Post Dark Imperium books

[MrDarth151]

I’m surprised that no one has made a huge fuss over Cawl just making Astartes so much better without being the “all knowing lord of mankind”

 

I'm headcanoning it to time constraints. Portrayal of the Emperor has been... severely underwhelming as of late, so I choose to headcanon most of it away.

 

And if I had to point towards one thing that most annoys me about post-Gathering Storm fiction is how it messes up the dark themes of Imperium that proceeded it.

[Xisor]

Re: hard dates. For God's sake, writers & devs & editors & whoever.

LOOK AT THE DAMNED APPENDIX. Pls!

The check-digit on the dates is a really cool bit of 40k. But it gets disregarded sooo often, when it would be of huge utility.

Absolute time isn't a thing out here in real life either. But dating systems, with genuine interest and cultural significance derived from calendars, varying views of time and it's importance? That's a thing!

Play with it. Please.

We love to see a timeline. Many readers adore appendices and maps and whatnot.

Please don't just jam it under "sometime then".

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On the otherhand, please for the love of all that's holy, don't try to tie up prophecy and time travel into a neat little predestination paradox. They all seem to be... unsatisfying.

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A great character done with more gravitas by someone else later?

[b1soul]

About Cawl improving SM...

 

Corax already did this to a possibly greater extent

 

Also, see Sons of Antaeus (supposedly with superior skeletal structures)

[Mellow]

Did Corax make them better or did he just make them faster in order to replace his losses? I can’t remember specifically.

[Ishagu]

I believe he made them better, and the improvement was even more pronounced, evidenced from how they performed.

[DarkChaplain]

Yep, better and faster production. They weren't vastly superior, but gave him an obvious advantage while they lasted...

 

Which is why I keep theorizing that Guilliman doesn't really start the Primaris project until after his showdown with "Alpharius" (Omegon) on Eskrador. The Alpha Legion got the untainted gene-tech from the Primarch project, they only handed the tainted samples to Fabius as per Horus' command. The Alpha Legion had been playing both sides, with Omegon being implied to be more supportive of the loyalists, indicating his chosen path after Legion. It'd make sense for Omegon, one way or another, passing on the tech to Guilliman, which could then lead to him looking for a promising Tech-Adept of the Biologis branch, somebody who doesn't shy away from committing "heresy" against the establishment of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

 

It'd offer the opportunity for a cracking Scouring-era novel, while connecting loose ends from the Heresy series (stuff that's been pretty open since Deliverance Lost, outside of the New Men Fabius made from the tainted samples, in Corax), make the Alpha Legion murkier again, giving a reasonable explanation as to why Cawl managed to do something Fabius "couldn't" so easily, and develop Belisarius Cawl further from what we've seen of him in Wolfsbane. The Primarch Project assets need to be addressed at some point, with how Deliverance Lost left them, and this could be the perfect opportunity to legitimize a newly established character with the help of plot points from 5+ years ago.

[mc warhammer]

i like a lot of that, but...has cawl really done what bill couldn’t? bill made two fully formed and functional

primarchs

[DarkChaplain]

That's why I said "couldn't" :) It's pretty silly that people harp on about Fabius as if he was stupid and Cawl trumped over him, when in reality, Fabius has been there, done that, and has different goals in mind, as in, a completely new evolutionary stage for humanity as a whole. He doesn't simply want to make better Space Marines. In a sense, some of his work could be said to be intended to make Astartes obsolete.

[b1soul]

From what I recall, Corax's raptors were wiping the floor with reg marines

[SkimaskMohawk]

They were better at sparring, but it was noted that armour would level the playing field more or less.

[Ishagu]

No doubt the wargear plays a part. Corax didn't develop new armour and weapons, unlike Cawl.

[Xisor]

Am I the only one concerned about the question of "can Cawl be trusted?". He claims to have only added three new organs, and tidied up the creation process to improve things generally.

 

But it also doesn't look like there was a huge degree of field testing either.

 

(I like the idea that chapters like, say, the Storm Giants were literal Primaris Chapters in action pre-TGS - early access to get more comprehensive test results. They were "accepted"/not questioned on better equipment/being a fair whack bigger because: 1-who's got time to do that when Armageddon is being invaded a third time!? 2- they're rumoured to be Salamanders successors, so maybe they're just displaying the bizarre quirks that stop the Salamanders having official/known successors?)

 

Also, we don't really know the long-term consequences of the changes.

 

Vulnerability to Genestealers?

Lackadaisical approach to psy-screening, brutalisation, indoctrination and cultural confirmity leaves the door open for Chaos? The Greater Good? Casual heresies? Strife within the Imperial hierarchy?

 

E.g. it's not a personal thing, but a medical/cultural/metaphysical question that is, arguably, far bigger than a mere "I don't trust these new folk" sort of question.

 

And that's not to mention the possibility of Cawl having left some overrides, backdoors, failsafes or other daft shenanigans...

 

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In that respect, I'm totally on board with the "they're just Space Marines" angle. It's great. But at the same time it rather distracts from the more compelling questions around the mistrust. (I sound like some sort of "economic anxiety"/"genuine concerns about immigration policy" apologist. But I do like the conspiracy side of 40k. Reality, not so much.)

 

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Add to that, if you look at a fine example where 30k/40k disparity is concerned, I think the absolute best distillation and presentation of it is in ADB's Void Hunter: when our beloved heroes from the dawn of time (Talos et al.) run afoul of that no-good, degenerate off-spring of a distant branch of the family... a Genesis Marine Captain(?).

 

And that Captain, calmly, professionally ( very "no nonsense, get the job done and move on"), knocks umpteen unspeakable shades of excreta out of them.

 

That's the distinction in 40k/30k for me. (And why I was a wee bit sad that Guilliman in DI went that "actually, those legions were pretty decent" route.)

 

Simply: 40k's Marines might be hidebound and uktra-indoctrinated, but sweet baby Emperor, I think they're shown best as an idea when they're also bloody, ferociously, uncompromisingly competent.

 

Unlike Uriel Ventris, for example. A maverick who plays by his own rules, and largely causes no end of trouble. It doesn't 'ring true', to my ears, to the description of what Marines are brutally institutionalised to be.

 

(I happened to like the presentation of Calgar and Dante in DI & DoB: shockingly competent, but nevertheless overwhelmed by improbable circumstance until the Emperor's Plot Device Made Flesh shows up to do the undoable.)

[b1soul]

In the BA codex, Corbulo observes Primaris BA tear AL limb from limb...he is very concerned

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

snip

 

I've always preferred the idea that the Cursed/Dark Foundings were Cawl testing out his tinkering with geneseed. That, and the idea that Cawl isn't so much a revolutionary genius, and more just someone that found the Emperors notes on down-sizing the Primarch Project into the development of the Astartes, found references to 3 other organs that were 90% finished testing, but didn't make it in time for the big reveal, so they got left on the cutting room floor. He didn't improve on the Emperors design, he found the Emperors existing design that didn't have time to make it into the finished product, and had 10,000 years to do the fine tuning that the Emperor didn't. Then he slapped his name all over it all and claimed all the credit, because he's an egomaniacal jerk who doesn't remember finding the original research notes.

 

However, I'd love to see a new Badab War break out, given the lack of indoctrination, where some Astartes start taking Guilliman's "the basic humans ruined everything, now the new humans are here" mentality a bit too far.

 

And yes, they definitely should have simply made more use of the date checks rather than just getting rid of dating entirely. I'd always loved that element of 40k, it's a shame they almost seem to be getting rid of it.

[Xisor]

And yes, they definitely should have simply made more use of the date checks rather than just getting rid of dating entirely. I'd always loved that element of 40k, it's a shame they almost seem to be getting rid of it.

A bit like in Age of Sigmar. "It's all made up anyway, we don't need detailed maps." They rolled that back though with AoS2, fortunately!

 

Maybe we'll see that in 40k too. Once we get a bit further into the DI timeline, someone'll cave and start pinning things down, even with a nice bit of warp madness.

 

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As for Cawl, I like that approach too. A lot, really.

 

It'd be interesting to see him out into the daft Elon Musk/T. Jefferson archetype: a fame mogul, whose fame really rides on the back of being the figurehead for a huge organisation of people, with a lot of credit hogging. (Perhaps do interesting better than the real world, with Cawl being both brilliant, and not that brilliant, but also knee deep in a variety of political shenanigans as well, not to mention various factional and sectarian schisms.)

 

There's huge room for interesting depth to him, but if it moves away slightly from 'wow, he's so amazing!' in the narration, I'd love to see it explored.

 

(Even if it were in a Kurt Helborg sort of silly way. A vaguely competent, dazzling leader that just cultivates celebrity without trying [or especially deserving, compared to other top-tier folk], a 'poops gold' sort of smarmy, inexplicably adored wizard.)

[Felix Antipodes]

In my current headcanon Cawl's fingerprints are all over (not only) the Cursed Founding, but the Dark Founding - the only Founding that the Mechanicus doesn't have the original geneseed for - as well.

 

You could also make a case that he slipped a couple of others into that period where there seems to have been several Foundings in a relatively short period. Heck, you could even speculate that the secret geneseed vault raided by the Iron Warriors was part of Cawl's organisation and not an official Mechanicus one.