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Primarchs - Scion of the Emperor anthology


Angel_of_Blood

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Honestly I am less fussed about the quality, moreso the content/context of the story. Did a quick google and found some people on reddit are specuating that hes been Primarised like Calgar, which would be a bit naff but make sense due to the little blurb.

Honestly I am less fussed about the quality, moreso the content/context of the story. Did a quick google and found some people on reddit are specuating that hes been Primarised like Calgar, which would be a bit naff but make sense due to the little blurb.

 

Ok, I gave it a quick read - I'll put what I read in spoilers below in case people want to read it fresh.

 

Uriel is on the point of death, with a deathly skull visage in front of him telling him of the fate that will shortly befall him, the pain and fire that will soon wrack his body. He begins to recall those who made him the man he was in his life, previous captains, his company command squad, and even his enemies. With each person he comes across he sees their death or, with his beloved 4th company, turning their back on him. Eventually he sees his greatest foe, Honsou of the Iron Warriors at the head of a vast force of daemonic engines, charging towards him as he stands alone. He remembers the words of the codex astartes, steeling himself against his death as it is to come.

Back in the operating room, an Ultramarines chaplain looks over Uriel's broken body and asks whether it had worked. Apothecary Selenus checks overVentrisand confirms that Uriel is dead, so it has indeed worked. All they have to do now is wait and see whether he "crosses the Rubicon".

 

Honestly I am less fussed about the quality, moreso the content/context of the story. Did a quick google and found some people on reddit are specuating that hes been Primarised like Calgar, which would be a bit naff but make sense due to the little blurb.

 

Ok, I gave it a quick read - I'll put what I read in spoilers below in case people want to read it fresh.

 

Uriel is on the point of death, with a deathly skull visage in front of him telling him of the fate that will shortly befall him, the pain and fire that will soon wrack his body. He begins to recall those who made him the man he was in his life, previous captains, his company command squad, and even his enemies. With each person he comes across he sees their death or, with his beloved 4th company, turning their back on him. Eventually he sees his greatest foe, Honsou of the Iron Warriors at the head of a vast force of daemonic engines, charging towards him as he stands alone. He remembers the words of the codex astartes, steeling himself against his death as it is to come.

Back in the operating room, an Ultramarines chaplain looks over Uriel's broken body and asks whether it had worked. Apothecary Selenus checks overVentrisand confirms that Uriel is dead, so it has indeed worked. All they have to do now is wait and see whether he "crosses the Rubicon".

 

 

Thanks Parker you, sir, are a legend.

 

And there's number three.

Not that of a surprise, tbh. But I'm really curious if they'll continue to do this with all "major" characters.

 

*edit*

Added spoiler tags

who was number 2?

 

 

A character in Spears of the Emperor.
A Mentor sent to see how they are holding out.

CMValrak just uploaded a vid and mentioned you and the Uriel Ventris Spoiler, Parker. :wink:

 

Anything else noteworthy in This anthology, btw?

 

Yeah - Valrak messaged me a few days ago asking whether I minded if he were to do that. Once it's all up on a forum it's pretty much public domain, but it's always nice for someone to ask.

 

The only other stories I've read are the two Heresy stories.

 

"Child of Chaos" by Chris Wraight - This is the one story I bought the anthology for, the story behind Erebus. I've said it many a time on here that Erebus has always lacked a raison d'être, and a lot of his character is simply "I'm Evil!", so getting a chance to see behind the scenes was always going to be appealing. As far as the story goes, it's told by Erebus as the narrator as he looks back over the different eras of his life. it starts with him as a young boy living in a desert village, through to his joining the Covenant on Colchis as a method of obtaining power, losing the planetary religious war against Larger and having to hide the old beliefs of the Covenant away, to the coming of the Emperor and becoming an Astartes. It's very well written, but it still lacks the defining motivation behind Erebus for me and still leaves me wondering what his deal is. It does make it somewhat clear in the story that there isn't a defining moment or incident that takes him down his path, he's just somehow set on it from day one and he doesn't want to deviate from it. Even when the Emperor first arrives on Colchis to be reunited with Lorgar, Erebus isn't in awe of the Emperor but knows in himself that the Emperor is destined to be 'brought low' by him. 

There is one minor spoiler in the story - it's not really relevant to the 30k universe or the vents that are to come, but I will put it in spoiler quotes just in case you want to come across it naturally:

Erebus isn't his real name. Erebus is the name of another boy in the same village who was looking to join the Covenant, and 'Erebus' murdered him and assumed his identity. He doesn't reveal his true name at any point. The ritual of tattooing colchisian script on his head is something that he took from Erebus as well. At the end fo the story, as a throwback to the epilogue of Fear to Tread, 'Erebus' still has his flesh-face that was cut away by Horus using the Anathame. The flesh itself is starting to decay, and although 'Erebus' has enough power to instantly replace it he keeps his face a bloodied muscular mess behind his helmet. 

 

 

"Champion of Oaths" by John French - Probably the best story of the three that I've read. It's a fairly simple premise, set during the Great Crusade rather than during the Heresy itself, in that the story primarily resolves around the selection process for a new master of the Templars within the VIIth Legion. The 'applicant' for the position must defeat all 200 other brothers of the Templars in combat, all at the same time. As Sigismund fights he has flashes back to his time before the Legion, and after he defeats his brothers he is left with a single combatant to become master of the Templars; Appius, the former mentor of Sigismund, and the first of the VIIth Legion's Dreadnouhgts. No spoilers here, just some good background and a well written story.

It makes the other templars seem like a bunch of unskilled hacks or utterly physically incompetent. 200 people one after the other is an insane feat even allowing for some being much more talented at swordsmanship or unarmed combat than others when we're talking about warriors that are all on the much the same baseline of physical prowess and will have mostly all gone through similar training etc I know it's rule of cool and all and 40k is not supposed to be dry serious military sci-fi or built on what would be realistic for a great human fighter scaled up to post-human to pull off, but that is just way too far into cape comic/anime sort of territory and kind of makes a mockery of the concept of Astartes as any kind of balanced military force if some are so much better than others to be capable of such feats.

I think it would've made more sense for Sigismund to fight the 20 "runner-up" Templars, rather than ten times that number with no breaks between.

 

Perhaps, relative to other Astartes, Sigismund is an extreme outlier not just in the realm of skill but also in the realm of physical stamina.

 

I recall the scene with Delvarus in Betrayer :

 

‘First blood?’ Delvarus growled at his brother. For years, but for the rarest bouts, first blood was almost all they ever asked of him.

‘Third blood,’ Skane replied, and lifted an inactive chainsword.

The fight was painfully, though not shamefully, brief. Skane went down to third blood in two minutes, losing to Delvarus without the Triarii captain even breaking a sweat.

Before Skane had even picked himself up, another World Eater stepped forwards to take his place. Delvarus was still laughing.

‘First blood?’ he asked again.

‘Third blood.’

The fight went the same way. As did the next, and the next, and the next. As did the one to follow that.

By the seventh fight, Delvarus was breathing heavily, his skin beaded by effort. ‘Who’s next?’ he cried over the hamstrung brother at his feet. ‘Who’s next?’

‘Third blood,’ said yet another World Eater, lifting a stilled chainaxe.

This fight went to four minutes, ending with Delvarus smirking through the cheers. Tradition stated no warrior should fight more than eight bouts in a single night, else he attracted accusations of arrogance and vainglory, putting himself above his brothers. The Triarii cast his meteor hammer to the deck, raising his fists in triumph. The cheers, however, had stopped cold.

Delvarus turned to leave the circle and rejoin the crowd, but the World Eaters didn’t part to make way for him. One of them, a warrior with a face almost as badly sutured as Esca’s, thudded chest to chest with the Triarii.

‘Third blood,’ he said to Delvarus. There was a chainsword in his hand.

‘I’ve done my eight,’ the warrior grinned.

‘Third blood,’ the World Eater repeated, and shoved Delvarus back into the circle.

The Triarii reclaimed his flail, hesitating a moment before setting it whirling again. His eyes were utterly untouched by the amusement plastered across his dark features.

Above all of this, Esca started to smile.

Three more fights ended just as the first eight had. Delvarus was no longer amused, and no longer trying to leave the circle. He knew where this was going.

Another fight. And another. And another – on this, the fourteenth, Delvarus’s opponent raked the motionless teeth of his chainaxe across the Triarii’s bicep, drawing first blood. In a rage, Delvarus retaliated with first, second and third bloodings in as many swings.

‘Next,’ he breathed through clenched teeth, looking out at the ring of his brothers who stared at him in silence. He was panting now, no different from the breathlessness of the front lines. Legionaries were gene-engineered to fight for days on end against human and inhuman enemies alike, but on even ground…

When brother fought brother in a place as brutal as the XII Legion’s fighting pits, the rules changed with the game.

He beat the next opponent, and the next, and the nine that followed those. With cramping muscles, he put his twenty-fifth opponent down on the deck and caught his heaving breath.

The twenty-sixth was tied at second blood for a dangerously long time. His opponent landed a lucky kick to his chest after almost half an hour of duelling, and Delvarus staggered back against the wall of World Eaters. Where duellists were usually pushed back into the fight with cheers and good-natured jeers, he was shoved unceremoniously forwards in vicious silence, almost stumbling over onto his hands and knees. He recovered in time to block the descending blow, his flail’s chain wrapping the incoming sword and tearing it from his foe’s fingers. Delvarus cannoned a fist into the warrior’s face, breaking his nose and winning on third blood at last.

He dragged in another breath. ‘Next.’ The challenge was almost a wheeze.

Kargos stepped forwards. ‘Sanguis extremis,’ he said. ‘To the death.’

Delvarus narrowed his eyes, giving a snarl that wouldn’t have been out of place rolling from the throat of an Ancient Terran tyger, or Fenrisian wolf.

‘So eager,’ he breathed, ‘to die, Apothecary?’

Kargos gave a crooked, nasty smirk and held out his hand towards Skane. The sergeant handed him a power sword without a word.

Their weapons came alive in the same moment: Kargos’s borrowed blade and the spiked flail-head crackling with opposing power fields. Neither warrior went to parry. Neither did anything beyond trying kill strike after kill strike, weaving aside when death came too close for comfort.

Desperation gave strength to Delvarus’s sore muscles, but it couldn’t give him the agility he possessed while fresh. Kargos’s first blow came after the first minute, cutting a shallow line of sizzling flesh down the Triarii’s cheek. Delvarus’s face twitched as his Nails pulsed and he launched back at the Apothecary.

He scored the next hit, his flail’s head catching Kargos on the jaw. The barest scratch, too weak to even flare the power field, but it painted blood over Kargos’s pale skin and left his gums bleeding. That was enough to bring Delvarus’s smile back.

He was wise to Kargos’s games. He flinched aside when the Apothecary spat bloody saliva in reply, ready for the oldest of tricks that earned Kargos his pit-fighting name.

‘A filthy habit,’ Delvarus grinned. His return blow lashed through the air with a whine of energised metal, pulled back before it could crash into the deck and wedge in the iron.

Kargos’s reply came with another smile, this one with blood-reddened teeth. ‘You look tired,’ he said.

Delvarus sprayed spit as he roared in reply.

Above them, Vorias narrowed his eyes in thought. ‘Did you feel that?’ he asked softly.

Esca nodded. He’d felt something change in the air, a tightening of the atmosphere around the circle as Delvarus’s implants ramped up. The Triarii’s blows were wilder, heavier, accompanied by grunts and snarls.

‘Six seconds,’ Vorias said in the same quiet voice. ‘Maybe eight.’

It was six. Kargos parried for the first time, cleaving through the meteor hammer’s chain in one chop. The deactivated flail head crashed into the closest World Eaters observer, raking across his bare chest.

At the mercy of his implants, Delvarus reached for Kargos with his bare hands, only to find the point of the Apothecary’s blade at his throat. Even with the Nails stealing the edge from his reason, the threat of imminent death penetrated to his hind-brain instincts, forcing him to hesitate. The silence was louder than the cheering had ever been.

‘Finish it, Bloodspitter.’ Saliva trailed in a thick string down the Triarii’s chin. ‘You’ve proven your point. All of you have. So finish it.’

 

Delvarus was badly fatigued by his 27th opponent and lost because of it. Haven't read the Sigismund story, so will reserve judgment, but still optimistic.

i’d like to see some trials or contests that are a little more creative

 

maybe stuff that specifically calls for the use of some of the other space marine augmentations? acid spit, or the lyman’s ear?

 

it seems like they go through all sorts of interesting trials to become a marine and after that; it’s mostly street fighter II.

i’d like to see some trials or contests that are a little more creative

 

maybe stuff that specifically calls for the use of some of the other space marine augmentations? acid spit, or the lyman’s ear?

 

it seems like they go through all sorts of interesting trials to become a marine and after that; it’s mostly street fighter II.

A brain eating contest

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