It's possible for all of the Primarchs to be brought back

[Scribe]

14 minutes ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

I want Rogal Dorn to come back. He's the best. The rest are all just filler. 

 

Dead, under a tide of knives in the dark. They recovered a hand.

[Kastor Krieg]

3 hours ago, Scribe said:

Dead, under a tide of knives in the dark. They recovered a hand.

Naw.

[Scribe]

6 minutes ago, Kastor Krieg said:

Naw.

 

War of the Beast retcons are not admissible in the court of law. ;)

[Arkangilos]

On 11/10/2023 at 6:14 PM, Scribe said:

That's how it should be, and is, right up until Haley ruins it for us.

I don’t know about his other stuff, but Guy Haley has had by far the best depiction of the BA in 40k. Well, him and ADB. 

[Scribe]

18 minutes ago, Arkangilos said:

I don’t know about his other stuff, but Guy Haley has had by far the best depiction of the BA in 40k. Well, him and ADB. 

 

Maybe, sure. I gave up on him after a few novels.

 

My point is, if there is an author who will be the vehicle by which the central truth of the setting is changed and ruined, I put my dollar bet on Haley pulling that trigger.

[Arkangilos]

50 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Maybe, sure. I gave up on him after a few novels.

 

My point is, if there is an author who will be the vehicle by which the central truth of the setting is changed and ruined, I put my dollar bet on Haley pulling that trigger.

Fair. I haven’t read his other novels that weren’t BA ones, just Dante (and the short story with the LE, it’s the only LE I’ve ever gotten) and Devastation. At least that I can recall. And he captured the BA masterfully imo. 

[One Paul Murray]

You read some of the stuff on here and you'd be forgiven for thinking that people hate GW... you know, the company whose IP sustains this chat site and the hobby it represents. 

 

Over time they have steadily filled out the corners of their IP which was always going to tread on the toes of what some people liked and wanted. That was inevitable. 

 

Bringing back more Primarchs to further fill out the setting is probably also inevitable, but doesn't need to be a massive issue. If done well then there's no reason that they can't diversify and enrich the storytelling. It would, at least, make perfect sense for all remaining Chaos Primarchs to return. At which point, outnumbered 6 to 2, there is not necessarily an issue with returning more Loyalists. Doubly so that you can have Belakor and Vashtorr et al to represent Primarch-tier antagonists as well, in a way that the Imperium would struggle to match. So they should always be hopelessly out matched.

 

What they do need to do, in my opinion and as others have said, is explore these entities more as having their own designs. For instance, Chaos Primarchs should really weaken Abaddon as they fragment whatever hold he has over the disparate legions. Speaking of Chaos though, they really need to explore more of their relationship with the other factions. For instance, if they Tyranids destroy the Imperium then the Chaos Gods would presumably die. Ditto the necrons. So surely destroying those would be a priority? Give the Silent King his time in the sun via those story routes.

 

Overall there is tons of interesting stuff you could do with the characters, and at the current rate of return there is 20-30 years of storytelling that they could do before going anywhere near any of the truly dead ones, so why fret too much?

 

Besides which, for all those who hate the company, if GW is as bad as you think then Sanguinius will be the last flip of the coin for them, and they would definitely release a Sanguinor first to double dip all those BA players' wallets. So that would put him at least 20 years away and very much out of mind.

 

 

[Special Officer Doofy]

34 minutes ago, One Paul Murray said:

For instance, Chaos Primarchs should really weaken Abaddon as they fragment whatever hold he has over the disparate legions

 

Abaddon doesn't have a hold over the other Legions at all. Individual warbands join him out of boredom or wanting to cause chaos onto the Imperium. 6/8 other Legions have their primarchs still.

[Blindhamster]

2 hours ago, Arkangilos said:

Fair. I haven’t read his other novels that weren’t BA ones, just Dante (and the short story with the LE, it’s the only LE I’ve ever gotten) and Devastation. At least that I can recall. And he captured the BA masterfully imo. 

 

Dante, Devastation of Baal and Darkness in the blood are indeed the best depictions of the blood angels. IMO without exception. I love ADB, his horus heresy stuff doesn't cover blood angels though. It tends to cover flesh tearers before they get the name and other successors (Zephon is my favourite "blood angel" character in the heresy, but he's very different). I'd have liked to see an author actually bother to do half a decent job with Raldoron for example, but the edgy alternatives always get the limelight.

 

I also really enjoyed the great work by ADB, one of the better and more interesting 40k novels IMO.

I would agree that the ultramarine vs deathguard books were... not great though, and I've read both versions of them.

 

I personally have never gotten on with Dan Abnett though, so I'm generally considered weird I guess :D as so many people act like he is the second coming on here.

 

 

42 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Abaddon doesn't have a hold over the other Legions at all. Individual warbands join him out of boredom or wanting to cause chaos onto the Imperium. 6/8 other Legions have their primarchs still.

Some of those primarchs have actively knelt to Abaddon tbf

[Kallas]

2 hours ago, One Paul Murray said:

Overall there is tons of interesting stuff you could do with the characters, and at the current rate of return there is 20-30 years of storytelling that they could do before going anywhere near any of the truly dead ones, so why fret too much?

You say that as if we didn't just get four Primarchs in the span of about 6 years (since the launch of 8th). At that rate, with one Primarch every ~1.5 years, we're looking at about 10.5 more years for them to fill out the rest of the known to be living Primarchs, and then we'd be on to the dead ones, assuming they don't change pace either way. Edit: I miscounted the men Liz! It'd be 13.5 years because there are 9 alive-but-unaccounted-for Primarchs, not the 7 that I did the numbers with.

 

Edit: I totally forgot about Magnus! So that's five Primarchs in about 7 years, so about one every 1.4 years; which would make the release speed about 11.2 years, so ultimately about the same as the initial estimate!

 

2 hours ago, One Paul Murray said:

If done well

Ultimately, this is the crux of all of it: if done well. Which will vary from person to person, and especially from GW writer to GW writer.

 

Let Dan Abnett and ADB helm the return of the various Primarchs? Sure, probably be alright. Let Matt Ward and CS Goto (yes, I'm just exaggerating for effect) helm it? Oh hell no.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Kallas

[Blindhamster]

I really wouldn't want Abnett helming the return of the primarchs. ADB would probably be great though - especially for the traitor ones as his portrayal of those has tended to be better than anyone elses IMO

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 hour ago, Blindhamster said:

Some of those primarchs have actively knelt to Abaddon tbf

 

O that terrible story arc.

 

Mortarion: ‘Did I know, back then, that it would be Abaddon? Horus’ angry whelp? I often wonder if I should have. They were so alike, those two. For a long time I thought he was dead. And then I thought I’d killed him, when he dared come here.'

 

In the same breathe he considered killing him. The primarchs (specially the 4 cult ones) serve their chaos god, and only help Abaddon when it serves the chaos gods. Even then they sometimes don't listen to them (Mortarion didn't listen to Nurgle during the plague wars and is now in big boy timeout haha).

[Kallas]

50 minutes ago, Blindhamster said:

I really wouldn't want Abnett

It wasn't really a genuine expectation or desire, just some examples.

 

Abnett is generally well regarded, though I think few would disagree that ADB is the premiere GW writer, at least for making the characters interesting; I feel like Abnett is better with setting than characters personally.

[Karhedron]

17 hours ago, Scribe said:

Dead, under a tide of knives in the dark. They recovered a hand.

 

We know from Praetorian of Dorn that he chopped Alpharius's hands off before killing him. We also know that the Primarchs are genetically almost identical, to the point that Curze fooled the launch systems on the Invincible Reason into thinking he was the Lion.

 

If GW want to bring Dorn back, it would be easy for them to claim he faked his death on the Sword of Sacrilege and left Alpharius's hand behind as "evidence". Not saying this is what actually happened or what GW will eventually write, simply that they have given themselves enough slack in the story leave the possibility open. The other thing to remember is that Curze's visions always came in pairs and he only saw Dorn die in one of them.

[NovemberIX]

18 hours ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

I want Rogal Dorn to come back. He's the best. The rest are all just filler. 

He's gotta be wearing a Centurion suite though. Otherwise it just won't feel right.

[Rain]

4 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Abaddon doesn't have a hold over the other Legions at all. Individual warbands join him out of boredom or wanting to cause chaos onto the Imperium. 6/8 other Legions have their primarchs still.

Also, the Chaos primarchs are all demon princes, and demon princes tend to be more concerned with the Great Game, and other obscure personal obsessions, and have no plan or perhaps even desire to fight the Imperium. I know that this has changed a bit recently, but this was how the lore was originally presented.
 

What made Abaddon special was that he had purposely remained mortal, and that he explicitly fights and organizes to try to conquer the Imperium instead of just to spread plague, or take skulls, or mess with the Space Wolves. So, various warbands from all of the Legions occasionally join him if they share his sense of purpose, regardless of what their own primarchs are doing, as their primarchs are probably ing around in the warp, while Abaddon is actually trying to lead a war.