The Primarchs - Alpharius/ Omegon

[Fedor]

From being around on various forums since Legion came out, the impression i have is it was clearly Legion that molded most of the internet discourse, jokes etc around them. The entire everyone is Alpharius schtick, everything heavily focused on espionage with Marines masquerading as normal humans via tech despite a foe that didn't show anything to indicate a standard astartes action wouldn't have rolled over them etc..

 

 

Then Thorpe inserting them into the Raven Guard arc and having them pull out a near flawless victory there was what really kicked the dislike and memes from a section of the online fanbase into overdrive.

 

Sanders story was a pretty tight setup for the possible schism between the primarchs that i remember being mostly well received. It didn't do anything in its depiction to ham up or turn the Legion into a cliche, unless the schism plot was very offputting in itself. Thorpe's RG story arc (rather than his portrayal of Alpha Legion characters themselves, most of whom were very secondary in it) and maybe to a lesser extent McNeill's novella that DID ham up the concept set up in Sanders entry were the biggest culprits imo, along with the simple fact Abnett's Legion was not in any way a subtle depiction in the first place of the Index Astartes Alpha Legion concept. Don't get me wrong, i like Legion a lot as a book, but it's not the kind of thing that will avoid getting "memed" by those that like to go down that route with the lore. "i am Alpharius" doomed it to that from the very start.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Fedor

[Lord_Caerolion]

It's also been the basis of the "Alpha Legion are anti-Chaos" portrayal. Before that, they were as anti-Chaos as the Night Lords. Never explicitly devolving into Warp-worship, but living in the Eye of Terror, etc.

[mc warhammer]

meh. let the meme lords lord it over their...uh...memes.

 

i don't find the "i'm alpharius" schitck any worse than "the rout" "theoretical. practical" "non vi" or any of the other little bits of flavour added by the series

 

i'm also a little unsure whether legions shouldn't be allowed stories or books where they just have a straight up victory. these astartes were built to be good at the thing they do; every so often they can and should unambiguously do it and do it well.

[Sandlemad]

 

Where as now.....where do you begin with them. Their plans have plans behind plans, hidden behind another set of plans. Ordered my a captain, who is actually a rank and file, who is actually taking orders from a sergeant, who is actually Alpharius, but actually another captain, who in actual fact may or may not be Omegon, who knows. With overlapping identities to the point some don't even know who they really are. The list goes on really.

 

See this is the angle Sanders, French and Bligh took and doesn't share much with the memefied portrayal of the AL. Those authors don't portray this as a good thing and make it clear that it's a recipe for madness, whereas the one-note memefied version isn't more complex than "they scheme and always win because they scheme", Hollywood villain-style, completely ignoring the inner strife or how ultimately toxic the approach is to the AL itself.

 

I'd agree with Fedor that this owes a lot more the McNeill's portrayal and Thorpe's Raven Guard plot.

[b1soul]

The meme-ness was super-strong with Long Games at Carcharias...that was a bit too All Your Base Are Belong to Us for me

[Petitioner's City]

One thing is we don't know where Abnett is taking his Alpharius ideas in Pariah's sequels. He is doing something he needed to ask for permission from the IP overlords in Penitent, but what is - whether it's AL, whether it's something else - we'll find out (hopefully soon!).

[Pariah32]

One thing is we don't know where Abnett is taking his Alpharius ideas in Pariah's sequels. He is doing something he needed to ask for permission from the IP overlords in Penitent, but what is - whether it's AL, whether it's something else - we'll find out (hopefully soon!).

 

That's very very true. 

[b1soul]

Valdor, Dorn, and Omegon have partnered up as the ultimate intelligence alliance

[Scribe]

Having just read PoD, I dont see how this would be bad to go to French at all. It very much captured the legion and Primarchs.

[mc warhammer]

i don't mind french, i just hope he could resist the zomg-omd-twist angle that he tends towards and that alpha legion stories also invite. you can do mystery and intrigue without it

[Scribe]

I didnt think PoD was bad for that at all. I thought it was a good reflection of a legion that has evolved into twisting itself into knots.

[DarkChaplain]

I just want a more introspective look at the Alpha Legion and their Twin Primarchs, rather than a twist-driven mayhem of ambiguity and I Am Alpharius memery. Something that goes beyond the Heresy itself to Eskrador and wraps up dangling plotlines that the Heresy forgot about... as well as had their thunder stolen by McNeill recently.

[mc warhammer]

I didnt think PoD was bad for that at all. I thought it was a good reflection of a legion that has evolved into twisting itself into knots.

totally agree

 

but that doesn't mean i want more of the same from a french penned alpharius novel

 

every french novel i've read has had a twist. every alpha legion story i've read has had a twist. would be nice to see something without a twist...which would actually be a twist.

[b1soul]

DA books about Unforgiven secrets and AL books about twists...please stahp

[Scribe]

 

I didnt think PoD was bad for that at all. I thought it was a good reflection of a legion that has evolved into twisting itself into knots.

totally agree

 

but that doesn't mean i want more of the same from a french penned alpharius novel

 

every french novel i've read has had a twist. every alpha legion story i've read has had a twist. would be nice to see something without a twist...which would actually be a twist.

 

 

I mean...I feel that, and I get what your saying but I also think thats just not how its going to be anymore.

 

Iron Hands are going to talk about machines, and Iron, and perhaps the repression of emotions (or not repressing, that lore change is still comical).

Night Lords are going to do their torture thing.

Raven Guard are going to be Operators, in the modern Special Forces sense, while also being emo, and coming out of shadows.

 

Like, imagine a World Eaters book, without brutality, slaughter, rage? Just wont happen.

 

Alpha Legions by definition now need to be about the twist, because its all about misdirection, multiple plans, layers of plans, and old spy/double agent tropes.

 

Its almost to a point where I feel the Legions are little more now than Trope delivery, and when an author wants to write a certain type of novel, just has to take that Legion off the shelf, dust it off, and craft a tale.

 

Maybe its always been that way? Maybe its not? Feels like that now to me though.

[Bobss]

This is a fairly frequent discussion I'm sure, but the Primarchs books have always had a serious lack of focus from pretty much the start. For me, it's not so much who writes it, but it's more how it's written - although of course the two are not mutually exclusive. Will the Alpharius book be a fantastic character dissection of the titular Primarch like The Palatine Phoenix was? Will it expand on an already-existing event like The Great Wolf did? Will it tackle a certain theme of the setting or period as we saw with Lord of Ultramar? Will it read as a fanboyish love letter to a main series Horus Heresy novel as Slave of Nuceria ended up? Will it be a boring pet project governed by an author who clearly loves that Legion, a la Master of Prospero? Will it serve as, basically, a prequel to a body of work like Warhawk of Chogoris? Will it be an attempted relaunch of a Legion like with Lord of the First? Or, perhaps, it will only deal with the Primarch in question in a roundabout way, like The Gorgon of Medusa did. Or will it be both a character study, a Horus Heresy prequel, an origin story and will expand on pre-existing events all in one like with The Hammer of Olympia

 

So I can see all of the following happening:

The Primarchs: Alpharius - The Man Behind The Mirror. This could be done, using a particular event to drill into Alpharius, but across 200~ pages it would need to be slim and economical. Praetorian of Dorn accomplished this with the Silonius bits, but that was a whopping 450+ pages or thereabouts. Yes, a lot of that page time was given to Archamus, but both 'teams' were pitted against each other to bring out the best in them, making all of it necessary reading

The Primarchs: Alpharius - Extended Universe. Fighting the Smurfs post-Heresy, for example. Some would enjoy this, others wouldn't. I belong to the latter

The Primarchs: Alpharius - Spy Kids. Who remembers that 20-or-so segment in POD where the Imperial Fists and the Alpha Legion both take a world through different means? That's what this would be about, and it would :cussing rock. Ideally, give me Alpharius and Horus getting along. I would like this set either post-Davin or pre-Ullanor where Horus is still firmly pro-Emps but he's starting to flex on his brothers a little bit

The Primarchs: Alpharius - Live and Let Die. I can easily see an author coming along and taking the easy route and just bandwagoning off of Legion or POD with some kind of throwaway story here. Bleh

The Primarchs: Alpharius - All Your Bases Are Belong To Us. So the Alpha Legion don't have an author who (P)erpetually haunts them like the Salamanders or the Bagels do. So in regards to returning authors I wouldn't mind Abnett or French knocking this out, but then again I always appreciate a fresh look at things... if it's written well

The Primarchs: Alpharius - Origins. Remember that line in The First Heretic where the Twins' pod drops onto a deck of a ship mmmaybe...? Well, let's dig into that. I want to know why they behave the way they do, and this could be dealt with cleverly. I mean the Valdor book's opening transcript is extremely revealing but in a vague enough way

[mc warhammer]

 

 

 

 

I didnt think PoD was bad for that at all. I thought it was a good reflection of a legion that has evolved into twisting itself into knots.

totally agree

 

but that doesn't mean i want more of the same from a french penned alpharius novel

 

every french novel i've read has had a twist. every alpha legion story i've read has had a twist. would be nice to see something without a twist...which would actually be a twist.

I mean...I feel that, and I get what your saying but I also think thats just not how its going to be anymore.

 

Iron Hands are going to talk about machines, and Iron, and perhaps the repression of emotions (or not repressing, that lore change is still comical).

Night Lords are going to do their torture thing.

Raven Guard are going to be Operators, in the modern Special Forces sense, while also being emo, and coming out of shadows.

 

Like, imagine a World Eaters book, without brutality, slaughter, rage? Just wont happen.

 

Alpha Legions by definition now need to be about the twist, because its all about misdirection, multiple plans, layers of plans, and old spy/double agent tropes.

 

Its almost to a point where I feel the Legions are little more now than Trope delivery, and when an author wants to write a certain type of novel, just has to take that Legion off the shelf, dust it off, and craft a tale.

 

Maybe its always been that way? Maybe its not? Feels like that now to me though.

i'm not even that opposed to "trope delivery"

 

i just believe that you can tell a black ops style story without a plot twist device

 

i also think french doesn't need to become BL's m night shyamalan

[Scribe]

Thats the thing though. Black Ops would be Raven Guard. Alpha Legion is...Jason Bourne, but only because of the memory loss. If Legions are the vehicle to deliver on Tropes, Alpha Legion exist, for the double cross and the twist. Its just the point now.

 

At least, it feels like thats all they can be in the modern framework of how BL/FW writes the Legions.

[mc warhammer]

whatever we choose to identify their particular trope as (tv tropes was the one listing AL as black ops), it's perfectly possible to tell a double cross story with the audience completely aware of every detail too. it's a choice.

 

i understand why modern authors tend towards twists, i do. audiences are so savvy these days that it's hard to surprise them with a more standard approach

 

i'd also say thousand sons get hit by the twisty stick a tad too often...

[b1soul]

I still hold Legion well above the rest, including the work of French, Sanders, and McNeill

 

PoD was solid but frankly...it had really flat characters (especially Archamus and Kestros) and relied too much on the dormant identity and shock twist toward the end

[Scribe]

Whaaaaaaaaat? Archamus was great. Kestros didnt get much screen time to develop at all, but I was pulling for Archamus at the end.

 

I hardly even remember Legion.

[Kelborn]

Pod mad me like the Fists, mostly because Archamus and his flashbacks!

 

It alone sold me on Frenchs take on them and the AL and made me appreciate the Crimson Fist even more.

 

But to each his own, eh?

[b1soul]

My personal opinion of course...

 

Archamus had zero personality and was written as a mental dullard. Kestros was the hot-headed muscle with even fewer wits than the older simpleton...so nothing remotely interesting about the younger simpleton.

 

Archamus seemed to exist to say different variations of "Wow my Lord Dorn, I could've never figured any of this out...thanks for taking care of all the thinking"

[Kelborn]

I'd vehemently disagree but it's your own opinion and I respect that, of course.

 

Though I agree that Archamus wasn't the best written character ever, I rather see him as a mean to dive into the past and culture of the Legion under his newly claimed Primarch instead of a "how awesome Dorn is" kinda way.

[b1soul]

On a positive note, I liked how Dorn was portrayed intelligently next to Alpharius. Both have their tactical specialties, but Dorn is able to think like Alpharius despite his aversion to using the Hydra's methods of destabilising and sowing paranoia and chaos.

 

Archamus struck me as the old man in a No Country for Old Men situation. I would've liked it if he had been less...mentally flat-footed so to speak.

 

As it was, he came across as the type of commander any semi-competent AL cell would run circles around. A loyal-to-a-fault blunt instrument...not an adaptive, quick-witted strategist. I suppose that's why Dorn picked him...but it almost smacked of "this guy is simple-minded enough not to over think...I'll use him against the AL"

Edited October 5, 2020 by b1soul