Devastation of Baal - Tower of Amareo - SPOILERS

[dread05]

I've almost finished the Devastation of Baal audio book (for anyone insterested, somebody uploaded it on youtube) and something came up I didnt know about. 

 

 

When the tyranids crossed the moat, the Blood Angels combined the strenght of their death company along with those from the successors. They sent them to hold the ground and die so that others could escape to the walls. It's easy to assume the entire death company perished there. 

 

Later, when the tyranids were inside the Arx Angelicum, Dante commanded the tower of Amareo to be opened, and the damned be unleashed. They're described as gene-seed abominations, twice the size of space marines, with bulging muscles, yellow fangs and dry red skin.

 

Now, if I know my lore correct, the death companies are formed at the eve of battle from those brothers who are ready to give in to the rage. After the battle, those unfortunate enough to be alive, are executed either by Astorath or some other chaplain. So who are the inhabitants of the tower of the lost? How did they end in there? Are they marines that were on Baal and were afflicted by the rage without a chance to be sent to die in battle? Are they a new concept entierly? (I'd love to see models for those guys).  Until yesterday I thought that the rage-crazed marines were kept inside the tower and were formed into death companies, but I dont think those brutes could ever be herded and donned armor.

[Spyros]

I think that Astorath as an executioner is a relatively recent piece of lore, the Tower of Amareo must be older. As always, in Warhammer 40K lore, the truth is never absolute, but somewhere between the various stories.

[Majkhel]

Origin of the inhabitants of the Tower of Amareo (Tower of the Lost) is different than the DC. True, they are also overcome with Black Rage and Red Thirst, but also have malfunctioning gene seed. I would say that those are failed aspirants, similarly like with the Wolves of Fenris. Them being afflicted with the Black Rage is a result of the gene seed malfunction rather than pre-battle meditations.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tower_of_the_Lost

[Arkhanist]

The tower of the lost and Death Company have different (but related) causes. All Blood Angels and successors suffer from the Red Thirst - short lived rage and a need to drink the blood of their foes. The Angels try to hide it, as they see it as a shameful loss of control. It's likely caused by a mutation in the Omophagea organ which allows Marines to retrieve memories from things they eat, and is associated with the blood drinking rituals common in the geneline to try and control the Thirst. Becoming overwhelmed by The Thirst is usually short lived, but some chapters are suffering from the Thirst more than others - and is the reason some Chapters are a real danger to civilians or allies in the area when they lose control to it. Near the end of DoB, we're told about the physical changes the Thirst is making to the Knights of Blood who have embraced it - bulging muscles under their skin, red skin, fangs instead of teeth while stretching their lips, and amber eyes. The Lamenters are thought to have nearly eliminated it, but since suffered extreme bad luck.

 

The Tower of the Lost is what happens to Blood Angels who fall permanently to the Thirst, and mutate because of it. They get locked up in secret and guarded as the physical manifestation of the shame of the Angels, until released in desperation in DoB. (the link majkhel posted uses DoB as its only source, BTW).

 

The Black Rage, in current sources anyway, is caused by the psychic death shock of Sanguinius. A marine who falls to it, usually on the eve of battle, falls for good and relives the final hours of Sanguinius until death.The Death Company is formed from those marines who fall to the Rage and are guided by the chaplains to wreck stuff and hopefully honourably fall in battle. Astorath has the duty to kill any survivors, to give them final redemption in death, but other chaplains will do it in extremis.  

 

IIRC only Mephiston has overcome the Rage, while trapped under rubble. Some say it wasn't Calistarius who survived and took the name Mephiston, but something darker that lives in him instead. Lemartes is permanently in its throes, but uniquely still lucid and was able to convince Astorath to let him live. He's kept in stasis between battles.

[Panzer]

The ones in the tower were the ones lost to the Red Thirst completely. The Knights of Blood showed signs of such mutations when they sacrificed themselves in the same book.

It's also no new lore but it's part of the BA lore that didn't get mentioned anywhere for a long time.

[Majkhel]

I forgot about the Knights of Blood, thanks for reminding that!

[Panzer]

I forgot about the Knights of Blood, thanks for reminding that!

 

Shame on you!  

[dread05]

Ah I see. It makes total sense to be the final stage of the red thirst, since that's an actual physical mutation. What confused me was this part of the wiki

 

"This can cause Blood Angels Astartes to go insane prior to or during battle and feel the uncontrollable rage of Sanguinius himself during the final days of the Battle of Terra. The condition is largely irrecoverable and only a few Blood Angels have managed to overcome "the Flaw." Victims are locked away in the Tower of Amareo"

 

TBH the wiki jumps between the Black Rage and the Red Thirst almost randomly.

[Panzer]

Probably because some of the wiki entries got written by people who aren't that knowledgeable about BA and get confused by the differences of the Red Thirst and the Black Rage. Can't really blame them since some of the Black Library novels are inconsistent in that regard as well.

[Majkhel]

The stuff in viki also tends to be simply added to the existing articles and rarely redacted as whole. Hence repetitions and inconsistencies are common.
 

 

I forgot about the Knights of Blood, thanks for reminding that!

 

Shame on you!  

 

I vow to paint something red (thirst) as penance  
 

[pandion40]

Ah I see. It makes total sense to be the final stage of the red thirst, since that's an actual physical mutation. What confused me was this part of the wiki

 

"This can cause Blood Angels Astartes to go insane prior to or during battle and feel the uncontrollable rage of Sanguinius himself during the final days of the Battle of Terra. The condition is largely irrecoverable and only a few Blood Angels have managed to overcome "the Flaw." Victims are locked away in the Tower of Amareo"

 

TBH the wiki jumps between the Black Rage and the Red Thirst almost randomly.

That’s because the lore has been defined more over the decades, the Black Rage and Red Thirst have always been separate symptoms but in the early years they were much more vaguely defined and closely linked, there was an inference back then that you’d suffer the Black Rage and then after that you’d fall to the Red Thirst. I remember having a debate years ago I think on this very board about if the Blood Angels are just normal marines until they feel the Rage or do they always feel angry and eventually fall. That’s not even a question these days as the lore is now better defined. The BA always feel the effects of the Thirst, it rises and falls but it’s there. The Rage is more of an on/off thing but can be resisted. Add in simple errors from writers, I’ve seen Red Rage in books in the past.

 

The info you read is a victim of the vagaries of the old lore and while the Rage and Thirst have been better defined over the years much of the rest seems to have been copy pasted from codex to codex for years until the novels Dante and Devastation of Baal. I remember reading that Guy Haley commented he was surprised how underdeveloped our lore was given how popular the BA are

 

It is still possible that many of those that fall to the Thirst fell to the Rage first as the Rage effects the mind of the BA. And a strong and disciplined mind is the very thing needed to resist the Thirst. But I’ve not seen this anywhere recently, old lore though often has them linked, the comic Bloodquest had a character that fell to the Rage but was resisting and he had frequent episodes of the Red Thirst, the only BA in the comic to do so, but then in the novel Dante, Dante’s whole squad not affected by the Rage had a brief episode where the Thirst became to strong to resist and they all fed on the aliens, plus the part where Dante’s friend is falling to the Rage and the officer in contact with Dante over the radio asked him to clarify if it’s the Rage or Thirst he’s falling to. This shows the difference in how the flaws have been handled over the years.

 

Lastly many lore writers on websites are fans of 40k in general and not necessarily the BA in particular and the better definition of the Rage and Thirst has happened subtly and organically over the years in our codexes and so has been easy for a non BA fan to miss. This is changing I think as more and more people read the excellent novels Dante and Devastation of Baal.

[Arkangilos]

Also, originally Mephiston didn't fall to the Black Rage, but fell completely to the Red Thirst* (both would be sent to the Death Company). Mephiston was the only one to overcome the complete fall to the Thirst, and at that time Lemartes (the head chaplain at the time) was the only one to have complete control over the Black Rage. Back then it showed hope to both aspects, not just one.

 

The Tower of Amereo was filled with the Red Thirst where you could hear the screams for blood.

 

* Also, someone will no doubt point out the, "But it also says Black Rage at x point" in which case you are right, but at that time Black Rage and Red Thirst were less defined, and in another paragraph just below it (in the case of the third edition) it says "Red Thirst" rather than Black Rage, and the rules support the Red Thirst, rather than the Black Rage (when rules would actually make him stop and drink the blood). So I would say the one that says "Red Thirst" is the correct one.

[pandion40]

With Mephiston I always took it to be he fell to the Black Rage first then the Red Thirst after he was trapped under the building, everyone even GW writers seemed to have a slightly different view of how it worked back then but at the time I always viewed the Thirst as an inevitable result of falling to the Rage, if you survived long enough.

 

This is one case where I prefer the modern interpretation of two separate curses rather than any of the theories I got from the old lore.

[Damon Nightman]

In the lemartes short story, he specifically states the rage cancels out the thirst. The whole company he is with falls to the thirst due to a trap, but him and the DC he is leading are not phased.

 

I don't think anyone really considers that fully canon though...

[Arkangilos]

True. It could be mechanisms of it though. So maybe they didn't fall because it was something external that triggered it, as opposed to it canceling it out completely. I don't have a codex handy (as it's half the world away) so I could be wrong, but what does it say under Astorath? I think I remember it saying that he executed them so that they don't fall to it? Again, I can't remember completely and can't verify? 

[Panzer]

Well it kinda makes sense that BA can't suffer from the Black Rage and the Red Thirst at the same time. If the Black Rage is something like the Marine getting "possessed" (for a lack of a better word) by the memories/spirit/soul/whatever of Sanguinius it's not too far fetched to assume that it also surpresses the Red Thirst since that would come from the body&mind from the original Marine.

[Arkangilos]

Eh, I would disagree because the thirst is a physical thing, and the physical doesn't go away because the mind is lost. I would say that the physical manifestation would exist, but they are too crazy to notice it? Like how you can blow off their leg but they can't tell because they are out of their minds?

[Panzer]

It's physical but it affects the mind and drives it into a frenzy. If the mind got already overwritten by something else completely there's nothing to get driven into a frenzy anymore.

[TheRealMcCagh]

Earlier in the novel, don't they throw all the DC in the Tower? I remember it's massive due to all the successors, but I thought they took them all and locked them in the Tower. Maybe just because it was a big secure structure they dual purposed it for both DC and the hulking monsters. I like the idea of the Tower being just for those that fell to the Red Thirst (since they resemble the Knights of Blood marines and when Dante was attacked in his early years by a squad member, it was described being pretty similar) and the Black Rage leads to the Death Company, where all survivors are killed after the campaign. It makes it much neater, but I don't think the actual lore is that defined.

[dread05]

Eh, I would disagree because the thirst is a physical thing, and the physical doesn't go away because the mind is lost. I would say that the physical manifestation would exist, but they are too crazy to notice it? Like how you can blow off their leg but they can't tell because they are out of their minds?

 

 

In the DoB, Sentor Jool says that the only thing keeping the Rage away is giving in to the thirst to the point that they are mutated. Later in the novel, Dante begins having the Death visions of Sanguinius, even after giving in to the Red Thirst. So anything goes really.

Earlier in the novel, don't they throw all the DC in the Tower? I remember it's massive due to all the successors, but I thought they took them all and locked them in the Tower. Maybe just because it was a big secure structure they dual purposed it for both DC and the hulking monsters. I like the idea of the Tower being just for those that fell to the Red Thirst (since they resemble the Knights of Blood marines and when Dante was attacked in his early years by a squad member, it was described being pretty similar) and the Black Rage leads to the Death Company, where all survivors are killed after the campaign. It makes it much neater, but I don't think the actual lore is that defined.

 

They didnt imprison the Death Company in the tower. More likely, they lead them to the dungeons of the tower of Amareo, armored and armed, to wait until they were needed.

[Majkhel]

 

They didnt imprison the Death Company in the tower. More likely, they lead them to the dungeons of tower of Amareo, armored and armed, to wait until they were needed.

 

^^exactly that.

 

​I've just re-read the passage in DoB related to forming of the Death Company. 

"At the rear of the cathedral, the three Rage Gates opened onto large lifter cages, ready to convey the damned to the chambers in the Dungeons of Amareo where they would be housed until needed."

 

Mind that it was rare for Baal to be under attack and so, the Dungeons might not be specifically designed to hold Death Company. It may be that the number of the DC at that time simply required a large space where they could be safely confined. But I'm certain that they were separate from the "normal" inhabitants of the Tower, since they would certainly fight each other if possible. And they were also unleashed separately. 

[dread05]

 

 

They didnt imprison the Death Company in the tower. More likely, they lead them to the dungeons of tower of Amareo, armored and armed, to wait until they were needed.

 

^^exactly that.

 

​I've just re-read the passage in DoB related to forming of the Death Company. 

"At the rear of the cathedral, the three Rage Gates opened onto large lifter cages, ready to convey the damned to the chambers in the Dungeons of Amareo where they would be housed until needed."

 

Mind that it was rare for Baal to be under attack and so, the Dungeons might not be specifically designed to hold Death Company. It may be that the number of the DC at that time simply required a large space where they could be safely confined. But I'm certain that they were separate from the "normal" inhabitants of the Tower, since they would certainly fight each other if possible. And they were also unleashed separately. 

 

 

Yes, if I understood things correctly, the "damned" were each in his own cell, probably chained.

 

I'm really intrigued by them, its like we had our own wulfen and I didnt know about them. They sound like red Hulks with fangs and claws.

[Reyner]

Like in the Blood Quest comic is how I pictured the ones who fell to the Red Thirst in the tower:

 

https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0277/44/1381792271207.jpg

[Ornithologist]

I thought briefly of converting some to use as flavorful counts as death co dreads... but decided against it.

[Silverson]

I thought briefly of converting some to use as flavorful counts as death co dreads... but decided against it.

 

that would look amazing.