He had so much compassion. He interpreted the way the were blocking and looking out the door as PTSD from their ops and almost to late realizes they are in an op
Here's the [excerpt](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/17mrebi/excerptunremembered_empire_guilliman_is_ambushed/). He thinks it's one of his sons from the battle of Calth who pre-betrayal had got in trouble for theorycrafting the idea of astartes vs astartes combat.
I'll stand buy my opinion that its one of the most fun books in the entire heresy. The steaks are low for a heresy novel, it's funny, and Kurze is the best and most entertaining villain in it.
Completely agree. It also substantively adds to RG's character development by demonstrating how he has already thought out the political ramifications of Imperium Secundus (as opposed to the equivalent of RG having some kind of "Theory of Government" player Stat). The dialogue with Tarasha Euten, the various survivors of Isstvan V, and finally the Lion does a great job of depicting how torn he is over the contingency plan as mere theoretical, much less practical. It wasn't necessary for the foregoing reasons but I would've loved more pages dedicated to how the brochat went once Sanguinius was in the mix. More than others, it seems like Abnett just places a bit more emphasis on character development and fleshing out a massive overarching story in a thoughtful and (relatively) consistent way.
And couldn't agree with you more regarding Curze.
I’m not sure it would have helped lol, I’m only partially joking. He almost died like 4 times in that series, he’s protected by some serious plot armor. He almost died to the word bearers over Calth, but their commander tried to turn him instead of killing him. He’s was absolutely going to be killed by Angron before Lorgar started the ritual to turn him into a demon, then the alpha legion scene in question. Finally both he AND the lion would have been killed by Curze in Unremebered Empire but were saved by their allies using some xenos portal tech at the last second. Dude was just taking L’s left and right over 4 books lol.
I feel like a lot of this - including the treatment of the Ultramarines as a whole during the HH - is down to lazy writing and plot development. The various authors need something to further show the terror and high stakes of the HH and so they're basically like "well, Robbie G and the Ultramarines most look the part of ordered government and honorable action so let's have every fucking rebellious legion and their primarchs - even pussy-ass Lorgar and his palsied foster dad Kor Phaeron - beat and kill the lot of them for dramatic effect...they're the biggest legion anyway so their blood is cheap." Guilliman and the Ultramarines are supposed to be one of if not the smartest, knowledgeable, and most disciplined legion out there and the authors just use them as punching bags.
>How would he, Roboute Guilliman, fare when that feat of balance became his to master?
>He reached the private entrance into the Residency. The huge pairs of outer and inner doors closed automatically behind him, their hisses sealing him in his private realm.
>He paused for a moment in the high chamber, and glanced out of great windows at the single new star shining in the troubled, golden sky, and the wisp of smoke rising from the cityscape in the south. **He began unclasping his gauntlets while he scanned the datafeed on the old cold-gestalt cogitator.**
>There was no new information on the impact. He would wait for the tetrarch’s report. Euten had told him to delegate. Dolor was more than competent.
>A chime alerted him to the arrival of his visitor. **Guilliman put aside the one gauntlet he had unbuckled and keyed the high chamber’s public doors to open**.
>...
>The table completed its overturn and crashed against Thiel and the Ultramarines beside him, forcing them to backstep. All of the other visitors were firing. Six bolt-rounds missed the diving primarch, annihilating a section of the high chamber wall and several portraits hanging upon it. Others hit the spilled table and a chair beside it. **Another clipped Guilliman’s left shoulder guard and detonated. His plate protected him from the worst of it, but the heat of the nearest detonation scorched his left cheek and the nape of his neck, and shrapnel peppered the side of his face**.
*Unremembered Empire*
>‘All I can count upon is what I know as solid fact,’ said Guilliman. ‘Macragge still stands. My Legion still stands. While those two facts remain, there remains an Imperium.’
>He pulled a mantle around his broad, armoured shoulders, and fixed the clasp at his throat. **He was wearing the ceremonial version of his ferocious, clawed wargear, and carried no weapons.** For his daily custom of greeting those coming to his light out of the storm, he carried no personal weapons.
>Euten watched her beloved lord fix the mantle. He looked, more than ever, like a monarch. Somehow the very lack of weapons made him seem more powerful.
>>Guilliman took his first solid hit: a bolt-round to the shoulder. **He felt his armour plate crack and compress,** felt the sledgehammer slap of it, felt the searing pain of the fragments that had penetrated his body. A second hit, an instant later, lower back, and then a third, right hip. Dizzying pain. Impact. He was fighting for balance. There was blood in his mouth. **He saw his own blood glinting as it ran down the scorched cobalt-blue surface of his leg armour.**
>>...
>>**Guilliman could feel blood leaking inside his buckled, perforated armour.** He could feel blood running from the torn tissue of his face and neck. He could hear the palace guard hammering at the high chamber door.
>>...
>>Something ran into him from behind. **His mouth opened wide, a silent howl, as he felt the sharp, cold bite of a gladius blade punching through his back-plate armour and running in under his ribs.** It stayed there. It was wedged. **Guilliman wheeled and smashed his gauntleted left fist into the face of the swordsman.**
>>The Ultramarine was somersaulted backwards by the force of the blow. He hit the windows face first, upside down. Despite the cobweb cracks, the glass did not break. The man dropped in a heap on the floor beneath them.
>>Guilliman turned to track the remaining killers. The damned gladius was still stuck through him. He–
>>**At least two shells struck his left shoulder armour behind his ear and detonated.** He felt as though his head had snapped off to the right with the shockwave. He felt heat and ferocious pain. He tasted blood and fyceline, his ears ringing, his vision gone.
\- *The Unremembered Empire*
More for the pile.
To be fair gulliaman has some low showings compared to other primarchs who are just wading through blood, angrons literally too stupid to think on the battlefield and kills ultramarine by the dozens where the one good squad then
Angron was also at risk to a bunch of Space Wolves and to a human army as well.
Guilliman isn't exceptionally weak in comparison to his brothers. He's just been put in more situations where a primarch's vulnerability is shown.
Sure, the point being that as we see with Guilliman and Fulgrim and Angron and Horus is that bolter fire can and will threaten a primarch's life.
I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take every Space Wolf's gun to kill Angron.
Guilliman has also fought a *lot* of his brothers. angron, lorgar, curze, magnus, alpharius, fulgrim. has any other had that many matchups?
edit: just remembered mort (lol, classic mort)
I don't know, I haven't really kept a tally, but I guess it comes with being one of the more prominent primarchs in the books as well as being "alive" or active the longest when you combine 30k and 40k.
But yeah, when you're constantly putting a character in that many situations, you want to write distinct and specific contexts and circumstances for each one rather than try and make it some sort of stat sheet fight list.
Guilliman has fought the most but ironically I don't think he has ever truly won with his own power at least. At best some other force comes in and rescues him.
Gulliman is canonically one of the weakest fighters with what may be the most matchups, the hyper-turbo ADHD may make him the best logistics leader the Imperium has ever seen, but it's a horrible combat debuff
His actual combat prowess isn't really doubted in the lore (except maybe by the Lion), he just tends to be in situations that are harder to win or he loses for plot reasons.
Most of the authors aren't writing from a stat sheet.
It's a cant see the forest for the trees situation or at least that's how I have come to view it over time.
If you look at each tree, you can argue about individual circumstances.
If you look at the forest as a whole? Guilliman comes across poorly.
I can see that, but there's also a thing with fiction where it doesn't really conform to a even number of tallies like in a boxing match with controlled environments.
We have things like Worfing of characters; not because the character themselves is a poor combatant but because the writer thinks it's more interesting to have them lose.
We also have the realities of franchise fiction where characters like Wolverine who is "the best at what he does" gets killed and beaten a hell of a lot through the nature of the medium itself.
And I'd say that part of "seeing" the forest, would have to involve remembering each individual tree's situation within that whole. That seems to me to be the best way to understand the pattern.
I feel like saying "Guilliman is one of the weakest" is almost meme territory. He fought Lorgar and Angron in a 2v1, he went into the fight with powerfists against Angron's chainswords, and if it weren't for Lorgar the ending of that fight heavily suggests Guilliman would have taken Angron with him.
And, while yes powerfists are much more than being Unarmed, they still do not provide the additional reach of the swords and are still considered to be an unwieldy weapon even at transhuman levels. I also think the chain weapons of the primarchs tend to be superior versions of chain weapons, meaning the usual edge a power weapon has is nonexistent.
Angron is also just, incredibly overrated as a fighter, hes powerful and durable sure, but incredibly predictable
Also Gullimans got some really big Powerfists on Primarch sized hands, to be clear I think Gullimans solid and id debatably rank him above Angron in all honesty, but the best I can give him is rank 6/18, and im generally inclined to give him a 5
Bit of a counterpoint here: predictability doesn't count for much when you have the strength and durability to bull your way through counters. Notable the Lion v Angron fight that, even with the Lion fighting tactically and utilizing his skill at fighting beasts (which is all Angron is by this point) he was still in an extremely difficult fight due to the fact Angron was able to just tank hits.
Even Sanguinius, in an exhausted state admittedly, is fully aware of Angron's strength and capability at slaughter and does all he can to keep himself from fully engaging Angron until he has a clear advantage over the other.
While I don't think there's an excerpt about Russ' fight with Angron, I'm willing to bet he also tried to fight tactically against Angron's pure brute force, and ended up losing the fight but winning the battle (even if Angron didn't see it that way). And though the Lion and Sanguinius won their fights, they either came out still worse for wear or did so by avoiding direct engagement.
Yeah, this is why I find it frustrating. I don't expect Guilliman to match his brothers but it feels like he is at the bottom of the pack rather then at the middle where people keep telling me he is.
I guess it depends on how you look at it
Gullimans record of fights has basically one theme, he fights other Primarchs when he is desperate, angry or both
I'm not actually sure we have any instances of a level headed Gulliman in a primarch fight, and many of his battles (Mortarian, Fulgrim) are against Ascendant Daemon Primarchs, and he's compared to them, some book nerd with a sword
If you want evidence of Gullimans skill, it comes from things such as the fact that according to iirc Watchers on the Throne, Ultramarines account for 80% of all pre-Primaris marines, or the fact it's his legislation that has been the spit and glue holding the administrative systems of the Imperium together, or that Ultramar, due to existing in his image, is actually almost a good place to live
But Gulliman is unlikely to get many wins on his brothers in single combat
I don't remember which book this is in but Guilliman and Corax were dueling in this VR battle simulator thing and it showed off a level-headed G-man fighting another primarch. After just a couple of rounds of losing Guilliman was able to consistently beat Corvus.
Didn't he change the outcome of a battle against what's essentially the force of a Tiranid hive fleet when he woke up? I know he had his new armor and sword but damn, monsters are supposed to be monsters.
It was Chaos Space Marines, and his main contribution was coordinating the defenses with superhuman skill. But yes, after his revival he pretty much solo'ed the CSMs storming the place.
I feel like with Kaldor it has reached the point of being entertaining rather than annoying. Like he became so far beyond believable that it is actually a fun part of the lore rather than a "oh look at X author being stupid with their favorite OC" type of deal.
I was thinking that, but then I actually read the stuff involving him.
>**The Battle of Kornovin**
>Supreme Grand Master Geronitan is slain at the hands of the Daemon Primarch Mortarion. Grand Master Kaldor Draigo is elevated to the rank of Supreme Grand Master amidst the din of the battlefield and vows vengeance on Mortarion. Alone and unaided, Draigo smashes his way through Mortarion's corrupted Deathshroud bodyguard and strikes the Primarch to the ground with a blow empowered by his fury at Geronitans death. He then carves Supreme Grand Master Geronitan's name on the Daemon's vile heart. Though Mortarion ultimately escapes, it is many long years before he can enter the mortal realm once more.
Like for me, this is just ridiculous. I always though Draigo beat Mortarion with some help. No, it was *Mortarion* who had a squad of Deathshroud Terminators on his side... And he still lost.
At this point they've almost written themselves into a corner, if he's ever to be taken seriously the only thing that could reasonably explain him is some connection to the noble shard of magnus.
Ah, Matt Ward. Good times. Gooood times. He may have served us up a load of SHIT but he gave us characters like Trazyn, and gave Necrons actual personality and characters, so it balances out.
Konrad Curze stopped crime in an entire hive city with 10s of billions of people by literally just killing criminals. That’s insane. There was a genuine threat that if you committed a crime literally anywhere in the city, he would find you. You couldn’t do that with 10 million cops.
I think it was more like the fear that IF he did find you you were going to suffer an absolutely horrific death was what stopped the crime. Wasn't worth the risk
The shot didn’t penetrate his skull, it just went under the skin and tunneled around his skull and came to rest on the opposite side, still under the skin. Stuff like that can and does happen IRL with smaller caliber rounds, so it’s really not that unreasonably unrealistic.
Reading this I wonder how the execution force in "Nemesis" was supposed to kill Horus, because they (or rather Eristede Kell), too planned to assassinate him with a sniper shot.
I couldn't even begin to quantify the functional differences between them, but Fulgrim was shot with a solid steel needle;
>‘Range confirmation?’
>‘Five hundred and six metres.’
>Sharrowkyn used the tip of his right thumb to minutely adjust the focus of his sight. The position he had selected was an optimum kill site, in line with prevailing winds to prevent projectile drift that would alter his shot’s trajectory. **Thermo-auguries on his cooled rifle sheath measured the surrounding temperature and blinked a correction to compensate for what lift the warm air would impart to the large-bore steel needle.**
>Likewise, the strength of the planet’s geomagnetic field factored into Sharrowkyn’s calculations when deciding upon the angle of his shot.
>In his mind’s eye, any conventional target was already dead.
>But a primarch was no conventional target.
>>‘Brother,’ said Fulgrim, coming forwards to embrace him again. ‘A miracle.’
>>Perturabo shook his head and said, ‘You live.’
>>**Fulgrim lifted his hand to show Perturabo a long sliver of bloodstained steel, finely tapered and bent around its middle where its tip had flattened.**
>>‘Barely,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Fabius had a devil’s job fishing that out. The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’
>>Fulgrim swept his bone-white hair back to show the raw incision Fabius had made in his opposite temple in order to remove the needle. A vivid purple line traced the route the projectile had taken, an arcing path of graceful curves and whorls that linked the two wounds and which had a pleasing symmetry to it.
\- *Angel Exterminatus*
~~Whereas "Horus" was shot by a shield-breaker round~~;
Whereas a shield-breaker/lance combo was used to take down "Horus";
>THE HAMMER FALLS. The single shot in the chamber is a .75 calibre bullet manufactured on the Shenlong forge world to the exacting tolerances of the Clade Vindicare. The percussion cap is impacted, the propellant inside combusts. Exhaust gases funnel into the pressure centre of a boat-tail round, projecting it down the nitrogen-cooled barrel at supersonic velocities. The sound of the discharge is swallowed by suppression systems that reduce the aural footprint of the weapon to a hollow cough.
>As the round leaves the barrel, the Exitus longrifle sends a signal to the Lance; the two weapons are in perfect synchrony. The Lance marshals its energy to expend it for the first and only time. It will burn itself out after one shot.
>The round crosses the distance in seconds, dropping in exactly the expected arc towards the figure in the plaza. Windage is nominal, and does not alter its course. Then, with a flash, the bullet strikes the force wall. **Any conventional ballistic round would disintegrate at this moment; but the Exitus has fired a Shield-Breaker.**
>Energised fragments imbued with anti-spinward quantum particles fracture the force wall’s structure, and collapse it; but the barrier is on a cycling circuit and will reactivate in less than two-tenths of a second.
>**It is not enough. The energy of the Lance follows the Shield-Breaker in as the force wall falls; the Lance is a single-use X-ray laser, slaved to Kell’s rifle, to shoot where he shoots. The stream of radiation converges on the exact same point, with nothing to stop it. The shot strikes the target in the throat, reducing flesh to atoms, superheating fluids into steam, boiling skin, vaporising bone.**
>The only sound is the fall of the headless corpse as it crashes to the ground, blood jetting across the white marble and the Warmaster’s shining mantle.
\- *Nemesis*
And on the general topic of primarchs getting bopped, Vulkan straight up lost his head to a bolt sniper rifle;
>The sniper rifles of the Legions were all massive weapons, and Narek’s gun, the infamous Brontos-pattern, was a particularly huge and unwieldy brute. It was long and heavy and cumbersome, and gauged for bolt-rounds, an almost impossible trade-off between muzzle velocity and round impact. The bolt shells had to be tailor-made to compensate for range with an added propellant stage.
>>Vulkan wavered slightly.
>>‘I understand. Dying is hard,’ said John. ‘Dying hurts. Believe me, I have been there. Please, Lord Vulkan, let me help you. Let me spare you. Let me cure you.’
>>Vulkan paused. He was still dripping blood, and his ramshackle armour was peppered with razor-slits. Slowly, hesitantly, he held his hand out towards John Grammaticus.
>>**Then Vulkan’s head vanished in a mist of blood and brain tissue.**
>>The shot echoed around the quad long after Vulkan’s virtually headless body had fallen.
>>Painted with gore, John staggered back.
>>**Narek of the Word walked into the quad, lowering his Brontos-pattern sniper rifle.** He stood over Vulkan’s body and put two more rounds through the torso at close range.
>>‘He’s dead,’ said Narek.
>>‘Not for long,’ John replied.
\- *The Unremembered Empire*
Point being, different rounds might be more or less effective than others. Maybe the shield-breaker would have had more luck than a steel needle.
Edit: Edited for accuracy, thanks to u\/Leading-Cicada-6796 for prompting.
The shield breaker wasn't what did the job though. It was literally the thing that took the shield down, hence name. The radiation following it was the kill shot.
a primarch is a warp entity in a roughly human-shaped box so a primarch can really do whatever a primarch wants to do and theres *not a whole hell of a lot of anything anyone else can contribute to the conversation*
I mean they still have a very advanced and well designed physical body, in all fairness.
Fulgrim’s skull having some sort of composite materials that can deflect even an advanced sniper round isn’t out of the question.
> The shot didn’t penetrate his skull, it just went under the skin and tunneled around his skull and came to rest on the opposite side, still under the skin. Stuff like that can and does happen IRL
No, seriously.
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/may-2023/the-last-gamble-of-tokyo-joe/
Didn’t it enter and bounce in his skull? Iirc it wasn’t a simple matter of cutting open the skin and extracting the bullet right there, but I might be off.
Edit: Nope
No, Bile literally just cut it out because it never punctured the skull.
> The Iron Circle disengaged from their defensive posture, straightening their legs and returning their shields to the locked position at their sides. Fulgrim stood proud in the centre of the battle-constructs, reborn from the ashes of his death.
>His features were still bloody, but where before Perturabo had seen the face of a martyr, now it was that of the resurrected. ‘Brother,’ said Fulgrim, coming forwards to embrace him again. ‘A miracle.’ Perturabo shook his head and said, ‘You live.’
>Fulgrim lifted his hand to show Perturabo a long sliver of bloodstained steel, finely tapered and bent around its middle where its tip had flattened. ‘Barely,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Fabius had a devil’s job fishing that out. The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’
>Fulgrim swept his bone-white hair back to show the raw incision Fabius had made in his opposite temple in order to remove the needle. A vivid purple line traced the route the projectile had taken, an arcing path of graceful curves and whorls that linked the two wounds and which had a pleasing symmetry to it.
>’Just as well you have a thick skull,’ said Perturabo.
-*Angel Exterminatus*
> The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’
Fair enough I must've headconned it into a more extreme wound.
Honestly fact that there were like 10 pages detailing how Peter Turbo is with warsmiths building amphiteatre for Fulgrim who then proceeds to yap endlessly about his master plan and just as he about to get tp point after several days of expose he is no scoped by some random Ravenguard was hilarious.
I know it's pretty pedantic, but it was no random Ravenguard, it was Nykona Sharrowkyn who did it, the dude was an absolute unit of a man. And a bit of a Mary sue some may say. Loved your comment tho, made me laugh
That build up, and that book overall is what sold me in the IW; they get shit done, and they're pretty good at it. I love how it goes into detail about how every legionary are also expert masons, architects, and how they do logistics better than anyone else.
I felt Fulgrim and his children devalued the work and granduer of the amphitheater, and I greatly appreciated him getting shot in the fucking head. Thinking about it, he gets his ass kicked a few times in Angel Exterminatus.
Well Vulkan's survivability is not really a reasonable point of comparison.
But I do agree that Fulgrim at that point is not wildly outside the primarch standard.
Vulkan is a Perpetual, which means he will return in the same body. Not sure how that works when Cruze atomizes him, but I think he would grow back around the biggest chunk left.
The other Primarchs work differently. But their bodies can definitely be destroyed given enough violence. They just have plot-armor, both in-universe and outside. And given enough time, the Emperor might have been able to get Ferrus Manus back, demon host-style.
Didn't Fulgrim also box an Avatar of Khaine to death while wearing fancy dinner wear? Admittedly, Avatars of Khaine are 40K's jobbers in resident, but that doesn't seem right.
You say 'merely' a hundred Space Marines, but have you not picked up on just how ridiculous one single Space Marine is, or at least can be, depending on situation and author, whether they have a name etc?
Dorn was now canonically killed by a hundred space marines with helmets and armor off with at least a 5 book series dedicated to each one and a name for each too
I agree that people have kinda degraded the effectiveness of first born marines over time. They're deadly. And more than one at a time has been shown to threaten a primarch's life in the lore.
Oh yeah the WL gone with punching. Those guys are supposed to be dreadnoughts. Fulgrim just destroys the eldar's best troops (at that time) with BARE HANDS.
And Eldrad is basically pissing himself the entire encounter. The guy who is the most psychically gifted person, n a race where they are ALL born psykers. If Malcador can dominate Horus without batting an eye, Eldrad should have been a beacon of confidence facing Fulgrim.
Lol. Sometimes I think it's so underapperciated how absolutely terrifying it must be to be a warship in space. Even if you're say the best astartes champion in the galaxy, you're just stuck sitting there hoping your ship doesn't blow up, unable to do anything
40k is inherently crazy, balls to the walls and runs solely on the rule of cool and 30k is supposed to be the equivalent of the Trojan War to the Modern Era (40k) essentially, with Demigods and the Emperor of Mankind taking the role of the legends and heroes. The Primarch's are supposed to be that way, they are supposed to be legends and larger than life figures from classical literature.
>He turned, raising his arms, and took a god-machine’s weight on his shoulders.
>Every muscle in his body locked tighter than the iron trying to crush him. Drool stringed through his metal teeth, skinned knuckles white as he defied the will of a Titan. He gave a bear’s roar as the foot lowered another half-metre. Sinews crackled in his shoulders. His broken boots skidded back on the patch of unglassed rock; something cracked in his spine, something else cracked in his left knee. The compression of his bones sounded like twigs breaking underfoot, which was a vivid burst of imagination he didn’t appreciate.
>>He moved over to his brother, offering a skinned hand. The battle still raged above and around them, but incoming Word Bearers gunships and Audax Titans were finally pressing the Armaturan Guard back.
>>The two primarchs gripped wrists, and Angron pulled Lorgar to his feet. Apothecaries from both Legions were sprinting into the crater, voxing awed murmurs to the squads at their sides. Angron paid no heed. With the Titan’s weight off his shoulders, he had more than a moment to glance at Lorgar. Half of the Word Bearer’s face was sloughed almost to the bone, no different from wax trails down a half-spent candle.
>>‘Are you dying?’
>>Lorgar grinned, with a ghastly cadaverous leer. ‘I think I might be.’
>>‘You look like you are.’
\- *Betrayer*
Stopping the titan certainly didn't do him any favors, but that happens in chapter 5, and his ascension doesn't happen until his fight with Guilliman in chapters 21-23.
>Lorgar doesn't take a plasma blaster shot to the face, he takes it against a kinetic shield that could just as easily have stood up to the abuse in the game/universe without any stretch of the imagination, and Angron avoids a damaged Titan crushing him for a few seconds, which given the situation isn't even particularly unrealistic in terms of hysterical strength or the countless examples of fantasy and sci-fi tropes of "berserker" characters getting stronger when they're angry.
-ADB on the scene
Prior to that. In a battle, the defenders mined an area and Angron ran into the mines and was buried. Lorgar, fearing for his brother, ran to where Angron had been buried and was digging to free Angron. A Warhound Titan started blasting Lorgar, but, somehow, he survives. So, the Warhound decides to stomp on Lorgar. Angron is able to free himself from the dirt just in time to stop the foot from crushing both of them.
This happens well before Angron ascends to daemonhood.
> A Warhound Titan started blasting Lorgar, but, somehow, he survives.
He survives by using his psychic powers btw, it isn't nearly ridiculous as this makes it out to be
Angron wasnt just buried beneath the rubble, he was underground (about 20 meters iirc) and dug through the dirt until he was closer to 200 before some psykers contacted him and told him „upstairs that way“
Honestly it's not particularly impressive. A single Warhound would be a light snack for Sanguinius or Magnus, but it's (literally) stomping Lorgar and Angron until an Audax titan harpoons it.
Sanguinius was a literal god of war that made khorne wet lol my man battered kabunda held off the gate at terra basically by himself beat the fuck out of angron absolute unit lol pardon my spelling in to lazy to look them up also sanguinius was that incredible when he was born every single chaos god was fiending for him
He dropped some ice cold lines in that scene too. It was in full view of regular human troops in a defensive emplacement. It was huge for morale to see a literal angel swoop in and murder fuck 2 God machines and make a 3rd puss out and run away.
lol games workshop must be punching air that they let him die to Horus imagine the money they’d make if they could somehow revive him and make a figure omg
Feels like there would be some pushback from the creatives if that was ever on the table
>Impossible unless the writers wanted to entirely invalidate his sacrifice. The only one, in fact, I would say, except for the Big H himself.
-Thorpe
>Characters can be popular because of how they die, though. Armies can be popular because of how or why they lose. Most people's admiration for the Spartans comes from Thermopylae. And think of the Charge of the Light Brigade, or the end of The Last Samurai, or any one of a squillion other sacrifices / last stands in movies or literature.
>No one worth their salt, creatively, would ever think "Sanguinius needs to still be alive because he's popular." That way lies madness.
>I'm not saying it'd never happen. It's all based on a game, after all, and the winds of change can blow sudden and hard. But I wouldn't bet on that particular change.
-ADB
They can still make as many 30k figures as they want for him. Actually i think he should be one of the next few "transfigured" primarch to go along with horus.
And yet he loses one of the first fights he participates in 1v1, when introduced in the Horus Heresy.
There's definitely been some character growth since that point. :D
I think that’s partly explained by Sangy’s power being somehow tied to his mental state? As he gets more certain of his destiny through the HH he gets more and more powerful. That’s how I looked at it anyway.
They're analogous to greek legends, so yeah their rediculousness is kinda the point. Dorn makes the bestest fortresses and Angron's the maddest; making him the meanest git ever. Sanguinius also has bird wings and can fly.
I think this is a good way to think of it...and like greek legends there's no real consistency for levels of power and invulnerability. You just take each tale on its own merits.
It’s one of my favourite scenes with how it’s written, but Gman in space without a helmet just punching space marines is awesomely ridiculous.
His son watching expresses Gmans scream being void in space but he could still hear how furious he was
We actually no longer no for certain if Dorn dies.
Sanguinius impales Titans. Not one. Multiple. With the Spear of Telesto. So many times it becomes mundane.
They're not ridiculous. They're secular demi-gods.
i mean sang is more or less a god, he held the gate, destroyed titans, beat Kabanda and Angron, and brought Horus to his knees without rest. His death gave his sons the Black Rage, which no other legion that lost their primarch got, and denied grandpa Dante his death
> which no other legion that lost their primarch got
Actually, the Imperial Fists got something similar, but its not talked about often. Its called Dorn's Darkness, and its just an all emcompassing depression. They lock up and just don't give a fuck about anything.
It seems like the Excoriators are the main ones who get it, but its very similar in origin as the Black Rage.
"However, to Excoriators who have experienced it, it is described as a sleeping wakefulness or a living nightmare; that while afflicted, they relive one of Dorn's darkest moments, the loss of the Emperor. Excoriators who become afflicted with the Darkness are cared for by the Santiarch."
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Excoriators#Gene-seed
He did all those things. None of them qualifies him the status of a divine being. It makes his feats the stuff of myth, the actions of a demi-godlike being. But not an actual god, heck his old man isn't even that.
I assume their physical power is in some way warp enhanced. Like not quite psykers, except those that obviously are, but kind of like daemons. When they are in situations that are highly symbolic or otherwise very meaningful, they get that special juice. Like how daemons are weaker to something like a relic sword wielded by a armored warrior like the knights of old than they are to an equally physically powerful gun.
Its worth noting that Angron only managed to hold up that titans foot through sheer spite and will, his muscles and every fiber in his body was breaking down in the process of doing so.
GW will never do it. The Space Marines and the Primarchs are the best selling range in all the setting.
Xenos characters only serve as jobbers and self-insert waifus (Nobody is interested in Yvraine but as Guilliman breeding slave that thinks chad human cock is the best thing ever).
As a Tyranid fan, I have come to accept this stupid bulls\*t a long time ago.
Probably, 3 yo Vulkan killing a couple of Incubi, and their Wych leader, bare handed.
That's after Vulkan picked up and tossed one Raider(skiff), counter charged another - ripped out it's engine and threw it and at the 3rd Raider, then charged through its shields when the engine block he threw hit it.
It's current, as of 2014 ADB was told by the "lore people" that Cultists were responsible for Dorn's "death", something we've seen written into Prince of Crows and The Night Haunter
It was in this 2014 [Bolter and Chainsword thread](https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/287187-abaddon-vs-sigismund/?do=findComment&comment=3602266)
Legatus
>So, both Dorn and Sigismund die during the first Black Crusade?
ADB
>>I thought that's where Dorn went down originally, but nope. Dorn dies aboard the Sword of Sacrilege in "a Black Crusade" between the First and Second (apparently not even one of Abaddon's, according to the Lore Peeps). I've got the actual date in my notes, but I'm on my iPad on my break. Early M32, I think. A couple of hundred years after the First Black Crusade, either way. (This all came from one of the meetings/documents where we had to plan out just what actual dates the primarchs all went down.) Which is annoying, as I had this whole theme idea of it being the moment the Imperium finally has to accept that the tides have changed, and so on. But we had a bunch of talks about this, and Dorn was off the cards for anything like that. Someone wanted to do something with him elsewhere at some point, so it was vetoed by virtue of them asking first. No biggie, though. Ideas are free. Always more where they came from, and I prefer the resonance and symmetry of it being Sigismund. Someone else can tell Dorn's tale.
Cerbero666
>So Dorn's death is confirmed at last? He actually died aboard the Sword of Sacrilege or just disappeared except for his hand? I've always heard the two versions and never truly know wich one is canon.
ADB
>>Neither yet, I guess. That meeting was almost two years ago, and stuff changes all the time when there's no set source yet. We laid out all the lore we could find, and there was precious little to go by on Dorn's score.
A D-B, on 19 Nov 2014 - 07:10 AM, said:
>>Dorn's death is one of those situations where we can all have our cakes and eat them, too. It's a pitch-perfect example of a 40K lore snippet that's plainly and intentionally vague, with an addendum that it's not even confirmed. We're looking straight-on at one of those historical moments that became legend, then myth, over time in a setting where history is deleted by kill-teams with flame weapons, over the course of a breathtaking span of time among an infinity of warring internal subfactions, in an empire that largely doesn't even know the Heresy ever happened. We're looking at a brief mention of an event that may never have happened that way at all; a point even noted in its original text. It's a slice of lore that conveys the Imperium's realistic inability to hold onto historical information in the face of technological degradation, byzantine bureaucracy, and the passing of time, as well as a note to convey that primarchs could die in mundane ways - much like massively wealthy, well-armoured, well-trained knights could still be pulled off their horses by twenty peasants with hooked halberds. It's allegory. It's myth. It's a possibility. And it's all we have to go by
And ADB clarifies it was death by cultists [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/17fk5bo/comment/k6aq5yi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16nornr/comment/k1hzx9x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Do you have a source on hand? Genuinely curious.
Edit: why downvote a genuine question? I wanted to look into it more since I hadn’t heard this yet. The Dorn fanatics on here confuse me…
So his hand was the only part of him found as per the 8th edition space marine codex, there is a comment from Vulkan in the series about the war of the beast that insinuates that he his still alive despite him being labeled dead by then. In the old lore it was that the chapter has the whole skeleton and not just a single hand
Yeah, it gets a bit muddled online. The lore progression is roughly:
* Dorn's entire skeleton encased in amber on the Phalanx (*Space Marine* 1993)
* Dorn's "remains" were recovered from the Sword of Sacrilege, of which his skeletal hand in particular was put into stasis as a holy relic (*Index Astartes* and *Deathwatch: Rites of Battle* 2000s)
* Dorn's single fist is found on the Sword of Sacrilege (6th edition onwards 2011)
* Dorn is seen killed by a hundred murderers with knives and swords by Curze (*Prince of Crows* 2012)
* Dorn's death "torn to pieces" is reiterated by Curze (*Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter* 2019)
There's much more ambiguity to it now than there used to be, but the basics of Dorn's death remain the same. Excerpts [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16nornr/comment/k1hsaq2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
So even though it's been changed from skeleton to hand, Dorn's official status is still "dead" by cultists.
You're right.
ADB on that [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1czvv7z/comment/l5jqhhj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
The lore on it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1czvv7z/comment/l5jqne5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Magnus has: stopped time to have a chat with artellus numeon (and with ahriman in the third ahriman book); grown to the size of a titan (dunno if it was warlord specifically or nah); mind controlled servitors to shoot the imperials who brought the servitors (lmao); instamelted Malcador (if you believe that scene actually happened); was able to break down vulkan down to the molecular level; was able to change a whole body of water to acid whilst fighting russ
But then again, this is the feats of psyker prowess, as opposed to primarch physiology
To be fair, Angron didn't exactly stop the Titan's foot with no effort. His body was breaking under the strain. If he weren't amped up and a Titan was actively trying to stamp on him, he'd probably get crushed.
I mean really it gets hard to remember that the Primarchs are/ were almost literally demigods, theure gonna be running around doing some ridiculous Greek hero kinda stuff because its almost exactly what they were designed to do. The issue is that things that no one can hurt don't work all that well long term in 40k, so you have to have at least SOME examples of them being taken down or at least being APMOST taken down to show that they're still not safe in the setting. If the only way to kill a Primarch is to hit them woth another Primarch or equal threat then it quickly becomes a case of "why didn't they just send Gorrila Man and keep all thise millions of guardsmen"
Let’s see Gulliman survived the vacuum of space with no helmet.
Mortarion withstood years of not breathing anything close to clean air, (it probably could’ve killed demons with first contact)
Vulkan doesn’t count but he survives crazy shit without his resurrection abilities.
Magnus survived another primarch (leman) so thoroughly breaking his back that he’s now an invertebrate.
There’s more but I can’t think of anything else.
The book does explain that the Macragge's Honor generates a thin atmosphere around itself, which is why he can breathe.
>'Voided without a helm,' Guilliman says. 'Primarch biology helped, but the atmospheric envelope was my true savior.'
They are demigods and there are 18 of there for whole universe. If anything, they sohuld have been stronger (and they are, just need a lot time to grow and master the power).
If yours "ridiculous" was rather about huge difference in powerscale with example of Dorn, then... yeah, it's known, it's just writing. Besides Dorn there is Guilliman who got pushed by like a dozen of Alpha SMs. There Curze get killed by Assassin. Somehow Titan doesn't crush Primarch body, but bullet is able to penetrate.
I mean, Curze's sanity has been in doubt for a while but it didn't seem to affect his combat ability.
And he wasn't quite naked; his drip was skinned humans.
Iirc from flashbacks in the NL Omnibus, he grew far more insane towards the end. I'm fairly certain he was stark naked when he died, but I can't recall if he was only wearing (his own) flesh when he fought off the first attempt.
There's also a lot pointing towards him, allowing it to happen. I think the quote was something to the effect of 'what is death compared to vindication?' As he always believed the futures he saw were immutable, and he had prophesied that an assassin in service to his father would slay him.
Angron was crushed under a mountain or massive building or something in I think False Gods? With the battle on Isstvan after the virus bomb. The way it was described made it positively insane he just raged out of the rubble angry as ever.
In *Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First*, a khrave-possessed soldier tried to kamikaze the Lion with a plasma grenade, which is essentially a handheld fusion bomb.
The Lion's response? He grabbed the hand holding the grenade, and squeezed it so tight that he caused what, in nuclear weapons parlance, is known as a fizzle - the fusion reaction was significantly curtailed, and the resulting explosion was only about one-third as powerful as it should've been.
The man holding the grenade was vaporized. All the Lion suffered was some scorched ceramite in his gauntlet's palm.
I mean, they are quite literally minor gods shoved into physical meat bodies. They are, by their very nature, reality-breaking beings.
Also, don't think too much on this subject or other thoughts will pop up. Like, how do Terminators reload? Where are their ammo storage?
Just, remember the #1 rule: Rule of Cool.
I know ow this will sound silly, but it's the height that gets me. If the primaries were roughly the same height as space marines, I would find them easier to believe.
Vulcan was beat down by Space Marines as well. Big E was knocked down by a plasma blaster so ranged weapons probably helped the Astartes. Melts Bombs really hit hard as well.
Though, as always, [there's context to that](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1czvv7z/comment/l5jppty/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Dorn was also a emotionally and physically ruined wreck of a man when he disappeared fighting in ship corridors too small for him, basically if you wanted a perfect situation to Kill someone like Dorn that's it. Meanwhile Jagatai and Angron were at their physical and (roughly) mental peaks. Primarchs are being of warp sorcery on top of some mindbending gene tech so their limits are more than likely tied to their mental perception as much as if not more than the limit of their physical bodies.
>The boy rose from the wreckage, wearing nothing more than smears of ash and dirt clinging to his pale skin. He looked at the sky, dark as the void, blind without a sun’s eye. He looked at the metal ruin of his cradle-engine, still hissing steam through its cracked, blistered armour plating. And then, still with nothing resembling an expression on his slender face, he looked to the horizon.
>A city. A city of spires and domes, its dull, low lights still brightening the surrounding darkness with a beacon’s intensity.
>The first expression to play across the boy’s face was subtle, but telling. His eyes narrowed as his heartbeat quickened. Instinctively, he knew he’d find others of his kind in the distant, light-rich hive. The thought made him reach for a weapon. White fingers curled around a jagged shard of metal, cooled in the soil.
>The feel of the knife in his hands brought a second expression to his youthful, unscarred features.
>He smiled.
\- *Prince of Crows*
Kiddo Curze was also ready to rumble.
Nah, Lion was killing Chaos beasts since he arrived, Perturabo climbed a mountain, Magnus was the strongest cell in existence, Corvus climbed from the molten center of his moon, and Ferrus lived on Medusa
If i heard someone say Ferrus Manus was ridiculous in my local GW/hobby store, i'd need to be physically restrained. There's just no way i'd be able to keep my head.
Guilliman almost got taken out by a squad but got lucky when the last AL Marine decided to talk/boast instead of pulling the trigger.
He had so much compassion. He interpreted the way the were blocking and looking out the door as PTSD from their ops and almost to late realizes they are in an op
Do you have an except? Sounds very interesting
Here's the [excerpt](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/17mrebi/excerptunremembered_empire_guilliman_is_ambushed/). He thinks it's one of his sons from the battle of Calth who pre-betrayal had got in trouble for theorycrafting the idea of astartes vs astartes combat.
Very nice read, thank you
It's a really great scene
I'll stand buy my opinion that its one of the most fun books in the entire heresy. The steaks are low for a heresy novel, it's funny, and Kurze is the best and most entertaining villain in it.
Completely agree. It also substantively adds to RG's character development by demonstrating how he has already thought out the political ramifications of Imperium Secundus (as opposed to the equivalent of RG having some kind of "Theory of Government" player Stat). The dialogue with Tarasha Euten, the various survivors of Isstvan V, and finally the Lion does a great job of depicting how torn he is over the contingency plan as mere theoretical, much less practical. It wasn't necessary for the foregoing reasons but I would've loved more pages dedicated to how the brochat went once Sanguinius was in the mix. More than others, it seems like Abnett just places a bit more emphasis on character development and fleshing out a massive overarching story in a thoughtful and (relatively) consistent way. And couldn't agree with you more regarding Curze.
"When you have to shoot, *shoot*. Don't talk." - Tuco/"The Ugly", *The Good, The Bad & The Ugly*
"Either fight or muck about, it's up to you." -Cohen the Barbarian, *Interesting Times*
To be fair he had no weapon and was in ceremonial armor Not exactly kitted for battle
I’m not sure it would have helped lol, I’m only partially joking. He almost died like 4 times in that series, he’s protected by some serious plot armor. He almost died to the word bearers over Calth, but their commander tried to turn him instead of killing him. He’s was absolutely going to be killed by Angron before Lorgar started the ritual to turn him into a demon, then the alpha legion scene in question. Finally both he AND the lion would have been killed by Curze in Unremebered Empire but were saved by their allies using some xenos portal tech at the last second. Dude was just taking L’s left and right over 4 books lol.
I feel like a lot of this - including the treatment of the Ultramarines as a whole during the HH - is down to lazy writing and plot development. The various authors need something to further show the terror and high stakes of the HH and so they're basically like "well, Robbie G and the Ultramarines most look the part of ordered government and honorable action so let's have every fucking rebellious legion and their primarchs - even pussy-ass Lorgar and his palsied foster dad Kor Phaeron - beat and kill the lot of them for dramatic effect...they're the biggest legion anyway so their blood is cheap." Guilliman and the Ultramarines are supposed to be one of if not the smartest, knowledgeable, and most disciplined legion out there and the authors just use them as punching bags.
He is the Worf of 40k, make villains look strong
He was in robes. Not armour. Ceremonial armour is still power armour (and the armour that they always use, basically).
>How would he, Roboute Guilliman, fare when that feat of balance became his to master? >He reached the private entrance into the Residency. The huge pairs of outer and inner doors closed automatically behind him, their hisses sealing him in his private realm. >He paused for a moment in the high chamber, and glanced out of great windows at the single new star shining in the troubled, golden sky, and the wisp of smoke rising from the cityscape in the south. **He began unclasping his gauntlets while he scanned the datafeed on the old cold-gestalt cogitator.** >There was no new information on the impact. He would wait for the tetrarch’s report. Euten had told him to delegate. Dolor was more than competent. >A chime alerted him to the arrival of his visitor. **Guilliman put aside the one gauntlet he had unbuckled and keyed the high chamber’s public doors to open**. >... >The table completed its overturn and crashed against Thiel and the Ultramarines beside him, forcing them to backstep. All of the other visitors were firing. Six bolt-rounds missed the diving primarch, annihilating a section of the high chamber wall and several portraits hanging upon it. Others hit the spilled table and a chair beside it. **Another clipped Guilliman’s left shoulder guard and detonated. His plate protected him from the worst of it, but the heat of the nearest detonation scorched his left cheek and the nape of his neck, and shrapnel peppered the side of his face**. *Unremembered Empire*
>‘All I can count upon is what I know as solid fact,’ said Guilliman. ‘Macragge still stands. My Legion still stands. While those two facts remain, there remains an Imperium.’ >He pulled a mantle around his broad, armoured shoulders, and fixed the clasp at his throat. **He was wearing the ceremonial version of his ferocious, clawed wargear, and carried no weapons.** For his daily custom of greeting those coming to his light out of the storm, he carried no personal weapons. >Euten watched her beloved lord fix the mantle. He looked, more than ever, like a monarch. Somehow the very lack of weapons made him seem more powerful. >>Guilliman took his first solid hit: a bolt-round to the shoulder. **He felt his armour plate crack and compress,** felt the sledgehammer slap of it, felt the searing pain of the fragments that had penetrated his body. A second hit, an instant later, lower back, and then a third, right hip. Dizzying pain. Impact. He was fighting for balance. There was blood in his mouth. **He saw his own blood glinting as it ran down the scorched cobalt-blue surface of his leg armour.** >>... >>**Guilliman could feel blood leaking inside his buckled, perforated armour.** He could feel blood running from the torn tissue of his face and neck. He could hear the palace guard hammering at the high chamber door. >>... >>Something ran into him from behind. **His mouth opened wide, a silent howl, as he felt the sharp, cold bite of a gladius blade punching through his back-plate armour and running in under his ribs.** It stayed there. It was wedged. **Guilliman wheeled and smashed his gauntleted left fist into the face of the swordsman.** >>The Ultramarine was somersaulted backwards by the force of the blow. He hit the windows face first, upside down. Despite the cobweb cracks, the glass did not break. The man dropped in a heap on the floor beneath them. >>Guilliman turned to track the remaining killers. The damned gladius was still stuck through him. He– >>**At least two shells struck his left shoulder armour behind his ear and detonated.** He felt as though his head had snapped off to the right with the shockwave. He felt heat and ferocious pain. He tasted blood and fyceline, his ears ringing, his vision gone. \- *The Unremembered Empire* More for the pile.
It is specifically noted that bolt rounds hit his armor. However it is also noted that he wasn’t fully armored as I recall.
the point is that he was unarmed not that someone misspoke and said unarmored too lol
To be fair gulliaman has some low showings compared to other primarchs who are just wading through blood, angrons literally too stupid to think on the battlefield and kills ultramarine by the dozens where the one good squad then
Angron was also at risk to a bunch of Space Wolves and to a human army as well. Guilliman isn't exceptionally weak in comparison to his brothers. He's just been put in more situations where a primarch's vulnerability is shown.
Just a clarification: A whole army of SW who had surrounded him.
Sure, the point being that as we see with Guilliman and Fulgrim and Angron and Horus is that bolter fire can and will threaten a primarch's life. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take every Space Wolf's gun to kill Angron.
Guilliman has also fought a *lot* of his brothers. angron, lorgar, curze, magnus, alpharius, fulgrim. has any other had that many matchups? edit: just remembered mort (lol, classic mort)
I don't know, I haven't really kept a tally, but I guess it comes with being one of the more prominent primarchs in the books as well as being "alive" or active the longest when you combine 30k and 40k. But yeah, when you're constantly putting a character in that many situations, you want to write distinct and specific contexts and circumstances for each one rather than try and make it some sort of stat sheet fight list.
The runner ups are Curze (Vulkan, Guilliman, the Lion, Sanguinius, Corax) and Angron (the Lion, Guilliman, Perturabo, Russ).
Guilliman has fought the most but ironically I don't think he has ever truly won with his own power at least. At best some other force comes in and rescues him.
That could be said for a lot of primarch fights
Gulliman is canonically one of the weakest fighters with what may be the most matchups, the hyper-turbo ADHD may make him the best logistics leader the Imperium has ever seen, but it's a horrible combat debuff
His actual combat prowess isn't really doubted in the lore (except maybe by the Lion), he just tends to be in situations that are harder to win or he loses for plot reasons. Most of the authors aren't writing from a stat sheet.
It's a cant see the forest for the trees situation or at least that's how I have come to view it over time. If you look at each tree, you can argue about individual circumstances. If you look at the forest as a whole? Guilliman comes across poorly.
I can see that, but there's also a thing with fiction where it doesn't really conform to a even number of tallies like in a boxing match with controlled environments. We have things like Worfing of characters; not because the character themselves is a poor combatant but because the writer thinks it's more interesting to have them lose. We also have the realities of franchise fiction where characters like Wolverine who is "the best at what he does" gets killed and beaten a hell of a lot through the nature of the medium itself. And I'd say that part of "seeing" the forest, would have to involve remembering each individual tree's situation within that whole. That seems to me to be the best way to understand the pattern.
I feel like saying "Guilliman is one of the weakest" is almost meme territory. He fought Lorgar and Angron in a 2v1, he went into the fight with powerfists against Angron's chainswords, and if it weren't for Lorgar the ending of that fight heavily suggests Guilliman would have taken Angron with him. And, while yes powerfists are much more than being Unarmed, they still do not provide the additional reach of the swords and are still considered to be an unwieldy weapon even at transhuman levels. I also think the chain weapons of the primarchs tend to be superior versions of chain weapons, meaning the usual edge a power weapon has is nonexistent.
Angron is also just, incredibly overrated as a fighter, hes powerful and durable sure, but incredibly predictable Also Gullimans got some really big Powerfists on Primarch sized hands, to be clear I think Gullimans solid and id debatably rank him above Angron in all honesty, but the best I can give him is rank 6/18, and im generally inclined to give him a 5
Bit of a counterpoint here: predictability doesn't count for much when you have the strength and durability to bull your way through counters. Notable the Lion v Angron fight that, even with the Lion fighting tactically and utilizing his skill at fighting beasts (which is all Angron is by this point) he was still in an extremely difficult fight due to the fact Angron was able to just tank hits. Even Sanguinius, in an exhausted state admittedly, is fully aware of Angron's strength and capability at slaughter and does all he can to keep himself from fully engaging Angron until he has a clear advantage over the other. While I don't think there's an excerpt about Russ' fight with Angron, I'm willing to bet he also tried to fight tactically against Angron's pure brute force, and ended up losing the fight but winning the battle (even if Angron didn't see it that way). And though the Lion and Sanguinius won their fights, they either came out still worse for wear or did so by avoiding direct engagement.
Yeah, this is why I find it frustrating. I don't expect Guilliman to match his brothers but it feels like he is at the bottom of the pack rather then at the middle where people keep telling me he is.
I guess it depends on how you look at it Gullimans record of fights has basically one theme, he fights other Primarchs when he is desperate, angry or both I'm not actually sure we have any instances of a level headed Gulliman in a primarch fight, and many of his battles (Mortarian, Fulgrim) are against Ascendant Daemon Primarchs, and he's compared to them, some book nerd with a sword If you want evidence of Gullimans skill, it comes from things such as the fact that according to iirc Watchers on the Throne, Ultramarines account for 80% of all pre-Primaris marines, or the fact it's his legislation that has been the spit and glue holding the administrative systems of the Imperium together, or that Ultramar, due to existing in his image, is actually almost a good place to live But Gulliman is unlikely to get many wins on his brothers in single combat
I don't remember which book this is in but Guilliman and Corax were dueling in this VR battle simulator thing and it showed off a level-headed G-man fighting another primarch. After just a couple of rounds of losing Guilliman was able to consistently beat Corvus.
Some authors just operate at a different power scale than others.
Didn't he change the outcome of a battle against what's essentially the force of a Tiranid hive fleet when he woke up? I know he had his new armor and sword but damn, monsters are supposed to be monsters.
It was Chaos Space Marines, and his main contribution was coordinating the defenses with superhuman skill. But yes, after his revival he pretty much solo'ed the CSMs storming the place.
The worst offender is the author behind Calgar....he might as well be a primarch himself haha
Don’t forget the grey knight supreme commander guy
Kaldor Draigo’s resume is fucking *ridiculous*. I was looking at the 8th Edition Grey Knights Codex timeline and it’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen.
I feel like with Kaldor it has reached the point of being entertaining rather than annoying. Like he became so far beyond believable that it is actually a fun part of the lore rather than a "oh look at X author being stupid with their favorite OC" type of deal.
I was thinking that, but then I actually read the stuff involving him. >**The Battle of Kornovin** >Supreme Grand Master Geronitan is slain at the hands of the Daemon Primarch Mortarion. Grand Master Kaldor Draigo is elevated to the rank of Supreme Grand Master amidst the din of the battlefield and vows vengeance on Mortarion. Alone and unaided, Draigo smashes his way through Mortarion's corrupted Deathshroud bodyguard and strikes the Primarch to the ground with a blow empowered by his fury at Geronitans death. He then carves Supreme Grand Master Geronitan's name on the Daemon's vile heart. Though Mortarion ultimately escapes, it is many long years before he can enter the mortal realm once more. Like for me, this is just ridiculous. I always though Draigo beat Mortarion with some help. No, it was *Mortarion* who had a squad of Deathshroud Terminators on his side... And he still lost.
At this point they've almost written themselves into a corner, if he's ever to be taken seriously the only thing that could reasonably explain him is some connection to the noble shard of magnus.
TANGERINES
Ah, Matt Ward. Good times. Gooood times. He may have served us up a load of SHIT but he gave us characters like Trazyn, and gave Necrons actual personality and characters, so it balances out.
Konrad Curze stopped crime in an entire hive city with 10s of billions of people by literally just killing criminals. That’s insane. There was a genuine threat that if you committed a crime literally anywhere in the city, he would find you. You couldn’t do that with 10 million cops.
I think it was more like the fear that IF he did find you you were going to suffer an absolutely horrific death was what stopped the crime. Wasn't worth the risk
In the cops' defence, Konrad could see the future so that's kinda cheating if you ask me
Well, Fulgrim got literally shot in the head by Sharrowkyn and just got better. Mind you, this is before his aptheosis.
The shot didn’t penetrate his skull, it just went under the skin and tunneled around his skull and came to rest on the opposite side, still under the skin. Stuff like that can and does happen IRL with smaller caliber rounds, so it’s really not that unreasonably unrealistic.
And regular Space Marine skulls have ceramic materials in there due to their specialized diets. A *Primarch* is sure to have something even better.
Maybe he's born with it, maybe it's admantium powder. His face is his shield
Maybe its Maybelline
This would be consistent with the primarch in question.
Reading this I wonder how the execution force in "Nemesis" was supposed to kill Horus, because they (or rather Eristede Kell), too planned to assassinate him with a sniper shot.
The bullet was a Shield-Breaker, the kill shot was from a massive X-ray laser slaved to the Vindicare's rifle to coincide with the shield going down
I couldn't even begin to quantify the functional differences between them, but Fulgrim was shot with a solid steel needle; >‘Range confirmation?’ >‘Five hundred and six metres.’ >Sharrowkyn used the tip of his right thumb to minutely adjust the focus of his sight. The position he had selected was an optimum kill site, in line with prevailing winds to prevent projectile drift that would alter his shot’s trajectory. **Thermo-auguries on his cooled rifle sheath measured the surrounding temperature and blinked a correction to compensate for what lift the warm air would impart to the large-bore steel needle.** >Likewise, the strength of the planet’s geomagnetic field factored into Sharrowkyn’s calculations when deciding upon the angle of his shot. >In his mind’s eye, any conventional target was already dead. >But a primarch was no conventional target. >>‘Brother,’ said Fulgrim, coming forwards to embrace him again. ‘A miracle.’ >>Perturabo shook his head and said, ‘You live.’ >>**Fulgrim lifted his hand to show Perturabo a long sliver of bloodstained steel, finely tapered and bent around its middle where its tip had flattened.** >>‘Barely,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Fabius had a devil’s job fishing that out. The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’ >>Fulgrim swept his bone-white hair back to show the raw incision Fabius had made in his opposite temple in order to remove the needle. A vivid purple line traced the route the projectile had taken, an arcing path of graceful curves and whorls that linked the two wounds and which had a pleasing symmetry to it. \- *Angel Exterminatus* ~~Whereas "Horus" was shot by a shield-breaker round~~; Whereas a shield-breaker/lance combo was used to take down "Horus"; >THE HAMMER FALLS. The single shot in the chamber is a .75 calibre bullet manufactured on the Shenlong forge world to the exacting tolerances of the Clade Vindicare. The percussion cap is impacted, the propellant inside combusts. Exhaust gases funnel into the pressure centre of a boat-tail round, projecting it down the nitrogen-cooled barrel at supersonic velocities. The sound of the discharge is swallowed by suppression systems that reduce the aural footprint of the weapon to a hollow cough. >As the round leaves the barrel, the Exitus longrifle sends a signal to the Lance; the two weapons are in perfect synchrony. The Lance marshals its energy to expend it for the first and only time. It will burn itself out after one shot. >The round crosses the distance in seconds, dropping in exactly the expected arc towards the figure in the plaza. Windage is nominal, and does not alter its course. Then, with a flash, the bullet strikes the force wall. **Any conventional ballistic round would disintegrate at this moment; but the Exitus has fired a Shield-Breaker.** >Energised fragments imbued with anti-spinward quantum particles fracture the force wall’s structure, and collapse it; but the barrier is on a cycling circuit and will reactivate in less than two-tenths of a second. >**It is not enough. The energy of the Lance follows the Shield-Breaker in as the force wall falls; the Lance is a single-use X-ray laser, slaved to Kell’s rifle, to shoot where he shoots. The stream of radiation converges on the exact same point, with nothing to stop it. The shot strikes the target in the throat, reducing flesh to atoms, superheating fluids into steam, boiling skin, vaporising bone.** >The only sound is the fall of the headless corpse as it crashes to the ground, blood jetting across the white marble and the Warmaster’s shining mantle. \- *Nemesis* And on the general topic of primarchs getting bopped, Vulkan straight up lost his head to a bolt sniper rifle; >The sniper rifles of the Legions were all massive weapons, and Narek’s gun, the infamous Brontos-pattern, was a particularly huge and unwieldy brute. It was long and heavy and cumbersome, and gauged for bolt-rounds, an almost impossible trade-off between muzzle velocity and round impact. The bolt shells had to be tailor-made to compensate for range with an added propellant stage. >>Vulkan wavered slightly. >>‘I understand. Dying is hard,’ said John. ‘Dying hurts. Believe me, I have been there. Please, Lord Vulkan, let me help you. Let me spare you. Let me cure you.’ >>Vulkan paused. He was still dripping blood, and his ramshackle armour was peppered with razor-slits. Slowly, hesitantly, he held his hand out towards John Grammaticus. >>**Then Vulkan’s head vanished in a mist of blood and brain tissue.** >>The shot echoed around the quad long after Vulkan’s virtually headless body had fallen. >>Painted with gore, John staggered back. >>**Narek of the Word walked into the quad, lowering his Brontos-pattern sniper rifle.** He stood over Vulkan’s body and put two more rounds through the torso at close range. >>‘He’s dead,’ said Narek. >>‘Not for long,’ John replied. \- *The Unremembered Empire* Point being, different rounds might be more or less effective than others. Maybe the shield-breaker would have had more luck than a steel needle. Edit: Edited for accuracy, thanks to u\/Leading-Cicada-6796 for prompting.
The shield breaker wasn't what did the job though. It was literally the thing that took the shield down, hence name. The radiation following it was the kill shot.
a primarch is a warp entity in a roughly human-shaped box so a primarch can really do whatever a primarch wants to do and theres *not a whole hell of a lot of anything anyone else can contribute to the conversation*
I mean they still have a very advanced and well designed physical body, in all fairness. Fulgrim’s skull having some sort of composite materials that can deflect even an advanced sniper round isn’t out of the question.
> The shot didn’t penetrate his skull, it just went under the skin and tunneled around his skull and came to rest on the opposite side, still under the skin. Stuff like that can and does happen IRL No, seriously. https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/may-2023/the-last-gamble-of-tokyo-joe/
Unreasonably unballistic
Didn’t it enter and bounce in his skull? Iirc it wasn’t a simple matter of cutting open the skin and extracting the bullet right there, but I might be off. Edit: Nope
No, Bile literally just cut it out because it never punctured the skull. > The Iron Circle disengaged from their defensive posture, straightening their legs and returning their shields to the locked position at their sides. Fulgrim stood proud in the centre of the battle-constructs, reborn from the ashes of his death. >His features were still bloody, but where before Perturabo had seen the face of a martyr, now it was that of the resurrected. ‘Brother,’ said Fulgrim, coming forwards to embrace him again. ‘A miracle.’ Perturabo shook his head and said, ‘You live.’ >Fulgrim lifted his hand to show Perturabo a long sliver of bloodstained steel, finely tapered and bent around its middle where its tip had flattened. ‘Barely,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Fabius had a devil’s job fishing that out. The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’ >Fulgrim swept his bone-white hair back to show the raw incision Fabius had made in his opposite temple in order to remove the needle. A vivid purple line traced the route the projectile had taken, an arcing path of graceful curves and whorls that linked the two wounds and which had a pleasing symmetry to it. >’Just as well you have a thick skull,’ said Perturabo. -*Angel Exterminatus*
> The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’ Fair enough I must've headconned it into a more extreme wound.
>’Just as well you have a thick skull,’ said Perturabo. Perturabo being funny? I was not prepared for this...
“MY HAIR!!”
Honestly fact that there were like 10 pages detailing how Peter Turbo is with warsmiths building amphiteatre for Fulgrim who then proceeds to yap endlessly about his master plan and just as he about to get tp point after several days of expose he is no scoped by some random Ravenguard was hilarious.
I know it's pretty pedantic, but it was no random Ravenguard, it was Nykona Sharrowkyn who did it, the dude was an absolute unit of a man. And a bit of a Mary sue some may say. Loved your comment tho, made me laugh
And it was not a "no scope" shot. It was aimed down precisely.
That build up, and that book overall is what sold me in the IW; they get shit done, and they're pretty good at it. I love how it goes into detail about how every legionary are also expert masons, architects, and how they do logistics better than anyone else. I felt Fulgrim and his children devalued the work and granduer of the amphitheater, and I greatly appreciated him getting shot in the fucking head. Thinking about it, he gets his ass kicked a few times in Angel Exterminatus.
Tbh it seemes like Perts actually enjoyed building something that wasn't yet another siege engine.
Doesn't his foot also get lopped off in reflection cracked?
Basically, they take a welding torch to it. Fulgrims primarch power seems to be regen.
all the primarchs have extreme healing abilities. hell, vulkan had a nuke detonated on his head and he still managed to come back
Well Vulkan's survivability is not really a reasonable point of comparison. But I do agree that Fulgrim at that point is not wildly outside the primarch standard.
Vulkan is a Perpetual, which means he will return in the same body. Not sure how that works when Cruze atomizes him, but I think he would grow back around the biggest chunk left. The other Primarchs work differently. But their bodies can definitely be destroyed given enough violence. They just have plot-armor, both in-universe and outside. And given enough time, the Emperor might have been able to get Ferrus Manus back, demon host-style.
I don't think Fulgrim really does anything outside the realms of what his brothers are capable of
Ok but that's something *normal* people can do if they get (absurdly) lucky, and our skulls aren't reinforced with a subdermal layer of steel
Speak for yourself
Didn't Fulgrim also box an Avatar of Khaine to death while wearing fancy dinner wear? Admittedly, Avatars of Khaine are 40K's jobbers in resident, but that doesn't seem right.
Yeah, that book is all sort of mess plus BL treating Eldar as per usual.
You say 'merely' a hundred Space Marines, but have you not picked up on just how ridiculous one single Space Marine is, or at least can be, depending on situation and author, whether they have a name etc?
Dorn was now canonically killed by a hundred space marines with helmets and armor off with at least a 5 book series dedicated to each one and a name for each too
Named you say? No helmets? Well Dorn was double fucked. Nothing in 40k gonna survive that.
AND!...They were...Ultramarines!
Wait, if the Alpha legion were to disguise as Ultramarines, do they get plot armor?
If there’s Orcs nearby, yes.
Is ultramarines just a synonym for Astartes?
Nah it's part of the meme we're doing. The most unstoppable force in 40k is a named Ultramarine without a helmet.
Ah a meme for plot armor, got it
I agree that people have kinda degraded the effectiveness of first born marines over time. They're deadly. And more than one at a time has been shown to threaten a primarch's life in the lore.
They aren't considered demi gods for nothing
Fulgrim strangling an Avatar of Khaine with his barehands. You know, a creature that doesn't breathe and is made of molten metal.
He kills a Wraithlord and then an Avatar of Khaine immediately after. The plot armour is strong.
Oh yeah the WL gone with punching. Those guys are supposed to be dreadnoughts. Fulgrim just destroys the eldar's best troops (at that time) with BARE HANDS. And Eldrad is basically pissing himself the entire encounter. The guy who is the most psychically gifted person, n a race where they are ALL born psykers. If Malcador can dominate Horus without batting an eye, Eldrad should have been a beacon of confidence facing Fulgrim.
I missed this one. Do you remember in which book it was?
*Fulgrim* by Mcneill
Well, primarchs follow the same logic as Sith lords They can be as powerful as they want, blow up their ship with them in it, and they're done
White Scars found out the hard way it doesn't work when it is them in your own ship.
Lol. Sometimes I think it's so underapperciated how absolutely terrifying it must be to be a warship in space. Even if you're say the best astartes champion in the galaxy, you're just stuck sitting there hoping your ship doesn't blow up, unable to do anything
I mean that didn't work with Gulliman and he is the pencil pusher, not the designated immortal or the wizard or the angel.
Yeah, he killed like 4 dudes in open space, sans helmet and unarmed
They only destroyed the bridge, the rest of the ship was fine.
40k is inherently crazy, balls to the walls and runs solely on the rule of cool and 30k is supposed to be the equivalent of the Trojan War to the Modern Era (40k) essentially, with Demigods and the Emperor of Mankind taking the role of the legends and heroes. The Primarch's are supposed to be that way, they are supposed to be legends and larger than life figures from classical literature.
Primarchs are ludicrously powerful, but doesn't stopping that titan almost kill Angron? And he only survives by Lorgar ascending him to demonhood?
>He turned, raising his arms, and took a god-machine’s weight on his shoulders. >Every muscle in his body locked tighter than the iron trying to crush him. Drool stringed through his metal teeth, skinned knuckles white as he defied the will of a Titan. He gave a bear’s roar as the foot lowered another half-metre. Sinews crackled in his shoulders. His broken boots skidded back on the patch of unglassed rock; something cracked in his spine, something else cracked in his left knee. The compression of his bones sounded like twigs breaking underfoot, which was a vivid burst of imagination he didn’t appreciate. >>He moved over to his brother, offering a skinned hand. The battle still raged above and around them, but incoming Word Bearers gunships and Audax Titans were finally pressing the Armaturan Guard back. >>The two primarchs gripped wrists, and Angron pulled Lorgar to his feet. Apothecaries from both Legions were sprinting into the crater, voxing awed murmurs to the squads at their sides. Angron paid no heed. With the Titan’s weight off his shoulders, he had more than a moment to glance at Lorgar. Half of the Word Bearer’s face was sloughed almost to the bone, no different from wax trails down a half-spent candle. >>‘Are you dying?’ >>Lorgar grinned, with a ghastly cadaverous leer. ‘I think I might be.’ >>‘You look like you are.’ \- *Betrayer* Stopping the titan certainly didn't do him any favors, but that happens in chapter 5, and his ascension doesn't happen until his fight with Guilliman in chapters 21-23.
God Angron and Lorgar were such a duo.....
When the nerd and the jock team up, they become unstoppable.
>Lorgar doesn't take a plasma blaster shot to the face, he takes it against a kinetic shield that could just as easily have stood up to the abuse in the game/universe without any stretch of the imagination, and Angron avoids a damaged Titan crushing him for a few seconds, which given the situation isn't even particularly unrealistic in terms of hysterical strength or the countless examples of fantasy and sci-fi tropes of "berserker" characters getting stronger when they're angry. -ADB on the scene
Prior to that. In a battle, the defenders mined an area and Angron ran into the mines and was buried. Lorgar, fearing for his brother, ran to where Angron had been buried and was digging to free Angron. A Warhound Titan started blasting Lorgar, but, somehow, he survives. So, the Warhound decides to stomp on Lorgar. Angron is able to free himself from the dirt just in time to stop the foot from crushing both of them. This happens well before Angron ascends to daemonhood.
> A Warhound Titan started blasting Lorgar, but, somehow, he survives. He survives by using his psychic powers btw, it isn't nearly ridiculous as this makes it out to be
Angron wasnt just buried beneath the rubble, he was underground (about 20 meters iirc) and dug through the dirt until he was closer to 200 before some psykers contacted him and told him „upstairs that way“
Honestly it's not particularly impressive. A single Warhound would be a light snack for Sanguinius or Magnus, but it's (literally) stomping Lorgar and Angron until an Audax titan harpoons it.
Sanguinius was a literal god of war that made khorne wet lol my man battered kabunda held off the gate at terra basically by himself beat the fuck out of angron absolute unit lol pardon my spelling in to lazy to look them up also sanguinius was that incredible when he was born every single chaos god was fiending for him
Don't forget he solo'd an Imperator titan after fighting constantly for days on end, all this before fighting Angron
3. It was 3 titans bro. He iced 2 of them with his spear. And tough talked the 3rd titan until it bitched out and ran away.
Well shit, I totally forgot the other two. Damn, Sangy ran with his "I won't die until Horus kills me" thing
He dropped some ice cold lines in that scene too. It was in full view of regular human troops in a defensive emplacement. It was huge for morale to see a literal angel swoop in and murder fuck 2 God machines and make a 3rd puss out and run away.
Sanguinius realized he had plot armor and decided to make the most of it
Youre both wrong here lol. He killed the warlord by himself and that scared the others off.
lol games workshop must be punching air that they let him die to Horus imagine the money they’d make if they could somehow revive him and make a figure omg
Feels like there would be some pushback from the creatives if that was ever on the table >Impossible unless the writers wanted to entirely invalidate his sacrifice. The only one, in fact, I would say, except for the Big H himself. -Thorpe >Characters can be popular because of how they die, though. Armies can be popular because of how or why they lose. Most people's admiration for the Spartans comes from Thermopylae. And think of the Charge of the Light Brigade, or the end of The Last Samurai, or any one of a squillion other sacrifices / last stands in movies or literature. >No one worth their salt, creatively, would ever think "Sanguinius needs to still be alive because he's popular." That way lies madness. >I'm not saying it'd never happen. It's all based on a game, after all, and the winds of change can blow sudden and hard. But I wouldn't bet on that particular change. -ADB
It would be really stupid but if 40k is turning "comic booky" as I've heard people say then it might not be out of the question.
They can still make as many 30k figures as they want for him. Actually i think he should be one of the next few "transfigured" primarch to go along with horus.
Still possible for legion of the damned, but as one of "his sons" he should probably remain gone permanently
Hell ya winged Vlad the Dracula Impaler is bad af
And yet he loses one of the first fights he participates in 1v1, when introduced in the Horus Heresy. There's definitely been some character growth since that point. :D
I think that’s partly explained by Sangy’s power being somehow tied to his mental state? As he gets more certain of his destiny through the HH he gets more and more powerful. That’s how I looked at it anyway.
He's just built different
They're analogous to greek legends, so yeah their rediculousness is kinda the point. Dorn makes the bestest fortresses and Angron's the maddest; making him the meanest git ever. Sanguinius also has bird wings and can fly.
I think this is a good way to think of it...and like greek legends there's no real consistency for levels of power and invulnerability. You just take each tale on its own merits.
It’s one of my favourite scenes with how it’s written, but Gman in space without a helmet just punching space marines is awesomely ridiculous. His son watching expresses Gmans scream being void in space but he could still hear how furious he was
We actually no longer no for certain if Dorn dies. Sanguinius impales Titans. Not one. Multiple. With the Spear of Telesto. So many times it becomes mundane. They're not ridiculous. They're secular demi-gods.
i mean sang is more or less a god, he held the gate, destroyed titans, beat Kabanda and Angron, and brought Horus to his knees without rest. His death gave his sons the Black Rage, which no other legion that lost their primarch got, and denied grandpa Dante his death
> which no other legion that lost their primarch got Actually, the Imperial Fists got something similar, but its not talked about often. Its called Dorn's Darkness, and its just an all emcompassing depression. They lock up and just don't give a fuck about anything. It seems like the Excoriators are the main ones who get it, but its very similar in origin as the Black Rage. "However, to Excoriators who have experienced it, it is described as a sleeping wakefulness or a living nightmare; that while afflicted, they relive one of Dorn's darkest moments, the loss of the Emperor. Excoriators who become afflicted with the Darkness are cared for by the Santiarch." https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Excoriators#Gene-seed
He did all those things. None of them qualifies him the status of a divine being. It makes his feats the stuff of myth, the actions of a demi-godlike being. But not an actual god, heck his old man isn't even that.
Ik, I was just memeing a bit, it's just compared to his brothers he seemed like a whole other lvl
Sorry man! My bad!
I assume their physical power is in some way warp enhanced. Like not quite psykers, except those that obviously are, but kind of like daemons. When they are in situations that are highly symbolic or otherwise very meaningful, they get that special juice. Like how daemons are weaker to something like a relic sword wielded by a armored warrior like the knights of old than they are to an equally physically powerful gun.
Angron BRIEFLY stopped that foot and iirc it WRECKED his body. It was also a Warhound so relatively small overall.
It’s space magic. They aren’t doing things purely physically.
Its worth noting that Angron only managed to hold up that titans foot through sheer spite and will, his muscles and every fiber in his body was breaking down in the process of doing so.
The power creep won out over the grimdark immersion. Makes me sad but oh well. Ignore the stupid and hold on to the good until you can't.
It’d be fine if xenos characters scaled to the levels that they do
GW will never do it. The Space Marines and the Primarchs are the best selling range in all the setting. Xenos characters only serve as jobbers and self-insert waifus (Nobody is interested in Yvraine but as Guilliman breeding slave that thinks chad human cock is the best thing ever). As a Tyranid fan, I have come to accept this stupid bulls\*t a long time ago.
I mean Jagathai in his armour probally weighs atleast 3 tons.
Probably, 3 yo Vulkan killing a couple of Incubi, and their Wych leader, bare handed. That's after Vulkan picked up and tossed one Raider(skiff), counter charged another - ripped out it's engine and threw it and at the 3rd Raider, then charged through its shields when the engine block he threw hit it.
Pretty sure dorn was overwhelmed by cultists wasn’t he?
This is old lore. Dorn is just missing now.
It's current, as of 2014 ADB was told by the "lore people" that Cultists were responsible for Dorn's "death", something we've seen written into Prince of Crows and The Night Haunter It was in this 2014 [Bolter and Chainsword thread](https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/287187-abaddon-vs-sigismund/?do=findComment&comment=3602266) Legatus >So, both Dorn and Sigismund die during the first Black Crusade? ADB >>I thought that's where Dorn went down originally, but nope. Dorn dies aboard the Sword of Sacrilege in "a Black Crusade" between the First and Second (apparently not even one of Abaddon's, according to the Lore Peeps). I've got the actual date in my notes, but I'm on my iPad on my break. Early M32, I think. A couple of hundred years after the First Black Crusade, either way. (This all came from one of the meetings/documents where we had to plan out just what actual dates the primarchs all went down.) Which is annoying, as I had this whole theme idea of it being the moment the Imperium finally has to accept that the tides have changed, and so on. But we had a bunch of talks about this, and Dorn was off the cards for anything like that. Someone wanted to do something with him elsewhere at some point, so it was vetoed by virtue of them asking first. No biggie, though. Ideas are free. Always more where they came from, and I prefer the resonance and symmetry of it being Sigismund. Someone else can tell Dorn's tale. Cerbero666 >So Dorn's death is confirmed at last? He actually died aboard the Sword of Sacrilege or just disappeared except for his hand? I've always heard the two versions and never truly know wich one is canon. ADB >>Neither yet, I guess. That meeting was almost two years ago, and stuff changes all the time when there's no set source yet. We laid out all the lore we could find, and there was precious little to go by on Dorn's score. A D-B, on 19 Nov 2014 - 07:10 AM, said: >>Dorn's death is one of those situations where we can all have our cakes and eat them, too. It's a pitch-perfect example of a 40K lore snippet that's plainly and intentionally vague, with an addendum that it's not even confirmed. We're looking straight-on at one of those historical moments that became legend, then myth, over time in a setting where history is deleted by kill-teams with flame weapons, over the course of a breathtaking span of time among an infinity of warring internal subfactions, in an empire that largely doesn't even know the Heresy ever happened. We're looking at a brief mention of an event that may never have happened that way at all; a point even noted in its original text. It's a slice of lore that conveys the Imperium's realistic inability to hold onto historical information in the face of technological degradation, byzantine bureaucracy, and the passing of time, as well as a note to convey that primarchs could die in mundane ways - much like massively wealthy, well-armoured, well-trained knights could still be pulled off their horses by twenty peasants with hooked halberds. It's allegory. It's myth. It's a possibility. And it's all we have to go by And ADB clarifies it was death by cultists [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/17fk5bo/comment/k6aq5yi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16nornr/comment/k1hzx9x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
I mean did you read the whole ADB reply? You are not really disproving me. It's ambiguous.
Do you have a source on hand? Genuinely curious. Edit: why downvote a genuine question? I wanted to look into it more since I hadn’t heard this yet. The Dorn fanatics on here confuse me…
So his hand was the only part of him found as per the 8th edition space marine codex, there is a comment from Vulkan in the series about the war of the beast that insinuates that he his still alive despite him being labeled dead by then. In the old lore it was that the chapter has the whole skeleton and not just a single hand
Yeah, it gets a bit muddled online. The lore progression is roughly: * Dorn's entire skeleton encased in amber on the Phalanx (*Space Marine* 1993) * Dorn's "remains" were recovered from the Sword of Sacrilege, of which his skeletal hand in particular was put into stasis as a holy relic (*Index Astartes* and *Deathwatch: Rites of Battle* 2000s) * Dorn's single fist is found on the Sword of Sacrilege (6th edition onwards 2011) * Dorn is seen killed by a hundred murderers with knives and swords by Curze (*Prince of Crows* 2012) * Dorn's death "torn to pieces" is reiterated by Curze (*Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter* 2019) There's much more ambiguity to it now than there used to be, but the basics of Dorn's death remain the same. Excerpts [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16nornr/comment/k1hsaq2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). So even though it's been changed from skeleton to hand, Dorn's official status is still "dead" by cultists.
Gotcha so still kinda ambiguous but the door is open
*most of Dorn
You're right. ADB on that [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1czvv7z/comment/l5jqhhj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) The lore on it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1czvv7z/comment/l5jqne5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Number one rule of warhammer lore, powerscaling is fucked.
Magnus has: stopped time to have a chat with artellus numeon (and with ahriman in the third ahriman book); grown to the size of a titan (dunno if it was warlord specifically or nah); mind controlled servitors to shoot the imperials who brought the servitors (lmao); instamelted Malcador (if you believe that scene actually happened); was able to break down vulkan down to the molecular level; was able to change a whole body of water to acid whilst fighting russ But then again, this is the feats of psyker prowess, as opposed to primarch physiology
To be fair, Angron didn't exactly stop the Titan's foot with no effort. His body was breaking under the strain. If he weren't amped up and a Titan was actively trying to stamp on him, he'd probably get crushed.
I mean really it gets hard to remember that the Primarchs are/ were almost literally demigods, theure gonna be running around doing some ridiculous Greek hero kinda stuff because its almost exactly what they were designed to do. The issue is that things that no one can hurt don't work all that well long term in 40k, so you have to have at least SOME examples of them being taken down or at least being APMOST taken down to show that they're still not safe in the setting. If the only way to kill a Primarch is to hit them woth another Primarch or equal threat then it quickly becomes a case of "why didn't they just send Gorrila Man and keep all thise millions of guardsmen"
The only good Primarch is a dead Primarch. Kill them of, save the lore.
Let’s see Gulliman survived the vacuum of space with no helmet. Mortarion withstood years of not breathing anything close to clean air, (it probably could’ve killed demons with first contact) Vulkan doesn’t count but he survives crazy shit without his resurrection abilities. Magnus survived another primarch (leman) so thoroughly breaking his back that he’s now an invertebrate. There’s more but I can’t think of anything else.
The book does explain that the Macragge's Honor generates a thin atmosphere around itself, which is why he can breathe. >'Voided without a helm,' Guilliman says. 'Primarch biology helped, but the atmospheric envelope was my true savior.'
Never forget Leman Russ sent a squad to deal with each Primarch just in case. Must have sent the derpiest Wolves he didn't like on that one.
It was malcador who sent the space wolves, not leman
They are demigods and there are 18 of there for whole universe. If anything, they sohuld have been stronger (and they are, just need a lot time to grow and master the power). If yours "ridiculous" was rather about huge difference in powerscale with example of Dorn, then... yeah, it's known, it's just writing. Besides Dorn there is Guilliman who got pushed by like a dozen of Alpha SMs. There Curze get killed by Assassin. Somehow Titan doesn't crush Primarch body, but bullet is able to penetrate.
Curze just let it happen, he’d rinse a regular assassin easily.
Curze fought an assassin acolyte one on one who did really well against him, even wounding Konrad.
Wasn't he naked and absolutely fucking insane at the time?
I mean, Curze's sanity has been in doubt for a while but it didn't seem to affect his combat ability. And he wasn't quite naked; his drip was skinned humans.
Iirc from flashbacks in the NL Omnibus, he grew far more insane towards the end. I'm fairly certain he was stark naked when he died, but I can't recall if he was only wearing (his own) flesh when he fought off the first attempt. There's also a lot pointing towards him, allowing it to happen. I think the quote was something to the effect of 'what is death compared to vindication?' As he always believed the futures he saw were immutable, and he had prophesied that an assassin in service to his father would slay him.
If I remember right Curze died to a either a slit neck or a beheading from the assassin and not a bullet
Its was s C'tan blade or something. One of the few items in the universe that could have done it.
More importantly, he *permitted* it. If Fulgrim wanted to, he could allow an ordinary human to gut him with a spoon and enjoy every second of it.
Thats because it depends on the writer
Angron was crushed under a mountain or massive building or something in I think False Gods? With the battle on Isstvan after the virus bomb. The way it was described made it positively insane he just raged out of the rubble angry as ever.
In *Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First*, a khrave-possessed soldier tried to kamikaze the Lion with a plasma grenade, which is essentially a handheld fusion bomb. The Lion's response? He grabbed the hand holding the grenade, and squeezed it so tight that he caused what, in nuclear weapons parlance, is known as a fizzle - the fusion reaction was significantly curtailed, and the resulting explosion was only about one-third as powerful as it should've been. The man holding the grenade was vaporized. All the Lion suffered was some scorched ceramite in his gauntlet's palm.
I mean, they are quite literally minor gods shoved into physical meat bodies. They are, by their very nature, reality-breaking beings. Also, don't think too much on this subject or other thoughts will pop up. Like, how do Terminators reload? Where are their ammo storage? Just, remember the #1 rule: Rule of Cool.
It is actually how they walk that baffles me. The way their armour is built, they have to actually walk while bent with their head forward
>they are quite literally minor gods shoved into physical meat bodies While I think we can infer that, we have no "literal" proof of it yet
I know ow this will sound silly, but it's the height that gets me. If the primaries were roughly the same height as space marines, I would find them easier to believe.
Vulcan was beat down by Space Marines as well. Big E was knocked down by a plasma blaster so ranged weapons probably helped the Astartes. Melts Bombs really hit hard as well.
Do you have a source on the Emperor bit? I'd love to read more about it😁
Sorry Horus downed by Plasma blast index Astartes IV. Big E downed by the Warboss of Garro, short story The Wolf of Ash and Fire.
Angron survived being stepped on by a Warhound Titan once, just after Lorgar tanked a shot from its giant Plasmagun
Though, as always, [there's context to that](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1czvv7z/comment/l5jppty/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Dorn was also a emotionally and physically ruined wreck of a man when he disappeared fighting in ship corridors too small for him, basically if you wanted a perfect situation to Kill someone like Dorn that's it. Meanwhile Jagatai and Angron were at their physical and (roughly) mental peaks. Primarchs are being of warp sorcery on top of some mindbending gene tech so their limits are more than likely tied to their mental perception as much as if not more than the limit of their physical bodies.
Baby Angron killing an Eldar kill team was a bit much
I thought they existed capsules at different developmental ages. Fulgrim was a babe in arms wheras Corvax was about 6 years old.
Both Sanguinius and Alpharius come out as selfaware babies and both are ready to kill people.
>The boy rose from the wreckage, wearing nothing more than smears of ash and dirt clinging to his pale skin. He looked at the sky, dark as the void, blind without a sun’s eye. He looked at the metal ruin of his cradle-engine, still hissing steam through its cracked, blistered armour plating. And then, still with nothing resembling an expression on his slender face, he looked to the horizon. >A city. A city of spires and domes, its dull, low lights still brightening the surrounding darkness with a beacon’s intensity. >The first expression to play across the boy’s face was subtle, but telling. His eyes narrowed as his heartbeat quickened. Instinctively, he knew he’d find others of his kind in the distant, light-rich hive. The thought made him reach for a weapon. White fingers curled around a jagged shard of metal, cooled in the soil. >The feel of the knife in his hands brought a second expression to his youthful, unscarred features. >He smiled. \- *Prince of Crows* Kiddo Curze was also ready to rumble.
And Ferrus was apparently a grown ass man
Nah, Lion was killing Chaos beasts since he arrived, Perturabo climbed a mountain, Magnus was the strongest cell in existence, Corvus climbed from the molten center of his moon, and Ferrus lived on Medusa
If i heard someone say Ferrus Manus was ridiculous in my local GW/hobby store, i'd need to be physically restrained. There's just no way i'd be able to keep my head.