Patrick Stuart's Blog, page 19
August 29, 2021
Ten Years of False Machine
Yes, at 14:50 (UK time) tonight, it will be ten years exactly since I started the False Machine Blog with this Vampire Table.
I should probably do something for the anniversary, I was thinking maybe a 'clip show' of old posts or something.
Anyone have any ideas or desires?
August 26, 2021
OUR TWISTED GAME CONTINUES
tldr; Scrap and I are doing a 'Ping-Pong' Exquisite Corpse fire-themed dungeon to bring attention to our Kickstarter.
"What Kickstarter?" you simply and perhaps foolishly ask.
my
god
just click the links!Ok, now on with the post AND..
THE HEXAHEDRON OF THE MONKS OF FLAME
What is this? - HERE is the start of the whole thing and a description.
HERE is Scraps first response.
HERE is a map
And here is my response;
Room 8
Doors
Three doors on the main level, all are wood inlayed and edged with brass.
West to Room #7 – door slightly open.
South-West Corner to room #11- brass bar across it on this side attached to a strange mechanism attached to a pipe coming from the room beyond. Rack nearby with small sticks of fragrant wood.
East to Room #9– Door locked.
Secret Door, South East to Room #9 - right at the bottom of the shaft, hidden in darkness is a door which could be revealed by bringing light to this level and carefully looking around.
General Description
A multi-layered well of light. This place glows with life. A deep well in the centre of the room. In the centre of that, like the trunk of a tree which has grown up from some lower level, is a stack of prayer wheels. This huge column of amber and basalt, the wheels of gold rotating between wheels of black stone, like thick mill-wheels stacked up. The deep well is surrounded by wooden platforms going down down down, like scaffolding, (only three floors or so but it still looks pretty dramatic).
Above head height in the main room are brazen branches of shining metal, sculpted as of they were the branches of the tree at the centre, from the branches hang strange iridescent orbs, like ripe fruit
On the main floor, and down on the several levels of the wooden platforms in the centre which surround the pilar of wheels like scaffolding or the steps of a well-pit, are the carbonised corpses of monks wearing pure robes of orange fire sitting in lotus position.
Context
A room for worship contemplation and joy. The monks would come here to meditate on the great tree of flame bringing both death and life to all things, the opener of the gates of renewal, redemption and rebirth.
In autumn they would grieve for the tree of fire, and give respectful sorrows to its grim nature.
Though dead, the monks are still spiritually present in this room, still meditating on the tree of wheels and adding their power to its unending movement. If you mess with the monks bodies or the wheels you will get a firey ghost attack!
The light comes down from above through a light well cunningly disguised in the roof - it looks like stone from above AND ITS A HUGE BLOCK OF AMBER. This is not necessarily obvious to PCs as it just seems like translucent yellowy light. Getting it out safely and transporting it would be a nightmare - plus removing it would likely doom the temple. Plus monk attacks and whatever other guardians we dream up.
Like giant thick mill wheels, turning very very slowly though with no apparent friction. The amber-seeming chunks have strange ritual glyphs cut into them which glimmer and flash vaguely as the wheels turn in the amber light. Likewise the dark onyx wheels have glyphs and signs cut into them – hard to see, black against black, but slowly the wheels turn in strange spears and arrows of shifting light it feels as if for moments in places on the tree words or phrases in some unknown language are spelled out before passing away.
Not gold but gilded they wave and writhe along the ceiling like very dangerous low-hanging chandeliers. There are about 8 branches with d4 orb-fruit on them. You could maybe climb on the branches but even touching one slightly sends it swaying and rocking with a 1 in 3 chance of disturbing each branch to each side and so on.
If a branch stars rocking its fruit will drop and either split immediately or roll randomly and then split.
The Orb Fruit
Fruit splits and (roll a d10)
1 to 4 – A spaff of fire which quickly goes out, d2 damage if its near you.5 or 6 – Small puddle of Napalm, sets ablaze & will stick to anything that tries to go through it.
7 or 8 – White Phosphorous cloud. Adheres to and eats at all flesh.
9 – Cracks open to reveal a spiky red hedgehog creature. A FireHog. Friendly, like to snuffle around, can be tamed easily, like to roll up in pockets, need to sleep in a fire now and again, snorts and sneezes fire when tickled so can essentially be used as a firelighter though its not useful in combat.
10 – A Firechild who stands like a candleflame and sings out;
“Fire is natures gift to time
Oriflamme of new-born things
Time darkens life
Fire brightens time
And so, all flame must live.”
Any reasonable combination of these concepts will serve as an answer to the question ‘”Why do I live?” in room #12
The FlameChild then disappears and a single monk sighs, collapses and decays to ash in a moment.
The Combusted Monks
The monks are stil wrapped in clean silk robes which are almost like liquid fire. Their bodies carbonised as if by spontaneous combustion, but they remained totally still during this and are still psychically, spiritually active. the hideously burned bodies look like victims of some natural disaster, if not for their expressions of peace and the uncorrupted nature of their robes.
Stitched into the monks robes and written upon the torcs of amber bronze and red gold wrapped around their necks are combinations of this phrasing;
“Fire is natures gift to timeOriflamme of new-born things
Time darkens life
Fire brightens time
And so, all flame must live.”
But, again, if you fuck with the monks PSYCHICH BURNING GHOST ATTACK!
August 22, 2021
The Hexahedron of the Monks of Flame!
Has Victory truly defeated us? Perhaps poor planning, house moves, health problems and general malaise have muted our powers...
WE ARE ONLY £500 away from an upgrade which will increase the print quality of 'Demon-Bone Sarcophagus' to that of Deep Carbon Observatory.
That includes multiple ribbons, 150gms paper and a spot highlight cover!
And £5,000 after that, Bukako Shall Feast Again!
Yes more levelels spells for the ever-growing Feast of Bukako PDF which shall hopefully one day swell to become a true, free open tome of leveless spells for all.
But to be honest, no-one really seemed THAT interested in Bukako to begin with.... (not that I care, I intend to do it anyway).
So, with 20 (19 by the time you read this probably) days to go, Scrap and I fall back on an OLD CLASSIC.
Yes, the blog ping-pong content creation contest.
One of us does a post and poses a challenge for the other, to be answered by them on their blog. At the end of that post they in turn propose their own challenge and so on.
(If you would like to see the first ping-pong contest we did for DCO then you can start HERE.)
BUT!
In this case we will not be proposing any random image-based challenge, but instead the creation of an ENTIRE (& relatively small) DUNGEON!
I present..
THIS
(Ok so this dungeon is not 'canon' and it doesn't involve content from Broken Fire REgime or Demon-Bone Sarcophagus, bt we will try to throw in some general fire-themeing, plus there may or may not be nods or links in deniable ways, so hopefully it will prove useful or at least interesting in some way or another.)
WHAT IS THIS PLACE ANYWAY??
A mountainside like a tumbled river of stone, layers of forgotten epochs tipped like laden plates,
lost and compresed, eroded and chiselled by wind. An escarpment, the image from a film still, the banded red rock broken like an eternally collapsing wave, labouring redly beneath a red sun.
And in this maze of fractal shadows and broken stone; the strange sides and regular angles of a perfect Cube poking from the shattered scree, a temple carved directly from the stone of the mountain.
After many days of travel on the Phyrrous Plain, sweating horses, parched riverbeds, sleepless nights, hissing snakes and constant fear, this is the first unnatural shape or texture you have seen. It feels unreal, like childs toy abandoned in the wild....
It is no illusion! For here at last is the end of your quest, the mysterious and long-forgotten...
HEXAHEDRON OF THE MONKS OF FLAME......
a dark stair beckons in the shadowed stone. the stars glimmer overhead and from beneath, a wisp of scent. a long corridor, two passages. You take the leftward path...
ROOM 12
APPROACHING THE DOOR
The flames from any lamps or torches carried reach towards the door even before it is opened. They seem to form small hands and fingers which trace against its surface but leave no mark.
WITHIN
The room has two aspects, one if it is lit by flame, one if it is not.
THE ROOM LIT BY FLAME
A bright room, painted with mandalas, wheels and chariots of fire. Across its ceiling the image of a god of frozen flame made from the conflagrations of destroyed cities.
An the southern wall, an arch of iron shows the way to the surface.
In the western wall, an arch of ivory marks the exit.
If any member of the party is carrying a naked flame, it speaks! Crying out as a child in pain and asks...
"WHY DO I LIVE? WHY MUST I DIE?"
Of course the answers to these two questions, as well as the correct propitiation and sacrifices, will only be known to those who have already reached the deepest rooms of the Hexahedron.
Once the correct answers, propitiations and sacrifices are made, the flames fall silent.
If they are not answered or made, any flame held by the characters grows and swells like a vile cancer forming a hideous spawn of toxic fire and attacking them!
This flame spawn can be killed by extinguishing the initial fuel and flame, to which it remains connected as if by a shining cord of fire.
Of course if this is done they must face the room in its second state;
THE ROOM LIT BY NO FLAME
If there is no fire within the room the mandalas fade revealing the natural strata of the rock behind, which glows as if beneath pal moonlight, before expanding into a seemingly infinite distance!
The far door seems many leagues away, across a desert of ash!
Tis a cold desert, beset with (2d6) wolves - cold and brutal, as is the life of man without fire to bless it.
Not only this but your weapons shall be made bone and your meat made raw, ye leather shall be un-cured and all that is metal or born of flame shall be remade into stone, bone and wood and ye shall suffer in darkness!
The desert in an illusion which you can roll to disbelieve or dispel in the usual way but if you can't do that then you must travel across it for 1d3 days before you reach the door on the other side.
Should you reach the exit (an arch or iron or ivory standing in the desert of Ash), the transmutation of your treasure and equipment persists!
Keep your eyes peeled!Look for the next room in the dungeon over at Monster Manual Sewn from Pants!
August 21, 2021
Trailing Corposant 5 - Shell Game
KICKSTARTER KICKSTARTER KICKSTARTER TWO AND A HALF WEEEEKS LEEEEFT
Ok
Book Seven: Legion
Tracing the Alpha Legion through the Heresy is, fittingly, very difficult indeed. My search for sources may be even more flawed than usual in this one so I am open to corrections.
The Alphas appear as secondary elements, and very often as antagonists in many books. ‘Praetorian of Dorn’ has a lot on them, but they are almost never the main characters or central protagonists.
So far as I can tell, there are only two books specifically about the Alpha Legion, one at the very start; Dan Abnetts ‘Legion’, and right at the end, Mike Brooks Primarch book ‘Alpharius, Head of the Hydra’. Pleasingly, their presence in the sources is a lot like their presence in the history, split apart into a thousand plots before cohering at the end.
Pleasing in a metatextual sense anyway. In a straightforward story sense, not so much.
THIS IS BORING, DON’T READ IT, SKIP TO THE NEXT SECTION.
March 2008 – Legion. Heresy Novel by Dan Abnett. A few years pre-Heresy. The Alphas are sneaking around being sneaky as the Imperium’s C.I.A when some questionable alien conspirators give them info about the upcoming Heresy and tell them the only way to fully defeat Chaos and save all life, is to make sure Horus wins and Humanity Dies. The Alphas, or some of them, buy this, or seem to, and they become pre-emptive allies of Horus. Dan Abnett has decided Perpetuals exist. I hope you like Perpetuals because as far as he is concerned the Horus Heresy Series is now the Perpetuals Series.
May 2011 - The Face of Treachery. Short Story by Gav Thorpe in 'Age of Darkness'. Post Istvaan V and some raven Guard have come to try to rescue Corax from the surface. The Alphas intend to infiltrate the Raven guard for Reasons.
December 2011 – Deliverance Lost. Novel by Gav Thorpe. More infiltrating the Ravens and ruining Coraxs’ day.
May 2012 – The Serpent Beneath. Novella by Rob Sanders collected in 'The Primarchs'. “Omegon” runs a super-even-more-secret black ops mission against his own side to destroy a special station which is keeping the White Scars in the dark.
August 2012 - Fear to Tread. Novel by James Swallow. A Blood Angels book but we get a nice glimpse of the Alphas from another legions perspective. They infiltrate and destroy an Ork empire, breking them into fragments and driving them to the Blood Angles to be wiped out. They also irritate the BA by telling them nothing and using them as an ork lawnmower.
October 2013 – Scars. Novel by Chris Wright. The White Scars don’t actually know they were fighting the Alpha Legion, until they do. The Scars make a break for it.
October 2013 – Unremembered Empire. Novel by Dan Abnett. Face-swapped Alphas have a go at killing Robute and make a pretty decent show of it.
Jan 2014 - Hunters Moon. Audio drama by Guy Haley. What happened to the Space Wolves sent to watch Alpharius? Nothing good, hers a peek. This is a pretty good story about some fishermen finding a crashed space-ship and rescuing the Space Wolf they find inside.
March 2014 - Wolfs Claw. Audio Drama by Chris Wraight. The Alphas jump the Wolves after Prospero and have them bottled up in a nebula. Russ feels sad. Bjorn gets a hand.
November 2014 - The Seventh Serpent. Novella by Graham McNeil. One of the Twins cosplays rebel leader Meduson to trick some loyalists into assassinating ‘Alpharius’, who turns out to be a loyalist Alpha Legion commander. I am still not sure if this made any sense.
October 2015 - Wolf King. Novella by Chris Wraight. The wolves being chased by the Alphas in the Alaxxes Nebula.
August 2016 - Praetorian of Dorn. Novel by John French. Dorn vs Alpharius. Kind of a big deal. More below.
July 2017 – Tallarn. Novel by John French, but the stories which make it up date from earlier, around 2015. The Alphas have their sneaky business interrupted by Pertuabo wrecking the planet they are on, then do more sneaky business in the wasteland left behind.
May 2018 – Wolfsbane. Novel by Guy Haley. They are barely in this but do play a part in the battle of Yarant, which leads on from these events.
August 2018 - Slaves to Darkness. Novel by John French. Horus gets more chaos on/in him & gathers team bad guy. Omegon (or Alpharius) turns up to let him know the alphas are completely fucked up after the events of ‘Praetorian of Dorn’.
February 2019 - First Legion. A short by Chris Wraight in 'Scions of the Emperor'. The Alphas meet the First, described in the last post from the DA perspective and to be described again in the Alpharius Primarch Book.
October 2019 - The First Wall. I *think* there are Alpha infiltrators in this and their plotline has not been resolved...
April 2021 - Alpharius, Head of the Hydra. Mike Brooks please fix this shit. Ties everything together almost neatly.
The important thing about the shell-game is that it's a scam Don’t Let Those Schemes Stay Dreams…
To rationalise all those fragmentary bits and pieces, lets look at the Alpha Legions actual plans in the Heresy and how they turned out.
Plan A - Make Sure Horus Wins
The Cabal want the Alpha Legion to side with Horus ahead of time as part of a plot to destroy Chaos.
Like with everything the Alphas do, its hard to tell if they are in it to win it, or in it to seem to win it while actually making sure it fails. Its also impossible to really know which of the twins is which when. There is likely an authors intent for each story but that means little in the overall drama. Suffice to say, one twin is probably still loyal to the Emperor and one is probably working against him to a degree.
Result - Massive, massive, massive fail.Horus does not win and the Emperor barely survives. Whatever anyone intended it’s unlikely it was this.
Plan B – Gene-Stealers!
Post Istvaan, Corax goes crying to Dad and, as a son he actually likes, will receive hyper-special gene tech to help rebuild his Legion. The Alphas know this and want that tech! With brain-eating, false faces, albums by The Joy Division and copies of Neil Gaimans ‘Sandman’, they infiltrate the Raven Guard!
Result - Likely partial success.Despite the usual clusterfuck the Alphas seem to get their hands on something, though it may already have been corrupted by their arch-foes, the Alpha Legion. At least Corax doesn’t have it and can’t rebuild his Legion now.
Plan C – Trick the Scars!
After wrecking the Ork Empire on Ullanor, Horus sends Jaghati to chase down the survivors. This he happily does, tracking them to Chondax where the Scars have a fine old time racing about killing Orks and leaving their emails on out-of-office auto-reply.
What they don’t know is that as well as fighting Orks they are also fighting the Alpha Legion who have been tasked with boxing them in, making sure they receive no news and hopefully aiding Horus in ultimately turning them to his side.
Result – Failure.Significant parts of the Legion either knowingly, or subverted by one of the Twins against the other, fuck this up by destroying special hyper-tech that keeps Chondax in the dark, explicitly attacking the Scars in Chondax itself and by turning up in force long enough to make sure they hear both messages, the false one from Horus, and the true one from Dorn. Jaghatai investigates a bit and eventually is one of the few Legions to make it to Terra and actually stick there.
Plan D.1 – Get Russ to Wreck Prospero!
The Emperor has given orders to Russ to go and arrest Magnus for being weird. Get those orders and shift a comma or whatever so instead of reading “get Magnus”, they read “get Magnus ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)”.
Result – SuccessNot only is Russ really easy to manipulate into taking the hardest possible line against Magnus, but he even fucks up the final execution, sending Magnus and his Legion right into the arms of Tzeentch.
Plan D.2 - Jump the Wolves after Prospero!
Ok Russ should be pretty fucked up after Prospero. The idiot has outlived his usefulness, go and jump him on the way home and take him out.
Result – failure (probably).Russ escapes into a Nebulae, meets some who-the-fuck-knows Dark Angels, calls Jaghatai for help and is ignored and eventually gets away possibly partially due to complex webs of infiltration on one of his ships. A clusterfuck.
Plan E - Stop Perty pulling a ‘Molech’
Pertuabo bio-nukes Tallarn and races around doing armoured warfare in the resulting hellscape while secretly looking for a demon-gate. Stop Pertuabo finding that big ring of stone! No super-powers for Perty!
Result – Success pretty much.It’s not clear if this was the Alphas original mission, if they wanted the Demon Gate themselves or if they were just generally up to sneaky business. They seemed to have had plans for Tallarn before Perty even arrived. Nevertheless they bollock up his schemes enough that orders from Horus arrive jusssst before he can get his hands on Godpowers.
Plan… F? - Kill Robute?!
He he heee, lets wear the faces of dead Ultramarines from Calth, infiltrate Ultramar and kill Guilliman, hee hee hee.
Its not clear what if any relationship this scheme has to anything else the Alphas are up to, or if the Chaos powers even want Guilliman dead at this point as he is a main thing drawing forces to the Eastern Rim and away from Terra, but they have a go anyway, who even cares at this point?
Result – Fail.They give it a good effort but even unarmoured and unaware Guilliman royally wrecks their shit. They got close though!
Plan G – Assassinate… Alpharius? What?
In McNeills ‘Seventh Serpent’ one of the twins, presumably Alpharius.., sets up McNeils saturday-morning-cartoon good guys to assassinate.. Alpharius. The Alpharius they assassinate is actually an Alpha still loyal to the throne.
Result – Success?
Plan H - Invade the Sol System!
Alpharius (probably) has a super-secret long-prepared extra-clever multi-layered scheme to provoke and baffle Rogal Dorn before grabbing Pluto and opening the Sol system to the traitors.
As usual, there are multiple reads on this. It may be that this is an actually-real plan to take Pluto, or, it may be an even more subtle scheme to simply meet with Dorn and persuade him of… something?
Result – MASSIVE FAILIf the plan was to take Pluto, it failed. Alpharius is a soudcloud rapper who quotes Machiavelli and Dorn is the nondescript uncle who always wins at bridge. Dorn rumbles the Pluto scheme and pincers the Alpha Legion when they are extended. The Alphas main forces are tabled by turn five and they are no longer a major military threat.
If the plan was to get Dorn to come to Pluto so they could have a chat, then A; that’s fucking stupid, and B; it still fails as Dorn just kills Alpharius in mid-monologue.
This is probably an actual Primarch death. We then cut to Omegon out in space. If ‘siding with Horus’ was ever part of a long-term scheme, it isn’t now.
Plan I – Gather Intel on Dorns Defences
A twin turns up in ‘Slaves to Darkness’ to present Horus with a complete plan of the Sol Systems defences and then strongly indicates that they are done with the Heresy.
Result – Success.Well Horus does take the Sol System, and pretty quickly too.
Plan J - Kill the Wolves and Ravens at Yarant
After his failed assassination/enlightenment attempt on Horus in ‘Vengeful Spirit’, Russ is badly wounded and chased by whoever the Warmaster can spare. He ends up in the Yarant system where good-old Corax arrives to help out. At least some of the Traitor forces are Alpha Legion though they are not in command.
Result – Fail.I think as of current lore this battle is still in progress but since both Wolves and Ravens still exist in M41 we can assume they escape somehow.
Plan A-PLUS! Be the Emperors ‘Knife In The Dark’
Yes there was a plan before plan A! At the start of the Great Crusade E-Dawg recovers Alpharius, keeps him secret and tells him to just go out and do pro-Imperial black-ops shit try to be useful you know? Secret missions, that kind of thing..
Result – Suc…. FAIL.Alpharius is pretty great at this job, but then he finds his mystery twin Omegon on a planet somewhere, doesn’t tell anyone, and then we loop back around to their encounter with the Cabal.
Dan Abnetts Bad Ideas
The Alphas are wonderful Polyfilla for any heresy writer. They can fill any gap in any story, provide motivation, add a bit of spicy danger and deception. They work reasonably well when added to things.
The central axis of the decisions they are actually seen to make are… just stupid.
There is no way you can make the Alphas agreement with the Cabal make any sense. No matter how good that book is, the choice is dense, Its like the head of the CIA being scammed by an email from a Nigerian Prince.
I can see how it illuminates character and is yet another Heresy example of the whatever-it-takes paradox; If you make a sneaky sociopath to do whatever-it-takes in pursuit of destroying chaos and they decide that whatever it takes involves the destruction of humanity then that’s a sort of interesting story.
It would be almost good if an Alpharius came to this decision on their own, if though being intelligent, investigating, uncovering secrets, history and motivation, they worked out the truth about chaos, even predicted the Heresy, exactly the kind of thing they are meant to do, and then made an unexpected choice, truly putting the final aim above the means, but the fact that they got barnumed by a bunch of Xenos is daft.
And again in ‘Praetorian of Dorn’ – another plan, stupid at its core, executed with genius.
Lack of any guaranteed stability of identity means alpha legion stories lack meaning, or that they are all the same story of a self-causing, self-resolving problem.
You think Tzeentch would like the Alphas, but Nurgle is more likely. The sum total of all their intelligence, perception and ambition is a flat zero – a total paradox. They nullify themselves time and again.
It’s largely Dan Abnett’s Fault.
He wrote a book, good in its elements, engaging in its mood and plot reveals, but its core it was built on poor foundations and those foundations play out again and again throughout the Heresy. The tics and tricks of the Alpha Legion infinite-plot-bucket proliferate and grow. More schemes within schemes, more is-it-a-primarch shell games. By the time we get to the other end of the Hydra of plots, all there is left for Mike Brooks to do is to slot the Alphas into the pre-existing Heresy lore and basically explain roughly who is who and what has been going on.
He at least manages to do so cleanly.
This was a wasted opportunity.
Alpharius/Omegon as Characters
There’s nothing really meaningful I can add that isn’t in either ‘Legion’ and/or ‘Alpharius: Head of the Hydra’. No grand synthesis or outside look at the character. There’s not much there.
August 17, 2021
Trailing Corposant 4 – Autistic Sympathy
Ok, on with the series.
Book 6 – Descent of Angels
Hey kids… do you like Dark Angels?
Well tough shit. Get ready for some quite-interesting characters across some very forgettable books by a spectrum of ablative writers as a series of books about the First Legion and the Lion manages to largely not actually be about the First Legion or the Lion.
The First Legion in (rough*) Publication Order
October 2007 - Descent of AngelsNovel by Mitchel Scanlon
Luther finds the Lion, raises him, goes to space then kinda-nearly-sorta lets him die and is banished back to Caliban.
March 2009 - ‘Call of the Lion’Short by Gav Thorpe published in ‘Tales of Heresy’
An old-school Terran Dark Angel and a Calibanite dick-measure over how to conquer a world.
July 2009 - Fallen AngelsNovel by Mike Lee
Heresy happens. Lion thinks ahead and grabs some super-siege weapons which Horus will need to crack the Palace = STRATEGIC GENIUS ONE STEP AHEAD BABY! Then gives them to Pertuabo = AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER. Luther plots on Caliban & gets chaos on him.
May 2011 - ‘Savage Weapons’Short by Aaron Dembski-Bowden in ‘Age of Darkness’
The Lion has already been fighting Conrad in the Thramas Crusade for a while (when did that happen? = In the Forge World books). Lion and Conrad meet for a mutual (attempted) backstabbing, successful in the Lions case.
May 2012‘The Lion’Short by Gav Thorpe in ‘The Primarchs’
More Thramas Crusade. They have Demons now? They have Demons now. Lion decides its time to start bending rules, wakes up the Librarius and fiddles with somewhat-evil hypertech. He is off to see Guilliman? YOU BETTER NOT BE DOING TREASON ROBUTE (yes I just somewhat-accidentally killed one of my Chaplains in an autistic meltdown but that wasn’t really treason really).
December 2013 – ‘Cypher, Guardian of Order’Audio drama by Gav Thorpe.
Spooky business on Caliban. WhOOOoooo.
May 2014 – ‘Prince of Crows’Novelette by Aaron Dembski Bowden
The Lions spooky and creepy schemes actually pay off and he kicks Conrads ass I’M GLAD SOMEONE DID. Unfortunately for us most of this happens in the Forge World books. This story begins in the aftermath as Severtar, the Night Lords one-competent-psychopath tries to un-fuck the situation.
October 2014 – ‘Master of the First’Audio drama by Gav Thorpe
More plotting on Caliban. WhOOOoo.
June 2016 – ‘Angels of Caliban’Novel by Gav Thorpe
The Lion, now working for with Guilliman on Macragge, fights Conrad AGAIN and wins FUCK YOU CONRAD. He did have to phosphex a bunch of civilians to do it, sorry Robute, but at least works out that the Emperor is still alive. More plotting on Caliban, some DA sent back for reinforcements ‘fall down some stairs’ – Luther gets more Chaos on him.
January 2017 – ‘Leman Russ: The Great Wolf’Primarchs Novel by Chris Wraight
Chris Wraight Prequel! Largely about Russ being a fucking incompetent and fighting the Lion. I think this has an interesting poscript describing the Lion arriving on Terra after the siege, realising he made every decision wrong and having a near-total meltdown. Hold on buddy as its about to get worse for you.
February 2019 – ‘First Legion’Short by Chris Wraight in ‘Scions of the Emperor’
Another Chris Wraight prequel. It’s the Ragandan Xenocides and the 1st are having a tough time when the ‘Alpha Legion’ come offering bright red apples and a large wooden horse. “Hey super-secret guy, we like the way you keep secrets secretly…”
May 2020 – ‘Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First’“Primarchs” Novel by David Guymer
An actually good novel largely about the Lion! Its pre-heresy. The DA fight super-evil super-psychic ages-old mega-monster Xenos and royally fuck them up. Finally we see the penguin in the water as all the DA masonic conspirital claptrap and low level autism turns out to be useful and quite clever actually fuck you very much. SYMBOLS.
March 2020 – ‘Saturnine’Siege Novel by Dan Abnett, (the 1stplay a bit part in this).
“But the Dark Angels weren’t at the Siege!” Well this one group was actually! And there are Fallen with him! See THAT WHOLE UNENDING SIDE PLOT WAS RELEVEANT ACTUALLLyyYYY!”
There is a chapter where the DA retake the Astronimicon, which now has Chaos on it. Will the Fallen do something creepy in future books? Probably/
October 2020 – ‘Luther: First of the Fallen’Novel by Gav Thorpe
The Heresy is over! Luther is captured by the Dark Angels and kept in a timelocked cage. He is interrogated over 10,000 years and gets to see the Imperium decay into gothic madness. An imperfect book but original in concept and execution. Well done.
(*Some of the shorts may have appeared before being collected.)
If ever a man suited a beard it was the Lion
The Lions Timetable
Ok, beginning the Lions Story in the Heresy, what do we know? Banishes Luther. Thramas Crusade. Not at Terra, arrives late. Fights Luther on Caliban. Goes beddy-bye.
So it’s a story about someone not making it to the party. Still, with all of the Lions early life and all of the Great Crusade to play with, there is a lot you could do. Sadly largely they do not.
Conspiracies on Caliban!
Black Library already has a few books about the Dark Angels in M41 involving the dark secrets of old Caliban, the Fallen and time travel. Plus we have characters who are from that era and talk about it.
So now we are doing the Heresy, we could close the loop.
Caliban is a forested death world beset by monsters which, all unique, are often semi intelligent and are always super-destructive. A bunch of post-apocalyptic Knights defend this place with guns and swords.
All these different Knightly groups have various levels of secrecy and conspiracy, even one group who, as we later discover, have the spiffing idea that since chaos (the beasts) can’t ever be finally defeated, maybe we should instead try and stabilise the relationship with them instead of trying to annihilate them?.
Extra bullshit; the world is actually a kind of container or trap for a piece of hypertech called the Ouroboros which might be from the War in Heaven and is definitely somewhat evil and quite chaosy. The little robed fellows who hang out with the Dark Angels are actually anti-chaos aliens who watch over this hypertech.
After Luther gets banished back to Caliban he starts unfolding this secret history. Luther and the Calibanites have their hands on the 1st Legions make-a-space-marine kit, and are not big fans of the Empire at all..
Get ready for infinite plots, identity swapping, mind-worms, conspiracies inside conspiracies, mixed loyalties, hidden flaws, cunning plans and Luther spinning about a million plates as he tries to keep the whole thing going while quietly shitting himself over what’s going to happen when the Heresy ends. Someone has to win right?
Not necessarily terrible as a set of stories about Old Night, a non-imperial look at the Imperium, and good if you like secret plotting and LORE, but largely not very interesting or deeply related to the main Heresy Series.
This strand makes up about a third to a half of all the DA series books. And they are not a separate strand, if you want to read about the Lion then you are going to get a ‘Conspiracies on Caliban’ chapter right afterwards, and visa versa.
The Fallen are still around! They travelled through time and turn up in M41/42. What happens when a non-imperial culture gets its hands on the Imperial tech package and is non-quite but a-bit chaosy? We will find out!
Its not terrible but the situation on Caliban would have been overwhelmingly better as one strong book about only-that-subject, instead of a grafted limb weighing down the others.
Thramas, the Off-Screen Crusade
Horus thinks of something useful to Conrad to do; “Fuck off to the Eastern Fringe and keep the 1st occupied and the Lion OFF MY FUCKING BACK.”
The Thramas Crusade! Dark Angels vs Night Lords! Cunning battles across the stars, Knights vs Atrocity, Terror vs Nobility! Tragedy! Honour! Planets go boom!
Surprisingly, Conrad does pretty well. He does lose a fair few fights, but in strategic terms that doesn’t matter at all. Even in defeat he gets the Lion haring off to deal with Guilliman and getting sucked into his schemes rather than heading for Terra. Well done Conrad, mission accomplished, you truly are the most irritating of all Primarchs.
In a classic method of heresy storytelling, one of the coolest bits of the Dark Angels being good at stuff, fighting, outwitting and ultimately wrecking the Night Lords shit, takes place largely off-screen from the main series. I think its already meant to be covered in the Forgeworld Red Books and so they can’t do main stories about it?
Oh well…
Luthers Complex Psychology!
Luther! The hyper-charismatic, super-fighter, strategic genius and best knight ever who seems destined to unify Caliban and drive back the beasts at the head of The Order, spooky knights who are less fucked up than most other Knightly orders and who actually value ordinary people a bit. His wife & kids just died and he is sad about it.
He and his team follow the path of a dangerous creature.
It’s the Lion.
His compatriots nearly shoot the Lion (a common drama on Primarch discovery) but he persuades them not to and they bring the wild child back to civilisation and teach him to be the best knight ever. Luther and the Lion beat up all the bad monsters along with anyone who disagrees with how they are doing that. They pretty much control Caliban. Don’t talk to me or my Autistic Son ever again.
Except he’s not your Autistic Son, he’s now your boss.
WHOOPS the Imperium of Man arrives. Caliban is saved again if it wasn’t before. Luther is cucked out of the hero AND Father role AGAIN.
But he still gets to hang out with the son that he hatesloves… So he goes to space with him.
On their first big mission Luther notices that recalcitrant subjects “coming to negotiate” came in a shuttle which in no way or sense could make it back to their planet… If they don’t intend to go back, does that mean…
Weeeeeelllll no need to mention it..
They’ll kill my rival, the Lion, who took Caliban from me, who reduced me to an also-ran in my own life, who excels everything I ever did simply by virtue of being born a monster..
Oh my god they’ll kill my son, the Lion. The boy I rescued from the forest! Who never had a real father! My friend who fought by my side to save Caliban, who I taught all of my wisdom and imbued with my best qualities despite him being an autistic idiot!
So Luther does mention it, almost-nearly too late. The Lion knows something is up, senses he can’t trust Luther, but still loves him, and can’t prove he did anything, so neatly sweeps the problem under the rug by sending Luther and anyone else who gives him a bad feeling, back to Caliban to mumble mumble deedly dooly whatever PROBLEM SOLVED.
Luther, in purely literary terms, maybe the most interesting character in the Heresy. Torn utterly between his genuine higher nature and real love for the Lion and a deep and complex web of shame, anger and self-recrimination which he can barely acknowledge.
We’ve seen Father/Son relationships go horribly wrong in the Heresy many times, from the Sons point of view. With Luther we get the anguish of a failed father, angry, yet still with a capacity for nobility. With genuine and reasonable complaints and massive flaws.
Luther slowly goes mental on Caliban, playing Calibanite Game of Thrones, fretting and never quite falling to Chaos no matter how many 25%-off free chaos powers offers they flood his email spam box with.
"Look, no-ones saying chaos chaos, wait hear me out!"
Some fragments of the page on Autism Spectrum Disorder from the Taken from the National Institute for Mental Health
“Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that affects communication and behaviour. .. people with ASD have:
· Difficulty with communication and interaction with other people
· Restricted interests and repetitive behaviours
· Symptoms that hurt the person’s ability to function properly in school, work, and other areas of life
Not all people with ASD will show all behaviours, but most will show several.
Social communication / interaction behaviours may include:
· Making little or inconsistent eye contact
· Tending not to look at or listen to people
· Rarely sharing enjoyment of objects or activities by pointing or showing things to others
· Failing to, or being slow to, respond to someone calling their name or to other verbal attempts to gain attention
· Having difficulties with the back and forth of conversation
· Often talking at length about a favorite subject without noticing that others are not interested or without giving others a chance to respond
· Having facial expressions, movements, and gestures that do not match what is being said
· Having an unusual tone of voice that may sound sing-song or flat and robot-like
· Having trouble understanding another person’s point of view or being unable to predict or understand other people’s actions
Although people with ASD experience many challenges, they may also have many strengths, including:
· Being able to learn things in detail and remember information for long periods of time
· Being strong visual and auditory learners
· Excelling in math, science, music, or art
The Lion
Beard! This is a good look for you Lion, stick with it. I cringe often when shameful memories spring to mind. As in physically. It got so bad that its part of the reason I am on pills.
When I think of the sadness of the Lion my strongest emotion is a grieving sympathy. There is a particular social horror in having the raw intelligence, the processing power, to be able to work out what people are thinking and doing, as agents, as abstract properties, and having the sensory capacities to intuit it, as you would a beast, but severely lacking any degree of social intuition.
Never being able to explain yourself. Not even really toyourself. Knowing everyone else is operating in a social milieu you can understand intellectually but never inhabit.
The sadness of being alone. The nightmare of half knowing your dad thought seriously about letting someone assassinate you.
The First. Does this make you an unreliable prototype? Or the most robust and coherent instantiation of the designers intent?
Because even though you were intended to be the first one out of the tubes, and though your gene-sons remember fighting alongside the Emperor, you yourself are being superseded militarily by a guy you are pretty sure you could beat.
Why?
Because he knows how to get along with people. The one thing you can’t do. Even space-dad likes him more.
But still, you are competent. You do what is needed of you. In in design terms, you seem to be the essence of what a Primarch should be. And what a Primarch should be is a super-badass, made to royally fuck up the kinds of alien and warp-based hyper threat that even the most brilliant and enhanced mainline human would have trouble with. A Monster to fight Monsters.
And you are completely fine with that, genuinely, and are very good at it.
In your quiet moments with the Emperor neither of you even say anything. You don’t need awards or explicit praise. That’s not self delusion or false modesty. Its enough to be recognised, and to be relied on. That matters.
Then the Heresy comes.
Then the almighty fuckup with handing siege weapons to Pertuabo. Fuck. Imagine the memory of it.
Then Conrad in the Thramas Crusade, getting tangled up with Robute on the Eastern Fringe.
Then finally, finally, reaching Terra and realising that every single choice you made was wrong. That when you thought you were winning you were being played. That the Emperors main beat stick against Chaos wasn’t there when he needed you. The one thing you were certain of, your competence, torn away.
Then you go home and your dad tries to kill you for real this time. And home is gone, blasted to bits.
Its no wonder he needed a sleep.
If Pertuabo is a lesson in dealing with Autism badly, the Lion is an example of dealing with Autism… well not well, but not terribly either. And regardless of all his fuckups and losses, meltdowns and frustrations, regardless of being born on a death world and hunted from birth, of being betrayed by his father/teacher, he still never turns evil.
........................
Farewell Mitchell Scanlon and Mike Lee! You got one book each and this is the last we will see of you in the Heresy!
August 16, 2021
More Interviews! More! MORE! MORE!
LEARN!
The secrets of BROKEN FIRE REGIME
My own Dark and Mysterious History
with David 'Yoon-Suin' McGrogan!
The secrets of PHILOSOPHY and THOUGHT
with MAX CANTOR
(creator of Maximum Recursion Depth
coming out soon)
August 14, 2021
A Long Interview about Broken Fire Regime
Yes gather for my wisdom...
If you remember all the insanely in-depth comments on my blog from Her Christmas Knight, this is him, interviewing me;
August 12, 2021
Trailing Corposant 3 – Fulgrim
CLICK THE TOP IMAGE ON THE RIGHT TO GO THERE!!!
Ok now on to the post. Click the 'trailing corposant' tag to see the previous posts in this series about me reading the entirity of the Horus heresy Series.
......
The next four books are frankly, all over the place as the Heresy Series goes into what will be one of several wild tacks back and forth, a lumbering freighter which has lost its course.
Lets just talk about Fulgrim.
thingk from here? https://www.deviantart.com/v-strozziPlace yourself in the Black Library offices. You’ve finished planning the initial trio of books. The Heresy should be in full flow. Maybe one or two have come out and are doing well.
What comes after that initial trilogy? Horus has fallen, the two sides are at war. That war is ten years long and covers the galaxy. What do you do next? How will you approach the rest of the series?
Graham McNeils answer – tell the story of Fulgrim and the fall of the Emperors Children to Chaos, would seem like a good idea.
Some people like this book, I found it pretty bad.
Fulgrims as Fiasco
We will start with a look at the character as he is published chronologically. Because this one is pretty interesting.
2002 - Index Astartes 1. The Proto-Versions of Fulgrims discovery and his uplifting of Chemos.
2007 Fulgrim - (HH Novel). The Big Main book that all the others end up responding to. Fulgrim starts dating a hot sword and falls to chaos. Ends with; ITS NOT FULGRIM ANY MORE A DEMON IS POSESSING HIM??? GASP. Yes OG Fulgrim is now trapped in a painting.
October 2011 - Auralean (HH Novella). Only a brief peek in this one as Lorgar works out Fulgrim is a demon; OK SO FULGRIMS STILL A DEMON HERE RIGHT?
May 2012 - The Reflection Crak’d (HH Novella). This is the one with the Torture Apple and the anal violation. Fulgrims kids work out that its not really him in that body as he has been acting weird, even for him, so they decide to BDSM the truth out of him.
BUT it turns out that he is actually into that shit, and apparently also it is really him – he used cleverness to get his body back and was deliberately acting not like himself in order to teach his sons a lesson or something, apart from some behaviours which were apparently actually him.
So he’s not a demon any more, but he’d like to become one, so we are off to..
October 2012 - Angel Exterminatus (HH Novel). Fulgrim teams up with Peter Turbo to find some incredible super-weapon (‘Turbo being insanely into superweapons is a theme with him), but it is all a cunning trick and Fulgrim was actually just planning to ascend to being a Demon Primarch, which he does.
Ok so now we have demonic, snake-bodied, shapechanging but NOT possessed Fulgrim from this point on and he remains relatively stable (from our point of view).
May 2014 - Vengeful Spirit (HH Novel). Horus uses his noted supercharisma and military genius to persuade his junkie brother to actually be useful in the Heresy for once.
March 2017 - Gathering Storm: Rise of the Primarch; (Campaign Guide). I haven’t read this, apparently F’Grim turns up in the ‘current year’ to dick Robute about and then just wanders off.
October 2017 - Fulgrim: The Palantine Phoenix (Primarchs Series Novel). Josh Reynolds gets a crack at F’Grim in a prequel story telling us something about the Fabulous One in the time before his fall seemed inevitable.
December 2017: Fabiuls Bile: Clonelord. Josh Reynolds again. This is a complex one, details at the end.
August 2018 - Slaves to Darkness (HH Novel). Horus is having a meltdown so Lorgar takes a shot at taking over the Heresy. As part of his plan he goes to hell and uses cunning to drag Fulgrim back-to-Reality-ope-there-goes-Gravity.
March 2018 - The Ancient Awaits (Short Story). Another post-Heresy story where Fulgrim meets a dreadnought of one of the Loyalists he sent to die on Istvaan III and gets a bomb in the face. A moment so epic fans made their own song about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Hb4bngxJ8
enjoy that before GW finds a reason to take it down.
May 2019 - The Solar War (Siege Novel)
October 2019 - The Lost and the Damned (Siege Novel)
March 2020 - Saturnine (Siege Novel)
Fulgrim at the siege of Terra is basically vibing.
To Summarise;
McNeil makes what may be one of the most epic misfires in the entire Heresy followed by one of the most agonising and strangely arranged attempts at a recovery.
He ends his first story, and our first extended story aboutFulgim by ‘black-boxing’ the main character. As whacked-out and wasted as Fulgrim is, he still can’t bring himself to kill his best friend Ferrus so at the climax of the book he gives up and surrenders his body to his addiction demon. Fulgrim is trapped in a painting and the Demon is now in charge. It was the demon who actually strook the blow that killed Ferrus. An important point.
(Of course we, reading later know that black-boxing is reserved for the Emperor and Horus, the other characters have to remain, well, characters.)
After three or four years in real time, possibly because he’s writing Angel Exterminatus and has realised that, since Fulgrim is in it, he needs Fulgrim to be an actual character, and also that, since its based around Fulgrim trying to become a Demon Prince, he needs to not already be a demon at the start of the book as that would be mental, McNeill decides to solve the Fulgrim issue.
So in May 2012 we get ‘The Reflection Crack’d’, where an anal torture scene reveals the truth… But think about what an incredibly strange way this is to write these events. What we learn is that Fulgrim has escaped from demonic imprisonment, forced his possessing demon into the prison instead, but is now super pervy and wants to be a demon himself.
We see absolutely none of this from Fulgrims point of view, instead we get this very strange story where the person you though was someone but suspected wasn’t turned out to in fact be the same person you originally assumed they were.
Things stabilise for the rest of the Heresy with him being a talented flake who generally doesn’t want to be there and has to be coerced or persuaded for each performance. He has no further character development or decay. (Apart from Josh Reynolds ballsy attempt at adding depth in ‘The Palantine Phoenix’).
Yet for most or many of the key moments of Fulgrims development and change, we either don’t see the events directly or Fulgrim is in some sense ‘absent’ within his own story.
Fulgrim as Character Fulgrim; School-Star
Fulgrim lands on a resource-poor planet ruled by aristocratic corporations, grinding work and despair where everything is slowly falling apart.
Three people find him. One is so freaked out that he wants to do away with the child, so another kills him (bad sign), but Fulgrims arrival breaks open the rock and releases a spring of pure water on a planet where this is treasured and rare (good sign).
(His name means ‘water-bringer’, something he shares with Lorgar, who also fell onto a desert world and was named ‘Rain Bringer’.)
In childhood and adolescence, Fulgrim works feverishly to rescue his world from its doom, and does so (so far as we know) with nothing but technical knowhow, charisma, politics and hope. Almost the ideal of the Emperors vision for a reunited mankind, he achieves what a few other Primarchs have, and does it without genociding or nuking anyone. (Even Corax had to nuke a few people.)
We don’t see this story. Its only revealed through memories and articles in old HH lore.
Assuming this lore remains true, this is Fugrim unquestionably at his best, with all his virtues working to the max and most of his flaws accounted for by poverty and lack of resources. In these circumstances he truly is a Phoenix; hope from hopelessness.
But our story begins, both chronologically and in-world, pastthis point.
What happens to the Phoenix after that initial re-birth, when it is just sort of hanging around? What happens to the High-School football star after school ends, and they need to enter the real world?
The Football Star Has Cracks
Fulgrim has a lot of flaws disguised as virtues, and a LOT of insidious problems in his legion which he either doesn’t know about, doesn’t really process or just chooses to ignore.
In his post High-School arc things seem to start well.
Luv me Emprah
Fulgrim thinks E-Money, his ideas, his big plan, Fulgrims place in it, and pretty much everything he does – is and are FUCKING AMAZING.
Admittedly its hard not to think that when the Emperor is staring you down as his presence distorts reality itself, but Fulgrim really really thinks that. And the Emperor thinks it right back.
“You are great, you are the best, I am going to base my life on you” says Fulgrim to the Emperor.
“No son,” says the Emprah, “You are great, you are so great in fact here, name your legion after me and wear my special symbol to show just how fucking special you are. NO-ONE ELSE GETS THIS SPECIAL BADGE FULGRIM YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE.”
Gene Seed Problems
Someone is clearly not a fan of the Third Legion. A weird and mysterious “accident”, (unusual in the Heresy series in that there has not been a short story about it involving time loops, demons, “you made your own future” themes, mysterious aliens, the Selinar Gene cults or anything at all really), takes place which wipes out most of their gene-seed.
Worse, they have a mysterious blight or flaw which is corrupting or destroying what remains. This legion seems doomed.
Fabius
Apothecary Fabius decides to save his Legion (and himself) using whatever it takes. A repeated theme with the Astartes since all of them have some kind of flaw or problem and if you want to keep a legion going then often someone needs to do whatever it takes.
This ultimately involves Fabius grinding up his dead bothers and snorting them in order to stay alive, Fabius has the Blight too, and though he can retard its progress, he can never entirely cure it.
The few remaining Astartes from this generation suspect that something is up with Fabius, but he is an unquestioned genius and a vital resource. The ‘Spider’ squatting there at the centre of the Legion, acts as an accelerant for the corruption to come.
Small Legion
The Third Legion is therefore very small, nearly wiped out in fact, so the remaining legionaries are treated a little more like air-force pilots than standard expendable grunts. They are very much notexpendable. In fact they are massively over-trained and upskilled compared to other legions, and very well looked after.
They are also massively traumatised by their near-extinction, and have a collective small-man syndrome at an epic level due to having a legion of like 200 guys. Even the Thousand Sons have a thousand sons.
Noble Seed
They are also recruited from the Noble Families of Old Terra. This is a common tactic of the Emperor to simultaneously co-opt, neuter and possibly destroy potential sources of resistance. Having your children selected to become Astartes is an “Honour” and clearly indicates your loyalty and integration with the new Imperium , but effectively it cripples your gene-line by removing most of the vital young men. Men are pretty replaceable in general, but the Astartes process is very flesh-hungry and many cultures in the Heresy are nearly destroyed by over-recruitment, accidentally in some cases, and in some, very deliberately.
A lot of the 3rd legion are from wealthy noble houses. Raised to rule and have good taste even in the short years before they were made supermen.
Very, very different to Fulgrims initial social milieux. The school hotshot from the small town won’t be working his way up from nothing, he arrives in Harvard, spending time with the genetic and social elite.
No Longer Number #1
The hyper-talented boy from the small town is no longer easily the superior of anyone he meets. He has 19 brothers, many of whom are better than him at stuff. Not the best technologist, (Ferrus), the best politician, (Robute) the best military strategist, (Horus) or even the most Handsome! (Sanguinius).
The guy who was best-at-everything, and for whom this was a huge part of his identity, is now very-good-at-a-range-of-things.
He does have one friend though, which is nice, a hyper-masculine equally-weird obsessive.
(Fulgrim and Ferrus is Guts and Griffith and no-one will convince me otherwise.)
All of this is fascinating character development and a deeply interesting look at the nature of character and how flaws can become virtues and virtues flaws as circumstances change except that ALMOST NONE OF IT IS THE DIRECT SUBJECT OF ANY OF HIS BOOKS.
Good news for weirdoes like me who get off on assembling the ephemera of imaginary paracosms into coherent wholes. Bad news for normies who just want to see things happen.
Sex n’ Gender
Did you know Fulgrim actually got married back on Chemos? At least a couple of times. These were largely political marriages made to cement alliances.
But, Fulgrim was very young when the first of these happened, and Primarchs can take some time to work out just how different they are to everyone else. They learn facts and skills quickly but they don’t develop emotionally very quickly. He is rather coy when questioned about them.
So did Fulgrim actually have feelings and relations for these early marriages?
Did Fulgrim have sex with a girl? I think this is the only Primarch who is suggested to have any kind of Heterosexual relationship with anyone. Later on in ‘Palatine Phoenix’ he has something of a flirtatious relationship with an intelligent and crafty old woman who might in some ways be an intellectual equal at this point in his development.
Its not really deeply described or looked into but the nascent concept of Fulgrim being someone capable of, and desirous of, actually emotional and physical intimacy with the opposite gender, is a fascinating one. It adds to and in some ways, makes more horrific, the loneliness of the Primarchs and of their Astartes ‘sons’. Most GW lore has Space Marines just generally uncomprehending of sexual intimacy but there is an unspoken possibility that one reason for the alienation of the Fulgrim and the Third Legion might be a sense of loss for an experience and capability most of them would barely be able to conceptualise emotionally. And then its translation into its own nightmare version as they turn into perv-monsters.
Of course we can’t have books about that because the middle-range of the I.Q. graph and the GW marketing department are VERY insistent that “Slaanesh isn’t just abuuuut seeeexx ducch kindofabadloooooook”.
The Palatine Phoenix
A book good enough that its worth mentioning on its own.
We get a look at Fulgrim at the exact mid-point between his obsessions and flaws being functionally useful, and him having edging towards some kind of breakdown.
Fulgrim is so obsessed with building a name and independence for his Legion that he decides he is going to take a planet with a small group of men and some political bullshit.
In later records this is portrayed as a supreme and brilliant victory. In Reynolds story it is shown as a near-catastrophe in which Fulgrim consistently underestimates or fails to understand the nature and quality of his opposition. He nearly gets blown up by a nuke, ends up brutally grinding his way through a scrum of opposition, ending up covered in their blood and gristle, his legionaries leave themselves open to possible defeat through grandstanding.
His ‘victory’ is much much more of a mess than it seems or is later presented as.
Worst of all is the failure to learn.
The planet in question is home to a complex philosophy which is all about dealing with the drive to perfection and understanding and channelling those urges into pro-social conduct and self-knowledge so that those who strive for greater things do not ultimately become the very monsters they sought to displace and defeat.
The book ends on a vaguely hopeful note in which Fulgrim acknowledges his need to keep learning and developing…
Which he definitely does not do.
This book, in 2017, is the end of Fulgrims personal pre-Heresy history (which we didn’t see most of), and the start of his cracked-up Heresy persona, which I found to be much less interesting as a whole, though he is still a lot of fun.
The Football Star Tries Crack
Graham McNeill is here! Bodies will be oiled, hair will be perfumed, sculptures will be smeared in poop, concerts will be had and love will definitely not blossom.
The Third legion is noodling along being almost-tolerable with their entourage of hipsters when they encounter a planet of pervy snakemen and decide to take them out. (The planet has cool floating islands so the Cogboys want it).
Unfortunately, the snakemen are wanking themselves off to a demon trapped in a sword. Fulgrim clearly has almost no idea about demons or warp infection and so kills the snakes and takes the sword. This is shooting up Heroin but with no idea what Heroin is or even that it exists. Also this Heroin is intelligent and wants to addict you.
What follows is broadly similar to ‘False Gods’, with one paragon marine (here Tarvitz rather than Loken) and a handful of relatively-sane Remembrancers experience the Third Legion turning into Epsteins Island.
There are many good scenes in the book, and many good concepts, and some good characters, but I did not find it to be a good book.
The demon in the Laer blade posing as part of Fulgims own character, then intrusive thoughts, then outright madness, is neat, the addiction-for-Primarchs stuff is good. The end is mental.
Fulgrim: What the Fuck is Going On
A brief period, already described in ‘Fulgrim as Catastrophe’ in which our boy is bounced around a bit and then the whole mess is papered over – HES A DEMON NOW OK????
“Because I Got High” - Fulgrims Heresy Adventures
Fulgrim in the Heresy has one overriding goal – to become winged snake-man and bang Demonettes in hell. He achieves this pretty quickly and in every other instance basically gives few to no fucks about anything that doesn’t look like immediate fun.
In ‘Angel Exterminatus’, Fulgrim tricks Pertuabo into helping him become a Demon Primarch. This done he fucks off to the Warp to bang Demonettes.
(Despite genuinely trying to kill Peter Turbo and then ending up under his (very nominal) command in the Siege, this isn’t really brought up much ever again. Perhaps Perty is just too generally bitter against everyone to focus on it.)
In ‘Vengeful Spirit’, Horus butters up Fulgrim with “You’re so pretty, please come to the Heresy” so Fulgrim can use TIME LOOPS (just time travel in this case) and an EXTREMELY OBVIOUS SNAKE CULT, to infiltrate the ruling caste of a planet he wants to invade. Fulgrim then fucks off to bang demonettes in hell.
In ‘Slaves to Darkness’. Lorgar goes to hell and stops Fulgrim banging demonettes, using sneaky demon-binding to drag him back to reality as part of a disastrous scheme to take over the Heresy. Horus immediately subverts that scheme, beats up Lorgar like a Nelson beating a Millhouse, and kicks him out of the Heresy. Fulgrim sticks around as Horus is just aboutcharismatic and powerful enough to compel him.
In the Siege of Terra Fulgrim largely primps around in holo-casts being a slightly gay panto villain as he is written by average writers until ‘Saturnine’ (Siege Novel published March 2020), when he is still a panto villain, but written by a better writer. He orchestrates a super-attack on the Palace walls, is nearly victorious and fights Rogal Dorn in a duel which Dorn wins despite Fulgrim being an insanely good duellist even when just a Primarch and now being an extra-fucking-good duellist because he is a fucking four-armed demon-snake largely because Dorn is being written by Dan Abnett.
Its implied that if Fulgrim had really pushed the attack he might have won anyway, but as he got dinged up in the duel he no longer gives a shit, leaves his ‘inner circle’ to get roflstomped by Dorn and Sigismund and literally thrown off the palace wall, and once again fucks off, either to bang demonettes in hell or to grind up the population of Terra and snort them. Terra being a Cormac McCarthy novel by this point he can do both at once.
And that, so far as has been thus written, is the end of Fulgrims military usefulness in the Heresy.
Except during the Scouring where he fights Robute Guilliman and easily cuts his throat with a super-poisoned blade, sending him into a 10,000 year long coma, but then leaves, presumably, again, to bang Demonettes in Hell.
Fulgrim in the Dark Millennium
Fulgrim pops up here and there with small mentions in books. In ‘The Ancient Awaits’ (Short Story published March 2018) he meets up with a buried dreadnought he left on Istvaan and gets bio-nuked. In ‘Gathering Storm: Rise of the Primarch’ he turns up to deliver a panto villain speech to Robute again.
The only really interesting look at him is, again, from Josh Reynolds.
In his Fabius Bile series Fabius gets his hands on a perfect uncorrupted clone of Fulgrim and is given the chance to raise him and maybe correct a past which once went wrong.
He doesn’t, probably couldn’t have anyway because he’s a psychopath and for Fabius at least, overcoming the ‘addiction’ of his Primarchs charisma is what passes for character development.
Yet we do get to see a young, vital, idealistic and earnest baby Fulgrim roaming around trying to fix everything and help people, (in this case, horrible mutants). And while being raised by a high-I.Q. madman, he is so-far non-chaotic and in fact regards chaos the way a five year old boy regards kissing girls.
He just wants to fix a broken galaxy, and begins to do so, starting from the very bottom…
This strange distant shadow in time is the only direct look we get at the School Star when he was still in school.
It is likely the last we will see as Reynolds no longer works with Games Workshop.
Sadness
Perhaps it’s appropriate that for a story about the school-star gone wrong, the truly heroic and bold acts of the character are hidden away, rarely directly observed.
The great series of books and short stories;
“Fulgrim Saves Chemos – without Genocide! Fuck Yeah!”
“Fulgrim Meets the Emprah and Impresses the SHIT Out of Him!”
“Fulgrim Meets Ferrus – Now Best Buds!”
“Fulgrim Escapes the Painting! Give-Me-My-Body-Back-You BITCH!”
“Fulgrim bangs Demonettes in Hell“
None of these exist. They are faded memories and imaginings, the stories of the school star quarterback soaking himself in a near-empty bar decades later.
August 10, 2021
I AM PIMPING MYSELF OUT
The MARKETING BEAST HAS WHISPERED TO ME
I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THIS SACRED GLYPH
WHAT DOES IT MEAN? NONE WHO LIVE YET KNOW OR DARE TO DREAMBUT WE WILL FIND OUT TOGETHER
I AM NOW AVAILBLE FOR
INTERVIEWS,
PODCASTS,
WHATEVER...So long as it comes out before the Kickstarter ends in early September.
Contact me on the socials..
another one
or at pjamesstuart aahhht gmail dot com
I NEED ATTENTION GOD HELP ME
August 9, 2021
GOALS AND STUFF
I can't even begin to explain the day I have had. So many tasks that I had to get up, do them, go back to bed for 1o minutes to calm down and then got up to find more tasks.
It has been brutal.
Our Kickstarter passed its initial goals though so here is an image to commemorate that.
More coherence tomorrow hopefully.
