. The Horus we had in Horus Rising was great, genuinely likeable and astute. Then in False Gods he turned evil....because reasons? There's almost no actual explanation behind it, and thus behind the entire Heresy. It's one of the most glaring issues with the entire series IMO, and what I wouldn't give for someone to go back and do that book properly.

 

All told, I think the concern with seeing them fall from grace is less that they've been done badly, more that we haven't been able to see much of them pre-Heresy. Mortarion and Perturabo in particular really need good examinations of their characters and reasons for turning.

 

That's what I think anyway.[/Hugo]

  On 6/1/2015 at 7:19 PM, Tymell said:

While I didn't enjoy Angel Exterminatus as a whole, I did like Perturabo himself, he was much more believable than the "RAWR PERTURABO SMASH!" portrayal we'd had until then.

 

I've seen this said about Perturabo before, and I still disagree with it. He was never a 'Rawr Smash' individual, it wasn't what defined him. Instead, I've always seen him as the most divorced Primarch from human emotion and rationality. He viewed his world in angles, equations, theory, and sums; he could not understand a thought process without such cold, calculating perfection. 

 

His tragedy was that he was born cold as life. Utterly heartless, but not without soul. He came to awareness with stunted emotions, and a mind so complex and weaving that he came the closest to having a true mental evolution towards the intractability and whimsy of an actual God. None could fathom him mind, and few dared.

 

As a part of this, despite his desire to remove himself from the irrevocably theorem-confusing concept of disgusting emotion, he still has a touch of humanity in him. His 'fall', you could say, is his inability to know what to do when he feels. When his heart moves, the world moves with it, and in violent fashion. Like a confused child, he lashes out at this irrationality, this variable that throws his equations out of balance. And he doesn't stop lashing out until the equation has returned to zero, until all is balanced again, at least in his mind. Olympia learned this, in a very painful fashion. 

 

He is an autistic savant, a God half made. The Emperor's crime wasn't failing to reward Perturabo, but failing to see that his son needed help learning what a human being is.

 

I found McNeil's story to be degrading to the Iron Warriors Primarch, because he took that cold outlook, and turned Pertuabo into a bland character with the same daddy-issues as the rest of them. Not to mention, turning him into a friggin' idiot. "What's that, Fulgrim? Follow you and your trail of drugs all the way into the heart of Hell, knowing that it's an obvious trap, which I verbally acknowledge in the book? Sure, why not?"

 

Thank you so much, Mr. McNeil, for turning the my Primarch into a bumbling fool.

  On 6/9/2015 at 1:44 AM, Snickers said:

I never finished Talon of Horus...... I love pretty all of ADBs work that I've read but something about Talon just couldn't suck me in and this is coming from someone who enjoyed Battle for the Abyss

Care to elaborate brother?? I only ask as I was sucked in from Khayons introduction on the first few pages (only a few chapters in so no spoilers please), so far to me the scale of character development and their introduction is amazing...

  On 6/14/2015 at 6:14 PM, rendingon1+ said:

Pandorax. Worst BL book I read so far.down.gif

How was Pandorax bad? In terms of characters it's been among the best books released for Space Marine Battles, plus it was full of important revelations regarding the nature of the Horus Heresy and the Dark Angels, along with some of the late Dark Angel characters appearing.

  On 6/15/2015 at 3:05 AM, Volt said:

  On 6/14/2015 at 6:14 PM, rendingon1+ said:

Pandorax. Worst BL book I read so far.down.gif

How was Pandorax bad? In terms of characters it's been among the best books released for Space Marine Battles, plus it was full of important revelations regarding the nature of the Horus Heresy and the Dark Angels, along with some of the late Dark Angel characters appearing.

Since I aint brave enough to read it, would you mind pming me these details?

WLK

  On 6/15/2015 at 3:23 AM, Wolf Lord Kieran said:

  On 6/15/2015 at 3:05 AM, Volt said:

  On 6/14/2015 at 6:14 PM, rendingon1+ said:

Pandorax. Worst BL book I read so far.down.gif

How was Pandorax bad? In terms of characters it's been among the best books released for Space Marine Battles, plus it was full of important revelations regarding the nature of the Horus Heresy and the Dark Angels, along with some of the late Dark Angel characters appearing.

Since I aint brave enough to read it, would you mind pming me these details?

WLK

Nah, I'll just post them in these spoilers.

  Reveal hidden contents

Also, I recommend the book simply because of it containing the single most awesome Jokaero ever. He pilots a Hellhammer and blows stuff up with it. It also is one of the few 40k books to have a semi-happy ending for some characters.

My only grievance with the book is that it jumps around in time a lot. I get that the Pandorax Campaign was censored.gif long, but several month or even year jumps are excessive. The book ends up feeling like it should have been spread out over two or three novels instead of one. CZ Dunn also doesn't seem to really understand what power armor or terminator is, so there's odd things like terminators folding like wet tissue paper at times.

BTW, did I mention the Kaiju Nurgle Daemon? It has a Kaiju-sized Nurgle Daemon. He eats turbolasers for breakfast.

Here's the best review of Pandorax:

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=129773&page=6

Here's an example. I hate this book.


 


  Quote

‘And what makes you think you can slay this daemon, Azrael?’ Draigo said when the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels had finished outlining his plan. ‘It would take the Emperor himself to best it in personal combat.’

‘Then if that’s what it takes,’ he said drawing the Sword of Secrets from his hip and pointing the diamond-sharp tip at Gabriel’s shoulder. ‘My apologies, brother. I do this out of necessity and mean you no disrespect.’ He stabbed into the Master of the Deathwing’s already cracked Crux Terminatus and broke it open, catching the tiny sliver of bright metal that fell from it. He took a bolt round from a pouch at his waist and raised it to his lips. For a moment it looked to those around him as if he was kissing the shell, but when he lowered it they could see that his acidic saliva had melted away some of the casing. Taking the fragment of shimmering metal from his other hand, he pushed it onto the shell with his thumb, fusing the two together.

‘Brother Gabriel’s armour is the most ancient of all the Deathwing’s suits, forged upon the anvils of the Rock in the days when the Emperor was already interred upon his throne but the Legions had not yet been divided. From Terra came a gift to all those Legions who had remained loyal in the face of Horus’s perfidy, a section of the Emperor’s own armour so that it may be incorporated into the newly forged Terminator suits of his true sons. The Dark Angels took delivery of the Emperor’s right gauntlet, and over the coming decades over a thousand suits of armour were fashioned incorporating metal from his battle plate in the pauldrons. Many of those suits were gifted to our noble successors when Lords Dorn and Guilliman broke the Space Marines down into smaller Chapters, and though most have been lost down the millennia, some of our brothers still go to battle in armour bearing those original Crux Terminatus.’

 

 

 

Fluff violation level is extreme. Entire book is like this.

Cringworthy indeed. Ok yes, terminator armour contains a sliver of the emperors armour, however cutting open a pauldron of Tactical Dreadnaught Armour with miniscule effort and then opening a Bolt shell with acid and resealing it once said sliver is inside just made me laugh. I dont think Dunn knows how munitions work or even 40k for that matter (but then again hes the novelist, im just a fanatic, what would I know right?) surely the editing team was away the week this was being published. 

Any more ridiculous extracts your willing to share? Spoilers are fine, dont think ill be reading it anyway.

  On 6/1/2015 at 7:51 PM, Hyaenidae said:

 

  On 6/1/2015 at 7:19 PM, Tymell said:

While I didn't enjoy Angel Exterminatus as a whole, I did like Perturabo himself, he was much more believable than the "RAWR PERTURABO SMASH!" portrayal we'd had until then.

 

 

I've seen this said about Perturabo before, and I still disagree with it. He was never a 'Rawr Smash' individual, it wasn't what defined him. Instead, I've always seen him as the most divorced Primarch from human emotion and rationality. He viewed his world in angles, equations, theory, and sums; he could not understand a thought process without such cold, calculating perfection. 

 

His tragedy was that he was born cold as life. Utterly heartless, but not without soul. He came to awareness with stunted emotions, and a mind so complex and weaving that he came the closest to having a true mental evolution towards the intractability and whimsy of an actual God. None could fathom him mind, and few dared.

 

As a part of this, despite his desire to remove himself from the irrevocably theorem-confusing concept of disgusting emotion, he still has a touch of humanity in him. His 'fall', you could say, is his inability to know what to do when he feels. When his heart moves, the world moves with it, and in violent fashion. Like a confused child, he lashes out at this irrationality, this variable that throws his equations out of balance. And he doesn't stop lashing out until the equation has returned to zero, until all is balanced again, at least in his mind. Olympia learned this, in a very painful fashion. 

 

He is an autistic savant, a God half made. The Emperor's crime wasn't failing to reward Perturabo, but failing to see that his son needed help learning what a human being is.

 

I found McNeil's story to be degrading to the Iron Warriors Primarch, because he took that cold outlook, and turned Pertuabo into a bland character with the same daddy-issues as the rest of them. Not to mention, turning him into a friggin' idiot. "What's that, Fulgrim? Follow you and your trail of drugs all the way into the heart of Hell, knowing that it's an obvious trap, which I verbally acknowledge in the book? Sure, why not?"

 

Thank you so much, Mr. McNeil, for turning the my Primarch into a bumbling fool.

I disagree I thought Angel Exterminatus was the best depiction of Perturabo that we have had so far. Compared to the stereotypical Saturday morning cartoon villain with anger management issues from Crimson Fist and the idiot whose solution to everything was to throw more bodies at it and kill his men when they failed him from Extermination, Mcneil did him very well.

To each their own, though i will say I see the Perturabo in AE as the one who is cartoonish and unrealistic. It broke every cardinal rule of the Iron Warrior mentality, and that is definitely a bad thing, in my book. (Except Grendel, who seemed to be the only redeemable character in the whole book)

 

And we did not need another Primarch Boo-Hoo story. It wasn't necessary. Not every Primarch needs to have severe mortal daddy issues.

 

You want to call the unpredictable anger of a mentally stunted God stereotypical of a saturday cartoon, then please let me know which shows you're watching, because I must be missing out.

  On 6/15/2015 at 10:52 PM, Herald of Sanguinius said:

Cringworthy indeed. Ok yes, terminator armour contains a sliver of the emperors armour, however cutting open a pauldron of Tactical Dreadnaught Armour with miniscule effort and then opening a Bolt shell with acid and resealing it once said sliver is inside just made me laugh. I dont think Dunn knows how munitions work or even 40k for that matter (but then again hes the novelist, im just a fanatic, what would I know right?) surely the editing team was away the week this was being published.

Any more ridiculous extracts your willing to share? Spoilers are fine, dont think ill be reading it anyway.

Exactly, and even if Crux Terminatus contains a fragment of Emperor's Armor (it's not confirmed by any other source) it should be treated as most holy relic and here Azrael literally spat upon it smile.png

Another extract? Here you go (Draigo is fighting a demon prince who teleports them to the ship's hull, so Draigo can't use true name on himdry.png ):

  Reveal hidden contents

  On 6/16/2015 at 10:28 AM, rendingon1+ said:

  On 6/15/2015 at 10:52 PM, Herald of Sanguinius said:

Cringworthy indeed. Ok yes, terminator armour contains a sliver of the emperors armour, however cutting open a pauldron of Tactical Dreadnaught Armour with miniscule effort and then opening a Bolt shell with acid and resealing it once said sliver is inside just made me laugh. I dont think Dunn knows how munitions work or even 40k for that matter (but then again hes the novelist, im just a fanatic, what would I know right?) surely the editing team was away the week this was being published.

Any more ridiculous extracts your willing to share? Spoilers are fine, dont think ill be reading it anyway.

Exactly, and even if Crux Terminatus contains a fragment of Emperor's Armor (it's not confirmed by any other source) it should be treated as most holy relic and here Azrael literally spat upon it smile.png

Another extract? Here you go (Draigo is fighting a demon prince who teleports them to the ship's hull, so Draigo can't use true name on himdry.png ):

  Reveal hidden contents

Wooooooow Draigo's experiance with dispatching Daemon Princes seems to have no bounds.... come on, even Primarchs are supposed to have a hard time against them and he finishes one off just like that... seriously? I guess we can also mark magnets down as something Dunn doesnt understand...

  On 6/16/2015 at 12:52 AM, Prodigal Son of Magnus said:

  On 6/1/2015 at 7:51 PM, Hyaenidae said:

  On 6/1/2015 at 7:19 PM, Tymell said:

While I didn't enjoy Angel Exterminatus as a whole, I did like Perturabo himself, he was much more believable than the "RAWR PERTURABO SMASH!" portrayal we'd had until then.

SNIP

I disagree I thought Angel Exterminatus was the best depiction of Perturabo that we have had so far. Compared to the stereotypical Saturday morning cartoon villain with anger management issues from Crimson Fist and the idiot whose solution to everything was to throw more bodies at it and kill his men when they failed him from Extermination, Mcneil did him very well.

The only redeeming quality of Perturabo in AE I found was his admiration of perfect mathematical architecture and his understanding of the golden ratio. What wasnt cool, and I agree with Hyaenidae on this is that McNeill flips this on its head and makes it an excuse as to why he hates Dorn and by extention their Father... get real, Perturabo doesnt get hurt feelings from his daddy not liking the way he builds things because he doesnt understand feelings at all.

This is why hes detatched from his sons, he cant empathise with them on any level. This is why he 'throws more men at his enemies' with out regard for their lives, sheer weight of numbers is a sound mathematical tactic that has been used by armies for millennia. This is why he kills his sons for failing him, in his eyes their not his sons, just broken equations that need to be rectified.

  On 6/16/2015 at 10:21 PM, Herald of Sanguinius said:

 

  On 6/16/2015 at 10:28 AM, rendingon1+ said:

 

  On 6/15/2015 at 10:52 PM, Herald of Sanguinius said:

Cringworthy indeed. Ok yes, terminator armour contains a sliver of the emperors armour, however cutting open a pauldron of Tactical Dreadnaught Armour with miniscule effort and then opening a Bolt shell with acid and resealing it once said sliver is inside just made me laugh. I dont think Dunn knows how munitions work or even 40k for that matter (but then again hes the novelist, im just a fanatic, what would I know right?) surely the editing team was away the week this was being published.

Any more ridiculous extracts your willing to share? Spoilers are fine, dont think ill be reading it anyway.

 

Exactly, and even if Crux Terminatus contains a fragment of Emperor's Armor (it's not confirmed by any other source) it should be treated as most holy relic and here Azrael literally spat upon it :)

Another extract? Here you go (Draigo is fighting a demon prince who teleports them to the ship's hull, so Draigo can't use true name on him<_< ):

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Wooooooow Draigo's experiance with dispatching Daemon Princes seems to have no bounds.... come on, even Primarchs are supposed to have a hard time against them and he finishes one off just like that... seriously? I guess we can also mark magnets down as something Dunn doesnt understand...

 

 

  On 6/16/2015 at 12:52 AM, Prodigal Son of Magnus said:

 

  On 6/1/2015 at 7:51 PM, Hyaenidae said:

 

  On 6/1/2015 at 7:19 PM, Tymell said:

While I didn't enjoy Angel Exterminatus as a whole, I did like Perturabo himself, he was much more believable than the "RAWR PERTURABO SMASH!" portrayal we'd had until then.

 

SNIP

I disagree I thought Angel Exterminatus was the best depiction of Perturabo that we have had so far. Compared to the stereotypical Saturday morning cartoon villain with anger management issues from Crimson Fist and the idiot whose solution to everything was to throw more bodies at it and kill his men when they failed him from Extermination, Mcneil did him very well.

 

The only redeeming quality of Perturabo in AE I found was his admiration of perfect mathematical architecture and his understanding of the golden ratio. What wasnt cool, and I agree with Hyaenidae on this is that McNeill flips this on its head and makes it an excuse as to why he hates Dorn and by extention their Father... get real, Perturabo doesnt get hurt feelings from his daddy not liking the way he builds things because he doesnt understand feelings at all.

 

This is why hes detatched from his sons, he cant empathise with them on any level. This is why he 'throws more men at his enemies' with out regard for their lives, sheer weight of numbers is a sound mathematical tactic that has been used by armies for millennia. This is why he kills his sons for failing him, in his eyes their not his sons, just broken equations that need to be rectified.

I didn't so much think he hated his father as much as he hated the Imperum and most of his brothers in general. They treated him like a menial who was nothing more than a stepping stool for them to step over. Remember the picture of his men being stepped on by the other legions? Notice how Fulgrim commands him like a servant in the novel and torwards the end tells him that he is nothing. They treated him like garbage and he took it, he took it until he broke. Olympia's destruction was not so much a wrathful outburst as it was Perturabo deciding he had taken enough crap and he was done.

 

I don't agree with Pert not having feelings, him being abrasive has been in the fluff far longer than FW has been around. If he was perfectly logical, he wouldn't be abrasive. His relationship with Dorn is more due to the two of them being very similar in many ways. And throwing men away is not the most logical expenditure of men, it's a callous disregard for life and ultimately foolish on a strategic level. Something a genius like Perturabo would realize. That isn't to say Perturabo was afraid to waste men, but he didn't spend them frivolously. If he just threw men at defenses until they collapsed why would he bother would setting up defenses at Isstvan and Hydra Cordatus?

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