Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor's Legion

[Scribe]

I have not, but I will be getting both it, and Dark Imperium (wasnt at my local store) to round out what I believe is the 'current' time frame?

[cheywood]

I have not, but I will be getting both it, and Dark Imperium (wasnt at my local store) to round out what I believe is the 'current' time frame?

There's a bunch more GS/post GS novels if that's what you mean? Would you like a list? I don't want to give you a bunch of info you know already.

[Scribe]

I'm not aware of the 'main story' drivers if thats what you mean. The big one as I understood it was Dark Imperium, though I know the Blood Angel books have been brought up to speed as well.

[cheywood]

I'm not aware of the 'main story' drivers if thats what you mean. The big one as I understood it was Dark Imperium, though I know the Blood Angel books have been brought up to speed as well.

With the exception of Cadia Stands most all of the novels of which I'm thinking are unconnected to the overarching plot line of the Primarchs coming back and the universe moving forward, though they're engaging stories in their own right.

[Scribe]

Yeah right now I'm just focused on the main meta plot.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I think we're just starting on the metaplot books now. To my knowledge, you've got Watchers, you've got Devastation of Baal, and Dark Imperium. Those seem to be the big ones so far.

[Scribe]

Excellent, thanks!

[cheywood]

There might be another one out on the 26th if the speculation I've seen about Luther is right.

[Perrin]

The Last Hunt by RobMac is set post Devasation of Baal. It doesn't specifically advance the meta, however it does hint at developments for the Scars.

 

It hints that the Chapter as a whole are busy hunting for The Khan. I don't know enough about the Scars to judge whether this is a development for them or if they've always been hunting for him, but they do know a Primarch has returned and have heard rumours that it's RG.

[karden00]

 

That’s simply not the case at all. The Silmaril is indeed a very important artifact, but it could be the light of the Sun or it could be an element that exists in Tolkien’s Universe that emits radiation. Magic could be a inter dimensional force, manipulation of gravity, or whatever they need it to be.

 

 

Such ambiguity is not given in Tolkien's work. The Silmaril are explicitly stated as forged of magic, explicitly stated to contain the light of magical trees as captured by Feanor, and explicitly stated to be cursed by the Curse of the Noldor. Those are all things explicitly stated, without any ambiguity that they might be of purely worldly nature. Similarly, Magic is an extension of Eru's will, as stated in the Ainulindale, and thus is a manipulation of worldly laws through otherworldly means, i.e. unnatural, metaphysical forces. These things are clearly stated in the Silmarillion, amongst other parts of the Legendarium(I will gladly provide quotes and pages in a PM if this is required). The Sun and the Moon are literal trees, not mythical interpretations as such. The Silmaril are literal vessels for their divine light. They are already what they need to be in Tolkien's context. But this is heavily off-topic, and should have only served to illustrate my point.

 

But you can’t have a billion starving people and not have mass, crippling violence. You can bring in millions and billions of gallons of water from asteroids in the Solar System, but it isn’t doled out like Fury Road. It goes into reservoirs filled with water from months or years before. That grape might’ve been a precious commodity grown on the only world in the Imperium with the exact climate as Wine Country in our own time, and that’s whatever. But the idea an apartment costs as much as a continent? Not possible. Indentured servitude in the way describes previously in this thread? The planet would burn in constant revolution. The science of the homeostatic trends of society must be followed, even if it’s described as mind boggling. If you described Mumbai to a person born in 3,900 B.C. It would sound like the way Wraight describes Terra, but that doesn’t make Mumbai impossible. The reality of it is the human brain of even an inquisitor couldn’t understand the full breadth of just how a planet like Terra functions anymore than you or I️ can describe every facet of how New York isn’t a pile of ashes, but those underlying immutable laws of population equilibrium are permanent and eternal.

 

 

You can, as evidenced by the text we have both read. You are trying to analyse a world, a universe that as whole, from ground to bottom, cannot exist by any of our laws of population, society, science and nature. Of course Terra would burn if this were set in our actual universe. Nobody is contesting that, I wasn't contesting this in my post. I am contesting the ludicrous notion that one can apply our worldly laws and facts onto an impossible narrative. The idea that an apartment costs as much as a continent is indeed impossible to us, but on Terra in the 41st millenium, it is very real. It evokes horror and awe by illustrating something impossible. A dragon is not a feasible biological lifeform, and yet they feature as prominent adversaries in modern fiction. Do you see anybody running around and trying to apply the laws of structural integrity, aviation, metabolism and more to Ancalagon the Black (Who blotted out the sun with his wings and shattered one of the greatest Mountain of Arda, the Thangorodrim, when he was slain)? No, of course not, because the whole point of his impossible scale is to illustrate the danger, the awe, the world-shattering strength that he and his creator Morgoth wield, and by extension also the virtue and purity of Earendil who slays Ancalagon.

The laws of population equillibrium are immutable to us, as much as laws of temporality, physics, and so on are. Guess what, in Time's Arrow, time runs backwards with all the implications that come with it (i.e. guns heal wounds, medication causes sickness, houses are never built but only deconstructed etc.), and yet the book works just perfectly fine by freeing itself of reality's shackles. One of the fundamental laws of existence, the way which time runs, is overturned and causality is completely reversed. Why? Because that is the premise. It opens up vistas of completely new expirience and discussion topics, it offers the possibility to ask "What if?".

Gregor Samsa in Kafka's The Metamorphosis wakes up one day and is literally transformed into a man-sized roach. No ambiguity about it, the book states that he has literally become a giant insect. By all laws of reality this is impossible, and yet it just so happened in the text. Why? Because it serves as an illustration for the reader of how Samsa's life is dreary and insignificant, and how he is plagued by crippling depression. While the illustration is metaphysical for us, an allegory, a metaphor, it is very, very real for the inhabitants of the books.

Faust summons the elemental homunculus of earth in the beginning of Goethe's Faust, an actual lump of animated earth that has sentience and control over the elements. Again, an impossible thing, and yet it is there. The homunculus is a metaphor for pagan truths and philosophies that appear horrifying and yet enticing to the Christian mind of Goethe's age. Again, a metaphor, an image for us and yet reality for the fictional world.

All the given descriptions of Terra follow the same pattern. Of course they are insane and impossible to us, but they illustrate the horrifying future of the 41st millenium just aptly. They are an image for us, the reader, to visualize just how impossibly wretched such places are, just how dark the universe has become, while still being perfectly aware of how impossible such things are. Yet to the given world, it is reality, simply because it is. Otherwise we would have no reason to gape at such scenes. It is a metaphor, an image to us, bitter reality to indentured worker 74-2878467. The 41st millennium is a place beaten down by adversity, horror, starvation, fanaticism and war. It is a feverish vision of impossibility itself, a place where hell is a very real place and one has to travel through it to reach other systems. It has never had the reason to adhere to reality, it clearly shows no ambition of doing so. All human and galactic laws are eternal only to us, but what happens within fictionality is bound by no laws whatsoever (Or are you trying to tell me that Pratchett's idea of how his world is situated atop four elephants, on top of a huge turtle and traversing the void, must also be considered as hyperbole because it clearly defies physics and biology?).

Literature has always been free to create worlds that defy all that is of our own, and it has always done so, be it through accident or intent.

I can invent a world ten times as crowded as Terra and where one shack costs as much as a sector, and where all workers are slaves and never rebell out of resignation, and I can present it as fact within the given context. The mere fact that I can do this, that I can create just such a thing of fiction, and that it has been done countless times throughout mankind's illustrious literary canon, illustrates that all the laws we know and are subject to mean about as much to fictionality as a minor flatulence does to a tornado.

 

I am over the moon that Ancalagon the Black was name dropped.

[Kelborn]

Little question to be on the safe side:

 

I remember something that Custodes dislike the Grey Knights. Is that correct?

 

With the newly announced Custodes codex, etc. for 8th edition and thus, the Dark Imperium setting, I'm tempted to let both of them fight against a common foe (fluffwise).

[Sete]

Not dislike. More like rivalry.

[Kelborn]

Thanks for clarifying.

 

This is handled in The Emperor's Legion, right?

Then I just have to find the post within this thread. :)

[Sete]

Yep it is. I can't remember the specifics, but it's due to the fact that GK have the Emps gene seed I think. And the Custodes are a bit jealous.

[Scribe]

The Custode vs GK question is.

 

"If we are both direct sons of the emperor, who is it who better follows his vision, while everyone else has lost the path?"

 

Both factions will obviously believe they are right.

Both factions have a direct 'thats my dad' connection.

 

GK's, came after and so could be argued to be more 'current' to the Emperors will and needs.

 

Its not an angry rivalry, but a question of 'have I been replaced?'

 

Or so it seemed to me.

[Sete]

Scribe is correct.

Need to read the book again.

[Marshal Rohr]

So the emperor hates the space marines he created himself and thinks they are tools but he loves the silver psychic marines he didn’t create and weren’t around until after the interlegionary war?

 

Par for the course, really.

[karden00]

Wowsers. 

Just got through this one. I really enjoyed it, I really enjoyed the first person, alternating narratives. Great world-building, characterization, etc. 

I'll get my thoughts together in a more coherent manner later, but a couple of quick reflections:
 

- I appreciated that the Grey Knights were noticeably affected by the Silent Sisters. Dark Imperium (a vastly...inferior read, in my humble opinion) had a scene where librarians were channeling psychic powers pretty much right beside a group of Sisters, and I found that to be rather inconsistent. 

 

- Kinda a big reveal in there, as Valerian basically flat out says that Custodians were built in part to cull Astartes, once their purpose had been fulfilled. Dropping truth and knowledge bombs! I applaud the bold choice, as GW is often reluctant to conclude definitively on lore matters that have, for a long time, tantalized us. It's not always comfortable to get these conclusions, but again, I applaud the bold choice.   

[bluntblade]

So the emperor hates the space marines he created himself and thinks they are tools but he loves the silver psychic marines he didn’t create and weren’t around until after the interlegionary war?

Par for the course, really.

That doesn't match what Scribe said.

[Scribe]

Lol that's not what I said at all. It's paraphrasing the introspection of a Custode in the book.

[Marshal Rohr]

"If we are both direct sons of the emperor, who is it who better follows his vision, while everyone else has lost the path?"

 

The issue is the premise. The Custodes shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea the Grey Knights are on the same level as he is or as the original legions, who were hand crafted by the Emperor. We know Custodes feel contempt for the Primarchs and Legions, which would logically extend to the Chapters. We know they feel like it’s their creation process that sets them so far apart. Now, even if the studio comes out and confirms the Grey Knights have geneseed derived from the Emperor and not a Primarch (something I hope they’d never do, but you never know with the studio :cuss) then they still wouldn’t match the Custodes level of artistry, and the Custodes would have no more reason to respect them than any other Chapter. Less so because, as I said before, the Grey Knights were Malcadors brain child and given the green light by the Emperor. Not his own idea.

[Scribe]

Rohr, I think based on this book, it's a given GK are Emperors Geneseed.

 

It's not about levels, it's about questions of who is heir to the Emperors will.

 

Custodes are hardly current in their implementation, it's kind of the premise of the book.

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

 

 

- Kinda a big reveal in there, as Valerian basically flat out says that Custodians were built in part to cull Astartes, once their purpose had been fulfilled. Dropping truth and knowledge bombs! I applaud the bold choice, as GW is often reluctant to conclude definitively on lore matters that have, for a long time, tantalized us. It's not always comfortable to get these conclusions, but again, I applaud the bold choice.   

 

Wait what?!

[Moonreaper666]

How would the Second Battle of Terra turn out if all the Custodes were replaced with Grey Knights?

 

 

Would the GK lose 2k members just as the Custodes did?

[bluntblade]

But then the Custodes have failed. As an order, they categorically failed. Weren't even the ones to find the broken Emperor and bring Him back.

 

I can see that shaking their self-confidence somewhat.