'Lazy' Primarchs

[Azekai]

As I am sure many of you are aware, there is a sentiment within the 40k community where people denigrate the Chaos Primarchs for essentially doing nothing for 10,000 years. I don't get it. Maybe it is just a stupid meme, but these folks seem to gripe about Mortarion or Lorgar like they are particularly inept heads of state, rather than made up super-humans-turned-daemon. Sure, it seems a little boring that they sit on their infernal worlds rather than reaving across the weakling Imperium... but that is just how Geedubs wanted it.

Don't blame the fictional entity for its masters allowing it to languish. After all, these godlike beings were intentionally sidelined by GW for thousands of years, and for some fairly legitimate reasons.

For starters, there is the fact that Primarchs were supposed to be legendary backdrop characters, heroes and monsters whose actions saved or damned their sons... and GW was happy with that. There were a few rare forays, a few spurts of activity; Angron got involved in a few sector-wide bloodbaths, but that was the exception, not the rule. Primarch involvement in 40k was basically unheard of for most of the game's history.

And that makes sense. When a significant part of your story involves war in heaven scenario between expys of God, the Angels, and the Devil (roughly speaking), you end up with some dang powerful entities running around. Lords of War/Apocalypse scale units have only relatively recently become fair play in 'normal' games.  I can't imagine something with a Primarch's statline floating around in 4th ed... well, I can, Angron had published stats, but the dude had a whole pack of bloodthirsters as 'bodyguards.' No one fielded Angron on the regular.

Furthermore, GW didn't have models for them. That hasn't stopped GW before, necessarily (see Angron, above), but they clearly weren't interested in making or seriously supporting Primarchs in 40k for general 40k. Hard to get people hyped about Blood Angel releases when your stories center around daemon Primarchs taking the colons of everyone in their path.

There is also the glaring absence of loyalist Primarchs that poses a bit of a problem, both from a consumer standpoint and a thematic one. If daemon Primarchs are out there, rampaging around, taking bubblegum and chewing names, things would have been kind of out of whack. The Primarchs are presented as demi-gods, the paragons of their kind and a sort of end-all-be-all for Astartes forces. If the chaos players get super daemon space marines, there needs to be suitable opposition on the Imperial side (and no, Draigo doesn't cut it). If I were an Imperial player, I would feel distinctly left out... heck, the fact we Chaos players have two Primarchs and loyalists only have one already has lots of folks pining and speculating.

tl;dr, daemon Primarchs were constrained in the fluff for a bunch of meta reasons, rather than 'in-universe' ones. They only 'lazy' ones here are GW, for failing to come up with a satisfactory story explanation that exclude them from the game.

[Lord Marshal]

It's just a stupid 1d4chan thing that the fanbase kept overusing to the point of taking a meme as canon. Much like the Failbaddon stuff. It never helped that a lot of it's usage on places like /tg/ was from loyalist SM players who treat the factions like football teams and used it to disparage Chaos to make 'emselves feel better about being Imperials.

[Brother Tyler]

Except that the lore has shown multiple occasions on which the daemon Primarchs did venture out of the Warp, each as a backdrop for how heroic some faction of the Imperium is (e.g., Mortarion versus the Grey Knights, Angron versus the Space Wolves and Grey Knights).

 

And even if the daemon Primarchs spent the majority of their time in the Warp by choice (i.e., when they could venture out), as daemons, they were also caught up in the machinations of the Dark Powers. The challenges for them were greater than simply conquering the Imperium, but were found within the vastness of the Warp. It's not like they were hiding out in their basements (or upstairs offices, in my case) chattering away on the Warp's equivalent of the Internet discussion forums.

 

And with the fluidity of Time within the Warp, who's to say that the time the daemon Primarchs were in the Warp was 10,000 years in their time? For all we know, the flow of time to them has been mere centuries (including all of the time spent in the greater struggles within the Warp).

 

From a real world perspective, blaming GW for not releasing Primarch models sooner might be a bit simplistic. The scale of the game was kept at a small scale skirmish for almost two decades until GW started creeping the scale up to include super-heavies, Apocalypse formations, etc. As the size and power of the models increased, GW finally reached a point where they could push things like Titans into production. Many players resisted increasing beyond things like Land Raiders (which were pretty potent when they were first pushed out in 3rd edition), but many other players eagerly welcomed bigger and badder things. With the Horus Heresy books from Forge World, GW figured out that hobbyists were hungry for the Primarchs, who were appropriate to that setting. So now, we are seeing some Primarchs returning to the setting, which forced GW to push the storyline forward, something that was actually resisted for quite some time.

 

Overall, calling the daemon Primarchs "lazy" is an overly simplistic argument that completely ignores the complicated context and nuance of the game setting, like a one word summary of a 1,000 page novel. To me, anyone who will do that and consider it an accurate statement isn't worth taking seriously.

[Scammel]

The Primarchs failed where Abaddon has yet to. The paradox of the power of Chaos is that it simulataneously enables mortals to acheive their goals whilst also distancing them from said goals. The Primarchs gained absolute power but no longer have the strength of will to use it in the mortal plane, and are instead embroiled in the colossal, endless and ultimately pointless conflcits of the gods. Abaddon, Ahriman and Typhus still care​, whilst the Primarchs are rendered irrelevant by their delusional aloofness. It's all part and parcel of the self-destructive nature of Chaos; the gods relish mortal potential, but every reward they bestow diminishes that potential.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

In fairness, you can accurately describe Russell Brand's 'Booky-Wook' with a single, four-letter, word.

[Slave to Darkness]

In fairness, you can accurately describe Russell Brand's 'Booky-Wook' with a single, four-letter, word.

Quite a few four letter words spring to mind when I think of him. :lol:

[Lexington]

4chan is where nuanced ideas go not to die, but to be obliterated in the overwhelming tide of memes and stupidity.

[Cryptix]

4chan is where nuanced ideas go not to die, but to be obliterated in the overwhelming tide of memes and stupidity.

Agreed. My first experience with 40k was browsing on 4chan, and it made em drop it 4 years.

[Galron]

I think Perturabo is pretty lazy spending the last 10000 years fortifying his pillow castle world in the Eye. He needs to make a new appearance. Yeah he has managed to somewhat keep his legion cohesive and they have a central home base they really want someone to attack but he needs to get out more and see some new scenery. Even if its just to tick someone off enough to get them to follow back and attack home world.

[Panzer]

If he really fortified his pillow castle for the whole 10k years I want to see the foe that tries to breach it. :D

I guess that's still better than Fulgrim having fun on his pleasure planet all on his own without telling his sons the address so they had to search for it the past 10k years. ^^

[Galron]

For some reason I was picturing Jeff Goldbloom's character in Thor as an eccentric Fulgrim on the pleasure planet welcoming everyone home when they arrived.

[ChazSexington]

The Primarchs were never originally meant to be in 40k - the whole point was that they had ascended to a level where mortals didn't register. 40k used to be about Your Dudes, not GW's dudes. During the 90's you needed your opponent's permission to use Special Characters, for instance. That was the reason

 

I enjoy 4chan, thoroughly. They write the best tactica (d4chan) and I appreciate the candour. Their whole point is to be offensive and push the borders of free speech, so I understand why it really doesn't appeal to some. I won't engage in that debate here though, as it's not relevant. 

[the jeske]

If he really fortified his pillow castle for the whole 10k years I want to see the foe that tries to breach it.

I guess that's still better than Fulgrim having fun on his pleasure planet all on his own without telling his sons the address so they had to search for it the past 10k years. ^^

Generally in cases like this, it ends this way. Dude preps fortress ad infinitum. bigger walls, more turrets, more kill zones. fortress gets nuked or blown up from undeground. In w40k terms. Someone rams a blackstone fortress sized thing in to it or a small planetoid and it blows up.

[Panzer]

The Primarchs were never originally meant to be in 40k - the whole point was that they had ascended to a level where mortals didn't register. 40k used to be about Your Dudes, not GW's dudes. During the 90's you needed your opponent's permission to use Special Characters, for instance. That was the reason

 

I enjoy 4chan, thoroughly. They write the best tactica (d4chan) and I appreciate the candour. Their whole point is to be offensive and push the borders of free speech, so I understand why it really doesn't appeal to some. I won't engage in that debate here though, as it's not relevant. 

Yeah and that was fine before where we only had a setting instead of a story but I for one am glad they are coming back now. ^^

 

It's not even that long ago since you had to get the opponents permission to use special characters. In WHFB about 6-7 years ago it was the same. Mostly because special characters were unbalanced as heck with some rare exceptions.

And yeah the 1d4chan tactica is great....if it's up to date and if you aren't unlucky and read it right after some idiot re-wrote it based on his personal opinion (it's like the old wikipedia where everybody could write whatever they wanted).

[Lexington]

The Primarchs were never originally meant to be in 40k - the whole point was that they had ascended to a level where mortals didn't register. 40k used to be about Your Dudes, not GW's dudes. During the 90's you needed your opponent's permission to use Special Characters, for instance. That was the reason

Sorta yes, sorta no, During the majority of the 90's, at least the majority of the time in which there were Special Characters in 40K, you didn't need your opponent's permission to use them. That only came around in very late '98 with the advent of 3rd Edition, and it was a reaction to some of 2nd Edition's more powerful Special Character entries.

 

The thing with Primarchs isn't so much that they're so powerful as to be beyond humans, but that the people writing the game at the time understood that having Primarchs around detracted from the much more interesting stories of Astartes and humans and Eldar and Squats (yes, Squats!) around them that gave the universe its flavor. It's something Andy Chambers talked about at some length in his Designer's Commentary for the 2nd Ed Chaos Codex - how it was decided that the book would focus on the Traitor Legionnaires, rather than the Gods and Primarchs, because doing otherwise would rob the Chaos Marines of their own agency and motivation. Given how the Horus Heresy, and now 40K, have turned into the Stories of Primarchs Fightin' Round the Galaxy (and also some Marines were with them, I guess, whatever), it seems more and more like a phenomenally wise choice.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I think it's also an element of that in the originally written background, which 40k has largely kept and built off, the Primarchs didn't even exist. Marines were almost completely different in archetype, and have slowly morphed into what they are now. The Primarchs weren't Primarchs, they were just "Commanders", then we had the Horus Heresy expanded a bit, and the idea of the even-more-superhuman primogenitors of the Legions was developed, but by this point lots of the story had already been fleshed out, so rather than shoehorning them in everywhere, they kept them back in the mythic pre-history of the setting, making them King Arthur-esque figures that may or may not have done all the things attributed to them in legend, that are now "elsewhere", and "legend says will return when Engla- the Imperium needs them most".

 

At least, that's my interpretation of what probably happened.

[Slave to Darkness]

 

I guess that's still better than Fulgrim having fun on his pleasure planet all on his own without telling his sons the address so they had to search for it the past 10k years. ^^

Thats exactly what I would do though. 

[Panzer]

 

I guess that's still better than Fulgrim having fun on his pleasure planet all on his own without telling his sons the address so they had to search for it the past 10k years. ^^

 

Thats exactly what I would do though.

Who wouldn't. Guess there's a reason why we are followers of slaanesh after all. :P

[Stross]

"Lazy" Primarchs? 

 

Well, let's see what we have on another side of the barricade. 

 

1. Korax. Just gone because of depression as I presume, abandoning everyone. 

2. Russ. Gone as welll, but MAYBE for a good reason. 

3. Dorn. Sort of dead, but as with Alpharius, we can't tell for sure. Either captured or just hanging around somewhere as well as other loyalists Primarchs 

4. Vulcan. Gone, but with joke. Find 9 artifacts accross the Galaxy guys and MAYYYYYBE I will back. Fun. 

5. Khan. Just gone to ride in Web on bike. Awesome. 

6. Girlyman (sorry, can't pronounce that correctly). Lose to Fulgrime and laid dead for 10000 years until Eldars decided to help. Great. Loyalist can't do nothing on their own again, it always must be a third side or deus ex machina. 

7. Lion. The same as Girlyman. Sypher do more for Emperium than him. 

8. Angel. Dead. Like Alpharius, but we sure about that since his body on Abaddon's sheap. But we have some spirit that help Blood Angels sometimes. So he do a bit more, than Lion or any other even after death. 

9. Ferrus Manus. Dead. Nothing to say about it. 

 

So, we have the same thing, but with another point of perspective. Loyalists have many "lazy" primarchs as well. 

But they don't have any reason like Daemon primarchs do. 

Because: 

1. They are eternal enteties now. 10000 for them is mere a year from their perspective. And time in warp float differently from real world, that is why Abaddon and other probably not 10000 years old. Because there are no veterans of Long war on loyalist side aside from ancient dreadnaughts. 

2. They don't care that much now about real world. Because their souls are in God's hands. They now tied to them with their own will. 

3. There are big war of daemons in warp, much more brutal. So they definatly do something (except for Perturabo and maybe Fulgrim, but it is another story). 

Edited November 23, 2017 by Stross

[Plaguecaster]

Only real one you could argue being lazy is Lorgar who is doing god knows what locked up in his tower on a so called "seeking guidance from the gods" though knowing how much of a Jerk Erebus and Kor Phaeron are in general I wouldn't be surprised they had a hand in convincing their Primarchs to go for a massive prayer session whilst they control the legion again Edited November 23, 2017 by Plaguecaster

[the jeske]

 

1. Korax. Just gone because of depression as I presume, abandoning everyone.

well he did that after executing 2/3 of what was left of his already crippled legion, and he executed them with his own hands. This is romance of 3 kingdoms tier of tragedy[dude wins, but now he is king. kings do not have friends. so first order he gives is to execute all his brother generals for the sake of a more stable state. his very best friend somehow survives and become a monk to write this history down].

 

Generally I like primarchs reacting to normal stuff, their views on goals, everyday workings of legions and humans. It is far better then a super hero comic tier fights[not that I have anything about comics]. I just get a lot more from G-man not understanding his sons or the emperor, then Omegon going all "it was me Abadon, it was me all along".

 

That is why I love books like the first SW book , Lord of the Night or the whole Calpurnia Trilogy. Inq trilogy is good too, specially the omnibus version.

 

 

 

In case of Lorgar I like to think that we/some may think he is lazy, because of how we/some view religion in daily lifes nowadays. But remember in w40k world the gods are not just real, not just there because human minds have a part responsible for dealing with religious stuff[which makes it super real], but they also walk around from time to time. It is hard to ignore them. And when you try to understand 4 infinite beings at the same time, even a primarch struggles. In fact even as a DP, it is strange that lorgar wasn't brain fried yet.

[ChazSexington]

sfPanzer, on 22 Nov 2017 - 2:36 PM, said:http://bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_images/carbon_red/snapback.png

 

ChazSexington, on 22 Nov 2017 - 12:52 PM, said:http://bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_images/carbon_red/snapback.png

The Primarchs were never originally meant to be in 40k - the whole point was that they had ascended to a level where mortals didn't register. 40k used to be about Your Dudes, not GW's dudes. During the 90's you needed your opponent's permission to use Special Characters, for instance. That was the reason

 

I enjoy 4chan, thoroughly. They write the best tactica (d4chan) and I appreciate the candour. Their whole point is to be offensive and push the borders of free speech, so I understand why it really doesn't appeal to some. I won't engage in that debate here though, as it's not relevant. 

Yeah and that was fine before where we only had a setting instead of a story but I for one am glad they are coming back now. ^^

 

It's not even that long ago since you had to get the opponents permission to use special characters. In WHFB about 6-7 years ago it was the same. Mostly because special characters were unbalanced as heck with some rare exceptions.

And yeah the 1d4chan tactica is great....if it's up to date and if you aren't unlucky and read it right after some idiot re-wrote it based on his personal opinion (it's like the old wikipedia where everybody could write whatever they wanted).

 

 

See, I prefer the setting. It's wholly subjective; I want my dudes' story, not GW's dudes' story. I understand why people like it, mind! Some of the stories are pretty damn good. However, playable Primarchs just doesn't seem to fit the spirit of what 40k is to me. It's like Drizzt Do'Urden or Elminster in the Forgotten Realms - they dwarf your PC and make them diminutive. They're miniatures, not diminiatures. 

 

I think Augustus b'Raass hit the nail on the head in his WiP thread. 

 

Augustus b'Raass, on 15 Nov 2017 - 6:55 PM, said:http://bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_images/carbon_red/snapback.png

 

 The fluff:

The continuation of the 40K timeline an sich is not a problem for me. I have always wondered why they had the 2003 Third Battle for Armaggedon campaign set in the year M40.999, as any fluff continuation after that would logically have to take place in the 41st millenium, making the iconic name of the game itself seem inappropriate. We're playing 40K, not 41K, after all. But now they have, and BOY have they ruffled my fictional universe feathers. From my point of view (which has been heavily influenced by playing 20+ years of Vampire the Masquerade RPGs)  the all-powerful should remain mysterious, not to be named or heard of. That's what makes the universe so interesting - anything can take place, as the major players, the real movers and shakers, aren't playable characters. Now, suddenly, there are not one, but THREE Primarchs running around. AND suddenly there's a newly awakened Eldar god, plus some heretofore unheard of 10,000 year-old Mechanicus dude who has a stash of über-space-marines hidden away on Mars. I just find the whole thing ... unbelievable and therefore unrelatable. My suspension of disbelief has been broken. I cannot relate to the new universe, and especially to the new space marines. They're awesome models, hell yes, but I cannot shake the thoughts that they are just GW trying to make an extra buck off the whole truescale hype, while still managing to not upgrade 20+ years-old miniature kits that are basic to certain armies. *cough*Khorne Berzekers*cough*. I mean, what the hell are they thinking: Thousand Sons rubricae are infinitely less popular and competitive than Khorne Berzerkers, Nurgle already had a great conversion kit from FW, but nooooo, they get an update, plus Spehs Muhreens get completely, never-heard of or even hinted-at new units.

 

 

 

The Primarchs were never originally meant to be in 40k - the whole point was that they had ascended to a level where mortals didn't register. 40k used to be about Your Dudes, not GW's dudes. During the 90's you needed your opponent's permission to use Special Characters, for instance. That was the reason

Sorta yes, sorta no, During the majority of the 90's, at least the majority of the time in which there were Special Characters in 40K, you didn't need your opponent's permission to use them. That only came around in very late '98 with the advent of 3rd Edition, and it was a reaction to some of 2nd Edition's more powerful Special Character entries.

 

The thing with Primarchs isn't so much that they're so powerful as to be beyond humans, but that the people writing the game at the time understood that having Primarchs around detracted from the much more interesting stories of Astartes and humans and Eldar and Squats (yes, Squats!) around them that gave the universe its flavor. It's something Andy Chambers talked about at some length in his Designer's Commentary for the 2nd Ed Chaos Codex - how it was decided that the book would focus on the Traitor Legionnaires, rather than the Gods and Primarchs, because doing otherwise would rob the Chaos Marines of their own agency and motivation. Given how the Horus Heresy, and now 40K, have turned into the Stories of Primarchs Fightin' Round the Galaxy (and also some Marines were with them, I guess, whatever), it seems more and more like a phenomenally wise choice.

 

 

Cheers for the correction. I don't disagree with any of that. The Overfiend had it. 

[Panzer]

sfPanzer, on 22 Nov 2017 - 2:36 PM, said:http://bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_images/carbon_red/snapback.png

ChazSexington, on 22 Nov 2017 - 12:52 PM, said:http://bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_images/carbon_red/snapback.png

The Primarchs were never originally meant to be in 40k - the whole point was that they had ascended to a level where mortals didn't register. 40k used to be about Your Dudes, not GW's dudes. During the 90's you needed your opponent's permission to use Special Characters, for instance. That was the reason

 

I enjoy 4chan, thoroughly. They write the best tactica (d4chan) and I appreciate the candour. Their whole point is to be offensive and push the borders of free speech, so I understand why it really doesn't appeal to some. I won't engage in that debate here though, as it's not relevant.

Yeah and that was fine before where we only had a setting instead of a story but I for one am glad they are coming back now. ^^

 

It's not even that long ago since you had to get the opponents permission to use special characters. In WHFB about 6-7 years ago it was the same. Mostly because special characters were unbalanced as heck with some rare exceptions.

 

And yeah the 1d4chan tactica is great....if it's up to date and if you aren't unlucky and read it right after some idiot re-wrote it based on his personal opinion (it's like the old wikipedia where everybody could write whatever they wanted).

 

 

See, I prefer the setting. It's wholly subjective; I want my dudes' story, not GW's dudes' story. I understand why people like it, mind! Some of the stories are pretty damn good. However, playable Primarchs just doesn't seem to fit the spirit of what 40k is to me. It's like Drizzt Do'Urden or Elminster in the Forgotten Realms - they dwarf your PC and make them diminutive. They're miniatures, not diminiatures. 

 

I think Augustus b'Raass hit the nail on the head in his WiP thread. 

 

Augustus b'Raass, on 15 Nov 2017 - 6:55 PM, said:http://bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_images/carbon_red/snapback.png

 The fluff:

The continuation of the 40K timeline an sich is not a problem for me. I have always wondered why they had the 2003 Third Battle for Armaggedon campaign set in the year M40.999, as any fluff continuation after that would logically have to take place in the 41st millenium, making the iconic name of the game itself seem inappropriate. We're playing 40K, not 41K, after all. But now they have, and BOY have they ruffled my fictional universe feathers. From my point of view (which has been heavily influenced by playing 20+ years of Vampire the Masquerade RPGs)  the all-powerful should remain mysterious, not to be named or heard of. That's what makes the universe so interesting - anything can take place, as the major players, the real movers and shakers, aren't playable characters. Now, suddenly, there are not one, but THREE Primarchs running around. AND suddenly there's a newly awakened Eldar god, plus some heretofore unheard of 10,000 year-old Mechanicus dude who has a stash of über-space-marines hidden away on Mars. I just find the whole thing ... unbelievable and therefore unrelatable. My suspension of disbelief has been broken. I cannot relate to the new universe, and especially to the new space marines. They're awesome models, hell yes, but I cannot shake the thoughts that they are just GW trying to make an extra buck off the whole truescale hype, while still managing to not upgrade 20+ years-old miniature kits that are basic to certain armies. *cough*Khorne Berzekers*cough*. I mean, what the hell are they thinking: Thousand Sons rubricae are infinitely less popular and competitive than Khorne Berzerkers, Nurgle already had a great conversion kit from FW, but nooooo, they get an update, plus Spehs Muhreens get completely, never-heard of or even hinted-at new units.

 

Yeah I read that and I really don't agree with anything he wrote there. Different people different tastes I guess. ^^

[Skalpynock]

I prefer to subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Lorgar has been dead all along, and that the "Locked in an ivory tower praying all day" is a cover up.

[Azekai]

I prefer to subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Lorgar has been dead all along, and that the "Locked in an ivory tower praying all day" is a cover up.

I think that was originally the plan, but after the new rules changes it was retconned. Now Lorgar has spent the last 10,000 years trying to choose one of the 4 marks of chaos for his new existence as a daemon prince; he just can't quite make up his mind :P