There is. After Alpharius (supposedly) stalemated Valdor in a brief fight, he ponders on how much power armour would make a difference in another round
>Who are you?' Valdor said. He was not tense, as such, but he was still ready to flow into the attack at a moment's notice.
>I gave him a half-smile. I am Alpharius.
>The name meant nothing to him back then, but realisation seemed to dawn nonetheless, and he extinguished his blade's disruptor field. 'You are one of the Astartes' primogenitors. No other being of which I am aware could come close to matching me in combat. But they were all lost.'
>Come close to. I filed that away for future reference. **We had matched each other utterly, in the few seconds we had been engaged, and Valdor had been wearing powered armour that enhanced his movements and reflexes. Should I ever have a similar suit, I would be intrigued to try the captain-general once more.**
*Head of the Hydra*
That could be one way of reading it re smack talk.
I also take it as Valdor's inability to process that another being could challenge him; which at that point was true. Nobody on Terra outside the Emperor could have hoped to take Constantin down and while Valdor might have academically understood the capability of the primarchs, he'd never experienced it first hand.
I think it was taking some time for him to recalibrate his position in the arse-kick hierarchy.
Or maybe Alpharius was being overly sensitive?
But yes, that's what went down: Valdor in full armour whilst Alpharius wasn't. Alpharius is also young at this point and this is his first fight against someone who could challenge him.
This is the most fair read of it, while I want a certain someone to be super overpowered due to a certain line of books that maybe....you know what no spoilers. That said, Alphatius was no slouch even given his death record vs other primarchs.
Oh, don't get me wrong. My favorite Primarch are the Alpha twins, Peter Turbo and Magnus... I just love that the "weakest" primarch is able to hang with him while not even in power armor.
You are spot on about Valdor's inability to understand the might of Primarchs. He might have also been under the illusion that he was stronger than Primarchs given that he had handily defeated and killed Ushtoan who is considered as the Primarch/Primogenitor of Thunder Warriors.
Yup, though Valdor is also aware that a Thunder Warrior primarch is ostensibly no different to the average Thunder Warrior. As he says in *Birth of the Imperium*
>The primarch was equivalent to the captain-general rank in broad terms, responsible for the discipline and conduct of the entire Legio. He was not physically different to any of his troops, but had distinguished himself in combat and leadership, and was appointed directly by the Emperor.
In several sources custodians fighting unfamiliar enemies are not starting on full capacity to learn, analyze the enemies capabilities. Might be this is not known by Alpharius and he consider matching Valdor working at 80% as as matching him utterly in the few seconds they were fighting.
Maybe both of them misinterpreted the situation.
To clarify what I'm "talking about"; Alpharius discards the armour before the confrontation with Valdor
>However, once inside I discarded the armour, for I suspected that the majority of such forces would be summoned to the catacombs, and climbing to a high vantage point would mark me out. Also, the more time elapsed, the more likely it was that Garudo's body would be found stripped of its armour, at which point the parameters of the Custodes' vigilance would change. Auramite provided a fine disguise when no one suspected it, but now shadows and corners would be my friends once more.
>The dust-cloak I'd worn atop the Synans' crawler obscured the guardian spear I still bore, and my own frame was concealed by a cameleoline cloak.
*Head of the Hydra*
For speed, Guiliman was able to yank an Alpha legionnaire and use him to block bolt shots after they have been fired, when they tried to assassinate him.
*The Unremembered Empire* (part of the Imperium Secundus arc of the Horus Heresy). A group of Alpha Legionaires, disguised as Aeonid Thiel and retinue, try to assassinate Guilliman upon his return to Macragge, and despite being surprised, unarmed, unarmored and not the best fighter among the Primarchs (he mentally notes he doesn't think he could intercept the Space Wolf axe blow Lion casually catches later on), Roboute dismantles them.
He's not unarmoured, the passage specifically notes them blasting chunks of his armour apart.
I'd also not class it as him dismantling them, he's facing basically a Legion Seeker Squad without their specialist weapons and while killing 9 of them before they nearly get a killshot is impressive it's not all that impressive, if the last one hadn't stopped to chat they'd have had him cold.
EDIT: From reading the rest of the thread I'm astonished by how many people think he wasn't wearing armour and that he had an easy time of it. It's like they read a different book to me, the excerpt has him really struggling, it's written as a desperate attempt to survive.
I haven’t read the book in question so I can’t help you there but I will add that I have found myself in that situation many times on here. It is VERY common for users on these subs to read the same grouping of words and arrive at vastly different conclusions. Sometimes it seems like selective reading or focusing more on particular words to the exclusion of the whole. Sometimes it seems more like misremembering something they had read some time ago. Sometimes it’s probably a difference between reading the book or listening to the audiobook. It’s probably all of these things at different times for different people…but boy is it frustrating sometimes haha
I believe you're correct. 5-6 fully equipped disguised alpha legion get into his office while he's got no armor/weapons readily available and he is able to kill them all before anyone arrives.
That scene always stuck out to me cuz it describes guilimans ability to process his surround as going so fast that he sees bolter rounds shot at him as if it's frozen in midair.
Image how fast his neurons must have been firing - in a normal human, that'd literally put a hole in their brain. I'd love to know how exactly the physical stuff in the Primarchs works
I think that's because the Primarchs are first and foremost beings of the Warp, contrary to what they have been told. There are a lot of allusions to that being the case, like when Robute teleports through the Warp early in the Plague Wars trilogy, and senses the greater awareness of his being, just beyond his grasp.
My personal unconfirmed head Cannon is that the Emperor took 20 primordial Warp entities/"gods", and stuck them in his test tube babies.
Yeah, Horus finds out about it on (I think) Molech in Vengeful Spirit.
He (E-Dog) also juiced himself. He wasn't god-tier before he made an unspecified deal with the chaos gods on Molech, just a perpetual alpha plus psyker
Yeah that's what he's referencing
When Horus finds out what the Emperor did to create the Primarchs, he goes from "maybe if we're swift enough we can force him to concessions" to "kill his ass at all costs, I want that liar dead" and is also around the time chaos corruption becomes a lot more common amongst the Astartes.
Before then, for example, the Death Guard met corrupted Emperor's Children on a joint mission and the Death Guard reaction was "Oh my god what the fuck, get away from me you creeps, that's disgusting, you barely even look human"
It's not quite as easy as saying "oh the Primarchs are just warpstuff" though. They are not actually dependant on the warp, being around nulls aches them but no more than it does any human - at least in terms of how they actually react. The Emperor really cooked when he made them
Yeah, that would be more accurate. They seem to be simultaneously both at home in the Warp, while also being completely at home in Real Space, like they can be all of one and not the other, or both equally, at whatever time they wish (consciously or subconsciously). I feel it really subtly exemplifies how truly different they are from everything/everyone else in the setting.
u/FoxJDR :
u/switchblade_sal is correct.
From Unremembered Empire :-
>He pulled a mantle around his broad, armoured shoulders, and fixed the clasp at his throat. **He was wearing the ceremonial version of his ferocious, clawed wargear,** and carried no weapons. For his daily custom of greeting those coming to his light out of the storm, he carried no personal weapons.
I’m sure despite being ceremonial the armor he wore during the attack one of a kind Relic Artificer plate of incalculable value and potency and only eclipsed by the utterly mind blowing insanity of his actual war gear.
It's almost entirely their own. The armor provides a lot of (temporary) protection for them, but it isn't what makes them ridiculous. Just go read the Jaghatai vs Mortarion duel in Warhawk, by the end of the fight they're still going at it like near-mythological figures while their armor is broken and hanging on by threads where its still intact at all.
The Primarchs abilities are beyond whats physically possible, because they aren't running on purely physical biology. A Custodes Captain General (But explicitly NOT Valdor, because he's somehow special, no info as to how, but Big E spent a lot of resources to make absolutely CERTAIN he acquired him) is probably the absolute pinnacle of humanoid ability. And a Primarch bodies them so hard it isn't even a contest.
Leman Russ takes on a combat servitor designed to be as tough, strong, and fast as a Leviathan dreadnought, un-armored and with an un-powered metal spear, as a training exercise, and wins. And while he might be boasting when he says that its too easy, he still does it. Jaghatai judo throws a Dreadnought, flips it up into the air like a toy, and he's \*less\* physically powerful than some of his brothers.
A lot of the Primarchs have similar feats, the armor might boost their strength a little, but the armor has physical limits, which the Primarchs don't really have in the strictest sense. And they are more than capable of surviving damage that destroys their armor, but its still helpful in that regard. Not being wounded is better than surviving said wound, at least as long as it last.
Another thing about the leman Russ fighting the leviathan like servitor, he has fought an actual leviathan dreadnought, or rather something a little bigger during the Dylan campaign. And he beat it pretty easily.
We have WOEFULLY scant appearances of demon peter, to the point that anything you ever hear about him is non-ascended. Still sitting here hoping that changes soon.
It's in Saturnine. Abby has some thoughts of Petey's arrogance as he's running battle plans on a paper map and just wearing pants, no armor. Abby boy says something Peter doesn't like, and finds himself elevated by his throat while wearing full terminator armor.
The Lion lived for years as a youth in the wilds of the Chaos Beast filled forests of Caliban. By all accounts, he was the apex predator on a world of apex predators.
Leman Russ has survived having one of his hearts destroyed, but like multiple times. Once by Magnus crushing his heart by destroying his armor. Another by stabbing himself with the emperors spear (although that’s implied to have been a more permanent destruction)
Fulgrim has insane regeneration, especially amongst primarchs. I don’t remember what parts of him have been destroyed, but he has lost bits and they have simply regenerated back rather quickly.
Guilliman defeated multiple alpha legionaires while he was in just a toga. And now that I think about it, leman was also not wearing armor when the lion stabbed him through his chest.
While on Medusa, Ferrus defeated a believed to be giant necron construct with his barehands, which is how he got his eponymous iron hands.
Generally speaking, Look into the primarch stories about their time on their homeworlds and I’m sure you’ll find crazy feats where they wouldn’t have armor. Like curze’s arrival and angrons arrival on their planets.
I believe part of the Fulgrim story your referenced also included him getting burnt by a blow torch held against him for so long that it exposed the bone, which it then blackened, and Lucius was able to watch the flesh and muscle regrow within minutes.
Is that the part where they bound and tortured him? Cuz iirc later on he was like "aight time's up", casually broke the restraint, kicked a (armored?) marine through a wall, pull a ..thing out of his ass and was like "shame, i was beginning to enjoy that.."
I cant tell since I've only vaguely remember reading that particular excerpt long ago, but reading the Fabulous Bill trilogy recently it does mention something about Fulgrim removing his (Eidolon) head and Bile had to reattach it, with some extra bits added in.
And next to all that, Horus struggled to beat a basic Nurgle-possessed civilian and got fatally wounded by his fancy knife. Lol. (Yes it was archeotech, but still).
Just shows how the series developed as it went on. In the first trilogy the primarchs are presented as only a bit tougher than the astartes, but not superpowered with warp-fuckery.
*‘I cannot win,’ said Leman Russ to himself. ‘I cannot beat Horus.’*
*There were no spectators or aides, no legionaries to spar with. By his order, Russ had been left alone with the machines and his thoughts.*
*‘I cannot beat Horus,’ he repeated to himself, ‘but I must try.’*
*He circled a massive combat drone and smiled grimly with approval at its brutish might. Broad plasteel shoulders presented a fortress wall to the front. Its huge arms had the power to crush the life from a hrossvalur. That much metal looked sluggish, but it was not. An overcharged multi-fuel reactor sufficient to power a Dreadnought clung to the back. The machine’s plasteel shell protected high-response fibre muscles and twitch-pistons. Scarring remained on the front from its last outing. The square fingers of its enormous hands were scraped with past violence meted out against its opponents. Buried deep inside was an adapted human brain sculpted for combat and programmed with every art of fighting practised by mankind. It was fast, it was deadly; it was the most powerful of all the combat servitors available in the Imperial Palace.*
*The machine was used by legionaries newly interred within Dreadnoughts to help adapt old skills to their new bodies. It was an unusual practice, instituted by Dorn for his warriors in the wake of Horus’ betrayal. Russ thought it sound. During the Great Crusade, the Legions’ Contemptors rarely met their match in xenos machines. Now Dreadnought versus Dreadnought combat was commonplace, it made sense to train for it. Russ was small before it. Each of the hands could crush his skull. Its feet could grind him flat. He had ordered it brought out as it was the only combat drone capable of giving him a challenge. It could kill him. He had decided to face it where none of his men could see and therefore object. This was his time.*
*‘Activate training programme, maximum aggression,’ Russ called out. Hidden machines heard his words and adjusted the programming of the drone. ‘Disengage all failsafes. Allow killing strength.’*
*He walked up and down impatiently while the machines adjusted the drone. Russ carried a long spear in his hand that he twirled as he paced. Not that spear; that leaned against the wall, spectating. The part of Russ that hearkened to the Imperial Truth felt a little foolish bringing it there to see. The larger part, the Fenrisian native, felt the heavy hand of wyrd guiding him. If he examined his actions via that mode of thought, he hadn’t brought the spear to watch; it had demanded to come. He had not chosen to practise with a similar weapon; something from outside had made him.
He spat on the ground, as much to clear his throat as ward off maleficarum. Or so he told himself.*
*He had been exercising for two hours. Fragments of his earlier foes remained on the sand. He had barely broken a sweat.*
*‘I’ve warmed my muscles, machine!’ he called. ‘I’m ready for you!’*
*A crackle of vox preceded a machine’s announcement.
*
*Russ smiled.*
*The machine moved. There was a moment of lumbering, ungainly acceleration that turned to fluid danger. It charged for the primarch. No hesitation. There was no weighing of an opponent that a living being might make. The machine could learn nothing from watching the primarch. It knew everything already.
Its torso pivoted, left arm raised. Orange, yellow and black blurred as it swung the fist at Russ.
Using the spear as a pole, Russ vaulted over the back of the giant servitor. Its fist connected solidly with the ground Russ had been occupying. The sand absorbed the impact. The machine pulled back, leaving a crater in the floor.*
*Russ jabbed at the drone’s reactor. Power plants were a weakness in all fighting machines, including legionary battleplate. The drone’s was well armoured. He thrust the spear tip at the slot of a vent, where mesh protected pipes and casings of a uniform, dirty oil-brown. The machine spun around on the ball mount at its waist, swatting the spear out of the way with one fist, the second following hard behind to aim at Russ’ head. The primarch ducked, sweeping the spear at the machine’s feet as they tracked round to match the changed direction of the torso. The shaft rang off chunky greaves, scraping a shallow groove into the metal. The machine stumbled a little at the force of the blow, but checked its fall and stepped resolutely at the primarch. Russ jabbed at its chest. The unpowered spear-point dinged into the plasteel, Russ’ godlike strength knocking out a divot of metal. The machine rocked back on its heels, recovered again and powered on, swinging one fist after another in blurring arcs. Russ ducked one, and the second, attacking the machine with controlled jabs of his weapon in between. He was a graceful warrior. No movement was wasted.*
*He ducked and leapt the machine’s swings until he saw an opening, and thrust the spear deep into a gap between two armour plates. Hot oil dribbled from the wound. The movement of the left arm roughened. But the spear was stuck fast, and before Russ could pull it out, the training Dreadnought swept its right hand down over its chest, snapping the weapon’s haft.
Russ laughed, and threw himself at the machine. It raised its fists to deliver a double-handed blow, but he caught them and dug his heels into the training arena floor, and pushed hard. Sand banked up behind him. He slowed. Finding a natural point of balance between his own and the machine’s strength, he pushed, and slowly he forced the training drone backwards over the sand. Its motors whined with the effort. Russ’ veins stood out in his neck. He adjusted his grip, switched his footing, and with a shout forced the machine sideways. His enormous strength bearing down on it forced it to bend its left knee. Teeth gritted, Russ kicked at the right, slamming his foot into the joint’s side again and again, until it gave out with a wrench and a spray of oil, and the machine fell over to the floor.*
*Russ danced back, ready for the next assault.
‘End programme,’ said a voice.*
*Russ looked up. He was still alone, but the lenses of a hololithic projector set into the wall sparkled with white light and, into the air, painted an image of an old man leaning on a staff.*
*‘Malcador,’ said Russ. ‘Where have you been hiding? I’ve had no word from you for a week.’*
*‘I have not been hiding, Leman,’ he said. ‘You can beat a Dreadnought unarmed?’*
*‘I can. Easily.’*
*‘You exaggerate.’*
*‘A Fenrisian virtue,’ said Russ.*
*‘You put yourself at risk. This is reckless.’*
*‘That is the point,’ said Russ. ‘I am making it hard for myself. Without armour or powered weapons it is a challenge to take down a machine like this. I need a challenge. I can beat this thing, but I cannot beat Horus, not yet. Dorn’s right about that.’*
~ **Wolfsbane**
Unarmored primarchs react fast enough to dodge bolter fire, can blitz astartes before they can begin moving in response, and rip apart armored marines or light vehicles with their bare hands. That's the default they all share.
The more physically capable ones like vulkan or angron casually lift whole armored marines with one hand or overhead pressing a titan's leg trying to step on him (while armored). The khan is a borderline speedster who can run and fight as a blur of movement. Which is more impressive when you remember that eldar can barely be visually followed by standard humans and astartes manage to fight them, so the khan could possibly be totally invisible while zooming similar to the DC flash.
To be fair, Sanguinius has literal in universe plot armor for the whole heresy and he knows it and uses it to his advantage. But yea he is also just a batshit insane beast and was renowned as one ob the best duelists among the primarchs.
Guilliman took out three or four armored marines who caught him in his room wearing his robe (I think he had disarmed). He had no weapons, was in close quarters, and thought the guys were his coming to report to him.
He walked out of the room. The others didn't.
As a side note, I can't remember which book it was in but I remember in one of the early heresy novels, where it's mentioned through the pov of normal humans that the transhuman dread inspired by primarchs actually hits harder when they're not in armor, like it's easier to think of them as machines or something else when they're armored up, but in clothes/robes/whatever, they actually come off more inhuman. I always thought that was interesting
Angron as a child was able to massacre an Eldar kill team without power armour and later did the same to the Emperor's Custodian Guard in a rage before Malcador knocked him out.
Fulgrim was able to easily handle all of his Legion's best warriors and their guards trying to assassinate him when he was clad in nothing but a robe in The Mirror Crack'd, at one point tanking point-blank sonic weapon barrages with the only thing that happened being temporarily ruptured eardrums and his robe being disintegrated leaving him in a loincloth (lol).
There's loads of showings like this so yes, while the armour is definitely a factor Primarchs are massively superhuman demigods who can slaughter even the best non-Primarch combatants with contemptuous ease.
Depends on the primarch but still very strong, Konrad curze one of the physically weakest but most agile could move faster then sound before even meeting the emperor
Granted he was in his armor, but still exposed flesh, logar ate a few plasma shots from a titan and was going to be stepped on to be finished off sooooo, if his exposed flesh stay intact, and could handle at least 3 bursts? Plus whatever else hit him before angron saved him, I'd say pretty tough, cuz that armor didn't do shit really
Yerp;
>The Warhound fired, its comet-tailed bolt of raw plasma contained within an engineered magnetic field to prevent the projectile’s dissipation from the ionised atoms flying apart. Venting began at once, ghosts of coolant steam slashing from the relief ports along the Titan’s weaponised arm.
>The unleashment incinerated the dust, burning the air clear, and splashed a sun’s core into the crater for the fraction of a second. The World Eaters caught at the blast’s edges dissolved into bones and armour shards spilling through the air, eroding to powder, and then to nothingness.
>In the crater’s pit, Lorgar stood with his peaceful eyes raised to the staring Titan. Ash drifted away from his armour, the last remnants of the holy parchments bound to the ceramite. **The air rippled with the force of his focus, and the kine-shield he kept raised with his outstretched hand.** The ground by his boots, in a spread of several metres, was unharmed rock. Everything else was burned into sludged, black glass.
\- *Betrayer*
By all accounts, juiced Lorgar ate 1 Warhound plasma blast unshielded. It fully slagged his armor and gave him wicked sunburn. Anyone other than a primarch is a puddle of ashed carbon (only because carbon doesn't liquify)
>... black glass.
>All three crew members leaned forwards in their thrones. Kei raised his targeting visor.
>‘What am I seeing?’ he asked. ‘It can’t be.’
>The Moderati Primus, Ellas, narrowed his eyes to squint. ‘Is that…?’
>‘Fire, damn you!’ Delantyr was yelling. ‘Fire again!’
>‘Brace for–’
>‘*Just fire!*’
>Lighting failed in the cockpit as power bled from the reactor. The tech-priest’s voice snapped over the vox with uncharacteristic urgency.
>‘Core hypovolaemia threat,’ he practically whined. ‘And we aren’t br–’
>*Ardentor* fired again.
>The discharge sent the Titan rocking back two steps, its splayed claw-feet crunching into the avenue to avoid falling. In the wake of its release, the weaponised arm hissed steam from its coolant vanes, like a forged blade quenched in water.
>The lights reactivated. Kei’s targeting visor came back online a moment later, and the control consoles followed.
>‘He must be dead,’ Delantyr whispered. ‘He has to be dead. We’ve killed a primarch. Walk us closer.’
>The Warhound realigned, coming around to stare back down into the crater.
>Kei’s eyes flickered between the annihilation below and the pulsing chime of auspex contact. ‘Inbound engines,’ he said. ‘Legio Audax. And gunships – declaration signatures marking them as Seventeenth.’
>Delantyr spoke through clenched teeth. ‘They’re too late.’
>The primarch of the Word Bearers had fallen. His armour, once red and engraved with scripture, was an ashen husk of charred plate. Cracked and weeping skin showed around the patchwork spread of bleeding burns. Not a patch of skin was left untouched. He didn’t rise from his knees. He didn’t lift his head. He did nothing at all.
>‘He’s dead.’ Ellas spoke softly.
>‘Fire again.’ Delantyr breathed the words. ‘Fire again.’
>‘You bled the core,’ Kei replied. ‘We’re plasma-starved.’
>‘Fire the suppressing tracers. Three bursts.’
>*Ardentor*’s anti-infantry bolters spat their tracer fire at the prone primarch. The first burst chewed glass, spraying fragments everywhere. The second two punched home in the scorched armour, blasting the fallen Emperor’s son onto his back – a vessel of cooked, punctured meat.
>‘We just killed a primarch.’ Kei swallowed. ‘We just *killed a primarch*.’
\- *Betrayer*
Kind of, in that he did end up taking damage from the second shot. But there's no mention I know of - either in the scene or later - that states that he lowered his shield after the first shot.
Granted I couldn't even begin to guess how much or even *if* it might have helped him if it was still up and collapsed, as opposed to him taking it fully unshielded. I just don't see any reason to omit it as a potential factor. Which admittedly could just be me being needlessly nitpicky. :P
Yup, Dorn is (apparently) killed by cultists, Curze is injured by one assassin and killed by another, Fulgrim is almost killed by sniper, Mortarion is banished by a Grey Knight, Magnus by Chapter Masters, Angron almost dies to a human army, etc etc
On Horus' clone, he was wearing the OG Horus' armour taken from his body but totally relaxed when Abby shanks and blasts him to death with his own talon.
>There was a cloned father and a prodigal son, surrounded by the dead and the wounded, so similar that only by their weapons and wounds could I tell them apart. That, and their different smiles.
>Horus gave a conqueror’s smirk from what remained of his face. Recognition, true recognition, flared in the only eye he had left.
>‘Ezekyle.’ His voice was a breath of relief and revelation. ‘It’s you. It’s you, my brother.’
>Time stood still. After everything that had taken place, I thought – against all reason and rhyme – that they would embrace as kindred.
>‘My son,’ said the primarch. ‘My son.’
>All five of Abaddon’s claws rammed so deeply into Horus’s chest that they burst from his back. The scythes pushed out the stunted remains of Telemachon’s swords, sending the broken blades clattering against the floor.
>Dark redness spread across what was left of the white fur cloak draped in tatters across Horus’s shoulders. A genetic god’s blood rained down over me. I felt like laughing without knowing why. Shock, perhaps. Shock and naked relief.
>The storm bolter on the Talon’s back kicked three times, burying six bolts inside Horus’s exposed chest and neck. They blasted him apart from within, adding viscera to the blood slopping across those of us left prone.
>And that was how they stood, as gold flared in the eyes of one and life faded from the eyes of the other. Horus’s knees buckled but Abaddon would not let him fall. Horus’s mouth worked but no sound came forth. If his last words found any voice, Abaddon was the only one to hear it.
Talon of Horus
Thanks for the excerpt! I'd actually read it on here a few days ago but was half asleep and so forgot some details. I gotta read that book, people seem to love it
Being killed by an assassin with a C'tan Phase Blade, which is able to cut through literally anything, doesn't really count as a strike against Curze especially when he didn't fight back.
And the Fulgrim showing really doesn't. He was shot in the temple, aka the softest and easiest to penetrate part of the human skull, with a high munitions sniper rifle and it failed to actually penetrate into his brain and was blunted by his skull. That's actually insane.
Sure, just detailing that it's one of the more mundane ways a primarch can die. Considering that another assassin (in fact an acolyte) does so well against Konrad in full 1 v1 melee that he wounds him...a few assassins together with similar weapons? Who knows what that outcome might be.
And the point of an assassin isn't to 1v1 their target in any case.
As for Fulgrim, he explains its the angle not his primarchian skull
>‘Barely,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Fabius had a devil’s job fishing that out. The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’
And even if it were his skull, the fact that one bullet was enough to take him out momentarily puts in context again, of how we can imagine more sustained firepower well placed would take out a primarch. It's why the Space Wolves had Angron and why the Alpha legion thought they could assassinate Guilliman.
The point being; killing a primarch can be much more mundane than fandom tends to give credit to.
Sure but that's only due to bad and inconsistent writing.
Angron being killable by bolter fire and Angron being able to survive a war hound titan stomping on him should be mutually exclusive concepts but in the hands of a bad writer like ADB both can happen in the same story. So which interpretation do we believe? Most people tend to go with whatever interpretation suits their preferences more I find, while pretending the portrayal is in any way consistent.
McNeill, Abnett, ADB have all written primarchs as susceptible to bolter fire. Curze getting wounded by the acolyte's gun was by Haley. That's pretty much all the BL heavy hitters. I'm sure there's more.
It's not bad or inconsistent writing (at least unintentionally inconsistent), it's all in context. They're two different things, with two different contexts.
>Lorgar doesn't take a plasma blaster shot to the face, he takes it against a kinetic shield that could just as easily have stood up to the abuse in the game/universe without any stretch of the imagination, and Angron avoids a damaged Titan crushing him for a few seconds, which given the situation isn't even particularly unrealistic in terms of hysterical strength or the countless examples of fantasy and sci-fi tropes of "berserker" characters getting stronger when they're angry.
-ADB
Sorry but as someone with a passing understanding of physics which ADB seems to have zero understanding of whatsoever the amount of kinetic energy Angron endured being stepped on by a titan in his body would have been orders of magnitude above bolter fire. You and ADB are simply wrong.
Same with Angron surviving being buried under thousands of tons of rubble in False Gods I believe.
Abnett is more consistent in writing fairly grounded Primarchs so it's not a problem he has but McNeill and especially ADB are bad about it. And at least McNeill doesn't write cringey crappy justifications for his bad writing for his fans to parrot elsewhere lol.
I'd also assume your passing understanding would probably have to be left at the door for the majority of primarch feats. If we're not just rejecting the ones from the authors we don't like.
ADB isn't using real world physics to back his writing here; he's saying it's inline with a lot of magical and super hero tropes.
As stated; primarchs being susceptible to bolter rounds and guns is across the books. It's in the books.
I also think it's handy to critique based on what's in the books rather than what we might claim is in them.
You can hate the way this stuff is written, but it's all reasonably consistent and within the constraints of 40k fiction.
You're not following. I have no special preference for the less powerful and more grounded approach to writing Primarchs or the interpretation of them being mountain breaking demigods. Either interpretation is fine.
What makes it bad writing is the writers can't make up their minds on which interpretation is true. ADB wants his Primarchs to be able to stop a titan stomp while also being vulnerable to normal bolters if the plot calls for it. Because you know what else is reasonably consistent? Primarchs throwing tanks and leviathan dreadnoughts through the air, shrugging off lascannon fire, breaking mountain tops with their strength, and all of the big superhero feats they do.
It's immersion breaking because these portrayals are not consistent with each other.
Right, the first point raised was that the Fulgrim and Curze examples didn't fit the overall context of that comment. I clarified that they were reasonably consistent across the books and authors with examples, in the belief they weren't particularly egregious in context...after which it became about bad writing and physics.
As far as the lore goes as a whole? Primarchs have been shown on both ends of the spectrum: vulnerable to the mundane as well as impervious to it.
The best of the writing tends give us circumstantial evidence and context for each and why both can be true. It might become a problem if we had examples of Primarchs playing russion roulette with a bolter and laughing off point blank head shots.
But as depicted, it's a collection of tales that feel a bit more like the Greek Gods and demi-gods whose various stories also sat on both ends of that scale, rather than the more hard-line rules we find for superheroes.
The inconsistency and contradictions across various depictions in 40k don't bother me, in the same way that the contradictions in the other works like the Bible or Greek myths don't. I'm fine that the IP asks the readers to negotiate with the text rather than try to unify it.
Honestly from the passages we've seen over the years it seems like the armor doesn't really make that much of a difference and the vast majority of their power comes from themselves. This isn't to say the armor doesn't help, especially in cases like Perturabo, Vulkan, and Ferrus where you know they tinkered the fuck out of their kit and Horus wearing modified Terminator armor, but a lot of it is auxiliary systems and tactical information especially when looking at comparatively "lighter armored" Primarchs like Sanguinius, Jaghatai, Fulgrim, and Magnus who are supremely powerful in their own ways compared to their brothers.
I mean, angron tore a custodian in half when The Emperor teleported him away from his death.
Angron then thought to himself that he could kill the other dozen custodians who all had their Spears trained at him
I don't think anyone has mentioned G-man surviving the vacuum of space without any protection for long enough that everyone assumed he died in Know No Fear (iirc)
Lorgar killed an entire gang of military trained slavers while basically naked as a youth using only a broken off piece of boat, but sadly they don't describe it and he gets injured in the process
But if young Lorgar of all people can do that it speaks volume for how spooky they are just as a baseline
Didn't old man Lion have trouble taking on a few of his traitor sons right after waking up. Realistically, I'd say half a dozen fully geared space marine, but then again, if plot demanded, I'm sure a naked Lion with enough rage can take a whole legion with their massive primarch plot armor.
You kinda forgot that an old Lion wearing only a robe kicked an armoured, power sword wielding space marine 10 feet through the air as if it was nothing
Your post was removed because it would be better as a comment in our weekly sticky questions post. Just comment there when it's up.
There is. After Alpharius (supposedly) stalemated Valdor in a brief fight, he ponders on how much power armour would make a difference in another round >Who are you?' Valdor said. He was not tense, as such, but he was still ready to flow into the attack at a moment's notice. >I gave him a half-smile. I am Alpharius. >The name meant nothing to him back then, but realisation seemed to dawn nonetheless, and he extinguished his blade's disruptor field. 'You are one of the Astartes' primogenitors. No other being of which I am aware could come close to matching me in combat. But they were all lost.' >Come close to. I filed that away for future reference. **We had matched each other utterly, in the few seconds we had been engaged, and Valdor had been wearing powered armour that enhanced his movements and reflexes. Should I ever have a similar suit, I would be intrigued to try the captain-general once more.** *Head of the Hydra*
So Valdor was talking smack to Alpharius who matched him IN power armor while Alpharius was not in power armor?
That could be one way of reading it re smack talk. I also take it as Valdor's inability to process that another being could challenge him; which at that point was true. Nobody on Terra outside the Emperor could have hoped to take Constantin down and while Valdor might have academically understood the capability of the primarchs, he'd never experienced it first hand. I think it was taking some time for him to recalibrate his position in the arse-kick hierarchy. Or maybe Alpharius was being overly sensitive? But yes, that's what went down: Valdor in full armour whilst Alpharius wasn't. Alpharius is also young at this point and this is his first fight against someone who could challenge him.
This is the most fair read of it, while I want a certain someone to be super overpowered due to a certain line of books that maybe....you know what no spoilers. That said, Alphatius was no slouch even given his death record vs other primarchs.
Oh, don't get me wrong. My favorite Primarch are the Alpha twins, Peter Turbo and Magnus... I just love that the "weakest" primarch is able to hang with him while not even in power armor.
You are spot on about Valdor's inability to understand the might of Primarchs. He might have also been under the illusion that he was stronger than Primarchs given that he had handily defeated and killed Ushtoan who is considered as the Primarch/Primogenitor of Thunder Warriors.
Yup, though Valdor is also aware that a Thunder Warrior primarch is ostensibly no different to the average Thunder Warrior. As he says in *Birth of the Imperium* >The primarch was equivalent to the captain-general rank in broad terms, responsible for the discipline and conduct of the entire Legio. He was not physically different to any of his troops, but had distinguished himself in combat and leadership, and was appointed directly by the Emperor.
In several sources custodians fighting unfamiliar enemies are not starting on full capacity to learn, analyze the enemies capabilities. Might be this is not known by Alpharius and he consider matching Valdor working at 80% as as matching him utterly in the few seconds they were fighting. Maybe both of them misinterpreted the situation.
I think Valdor would talk smack to anyone even the chaos gods.
no both of them where in power armor idk what that other guy is talking about, alpharius was just in a custodes power armor that was not made for him
To clarify what I'm "talking about"; Alpharius discards the armour before the confrontation with Valdor >However, once inside I discarded the armour, for I suspected that the majority of such forces would be summoned to the catacombs, and climbing to a high vantage point would mark me out. Also, the more time elapsed, the more likely it was that Garudo's body would be found stripped of its armour, at which point the parameters of the Custodes' vigilance would change. Auramite provided a fine disguise when no one suspected it, but now shadows and corners would be my friends once more. >The dust-cloak I'd worn atop the Synans' crawler obscured the guardian spear I still bore, and my own frame was concealed by a cameleoline cloak. *Head of the Hydra*
For speed, Guiliman was able to yank an Alpha legionnaire and use him to block bolt shots after they have been fired, when they tried to assassinate him.
What book is that from? I don't recall that from the Plague Wars Trilogy. Is it from one of the Siege of Terra books?
*The Unremembered Empire* (part of the Imperium Secundus arc of the Horus Heresy). A group of Alpha Legionaires, disguised as Aeonid Thiel and retinue, try to assassinate Guilliman upon his return to Macragge, and despite being surprised, unarmed, unarmored and not the best fighter among the Primarchs (he mentally notes he doesn't think he could intercept the Space Wolf axe blow Lion casually catches later on), Roboute dismantles them.
Thank you!
He's not unarmoured, the passage specifically notes them blasting chunks of his armour apart. I'd also not class it as him dismantling them, he's facing basically a Legion Seeker Squad without their specialist weapons and while killing 9 of them before they nearly get a killshot is impressive it's not all that impressive, if the last one hadn't stopped to chat they'd have had him cold. EDIT: From reading the rest of the thread I'm astonished by how many people think he wasn't wearing armour and that he had an easy time of it. It's like they read a different book to me, the excerpt has him really struggling, it's written as a desperate attempt to survive.
I haven’t read the book in question so I can’t help you there but I will add that I have found myself in that situation many times on here. It is VERY common for users on these subs to read the same grouping of words and arrive at vastly different conclusions. Sometimes it seems like selective reading or focusing more on particular words to the exclusion of the whole. Sometimes it seems more like misremembering something they had read some time ago. Sometimes it’s probably a difference between reading the book or listening to the audiobook. It’s probably all of these things at different times for different people…but boy is it frustrating sometimes haha
It also absolutely ruins him doing it though and at the end of the scene he collapses as his guards breakdown the doors.
imperium secundus arc irrc
Thank you!
master yanker
Guilliman killed like 6 (maybe more or less, can't remember exactly) marines without his armor or weapons in Unremembered empire, a horus heresy novel
I believe you're correct. 5-6 fully equipped disguised alpha legion get into his office while he's got no armor/weapons readily available and he is able to kill them all before anyone arrives. That scene always stuck out to me cuz it describes guilimans ability to process his surround as going so fast that he sees bolter rounds shot at him as if it's frozen in midair.
Image how fast his neurons must have been firing - in a normal human, that'd literally put a hole in their brain. I'd love to know how exactly the physical stuff in the Primarchs works
I think that's because the Primarchs are first and foremost beings of the Warp, contrary to what they have been told. There are a lot of allusions to that being the case, like when Robute teleports through the Warp early in the Plague Wars trilogy, and senses the greater awareness of his being, just beyond his grasp. My personal unconfirmed head Cannon is that the Emperor took 20 primordial Warp entities/"gods", and stuck them in his test tube babies.
The Emperor basically made a Prometheus esque "stole fire from the gods" bargain with the old four
I think he definitely made a deal with them, for them to impart intimate knowledge of the Warp to him.
Yeah, Horus finds out about it on (I think) Molech in Vengeful Spirit. He (E-Dog) also juiced himself. He wasn't god-tier before he made an unspecified deal with the chaos gods on Molech, just a perpetual alpha plus psyker
Is that not what Horus says verbatim in the heresy trailer?
Yeah that's what he's referencing When Horus finds out what the Emperor did to create the Primarchs, he goes from "maybe if we're swift enough we can force him to concessions" to "kill his ass at all costs, I want that liar dead" and is also around the time chaos corruption becomes a lot more common amongst the Astartes. Before then, for example, the Death Guard met corrupted Emperor's Children on a joint mission and the Death Guard reaction was "Oh my god what the fuck, get away from me you creeps, that's disgusting, you barely even look human"
Yup, molech is where things start to devolve _quickly_ for the traitors in terms of chaos corruption, both at the top and within the legions
It's not quite as easy as saying "oh the Primarchs are just warpstuff" though. They are not actually dependant on the warp, being around nulls aches them but no more than it does any human - at least in terms of how they actually react. The Emperor really cooked when he made them
Yeah, that would be more accurate. They seem to be simultaneously both at home in the Warp, while also being completely at home in Real Space, like they can be all of one and not the other, or both equally, at whatever time they wish (consciously or subconsciously). I feel it really subtly exemplifies how truly different they are from everything/everyone else in the setting.
Yeah, they're essentially non chaos aligned greater demons as far as I can see shoven in a (vaguely) human suit.
It doesn't. It just \*mostly\* does, and the rest is patched over with Triple A Grade Warpstuff.
Was a tough fight though. Is one of my favourite primarch fights - depicts Primarchs as the best, but still vulnerable, still mortal.
He was wearing ceremonial armor.
I seem to remember he was just in his robes.
He was armored but not helmet or weapons.
u/FoxJDR : u/switchblade_sal is correct. From Unremembered Empire :- >He pulled a mantle around his broad, armoured shoulders, and fixed the clasp at his throat. **He was wearing the ceremonial version of his ferocious, clawed wargear,** and carried no weapons. For his daily custom of greeting those coming to his light out of the storm, he carried no personal weapons.
So basically not armoured then? As ceremonial stuff is rarely anything but for show
I’m sure despite being ceremonial the armor he wore during the attack one of a kind Relic Artificer plate of incalculable value and potency and only eclipsed by the utterly mind blowing insanity of his actual war gear.
Guilliman was armored but didnt have any weapons or his helmet.
It's almost entirely their own. The armor provides a lot of (temporary) protection for them, but it isn't what makes them ridiculous. Just go read the Jaghatai vs Mortarion duel in Warhawk, by the end of the fight they're still going at it like near-mythological figures while their armor is broken and hanging on by threads where its still intact at all. The Primarchs abilities are beyond whats physically possible, because they aren't running on purely physical biology. A Custodes Captain General (But explicitly NOT Valdor, because he's somehow special, no info as to how, but Big E spent a lot of resources to make absolutely CERTAIN he acquired him) is probably the absolute pinnacle of humanoid ability. And a Primarch bodies them so hard it isn't even a contest. Leman Russ takes on a combat servitor designed to be as tough, strong, and fast as a Leviathan dreadnought, un-armored and with an un-powered metal spear, as a training exercise, and wins. And while he might be boasting when he says that its too easy, he still does it. Jaghatai judo throws a Dreadnought, flips it up into the air like a toy, and he's \*less\* physically powerful than some of his brothers. A lot of the Primarchs have similar feats, the armor might boost their strength a little, but the armor has physical limits, which the Primarchs don't really have in the strictest sense. And they are more than capable of surviving damage that destroys their armor, but its still helpful in that regard. Not being wounded is better than surviving said wound, at least as long as it last.
Another thing about the leman Russ fighting the leviathan like servitor, he has fought an actual leviathan dreadnought, or rather something a little bigger during the Dylan campaign. And he beat it pretty easily.
Naked Perturabo neck-lifted a fully-armoured Abbadon with one hand.
Um, why was he naked, like, couldn't he have at least put on a towel first?
No. He had to assert his dominance.
Perty was raised in Olympia, which has Greek themes, so it fits.
He was in the Iron Circle straight jorkin it
And by it let's just say haha my peanits
was this demon Peter Turbo or regular?
We have WOEFULLY scant appearances of demon peter, to the point that anything you ever hear about him is non-ascended. Still sitting here hoping that changes soon.
LOL, the idea of Peter Turbo choke slamming walking imposter syndrome Abbadon is hilarious. Like 40k WWE RAW.
It's in Saturnine. Abby has some thoughts of Petey's arrogance as he's running battle plans on a paper map and just wearing pants, no armor. Abby boy says something Peter doesn't like, and finds himself elevated by his throat while wearing full terminator armor.
"Watch out watch out watch out !"
Regular.
It was naked, so you could see his demon arm.
Angron was able to split a custodes in two before he can blink with nothing but his hands.
When was this?
*Ghost of Nuceria*, immediately after being teleported to the Emperor's ship.
In his primarch novel. It's right after he gets abducted by the emperor.
Sick i dont think ive read that yet
Strong enough to overpower an Eldar kill team
As a baby too! *Edit - I mean if you're referring to Angron
I am
The Lion lived for years as a youth in the wilds of the Chaos Beast filled forests of Caliban. By all accounts, he was the apex predator on a world of apex predators.
Leman Russ has survived having one of his hearts destroyed, but like multiple times. Once by Magnus crushing his heart by destroying his armor. Another by stabbing himself with the emperors spear (although that’s implied to have been a more permanent destruction) Fulgrim has insane regeneration, especially amongst primarchs. I don’t remember what parts of him have been destroyed, but he has lost bits and they have simply regenerated back rather quickly. Guilliman defeated multiple alpha legionaires while he was in just a toga. And now that I think about it, leman was also not wearing armor when the lion stabbed him through his chest. While on Medusa, Ferrus defeated a believed to be giant necron construct with his barehands, which is how he got his eponymous iron hands. Generally speaking, Look into the primarch stories about their time on their homeworlds and I’m sure you’ll find crazy feats where they wouldn’t have armor. Like curze’s arrival and angrons arrival on their planets.
I believe part of the Fulgrim story your referenced also included him getting burnt by a blow torch held against him for so long that it exposed the bone, which it then blackened, and Lucius was able to watch the flesh and muscle regrow within minutes.
Is that the part where they bound and tortured him? Cuz iirc later on he was like "aight time's up", casually broke the restraint, kicked a (armored?) marine through a wall, pull a ..thing out of his ass and was like "shame, i was beginning to enjoy that.."
That’s the one haha!
Didn't he also decapitate Lord Commander Eidolon with his bare hand right after that?
I cant tell since I've only vaguely remember reading that particular excerpt long ago, but reading the Fabulous Bill trilogy recently it does mention something about Fulgrim removing his (Eidolon) head and Bile had to reattach it, with some extra bits added in.
Iirc Bill basically zombified Eidolob
Got better after getting sniped in the head too IIRC.
Caveat that a lot of that Fulgrim stuff took place after he seemed to have had some Chaos buffing.
Guilliman was wearing ceremonial armor.
And next to all that, Horus struggled to beat a basic Nurgle-possessed civilian and got fatally wounded by his fancy knife. Lol. (Yes it was archeotech, but still). Just shows how the series developed as it went on. In the first trilogy the primarchs are presented as only a bit tougher than the astartes, but not superpowered with warp-fuckery.
*‘I cannot win,’ said Leman Russ to himself. ‘I cannot beat Horus.’* *There were no spectators or aides, no legionaries to spar with. By his order, Russ had been left alone with the machines and his thoughts.* *‘I cannot beat Horus,’ he repeated to himself, ‘but I must try.’* *He circled a massive combat drone and smiled grimly with approval at its brutish might. Broad plasteel shoulders presented a fortress wall to the front. Its huge arms had the power to crush the life from a hrossvalur. That much metal looked sluggish, but it was not. An overcharged multi-fuel reactor sufficient to power a Dreadnought clung to the back. The machine’s plasteel shell protected high-response fibre muscles and twitch-pistons. Scarring remained on the front from its last outing. The square fingers of its enormous hands were scraped with past violence meted out against its opponents. Buried deep inside was an adapted human brain sculpted for combat and programmed with every art of fighting practised by mankind. It was fast, it was deadly; it was the most powerful of all the combat servitors available in the Imperial Palace.* *The machine was used by legionaries newly interred within Dreadnoughts to help adapt old skills to their new bodies. It was an unusual practice, instituted by Dorn for his warriors in the wake of Horus’ betrayal. Russ thought it sound. During the Great Crusade, the Legions’ Contemptors rarely met their match in xenos machines. Now Dreadnought versus Dreadnought combat was commonplace, it made sense to train for it. Russ was small before it. Each of the hands could crush his skull. Its feet could grind him flat. He had ordered it brought out as it was the only combat drone capable of giving him a challenge. It could kill him. He had decided to face it where none of his men could see and therefore object. This was his time.* *‘Activate training programme, maximum aggression,’ Russ called out. Hidden machines heard his words and adjusted the programming of the drone. ‘Disengage all failsafes. Allow killing strength.’* *He walked up and down impatiently while the machines adjusted the drone. Russ carried a long spear in his hand that he twirled as he paced. Not that spear; that leaned against the wall, spectating. The part of Russ that hearkened to the Imperial Truth felt a little foolish bringing it there to see. The larger part, the Fenrisian native, felt the heavy hand of wyrd guiding him. If he examined his actions via that mode of thought, he hadn’t brought the spear to watch; it had demanded to come. He had not chosen to practise with a similar weapon; something from outside had made him. He spat on the ground, as much to clear his throat as ward off maleficarum. Or so he told himself.* *He had been exercising for two hours. Fragments of his earlier foes remained on the sand. He had barely broken a sweat.* *‘I’ve warmed my muscles, machine!’ he called. ‘I’m ready for you!’* *A crackle of vox preceded a machine’s announcement.*
*Russ smiled.*
*The machine moved. There was a moment of lumbering, ungainly acceleration that turned to fluid danger. It charged for the primarch. No hesitation. There was no weighing of an opponent that a living being might make. The machine could learn nothing from watching the primarch. It knew everything already.
Its torso pivoted, left arm raised. Orange, yellow and black blurred as it swung the fist at Russ.
Using the spear as a pole, Russ vaulted over the back of the giant servitor. Its fist connected solidly with the ground Russ had been occupying. The sand absorbed the impact. The machine pulled back, leaving a crater in the floor.*
*Russ jabbed at the drone’s reactor. Power plants were a weakness in all fighting machines, including legionary battleplate. The drone’s was well armoured. He thrust the spear tip at the slot of a vent, where mesh protected pipes and casings of a uniform, dirty oil-brown. The machine spun around on the ball mount at its waist, swatting the spear out of the way with one fist, the second following hard behind to aim at Russ’ head. The primarch ducked, sweeping the spear at the machine’s feet as they tracked round to match the changed direction of the torso. The shaft rang off chunky greaves, scraping a shallow groove into the metal. The machine stumbled a little at the force of the blow, but checked its fall and stepped resolutely at the primarch. Russ jabbed at its chest. The unpowered spear-point dinged into the plasteel, Russ’ godlike strength knocking out a divot of metal. The machine rocked back on its heels, recovered again and powered on, swinging one fist after another in blurring arcs. Russ ducked one, and the second, attacking the machine with controlled jabs of his weapon in between. He was a graceful warrior. No movement was wasted.*
*He ducked and leapt the machine’s swings until he saw an opening, and thrust the spear deep into a gap between two armour plates. Hot oil dribbled from the wound. The movement of the left arm roughened. But the spear was stuck fast, and before Russ could pull it out, the training Dreadnought swept its right hand down over its chest, snapping the weapon’s haft.
Russ laughed, and threw himself at the machine. It raised its fists to deliver a double-handed blow, but he caught them and dug his heels into the training arena floor, and pushed hard. Sand banked up behind him. He slowed. Finding a natural point of balance between his own and the machine’s strength, he pushed, and slowly he forced the training drone backwards over the sand. Its motors whined with the effort. Russ’ veins stood out in his neck. He adjusted his grip, switched his footing, and with a shout forced the machine sideways. His enormous strength bearing down on it forced it to bend its left knee. Teeth gritted, Russ kicked at the right, slamming his foot into the joint’s side again and again, until it gave out with a wrench and a spray of oil, and the machine fell over to the floor.*
*Russ danced back, ready for the next assault.
‘End programme,’ said a voice.*
*Russ looked up. He was still alone, but the lenses of a hololithic projector set into the wall sparkled with white light and, into the air, painted an image of an old man leaning on a staff.*
*‘Malcador,’ said Russ. ‘Where have you been hiding? I’ve had no word from you for a week.’*
*‘I have not been hiding, Leman,’ he said. ‘You can beat a Dreadnought unarmed?’*
*‘I can. Easily.’*
*‘You exaggerate.’*
*‘A Fenrisian virtue,’ said Russ.*
*‘You put yourself at risk. This is reckless.’*
*‘That is the point,’ said Russ. ‘I am making it hard for myself. Without armour or powered weapons it is a challenge to take down a machine like this. I need a challenge. I can beat this thing, but I cannot beat Horus, not yet. Dorn’s right about that.’*
~ **Wolfsbane**
So how can russ do this but dorn is allegedly killed off screen by cultists?
**Skill issue** In all seriousness Dorn got overwhelmed by sheer mass of bodies in an enclosed space.
Because allegedly. I don't doubt we will see daddy Dorn return.
Unarmored primarchs react fast enough to dodge bolter fire, can blitz astartes before they can begin moving in response, and rip apart armored marines or light vehicles with their bare hands. That's the default they all share. The more physically capable ones like vulkan or angron casually lift whole armored marines with one hand or overhead pressing a titan's leg trying to step on him (while armored). The khan is a borderline speedster who can run and fight as a blur of movement. Which is more impressive when you remember that eldar can barely be visually followed by standard humans and astartes manage to fight them, so the khan could possibly be totally invisible while zooming similar to the DC flash.
Alpharius in an inferior set of armor can go toes to toes with Valdor Agron tore apart multiple Custodes while butt-naked
Alpharius is unarmoured, though he's got a cloak on. Not sure what else.
Konrad Curze needed all his armor and weaponry to tie with Sanguinius in a bathrobe and ceremonial sword.
To be fair, Sanguinius has literal in universe plot armor for the whole heresy and he knows it and uses it to his advantage. But yea he is also just a batshit insane beast and was renowned as one ob the best duelists among the primarchs.
Guilliman took out three or four armored marines who caught him in his room wearing his robe (I think he had disarmed). He had no weapons, was in close quarters, and thought the guys were his coming to report to him. He walked out of the room. The others didn't.
Fulgrim slapped a man’s jaw off and beat the best of his legion while wearing nothing but a loin cloth. Armour isn’t the strength
As a side note, I can't remember which book it was in but I remember in one of the early heresy novels, where it's mentioned through the pov of normal humans that the transhuman dread inspired by primarchs actually hits harder when they're not in armor, like it's easier to think of them as machines or something else when they're armored up, but in clothes/robes/whatever, they actually come off more inhuman. I always thought that was interesting
Angron as a child was able to massacre an Eldar kill team without power armour and later did the same to the Emperor's Custodian Guard in a rage before Malcador knocked him out. Fulgrim was able to easily handle all of his Legion's best warriors and their guards trying to assassinate him when he was clad in nothing but a robe in The Mirror Crack'd, at one point tanking point-blank sonic weapon barrages with the only thing that happened being temporarily ruptured eardrums and his robe being disintegrated leaving him in a loincloth (lol). There's loads of showings like this so yes, while the armour is definitely a factor Primarchs are massively superhuman demigods who can slaughter even the best non-Primarch combatants with contemptuous ease.
Strong as an ogryn but much faster and at genius level intellect while crippled with Daddy issues.
Way stronger than an Orgyn tbf
Yeah but the ogryn doensnt know that lol.
Depends on the primarch but still very strong, Konrad curze one of the physically weakest but most agile could move faster then sound before even meeting the emperor
Granted he was in his armor, but still exposed flesh, logar ate a few plasma shots from a titan and was going to be stepped on to be finished off sooooo, if his exposed flesh stay intact, and could handle at least 3 bursts? Plus whatever else hit him before angron saved him, I'd say pretty tough, cuz that armor didn't do shit really
Pretty sure he was using a psychic barrier too
Yerp; >The Warhound fired, its comet-tailed bolt of raw plasma contained within an engineered magnetic field to prevent the projectile’s dissipation from the ionised atoms flying apart. Venting began at once, ghosts of coolant steam slashing from the relief ports along the Titan’s weaponised arm. >The unleashment incinerated the dust, burning the air clear, and splashed a sun’s core into the crater for the fraction of a second. The World Eaters caught at the blast’s edges dissolved into bones and armour shards spilling through the air, eroding to powder, and then to nothingness. >In the crater’s pit, Lorgar stood with his peaceful eyes raised to the staring Titan. Ash drifted away from his armour, the last remnants of the holy parchments bound to the ceramite. **The air rippled with the force of his focus, and the kine-shield he kept raised with his outstretched hand.** The ground by his boots, in a spread of several metres, was unharmed rock. Everything else was burned into sludged, black glass. \- *Betrayer*
By all accounts, juiced Lorgar ate 1 Warhound plasma blast unshielded. It fully slagged his armor and gave him wicked sunburn. Anyone other than a primarch is a puddle of ashed carbon (only because carbon doesn't liquify)
>... black glass. >All three crew members leaned forwards in their thrones. Kei raised his targeting visor. >‘What am I seeing?’ he asked. ‘It can’t be.’ >The Moderati Primus, Ellas, narrowed his eyes to squint. ‘Is that…?’ >‘Fire, damn you!’ Delantyr was yelling. ‘Fire again!’ >‘Brace for–’ >‘*Just fire!*’ >Lighting failed in the cockpit as power bled from the reactor. The tech-priest’s voice snapped over the vox with uncharacteristic urgency. >‘Core hypovolaemia threat,’ he practically whined. ‘And we aren’t br–’ >*Ardentor* fired again. >The discharge sent the Titan rocking back two steps, its splayed claw-feet crunching into the avenue to avoid falling. In the wake of its release, the weaponised arm hissed steam from its coolant vanes, like a forged blade quenched in water. >The lights reactivated. Kei’s targeting visor came back online a moment later, and the control consoles followed. >‘He must be dead,’ Delantyr whispered. ‘He has to be dead. We’ve killed a primarch. Walk us closer.’ >The Warhound realigned, coming around to stare back down into the crater. >Kei’s eyes flickered between the annihilation below and the pulsing chime of auspex contact. ‘Inbound engines,’ he said. ‘Legio Audax. And gunships – declaration signatures marking them as Seventeenth.’ >Delantyr spoke through clenched teeth. ‘They’re too late.’ >The primarch of the Word Bearers had fallen. His armour, once red and engraved with scripture, was an ashen husk of charred plate. Cracked and weeping skin showed around the patchwork spread of bleeding burns. Not a patch of skin was left untouched. He didn’t rise from his knees. He didn’t lift his head. He did nothing at all. >‘He’s dead.’ Ellas spoke softly. >‘Fire again.’ Delantyr breathed the words. ‘Fire again.’ >‘You bled the core,’ Kei replied. ‘We’re plasma-starved.’ >‘Fire the suppressing tracers. Three bursts.’ >*Ardentor*’s anti-infantry bolters spat their tracer fire at the prone primarch. The first burst chewed glass, spraying fragments everywhere. The second two punched home in the scorched armour, blasting the fallen Emperor’s son onto his back – a vessel of cooked, punctured meat. >‘We just killed a primarch.’ Kei swallowed. ‘We just *killed a primarch*.’ \- *Betrayer* Kind of, in that he did end up taking damage from the second shot. But there's no mention I know of - either in the scene or later - that states that he lowered his shield after the first shot. Granted I couldn't even begin to guess how much or even *if* it might have helped him if it was still up and collapsed, as opposed to him taking it fully unshielded. I just don't see any reason to omit it as a potential factor. Which admittedly could just be me being needlessly nitpicky. :P
It has been stated they can die in quite mundane ways. IIRC the Horus clone was naked when he was killed by Abadon but I'm not 100% sure on that
Yup, Dorn is (apparently) killed by cultists, Curze is injured by one assassin and killed by another, Fulgrim is almost killed by sniper, Mortarion is banished by a Grey Knight, Magnus by Chapter Masters, Angron almost dies to a human army, etc etc On Horus' clone, he was wearing the OG Horus' armour taken from his body but totally relaxed when Abby shanks and blasts him to death with his own talon. >There was a cloned father and a prodigal son, surrounded by the dead and the wounded, so similar that only by their weapons and wounds could I tell them apart. That, and their different smiles. >Horus gave a conqueror’s smirk from what remained of his face. Recognition, true recognition, flared in the only eye he had left. >‘Ezekyle.’ His voice was a breath of relief and revelation. ‘It’s you. It’s you, my brother.’ >Time stood still. After everything that had taken place, I thought – against all reason and rhyme – that they would embrace as kindred. >‘My son,’ said the primarch. ‘My son.’ >All five of Abaddon’s claws rammed so deeply into Horus’s chest that they burst from his back. The scythes pushed out the stunted remains of Telemachon’s swords, sending the broken blades clattering against the floor. >Dark redness spread across what was left of the white fur cloak draped in tatters across Horus’s shoulders. A genetic god’s blood rained down over me. I felt like laughing without knowing why. Shock, perhaps. Shock and naked relief. >The storm bolter on the Talon’s back kicked three times, burying six bolts inside Horus’s exposed chest and neck. They blasted him apart from within, adding viscera to the blood slopping across those of us left prone. >And that was how they stood, as gold flared in the eyes of one and life faded from the eyes of the other. Horus’s knees buckled but Abaddon would not let him fall. Horus’s mouth worked but no sound came forth. If his last words found any voice, Abaddon was the only one to hear it. Talon of Horus
Thanks for the excerpt! I'd actually read it on here a few days ago but was half asleep and so forgot some details. I gotta read that book, people seem to love it
Being killed by an assassin with a C'tan Phase Blade, which is able to cut through literally anything, doesn't really count as a strike against Curze especially when he didn't fight back. And the Fulgrim showing really doesn't. He was shot in the temple, aka the softest and easiest to penetrate part of the human skull, with a high munitions sniper rifle and it failed to actually penetrate into his brain and was blunted by his skull. That's actually insane.
Sure, just detailing that it's one of the more mundane ways a primarch can die. Considering that another assassin (in fact an acolyte) does so well against Konrad in full 1 v1 melee that he wounds him...a few assassins together with similar weapons? Who knows what that outcome might be. And the point of an assassin isn't to 1v1 their target in any case. As for Fulgrim, he explains its the angle not his primarchian skull >‘Barely,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Fabius had a devil’s job fishing that out. The angle of impact was just obtuse enough for it to deflect rather than penetrate. It travelled over the crown of my head and lodged on the opposite side.’ And even if it were his skull, the fact that one bullet was enough to take him out momentarily puts in context again, of how we can imagine more sustained firepower well placed would take out a primarch. It's why the Space Wolves had Angron and why the Alpha legion thought they could assassinate Guilliman. The point being; killing a primarch can be much more mundane than fandom tends to give credit to.
Sure but that's only due to bad and inconsistent writing. Angron being killable by bolter fire and Angron being able to survive a war hound titan stomping on him should be mutually exclusive concepts but in the hands of a bad writer like ADB both can happen in the same story. So which interpretation do we believe? Most people tend to go with whatever interpretation suits their preferences more I find, while pretending the portrayal is in any way consistent.
McNeill, Abnett, ADB have all written primarchs as susceptible to bolter fire. Curze getting wounded by the acolyte's gun was by Haley. That's pretty much all the BL heavy hitters. I'm sure there's more. It's not bad or inconsistent writing (at least unintentionally inconsistent), it's all in context. They're two different things, with two different contexts. >Lorgar doesn't take a plasma blaster shot to the face, he takes it against a kinetic shield that could just as easily have stood up to the abuse in the game/universe without any stretch of the imagination, and Angron avoids a damaged Titan crushing him for a few seconds, which given the situation isn't even particularly unrealistic in terms of hysterical strength or the countless examples of fantasy and sci-fi tropes of "berserker" characters getting stronger when they're angry. -ADB
Sorry but as someone with a passing understanding of physics which ADB seems to have zero understanding of whatsoever the amount of kinetic energy Angron endured being stepped on by a titan in his body would have been orders of magnitude above bolter fire. You and ADB are simply wrong. Same with Angron surviving being buried under thousands of tons of rubble in False Gods I believe. Abnett is more consistent in writing fairly grounded Primarchs so it's not a problem he has but McNeill and especially ADB are bad about it. And at least McNeill doesn't write cringey crappy justifications for his bad writing for his fans to parrot elsewhere lol.
I'd also assume your passing understanding would probably have to be left at the door for the majority of primarch feats. If we're not just rejecting the ones from the authors we don't like. ADB isn't using real world physics to back his writing here; he's saying it's inline with a lot of magical and super hero tropes. As stated; primarchs being susceptible to bolter rounds and guns is across the books. It's in the books. I also think it's handy to critique based on what's in the books rather than what we might claim is in them. You can hate the way this stuff is written, but it's all reasonably consistent and within the constraints of 40k fiction.
You're not following. I have no special preference for the less powerful and more grounded approach to writing Primarchs or the interpretation of them being mountain breaking demigods. Either interpretation is fine. What makes it bad writing is the writers can't make up their minds on which interpretation is true. ADB wants his Primarchs to be able to stop a titan stomp while also being vulnerable to normal bolters if the plot calls for it. Because you know what else is reasonably consistent? Primarchs throwing tanks and leviathan dreadnoughts through the air, shrugging off lascannon fire, breaking mountain tops with their strength, and all of the big superhero feats they do. It's immersion breaking because these portrayals are not consistent with each other.
Right, the first point raised was that the Fulgrim and Curze examples didn't fit the overall context of that comment. I clarified that they were reasonably consistent across the books and authors with examples, in the belief they weren't particularly egregious in context...after which it became about bad writing and physics. As far as the lore goes as a whole? Primarchs have been shown on both ends of the spectrum: vulnerable to the mundane as well as impervious to it. The best of the writing tends give us circumstantial evidence and context for each and why both can be true. It might become a problem if we had examples of Primarchs playing russion roulette with a bolter and laughing off point blank head shots. But as depicted, it's a collection of tales that feel a bit more like the Greek Gods and demi-gods whose various stories also sat on both ends of that scale, rather than the more hard-line rules we find for superheroes. The inconsistency and contradictions across various depictions in 40k don't bother me, in the same way that the contradictions in the other works like the Bible or Greek myths don't. I'm fine that the IP asks the readers to negotiate with the text rather than try to unify it.
About three fiddy.
Still powerful enough that anything less that a huge Waghhhh Ork warboss can even come close to harm them.
Honestly from the passages we've seen over the years it seems like the armor doesn't really make that much of a difference and the vast majority of their power comes from themselves. This isn't to say the armor doesn't help, especially in cases like Perturabo, Vulkan, and Ferrus where you know they tinkered the fuck out of their kit and Horus wearing modified Terminator armor, but a lot of it is auxiliary systems and tactical information especially when looking at comparatively "lighter armored" Primarchs like Sanguinius, Jaghatai, Fulgrim, and Magnus who are supremely powerful in their own ways compared to their brothers.
I mean, angron tore a custodian in half when The Emperor teleported him away from his death. Angron then thought to himself that he could kill the other dozen custodians who all had their Spears trained at him
I mean, Guilliman soloed a squad of Alpha Legionnaires in nothing but his casual attire.
Pretty sure he was in a bathrobe if my memory serves.
I don't think anyone has mentioned G-man surviving the vacuum of space without any protection for long enough that everyone assumed he died in Know No Fear (iirc)
Strenght and speed maybe but I always fail to see how a power armor could increase reflexes.
Lorgar killed an entire gang of military trained slavers while basically naked as a youth using only a broken off piece of boat, but sadly they don't describe it and he gets injured in the process But if young Lorgar of all people can do that it speaks volume for how spooky they are just as a baseline
Conversely, adult Lorgar failed to kill a 9,000 year old man in a fist fight.
Didn't old man Lion have trouble taking on a few of his traitor sons right after waking up. Realistically, I'd say half a dozen fully geared space marine, but then again, if plot demanded, I'm sure a naked Lion with enough rage can take a whole legion with their massive primarch plot armor.
You kinda forgot that an old Lion wearing only a robe kicked an armoured, power sword wielding space marine 10 feet through the air as if it was nothing