Fanfiction for Damon Prytanis I came up with

[Just123456]

In my fanfiction of the 40k setting Damon Prytanis was born a few centuries after Oll Persson, but he was born somewhere in the icey parts of Europe/Asia during the height of the last ice age. When he was roughly four years old he was mauled to death by a now long extinct cave lion, and he wake up in a grave where he dig himself out with tools which were buried with him. When he wandered back into his Paleolithic settlement his tribal clan chased him away and he had to fend for himself. I know that is extreme to do to such a young child, but in my fanfiction Damon Prytanis' tribal clan was particularly superstitious even when compared to other superstitious tribes of nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Upper Paleolithic, and their religion also involved demons, they were very afraid of demons and thought that Damon Prytanis was a demon or that his body was possessed by one. 

 

Then Damon Prytanis spent the next years fending for himself, starving and freezing to death over and over, then resurrecting- being ripped apart by wild animals and resurrecting over and over, and so on. Now humans of the Upper Paleolithic probably learned to hunt and fight as small children, but Damon Prytanis was only four years old at this time, so his lack of experience and child size will put him at a disadvantage. Damon Prytanis wandered the Earth for millennia, his banishment and basically torture making him hard and cold, even a bit bloodthirsty. He eventually became the Greek mythological serial killer Procrustes. And after Theseus kills him he moved on from that. By the ear-mid 20th century he calmed down a little bit and settled down and had a family. He abandoned them earlier than expected because he thought he had been discovered as a Perpetual by secret organizations. He discovered his wife and children died in Auschwitz after he was recruited by the Cabal at the battle of Iwo Jima, and he was almost completely on board with the Cabal after that, thinking that humanity should probably be destroyed because millions died for no other reason than one man's racism, hatred and megalomania. 

 

 

I know the Holocaust is a sensitive subject, and I know that the Holocaust is a sensitive subject for very good reasons, but my point is to demonstrate why Damon Prytanis would basically betray his own species by joining the Cabal. But of course, he had his doubts about humanity before that. 

 

And Damon Prytanis doesn't know exactly where he was born, only approximately when because of his experience with cave paintings he had which were later dated with modern techniques. 

 

 

What do you all think? Is this a good fanfiction for my version of 40k? Its a rough sketch, so it won't be perfect. 

Edited November 3, 2023 by Just123456

[TheArtilleryman]

I like some of these ideas like the early origins of the character and having been hardened by repeated deaths and the worst possible childhood experiences.

 

Thoughts: 

 

Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but AFAIK there isn’t as yet any link to other mythology in 40K lore. We have some references to actual history, like the battle of Iwo Jima as you say, but to start tacking on Greek myth then asks the questions about Greek Gods etc. and whatever happened to them, and if they are still around in the 41st millennium, which I’m not sure would be too compatible with 40K. I like the idea though, especially as a figure like Procrustes isn’t likely to dredge up raw memories for anyone affected by more recent cases and isn’t as overdone as someone like Jack the Ripper.

 

The link to Auschwitz I think is a bit shaky. If he was fighting at Iwo Jima, he was either on the US or Japanese side, so unless when he fled from his family he went to the US or Japan, his nationality doesn’t match up. There is also a very tight timescale between that battle and the liberation of Auschwitz. This plot device would be more powerful if he was there for the liberation itself, and he couldn’t have been if he was in Japan at that time.
 

He could have had a similar reaction in response to the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, perhaps. Maybe he could have been Japanese and his family died in the A-bomb. Or maybe he just lived through so much bad stuff in the two world wars and all that came before them and just knowing about the holocaust and the A-bomb and all the rest of the death and misery caused in WWII tipped him over the edge. Even the “good guys” did bad things to secure victory, like the US imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans in their own concentration camps, or the British not giving a damn about the millions of African and Indian citizens who died from famine because their resources were all requisitioned for the war effort. The experience of everything he went through in his past could have hit breaking point because of the worldwide scale of the horror he saw.

 

I agree that the holocaust is very sensitive, especially in the current climate, so if it was me I would be reluctant to use it as a device in fiction like this, especially where a character is of such questionable morality as this one. My view is it would be better referenced as just one among the many horrors that he lived through. 

Edited November 15, 2023 by TheArtilleryman

[Just123456]

On 11/15/2023 at 9:39 AM, TheArtilleryman said:

I like some of these ideas like the early origins of the character and having been hardened by repeated deaths and the worst possible childhood experiences.

 

Thoughts: 

 

Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but AFAIK there isn’t as yet any link to other mythology in 40K lore. We have some references to actual history, like the battle of Iwo Jima as you say, but to start tacking on Greek myth then asks the questions about Greek Gods etc. and whatever happened to them, and if they are still around in the 41st millennium, which I’m not sure would be too compatible with 40K. I like the idea though, especially as a figure like Procrustes isn’t likely to dredge up raw memories for anyone affected by more recent cases and isn’t as overdone as someone like Jack the Ripper.

 

The link to Auschwitz I think is a bit shaky. If he was fighting at Iwo Jima, he was either on the US or Japanese side, so unless when he fled from his family he went to the US or Japan, his nationality doesn’t match up. There is also a very tight timescale between that battle and the liberation of Auschwitz. This plot device would be more powerful if he was there for the liberation itself, and he couldn’t have been if he was in Japan at that time.
 

He could have had a similar reaction in response to the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, perhaps. Maybe he could have been Japanese and his family died in the A-bomb. Or maybe he just lived through so much bad stuff in the two world wars and all that came before them and just knowing about the holocaust and the A-bomb and all the rest of the death and misery caused in WWII tipped him over the edge. Even the “good guys” did bad things to secure victory, like the US imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans in their own concentration camps, or the British not giving a damn about the millions of African and Indian citizens who died from famine because their resources were all requisitioned for the war effort. The experience of everything he went through in his past could have hit breaking point because of the worldwide scale of the horror he saw.

 

I agree that the holocaust is very sensitive, especially in the current climate, so if it was me I would be reluctant to use it as a device in fiction like this, especially where a character is of such questionable morality as this one. My view is it would be better referenced as just one among the many horrors that he lived through. 

Its the wife and children he left behind years ago before he was at Iwo Jima.