“Magnus grinned. His eye seemed to be weeping, though it was hard to tell whether it was with tears or blood. ‘Stories may meander, but the endings never change. Believe me, I have witnessed the authors.’ He shuddered. ‘They are terrible,’ he whispered.”–Scars

Sick burn, Chris Wraight. Sick burn.

“‘He is a primarch. You know your forbidden history – they were fratricidal lunatics, prepared to tear the entire galaxy apart to pursue their feuds. We designed the Lex – he designed the Lex – precisely to stop them doing it ever again. He cannot take control.’”–The Emperor’s Legion

…I mean, you’re not wrong, dude…

“If it had been possible to solve our many problems through the continual application of unrestrained force, then you would have thought that over ten thousand years of trying it we might have had some rather better outcomes.”–The Emperor’s Legion

I like how the Custodes are portrayed in The Emperor’s Legion. I like how they’re differentiated from other factions in their attitudes as well. However, I still reserve judgement on them as a whole, because just about every other time they’ve appeared in the franchise, they’ve been total douchebags and for all intents and purposes Astartes in different coloured armour + extra “oh they’re lone wolves who don’t even pretend to care about brotherhood, so edgy.”

flunkyofmalcador:

adepta-astarte:

I hate that awkward feeling having characters you want to write about even more than you have stories for them. So I’m going to talk a bit about some of the characters from long-fics I’ve been working on on and off in the last few months.

Keep reading

I am already interested in your heretical Tech Marine as I also wish to be a dreadnought and would like to subscribe to his newsletter.

Heh, I was bored of all the angsting over being a dreadnought, so I wanted to try something different. Korim wasn’t even injured in battle, he just built himself a dreadnought chasis and wired himself in, because he is a techmarine and has the skills. He’s from the Steel Confessors, an Iron Hands successor Chapter with especially close ties to the Mechanicus. He is described as barely recognizable as a dreadnought except by process of eliminiation based on how many off-market modifications he’s constantly making and testing out on his rig. He also has a secondary ambulatory unit–he has devised a way to disconnect the majority of his chasis hookups and move his brain in a jar to a smaller body hookup for situations where being a dreadnought would be too inconvenient. And by smaller hookup I mean metal robot tiger with prehensile paws. Among many things he’s been told off for by Mars, he has no emotional reserve whatsoever–he will not shut up about how cool he thinks technology and science and new things are. He is definitely one of Belisarius Cawl’s surreptitious network of penpals, and a number of people in the ranks of the Inquisition consider him useful, which is why his obviously heretek self is still being tolerated. He and his gue’vesa spy teammate are especially close friends because he’s a total tau fanboy. He doesn’t hold with Chaos/the Dark Mechanicum, though. Using evil magic to get new tech innovations is useless cheating, as far as he’s concerned, if you still don’t understand what you’re doing.

birdechoes:

soniampride:

adepta-astarte:

Having read through both Dark Imperium and Clonelord in the space of five days (back around when I wrote this), I find myself unable to comment on many aspects of the latter except in the context of the former. But first, a tangent:

I, like many people, first speculated years ago about the return of the primarchs in the 40k-era and what it would be like and how it would go and so on. But in my fantasies and AU writing, I never felt like putting the primarchs at the center of galactic affairs. Oh, they could do some things, but as far as I was concerned their stories were going to have to contain a major component of the galaxy having moved on without them, having moved past them. They could not step into their old places, they could only find a new place, by getting their shit together and then finding a way to make themselves useful on the sidelines.

As I was complaining about previously, a primarch swooping in to effortlessly save the day is just boring. Because really, primarchs are just awful. Whether loyalist or traitor, good or evil, or whatever as people, their very existence breaks the world around them. They’re strong, but it’s often in a way that makes the people around them weak. Sure there’s going on about how they’re inspirational and good for morale, but it’s… too much. They have this nat 20 charisma that turns into a Dominate discipline. They turn the people around them into these hollowed-out sycophants and worshippers, into pawns and children, who worst of all aren’t even doing it from fear or intimidation but from love, and that’s terrifying.

Sure, there are charismatic people in real life, but they take it to a magic extent. People who meet a primarch can’t keep a sentence in their head, we’ve been told over and over since Horus Rising. People who met them twenty minutes ago are jumping to take a bullet for them. Primarchs are willing to admit, looking backwards from the 40k era, that mistakes were made and should be fixed, but what’s to keep them from making the same mistakes again or shiny new ones? A miniscule number of people are capable of arguing with them, let alone changing their minds, let along stopping them from doing the stupid thing they’ve decided on anyway. They don’t have to work for people’s regard, it is a default state that takes immense fortitude or other priorities to avoid.

When primarchs held firm, those around them continued in their shadows. When primarchs fell, those around them fell, 99% of the time (and most of that 1% only did otherwise by being head-over-heels adherents to the Emperor personality cult more strongly than the primarch one). When primarchs went away, everything fell apart in their absence because all the structures around them, both of the Imperium and the Chaos Legions, were based around their existence as a lynch pin, making everyone else dependent on them.

So I found the ending of Clonelord to be satisfying. Not a good thing, not a deserved thing, not that thing that failed to be riddled with flaws from beginning to end, many of which were pointed out outright in the narrative, but understandable. Maybe, yes, necessary, for any good future to be possible in the long run.

Because sure, sometimes you need help. Sometimes you need a push, and sometimes you can’t succeed on your own in digging yourself out of the hole you’re in, especially when that hole is systematic oppression and degradation of people and a culture and civilization over the course of millennia. But the narrative of a savior will only get you so far. People have to chose to save themselves. People have to choose to change their ways and their values and their lives. Other people can help and can change the circumstances around them, but only someone’s own choice will lead to anything but another castle in the sky. (Huh, and now I’m left with a really strong desire to rewatch Revolutionary Girl Utena.)

Yes, yes, and yes. Primarchs are just the worst for the world around them. They’re weapons to be wielded, they should never be independent. (Guilliman might be the exception, as he is the only one of them with the concept of the Polis deeply ingrained to his mind. It’s better for him to interact with society and easier for society to interact with him.) Also there’s so many parallels between all this drama and Utena that if I ever made a post about them I’d get booed away.

@adepta-astarte, while you’re on this train of thought, I do recommend reading Fulgrim: the Palantine Phoenix. You’ll get more Fabius, and more food for thought on the nature of primarchs in the setting, and both of these things are very nice and good.

I’m reading it at the moment, actually! Finally got a copy recently. Everyone is awful, but in a fun-read sort of way. I love it. Fabius is the cutest kid and I love him most #gradstudentproblems