If you could change anything in the lore what would you change?

[The Neverborn]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

The only Traitor Primarch I could see potentially having a redemption arc would be Omegon at this point. The other Primarchs have all come to hate the Emperor by the Siege whereas Omegon seems to have tried to play a double agent but went too deep. 

I disagree, not that Omegon wouldn't be an acceptable choice, but that he's the only choice.

A redemption arc for a Traitor Primach would hit hardest if the individual in question undertook a not insignificant amount of personal growth before the went full heel/face turn and "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more". 

[NTaW]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

The only Traitor Primarch I could see potentially having a redemption arc would be Omegon at this point.

 

For those who have read the Fabius Bile trilogy,

 

There's a fully formed and functional Fulgrim clone currently in one of Trazyn's tesseract vaults who is wholesale disgusted with what happened and "loyal" to the Imperium. Bile created him, and could do even more....

 

If you've read Genefather,

 

because he basically stole Primarch dna from Alpha Primus so now he very likely has full knowledge of how to create when he already had a lot of knowledge.

 

It's always possible for an Oprah moment where "you get a Primarch, and you get a Primarch". Heck, if you've read the Vaults of Terra and Dante trilogies,

 

The Dark Eldar only need the smallest scraping of DNA to recreate a being down to its memories, and there's little bits of Sanguinius DNA on at least two different relics of Baal.

 

How's that for a redacted comment? 

[Felix Antipodes]

It seems a bit tricky, as I couldn’t see any of the daemon prince Primarchs being able to escape their fate even if they had an epiphany.  

 

That leaves Perturabo, Lorgar, and the already mentioned Omegron.  The one who’s turning would provide the most story points, shock, (and nerd rage) would be Lorgar realising he had been set up by Erebus and others.  Not a choice I’d make, but then GW have never called to see if I liked their plot beats. 

[ZeroWolf]

3 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

It seems a bit tricky, as I couldn’t see any of the daemon prince Primarchs being able to escape their fate even if they had an epiphany.  

 

That leaves Perturabo, Lorgar, and the already mentioned Omegron.  The one who’s turning would provide the most story points, shock, (and nerd rage) would be Lorgar realising he had been set up by Erebus and others.  Not a choice I’d make, but then GW have never called to see if I liked their plot beats. 

I think those are both Demon Primarchs now though.

[Scribe]

A 'redeemed' Traitor Primarch would be just spitting in the face of the lore. Agreed that Omegon would be the only semi appropriate one, as he wasnt all in on Chaos and tried to play both sides.

 

Its a one way road, its not as if the Imperium would be forgiving lol

[Karhedron]

7 hours ago, NTaW said:

For those who have read the Fabius Bile trilogy,

 

  Hide contents

There's a fully formed and functional Fulgrim clone currently in one of Trazyn's tesseract vaults who is wholesale disgusted with what happened and "loyal" to the Imperium. Bile created him, and could do even more....

 

I have indeed but I don't think that would really count as redemption. Just my tuppence worth. 

Edited October 26 by Karhedron

[The Neverborn]

My thoughts are

Hero to Villain to Hero make the best character stories, in comparison to Hero to Villain or always a hero or always a Villain - even if the latter two are morally "Grey".

As @Scribe has pointed out it's hard to do and maintain narrative consistency - but when it's executed well   !
 

[phandaal]

30 minutes ago, The Neverborn said:

My thoughts are

Hero to Villain to Hero make the best character stories, in comparison to Hero to Villain or always a hero or always a Villain - even if the latter two are morally "Grey".

As @Scribe has pointed out it's hard to do and maintain narrative consistency - but when it's executed well   !
 

 

The problem is, Chaos is eternal damnation. There is no recovering once Chaos corrupts someone.

[Lathe Biosas]

Didn't we get a Horus Heresy novel that had the Emperor show Magnus that he (not the Emperor) was sitting on the Golden Throne in the future?

 

Or did I misremember that. It's been a while since I read those books.

[NTaW]

17 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

I have indeed but I don't think that would really count as redemption. Just my tuppence worth. 

 

I don't think we'd see an Imperium wide redemption, or even a Daemon Primarch stop being one, but rather that there's a few seeds out there for Primarchs and having two versions of the same entity confront one another could have...unforseen impacts on the setting. At best (or worst, depending on your opinions) it would be an off-screen happening for the wider Imperium, akin to how Darth Vader's turn back to the light side was only known to a few people and the rest of the universe knew nothing. 

 

Not that I particularly want this to happen. I just feel like nothing is out of bounds for GW if they think a model could sell.

[Rain]

2 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

The problem is, Chaos is eternal damnation. There is no recovering once Chaos corrupts someone.

Well, mostly. At the end of the Bile trilogy there are some EC that have a brief reminiscence of what they once were, and agree to fight a battle despite there being no personal benefit to themselves. Also, in the rather mediocre Angron the Red Angel, there’s a WE that is cursed to be unable to bleed or die, who repents, and dies making the sign of the Aquila. As it turns out, he was cursed for attempting to commit suicide during the Heresy during a moment of lucidity.

 

That said, being a demon prince is eternal damnation, as demon princes probably don’t really have free will. Maybe. The warm is intentionally poorly explained, and please GW keep it that way.

 

This is also why the original ending of Fulgrim was so good. By having the real Fulgrim be trapped in a painting, there was always some slim hope of redemption for him, or at least an attempt by him to escape the painting and curtail some of the damage that he has caused. Said redemption would never actually be written, but hanging threads like this add intrigue to the setting. So, of course, they undid the whole thing in The Reflection Crack’d, because we can’t have intrigue or things to wonder about.

[Scribe]

4 minutes ago, Rain said:

Also, in the rather mediocre Angron the Red Angel, there’s a WE that is cursed to be unable to bleed or die, who repents, and dies making the sign of the Aquila. As it turns out, he was cursed for attempting to commit suicide during the Heresy during a moment of lucidity.

 

That guy essentially was a Daemon Prince. I found it somewhat interesting as the implication is that "Chaos Worship" is a mental affliction that could be removed.

 

Obviously that detracts quite a bit from the setting, to say the least.

 

I didn't like that book much at all.

[phandaal]

3 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

That guy essentially was a Daemon Prince. I found it somewhat interesting as the implication is that "Chaos Worship" is a mental affliction that could be removed.

 

Obviously that detracts quite a bit from the setting, to say the least.

 

I didn't like that book much at all.

 

As long as they cannot actually escape from the consequences, that seems alright. A guy can "repent" from Chaos maybe, but he is still corrupted and has to go.

 

A good example of this comes from the novel Dark Apostle, when that local trooper POV character finds himself captured by Chaos worshippers and over time becomes more and more corrupted. His final act after seeing his reflection and realizing what he is becoming is to blow his own brains out with a lasgun.

 

That is the kind of one-way street that Chaos should be.

 

Also applies to "heretics" in the Inquisition/Loyalist Space Marines who pick up Chaos tools to fight the bad guys. The fact that they irrevocably corrupt themselves a little bit more each time makes the choice a lot more interesting.

[Rain]

34 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

That guy essentially was a Daemon Prince. I found it somewhat interesting as the implication is that "Chaos Worship" is a mental affliction that could be removed.

 

Obviously that detracts quite a bit from the setting, to say the least.

 

I didn't like that book much at all.

 

I didn't like the book either, but he was definitely not a demon prince. Demon princes are demons, they are made of "warp stuff", most likely being a physical and metaphysical shard of their patron god. He also didn't really worship Khorne, as such, he was just very badly Nails-lost. It was implied that he allowed the Nails to take over so as to not remember what he was, as he was a semi-involuntary traitor. Which is a major point about Chaos marines. Not all of them explicitly worship their patron god(s), even among the cult Legions. Many just carry out acts that echo in the warp in such a way as to empower said patron gods. The Chaos gods are essentially metaphysical parasites. They "infect" their followers, and cause said followers to become physically addicted to certain kinds of behaviors. Violence, excess, scheming, all for their own sake. Said followers then act according to these physical compulsions, thereby feeding their patron god. The more that they do this, the deeper into the addiction they fall, and the more "gifts" are bestowed upon them, which serve to only further their addictions, eventually leading to demonhood, and loss of free will, spawndom, and loss of free will, or self destruction and death, at which point the patron god thanks them by consuming their soul.

 

So, it's not inconceivable for such a Chaos follower to experience lucidity when momentarily cut off from the warp or the influence of the god(s), which is what happened to that World Eater; he was momentarily made lucid by the Grey Knights casting a mass purification ritual. This is very different from, say, a Word Bearer who explicitly believes in his mission to spread Chaos around the galaxy, and would not necessarily change his mind just because the effects of demonic influence and/or Khornate archeotech implants were momentarily muted.

[Scribe]

1 minute ago, Rain said:

The Chaos gods are essentially metaphysical parasites. They "infect" their followers, and cause said followers to become physically addicted to certain kinds of behaviors. Violence, excess, scheming, all for their own sake. Said followers then act according to these physical compulsions, thereby feeding their patron god. The more that they do this, the deeper into the addiction they fall, and the more "gifts" are bestowed upon them, which serve to only further their addictions, eventually leading to demonhood, and loss of free will, spawndom, and loss of free will, or self destruction and death, at which point the patron god thanks them by consuming their soul.

 

This is what I'm not a fan of. I'm not sure I have the will to get into it deeply.

 

The setting is better, when the root of the issue is not 'Chaos the Parasites' but 'Bob fell to his own vices, and fed the forces beyond'.

 

There is a distinction there, and I think the Chaos as Parasites, is a much more recent take on things, which again I believe detracts from the setting.

[Rain]

Agree to disagree, I suppose. The great thing about how vague and contradictory lore regarding the warp is, is that we can both have our view on this, and both be "right" because it's the warp, and it explicitly exists outside of things like causation and axioms of logic. A lot of the lore used to be intentionally ambiguous in this way, to encourage people to headcanon and personally engage with their understanding of the universe.

 

Also, I'm not sure how much we even disagree. What I am saying is that if Bob falls to his vices, and feeds the forces beyond, he need not worship or even know or understand what that force beyond is. He just does what feels good, and the force beyond feeds on that, and reinforces his actions through gifts and subliminal suggestions. But, the more he does so, the deeper the psychic brain worms dig.

[Scribe]

It needs to begin with us. We are the problem, and we own it. We created the Chaos Gods, not the other way around, and it's our own failures and urges that lead to that.

 

If it's reversed, that's actually catastrophic to the setting.

[Karhedron]

5 hours ago, Lathe Biosas said:

Didn't we get a Horus Heresy novel that had the Emperor show Magnus that he (not the Emperor) was sitting on the Golden Throne in the future?

 

Or did I misremember that. It's been a while since I read those books.

 

You are right although it is not clear if it is the Emperor talking to Magnus or his own madness consuming him. The scene got somewhat retconned in Echoes of Eternity (the only part of the book I didn't really like) 

[Karhedron]

5 hours ago, phandaal said:

The problem is, Chaos is eternal damnation. There is no recovering once Chaos corrupts someone.

 

The idea behind the Excorsists is that people who are corrupted and then purified gain a degree of resilience against it in future. A bit like an inoculation. Of course that is just the practices of one Chapter. 

 

At the end of Godblight, the Emperor talking to Mortarion through Guilliman's implies it is still not too late for him to repent. 

[Scribe]

50 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

At the end of Godblight, the Emperor talking to Mortarion through Guilliman's implies it is still not too late for him to repent. 

 

Comically bad lore.

[Rain]

Well, it depends on what form that "redemption" takes. If it's just accepting total obliteration, that's fine*. Horus having a moment of clarity and accepting that he must be obliterated body and soul has been lore for well over two decades now. I haven't slogged through TEatD (and don't mean to), so I don't know if they retconned it, but it's been that was since 3rd edition at least. 

 

*That said, Horus was not a demon prince. To what extent a demon prince has the basic capacity to repent is very questionable.

[phandaal]

56 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

The idea behind the Excorsists is that people who are corrupted and then purified gain a degree of resilience against it in future. A bit like an inoculation. Of course that is just the practices of one Chapter. 

 

At the end of Godblight, the Emperor talking to Mortarion through Guilliman's implies it is still not too late for him to repent. 

 

I don't think what the Exorcists do is comparable to someone worshipping Chaos or allowing themselves to be transformed into a daemon.

 

The Exorcists are possessed and then they have to expel the daemon from their bodies. As in, they have to be able to resist and reject the demon. They have to not take a single step down the path.

 

And even that contact is enough to permanently alter them, right? The Exorcists never regain their pre-possessed state.

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

Well, it depends on what form that "redemption" takes. If it's just accepting total obliteration, that's fine*. Horus having a moment of clarity and accepting that he must be obliterated body and soul has been lore for well over two decades now. I haven't slogged through TEatD (and don't mean to), so I don't know if they retconned it, but it's been that was since 3rd edition at least. 

 

*That said, Horus was not a demon prince. To what extent a demon prince has the basic capacity to repent is very questionable.

 

I'm somewhat traumatized by TEATD, but I believe they did change that. I dont think he had a moment of clarity, but the moment I finished that door stopper, I sold it, so I cannot confirm.

[The Neverborn]

2 hours ago, Rain said:

Well, it depends on what form that "redemption" takes. If it's just accepting total obliteration, that's fine*. Horus having a moment of clarity and accepting that he must be obliterated body and soul has been lore for well over two decades now. I haven't slogged through TEatD (and don't mean to), so I don't know if they retconned it, but it's been that was since 3rd edition at least. 

 

*That said, Horus was not a demon prince. To what extent a demon prince has the basic capacity to repent is very questionable.

I've thought about how I would like that redemption to take place - however I'm not a professional writer. And this would take really good one - so I'm sticking to "well executed". 

[Scribe]

6 minutes ago, The Neverborn said:

I've thought about how I would like that redemption to take place - however I'm not a professional writer. And this would take really good one - so I'm sticking to "well executed". 

 

In what world, knowing the type of setting 40K is, does it make sense for the Emperor, a man who is now more corpse than living, tortured on the Throne for 10K years, his dreams and goals dashed, his people subjected to a living eternal hell, a setting where 'Hell' is actually just a byproduct of our own fears and desires, where there is no 'Christian' God, or Heaven, and the only 'redemption' is death?

 

"Look, I know you are infused with the Warp, I know you have been corrupted and for 10,000 years you have damned countless people, whole worlds, cast to the warp...but dont worry son, I forgive you."

 

Thats not 40K. Thats never been 40K. The day that happens, it ceases to be 40K, and its no shocker at all that the idea was floated in 2 of Haley's books.

 

No writer, can make that good, as it runs 10000% counter to the very fabric of the setting.