Siege of Terra - Saturnine by Dan Abnett

[Marshal Rohr]

I relistened to the Erda dialogue today while doing yard work, and the fact she paraphrases the shaman lore from StD really makes me think these guys aren’t meant to be an Abnett invention. Guiding humanity and all the Jazz is straight from the book.

[Scribe]

It's the replacement for Shaman and Sensai, I would think.

 

However the Shaman were only immortal in the sense of rebirth, when the warp got dangerous they made the play for the Emperor.

 

Blah blah blah, we could go on forever, but there's no world in which the Perpetual concept is not something one man decided to push.

 

It was not part of the story/setting, and due to Abnett, it is, and it's an increasingly important part, that is extremely likely to be central to the plot of the ultimate book in a series/setting that could be, SHOULD BE, told without them at no cost to the story at all.

 

I feel I'm on crazy pills.

 

The Heresy is not the story of Perpetuals.

 

It very likely could be forced to be, by one authors desires to make Asian infused orange Turkey, instead of your Grandmothers thanksgiving dinner.

 

Good or bad? That's up to you.

[m0nolith]

This idea that Abnett can do what he wants with the lore is nonsense and I don’t know where people come up with this idea.

 

GW is a business first and foremost, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the higher ups at GW went to Abnett and asked him to come up with a mechanic to bring back dead Primarchs so they can sell models for them in 40k. I don’t like it but that’s my problem.

 

Unfortunately, it’s what they’re going to use to sell you resurrected Sanguinius and Kurze and whoever else in 40k.

Edited August 23, 2020 by m0nolith

[Marshal Rohr]

It's the replacement for Shaman and Sensai, I would think.

 

However the Shaman were only immortal in the sense of rebirth, when the warp got dangerous they made the play for the Emperor.

 

Blah blah blah, we could go on forever, but there's no world in which the Perpetual concept is not something one man decided to push.

 

It was not part of the story/setting, and due to Abnett, it is, and it's an increasingly important part, that is extremely likely to be central to the plot of the ultimate book in a series/setting that could be, SHOULD BE, told without them at no cost to the story at all.

 

I feel I'm on crazy pills.

 

The Heresy is not the story of Perpetuals.

 

It very likely could be forced to be, by one authors desires to make Asian infused orange Turkey, instead of your Grandmothers thanksgiving dinner.

 

Good or bad? That's up to you.

I mean, I see where you’re coming from, it feels like a tangent. I’m not super into Perpetual Lore, but I appreciate the man on the ground word about the Emperor and his plans even if it isn’t true, etc. I guess I’m kind of just at the point where I don’t hate it, but I’m not turning pages to get to it if that makes sense. For me, ultimately, this book was enjoyable just because of the random descriptions of the fights at the palace and I don’t mean the character fights. The scenes where he describes the traitors onslaughts I wish I could read for hours, the descriptions of the Magnifican etc. I had been moving away from the Siege for a while, and trying to theme my armies around late Heresy defenses in the Solar Segmentum, but now I feel like I can commit to my dudes being at Terra and getting lost in those 14,000 engagements with 30,000 or more combatants.

[mc warhammer]

 

It's the replacement for Shaman and Sensai, I would think.

 

However the Shaman were only immortal in the sense of rebirth, when the warp got dangerous they made the play for the Emperor.

 

Blah blah blah, we could go on forever, but there's no world in which the Perpetual concept is not something one man decided to push.

 

It was not part of the story/setting, and due to Abnett, it is, and it's an increasingly important part, that is extremely likely to be central to the plot of the ultimate book in a series/setting that could be, SHOULD BE, told without them at no cost to the story at all.

 

I feel I'm on crazy pills.

 

The Heresy is not the story of Perpetuals.

 

It very likely could be forced to be, by one authors desires to make Asian infused orange Turkey, instead of your Grandmothers thanksgiving dinner.

 

Good or bad? That's up to you.

I mean, I see where you’re coming from, it feels like a tangent. I’m not super into Perpetual Lore, but I appreciate the man on the ground word about the Emperor and his plans even if it isn’t true, etc. I guess I’m kind of just at the point where I don’t hate it, but I’m not turning pages to get to it if that makes sense. For me, ultimately, this book was enjoyable just because of the random descriptions of the fights at the palace and I don’t mean the character fights. The scenes where he describes the traitors onslaughts I wish I could read for hours, the descriptions of the Magnifican etc. I had been moving away from the Siege for a while, and trying to theme my armies around late Heresy defenses in the Solar Segmentum, but now I feel like I can commit to my dudes being at Terra and getting lost in those 14,000 engagements with 30,000 or more combatants.

 

pretty much how i feel about the perpetuals concept/reimagining of the shamans (and i personally found the shaman stuff really hokey).

 

it's there. i don't think it detracts from the story-line so far...but whether it adds anything signficant? i'll know once the seige books are done.

[mc warhammer]

And I don't even get why it couldn't have simply been a case of Oll Persson getting on board with the Emperor's plan, however reluctantly, and putting down his life for him in the end - just for Imperial historians then twisting it into an act of faith rather than a for-the-greater-good act for humanity. That'd have been plenty enough subversive of the old fluff, without it being a totally made-up myth featuring somebody who isn't Horus, who is "another" Oll, who has never even seen the Emperor or the Vengeful Spirit etc.

 

It's just some change/addition that is totally unnecessary. You could've done something similar without taking the fuel out of one of the moments were - traditionally - humanity "wins". That self-sacrificial bit of fluff in a way epitomized why Chaos lost. And now it's not even just abstracted by history and revisionism, but quite plainly in-universe fiction.

anyone else remember that discussion here a while back, where adb and mr darth were going back and forth on this?

 

from memory: mr darth dug his heels in on the thematic beauty of a "normal man" doing something extraordinary to the point that the emperor is shocked into action. adb countered that the reality of a normal guardsman getting that far on the vengeful spirit and having more of an impact on the master of mankind than his son's death was a bit silly.

 

if it's possible to agree with both, then i do.

[mc warhammer]

This idea that Abnett can do what he wants with the lore is nonsense and I don’t know where people come up with this idea.

 

adb has addressed that a few times himself, saying it's an idea that fandom has come to themselves but it's an idea that persists.  i mean, what do you do? none of us can ever really break down the truth of it without being in the room.

 

we've had swallow change sanguinius's vs ka'bandha, mcneil altered fulgrim's corruption and apotheosis...i think addressing the quality of each specific change is a more worthwhile discussion than a vague one about an author's perceived arrogance.

Edited August 23, 2020 by mc warhammer

[mc warhammer]

here's my take: i don't know.

 

and i don't think we can know until the final curtain

 

i just worked on a tv series where one of the initial reviews was "this show is about horrible people who do horrible things, why would anyone watch this"? which i guess was fair, based on the first episode alone...but the character journeys and growth over the first season led to a final episode that only had the emotional impact that it did because the characters didn't start out as the most admirable people. that first review was hard to read because you want to scream "we discussed this in every writer's room and every rehearsal...just trust us", but you can't do that. you just have to let it play out.

 

the obvious point being, the picture is only complete when it's...well...complete. putting together 50% of a jigsaw puzzle and saying that it doesn't look like anything is...accurate... but not exactly getting the art-of-the-jigsaw.

 

there's a few horus heresy elements that i feel didn't contribute as much to the mythos as i had hoped. like the alpha legion primarch twins or iacton qruze. and i can say that because those stories are (more or less) told.

 

whether dan just threw a new idea into the pot that the other writer's didn't know what to do with or didn't want to deal with, or whether dan had other plans for perpetuals that his hiatus from black library derailed...i don't know. i'm giving the team till siege book 8 to show us.

 

but if the question is purely up till now: i'd say it's a mixed bag. i like the idea of the emperor having contemporaries and rivals in the centuries leading to the great crusade. it gives more context to his eventual decision to create the primarchs. i like that he had failed and abandoned plans and allies. but would the series up till now have been more or less the same without them? yeah.

[mc warhammer]

update on my reading: best seige perturbo so far. i also like the story about he and dorn running war games with each other and not being too egotistic to learn from him

[bluntblade]

Almost like subverting expectations just to subvert them is gonna be divisive among the supposed target audience.

 

But unlike with Black Library, in the case of that certain movie, the guy in charge actually had almost entirely carte blanche, to the point of frustrating other people working on the IP with how he both ignored and twisted ongoing plotlines and characters in a bid to do the unexpected. At least with the Siege, we know that the authors sat down together and discussed things.

Though he was in constant contact with the equivalent of the BL editors, and I think the subversions were more purposeful from a story POV than just doing the unexpected (also he was having to buttress a very shaky foundation in terms of his protagonists). I regard Saturnine pretty much the same way; yes it does some left-field stuff and some of it is just plain weird, but I think it's in service of the story.

 

Any-way I do have one logic-gap gripe regarding what goes down under the wall, but suspect Wraight or AD-B will find an elegant way to fix it and hopefully do something interesting in the process. I still adore Abaddon's sequence and we finally get to see the battle-king unleashed like Sigismund.

Edited August 23, 2020 by bluntblade

[b1soul]

Have we really seen Sigismund unleashed yet? Who has he slain of note?

 

We've seen him getting (for lack of a better word) utterly steamrolled by Khârn and disemboweled by Abaddon. And Sevatar stalemated him that one time before a naughty headbutt. And Rann may have saved his life against Word Bearers.

 

Other than killing redshirt here and there, he hasn't really been shown as worthy of the moniker "The Angel of Death". I'm still waiting for his epic moments of glory at the Siege.

 

He's fast becoming the Loyalist equivalent of pre-ADB Abaddon.

[Marshal Rohr]

I don’t know, that Son of Horus materializing onto his sword during their teleport assault was pretty freaking cool. Only Dan, ADB, French, and Wraight have stories coming up so I’d wager he’ll be the primary focus of French’s next story.

[Fire Golem]

I don’t know, that Son of Horus materializing onto his sword during their teleport assault was pretty freaking cool. Only Dan, ADB, French, and Wraight have stories coming up so I’d wager he’ll be the primary focus of French’s next story.

Do we know for sure French has a second novel? I was under the impression we weren’t sure who the other person doubling up was. 

[Marshal Rohr]

Coulda sworn he said he had two, but I might be wrong.

[b1soul]

If it's not French, it's either Wraight or Dan (unlikely to be ADB methinks, given his pace of writing)...so we can't lose really

[bluntblade]

Have we really seen Sigismund unleashed yet? Who has he slain of note?

 

We've seen him getting (for lack of a better word) utterly steamrolled by Khârn and disemboweled by Abaddon. And Sevatar stalemated him that one time before a naughty headbutt. And Rann may have saved his life against Word Bearers.

 

Other than killing redshirt here and there, he hasn't really been shown as worthy of the moniker "The Angel of Death". I'm still waiting for his epic moments of glory at the Siege.

 

He's fast becoming the Loyalist equivalent of pre-ADB Abaddon.

French's depictions have tended to be fairly brief, but consider that a badly wounded Sigismund still relieved Aximand of a hand.

[Noserenda]

I mean Sigismund does get unleashed at the end of Saturine, the book we are supposedly talking about :P 

Regards Dan, certainly at least as far back as Legion he was pitching ideas to BL for approval and getting them all approved, even the ones he didnt expect to be, i cant imagine that dynamic has changed all that much in the meantime tbh.

[bluntblade]

True. He just does it in Dorn's shadow.

[Moonreaper666]

I mean Sigismund does get unleashed at the end of Saturine, the book we are supposedly talking about :P

 

Regards Dan, certainly at least as far back as Legion he was pitching ideas to BL for approval and getting them all approved, even the ones he didnt expect to be, i cant imagine that dynamic has changed all that much in the meantime tbh.

Does Dan have a huge say what happens in other HH and Siege books? Can he and ADB persuade GW/BL to allow Wraight to let Mortarion kill Khan in his siege novel? Abnett has been building up their inevitable confrontation in Saturnine

[Indefragable]

@DarkChaplain I saw your first post RE: Perpetuals and I will comment a bit later. Just searching for the right words in general to better illustrate why I’ve gone from “meh, Perpetuals seem pointless...” to “hmmm.....maybe there’s something going on here...”

[Scammel]

Have we really seen Sigismund unleashed yet? Who has he slain of note?

 

We've seen him getting (for lack of a better word) utterly steamrolled by Khârn and disemboweled by Abaddon. And Sevatar stalemated him that one time before a naughty headbutt. And Rann may have saved his life against Word Bearers.

 

Other than killing redshirt here and there, he hasn't really been shown as worthy of the moniker "The Angel of Death". I'm still waiting for his epic moments of glory at the Siege.

 

He's fast becoming the Loyalist equivalent of pre-ADB Abaddon.

I'm pretty sure it's deliberate - I have no doubt Khârn is going to get thoroughly yeeted. The only question is whether Sigismund's incoming power-up is Dorn's heart-wrenching release of the shackles of fatherhood, finally granting Sigismund the spiritual release his soul desperately craves, but at the same time knowing that he will forever more be psychologically estranged from the zealous crusader his favoured son becomes... or if the Big E simply gives him Dragonball-style psychic steroids.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Scammel

[bluntblade]

 

Have we really seen Sigismund unleashed yet? Who has he slain of note?

 

We've seen him getting (for lack of a better word) utterly steamrolled by Khârn and disemboweled by Abaddon. And Sevatar stalemated him that one time before a naughty headbutt. And Rann may have saved his life against Word Bearers.

 

Other than killing redshirt here and there, he hasn't really been shown as worthy of the moniker "The Angel of Death". I'm still waiting for his epic moments of glory at the Siege.

 

He's fast becoming the Loyalist equivalent of pre-ADB Abaddon.

I'm pretty sure it's deliberate - I have no doubt Khârn is going to get thoroughly yeeted. The only question is whether Sigismund's incoming power-up is Dorn's heart-wrenching release of the shackles of fatherhood, finally granting Sigismund the spiritual release his soul desperately craves, but at the same time knowing that he will forever more be psychologically estranged from the zealous crusader his favoured son becomes... or if the Big E simply gives him Dragonball-style psychic steroids.

I'm still hoping Khârn's temporary setback isn't from a fight against Sigismund, but rather when he's flattened by the massed Blood Angels in the throes of the Black Rage.

Edited August 23, 2020 by bluntblade

[Scribe]

Just please, let Khârn take the breach.

 

He can 'die' any number of ways after that, but let the World Eaters take it. :p

[Brother Lunkhead]

=][=

 

TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK....

 

I'm going to give you on last chance to get back on topic. 

 

Perpetuals, good or bad?...... a fine topic..... for a separate thread.

 

Dan Abnett..... does the BL editorial staff give him carte blanche?..... also a fine topic..... for a separate thread.

 

General speculation...... not a fine topic here.

 

Unconstructive comments on above topics..... while tempting, not a fine topic.

 

Anyone who wants to create a new thread concerning any of the above fine topics, please do so. I will be happy to split off the relevant posts to that topic. I will not however, do the work of creating  these threads just to save hidden posts. You will also notice that I did not hide all of the off topic posts. These were left open to provide reference anchors. So, if you are wondering why your post was hidden and someone else's was not, now you know.

 

Saturnine is a tome of considerable poundage and there is still a lot of fuel left for discussion. So let's stop rehashing old arguments and get back to the book. Like it or don't like it, there's still a lot there to talk about......but time is running out.

 

TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK......

 

=][=

[Indefragable]

Anyone with the actual physical book up for putting the dramatis personae here? I’m curious how to spell the actual names like Neeberand and Cadwalla.