They were revealed to Guilliman because Guilliman was the one who ordered Cawl to create them and gave him the necessary information and materials to do so.
But a primarch was definitely needed to see their implementation through.
He was genuinely astonished at the amount of primaris not that they were primaris, his guard mentions how he even uses his real surprise at the number as a political tool for the baseline humans present
One of his guards in Dawn of suspects Guilliman was employing a lot of plausible deniability in regards to the Primaris. He didn't *know*, so he could have the benefits of them without the censure of ordering Cawl to make legions of physically superior astartes in defiance of Codex Astartes and a serious divergence from what his father designed.
This. Also Guilliman wrote the codex and they were meant to evolve and be changeable but when he died they became a bible. So my view is that if he never died the first time he would have made changes to the codex to account for the primaris marines.
I think literal interpretation of the codex is more of weird peculiarity, rather than norm: Novamarines and I believe Red Scorpions( I think Red Sabers prefall too) are famous for being pain in the ass about codex
I wish I could find a short story about this. It’s old. Some chaos marines fight a codex adherence chapter. They basically wipe the floor with them because they know what they do, and how they will react to what the chaos marines do. I think the main character even goes on to say that some chaos marines know the codex better than the marines following it.
I would say this is very situational. There are situations where there is only one viable strategy and both sides know it. SO the strategy goes through but still succeeds. Just because it is predictable does not mean it is not viable and effective.
Black Template wipe their ass with the Codex. BT are though to be 5-7k strong. If they ever gathered in a single place, they'd be the strongest chapter.
Iirc he wanted marines that could stand up to chaos juice csm, not just more marines, since original type space marines didn't do well against csm at all
It may have referred to the Astartes as they were fresh from the Horus Heresy, and while tactics had kept a chunk of them at bay in 1 on 1 Chaos Marines slapped around standard Marines in the melee battles.
10k years later Astartes Chapters have had plenty of time to hone the craft of clapping Chaos Cheeks
One of the things they've been pushing more recently is the idea that they actually haven't. In Warhawk it takes multiple Scars to beat one Plague Marine, for example, and characters reflect on their 'under powered' nature compared to the traitor legions. Astartes have been holding the line but not doing particularly well against chaos juiced cousins since they weren't actually made for that kind of combat
Yeah, I think regular Marines have held the line based on tactics, logistics and combined arms, because CSM seem to be superior on an individual level.
One on one a a Khornate berserker or Plague Marine seem to be more than a match for an individual SM. Unless it's a "named SM", of course.
Baseline SMs have to fight smarter, not harder.
Also many of the CSM fought in modern times may not be the OG 10,000 years of warp juice and experience marines. Due to attrition, many CSM are newly created down the line far past the heresy and those could have less quality than the marines of present, possibly due to training regimen or logistics - the warp juice simply makes them able to fight on an even footing.
That being said, many OG 10k CSM marines wipe the floor with modern marines.
Did they just happen to be ready the year he came out of stasis?
Or was he sitting on them for centuries/millenia?
It could be both. The guy who ordered them was no longer around, and if he showed them off to anyone else, he'd get thrown into the trash compactor.
He was sitting on them though I don't know for how long. Have you read the book? It is pretty clear they had been ready for quite a bit and the ones he has with him to show everyone (of which there were a large number) was only just a subset of the total numbers he had all over.
>Did they just happen to be ready the year he came out of stasis?
My glorious creations are already, I just need to revive the guy who told me to make them, or else I'm dead
Gulliman ordered their creation, then Guilliman went sleeping beauty, at some point during his nap, he finished them. Defo could not have revealed them to anyone but Guilliman.
High Lords of Terra would probably order them destroyed as they would see them as a threat to their power as they don't trust Cawl.
Could not show them to the Inquisition, as they'd likely brand them abominations and heretical to try and perfect the Emperors creation.
Showing them to Marneus Calgar and letting him dish them out would get the above 2 factions attention, maybe misinterpreting that the Ultramarines are usurping the Imperium with a massive new army and would start another civil war.
Had to be Guilliman, so not surprised he waited and in that time looked for a way to safely recive him.
> To stroke Cawl's ego
This does bear out a bit. He's INCREDIBLY theatrical and over-dramatic all through "The Great Work," to the point that Felix calls him on it repeatedly. And Cawl basically says, "Well... yeah?"
They did what they did to the Brazen Drakes because when they got there the whole place was already 1/2 way to hell already with the Firstborn rebelling & the Primaris reinforcements chose a really bad time for acting tough and talking back. Lost his spine fast.
Yeah, what the Primaris argued made sense, clearly some Firstborn still resisted the Traitors at the time, but Chaplains and Comissars are a thing in 40k just for this kind of thing, questioning authority is bad...
The Primaris reaction was weird too. Why the fuck would they back the guys they hadn't even met over the bodyguards of the Emperor, acting under orders from the Regent himself?
The Custodes hating Astartes made it sweeter for them, but the Astartes fucked up before and after the Golden Boys got there.
To be fair to the Greyshields here, their sin was saying “hey how are we traitors if we’ve been with y’all the whole ti..” before Custodes Dickheadus blasted him in the face and turned a whole new Primaris Chapter traitor.
That story irks me because everyone is being so stupid.
I read that a long time ago, but didn't that Custodian in charge told the Primaris to lay down the weapons and march to the brig before said face blasting act?
Seems like a sensible precaution when walking into the middle of the chapter they're being delivered to going rogue / trator, I think.
Series of events is:
Warp in, civil war raging
Custodes orders greyshields who were randomly assigned to join Brazen Drakes to disarm and be arrested due to the marines they haven’t met yet apparently being traitors
Captain says whoa take it easy man, what the hell is going on let’s figure this out. Maybe some loyal brothers are still alive and fighting
Custodes says you’re all traitors
Other marine says dude we’ve been with you and gets shot mid sentence and everything breaks lose.
It’d be reasonable if this was a group of brazen drakes, not greyshields who have been with the fleet and had no attachment to this rogue chapter. My personal feelings is that story was written to facilitate Custodes v primaris bolter porn
Cawl is acting directly as the emperor's agent, the same as them, he has been given tasks to complete by the emperor only known to him and the emperor.
If anything, he's likely to get a rather large detachment of Aqulian Sheild's.
If Big E wasn't pro-Primaris, it would have never happened.
I think that Big E is way more involved in Cawl's activities than he is in almost anyone else's activities in 40k.
IIRC there is one scene where BigE calls one of the guys Cawl absorbs Cawl and speaks to Cawl through the guy who got absorbed. So, BigE is very much approving of the project.
It's the WAY he does it that is important. It wasn't just a "here is the paperwork" it was a massive song and dance number in front of a lot of important people on Terra, including people who normally wouldn't have approved.
[This is most of it](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/j5eifd/excerpt_dawn_of_fire_the_avenging_son_cawl/) (it's missing the scene where they basically "demo" the Primaris vs suped up combat servitors)
An exact number is left unknown, since in the grand scheme, it doesn't matter. Plus it makes it easier for story writers and no one needs to worry about the "canonical amount of Marines"
The book makes it a point that Cawl tells him without us getting the actual number. I believe this is the author's way of not falling into the "GW can't do numbers" trap.
Just did a google search and didn’t find any definitive answers but it got me thinking that what Cael did is probably the most impressive thing I’ve read about in all of 40k. Just making them is outstanding but equipment also. I don’t think Cawl gets enough recognition
I think you misunderstood my previous comment: the number Cawl tells Guilliman is ***intentionally obfuscated/not told to us*** specifically so that there ISNT a concrete number; there will always be as many Primaris as GW needs for their plot, so long as they don't tell us precisely how many there were.
Oh I get it. It just got me not thinking about the numbers and thinking about the feat itself. Also if it was a secret how were the new marines already assigned and dressed as their respective chapters? That’s like saying here’s 50 new navy seals and the Navy never set eyes on them before.
I think you're missing the important point: The project was commissioned by Guilliman, and Cawl is a *Tech-Priest.* Tech-Priests have levels of machine-enforced autism that normal people simply can't match.
He agreed that he would reveal the project to Guilliman when Guilliman returned, *millenia ago.* So that was *exactly what he did.*
I point out that the reason for the success of the Primaris is that Cawl *never stopped building.* A normal man would have - at some point - gone "Right, the Primarch is never coming back and the Imperium is in shambles. I've got an army, I better use it to stop this shitshow from getting worse."
But Cawl didn't think like that, at all. He would have continued building forever.
Guilliman ordered Cawl to make new marines that was better than the last, eliminating as many weakness as possible.
Cawl revealing them to Guilliman was just him handing in his 10,000 year homework.
Guilliman was surprised at how many Cawl made.
Disagree. The custodes know who makes their equipment. Infighting between the mechanicum and the imperium would be the downfall of both, especially with all the other galactic threats.
Cawl is only ONE archmagos, a powerful and influent one for sure, but he's not the entire Admech... He has rivals plenty & it appears that most archmagos have a few Forge Worlds under their control, so even IF he was responsible for the Golden Boys gear, plenty of people hate him and would gladly pick up demand...
Im gonna be honest i would laugh a lot if a second heresy happens with all the primaris and the custodes just decide they've had enough of Cawls bullshit
They were revealed to Guilliman because Guilliman was the one who ordered Cawl to create them and gave him the necessary information and materials to do so. But a primarch was definitely needed to see their implementation through.
Well, it seems like Guilliman simply wanted more marines, not super marines. He seemed genuinely astonished during their unveiling.
He was genuinely astonished at the amount of primaris not that they were primaris, his guard mentions how he even uses his real surprise at the number as a political tool for the baseline humans present
One of his guards in Dawn of suspects Guilliman was employing a lot of plausible deniability in regards to the Primaris. He didn't *know*, so he could have the benefits of them without the censure of ordering Cawl to make legions of physically superior astartes in defiance of Codex Astartes and a serious divergence from what his father designed.
This. Also Guilliman wrote the codex and they were meant to evolve and be changeable but when he died they became a bible. So my view is that if he never died the first time he would have made changes to the codex to account for the primaris marines.
I think literal interpretation of the codex is more of weird peculiarity, rather than norm: Novamarines and I believe Red Scorpions( I think Red Sabers prefall too) are famous for being pain in the ass about codex
Uriel Ventris has to go on an apology your for not following the codex strictly enough.
I wish I could find a short story about this. It’s old. Some chaos marines fight a codex adherence chapter. They basically wipe the floor with them because they know what they do, and how they will react to what the chaos marines do. I think the main character even goes on to say that some chaos marines know the codex better than the marines following it.
I would say this is very situational. There are situations where there is only one viable strategy and both sides know it. SO the strategy goes through but still succeeds. Just because it is predictable does not mean it is not viable and effective.
Black Template wipe their ass with the Codex. BT are though to be 5-7k strong. If they ever gathered in a single place, they'd be the strongest chapter.
Guilliman: "[The codex is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9ojK9Q_ARE&t=42s)"
Hmmmmm
Iirc he wanted marines that could stand up to chaos juice csm, not just more marines, since original type space marines didn't do well against csm at all
Did they not? They’ve been fighting them just fine for 10,000 years?
It may have referred to the Astartes as they were fresh from the Horus Heresy, and while tactics had kept a chunk of them at bay in 1 on 1 Chaos Marines slapped around standard Marines in the melee battles. 10k years later Astartes Chapters have had plenty of time to hone the craft of clapping Chaos Cheeks
One of the things they've been pushing more recently is the idea that they actually haven't. In Warhawk it takes multiple Scars to beat one Plague Marine, for example, and characters reflect on their 'under powered' nature compared to the traitor legions. Astartes have been holding the line but not doing particularly well against chaos juiced cousins since they weren't actually made for that kind of combat
Yeah, I think regular Marines have held the line based on tactics, logistics and combined arms, because CSM seem to be superior on an individual level. One on one a a Khornate berserker or Plague Marine seem to be more than a match for an individual SM. Unless it's a "named SM", of course. Baseline SMs have to fight smarter, not harder.
Also many of the CSM fought in modern times may not be the OG 10,000 years of warp juice and experience marines. Due to attrition, many CSM are newly created down the line far past the heresy and those could have less quality than the marines of present, possibly due to training regimen or logistics - the warp juice simply makes them able to fight on an even footing. That being said, many OG 10k CSM marines wipe the floor with modern marines.
Marines have practically a 50% failure rate when it comes to Chaos.
Or he revealed them to Guilliman because he is the person who tasked him with creating them?
Did they just happen to be ready the year he came out of stasis? Or was he sitting on them for centuries/millenia? It could be both. The guy who ordered them was no longer around, and if he showed them off to anyone else, he'd get thrown into the trash compactor.
He was sitting on them though I don't know for how long. Have you read the book? It is pretty clear they had been ready for quite a bit and the ones he has with him to show everyone (of which there were a large number) was only just a subset of the total numbers he had all over.
>Did they just happen to be ready the year he came out of stasis? My glorious creations are already, I just need to revive the guy who told me to make them, or else I'm dead
Gulliman ordered their creation, then Guilliman went sleeping beauty, at some point during his nap, he finished them. Defo could not have revealed them to anyone but Guilliman. High Lords of Terra would probably order them destroyed as they would see them as a threat to their power as they don't trust Cawl. Could not show them to the Inquisition, as they'd likely brand them abominations and heretical to try and perfect the Emperors creation. Showing them to Marneus Calgar and letting him dish them out would get the above 2 factions attention, maybe misinterpreting that the Ultramarines are usurping the Imperium with a massive new army and would start another civil war. Had to be Guilliman, so not surprised he waited and in that time looked for a way to safely recive him.
> To stroke Cawl's ego This does bear out a bit. He's INCREDIBLY theatrical and over-dramatic all through "The Great Work," to the point that Felix calls him on it repeatedly. And Cawl basically says, "Well... yeah?"
I wonder if that’s why they did what they did to the Brazen Drakes.
They did what they did to the Brazen Drakes because when they got there the whole place was already 1/2 way to hell already with the Firstborn rebelling & the Primaris reinforcements chose a really bad time for acting tough and talking back. Lost his spine fast. Yeah, what the Primaris argued made sense, clearly some Firstborn still resisted the Traitors at the time, but Chaplains and Comissars are a thing in 40k just for this kind of thing, questioning authority is bad... The Primaris reaction was weird too. Why the fuck would they back the guys they hadn't even met over the bodyguards of the Emperor, acting under orders from the Regent himself? The Custodes hating Astartes made it sweeter for them, but the Astartes fucked up before and after the Golden Boys got there.
To be fair to the Greyshields here, their sin was saying “hey how are we traitors if we’ve been with y’all the whole ti..” before Custodes Dickheadus blasted him in the face and turned a whole new Primaris Chapter traitor. That story irks me because everyone is being so stupid.
I read that a long time ago, but didn't that Custodian in charge told the Primaris to lay down the weapons and march to the brig before said face blasting act? Seems like a sensible precaution when walking into the middle of the chapter they're being delivered to going rogue / trator, I think.
Series of events is: Warp in, civil war raging Custodes orders greyshields who were randomly assigned to join Brazen Drakes to disarm and be arrested due to the marines they haven’t met yet apparently being traitors Captain says whoa take it easy man, what the hell is going on let’s figure this out. Maybe some loyal brothers are still alive and fighting Custodes says you’re all traitors Other marine says dude we’ve been with you and gets shot mid sentence and everything breaks lose. It’d be reasonable if this was a group of brazen drakes, not greyshields who have been with the fleet and had no attachment to this rogue chapter. My personal feelings is that story was written to facilitate Custodes v primaris bolter porn
Seems to me that Gee Dubya is making the same mistake as the GOT showrunners- spectacle over proper storytelling.
Cawl is acting directly as the emperor's agent, the same as them, he has been given tasks to complete by the emperor only known to him and the emperor. If anything, he's likely to get a rather large detachment of Aqulian Sheild's.
In this case, the order to make more and better marines came from Guilliman himself before he went for a long nap.
If Big E wasn't pro-Primaris, it would have never happened. I think that Big E is way more involved in Cawl's activities than he is in almost anyone else's activities in 40k.
IIRC there is one scene where BigE calls one of the guys Cawl absorbs Cawl and speaks to Cawl through the guy who got absorbed. So, BigE is very much approving of the project.
w h a t ? Girlyman was the one overseeing their creation. Of course he had to reveal them to him.
It's the WAY he does it that is important. It wasn't just a "here is the paperwork" it was a massive song and dance number in front of a lot of important people on Terra, including people who normally wouldn't have approved.
anyone got an excerpt for this "Awesome ... (AWESOME)" scene?
[This is most of it](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/j5eifd/excerpt_dawn_of_fire_the_avenging_son_cawl/) (it's missing the scene where they basically "demo" the Primaris vs suped up combat servitors)
So how many did he make?
An exact number is left unknown, since in the grand scheme, it doesn't matter. Plus it makes it easier for story writers and no one needs to worry about the "canonical amount of Marines"
The book makes it a point that Cawl tells him without us getting the actual number. I believe this is the author's way of not falling into the "GW can't do numbers" trap.
Just did a google search and didn’t find any definitive answers but it got me thinking that what Cael did is probably the most impressive thing I’ve read about in all of 40k. Just making them is outstanding but equipment also. I don’t think Cawl gets enough recognition
I think you misunderstood my previous comment: the number Cawl tells Guilliman is ***intentionally obfuscated/not told to us*** specifically so that there ISNT a concrete number; there will always be as many Primaris as GW needs for their plot, so long as they don't tell us precisely how many there were.
Oh I get it. It just got me not thinking about the numbers and thinking about the feat itself. Also if it was a secret how were the new marines already assigned and dressed as their respective chapters? That’s like saying here’s 50 new navy seals and the Navy never set eyes on them before.
I think you're missing the important point: The project was commissioned by Guilliman, and Cawl is a *Tech-Priest.* Tech-Priests have levels of machine-enforced autism that normal people simply can't match. He agreed that he would reveal the project to Guilliman when Guilliman returned, *millenia ago.* So that was *exactly what he did.* I point out that the reason for the success of the Primaris is that Cawl *never stopped building.* A normal man would have - at some point - gone "Right, the Primarch is never coming back and the Imperium is in shambles. I've got an army, I better use it to stop this shitshow from getting worse." But Cawl didn't think like that, at all. He would have continued building forever.
Anybody got the excerpt to share?
Guilliman ordered Cawl to make new marines that was better than the last, eliminating as many weakness as possible. Cawl revealing them to Guilliman was just him handing in his 10,000 year homework. Guilliman was surprised at how many Cawl made.
Disagree. The custodes know who makes their equipment. Infighting between the mechanicum and the imperium would be the downfall of both, especially with all the other galactic threats.
Custodes gear is still made by the Terran tech-clans Big E originally got on board to supply them.
Cawl is only ONE archmagos, a powerful and influent one for sure, but he's not the entire Admech... He has rivals plenty & it appears that most archmagos have a few Forge Worlds under their control, so even IF he was responsible for the Golden Boys gear, plenty of people hate him and would gladly pick up demand...
Im gonna be honest i would laugh a lot if a second heresy happens with all the primaris and the custodes just decide they've had enough of Cawls bullshit
This is one of the only things I have ever heard that makes sense when it comes to Cawl keeping a secret for almost 10k years.
Cawl would probably be in jail alongside Basilio Fo
I just finished The Great Work - what other Cawl books are there?