Your thoughts on the Primaris and lore progression

[Blindhamster]

its already shown in dark imperium that primaris marines are just as capable of falling to chaos as any other marine - in some ways more so because of a certain level of naivety about such things.

 

It takes a Librarian shielding another characters mind to stop it from happening - but he was close, without even meaning to be.

 

So yeah, its already shown that they are not super awesome immune to chaos. Anyone that things they are is just wishlisting, or trying to impose things on them to justify their own negativity.

 

We also already know that Fabius wants to capture some as he believes they're the key to his own experiments, and we already know that Fabius is a key player in traitor legion recruitment and "advancement", with his experiments being sought after, and his reputation having cloned multiple primarchs at least semi successfully.

 

p.s.

 

all the talk about north of the rift being totally cut off and where traitors go - Dante is warden of that entire region, and we know the chapter is in theory larger than 1k marines too (has nearly 500 neophytes on top of a full chapter and various command staff etc. We also know the DA are north of the rift currently still too, and despite the lame jokes, they are anything but traitors themselves, and many of both chapters successors remain that side too in whatever state they are in.

[Robbienw]

Totally agree about the Custodes and GK should be the only Warp Immune (and I'm not even 100% sold that the Custodes should be. They aren't Psykers and can't protect themselves that way, and aren't Pariah's either. There's nothing 'special' about them that should give them immunity to the warp. I guess we hand wave that to the Emperors secret creation of them. But then why didn't he impart normal Marines with such protection?).

 

But do we have any current Marine chapters falling Renegade?

Well with the Custodes, they are the emperors loyal bodyguard, so I am sure he used all his knowledge in their creation process to make them immune or virtually immune.  They also have the protection of the emperor thing which gives them some level of psychic protection which probably helps.

 

He did impart his psychic protection to his first group of 5000 Angels of Death first legion prototype marines that operated during the Unification wars.  There are some details on it in Angels of Caliban, Astelan was one of them.  I can't remember the exact details of what is said, but I think it was the case that the emperor didn't do it for subsequent space marines because there were too many marines to do, even with his abilities.

 

As for current chapters turning renegade, I guess the Crimson Sabres who went on to become the Crimson Slaughter would be the most recent.  It wasn't every marine in the chapter, but the vast majority went turned traitor.

[BitsHammer]

Not to rain on anyone's parade about the way the studio doesn't go into the weeds (lore wise I mean) anymore, but I honestly don't remember it going into the weeds all that much during 3rd either. I've always found that the stories that handle those sorts of things and really flex out the galaxy come form the BL team and from there we get into the more common man and how they live/die.

 

Basically I guess the difference is in approach on where I expect to see most of the finer details of world building done at. The studio is definitely more broad strokes than nitty gritty (though they do come up with some nice details here and there too), and honestly has been for more than a decade now. We can complain about the "new" guys, but honestly anyone whose been doing the job for that long can't be called "new" anymore.

 

That aside, I do feel like the in universe justification for Primaris feels rushed and a bit hamfisted. Perhaps the studio is trying to hard to make them acceptable for the community, or they're trying too hard to set up future Primaris stuff and the eventual phasing out of the current Marine line.

 

I honestly don't know, can't guess, and won't guess at this point. I'm kind of tired of guessing what they're thinking honestly, and can only present meager responses on why anything is anything honestly.

[autek mor]

i reckon it may take a of couple years to phase out the current marines. they would have to replace iconic units from both angels chapters and the space wolves while still having to update other books. if they were more popular in lists then maybe that would speed up the phasing out process if that is the plan?

[BitsHammer]

I agree the phase out will take time, and will likely come in stages (my money is on Tacticals likely being last honestly) but in an edition where GW seems to be making an effort to ensure that there is 0 carry over in terms of models from one kind of unit to another it looks like that the Marines will be seeing everything eventually replaced and new options that don't share wargear will stand where they once were.

 

That's just my pessimism speaking though, it's possible Primaris and regular Marines are being designed with no overlap so we can have fun, new ways to build armies without invalidating anything.

 

Since GW isn't giving Guard the Primaris treatment (yet?) it's possible I'm over thinking it after all.

[Lexington]

Not to rain on anyone's parade about the way the studio doesn't go into the weeds (lore wise I mean) anymore, but I honestly don't remember it going into the weeds all that much during 3rd either. I've always found that the stories that handle those sorts of things and really flex out the galaxy come form the BL team and from there we get into the more common man and how they live/die.

Boy, I sure do remember a lot of non-military perspective in 3rd Ed. Tons of it. Break open that big ol' 3rd Ed rulebooks - still the greatest single presentation of 40K as a setting for my money - and you'll see not just investigation but, much more importantly, illustration of civilian life in the Imperium. You get heavy doses of documentation from scientists, scribes, administrative clerks and low-grade explorers all over the place. Notes and reports and prayers and histories, all from people miles and miles from the battlefield. It made the universe feel full and real and inhabited.

 

Even with BL's output (which, frankly, is often more concerned with Space Marines and their particular exploits than the old Studio works), a military whose actions and consequences are presented as completely separate from civilian life is going to feel empty and hollow. Just like anything, anywhere, there's going to be overlap and interaction between sections of a society. Heck, like I said before, just the invocation of "the common man" is part of the problem, rather than the solution - it flattens and dehumanizes everything outside of the setting's military god-kings. It's not the "common man" vs. the setting's de-facto nobility that's the problem, it's the exclusion of practically anything that doesn't have a tabletop representation. If it's not in the game, it doesn't get mentioned, and if it does get mentioned, it's only in the most base supporting way - something to die or threaten or fight over. They don't feel like lives, they feel like points on a scoreboard, and that makes for some shallow reading.

[BitsHammer]

My codexes are all in storage at the moment, so I freely concede I could be wrong, but I mostly just remember a lot of quotes here and there and some basic descriptions of units and armies in the books. Well that and a "why would X fight Y" thing.

[Beta galactosidase]

From the beginning, most descriptions were in the context of this large civil-military imperial bureaucracy.  Even space marines themselves, as well as guard, were put into their stories, their exposition, more or less as if they were controlled by roman consuls, who were civil governors and military commanders at the same time.  This was pretty apparent in third edition rulebook, and of course more so in rogue trader, but even in marine specific books.  In the 2002 Chaos book, the long flavor texts right in the army lists, not even in the "background section" or special character portion, were about pre-industrial a chaos culture meeting marines, or mortal fleet captains being assigned chaos marines as their ships' troops. In these contexts, in a codex specifically about tabletop miniatures for space marines, the fluff was still about how marines fit into the mechanisms of the galaxy.

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

 

I hope there are no issues at all with Primaris.

I don't want a repeat of past events.

Agree. If GW feel the need to make primaris sized chaos marines, I would rather have it be as a result of Fabiuos Biles experiments.

Making Fabius anything more than a Chaos warlord is universe shrinking. He’s not important enough to become the Cawl of Chaos, because Cawl should not be the Cawl of the Imperium. There is depth in obscurity.

 

 

We know he's really influential, though. Not Cawl-level, but he's certainly an incredibly sought-after mercenary.

[Jarl Caldersson]

 

I hope there are no issues at all with Primaris.

I don't want a repeat of past events.

Agree. If GW feel the need to make primaris sized chaos marines, I would rather have it be as a result of Fabiuos Biles experiments.

 

 

Why shouldn't there be issues? We already have example of Primaris nearly corrupted already. Death Guard have probably seen the most action fighting Primars, and the DG are well-known gene-seed thiefs and corruptors. Those 2 things alone just show that Primaris are on the path of corruption. 

 

We especially see it as the BA Primaris are ripping apart enemies in such a savage manner that it horrifies people. Sounds like perfect candidates for Khorne...

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

 

 

I hope there are no issues at all with Primaris.

I don't want a repeat of past events.

Agree. If GW feel the need to make primaris sized chaos marines, I would rather have it be as a result of Fabiuos Biles experiments.

Making Fabius anything more than a Chaos warlord is universe shrinking. He’s not important enough to become the Cawl of Chaos, because Cawl should not be the Cawl of the Imperium. There is depth in obscurity.

We know he's really influential, though. Not Cawl-level, but he's certainly an incredibly sought-after mercenary.

Right. Think of it like Boba Fett. Mandalorians are less cool when they aren’t badass normal Jedi killers and have some weird civilization and a queen and all the other TV show stuff.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I love the irony of using Star Wars to explain how not to do universe-shrinking, let alone Boba Fett, the prime example of a universe-shrinking character. "The most feared bounty hunter in the entire galaxy!"... Who goes on to prove exactly why "show, don't tell" is a thing, since he gets talked up by Darth Vader, follows a ship, then dies like a chump to a blind man bumping into him. Not exactly badass normal.

 

Fabius, on the other hand, has both previously been established as an influential mercenary who hires himself out to create new Astartes for the various Warbands, is directly linked to the Cursed Founding experiments as well as cloning the Primarchs themselves, and lastly, has explicitly been mentioned as having taken an interest in the Primaris Marines. It's not really universe-shrinking if it's doing literally what the character has been set up for doing.

[Marshal Rohr]

I love the irony of using Star Wars to explain how not to do universe-shrinking, let alone Boba Fett, the prime example of a universe-shrinking character. "The most feared bounty hunter in the entire galaxy!"... Who goes on to prove exactly why "show, don't tell" is a thing, since he gets talked up by Darth Vader, follows a ship, then dies like a chump to a blind man bumping into him. Not exactly badass normal.

 

Fabius, on the other hand, has both previously been established as an influential mercenary who hires himself out to create new Astartes for the various Warbands, is directly linked to the Cursed Founding experiments as well as cloning the Primarchs themselves, and lastly, has explicitly been mentioned as having taken an interest in the Primaris Marines. It's not really universe-shrinking if it's doing literally what the character has been set up for doing.

 

Whatever, man. It was an example. Fabius doesn't need to be anything more than a legendary mercenary. Not some huge figure in the lore everyone has contact with. 

[Moonreaper666]

What about the Enhanced Chosen that the Chaos Gods are making? Do you guys dislike them as well?

 

How would you respond to Bile's Enhanced Primaris New Men?

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

I love the irony of using Star Wars to explain how not to do universe-shrinking, let alone Boba Fett, the prime example of a universe-shrinking character. "The most feared bounty hunter in the entire galaxy!"... Who goes on to prove exactly why "show, don't tell" is a thing, since he gets talked up by Darth Vader, follows a ship, then dies like a chump to a blind man bumping into him. Not exactly badass normal.

 

Fabius, on the other hand, has both previously been established as an influential mercenary who hires himself out to create new Astartes for the various Warbands, is directly linked to the Cursed Founding experiments as well as cloning the Primarchs themselves, and lastly, has explicitly been mentioned as having taken an interest in the Primaris Marines. It's not really universe-shrinking if it's doing literally what the character has been set up for doing.

 

Whatever, man. It was an example. Fabius doesn't need to be anything more than a legendary mercenary. Not some huge figure in the lore everyone has contact with. 

 

 

That's the thing though, that's basically what he already is. He's already a mercenary that hires himself out to a whole bunch of different warbands within the Eye. He already makes Super-Marines for them, created through his own experiments. What difference does it make for him to tinker with the Primaris? Nobody has said that he should pull a Cawl and suddenly have tens of thousands to give out to the remnants of the Legions and whoever else wants to buy. If they do something like that then yeah, I'll be right there with you complaining about how they handled it.

 

I just don't see how it's a big deal to have the character whose whole shtick is "hires himself out to make UberMarines for the highest bidder" makes a slightly different sort of UberMarine?

 

Sorry if I seemed snippy in regards to the Boba Fett thing, I just never really saw why everybody made him out to be the most awesome character ever. I do agree with your general point though, that 40k is in danger of becoming way too heavily focussed on the various special characters. It's always been a problem, to a certain degree, but previously it more felt like it was a wide galaxy, we were just being told about the actions of certain characters. It's slowly becoming that nothing is happening without specific characters being involved, and I do really hope that goes away.

[Jarl Caldersson]

What about the Enhanced Chosen that the Chaos Gods are making? Do you guys dislike them as well?

 

How would you respond to Bile's Enhanced Primaris New Men?

 

Why complicate things, the primaris are already there and the ability to corrupt them is already written. Simpler just to corrupt Primaris, return the status quo and continue on.

[DuskRaider]

In all fairness, the dude has cloned Primarchs so I'm pretty sure Primaris are easy peasy to him.

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

In all fairness, the dude has cloned Primarchs so I'm pretty sure Primaris are easy peasy to him.

I dont think we have been given all the information on the 3 new organs they get that make them more resistant to chaos (though I could have missed some lore, been too busy buying deathwatch and bits orders to get the new books from black library). But I am pretty sure 1 of the new organs they get makes them very resistant to chaos taint.

[Bryan Blaire]

But I am pretty sure 1 of the new organs they get makes them very resistant to chaos taint.

Which one? All of them are directly physical enhancement, damage control boosting, or hormonally regulating. It'd be pretty hard to swallow any of the ones written about so far having specific mechanisms also somehow preventing Chaos taint since they are all so directly physical (none of them are even bio-magic like the Omophagea).

 

Seriously, how "very resistant" to Chaos could the Primaris Marines be, when nine Primarchs fell to Chaos's taint or sway, or was Cawl somehow able to mysteriously make the Primaris better at something than even the Primarchs that they are partial based on, who were designed by the Emperor who fully knew the extent of Chaos's reach, etc., within the galaxy?

[Lord_Caerolion]

Nothing indicates they're more resistant to Chaos though? They're physically stronger and more resilient, but nothing so far has stated that they're resistant to Chaos.

 

"But how could he fall to Chaos? He could lift so much! He never skipped leg day!"

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

 

But I am pretty sure 1 of the new organs they get makes them very resistant to chaos taint.

Which one? All of them are directly physical enhancement, damage control boosting, or hormonally regulating. It'd be pretty hard to swallow any of the ones written about so far having specific mechanisms also somehow preventing Chaos taint since they are all so directly physical (none of them are even bio-magic like the Omophagea).

 

Seriously, how "very resistant" to Chaos could the Primaris Marines be, when nine Primarchs fell to Chaos's taint or sway, or was Cawl somehow able to mysteriously make the Primaris better at something than even the Primarchs that they are partial based on, who were designed by the Emperor who fully knew the extent of Chaos's reach, etc., within the galaxy?

 

Like I said, I havent read all of the new books,but considering the Indomnitus Crusade lasted a century, and Fabius Bile (someone who could clone primarchs) hasn't made them yet and the fact that over the period of the Crusade and some time after we dont have any reports/lore/books/etc yet (emphasis on YET) seems to make them more resistant to the influence of chaos.

 

A lot of lore/theories have pointed to the fact that maybe space marines weren't a finished product, and were probably forced out to production early after the chaos gods :cussed with the primarchs, and thus forced the emperor to start the crusades early to try and reclaim the primarchs. We know the Emperor wiped out the Thunder Warriors once he was done with conquering the SOL system. And we know that once the emperor had conquered the galaxy, he pretty much planned on throwing away his toys.

 

Cawl did have 10k years to work on space marine geneseed, and the cursed founding looks like it was a test run of Primaris (with only a few successful chapters out of the bunch). Not to mention the 9th mark is missing in the armor series as well as the fact that we have have only 1 chapter noted in the 23rd (m38) and 26th (m41) founding. Considering just how terrible things have gone for the imperium in the last few centuries/millenia, you would think that there would be more founding chapters before the ultima founding, yet there is a severe lack of chapters being created at one of the darkest times of the imperium.

 

You know who else was designed by the emperor? Grey Knights and Adeptus Custodes, and we know for a fact that the only reason GK cant fall is because of their psyker powers being able to power the aegis (something so far not replicated anywhere else in the lore), and the Adeptus Custodes have sat in the throne room for 10k years with no lore. So now that they have a codex, and we know black library is going to be pushing lore for them, how long do you think it will take for them to fall to chaos? Sisters of Battle fall to chaos, Space marines fall to chaos, Inquisitors fall to chaos. Primaris haven't YET fallen to chaos, but lets be honest its just a matter of time. And what protection does the Custodes have from the powers of the warp? They dont have the aegis, and dont have psykers (that we know of yet), so how long until they fall too now that they have finally left terra?

[Lord_Caerolion]

The Custodes are intrinsically remade by their creation process, literally resculpting them, though. It's not a case of a few more organs that even the Primaris don't get, they're entirely recreated.

[DuskRaider]

Yeah, no... there's no organ that makes them resistant to Chaos influence.

[Blindhamster]

 

 

 

 

 

I hope there are no issues at all with Primaris.

I don't want a repeat of past events.

Agree. If GW feel the need to make primaris sized chaos marines, I would rather have it be as a result of Fabiuos Biles experiments.

Making Fabius anything more than a Chaos warlord is universe shrinking. He’s not important enough to become the Cawl of Chaos, because Cawl should not be the Cawl of the Imperium. There is depth in obscurity.

We know he's really influential, though. Not Cawl-level, but he's certainly an incredibly sought-after mercenary.

Right. Think of it like Boba Fett. Mandalorians are less cool when they aren’t badass normal Jedi killers and have some weird civilization and a queen and all the other TV show stuff.

I happened to enjoy the clone wars stuff So, for me your point doesn't hold.

[Huggtand]

Sorry if I seemed snippy in regards to the Boba Fett thing, I just never really saw why everybody made him out to be the most awesome character ever. I do agree with your general point though, that 40k is in danger of becoming way too heavily focussed on the various special characters. It's always been a problem, to a certain degree, but previously it more felt like it was a wide galaxy, we were just being told about the actions of certain characters. It's slowly becoming that nothing is happening without specific characters being involved, and I do really hope that goes away.

 

This I feel is the biggest problem with the new direction GW has taken and really shrinks the universe to a soap opera between a handful of people. This is also reflected on the tabletop gaming since now every little skirmish has a primarch or chapter master involved.

 

When special characters was forbidden in tournaments and only was brought with mutual consent you saw much more varied HQs and people was more invested to give their own characters unique back stories.