Your thoughts on the Primaris and lore progression

[Gentlemanloser]

But what of Yarriks actions were Heresy?

[Huggtand]

You know guys, your complaints about Cawl can be applied to a lot of heroes in 40k.

 

There was a time before Yarrick. Suddenly this guy shows up in the lore and he's an incredible commissar, general without parallel and performs super human feats that earn him more respect from the Orks then they give to the super human Adeptus Astartes.

 

The difference with Cawl and Yarrick is that they din´t try to shoehorn in a retroactively backstory for the latter an say that he was a super general long before Armageddon off screen. Yarrick became the hero he is with the story.

 

As many have said before, if we had stories a year ago where hint of this mad Magos working on a awesome project ,where dropped regularly with more hints of what it was I think this would not be such a big deal. We could feel invested in an evolving story.

[Claws and Effect]

You know guys, your complaints about Cawl can be applied to a lot of heroes in 40k.

 

There was a time before Yarrick. Suddenly this guy shows up in the lore and he's an incredible commissar, general without parallel and performs super human feats that earn him more respect from the Orks then they give to the super human Adeptus Astartes.

True. But there's a big difference between the 2.

 

Yarrick didn't become the single most important character in the entire Imperium the moment he was introduced. He didn't bring back a Primarch or single handedly reinforce the entirety of the Adeptus Astartes. He showed up and led a battle with great skill and was really good at killing Orks.

 

The entire setting didn't shift when he was introduced.

 

Cawl is basically a McGuffin in a fancy package. He exists to drive the plot forward.

 

Honestly, would the setting be that different if Yarrick didn't exist? Or Shrike, or Straken, or any number of suddenly appearing characters?

 

When a character is as important to the plot as Cawl has been, you NEED to have more of a build up to him. Otherwise he comes off as exactly what he is: A plot device to sell more overpriced plastic.

[Marshal Loss]

Actually, Yarrick is an excellent example of how you can introduce a powerful and important character and have them still be a believable part of the setting.

 

He's one of the greatest heroes of the Imperium, but his importance is derived and related to only two things: the planet Armageddon and the Ork Warlord Ghazghkull. Some amazing feats were performed on Armageddon, certainly, but...that's it. Yarrick wasn't hiding somewhere for thousands of years on a secret mission that nobody else knew about, Yarrick's actions haven't revolutionised and changed an entire galaxy beyond what vast organisations and god-like beings were capable of, Yarrick isn't gallivanting around the galaxy delivering super super soldiers to far flung corners of the setting. He's just an example of an incredible human who rose to high command under incredible circumstances, with a great rivalry going on with an infamous enemy to boot. The sort of character that we, as players and fans of the setting, can create ourselves and have lead our armies.

 

All characters have to be introduced at some point, that much is true. And no doubt it can be a challenge for authors to introduce a character that is interesting, notable, and believable. The easiest way to do so effectively? Make sure they don't suddenly become a key part of the entire setting immediately upon arrival.

 

There is nothing wrong with Cawl being notable, or powerful, or even one of the greatest magos' ever to bestride the galaxy, even if he came out of nowhere. What is problematic, however, is the sheer volume of achievements being attributed to him out of nowhere, inventions and engineering that are simply without precedent in the setting itself. Games Workshop wanted the Primaris out, and they wanted them out quickly, and Cawl was used as justification. I find this justification to be rather poor.

[Marshal Rohr]

Primaris didn’t kill 40k for me. It’s actually, shockingly, the exact opposite. For the first time in 5 years, I’ve got Black Templars on my desk and a pretty cool lore project in the works for them. In fact, it’ll be the only Primaris Project with an extensive lore portion attempted so far. Most everyone else has just been doing models, and that’s perfectly cool too. I love project logs of any kind, lore focused or conversion focused. They’re all equal to me. See, I like models. I like details. It like painting the underlayer of my mark 3 a metallic color instead of a chapter’s primary color because it feels ‘lived in’. I love lived in universes. I like seeing the brand names of noodles in Blade Runner or Jyn Ersos stormtrooper doll.

 

My love of details extends to the lore. I don’t mean we need to know Marneus Calgar’s favorite brand of khorne flakes, but we do need to know if he’s alive Post-Gathering Storm. We need to know how warp travel functions in the Imperium Nihlus. We need to know if the Imperial Guard is becoming standardized in appearance. We need to know if Terminators are dead and being phased out.

 

The new lore trades detail and nuance for simplicity. It’s simple to have Cawl be the functional head of the Mechanicus with most of the support. It’s simple for Guilliman to be the de facto commander of the Ultramarines successors. Having Mortarion and Magnus gives you not just beautiful models to sell, but easy stories. Right now you can basically build a massive demon and marine Nurgle army complete with cultists and poxwalkers and plaguebearers and it’ll be amazing to see and requires no extensive work.

 

Simple isnt very deep though, and war games benefit more from depth than simplicity if it’s mean to be immersive. I have recently been introduced to the idea of ‘railroading’ by DMs in DnD and it explains a lot of the problems with studio background. It’s become very railroading. Like Fallout 4, it’s gorgeous and fun, but it’s not as immersive as New Vegas. It doesn’t make us bad people to want immersion over voiced protagonist lines. It doesn’t make us bad people to want Cawl to just be one facet of the Primaris Project and new Mechanicus wave of tech.

 

The people saying ‘it’s the same as it’s always been’ aren’t wrong, but they aren’t right either. It certainly is different. The simplicity is different. Sure some people prefer simplicity. That’s perfectly fine. I am not even opposed to it, theoretically. It’s nice to know the hierarchies. But I don’t like it at the expense of all depth and right now it’s very shallow. This may change in time with BL novels but it doesn’t feel like the studio will be getting much deeper.

 

The IN gives us all a cool playground to explore deep and immersive lore ideas that can scale to what we think we can handle. Religious Templars? They all died and my new M2C-verse Templars never much cared for any religion. The Emperor is pretty much a myth to them. The Imperium itself is a myth. They’ve never seen a Codex. That’s the kind of stuff I can do on the other side of the rift and that’s why I’m happy to come back to 40k. I never have to acknowledge the lore I’m not a fan of, and the IN makes it plausible and fit into the universe. How cool is that? An official way to make your ‘do what you want’ stories fit!

 

If they would just stop telling these stories as pseudo-novels and go back to short, tight but vague lore blurbs, the new fluff could be awesome.

 

 

Edit: this was supposed to be in the other thread, but it’s constructive and on topic so I’ll just leave it here

[bluntblade]

What Loss said.

 

For me, Cawl encapsulates the problem. I just don't find it engaging if the heroes prevail or endure because they get better toys. Like in Episode II where Yoda rocks up with a disposable army that's better than the baddies' disposable army. It feels too easy, especially as it comes with such a naked sales pitch.

 

That Cawl is the only Mechanicum character of his stature speaks to the way in which the faction has been underserved, not unfairness in the way that people perceive him.

[BitsHammer]

Can't C&P at work.

 

Just like to add that the list of codexes posted earlier has forgotten the poor Grey Knights.

 

We also got no new minis.

I'm honestly dying to know how Primaris Grey Knights will work. Funny though, we can have Primaris Exorcists now and they share the same geneseed.

[Ishagu]

So I'm getting the impression that it was simply the speed in which everything happened.

Gathering Storm transformed the setting in 3 months, and then 8th came shortly after. The story didn't move for 2 decades, and then jumped 200 years forward in the space of weeks.

 

There's nothing about the plot which is more or less reasonable than anything that has happened before. I can point to any number of things that have taken place over the years - but none have actually moved the story forward.

[Jarl Caldersson]

Ishagu you oversimplify things. People have explained their points again and again, there is at least 3 or 4 major points being repeated. From simple things as "Primaris need melee weapons and terminators" to much more complex things like "the fluff has so much far-fetched surprises that are just Deus ex machina".

[BitsHammer]

- Asterion Moloc is described as exceptionally large for an Astartes, so is Tyberos the Red Wake, and the guy from the Exorcists. Why couldn't these characters be retconned into being secret Primaris prototypes?

 

- There are at least 2 chapters that whose description is basically "really big for Astartes", the Sons of Antaeus and the Storm Giants. Again, why couldn't these chapters be test beds for the Primaris organs?

Moloc, Tyberos and Silas (the guy from the Exorcists) are all FW characters (the last of which never got a model *shakes fist in the direction of Nottingham*), so if FW gets around to it they might see a Primaris retrofit.

 

Storm Giants were a GW chapter, so that is a missed opportunity, but then again we may see something come out of it going forward from the BL since the studio does a lot less lore writing away from the first founding chapters (and the occassional Son of Dorn since Crimson Fists and Black Templars get some direct love).

 

I'll be honest, I had to look the Sons of Antaeus up since it wasn't quite clicking who they were, and found this tid-bit on the 40k Wikia:

...the Astartes of the Sons of Antaeus Chapter are unusually large and robust physical specimens, even among their already superhuman kind, and they are capable of surviving wounds and physical injuries that would kill even other Space Marines.

 

That sounds, looks and feels like a Primaris to me. This is a chapter with no official artwork or colours as far as I know so making them a Primaris, or at least a prototype of that chapter, would work very well. They're a 21st founding chapter, which is one of the cursed foundings with all sorts of odd stuff popping up or whole chapters being wiped by bad luck (basically like the 13th founding), so it could easilly have been a live test of the Primaris project without changing anything in the lore.

 

Some alternate theories from the lore suggest they might be a secret Death Guard successor, which if so could make them Death Guard Primaris minus the diseased bits.

[Ishagu]

Hey, I completely agree they need more model variety. That isn't even up for debate. They are a new range and will need time to grow. The old Astartes were around for 30 years.

As for fluff being far-fetched, really? Any more than everything that has happened before? I really don't think so.

[Robbienw]

They would need a new primaris version of the grey knights geneseed created to set off the new primaris organs.  Not sure if cawl would ever be allowed access to the special grey knights geneseed, so presumably they would have to make the new geneseed themselves, could take them a while.

 

People tend to forget, but cawl also made new geneseed for the Primaris, they don't use the geneseed of normal space marines.  Its mentioned as being 'more potent' and more stable than previous geneseed.

 

Could be an additional reason why regular space marines are still being made at the current point in the setting - not enough primaris specific geneseed has been made to make enough to replace all space marines so regular ones need to be made to keep the numbers up.

[Ishagu]

Did Cawl know about the GK prior to Gathering Storm?

[Jarl Caldersson]

Edit: inserted quote for context due to thread merger

 

Hey, I completely agree they need more model variety. That isn't even up for debate. They are a new range and will need time to grow. The old Astartes were around for 30 years.

As for fluff being far-fetched, really? Any more than everything that has happened before? I really don't think so.

Really the fact that Roboute keeps showing up to just after all these major events with all these Primaris to replenish the depleted ranks. If I was an investigator on a case like this IRL, I would suspect foul play on behalf of Roboute. It seems like he is behind it to get the Primaris into position.

 

No I don't believe that is actually happening though, but it is a repeated dues ex machina that has been repeated multiple times that it is simply bad storytelling.

[Brother Tyler]

I've merged the "Primaris killed WH40K for me" and "Primaris made WH40K better for me" topics because they were basically the same thing, with the same participants saying the same things.

 

And I've changed the topic title to more accurately reflect the actual discussion that is taking place (from the original whiny title of the "killed" topic and the blatant counter of the "better" topic).

 

Let's keep it civil, rational, and respectful. More importantly, let's keep it constructive.

[Ishagu]

Edit: inserted quote for context due to thread merger

 

 

Hey, I completely agree they need more model variety. That isn't even up for debate. They are a new range and will need time to grow. The old Astartes were around for 30 years.

As for fluff being far-fetched, really? Any more than everything that has happened before? I really don't think so.

Really the fact that Roboute keeps showing up to just after all these major events with all these Primaris to replenish the depleted ranks. If I was an investigator on a case like this IRL, I would suspect foul play on behalf of Roboute. It seems like he is behind it to get the Primaris into position.

 

No I don't believe that is actually happening though, but it is a repeated dues ex machina that has been repeated multiple times that it is simply bad storytelling.

You do realise this took place over the course of a century? And Guilliman was using a fleet of space craft to get around that was more advanced or improved upon from older designs. He didn't show up everywhere all at once, he specifically travelled to key Imperium locations including Chapter strongholds for 100 hundred years. Admittedly this is pretty fast for 40k but assume he had all the resources necessary for him to do it.

 

As for defeating various Chaos forces, exactly who is a more capable general from the people he's battled?

[BitsHammer]

But what of Yarriks actions were Heresy?

 

Technically, his power klaw is heretical. It's actual xenos tech he's using after all, which is a pretty big no-no for the Imperium, yet no one ever says anything about it.

[BitsHammer]

Did Cawl know about the GK prior to Gathering Storm?

 

Even if he didn't, the Exorcists chapter gives him a backdoor in if he did anything for those guys' geneseed. Considering the Exorcists gift recruits to the Grey Knights regularly, I could see some recruit being discovered as a potent psyker as a scout leading to him, Primaris implants and all, being given to the grey Knights.

 

[Huggtand]

Hey, I completely agree they need more model variety. That isn't even up for debate. They are a new range and will need time to grow. The old Astartes were around for 30 years.

As for fluff being far-fetched, really? Any more than everything that has happened before? I really don't think so.

 

No, it's not that it´s more far-fetched than anything else. Most people here don´t have a problem with the single pieces themselves. We had the concept of supermarines before with the raptors in HH. We had super Magos Arcand Land etc.

 

What's the big problem is the rushed/simplistic/and bad way they introduced it all. It's like a kids morning cartoon, now a thing happens but we don't have more than a second to show it before the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and...  It to simplistic, we want more details, afterthought and frankly more quality from GW when they do something like this. Now they just crammed it to us with almost no explanation at all, more than that stuff happend.

 

The pity is that if they missed heaps of good stories and customer immersion in their products. What's not to like about a mad genius Magos working on forbidden tech and with a amazing plan to restore a Primarch. That alone could have been gold to follow the build up for.

[Jarl Caldersson]

 

Edit: inserted quote for context due to thread merger

Hey, I completely agree they need more model variety. That isn't even up for debate. They are a new range and will need time to grow. The old Astartes were around for 30 years.

As for fluff being far-fetched, really? Any more than everything that has happened before? I really don't think so.

Really the fact that Roboute keeps showing up to just after all these major events with all these Primaris to replenish the depleted ranks. If I was an investigator on a case like this IRL, I would suspect foul play on behalf of Roboute. It seems like he is behind it to get the Primaris into position.

No I don't believe that is actually happening though, but it is a repeated dues ex machina that has been repeated multiple times that it is simply bad storytelling.

You do realise this took place over the course of a century? And Guilliman was using a fleet of space craft to get around that was more advanced or improved upon from older designs. He didn't show up everywhere all at once, he specifically travelled to key Imperium locations including Chapter strongholds for 100 hundred years. Admittedly this is pretty fast for 40k but assume he had all the resources necessary for him to do it.

As for defeating various Chaos forces, exactly who is a more capable general from the people he's battled?

Ishagu when did I say he showed up everywhere at once. I said he shows up right after major events, very shortly after in the books. It doesn't matter if it was 50 years between his miraculous saving of the DA and his astonishing saving of the BA. The issue is he shows right after the events, never before never after everything is fixed, but right when the embers are still hot.

 

I also never said he was of a battle field commander, so you won me there I don't have a counter argument, though I never made a argument to start with.

 

I am not sure if you are purposely ignoring what people are saying to write a counter argument, but it seems like you are not not grasping the concept of people's messages.

[Gentlemanloser]

The Exorcists are not made from GK geneseed, and don't gift recruits to them either!

 

Also GK use Tesserects and the NDK is based on Xeno tech.  So Yarriks claw *might* be passable. ;)

 

As far as I'm aware, as a regular Space Marine Chapter, the GK are still required to tithe 10% of the Gene Seed to the Ad Mech, Cawl would have been aware (we have Techmarines, they go to Mars for training, another reason the oh so secret GK can't actually be secret) plus we have our own Forge World.  Someone as big in the Ad Mech as Cawl would have known of Demios as well.

[Ishagu]

I'm not ignoring what anyone is saying.

 

You have to understand that a returned Primarch would have more impressive exploits than anyone else. Guilliman is a legendary demi-God - I fully expect him to be involved in major events.

Also, during the Scouring he was described as practically being everywhere at once, dealing with threats. It's basically a continuation of that.

 

Good point on Yarrick's claw. Guess Xenos involvement can be ignored when it suits the Imperium!

[BitsHammer]

The Exorcists are not made from GK geneseed, and don't gift recruits to them either!

That must have been retconned since I'm almost positive that they were successors that occassionally gift recruits to the Grey Knights when FW fleshed the chapter out. I know all GW does is mention them having 12 companies due to a high mortality rate for new recruits (getting possessed will do that to you after all), so that's a shame that it changed because it was a nice way to let Cawl work on Grey Knight geneseed even if he wasn't allowed to know about the Grey Knights.

 

Flipside is that they Grey Knights are an "open secret" among the High Lords, so it may just be one of those things you learn about over time. Alternatively, with Cawl's age, he may have remembered the gifting of Deimos to the chapter back during the Heresy and it's disappearance along with Titan. Who knows, perhaps the Grey Knight geneseed was even the crux of his work since it was made way later than the other chapters and was likely more stable and potent than the earlier geneseed production.

[deathspectersgt7]

Wait new and approved Ships now ? Now I have to go back and re-read DI to find that .

[Leif Bearclaw]

So I'm getting the impression that it was simply the speed in which everything happened.

Gathering Storm transformed the setting in 3 months, and then 8th came shortly after. The story didn't move for 2 decades, and then jumped 200 years forward in the space of weeks.

 

Again, that's not the entire issue. There's no monolithic 'them' with a 'simple' explanation, so trying to boil it down to a single bullet point like that doesn't really help and makes it look like you're deliberately overlooking the varied and nuanced concerns/dislikes of many people. Personally the speed of the changes certainly contributed to the overall poor quality, slapdash feel of the change, but that's not the only issue at work (Deus Ex Cawl, the very 'Marines +1 concept has always been kinda controversial'. how does Chapter X get them, why does Chapter Y accept them, the formulaic 'Chapter gets wrecked, only to saved by Gulliman and co, hence accepting Primaris' being overused etc.).