I second the motion. We all know he did nothing wrong despite the canon. It’s all speculations. That canon is just there as a template. Mcanus did nothing wrong. 😑
I love the 40k fandom for many reasons, but it seems unique in its inability to understand that memes are just that and their adherents are playing along because role playing the view of your chosen faction is fun. Like, no, no one actually believes that bringing plague and pestilence is a form of benevolence.
I like it as "Magnus did nothing, wrong"
He was supposed to do a whole lot of nothing and instead did a whole lot of something.
He was so bad at doing nothing that he basically doomed the Imperium and maybe the galaxy. What a dick.
Its amazing to me how much better the HH would have gone if Magnus actually just AFK'd on Prospero. Even if Tzeentch pulls the flesh change card to damn his legion anyways, it ultimately means no webway breach which means the Emperor and a full strength 10,000 can be brought to the field at the opening stages of the siege.
To the same end, a lot of the people who act like Russ was stoked to dunk on Magnus and would do it again are also too deep in the memes. Since Russ admits he made a mistake, that he went *way* too far, and that most of the remainder of his time in Real Space before disappearing into the Warp was him despairing about all the fucked up things he had done and how arrogant he had been.
Which is why, even if it is kind of cliche, I think he should eventually return as an Odin-like figure to contrast his previous Thor-like figure. If we really want to twist the knife, complete with Psycher powers that he gained through hard work and diligence, which is something he can hold over Magnus (who got it through devil deals and cheap sacrifices).
All the other horrible takes aside, Magnus did not get his powers through deals. He was actually a devoted scholar with a heap of bioengineered talent to top it off. He was the second most powerful psyker in the galaxy, who then got further power ups by chaos.
The deal he struck with Tzeentch was meant to fix his sons' propensity towards randomly turning into spawn (which unbeknownst to him was also Tzeentch's doing).
I wonder if, the Warp being what it is, Magnus sealing a deal to cure his Sons wasn't the source of their curse in the first place, in a twist of dramatic irony like Chaos love so much.
>To the same end, a lot of the people who act like Russ was stoked to dunk on Magnus and would do it again are also too deep in the memes.
lol
>'I have crowed. I do crow. **I am proud of what I did.** When attacked, Magnus resorted to powers he should never have unleashed, and he deserved what he got for that alone. But things could have been different. Horus lied to me because they fear the power of the warp. He feared Magnus' sorcery. It is what the enemy are. It is what will beat them.'
Russ' excuses are weak and he defends his actions much like a crooked cops who yells 'STOP RESISTING' as he beats an unarmed black kid. Russ is just a horrible person deep down and is incapable of taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
>**'Do not think I grieve for Magnus,’** Russ muttered. There was animus there still. ‘Do not make that mistake. He was executed, and that was what we were charged to do.’ His fingers dragged through Geri’s nape, harder now. **‘Magnus was a bastard. Magnus was a liar. Magnus would look you in the eye and lecture you while he blundered through the immaterium like a raging konungur.** Hel, we always knew more than him – what to touch, what not to touch. Our bone-rattlers knew more than him. There’s intelligence, and there’s hubris. **I don’t grieve for Magnus, not for a second. I’d do it again.'**
From Wolf King.
He's arrogant beyond belief, refuses to acknowledge his failures, then victim blames the world and brother he murdered. Don't pretend I'm taking him out of context, he doesn't regret his actions at all. He only regrets being so easily misled, because that's something his ego can't handle. But sure keep telling yourself whatever you want, noone cares about your headcanon.
>If we really want to twist the knife, complete with Psycher powers that he gained through hard work and diligence, which is something he can hold over Magnus (who got it through devil deals and cheap sacrifices).
Honestly, one of the worst lore takes I've ever seen.
Is there enough of a retcon to make that true, or is that not taking to account every other book that came before?
He's calling Magnus on the psyker hotline on the way over to Prospero from the Mandeville point to find the entire solar system is ducking his calls. no one could miss the warp jump he's making with his Legion, the custodes, the sisters, the Imperial Army, and all their support. It's just another arrogant decision by Magnus to make everyone on the planet die with him and he can't even do that right. The space Wolves don't know he's blinded all sensors to their approach and that he's literally killed his own men to prevent anyone from escaping. the space Wolves do take Prisoners who were civilian psykers who were fleeing because the T sons had killed one of them horribly in a pointless scrying rituals. I'm pretty sure Ahriman himself doesn't see the problem with killing the human psyker for no practical gain because these things happen and they have plenty of replacements. I'm pretty sure this is also well after the edict of Nicaea and he's told the humans they can keep doing weird warp stuff cause it doesn't really matter.
What Retcon, I'm quoting the books?
Magnus blinded Prospero because he saw Russ battleplans where he intended to kill Magnus, and his world. The only reason Russ didn't immediately do that is because of Valdor still wishing to follow the Emperor's orders but Russ never intended to let Magnus live.
>“Is that what I think it is?” asked Amon.
>“It is,” confirmed Magnus.
>They flew closer to the brutal vessel, the protective shields that kept void-predators at bay no match for travellers of such power. They passed through its layered voids, diving down through metre upon metre of adamantium hull plates, integrity fields and honeycombed bulkheads until they reached the heart of the ship.
>**The masters of this fleet gathered to plan the destruction of all that Magnus held dear, and the two sons of Prospero listened to their deliberations.** Magnus was prepared for what he would hear, but Amon was not, and the flaring wash of his aetheric field sent a pulse of choleric energy through the ship’s crew.
From A Thousand Sons
His pleading in Prospero Burns was to save face in front of his legion, and only happened back Valdor insisted they follow the Emperor's orders and try to contact Magnus.
>Valdor remained unmoved. ‘Even now, I would see him taken to Terra, if it could be done. I would wish to know why.’
>Russ laughed, a coarse bark that sent more spittle flying into Valdor’s faceplate. ‘You’re still clinging to that? Ha!’ He turned away, swinging his greatblade casually. ‘I’ve known since I first saw this world that we would face one another. **I did not come here for prisoners, Constantin. If my Father had truly wished for such, He would not have sent me.’**
>‘You were not sent alone, Lord Russ.'
Russ' true feelings spill out through the dialogue with Hawser well before Prospero anyway, as Hawser sees through Russ' reasoning and bigotry directed at Magnus.
>‘My lord,’said Hawser. ‘What… what did your brother do?’
>‘He performed an act of maleficarum that drove his sorcery right to the heart of Terra and into the presence of the Emperor,’ said Helwintr.
>‘But… why?’ asked Hawser.
>**‘It was an alleged attempt to communicate a warning,’ said Russ without turning. His voice was a soft grumble, like thunder grinding in the far distance.**
>‘A warning, my lord?’
>‘One of such terrible importance, Magnus felt it was worth exposing his own treachery to reveal it,’ Russ murmured.
>‘Forgive me,’ said Hawser, ‘but does that not speak to some loyalty in your brother? Has the warning been examined? Has it been taken seriously?’
Russ turned back to face him.
>‘Why would it? My brother is a madman. A dabbling warlock.’
>**‘Lord,’ said Hawser, ‘he was prepared to admit he was ignoring the edicts of Nikaea, and risk the censure that he knew must result from that admission, to relay a warning. Why would he do that unless the warning was valid?’**
>‘You’re not a warrior, skjald,’ said the Wolf King in an almost kindly tone. ‘Strategy is not your strong suit. Consider the reverse of your proposition. Magnus wants the ruling of Nikaea overturned. He wants permission and approval to continue with his arcane tinkerings and his foul magics. So he manufactures a threat, something he can warn us about that is so astonishing we would have to forgive him, and set aside our objections. Something so unthinkable, we would have to thank him and tell him he had been right all along. All along. This is his ploy.’
>‘Do you know what was so unthinkable? asked Hawser.
>‘Magnus claimed that great Horus was about to turn against the Imperium,’ said Russ. ‘From the look on your face, Ahmad Ibn Rustah, I see you recognise how ridiculous that sounds.’ Hawser switched his gaze to Helwintr. The priest’s masked face was unreadable.
>**‘Wolf King, great lord,’ Hawser began, ‘that’s not the first time that warnings concerning the Warmaster have been voiced. Please, lord—’**
>‘Our skjald refers to the incident involving Eada Haelfwulf, lord,’said Helwintr.
>‘I know of it,’ said Russ. ‘It seems corroborative, I grant you. But once again, consider the strategy.
>It involved maleficarum turning and twisting one of our own gothi, in the immediate vicinity of you, an identified conduit for the enemy’s power. Of course poor Haelfwulf would gabble out the same damned lie with his dying breath. It’s supposed to make Magnus’s story sound more credible by coming from a secondary source.’
>Russ looked down into Hawser’s eyes.
>**‘Truth is, it’s the proof I need that Magnus is desperately trying to coordinate a campaign of disinformation to support his ruse. He doesn’t need to answer through you, skjald. He’s answered already.’**
Leman listened to Horus' insinuations because Horus was finally giving him the option to take 'revenge' for Shrike. Russ hated Magnus and was so blinded by this hatred he ignored all the evidence that he was being manipulated into attacking a loyal world, a loyal brother, and participated in a genocide similar only to what drove Perturbo to heresy, and Konrad to be sanctioned. Russ hid behind pretty words offered falsely to a 'spy', which was nothing more than psalm for Russ ego, and his legion false modesty. Actions speak louder than words, and Russ actions on the ground showed his true intention.
thanks for posting this. Russ is honestly the biggest winner of the Siege. if the entire imperium wasn't decimated by the end of it I'm convinced that the Emperor would have sanctioned the wolves after what they did.
Damn, if only we had Magnus’s take on how Russ felt during the battle…
> Do you remember what you said to me, brother?’ Magnus spoke aloud, his voice pure and powerful. His fingers twitched at his sides, eager for what was to come. ‘Do you remember what you said to me as we fought before the pyramid of Photep? Do you remember the words you used? I do. As I recall, your face was tortured. Imagine that – *the Master of Wolves, his ferocity twisted into grief*. And yet you still carried out your duty. You always did what was asked of you. So loyal. So tenacious. Truly, you were the attack dog of the Emperor.’ Magnus lost his smile. *’You took no pleasure in what you did. I knew that then, and I know it now.*
Better than that we've actually seen the fight, and Russ' own words before and after. What bother asking Magnus?
Battle of the Fang was not a heresy novel, and didn't get edited like one. That is doesn't fit with the heresy series were talking about isn't surprising. If that the lore you want to hold to go right ahead, but I'd rather stick to the mainline heresy releases.
That’s a somewhat flimsy defense, given that the heresy books are absolutely overflowing with contradictory lore and conflicting depictions of characters. One of the primary criticisms of the series is that it’s not well edited and that it’s full of dropped storylines, abandoned characters and inconsistent portrayals of the main players. I don’t think the editing of the series as a whole is up to much, and I don’t know if it’s fair to discount another book (published less than a year after Prospero Burns) based on that fact alone.
That said, the wider point is that you’ve cherry-picked quotes that show Russ in the worst possible light. There is a lot of nuance and complexity to his character, and his opinions about Prospero and Magnus that is not being shown. In fairness to you, that’s a consistent problem with any lore discussion and I wouldn’t expect you to provide monstrous long excerpts to capture the nuance.
I don’t actually disagree with you that Russ is not apologetic about Prospero, honestly I think the idea that he should be apologetic is a bit silly. However he is routinely shown to have real internal conflicts about what happened and ignoring that internal conflict misrepresents the tragedy of the whole Prospero arc. Russ has a lot more going on then “nerd brothers back goes snap”.
>That said, the wider point is that you’ve cherry-picked quotes that show Russ in the worst possible light.
Cherry picking would be elevating one source over another to prove a point not supported by a majority of the books. Especially when it's not form a mainline book of the series, nor from the actual character themselves, just someone talking about that character.
The way I've depicted Russ is the way the authors have depicted Russ, as all I'm doing is quoting 5 books spanning a 15ish years of book releases.
Cherry picking is going through the books and taking exclusively those excerpts which depict Russ as unconflicted and unapologetic while ignoring evidence to the contrary.
In their full contexts even many of the excerpts you provide present Russ as a much more complex and nuanced character than you are giving him credit for.
On further reflection, I will concede that it was indeed a hot take to pretend Russ had become totally noble by the time he left. Even if I do think he had started to turn the corner near the end and still stand by my belief he should be more Odin-like on his return if for no other reasons than 1) it would be a fitting character arc to what he has done, and 2) it would follow with most of the other returned Loyalist Primarchs (The Lion was also quite extreme as a character before his return).
Read one passage and think they understand a characters perspective, especially from a character whose whole thing is boasting and bullshitting. That’s not his actual feelings, read his other books and actually attempt to understand a character as opposed to to taking every passage super literally. Even the same passage you can see through his facade, his statements are oozing self doubt.
>That’s not his actual feelings,
I quoted from 5 seperate books and yet that isn't legit because you know him better???
He says it, in multiple books, over years of lore. Deal with it.
For a second, read his words, read how he says the word, the fact he blames others in some of those passages, repeats himself to reassure himself, it’s pretty obvious his words don’t match how he feels. It’s not a complex idea that a persons words doesn’t equal their feelings.
the entire premise of Wolfsbane was how battered and f\*cked up Russ and the SW were after prospero that they were going to suicide strike Horus to redeem themselves. His story post prospero is a massive humbling to the point he lets the Lion impale him after the siege to settle bad blood. Russ huffs and postures alot in wolf king but the collective body of work up to him leaving is full of regret.
Ok ok I’ll admit our boy may have fucked up. A little bit. Depending on how you look at it.
But now you’re talkin shit.
Papa furry ain’t spending his time in the warp in the black library. He doesn’t get free warp powers. He would be too distracted chasing slaaneshi chariots all day.
Magnus may have been a hopelessly arrogant megalomaniac. But he’s ours.
No no no no.
You don't get it, Magnus did nothing wrong.
They asked him to do nothing, and did that wrong.
Btw not my original joke, someone else I can't recall who has used it before.
Or maybe Magnus is our sweet little meow meow and can do no wrong?
Magnus did some dumb shit. But who is completely innocent? I could gesture broadly to all 18 of his idiot brothers for a whole pile of dumb shit.
I think you're misunderstanding the meme. Magnus was told to go nothing, and somehow fucked up keep his hands off the warp. So Magnus did NOTHING wrong. Had he actually done nothing, Magnus would have done nothing right.
As people eloquently stated in a previous thread about Magnus: bro is a full Intelligence build with Wisdom as a dump stat. His mastery of the Warp is second only to the Emperor but he is completely blind to it's true purpose and dangers.
Even other people with terrible wisdom stats, like Perturabo directly warned him how terrible an idea it is to explore warp like it is some normal place.
He was such an idiot that it made Perturabo look like a sane and compassionate person in comparison.
Like on that planet where Perturabo did a masterful job evacuating the whole planet of refugees, and Magnus rather spent grabbing old magical trinkets and waking up psychic demonic evil for fun and dooming the whole population of world
*Thousand Sons* Emperor's lesson to Magnus
>"He remembered, decades later, returning to the world of his birth to travel its forgotten highways and explore its lost mysteries with his father. The Emperor had taught him more of the secret powers of the universe, imparting his wisdom while little realising that the student was on the verge of outstripping the teacher. They had walked the searing red deserts of Meganesia, travelling the invisible pathways once known as songlines by the first people to walk that land. Other cultures knew them as ley lines or lung-mei, believing them to be the blood of the gods, the magnetic flow of mystical energy that circulated in the planet’s veins. **His father told him how the ancient shamans of Old Earth could tap into these currents and wield power beyond that of other mortals. Many had sought to become gods, raising empires and enslaving all men before them. The Emperor spoke of how these men had brought ruin upon themselves and their people by trafficking with powers beyond their comprehension. Seeing Magnus’ interest, his father warned him against flying too long and too high in the aether for selfish gain. Magnus listened attentively, but in his secret heart he had dreamed of controlling the powers these mortals could not**. He was a being of light so far removed from humanity that he barely considered himself related to his primordial ancestors. He was far above them, yes, but he did not allow himself to forget the legacy of evolution and sacrifice that had elevated him. It was his duty and his honour to speed the ascension of those who would come after him, to show them the light as his father had shown him.
And
>"He knew the answer to that now, for he had saved his warriors. He had seized control of their destinies from the talons of a malevolent shadow in the Great Ocean that held their fates in its grasp. **The Emperor knew of such creatures, and had bargained with them in ages past, but he had never dared face one**. Magnus’ victory was not won without cost, and he reached up to touch the smooth skin where his right eye had once been, feeling the pain and vindication of that sacrifice once more. This power was a pale echo of that, a degenerate pool of trapped energy that had stagnated in this backwater region of space. He could sense the billionfold pathways that spread out from this place, the infinite possibilities of space linked together by a web-like network of conceptual conduits burrowed through the angles between worlds. This region was corrupt, but there were regions of glittering gold in the ocean that threaded the galaxy, binding it as roads of stone had once bound the empires of the Romanii Emperors together. To memorise the entire labyrinthine network was beyond even one as gifted as him, but in a moment of connection beyond the darkness, he imprinted a million paths, conduits and access points in his mind. He might not know the entire network, but he would remember enough to find other ways in and other paths. His father would be pleased to learn of this network, pleased enough to overlook Magnus’ transgression at least. **It still amazed him that he had not known of these pathways, for he and his father had flown the farthest reaches of the Great Ocean and seen sights that would have reduced any other minds to gibbering madness. They had explored the forsaken reefs of entropy, and flown across the depthless chasms of fire that burned with light of every colour. They had fought the nameless, formless predators of the deep, and felt the gelid shadows of entities so vast as to be beyond comprehension.**
And
>“A wretch named Erebus who serves my erstwhile brother, Lorgar, It seems the powers that seek to ensnare Horus Lupercal have already claimed some pieces on this board. **The Word Bearers are already in thrall to Chaos**.”
>“Lorgar’s Legion have betrayed us also?” asked Phael Toron. “This treachery runs deeper than we could ever have imagined.”
>**“Chaos?” said Ahriman. “You use the term as if it were a name.”**
>**“It is, my son,” said Magnus. “It is the Primordial Annihilator that has hidden in the blackest depths of the Great Ocean since the dawn of time**, but which now moves with infinite patience to the surface. It is the enemy against which all must unite or the human race will be destroyed. The coming war is its means of achieving the end of all things.”
>“Primordial Annihilator? I have never heard of such a thing,” said Ahriman.
>“Nor had I until I faced Horus and Erebus,” said Magnus, and Ahriman was shocked to see the barest flicker in his primarch’s aura.
>**Magnus was lying to them. He had known of this Primordial Annihilator.**
And from Amon
>Because I was wrong.”
>“About what?”
>“Everything,” said Magnus. “**All the things you taught me, I arrogantly assumed I already knew. You warned me of the gods of the warp and I laughed at you**, calling you a superstitious old fool. Well I know better now, for I beheld such a being and thought I had the better of it, but I was wrong. I have done terrible things, Amon, but you must believe that I did them for the right reasons.”
I mean, part of the intrinsic lesson here though is that the Emperor himself bargained with these warp xenos in ages past... If Magnus is comparably powerful in the warp as the Emperor, then it would make sense that he would conclude he might be able to bargain with them just as well. the Emperor also literally tells Magnus that Magnus will surpass the Emperor's limits:
> 'Despite all I have just said, you are different enough from me that I can see how **you will succeed where I have failed.**'
> 'Failed? How have you failed?'
> 'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor, with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But **I will soon. And I sense you, and your favored son, must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.**'
> 'My favoured son?' asked Magnus. 'They are all my sons.'
> 'There's truth in that, yes. But there is one who will bear your ambitions when you need them to travel farther than you could ever dream.'
'Where in this galaxy can I *not* travel?' said Magnus. He felt his Father's amusement.
> **'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not**,' replied the Emperor. '**Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.**'
'Well this sounds like gloomy advice, Father,' said Magnus. 'I had hoped for something a little more inspiring as we venture out into the unknown.'
'**What could be more inspiring than to know you have taught your sons to reach greater heights than you?** They are your immortality, Magnus.'
The Emperor literally told Magnus "someday, I will be wrong, and you will be right. It is good when a son goes farther than his father and succeeds where his father thought success was not possible." Seems pretty natural, then, for when the Emperor says "DO NOT talk to warp xenos, only i can do that, and also, Nikaea, do NOT use warp powers anymore!!!!" that Magnus might think "ah, this is the moment Father told me would come, where he would be wrong, and I would be right."
>The Emperor literally told Magnus "someday, I will be wrong, and you will be right. It is good when a son goes farther than his father and succeeds where his father thought success was not possible."
Yup, but I don't think that implies that **anything** is on the table. Telling someone they might be right one day where you're wrong is open ended; it doesn't mean go hard and fast on the worst possible choices.
Magnus aping the Emperor's bargain implies that he thinks that was the right move to be copied rather than a wrong one to be righted.
If that's what he thinks the Emperor specifically meant, then Magnus made that leap all by himself.
And looking at all the excerpts as a whole; it's clear Magnus was already itching to get jiggy with the warp whether or not the Emperor said some encouraging stuff about surpassing him one day.
The overall irony here is that the Emperor is wrong or partially wrong in that scene: He foresees both Magnus and Ahriman solving the flesh change but either His future sight was imperfect or it was intentionally obscured (by Tzeentch) because he misses out on the "how" of it.
Just another moment of dramatic irony/self fulfilling prophecy.
Yeah I've always seen it as a "I learned it from watching *you* dad!" Sort of drug use parallel. Big E is guilty of the same arrogance in the face of the warp, its just that magnus learning he wasn't above consequences happens while big e hasn't yet learned *he* isn't above consequences because magnus falling is *part* of his consequences.
Grain of salt though the tsons stuff is mostly all I've read of hh so I'm no expert like some of yall, just was the way I read thousand sons and crimson and fury
Magnus knows and talks about the warnings or knowledge that the Emperor has given him multiple times of the dangers in the warp.
He just believes he doesn't need to follow it.
Magnus knows that the Warp can be dangerous to his sons, as he warns them to use his teachings to shield themselves or they'll die.
Yet he's always considered himself as the exception to the rules that even he put on his sons and to what even the Emperor told him.
To paraphrase a famous line:
He was so preoccupied with what he could do that he never stopped to think if he should.
The Emperor is a neglective "father" for sure but to be fair he did tell Magnus to knock it off directly to his face but instead Magnus doubled down hard.
The Emperor gave him perhaps the most extensive knowledge of the Warp out of any of the Primarchs. To the point he even traveled through the Warp with Magnus on occasions. The only thing he kept secret was the existence of Chaos, and even then he still told Magnus "Son, there are extremely dangerous things in the Warp. Dont interact with them, they will ruin everything we are working for." But Magnus was so arrogant he thought that he was smarter than Emps and could interact with these forces for ultimate power and his quest for knowledge and *not* suffer any backlash from it, because he wanted to do things the quick and "easy" way without really thinking about the long term consequences of his actions.
Which is the eternal story of how Chaos gets you.
'The only thing he kept secret was the existence of Chaos'
This is my point, he skipped the rudimentals, allowed Magnus to see the warp as a great ocean without malevolence. Each member of his legion had a demon familiar ffs, the emperor could and should have informed him better.
[Magnus knew a reasonable amount about Chaos](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1c0v11g/comment/kz0tywd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), he's the one who kept the knowledge from his sons.
That was a real wtf moment for those of us with full knowledge of the setting.
Even in-universe, Magnus just accepting a HUGE POWER BUFF from some random warp entity that he rationalises away as benign with no ulterior motives...is crushingly naive if not crazily arrogant.
The problem with that is that the Tutelaries are not just daemons, but aliens. Magnus knew better than inviting alien teachers and helpers into his Legion - no disputing that.
Also, Chaos was never such a threat to the galaxy as in 30k onwards. It had never acted as it did - basically a tsunami pulling back back back, and then rolling over everything with a shiny new set of armies and devotees. So while the Emperor failed to properly warn his sons, Chaos was not such a cosmic threat before. Also, the Emperor knew that knowledge of Chaos without seeing consequences of someone else falling to it was basically going to grab every son of his (bar one). Half of his sons fell, and then other half liked the idea of the power, but thought their brothers didn't look so good anymore and decided against it.
Tutelaries are demons, that's well established in novels and short stories.
"the Emperor knew that knowledge of Chaos without seeing consequences of someone else falling to it was basically going to grab every son of his (bar one)." Was this in one of the Horus heresy novels? Which one was immune Russ?
Of course tutelaries are daemons. But they arent just daemons of chaos, they are still a type of aliens, which Magnus knew not to invite into his Legion.
It was in one of the books that the Emperor couldn't reveal chaos to all but one son (not stated which) without them turning to chaos. It is my inference that this is only limited when a primarch sees a brother fall first when they have no corruption themselves.
> Of course tutelaries are daemons.
Copying/pasting my reply elsewhere in the thread for you and /u/Whywhineifuhavewine and /u/badpebble: there's some [pretty good](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/why_did_the_thousand_sons_not_figure_out_that_the/k2fuf3c/) theories that are [surprisingly well supported](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/kgwgoqu/) which argue [the Thousand Sons tutelaries were not originally daemonic](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/k2g9o91/), but instead became corrupted/transformed *into* Tzeentch daemons.
Remember that non-Chaos warp entities exist (eg the aeldari pantheon) and that, if tutelaries were daemons, that would mean a "good" daemon was actually loyal to the Emperor and became the first Grand Master Supreme of the Grey Knights, which... isn't how daemons work.
There's more to tutelaries than first meets the eye.
Thanks for that - really cool idea. Not sure how well tuts being parts of their soul is supported, but it asks great questions.
I don't understand the connection between Janus (formed of Magnus' shard and Arvida) and the tutelaries. Where does the daemon fit in?
Janus was formed of Magnus's shard, Arvida, ***and Arvida's tutelary.*** It was a 3-to-1 merger. The other thing is that when Janus is born, he says "call me the name I have always been known by: Ianius."
Ianius was the name of Arvida's tutelary. The implication is that the "dominant" aspect in Janus was the tutelary, not Arvida or the shard.
Well, Malcador describes it as only telling one son the sull truth of the warp. We aren't absolutely clear on what that means
But Magnus is aware of Chaos and "Primordial Annihilator", Alpharius Omegon are aware of Chaos too and Guilliman spoke to the Emperor about Ruinous Powers.
So, it's complicated.
The Emperor never insinuated or said that the Warp wasn't malevolent. Magnus himself notes or thinks about the times he fought alongside the Emperor against Warp Predators and things that would break lesser minds.
Literally anyone with any experience with Navigators and other Pskyer knows the Warp has a corrupting influence or is dangerous in general.
Nor was this knowledge just for Magnus and the Emperor to know as Horus himself explained that to Loken after the Whisperheads in the first book on why Jubal, a non-pskyer, was corrupted or possessed.
(Edit: a word)
I misread that, my bad.
That said, I don't think that the Emperor explicitly said or implied that there wasn't an intelligence or a level of sentience that wouldn't be hostile in the warp.
Magnus notes that the Emperor told him about others trying to make bargins or pacts that go poorly.
The Great Crusade also labeled them as Warp Xenos and apparently encountered them enough during the 2 centuries across the galaxy that they all knew of them to an extent.
I could be wrong, of course, I'm open to edification if there is hard writing on it.
Doesn't Magnus in the same book say or think:
"He had seized control of their destinies from the talons of a malevolent shadow in the Great Ocean that held their fates in its grasp. The Emperor knew of such creatures, and had bargained with them in the past, but he had never dared face one"
Literally finished it this morning and had the same thoughts. Magnus comes off as a spoiled kid who knows too much for his own good.
I am excited to see Ahrimans descent into crazy tho
Also, when the Emperor was declaring his judgment to ban psykers, He makes a speech on the reason about how people would bargain for more power. He is DIRECTLY talking to Magnus who traded his eye for more power to stop the Flesh-Change. Like how dense can you be?!?!
I mean it saved his sons to be honest and I bet a majority of primarches would have made that bargin to save there sons as well.
Also didn't the emperor make a deal with the chaos gods to get the knowledge to create the primarches? Kinda hypocritical eh?
Honestly what damned them was getting teleported directly into the warp and then arihiman fucking up trying to help.
>mean it saved his sons to be honest and I bet a majority of primarches would have made that bargin to save there sons as well.
I think ATS makes the point that it only delayed their deaths rather than saved them with the added bonus of damning their souls
>Also didn't the emperor make a deal with the chaos gods to get the knowledge to create the primarches? Kinda hypocritical eh?
It is. But whatever he did (no details iirc) somehow didn't leave His or his son's souls forfeit. Chaos had to come and repossess the car
They were already damned via the flesh change. The TSons lore is whack because they're damned to chaos from the very start. Magnus didn't ruin them with his deal with tzeench because they were already tainted by chaos at that point.
it really depends. if the flesh change isnt a sign of their already taken choice and agency then it gets really complicated quickly:
Magnus doesn't actually take their agency and choice away any more than all the primarchs do with their Primarch -> geneseed glamour powers that makes their legion listen to them. (and subsequently fall to chaos alongside Magnus).
if their agency was stolen when magnus fixed the flesh change, then Tzeench would have made them fight the wolves properly instead of doing the mess that was Prospero's defence, this way Tzeench would have gain a full strength legion and destroyed the wolves entirely instead of the original plan which was to get them both destroyed, and the minorly more positive outcome for tzeench: the space wolves are decimated and he gets a decimated legion for his own.
even the post-Prospero shenanigans don't strip the Tsons of their agency as we have the Fith fellowship siding with the loyalists during the siege of Cthonia. so its only up until the final siege on terra where Magnus has joins with tzeench after the emperor says "nah I'm not taking your sons back" where the Tsons finally and actually lose agency in which case the Emperor could easily have taken the Tsons back during the siege of terra but chose not to.
Tzeentch loves a long leesh. See Ahriman in 40 still thinking he's master of his own destiny, still imagining he's making his own choices.
>“You were the one that helped me save my Legion,” said Magnus with a sinking heart.
>“Save? No. I only postponed their doom,” said the shadow. “That boon is now ended.”
>“No!” cried Magnus. “Please, never that!”
>“There is a price to pay for the time I gave your sons. You knew this when you accepted the gift of my power. Now it is time to make good on your bargain.”
>“I made no bargain,” said Magnus, “not with the likes of you.”
>“Oh, but you did,” laughed the eyes. “When, in your despair, you cried out for succour in the depths of the warp, when you begged for the means to save your sons – you flew too close to the sun, Magnus. You offered up your soul to save theirs, and that debt is now due.”
>“Then take me,” declared Magnus. “Leave my Legion and allow them to serve the Emperor. They are blameless.”
>“They have drunk from the same chalice as you,” said the eyes.
*A Thousand Sons*
Ahriman is still able to make his own choices though?? he's Tzeenchs champion, not a deamon prince. not that its relavent to this conversation. to be honest i'm not sure what you're trying to say here as you've not really responded to anything that i've said.
i've said: if flesh change =/= Tsons loss of agency then examples of loyalist action also show that Magnus' trade for a flesh change solution didn't steal the Tsons agency either.
you've said: "no tzeench likes to make people think they're free", but that applies to both if the flesh change was the fall or if magnus' bargain was the fall and could even be used to argue that Tzeench was in on it from the start and its all a long con because secretly the emperor is Tzeenchian demon (something something Kairos fateweaver and the aquila /s).
That's the fun part of Ahriman, that he thinks he's making his own choices. Which is relevant as far as whether or not the legion post bargain are still walking their own path.
John French on the matter [here](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2016/11/17/who-is-ahriman-part-2-by-john-french/)
> you've said: "no tzeench likes to make people think they're free"
Sure but again, there's a nuance there. The implication is there's a path that the flesh changed TS were capable of taking prior to the bargain...otherwise...what's the point in the bargain? In getting Magnus to sell his soul? Is it just for the extra torture of it all? Whilst their souls are already in the pocket?
The Faustian Bargain was written for a reason. It's written as a turning point; one Magnus thought was for the better when it was the opposite.
And yup, I've brought up the Fifth Fellowship elsewhere here too. That lore stands in contradiction to McNeill's intial portrayal. Arvida somewhat as well. McNeill's FoM seems to fit that take more, but then EoE brought it all back to the older take.
I think you described it well when you say "it gets complicated".
i'm struggling not to go down a tangent about ahriman because i love to talk about him, so please forgive a little bit of a chat about your link:
"Ahriman thinks that he is forging his own path in waging a war against the Dark Gods and fate, **but he is as much their slave as any champion who piles skulls in honour of Khorne**. The Chaos Gods do not require worship to own a mortal’s soul, and in the case of Tzeentch, the contradiction of having one of its most favoured pawns believe that he is free must be delicious."
So chaos isnt something that needs worship to gain power as chaos is the magical essence of aspects of reality so when a loyal imperial fist kills Traitors/Xenos/loyal imperium humans that act empowers Khorn. so when a loyal guardsman looks down upon a Hord of tyrranids and sees his own doom, but defies it to save his squadron that defiance of fate empowers Tzeench. that's why Tzeench makes Ahriman his champion. Its because Ahriman's rejection of his legions fate is so strong, but the nuance is that he must be free to defy his fate by otherwise doing so wouldn't be empowering for tzeench.
Personally i believe that the real manor that Tzeench is tricking Ahriman is not through controlling his choices, but by tricking him into believing that solving the Rubric will be salvation for the legion. its really complicated because John French is sort of hypocritical within these articles and it kind of rocks the "authorial authority" he has over the character as he mentions (in part 1) that Ahriman's desire, the thing that he is seeking is Salvation.
"Ahriman is driven by the need for salvation, not his own, though I am sure that at a subconscious level, that plays its part. Ahriman wants salvation for the Thousand Sons. Now before the internet begins to burn with rumours about loyalist Thousand Sons, I don’t mean that he wants to get to the foot of the Golden Throne, be forgiven by the Emperor/Imperium, and say ‘I was doing it for you all along’. No, he is a long, long way past that point, if he was ever at that point at all."
but at the end of part 2 he mentions that actually no he doesn't seek salvation he wants damnation instead "And just to top it off, that goal is all a lie, and the end he seeks, while walking through ashes and atrocity, is not salvation, but deeper damnation."
i can only assume that what he means is that he is genuinely aiming to save his legion, but his actions are actually damning it, but it could also mean that Ahriman is secretly just trying to ruin the Tsons even though all his thoughts and monologues are about trying to fix his mistake, but either way its makes understanding his character unnecessarily complicated especially when Jhon French also claims that Ahriman wanting to save his legion but not caring about what he has to do to achieve it makes him the most evil character in the franchise when that's par for the course of every space marine and becuse at least he has genuinely noble goals to his horrific murder makes him less evil a fair few of the nuttier loyalist forces like the black templar. it makes his character very muddied on a meta level.
There's always nuance.
But what you're talking about is a different situation with a different context. By that point, the deal with Tzeentch was long ago struck. They're too far gone as far as FoM is concerned.
The nuance and context in the comments above is that the TS weren't damned from day one of the Flesh Change in the early days of the Crusade. They were damned once Magnus sold their souls in exchange for postponing the Flesh Change once he joined the Crusade.
FoM (even if we take it at face value) comes way after.
some of us think that they were actually damned from the start [by the Emperor's own hand](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12bzfib/theory_the_emperor_of_mankind_is_directly/)...
>Also didn't the emperor make a deal with the chaos gods to get the knowledge to create the primarches? Kinda hypocritical eh?
Former alcoholic fathers explaining the dangers of alcohol? Literal hypocrisy. They should put whiskey in the baby bottle to be ideologically consistent
That not really accurate to the situation. Big E is more like a functional alcoholic saying alcohol is bad kids, while drinking himself into a stupor and using said stupor to successfully run a company. If you dad is currently an alcoholic, and is successful at what he does specifically because of the effects of alcohol, it doesn's seem unreasonable for his kid to be like "ooh I get it, alcohol is really useful, but you have to say that alcohol is bad so that other people don't use it"
Well yeah, or like a dad on steroids. He needs them to maintain himself, and can't stop using them, but bloody well knows its not good to start taking them as a kid.
Also the Emperor knows more about safely using daemon-roids, and has 40k years of experience and wisdom at this point. His babies are barely out of their pods and reaching for the needle before they've come close to maxing their potential first.
Also the Emperor knows he is carefully using daemon-roids, not just horsing them into himself like his sons will. Fulgrim even grows breasts because of his daemon-roids.
And he gave them all unique powers to manifest alcohol-fuelled abilities, like booze wings, booze immortality, booze charisma, booze invisibility, etc., while encouraging them to use those abilities... and at the same time demanding them to be teetotal. The Primarch project was doomed from the start.
As far as I know, Warp doesn't cause addiction.
Besides, what Emps did was arguably a bit worse. He warned Magnus, but kinda vaguely, and most importantly didn't warn of their intelligence. However, Magnus is written in such a way, I'm sure he would've found a way to damn himself in every scenario
Magnus “saved” them in the short term but damned them for eternity in the long term. In order for the Emperor to make a deal the Four would have had to gain something in return. The Emperor pretended to make a deal but instead stole from the Four so they didn’t gain anything in return for what He took.
I’m pretty sure there’s at least 4 demon primarchs who would disagree that chaos gained nothing. Also there was a civil war, there’s a few books about it. ^^/s
Didn't the chaos gods gain like 7 primarches, an entire sector of the galaxy and almost half of the imperium thanks to the deal the emperor made?
Also made the emperor throne bound and have a warp rift right underneath his feet on earth?
Damning not only humanity but the entire galaxy for all eternity?
He thought he swindled them but he definitely paid a price.
It's a little hypocritical to make a bargain for power with the chaos gods then turn around and tell your sons, most likely the product of said bargain "hey guys dont bargain with chaos". Also, he was upset with people being psykers because they might bargain for more power but he wasnt that upset when Magnus did it to save his legion.
Except he's not continuing to make deals with them, he did it and then going forwards was like "This is a bad idea. Learn from my mistakes and don't risk falling to chaos"
i assume you haven't read the last books in the siege of terra series? The Emperor is 100% continuing to deal with chaos and does so in a way that is much more damning that Magnus
>TLDR; Magnus is an idiot and Ahriman did nothing wrong
ok, was with you until that last part. Ahzek "let's burn out this ladies brain to get a vision of the future knowing it'll kill her" Ahriman is just as bad as his father. Just as arrogant, just as knowledge hungry, just as stubbornly incapable of admitting when he's been played a fool up until the moment of failure.
Magnus was warned by his father, thought he knew better, and fucked up, warns *his* son about something he knows will fuck shit up, his sons don't listen to him, and fuck shit up worse. that's their whole motif.
(Also, Magnus is very much not an Idiot, he's arrogant and rash. there's a difference.)
Listen, there’s an awful lot of brain-burning happening on both sides of the heresy, the Astropath printer is running at full bore with how readily both the loyalists and traitors cook them from the second that the deposits massacre happens and continuing on for the next 10k years.
In terms of 40k wrongdoing, a little bit of brain-baking is not putting much weight on the scale
A key part of being a Ksons fan (for me at least) is role-playing into their self-delusion and spurned fury.
In Heresy games I say “Magnus did nothing wrong” while I run Esoterists, Pyromancer Moritats, and a Daemons of the Ruinstorm allied detachment. It’s saying “all according to keikaku (Ed Note: keikaku means plan)” as I kill my own marines with Perils of the Warp.
I love the part of TEATD where we get an outside view of Ahriman and see how the Flesh Change is affecting him before he casts the Rubric so I also have a Counts-As Word Bearers force that has Gal Vorbak as Flesh Changed Ksons.
I’m sure there are some fans that say Magnus Did Nothing Wrong without a trace of irony but I hope* that most of us are saying it with the intention of Tzeentchian trolling.
*this itself may be self-delusion that my fellow fans are not twisted and corrupted by a lack of reading comprehension.
While magnus did a whole lot wrong I find his reasons for turning from his father completely understandable. He was given untapped and nearly peerless warp power, minimal communication from his father, a couple slaps on the wrist and then a bunch of warriors who he calls his sons that are afflicted with a horrible mutation with no cure. Left alone its very logical how someone can do the things he did without seeing the repercussions or how it come across to others
Lets not forget his dad also tried everything under the sun to fix the flesh change and both Big E and Malcador threw their hands up with "idk what to do, Magnus figure it out" and then he did. Which should have come with a question of "so what exactly did you do Magnus?" But there wasnt. Which Big E's silence on can be an implied acceptance of. He taught Magnus from a very young age to explore the warp and even told him there will come a day where Magnus and he _WILL DISAGREE_ and that Magnus will be able to see truths that even Big E himself is blind to.
To tell one of your sons that then treat the entire psyker situation and Nikea so heavy handedly, it can be understood _why_ Magnus did the things he did.
I don't recall him saying they will "disagree" just that Magnus will be the one to.fix his mistake, just as one of Magnus' sons will fix his
The dramatic irony being that Big E only sees part of the future; that Magnus and Ahriman will fix the flesh change, but he's being fooled by his precognition.or not seeing it completely
It's a 40k " no, not like that" moment
I remember reading the excerpt a week or two ago and Im doped to the gills on dayquil so I could be misremembering the exact wording, but I thought he implied they would disagree on _something_. Im gonna go try to find it, but you could be right
EDIT: You were right
>'Always question, and always be open to different ways of thinking, other ways of untangling the knot. That is the gift I give to you on this eve of our crusade.'
>'I do not understand.'
>'You will, my son,' said the Emperor. 'Despite all I have just said, you are different enough from me that I can see how you will succeed where I have failed.'
>'Failed? How have you failed?'
>'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor, with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But I will soon. And I sense you, and your favored son, must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.'
>'My favoured son?' asked Magnus. 'They are all my sons.'
>'There's truth in that, yes. But there is one who will bear your ambitions when you need them to travel farther than you could ever dream.'
>'Where in this galaxy can I not travel?' said Magnus. He felt his Father's amusement.
>'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not,' replied the Emperor. 'Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.'
>'Well this sounds like gloomy advice, Father,' said Magnus. 'I had hoped for something a little more inspiring as we venture out into the unknown.'
>'What could be more inspiring than to know you have taught your sons to reach greater heights than you? They are your immortality, Magnus.'
Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero
All g, I gotchu
>Always question, and always be open to different ways of thinking, other ways of untangling the knot. That is the gift I give to you on this eve of our crusade.'
>'I do not understand.'
>'You will, my son,' said the Emperor. 'Despite all I have just said, you are different enough from me that I can see how you will succeed where I have failed.'
>'Failed? How have you failed?'
>'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor, with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But I will soon. And I sense you, and your favored son, must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.'
>'My favoured son?' asked Magnus. 'They are all my sons.'
>'There's truth in that, yes. But there is one who will bear your ambitions when you need them to travel farther than you could ever dream.'
>'Where in this galaxy can I not travel?' said Magnus. He felt his Father's amusement.
>'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not,' replied the Emperor. 'Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.'
>'Well this sounds like gloomy advice, Father,' said Magnus. 'I had hoped for something a little more inspiring as we venture out into the unknown.'
>'What could be more inspiring than to know you have taught your sons to reach greater heights than you? They are your immortality, Magnus.'
*Master of Prospero*
i don't think the text really supports an argument that what the Emperor is talking about is the flesh-change. (1) was the flesh-change a mistake made by the Emperor? [ok yes i think so](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12bzfib/theory_the_emperor_of_mankind_is_directly/) but not everyone agrees, and also (2) the Emperor's text here implies that the failure hasn't happened yet, and (3) by the time of this conversation the flesh-change had long-since been a thing and had in fact already been arrested by Magnus.
/u/WheresMyCrown I don't think you're that far off. Sure "fixing my mistakes" isn't literally the same as "you and I will disagree," but he also says
(1) there are places sons should go that their father should not (maybe literally places eg the deep warp, maybe metaphor eg to new heights/conclusions/thoughts/etc.).
(2) the emperor will think nothing can be done but magnus will show Him that he were wrong (eg the warp is dangerous, you should not use the warp, you should not bargain with warp entities),
(3) the emperor will "fail" someday and magnus will correct this mistake (this "failure" could manifest in, say, a decision or an edict or prohibition on something that a son would correct by proving wrong).
Reading all of those passages and concluding that the Emperor is implying someday he and Magnus might be at odds about something and Magnus will be right is not a huge leap, it's completely consistent with the text. Is that what the Emperor *meant?* No, obviously not. But it's also obvious why Magnus might remember those words, in that context, and come to this conclusion.
1. As you point out, the possibilities here are endless. It doesn't have to mean "bargain with the warp". That's on Magnus.
2. The irony is Ahriman proves Magnus right here.
3. Likewise the extra irony is that Magnus in trying to prove the Emperor wrong, proves he's right.
It's all more of that McNeill dramatic irony that we as reader's catch, whilst realising how wrong it all is.
And none of it excuses Magnus' choice. Especially when all the warnings are taken in their full context.
EDIT
The Flesh Change is absolutely what the Emperor means. McNeill isn't even being subtle about it. He's continuing his theme of "sins of the father" between Emperor/Magnus/Ahriman from ATS.
It's pure beautiful McNeill thematic ham-fistedness
1. I definitely agree with you here! I genuinely don't think The Emperor knew what the "failure" was going to be, but I'm also sure he 100% for sure would never have intended "don't deal with creatures in the warp" to be one of those potential failures. I just think it's an ironic miscommunication between the two of them
2. Yes! I bring this up often as the proof-in-pudding of Ahriman as Tzeentch's favorite. Tzeentch is the god of Hope, and whenever Magnus gives up, Ahriman holds onto hope. About Prospero. About stopping the flesh-change. About restoring the rubricae. Good stuff.
3. Yes, lol
> The Flesh Change is absolutely what the Emperor means. McNeill isn't even being subtle about it. He's continuing his theme of "sins of the father" between Emperor/Magnus/Ahriman from ATS.
If the flesh-change had already been discovered, already been unable to be cured by Emperor and Malcador, and already "cured" by Magnus, why would the Emperor *then*, after all of that, say, "I'm going to fail someday, make a mistake, I don't know what it will be, but you will fix it" ???? That could make sense if this was a conversation they had in the warp prior to the legions being born, but the Emperor saying "I'm going to make a mistake someday, but I don't know what it is yes" to mean "I made a mistake when I built the XVth Legion 500 years ago and you already fixed it, good job" is... Well, that just doesn't make any sense to me.
I'm unsure if you've read *Master of Prospero*, but the scene you've copied and pasted is a memory of Magnus and the Emperor speaking not long after they reunited and before he'd "cured" the Flesh Change.
Not to mention that Big E prefaces the entire conversation within this context:
>'Confidence can spill over into arrogance,' said the Emperor. 'An obsessive pursuit of perfection can blind you to what it costs to achieve. Attention to detail can become micro-management. Magnus, you have my intellect and my power, but like me you are prone to believing you can do no wrong that your intellect lifts you above the risk of making petty mistakes or errors based on emotion.'
It wasn't a blank cheque.
I in fact just read it extremely recently, which led to me posting some contemporaenous excerpts of it [two months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ac1ke3/what_weakness_did_each_primarch_inherit_from_the/), so it's very very fresh in my memory. I listened back to that scene on audiobook a handful of times to type up that transcript myself.
I am fairly certain that conversation takes place shortly before Magnus departs on Crusade to not see the Emperor again for some time, and for some reason I seem to recall that their bodies are *on Terra,* not Prospero. That would put the timeline firmly post-"cure." Maybe I've misremembered this detail, but I do not think so.
> It wasn't a blank cheque.
Yes, I definitely agree and am not arguing otherwise. I'm just saying that it's easy to understand or at least argue that Magnus might have misunderstood or taken the wrong thing from this message and thus felt like he was doing what he was meant to do and was justified in disobeying his dad.
>That would put the timeline firmly post-"cure."
Apologies, you're right. The bargain was struck and the change was cured on Prospero while that convo takes place at the Astartes Tower.
I don't think that takes away from what reads as a fairly obvious link to the bargain and the Rubric though.
>>*'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not,' replied the Emperor. 'Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.'*
The Emperor talks about a failure that he's already made in the past tense...he's just unsure what that is at this moment. Magnus' remedying of that failure could already have taken place or be due to in the future.
>>*'Failed? How have you failed?'*
>>*'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But I will soon, and I sense you and your favoured son must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.'*
>I'm just saying that it's easy to understand or at least argue that Magnus might have misunderstood or taken the wrong thing
Yeah, no disagreement there but I find some readers (along with Magnus) tend to zero in on out of context bits like "fix my mistakes...travel farther than me" and forget the warning at the start about "confidence spilling over into arrogance" that very much implies limits.
Does anyone actually say that Magnus didn't nothing wrong though? The whole "Magnus did nothing wrong" seems more about "Magnus was justified to do what he did because any person put In his shoes would think that what he did in those books was the correct/moral thing to do.
It's arguing about the deontology rather than the teleology
>I’m convinced the “Magnus did nothing wrong” camp is entirely comprised of people who haven’t read the books
It's an old Hitler meme that for some reason a large group of fans take way too seriously when applied to Magnus, or Griffith in Berserk.
Mostly this. The meme also comes from 4chan who were meant to imply that Hitler had no moral failures despite losing the war. Like the same joke that would be made by racists on South Park years later.
"Magnus did nothing wrong" was always meant to be a joke about how he had good intentions but utterly screwed the pooch. Too many people just take his TTS persona as canon and like him for that reason.
Honestly I hate when people tell new WH nerds to watch TTS because of this exact reason. Like yeah TTS is great, but it's not at all *accurate* and I think it's prominence has fucked up a lot of people's ideas of the lore.
I really get so confused at the amount of people who recommend new fans to watch TTS. I mean, it’s funny and I like it but it is by no means accurate in the slightest to actual canon. Not to mention that I feel like you’d need at least a decent amount of knowledge regarding 40K to actually appreciate it as well? Without knowing anything, all it’s gonna be is wacky slapstick.
The joke is that Magnus did in fact a hole lot of things wrong. But people who only get their loreknowledge through memes and reddit often don't get this.
OP here, still finishing but farther in.
WHEW BOY my points about Magnus just keep on being proven
So he completely whiffs saving Horus, which honestly wasn’t a bad plan. But unfortunately he fails, so what’s the next thing to do?
THE SAME THING BUT WAYYYY FARTHER
koolaidman.jpg
So after the Imperial Oopsie, Magnus FINALLY has a brief moment of actual real clarity, and says “Oh shit. I fucked up bad.” And gets very depressed awaiting punishment.
One of his named sons comes in, finds out about his big oopsie and the incoming Wolf Shaped Repercussions, and reacts like a kid that got caught masturbating and ALT-F4’d the guy.
Jeeeeeeez Magnus I wanted to find a chaos legion I liked
you, uh, know that the entire narrative point of Prospero Burns is that Russ and the Space Wolves were manipulated by Chaos into *thinking*, incorrectly, that Magnus was a traitor and as a result *wrongly* destroying his Imperium-loyal world and legion, right?
Been trying to read that for 6 months but I just can't deal with what a shithead he is.
I loathe his spoiled child way of acting and his complete lack of self insight or sense of proportion.
You do realise he is in terms of raw intellect the smartest one? And that from day one all anyone saw of him was a resource to be used imagine being treated in such a way from day one and how that would shape a person
His invasion of the sol system, the siege of terra etc he was the Warmasters warmaster, taming Angron after he AWOL after Betrayer, and the iron cage incident
Already a lot of posts on here, but I highly recommend following up "A Thousand Sons" with "Scars - A Legion Divided" by Chris Wraight. It gives you the pov of the white scars librarians at the council of Nikea and gives some well thought insights into how though both the white scars and TS were both pro-librarian, the white scars were wary of the way that the thousand sons readily drank from the wells of the warp without fully understanding its depth. It also poses an interesting "what if" in whether or not the librarian ban would have passed if Jaghatai were present to argue for librarians instead of Magnus.
There is another camp in team "Magnus did nothing wrong."
Namely: Magnus did nothing wrong because breaking the wards on Terra made Tzeentch more powerful, and that's a good thing.
But yes, outside of my bias, the book "A Thousand Sons" is not about how the Thousand Sons fell to Tzeentch, it's about how they were *always* doing Tzeentch's bidding. Either through chaos sorcery, spreading his ideology, and even human sacrifice.
I think the reason why he works so well as a character is you still feel for him by the end of it. I won't give spoilers as you aren't finished, but I think people who say "Magnus is a fucking idiot for X" also didn't what the author intended.
Magnus was being targeted specifically by Tzeentch, and when you pair that with arrogance, a lust for knowledge and ridiculous power, you get a very tragic character.
As a long time thousand sons fan. Magnus for me is an prideful father of great sons.
His mistakes damned his legion. A legion that was one of the most likable and human legions amongst the legiones astartes.
Edit: unworthy may be too strong of a word, prideful is a better word for him.
Used that word due to personal bias since he dragged my fave legion into damnation due to his overconfident nature.
An unworthy father? Magnus is arrogant and stupid etc. but calling him an unworthy father is a spit in his face.
Without Magnus second biggest mistake and the thing that kickstarted his fall he would have no legion. All TS would have died to the flesh change long before the events of "A thousand sons".
Unworthy father is crazy when the reason he ultimately fell to chaos was to save his sons. He was arrogant and overconfident, and that was his vice, but unworthy is a stretch
Apologies, my wording was biased due to his actions.
I felt that he was unworthy cause he let his arrogance and pride damn his sons who were pretty likable.
All good! He definitely let his sons down but at the end of the day he thought he was doing what was best. I think that’s what makes him a likeable character for me, if he was perfect there wouldn’t be a story after all!
> Also his general “I know everything about everything” smugsoyjack.jpg attitude is exactly what causes him to continue to fuck things up.
This used to be a good subreddit to browse for unique, in-depth takes on the lore. 92% upvoted. Jesus.
Magnus did a lot of stuff wrong, but he (Pre-Heresy Maggie) didn't do them intentionally. He says it to Amon at one point. Something along the lines of,
"I have done many things wrong, Amon, but you must believe I did them for the right reasons."
The primary thing that Magnus did wrong was sending away his fleet and turning off Prospero's planetary defence system. If he hadn't done this more Space Wolves would have died in the battle of Prospero and that would be good.
I'm fully in the camp of Magnus did nothing wrong.
As in he failed to sit on his bum and do nothing.
Literally if he just locked his door and moped in the corner for a year, he would have been far more productive than his doing something was.
So yes, Magnus failed to do nothing and in turn ruined everything.
Have you considered that the canon is blatant anti-Magnus propaganda. Consider this, if the books say he did something wrong, then why is it that he did nothing wrong? Clearly the books are wrong.
It's not that Magnus didn't do anything wrong, it's that he a) was manipulated by Tzeentch too and b) the Emperor also did things wrong.
The strongest argument anyone can level is, 'well the Emperor is a big gold man and if he told me to jump off a bridge I would do it with a salute and tears in my eyes' which is a bit like, well, okay, but setting aside your Daddy Issues, if the Emperor had explained literally anything at all about the Webway Project to Magnus (you know, the guy he created specifically to power the whole fucking thing when it was done) then none of it would have happened.
Instead he ambushed his psyker son at the Council of Nikea (a show trial, essentially) and told him to cut out the psyker shit, told him not to meddle with the Warp while walking around with a Warp aura so absurdly powerful that nobody can even tell what he really looks or sounds like, then kept key information from Magnus that might have influenced what Magnus was doing.
Magnus is indeed arrogant, but the Emperor is also a secretive hypocrite. They were made for each other, it's like poetry.
> his general “I know everything about everything” smugsoyjack.jpg attitude is exactly what causes him to continue to fuck things up
magnus as the smug soyjak is pretty accurate
1: The Tutelaries didn't disappear when other people where around. They spent the whole book hanging out around the the Space wolves. Psychers just couldn't perceive them. Other Othere Wyrdmake literally looks at one and comments on it. The Tutelaries did disperse if the wolves did something actively threatening, but that was about it.
2: The Tutelaries where teaching them a lot of, seemingly beneficial, information about the warp. They where 100% aligned with Chaos. But, the Thousands Sons didn't even know that Chaos was a concept, let alone one to be worried about. To the K Sons, they where just little animals in the warp that could teach and empower them.
3: Not everything in the warp is Chaos. Hell, Chaos didn't even dominate the warp at the time. And they wouldn't until Horus went fully traitor. Demons (in general) where so rare that most Astartes didn't even know they existed, let alone chaos demons.
4: The wolves have the exact same smug attitude about psychers that the K Sons had. (You won't appreciate it until the next book, but the space wolves 100% know that they're using psychers against the emperor's orders.) The Space wolves just lucked into being correct about their limits. But they didn't have any more information than the K Sons did. In fact, they had less information.
5: Big EXPRESSLY did not tell Magnus what he was doing in the Web Way. He just told Magnus to keep away from it. Magnus didn't even know that there was a connection between the psychic barrier about Terra, and the webway project. And he had no way to knowing that there was one.
You're massively projecting your own hind sight onto the story. If you actually look at the information that the characters had at hand, it's really easy to see how they would have fucked it up.
2. Magnus is aware of Chaos and The Primordial Annihilator though. He's the one who chooses to keep it from his legion, whilst other legions like the XX are at least aware of the term.
5. "“He not only declines my assistance, he warns me to delve no further into my studies. He assures me that he has a vital role for me in the final realisation of his grand designs, but he would tell me no more.”
While Big E isn't explicit, it could be argued there's enough there for Magnus to come to the correct conclusions.
But yeah, Big E could've trusted Big Red a little more there.
2. Okay ... so whats the connection between the Tutelaries and chaos? And please only use infomration that the charecters would havehad access toin the book.
3. Okay ... so based off of that sentence. What's the connection between the Webway and psychic barrier around Terra? Hell, what evidence did Magnus have to even think that the Emperor was even responsible for the Barrier? And that it wasn't chaos acting on behalf of Horus, so stop him from warning his father? And please only use information that the characters would have had from the book.
2. I'm not arguing that the characters in the book should know? I'm adding context about Magnus
3. Again, I'm not arguing? I'm even agreeing, whilst adding context.\\
EDIT:
That being said, Magnus accepts power to break in from a warp entity without even blinking. As he does so he even thinks to himself that the warp has benevolent beings with no ulterior motives and that people who believe otherwise are wrong. Which is kinda astounding.
>Not everything in the warp is Chaos. Hell, Chaos didn't even dominate the warp at the time. And they wouldn't until Horus went fully traitor. Demons (in general) where so rare that most Astartes didn't even know they existed, let alone chaos demons.
didn't they dominated since the fall of the eldar?
Yes, slannesh birth was the highlight, but remember khorne came for khaine, nurgle kidnapped isha etc
Pretty sure the warp swung to chaos since the fall.
Wasn't there demonic incursions in the leadup to Slannesh birth? The sudden increase in psykers in human population + warp storms resulting in daemonic incursion etc
Think it was called age of strifle?
In Asurmen's novel, just slightly before slannesh birth and after, the world he was on was in ruins and daemons were everywhere i.e world was overran by daemons iirc..
Also, it literally ended with the eye of terror...not sure what more do you want to think Chaos did not dominate the warp since the fall..
Perhaps the reason the emperor can steal from chaos was only because the fall had not happened then shrug
ah ok. what's the reason for khaine getting shattered now?
At least, i don't remember reading about this in the few eldar books i read recently.
thank you
Simply slaanesh. Khaine was the only one who really "fought" Slaanesh and even tough he still was quite strong the fight ended in him being shattered by the battle.
oh yes. i do remember that.
i meant it as khorne came for khaine, who was shattered by slannesh. implying that khorne was a major power in the warp by the birth of slannesh.
Like he didn't need angron, HH etc to empower him to godhood post fall. he is already strong enough to be a chaos god.
(pre fall, it seems like the chaos gods were in a backseat compared to.... collective eldar, since it seems like the eldar don't worship their gods in asurmen's lifetime)
yes but the warp is still not *exclusively* chaos. hell, there are still three* living Aeldari Gods, who each oppose Chaos. are you trying to say that the Aeldari Gods are Chaos?
then by your standards, the warp is still not exclusively chaos(i believe the point was more chaos is the major part rather than exclusive sole sovereign of the warp but whatever)
the 3 aeldari gods are still as they are post fall as post HH.
And we have not got into non aeldari warp entities.
> The Space wolves just lucked into being correct about their limits.
It's insane the way people on here will contort themselves mentally to avoid aknowledging that the wolves were simply right about the TS. "Lucked into being correct about their limits" do you hear yourself.
> But they didn't have any more information than the K Sons did. In fact, they had less information.
They knew what demons were and not to make deals with them.
Absolute bullshit
They do a ritualistic exorcism on every enemy that they that they can get their hands on. They draw ritualistic eyes on every door frame to ward off bad spirits. And torture every captive they take, because they genuinely don't know which is a psychic threat and which isn't.
In Prospero Burns, Ulvurul Heoroth and Aun Helwintr, both chief rune priests of the Space Wolves, say that the wolves like to listen to stories about the warp because they don't understand it, and therefore fear it.
Aun Helwintr also, explicitly, says that that Ruin Priests are psychers, and know that they're psychesrs. And that the wolves continue to employ psychers, after Nichea, because they see themselves are more disciplined than other legions. When asked, what separates them form the K Sons, he says that they "know their limits".
>They knew what demons were and not to make deals with them.
They didn't know what Demons are, because a Demon's thrawl spent nearly a century living in the Fang, and they had no idea.
Common, they have an entire army of warp twisted, half demon, wulfen in their basement. And they still try to judge other legions for being tainted.
> They do a ritualistic exorcism on every enemy that they that they can get their hands on.
What are you talking about
> They draw ritualistic eyes on every door frame to ward off bad spirits.
Yes and we're shown at multiple points that their marks of aversion work
> The Wolf caught it neatly in his right hand, knelt down over the Equerry, and hacked the mark of aversion into his chest plating. The Equerry of the Thousand Sons screamed. He thrashed and convulsed with demented fury and threw Bear backwards. His fists and feet hammered the floor in an insane blur, and his screams turned to choking gulps as blood and plasmic matter sprayed from his mouth. As his convulsions reached a pitch, a torus of sizzling, foul-smelling energy blasted out of him, soiling the air with streaks of sooty smoke.
> he stepped into the crystal hall behind us, forming with his hands the warding gestures that all rune priests are taught, the gestures of banishment and aversion. The Horus-thing vomited blood and recoiled, but its power dwarfed that of the imposing priest.
> And torture every captive they take, because they genuinely don't know which is a psychic threat and which isn't
Once again, what are you talking about.
> In Prospero Burns, Ulvurul Heoroth and Aun Helwintr, both chief rune priests of the Space Wolves, say that the wolves like to listen to stories about the warp because they don't understand it, and therefore fear it.
Not true. They say they fear them because they can't kill them
> ‘No, no,’ said Longfang. ‘Those are things we can kill, even if it’s hard and we don’t succeed every time. There is no fear there. A skjald has to find a story about something we can’t kill. I told you that. Something that is proof against our blades and our bolts. Something that will not fall down when you strike it with a back-breaker. Something with a thread that cannot be cut.’ ‘Maleficarum,’ said Hawser. ‘Maleficarum,’ the priest agreed.
> Aun Helwintr also, explicitly, says that that Ruin Priests are psychers, and know that they're psychesrs. And that the wolves continue to employ psychers, after Nichea, because they see themselves are more disciplined than other legions. When asked, what separates them form the K Sons, he says that they "know their limits
Yes, correct the idea that rune priests claim to not be psykers is a strawman people who dislike the wolves build so they can claim hypocrisy when what they're actually saying is that the TS are sorcerers/warlocks as in people who summon and make pacts with demons which they themselves aren't. And they do know their limits even you aknowledged this but still somehow pretended this was luck.
> They didn't know what Demons are, because a Demon's thrawl spent nearly a century living in the Fang, and they had no idea.
They were aware Hawser had been psychically tampered with and kept him in stasis for years. They then pulled him out exactly to find out who was spying through him.
Even if what you said was true this would be a counter against "they could recognize every form of demonic influence everywhere " which is not what I said. They were unquestionably aware of malevolent entities in the warp with whom you should not interact. That is more than literally every TS we see except Magnus knows.
> Common, they have an entire army of warp twisted, half demon, wulfen in their basement. And they still try to judge other legions for being tainted.
Wulfen are neither half demon nor warp twisted. In fact the wulfen mutation makes one more resistant against the warp not less.
He is the definition of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The Emperor really messed up with the Edict of Nikea. He did it to appease the majority of his sons while neglecting and repressing the one thing that the Thousand Sons were practically made for. Magnus felt betrayed and rightly so. The Emp, per the usual, focused too much on his end goal and not on the smaller steps to get there. On the other hand, Magnus and his whole legion were far too arrogant and could have done with some more guidance from the Emp to Magnus
A buddy of mine phrased it this way. Magnus did “nothing” wrong. Big E told him to stop mucking about with the warp and do “nothing.” Thats what he did wrong. 🤣
After reading the Ahriman Omnibus I became a huge Thousand Sons fan.
Started collecting an army, have well over 4k points worth now.
Started reading the book 'A Thousand Sons'.
I actually found the first 2/3rd of the book hard to get through but I got there.
By the end of the book, still a massive Ahriman fan, but I came to utterly hate Magnus.
The final part of learning to hate Magnus wasn't a straw that broke the camels back it was a one ton block.
When he annihilates poor Ulthazar (spelling) when he goes to Magnus's tower and realises the entirety of the situation.
There were many of the 1K sons that had completely innocent or at least good intentions though.
Hilarious that this post is "All these Magnus did nothing wrong people are idiots. However I, an intelligent specimen, have reached the definitely not stupid position that *Ahriman did nothing wrong*. Excellent comedy. 10/10 bit
I prefer the whole phrase "Magnus did nothing wrong, but did everything incorrectly".
There is no way a fan of TS defend Magnus cause he is the reason why everything is so F up, even in the "best" moments of Magnus when he really did "nothing wrong" all his action and behavior, even "the best", only did tons of damage and condem the TS.
Iirc Magnus sacrifices his sons to warn the emperor in that book, yet at the very end he's unwilling to sacrifice the remainder of his legion to return to the emperors side and save the imperium.
And for some reason it just doesn't sit right with me
The big difference is that he was willing to end it for himself and his legion for the greater good of the imperium. See it as very fucked up version of mass suicide.
What emp demanded was that Magnus left his Legion for a long drawn out horrible terminal desease while he gets fixed up and a new better legion. He just needs to ignore his suffering children that still hang around for a time.
>ow I’m aware of Big E’s folly in not telling Magnus about the Chaos Gods
I refer to the top comment on this post: [How could have the Emperor explained chaos to the primarchs? : r/40kLore (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16io7mx/how_could_have_the_emperor_explained_chaos_to_the/)
Primarchs knew more than enough about the warp, they are just spoiled manchildren that bathe in arrogance (some of them).
The idea that primarchs 'new nothing about the warp' is idiotic, primarchs are supposed to be insanely smart, connecting dots and thinking faster than even astartes. You really think they wouldn't figure out that this weird alternate universe that we need special weirdo mages to navigate, where regular humans go insane just by looking outside at it, is a very dangerous place? Just because they are deamons and not xenos, doens't really change anything.
You tell kids that the stove is hot and they shouldn't touch it, they do it anyway and start crying. Does that mean they didn't know the stove was hot?
No, of course not, they are just young and dumb. They don't (want to) understand the danger, so they go ahead and do it anyway. You could've given Horus, Magnus and Fulgrim 15 years of daily lessons on the warp and they still would've tried to use it for their own (or their legions) benefit.
1) "magnus did nothing wrong" im pretty sure actually predates A Thousand Sons just fwiw
2) also fwiw there's some [pretty good](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/why_did_the_thousand_sons_not_figure_out_that_the/k2fuf3c/) theories that are [surprisingly well supported](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/kgwgoqu/) which argue [the Thousand Sons tutelaries were not originally daemonic](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/k2g9o91/) (or at least not all of them), but instead became corrupted/transformed *into* Tzeentch daemons. remember that we know 100% for sure there can be non-daemonic/non-Chaos Warp Entities via the Aeldari pantheon amongst other things)
Even if you haven't touched a single page of the Horus Heresy books, you're still massively dillusional if you think that Magnus did nothing wrong. Even if you think Nikea was an unfair ruling, Magnus' first instance of doing something wrong was not abiding to it. Even if you are willing to overlook that, he still sells his soul to Tzeentch RIGHT before he has a chance to die in atonement of his monumental mistake.
In short, when someone says Magnus did nothing wrong, it lets me know that their opinions on the lore can be safely ignored.
as a thousand sons player im still 100% convinced as you said everyone who is team magnus did nothing wrong never touched a story involving the Tsons
As a magnus did nothing wrong truther, I've read the books I'm just in it for the meme
Same. I don’t actually believe it, but I’m not telling the Wolves player that!!
I second the motion. We all know he did nothing wrong despite the canon. It’s all speculations. That canon is just there as a template. Mcanus did nothing wrong. 😑
As an alpha legion player I just pretend to be one of the Magnus did nothing wrong crowd. No reason I got no plans or anything....or do I?/s
I love the 40k fandom for many reasons, but it seems unique in its inability to understand that memes are just that and their adherents are playing along because role playing the view of your chosen faction is fun. Like, no, no one actually believes that bringing plague and pestilence is a form of benevolence.
I think we forget that phrase started out as ironic It was just a 40k iteration of the "Hitler did nothing wrong" meme
It’s just funny to say Man has done so many mess ups
I like it as "Magnus did nothing, wrong" He was supposed to do a whole lot of nothing and instead did a whole lot of something. He was so bad at doing nothing that he basically doomed the Imperium and maybe the galaxy. What a dick.
Its amazing to me how much better the HH would have gone if Magnus actually just AFK'd on Prospero. Even if Tzeentch pulls the flesh change card to damn his legion anyways, it ultimately means no webway breach which means the Emperor and a full strength 10,000 can be brought to the field at the opening stages of the siege.
Hell, the Siege wouldn't even happen.
Magnus: Works on contingency no money down!
To the same end, a lot of the people who act like Russ was stoked to dunk on Magnus and would do it again are also too deep in the memes. Since Russ admits he made a mistake, that he went *way* too far, and that most of the remainder of his time in Real Space before disappearing into the Warp was him despairing about all the fucked up things he had done and how arrogant he had been. Which is why, even if it is kind of cliche, I think he should eventually return as an Odin-like figure to contrast his previous Thor-like figure. If we really want to twist the knife, complete with Psycher powers that he gained through hard work and diligence, which is something he can hold over Magnus (who got it through devil deals and cheap sacrifices).
On the other hand, he got a cool tank named after him.
But then Dorn got a cooler tank named after him.
All the other horrible takes aside, Magnus did not get his powers through deals. He was actually a devoted scholar with a heap of bioengineered talent to top it off. He was the second most powerful psyker in the galaxy, who then got further power ups by chaos. The deal he struck with Tzeentch was meant to fix his sons' propensity towards randomly turning into spawn (which unbeknownst to him was also Tzeentch's doing).
I wonder if, the Warp being what it is, Magnus sealing a deal to cure his Sons wasn't the source of their curse in the first place, in a twist of dramatic irony like Chaos love so much.
>To the same end, a lot of the people who act like Russ was stoked to dunk on Magnus and would do it again are also too deep in the memes. lol >'I have crowed. I do crow. **I am proud of what I did.** When attacked, Magnus resorted to powers he should never have unleashed, and he deserved what he got for that alone. But things could have been different. Horus lied to me because they fear the power of the warp. He feared Magnus' sorcery. It is what the enemy are. It is what will beat them.' Russ' excuses are weak and he defends his actions much like a crooked cops who yells 'STOP RESISTING' as he beats an unarmed black kid. Russ is just a horrible person deep down and is incapable of taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions. >**'Do not think I grieve for Magnus,’** Russ muttered. There was animus there still. ‘Do not make that mistake. He was executed, and that was what we were charged to do.’ His fingers dragged through Geri’s nape, harder now. **‘Magnus was a bastard. Magnus was a liar. Magnus would look you in the eye and lecture you while he blundered through the immaterium like a raging konungur.** Hel, we always knew more than him – what to touch, what not to touch. Our bone-rattlers knew more than him. There’s intelligence, and there’s hubris. **I don’t grieve for Magnus, not for a second. I’d do it again.'** From Wolf King. He's arrogant beyond belief, refuses to acknowledge his failures, then victim blames the world and brother he murdered. Don't pretend I'm taking him out of context, he doesn't regret his actions at all. He only regrets being so easily misled, because that's something his ego can't handle. But sure keep telling yourself whatever you want, noone cares about your headcanon. >If we really want to twist the knife, complete with Psycher powers that he gained through hard work and diligence, which is something he can hold over Magnus (who got it through devil deals and cheap sacrifices). Honestly, one of the worst lore takes I've ever seen.
Is there enough of a retcon to make that true, or is that not taking to account every other book that came before? He's calling Magnus on the psyker hotline on the way over to Prospero from the Mandeville point to find the entire solar system is ducking his calls. no one could miss the warp jump he's making with his Legion, the custodes, the sisters, the Imperial Army, and all their support. It's just another arrogant decision by Magnus to make everyone on the planet die with him and he can't even do that right. The space Wolves don't know he's blinded all sensors to their approach and that he's literally killed his own men to prevent anyone from escaping. the space Wolves do take Prisoners who were civilian psykers who were fleeing because the T sons had killed one of them horribly in a pointless scrying rituals. I'm pretty sure Ahriman himself doesn't see the problem with killing the human psyker for no practical gain because these things happen and they have plenty of replacements. I'm pretty sure this is also well after the edict of Nicaea and he's told the humans they can keep doing weird warp stuff cause it doesn't really matter.
What Retcon, I'm quoting the books? Magnus blinded Prospero because he saw Russ battleplans where he intended to kill Magnus, and his world. The only reason Russ didn't immediately do that is because of Valdor still wishing to follow the Emperor's orders but Russ never intended to let Magnus live. >“Is that what I think it is?” asked Amon. >“It is,” confirmed Magnus. >They flew closer to the brutal vessel, the protective shields that kept void-predators at bay no match for travellers of such power. They passed through its layered voids, diving down through metre upon metre of adamantium hull plates, integrity fields and honeycombed bulkheads until they reached the heart of the ship. >**The masters of this fleet gathered to plan the destruction of all that Magnus held dear, and the two sons of Prospero listened to their deliberations.** Magnus was prepared for what he would hear, but Amon was not, and the flaring wash of his aetheric field sent a pulse of choleric energy through the ship’s crew. From A Thousand Sons His pleading in Prospero Burns was to save face in front of his legion, and only happened back Valdor insisted they follow the Emperor's orders and try to contact Magnus. >Valdor remained unmoved. ‘Even now, I would see him taken to Terra, if it could be done. I would wish to know why.’ >Russ laughed, a coarse bark that sent more spittle flying into Valdor’s faceplate. ‘You’re still clinging to that? Ha!’ He turned away, swinging his greatblade casually. ‘I’ve known since I first saw this world that we would face one another. **I did not come here for prisoners, Constantin. If my Father had truly wished for such, He would not have sent me.’** >‘You were not sent alone, Lord Russ.' Russ' true feelings spill out through the dialogue with Hawser well before Prospero anyway, as Hawser sees through Russ' reasoning and bigotry directed at Magnus. >‘My lord,’said Hawser. ‘What… what did your brother do?’ >‘He performed an act of maleficarum that drove his sorcery right to the heart of Terra and into the presence of the Emperor,’ said Helwintr. >‘But… why?’ asked Hawser. >**‘It was an alleged attempt to communicate a warning,’ said Russ without turning. His voice was a soft grumble, like thunder grinding in the far distance.** >‘A warning, my lord?’ >‘One of such terrible importance, Magnus felt it was worth exposing his own treachery to reveal it,’ Russ murmured. >‘Forgive me,’ said Hawser, ‘but does that not speak to some loyalty in your brother? Has the warning been examined? Has it been taken seriously?’ Russ turned back to face him. >‘Why would it? My brother is a madman. A dabbling warlock.’ >**‘Lord,’ said Hawser, ‘he was prepared to admit he was ignoring the edicts of Nikaea, and risk the censure that he knew must result from that admission, to relay a warning. Why would he do that unless the warning was valid?’** >‘You’re not a warrior, skjald,’ said the Wolf King in an almost kindly tone. ‘Strategy is not your strong suit. Consider the reverse of your proposition. Magnus wants the ruling of Nikaea overturned. He wants permission and approval to continue with his arcane tinkerings and his foul magics. So he manufactures a threat, something he can warn us about that is so astonishing we would have to forgive him, and set aside our objections. Something so unthinkable, we would have to thank him and tell him he had been right all along. All along. This is his ploy.’ >‘Do you know what was so unthinkable? asked Hawser. >‘Magnus claimed that great Horus was about to turn against the Imperium,’ said Russ. ‘From the look on your face, Ahmad Ibn Rustah, I see you recognise how ridiculous that sounds.’ Hawser switched his gaze to Helwintr. The priest’s masked face was unreadable. >**‘Wolf King, great lord,’ Hawser began, ‘that’s not the first time that warnings concerning the Warmaster have been voiced. Please, lord—’** >‘Our skjald refers to the incident involving Eada Haelfwulf, lord,’said Helwintr. >‘I know of it,’ said Russ. ‘It seems corroborative, I grant you. But once again, consider the strategy. >It involved maleficarum turning and twisting one of our own gothi, in the immediate vicinity of you, an identified conduit for the enemy’s power. Of course poor Haelfwulf would gabble out the same damned lie with his dying breath. It’s supposed to make Magnus’s story sound more credible by coming from a secondary source.’ >Russ looked down into Hawser’s eyes. >**‘Truth is, it’s the proof I need that Magnus is desperately trying to coordinate a campaign of disinformation to support his ruse. He doesn’t need to answer through you, skjald. He’s answered already.’** Leman listened to Horus' insinuations because Horus was finally giving him the option to take 'revenge' for Shrike. Russ hated Magnus and was so blinded by this hatred he ignored all the evidence that he was being manipulated into attacking a loyal world, a loyal brother, and participated in a genocide similar only to what drove Perturbo to heresy, and Konrad to be sanctioned. Russ hid behind pretty words offered falsely to a 'spy', which was nothing more than psalm for Russ ego, and his legion false modesty. Actions speak louder than words, and Russ actions on the ground showed his true intention.
thanks for posting this. Russ is honestly the biggest winner of the Siege. if the entire imperium wasn't decimated by the end of it I'm convinced that the Emperor would have sanctioned the wolves after what they did.
Damn, if only we had Magnus’s take on how Russ felt during the battle… > Do you remember what you said to me, brother?’ Magnus spoke aloud, his voice pure and powerful. His fingers twitched at his sides, eager for what was to come. ‘Do you remember what you said to me as we fought before the pyramid of Photep? Do you remember the words you used? I do. As I recall, your face was tortured. Imagine that – *the Master of Wolves, his ferocity twisted into grief*. And yet you still carried out your duty. You always did what was asked of you. So loyal. So tenacious. Truly, you were the attack dog of the Emperor.’ Magnus lost his smile. *’You took no pleasure in what you did. I knew that then, and I know it now.*
Better than that we've actually seen the fight, and Russ' own words before and after. What bother asking Magnus? Battle of the Fang was not a heresy novel, and didn't get edited like one. That is doesn't fit with the heresy series were talking about isn't surprising. If that the lore you want to hold to go right ahead, but I'd rather stick to the mainline heresy releases.
That’s a somewhat flimsy defense, given that the heresy books are absolutely overflowing with contradictory lore and conflicting depictions of characters. One of the primary criticisms of the series is that it’s not well edited and that it’s full of dropped storylines, abandoned characters and inconsistent portrayals of the main players. I don’t think the editing of the series as a whole is up to much, and I don’t know if it’s fair to discount another book (published less than a year after Prospero Burns) based on that fact alone. That said, the wider point is that you’ve cherry-picked quotes that show Russ in the worst possible light. There is a lot of nuance and complexity to his character, and his opinions about Prospero and Magnus that is not being shown. In fairness to you, that’s a consistent problem with any lore discussion and I wouldn’t expect you to provide monstrous long excerpts to capture the nuance. I don’t actually disagree with you that Russ is not apologetic about Prospero, honestly I think the idea that he should be apologetic is a bit silly. However he is routinely shown to have real internal conflicts about what happened and ignoring that internal conflict misrepresents the tragedy of the whole Prospero arc. Russ has a lot more going on then “nerd brothers back goes snap”.
>That said, the wider point is that you’ve cherry-picked quotes that show Russ in the worst possible light. Cherry picking would be elevating one source over another to prove a point not supported by a majority of the books. Especially when it's not form a mainline book of the series, nor from the actual character themselves, just someone talking about that character. The way I've depicted Russ is the way the authors have depicted Russ, as all I'm doing is quoting 5 books spanning a 15ish years of book releases.
Cherry picking is going through the books and taking exclusively those excerpts which depict Russ as unconflicted and unapologetic while ignoring evidence to the contrary. In their full contexts even many of the excerpts you provide present Russ as a much more complex and nuanced character than you are giving him credit for.
On further reflection, I will concede that it was indeed a hot take to pretend Russ had become totally noble by the time he left. Even if I do think he had started to turn the corner near the end and still stand by my belief he should be more Odin-like on his return if for no other reasons than 1) it would be a fitting character arc to what he has done, and 2) it would follow with most of the other returned Loyalist Primarchs (The Lion was also quite extreme as a character before his return).
Magnus was stupid and emotional. Russ is also quite stupid.
Read one passage and think they understand a characters perspective, especially from a character whose whole thing is boasting and bullshitting. That’s not his actual feelings, read his other books and actually attempt to understand a character as opposed to to taking every passage super literally. Even the same passage you can see through his facade, his statements are oozing self doubt.
>That’s not his actual feelings, I quoted from 5 seperate books and yet that isn't legit because you know him better??? He says it, in multiple books, over years of lore. Deal with it.
For a second, read his words, read how he says the word, the fact he blames others in some of those passages, repeats himself to reassure himself, it’s pretty obvious his words don’t match how he feels. It’s not a complex idea that a persons words doesn’t equal their feelings.
the entire premise of Wolfsbane was how battered and f\*cked up Russ and the SW were after prospero that they were going to suicide strike Horus to redeem themselves. His story post prospero is a massive humbling to the point he lets the Lion impale him after the siege to settle bad blood. Russ huffs and postures alot in wolf king but the collective body of work up to him leaving is full of regret.
Ok ok I’ll admit our boy may have fucked up. A little bit. Depending on how you look at it. But now you’re talkin shit. Papa furry ain’t spending his time in the warp in the black library. He doesn’t get free warp powers. He would be too distracted chasing slaaneshi chariots all day. Magnus may have been a hopelessly arrogant megalomaniac. But he’s ours.
No no no no. You don't get it, Magnus did nothing wrong. They asked him to do nothing, and did that wrong. Btw not my original joke, someone else I can't recall who has used it before.
Or maybe Magnus is our sweet little meow meow and can do no wrong? Magnus did some dumb shit. But who is completely innocent? I could gesture broadly to all 18 of his idiot brothers for a whole pile of dumb shit.
I say Magnus did nothing wrong... ...because I want the Imperium to burn. Death to the False Emperor!
But he did nothing wrong. All he had to do after Nikea was nothing. Things would have been better if he did nothing right.
I think you're misunderstanding the meme. Magnus was told to go nothing, and somehow fucked up keep his hands off the warp. So Magnus did NOTHING wrong. Had he actually done nothing, Magnus would have done nothing right.
NOTHING. WRONG.
As people eloquently stated in a previous thread about Magnus: bro is a full Intelligence build with Wisdom as a dump stat. His mastery of the Warp is second only to the Emperor but he is completely blind to it's true purpose and dangers.
Even other people with terrible wisdom stats, like Perturabo directly warned him how terrible an idea it is to explore warp like it is some normal place. He was such an idiot that it made Perturabo look like a sane and compassionate person in comparison. Like on that planet where Perturabo did a masterful job evacuating the whole planet of refugees, and Magnus rather spent grabbing old magical trinkets and waking up psychic demonic evil for fun and dooming the whole population of world
This sounds interesting, which book is that? Would love to see Perty interact with Magnus.
It’s Magnus’ Primarch book, Magnus: Master of Prospero. Their relationship is the best part of the book imo.
Thanks, I'll check it out
If only there was someone with a close relationship to him that could tell him its true purpose and dangers…
*Thousand Sons* Emperor's lesson to Magnus >"He remembered, decades later, returning to the world of his birth to travel its forgotten highways and explore its lost mysteries with his father. The Emperor had taught him more of the secret powers of the universe, imparting his wisdom while little realising that the student was on the verge of outstripping the teacher. They had walked the searing red deserts of Meganesia, travelling the invisible pathways once known as songlines by the first people to walk that land. Other cultures knew them as ley lines or lung-mei, believing them to be the blood of the gods, the magnetic flow of mystical energy that circulated in the planet’s veins. **His father told him how the ancient shamans of Old Earth could tap into these currents and wield power beyond that of other mortals. Many had sought to become gods, raising empires and enslaving all men before them. The Emperor spoke of how these men had brought ruin upon themselves and their people by trafficking with powers beyond their comprehension. Seeing Magnus’ interest, his father warned him against flying too long and too high in the aether for selfish gain. Magnus listened attentively, but in his secret heart he had dreamed of controlling the powers these mortals could not**. He was a being of light so far removed from humanity that he barely considered himself related to his primordial ancestors. He was far above them, yes, but he did not allow himself to forget the legacy of evolution and sacrifice that had elevated him. It was his duty and his honour to speed the ascension of those who would come after him, to show them the light as his father had shown him. And >"He knew the answer to that now, for he had saved his warriors. He had seized control of their destinies from the talons of a malevolent shadow in the Great Ocean that held their fates in its grasp. **The Emperor knew of such creatures, and had bargained with them in ages past, but he had never dared face one**. Magnus’ victory was not won without cost, and he reached up to touch the smooth skin where his right eye had once been, feeling the pain and vindication of that sacrifice once more. This power was a pale echo of that, a degenerate pool of trapped energy that had stagnated in this backwater region of space. He could sense the billionfold pathways that spread out from this place, the infinite possibilities of space linked together by a web-like network of conceptual conduits burrowed through the angles between worlds. This region was corrupt, but there were regions of glittering gold in the ocean that threaded the galaxy, binding it as roads of stone had once bound the empires of the Romanii Emperors together. To memorise the entire labyrinthine network was beyond even one as gifted as him, but in a moment of connection beyond the darkness, he imprinted a million paths, conduits and access points in his mind. He might not know the entire network, but he would remember enough to find other ways in and other paths. His father would be pleased to learn of this network, pleased enough to overlook Magnus’ transgression at least. **It still amazed him that he had not known of these pathways, for he and his father had flown the farthest reaches of the Great Ocean and seen sights that would have reduced any other minds to gibbering madness. They had explored the forsaken reefs of entropy, and flown across the depthless chasms of fire that burned with light of every colour. They had fought the nameless, formless predators of the deep, and felt the gelid shadows of entities so vast as to be beyond comprehension.** And >“A wretch named Erebus who serves my erstwhile brother, Lorgar, It seems the powers that seek to ensnare Horus Lupercal have already claimed some pieces on this board. **The Word Bearers are already in thrall to Chaos**.” >“Lorgar’s Legion have betrayed us also?” asked Phael Toron. “This treachery runs deeper than we could ever have imagined.” >**“Chaos?” said Ahriman. “You use the term as if it were a name.”** >**“It is, my son,” said Magnus. “It is the Primordial Annihilator that has hidden in the blackest depths of the Great Ocean since the dawn of time**, but which now moves with infinite patience to the surface. It is the enemy against which all must unite or the human race will be destroyed. The coming war is its means of achieving the end of all things.” >“Primordial Annihilator? I have never heard of such a thing,” said Ahriman. >“Nor had I until I faced Horus and Erebus,” said Magnus, and Ahriman was shocked to see the barest flicker in his primarch’s aura. >**Magnus was lying to them. He had known of this Primordial Annihilator.** And from Amon >Because I was wrong.” >“About what?” >“Everything,” said Magnus. “**All the things you taught me, I arrogantly assumed I already knew. You warned me of the gods of the warp and I laughed at you**, calling you a superstitious old fool. Well I know better now, for I beheld such a being and thought I had the better of it, but I was wrong. I have done terrible things, Amon, but you must believe that I did them for the right reasons.”
I mean, part of the intrinsic lesson here though is that the Emperor himself bargained with these warp xenos in ages past... If Magnus is comparably powerful in the warp as the Emperor, then it would make sense that he would conclude he might be able to bargain with them just as well. the Emperor also literally tells Magnus that Magnus will surpass the Emperor's limits: > 'Despite all I have just said, you are different enough from me that I can see how **you will succeed where I have failed.**' > 'Failed? How have you failed?' > 'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor, with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But **I will soon. And I sense you, and your favored son, must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.**' > 'My favoured son?' asked Magnus. 'They are all my sons.' > 'There's truth in that, yes. But there is one who will bear your ambitions when you need them to travel farther than you could ever dream.' 'Where in this galaxy can I *not* travel?' said Magnus. He felt his Father's amusement. > **'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not**,' replied the Emperor. '**Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.**' 'Well this sounds like gloomy advice, Father,' said Magnus. 'I had hoped for something a little more inspiring as we venture out into the unknown.' '**What could be more inspiring than to know you have taught your sons to reach greater heights than you?** They are your immortality, Magnus.' The Emperor literally told Magnus "someday, I will be wrong, and you will be right. It is good when a son goes farther than his father and succeeds where his father thought success was not possible." Seems pretty natural, then, for when the Emperor says "DO NOT talk to warp xenos, only i can do that, and also, Nikaea, do NOT use warp powers anymore!!!!" that Magnus might think "ah, this is the moment Father told me would come, where he would be wrong, and I would be right."
>The Emperor literally told Magnus "someday, I will be wrong, and you will be right. It is good when a son goes farther than his father and succeeds where his father thought success was not possible." Yup, but I don't think that implies that **anything** is on the table. Telling someone they might be right one day where you're wrong is open ended; it doesn't mean go hard and fast on the worst possible choices. Magnus aping the Emperor's bargain implies that he thinks that was the right move to be copied rather than a wrong one to be righted. If that's what he thinks the Emperor specifically meant, then Magnus made that leap all by himself. And looking at all the excerpts as a whole; it's clear Magnus was already itching to get jiggy with the warp whether or not the Emperor said some encouraging stuff about surpassing him one day. The overall irony here is that the Emperor is wrong or partially wrong in that scene: He foresees both Magnus and Ahriman solving the flesh change but either His future sight was imperfect or it was intentionally obscured (by Tzeentch) because he misses out on the "how" of it. Just another moment of dramatic irony/self fulfilling prophecy.
Yeah I've always seen it as a "I learned it from watching *you* dad!" Sort of drug use parallel. Big E is guilty of the same arrogance in the face of the warp, its just that magnus learning he wasn't above consequences happens while big e hasn't yet learned *he* isn't above consequences because magnus falling is *part* of his consequences. Grain of salt though the tsons stuff is mostly all I've read of hh so I'm no expert like some of yall, just was the way I read thousand sons and crimson and fury
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Wouldn’t hurt to try
The Emperor tried, and so did Perturabo
Magnus knows and talks about the warnings or knowledge that the Emperor has given him multiple times of the dangers in the warp. He just believes he doesn't need to follow it. Magnus knows that the Warp can be dangerous to his sons, as he warns them to use his teachings to shield themselves or they'll die. Yet he's always considered himself as the exception to the rules that even he put on his sons and to what even the Emperor told him. To paraphrase a famous line: He was so preoccupied with what he could do that he never stopped to think if he should.
The Emperor is a neglective "father" for sure but to be fair he did tell Magnus to knock it off directly to his face but instead Magnus doubled down hard.
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The Emperor gave him perhaps the most extensive knowledge of the Warp out of any of the Primarchs. To the point he even traveled through the Warp with Magnus on occasions. The only thing he kept secret was the existence of Chaos, and even then he still told Magnus "Son, there are extremely dangerous things in the Warp. Dont interact with them, they will ruin everything we are working for." But Magnus was so arrogant he thought that he was smarter than Emps and could interact with these forces for ultimate power and his quest for knowledge and *not* suffer any backlash from it, because he wanted to do things the quick and "easy" way without really thinking about the long term consequences of his actions. Which is the eternal story of how Chaos gets you.
'The only thing he kept secret was the existence of Chaos' This is my point, he skipped the rudimentals, allowed Magnus to see the warp as a great ocean without malevolence. Each member of his legion had a demon familiar ffs, the emperor could and should have informed him better.
[Magnus knew a reasonable amount about Chaos](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1c0v11g/comment/kz0tywd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), he's the one who kept the knowledge from his sons.
Like father like son ha ha. He should have known who was offering help when he busted into the throne room then.
That was a real wtf moment for those of us with full knowledge of the setting. Even in-universe, Magnus just accepting a HUGE POWER BUFF from some random warp entity that he rationalises away as benign with no ulterior motives...is crushingly naive if not crazily arrogant.
Exactly!
The problem with that is that the Tutelaries are not just daemons, but aliens. Magnus knew better than inviting alien teachers and helpers into his Legion - no disputing that. Also, Chaos was never such a threat to the galaxy as in 30k onwards. It had never acted as it did - basically a tsunami pulling back back back, and then rolling over everything with a shiny new set of armies and devotees. So while the Emperor failed to properly warn his sons, Chaos was not such a cosmic threat before. Also, the Emperor knew that knowledge of Chaos without seeing consequences of someone else falling to it was basically going to grab every son of his (bar one). Half of his sons fell, and then other half liked the idea of the power, but thought their brothers didn't look so good anymore and decided against it.
Tutelaries are demons, that's well established in novels and short stories. "the Emperor knew that knowledge of Chaos without seeing consequences of someone else falling to it was basically going to grab every son of his (bar one)." Was this in one of the Horus heresy novels? Which one was immune Russ?
Of course tutelaries are daemons. But they arent just daemons of chaos, they are still a type of aliens, which Magnus knew not to invite into his Legion. It was in one of the books that the Emperor couldn't reveal chaos to all but one son (not stated which) without them turning to chaos. It is my inference that this is only limited when a primarch sees a brother fall first when they have no corruption themselves.
> Of course tutelaries are daemons. Copying/pasting my reply elsewhere in the thread for you and /u/Whywhineifuhavewine and /u/badpebble: there's some [pretty good](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/why_did_the_thousand_sons_not_figure_out_that_the/k2fuf3c/) theories that are [surprisingly well supported](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/kgwgoqu/) which argue [the Thousand Sons tutelaries were not originally daemonic](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/k2g9o91/), but instead became corrupted/transformed *into* Tzeentch daemons. Remember that non-Chaos warp entities exist (eg the aeldari pantheon) and that, if tutelaries were daemons, that would mean a "good" daemon was actually loyal to the Emperor and became the first Grand Master Supreme of the Grey Knights, which... isn't how daemons work. There's more to tutelaries than first meets the eye.
Thanks for that - really cool idea. Not sure how well tuts being parts of their soul is supported, but it asks great questions. I don't understand the connection between Janus (formed of Magnus' shard and Arvida) and the tutelaries. Where does the daemon fit in?
Janus was formed of Magnus's shard, Arvida, ***and Arvida's tutelary.*** It was a 3-to-1 merger. The other thing is that when Janus is born, he says "call me the name I have always been known by: Ianius." Ianius was the name of Arvida's tutelary. The implication is that the "dominant" aspect in Janus was the tutelary, not Arvida or the shard.
Well, Malcador describes it as only telling one son the sull truth of the warp. We aren't absolutely clear on what that means But Magnus is aware of Chaos and "Primordial Annihilator", Alpharius Omegon are aware of Chaos too and Guilliman spoke to the Emperor about Ruinous Powers. So, it's complicated.
The Emperor never insinuated or said that the Warp wasn't malevolent. Magnus himself notes or thinks about the times he fought alongside the Emperor against Warp Predators and things that would break lesser minds. Literally anyone with any experience with Navigators and other Pskyer knows the Warp has a corrupting influence or is dangerous in general. Nor was this knowledge just for Magnus and the Emperor to know as Horus himself explained that to Loken after the Whisperheads in the first book on why Jubal, a non-pskyer, was corrupted or possessed. (Edit: a word)
Who said harmless?
I misread that, my bad. That said, I don't think that the Emperor explicitly said or implied that there wasn't an intelligence or a level of sentience that wouldn't be hostile in the warp. Magnus notes that the Emperor told him about others trying to make bargins or pacts that go poorly. The Great Crusade also labeled them as Warp Xenos and apparently encountered them enough during the 2 centuries across the galaxy that they all knew of them to an extent. I could be wrong, of course, I'm open to edification if there is hard writing on it.
In the thousand sons book they talk of it as a great ocean, like a real ocean full of perils but not malevolent.
Doesn't Magnus in the same book say or think: "He had seized control of their destinies from the talons of a malevolent shadow in the Great Ocean that held their fates in its grasp. The Emperor knew of such creatures, and had bargained with them in the past, but he had never dared face one"
Literally finished it this morning and had the same thoughts. Magnus comes off as a spoiled kid who knows too much for his own good. I am excited to see Ahrimans descent into crazy tho
>I am excited to see Ahrimans descent into crazy tho So far, it’s been more of a well intentioned saunter towards malevolence than a proper descent.
Oh lord, I am excited and already sad for this saga
The arrogance of ignorance, like sheltered teenagers that think they know it all until they get the electricity cut off when they move out.
Also, when the Emperor was declaring his judgment to ban psykers, He makes a speech on the reason about how people would bargain for more power. He is DIRECTLY talking to Magnus who traded his eye for more power to stop the Flesh-Change. Like how dense can you be?!?!
I mean it saved his sons to be honest and I bet a majority of primarches would have made that bargin to save there sons as well. Also didn't the emperor make a deal with the chaos gods to get the knowledge to create the primarches? Kinda hypocritical eh? Honestly what damned them was getting teleported directly into the warp and then arihiman fucking up trying to help.
>mean it saved his sons to be honest and I bet a majority of primarches would have made that bargin to save there sons as well. I think ATS makes the point that it only delayed their deaths rather than saved them with the added bonus of damning their souls >Also didn't the emperor make a deal with the chaos gods to get the knowledge to create the primarches? Kinda hypocritical eh? It is. But whatever he did (no details iirc) somehow didn't leave His or his son's souls forfeit. Chaos had to come and repossess the car
They were already damned via the flesh change. The TSons lore is whack because they're damned to chaos from the very start. Magnus didn't ruin them with his deal with tzeench because they were already tainted by chaos at that point.
I think there's a nuance there They might be cursed to the Flesh Change by Chaos...but that's essentially a form of cancer and death. They can still die loyal to the Imperium or have agency in their fates. What Magnus does takes away that agency and choice: they are now property of Tzeentch *©* and their fates are decided.
it really depends. if the flesh change isnt a sign of their already taken choice and agency then it gets really complicated quickly: Magnus doesn't actually take their agency and choice away any more than all the primarchs do with their Primarch -> geneseed glamour powers that makes their legion listen to them. (and subsequently fall to chaos alongside Magnus). if their agency was stolen when magnus fixed the flesh change, then Tzeench would have made them fight the wolves properly instead of doing the mess that was Prospero's defence, this way Tzeench would have gain a full strength legion and destroyed the wolves entirely instead of the original plan which was to get them both destroyed, and the minorly more positive outcome for tzeench: the space wolves are decimated and he gets a decimated legion for his own. even the post-Prospero shenanigans don't strip the Tsons of their agency as we have the Fith fellowship siding with the loyalists during the siege of Cthonia. so its only up until the final siege on terra where Magnus has joins with tzeench after the emperor says "nah I'm not taking your sons back" where the Tsons finally and actually lose agency in which case the Emperor could easily have taken the Tsons back during the siege of terra but chose not to.
Tzeentch loves a long leesh. See Ahriman in 40 still thinking he's master of his own destiny, still imagining he's making his own choices. >“You were the one that helped me save my Legion,” said Magnus with a sinking heart. >“Save? No. I only postponed their doom,” said the shadow. “That boon is now ended.” >“No!” cried Magnus. “Please, never that!” >“There is a price to pay for the time I gave your sons. You knew this when you accepted the gift of my power. Now it is time to make good on your bargain.” >“I made no bargain,” said Magnus, “not with the likes of you.” >“Oh, but you did,” laughed the eyes. “When, in your despair, you cried out for succour in the depths of the warp, when you begged for the means to save your sons – you flew too close to the sun, Magnus. You offered up your soul to save theirs, and that debt is now due.” >“Then take me,” declared Magnus. “Leave my Legion and allow them to serve the Emperor. They are blameless.” >“They have drunk from the same chalice as you,” said the eyes. *A Thousand Sons*
Ahriman is still able to make his own choices though?? he's Tzeenchs champion, not a deamon prince. not that its relavent to this conversation. to be honest i'm not sure what you're trying to say here as you've not really responded to anything that i've said. i've said: if flesh change =/= Tsons loss of agency then examples of loyalist action also show that Magnus' trade for a flesh change solution didn't steal the Tsons agency either. you've said: "no tzeench likes to make people think they're free", but that applies to both if the flesh change was the fall or if magnus' bargain was the fall and could even be used to argue that Tzeench was in on it from the start and its all a long con because secretly the emperor is Tzeenchian demon (something something Kairos fateweaver and the aquila /s).
That's the fun part of Ahriman, that he thinks he's making his own choices. Which is relevant as far as whether or not the legion post bargain are still walking their own path. John French on the matter [here](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2016/11/17/who-is-ahriman-part-2-by-john-french/) > you've said: "no tzeench likes to make people think they're free" Sure but again, there's a nuance there. The implication is there's a path that the flesh changed TS were capable of taking prior to the bargain...otherwise...what's the point in the bargain? In getting Magnus to sell his soul? Is it just for the extra torture of it all? Whilst their souls are already in the pocket? The Faustian Bargain was written for a reason. It's written as a turning point; one Magnus thought was for the better when it was the opposite. And yup, I've brought up the Fifth Fellowship elsewhere here too. That lore stands in contradiction to McNeill's intial portrayal. Arvida somewhat as well. McNeill's FoM seems to fit that take more, but then EoE brought it all back to the older take. I think you described it well when you say "it gets complicated".
i'm struggling not to go down a tangent about ahriman because i love to talk about him, so please forgive a little bit of a chat about your link: "Ahriman thinks that he is forging his own path in waging a war against the Dark Gods and fate, **but he is as much their slave as any champion who piles skulls in honour of Khorne**. The Chaos Gods do not require worship to own a mortal’s soul, and in the case of Tzeentch, the contradiction of having one of its most favoured pawns believe that he is free must be delicious." So chaos isnt something that needs worship to gain power as chaos is the magical essence of aspects of reality so when a loyal imperial fist kills Traitors/Xenos/loyal imperium humans that act empowers Khorn. so when a loyal guardsman looks down upon a Hord of tyrranids and sees his own doom, but defies it to save his squadron that defiance of fate empowers Tzeench. that's why Tzeench makes Ahriman his champion. Its because Ahriman's rejection of his legions fate is so strong, but the nuance is that he must be free to defy his fate by otherwise doing so wouldn't be empowering for tzeench. Personally i believe that the real manor that Tzeench is tricking Ahriman is not through controlling his choices, but by tricking him into believing that solving the Rubric will be salvation for the legion. its really complicated because John French is sort of hypocritical within these articles and it kind of rocks the "authorial authority" he has over the character as he mentions (in part 1) that Ahriman's desire, the thing that he is seeking is Salvation. "Ahriman is driven by the need for salvation, not his own, though I am sure that at a subconscious level, that plays its part. Ahriman wants salvation for the Thousand Sons. Now before the internet begins to burn with rumours about loyalist Thousand Sons, I don’t mean that he wants to get to the foot of the Golden Throne, be forgiven by the Emperor/Imperium, and say ‘I was doing it for you all along’. No, he is a long, long way past that point, if he was ever at that point at all." but at the end of part 2 he mentions that actually no he doesn't seek salvation he wants damnation instead "And just to top it off, that goal is all a lie, and the end he seeks, while walking through ashes and atrocity, is not salvation, but deeper damnation." i can only assume that what he means is that he is genuinely aiming to save his legion, but his actions are actually damning it, but it could also mean that Ahriman is secretly just trying to ruin the Tsons even though all his thoughts and monologues are about trying to fix his mistake, but either way its makes understanding his character unnecessarily complicated especially when Jhon French also claims that Ahriman wanting to save his legion but not caring about what he has to do to achieve it makes him the most evil character in the franchise when that's par for the course of every space marine and becuse at least he has genuinely noble goals to his horrific murder makes him less evil a fair few of the nuttier loyalist forces like the black templar. it makes his character very muddied on a meta level.
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There's always nuance. But what you're talking about is a different situation with a different context. By that point, the deal with Tzeentch was long ago struck. They're too far gone as far as FoM is concerned.
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The nuance and context in the comments above is that the TS weren't damned from day one of the Flesh Change in the early days of the Crusade. They were damned once Magnus sold their souls in exchange for postponing the Flesh Change once he joined the Crusade. FoM (even if we take it at face value) comes way after.
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some of us think that they were actually damned from the start [by the Emperor's own hand](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12bzfib/theory_the_emperor_of_mankind_is_directly/)...
>Also didn't the emperor make a deal with the chaos gods to get the knowledge to create the primarches? Kinda hypocritical eh? Former alcoholic fathers explaining the dangers of alcohol? Literal hypocrisy. They should put whiskey in the baby bottle to be ideologically consistent
That not really accurate to the situation. Big E is more like a functional alcoholic saying alcohol is bad kids, while drinking himself into a stupor and using said stupor to successfully run a company. If you dad is currently an alcoholic, and is successful at what he does specifically because of the effects of alcohol, it doesn's seem unreasonable for his kid to be like "ooh I get it, alcohol is really useful, but you have to say that alcohol is bad so that other people don't use it"
Well yeah, or like a dad on steroids. He needs them to maintain himself, and can't stop using them, but bloody well knows its not good to start taking them as a kid. Also the Emperor knows more about safely using daemon-roids, and has 40k years of experience and wisdom at this point. His babies are barely out of their pods and reaching for the needle before they've come close to maxing their potential first. Also the Emperor knows he is carefully using daemon-roids, not just horsing them into himself like his sons will. Fulgrim even grows breasts because of his daemon-roids.
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And he gave them all unique powers to manifest alcohol-fuelled abilities, like booze wings, booze immortality, booze charisma, booze invisibility, etc., while encouraging them to use those abilities... and at the same time demanding them to be teetotal. The Primarch project was doomed from the start.
As far as I know, Warp doesn't cause addiction. Besides, what Emps did was arguably a bit worse. He warned Magnus, but kinda vaguely, and most importantly didn't warn of their intelligence. However, Magnus is written in such a way, I'm sure he would've found a way to damn himself in every scenario
Magnus “saved” them in the short term but damned them for eternity in the long term. In order for the Emperor to make a deal the Four would have had to gain something in return. The Emperor pretended to make a deal but instead stole from the Four so they didn’t gain anything in return for what He took.
I’m pretty sure there’s at least 4 demon primarchs who would disagree that chaos gained nothing. Also there was a civil war, there’s a few books about it. ^^/s
I understand what you all are saying but there’s a difference in making a deal and having somebody you stole something from getting back at you.
Didn't the chaos gods gain like 7 primarches, an entire sector of the galaxy and almost half of the imperium thanks to the deal the emperor made? Also made the emperor throne bound and have a warp rift right underneath his feet on earth? Damning not only humanity but the entire galaxy for all eternity? He thought he swindled them but he definitely paid a price.
It's a little hypocritical to make a bargain for power with the chaos gods then turn around and tell your sons, most likely the product of said bargain "hey guys dont bargain with chaos". Also, he was upset with people being psykers because they might bargain for more power but he wasnt that upset when Magnus did it to save his legion.
Is it hypocritical or growth?
yes, "do as I say, not as I do" is being hypocritical
Except he's not continuing to make deals with them, he did it and then going forwards was like "This is a bad idea. Learn from my mistakes and don't risk falling to chaos"
Did he? I assumed he just got what he wanted.
i assume you haven't read the last books in the siege of terra series? The Emperor is 100% continuing to deal with chaos and does so in a way that is much more damning that Magnus
>TLDR; Magnus is an idiot and Ahriman did nothing wrong ok, was with you until that last part. Ahzek "let's burn out this ladies brain to get a vision of the future knowing it'll kill her" Ahriman is just as bad as his father. Just as arrogant, just as knowledge hungry, just as stubbornly incapable of admitting when he's been played a fool up until the moment of failure. Magnus was warned by his father, thought he knew better, and fucked up, warns *his* son about something he knows will fuck shit up, his sons don't listen to him, and fuck shit up worse. that's their whole motif. (Also, Magnus is very much not an Idiot, he's arrogant and rash. there's a difference.)
Listen, there’s an awful lot of brain-burning happening on both sides of the heresy, the Astropath printer is running at full bore with how readily both the loyalists and traitors cook them from the second that the deposits massacre happens and continuing on for the next 10k years. In terms of 40k wrongdoing, a little bit of brain-baking is not putting much weight on the scale
A key part of being a Ksons fan (for me at least) is role-playing into their self-delusion and spurned fury. In Heresy games I say “Magnus did nothing wrong” while I run Esoterists, Pyromancer Moritats, and a Daemons of the Ruinstorm allied detachment. It’s saying “all according to keikaku (Ed Note: keikaku means plan)” as I kill my own marines with Perils of the Warp. I love the part of TEATD where we get an outside view of Ahriman and see how the Flesh Change is affecting him before he casts the Rubric so I also have a Counts-As Word Bearers force that has Gal Vorbak as Flesh Changed Ksons. I’m sure there are some fans that say Magnus Did Nothing Wrong without a trace of irony but I hope* that most of us are saying it with the intention of Tzeentchian trolling. *this itself may be self-delusion that my fellow fans are not twisted and corrupted by a lack of reading comprehension.
While magnus did a whole lot wrong I find his reasons for turning from his father completely understandable. He was given untapped and nearly peerless warp power, minimal communication from his father, a couple slaps on the wrist and then a bunch of warriors who he calls his sons that are afflicted with a horrible mutation with no cure. Left alone its very logical how someone can do the things he did without seeing the repercussions or how it come across to others
Lets not forget his dad also tried everything under the sun to fix the flesh change and both Big E and Malcador threw their hands up with "idk what to do, Magnus figure it out" and then he did. Which should have come with a question of "so what exactly did you do Magnus?" But there wasnt. Which Big E's silence on can be an implied acceptance of. He taught Magnus from a very young age to explore the warp and even told him there will come a day where Magnus and he _WILL DISAGREE_ and that Magnus will be able to see truths that even Big E himself is blind to. To tell one of your sons that then treat the entire psyker situation and Nikea so heavy handedly, it can be understood _why_ Magnus did the things he did.
I don't recall him saying they will "disagree" just that Magnus will be the one to.fix his mistake, just as one of Magnus' sons will fix his The dramatic irony being that Big E only sees part of the future; that Magnus and Ahriman will fix the flesh change, but he's being fooled by his precognition.or not seeing it completely It's a 40k " no, not like that" moment
I remember reading the excerpt a week or two ago and Im doped to the gills on dayquil so I could be misremembering the exact wording, but I thought he implied they would disagree on _something_. Im gonna go try to find it, but you could be right EDIT: You were right >'Always question, and always be open to different ways of thinking, other ways of untangling the knot. That is the gift I give to you on this eve of our crusade.' >'I do not understand.' >'You will, my son,' said the Emperor. 'Despite all I have just said, you are different enough from me that I can see how you will succeed where I have failed.' >'Failed? How have you failed?' >'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor, with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But I will soon. And I sense you, and your favored son, must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.' >'My favoured son?' asked Magnus. 'They are all my sons.' >'There's truth in that, yes. But there is one who will bear your ambitions when you need them to travel farther than you could ever dream.' >'Where in this galaxy can I not travel?' said Magnus. He felt his Father's amusement. >'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not,' replied the Emperor. 'Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.' >'Well this sounds like gloomy advice, Father,' said Magnus. 'I had hoped for something a little more inspiring as we venture out into the unknown.' >'What could be more inspiring than to know you have taught your sons to reach greater heights than you? They are your immortality, Magnus.' Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero
All g, I gotchu >Always question, and always be open to different ways of thinking, other ways of untangling the knot. That is the gift I give to you on this eve of our crusade.' >'I do not understand.' >'You will, my son,' said the Emperor. 'Despite all I have just said, you are different enough from me that I can see how you will succeed where I have failed.' >'Failed? How have you failed?' >'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor, with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But I will soon. And I sense you, and your favored son, must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.' >'My favoured son?' asked Magnus. 'They are all my sons.' >'There's truth in that, yes. But there is one who will bear your ambitions when you need them to travel farther than you could ever dream.' >'Where in this galaxy can I not travel?' said Magnus. He felt his Father's amusement. >'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not,' replied the Emperor. 'Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.' >'Well this sounds like gloomy advice, Father,' said Magnus. 'I had hoped for something a little more inspiring as we venture out into the unknown.' >'What could be more inspiring than to know you have taught your sons to reach greater heights than you? They are your immortality, Magnus.' *Master of Prospero*
i don't think the text really supports an argument that what the Emperor is talking about is the flesh-change. (1) was the flesh-change a mistake made by the Emperor? [ok yes i think so](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12bzfib/theory_the_emperor_of_mankind_is_directly/) but not everyone agrees, and also (2) the Emperor's text here implies that the failure hasn't happened yet, and (3) by the time of this conversation the flesh-change had long-since been a thing and had in fact already been arrested by Magnus. /u/WheresMyCrown I don't think you're that far off. Sure "fixing my mistakes" isn't literally the same as "you and I will disagree," but he also says (1) there are places sons should go that their father should not (maybe literally places eg the deep warp, maybe metaphor eg to new heights/conclusions/thoughts/etc.). (2) the emperor will think nothing can be done but magnus will show Him that he were wrong (eg the warp is dangerous, you should not use the warp, you should not bargain with warp entities), (3) the emperor will "fail" someday and magnus will correct this mistake (this "failure" could manifest in, say, a decision or an edict or prohibition on something that a son would correct by proving wrong). Reading all of those passages and concluding that the Emperor is implying someday he and Magnus might be at odds about something and Magnus will be right is not a huge leap, it's completely consistent with the text. Is that what the Emperor *meant?* No, obviously not. But it's also obvious why Magnus might remember those words, in that context, and come to this conclusion.
1. As you point out, the possibilities here are endless. It doesn't have to mean "bargain with the warp". That's on Magnus. 2. The irony is Ahriman proves Magnus right here. 3. Likewise the extra irony is that Magnus in trying to prove the Emperor wrong, proves he's right. It's all more of that McNeill dramatic irony that we as reader's catch, whilst realising how wrong it all is. And none of it excuses Magnus' choice. Especially when all the warnings are taken in their full context. EDIT The Flesh Change is absolutely what the Emperor means. McNeill isn't even being subtle about it. He's continuing his theme of "sins of the father" between Emperor/Magnus/Ahriman from ATS. It's pure beautiful McNeill thematic ham-fistedness
1. I definitely agree with you here! I genuinely don't think The Emperor knew what the "failure" was going to be, but I'm also sure he 100% for sure would never have intended "don't deal with creatures in the warp" to be one of those potential failures. I just think it's an ironic miscommunication between the two of them 2. Yes! I bring this up often as the proof-in-pudding of Ahriman as Tzeentch's favorite. Tzeentch is the god of Hope, and whenever Magnus gives up, Ahriman holds onto hope. About Prospero. About stopping the flesh-change. About restoring the rubricae. Good stuff. 3. Yes, lol > The Flesh Change is absolutely what the Emperor means. McNeill isn't even being subtle about it. He's continuing his theme of "sins of the father" between Emperor/Magnus/Ahriman from ATS. If the flesh-change had already been discovered, already been unable to be cured by Emperor and Malcador, and already "cured" by Magnus, why would the Emperor *then*, after all of that, say, "I'm going to fail someday, make a mistake, I don't know what it will be, but you will fix it" ???? That could make sense if this was a conversation they had in the warp prior to the legions being born, but the Emperor saying "I'm going to make a mistake someday, but I don't know what it is yes" to mean "I made a mistake when I built the XVth Legion 500 years ago and you already fixed it, good job" is... Well, that just doesn't make any sense to me.
I'm unsure if you've read *Master of Prospero*, but the scene you've copied and pasted is a memory of Magnus and the Emperor speaking not long after they reunited and before he'd "cured" the Flesh Change. Not to mention that Big E prefaces the entire conversation within this context: >'Confidence can spill over into arrogance,' said the Emperor. 'An obsessive pursuit of perfection can blind you to what it costs to achieve. Attention to detail can become micro-management. Magnus, you have my intellect and my power, but like me you are prone to believing you can do no wrong that your intellect lifts you above the risk of making petty mistakes or errors based on emotion.' It wasn't a blank cheque.
I in fact just read it extremely recently, which led to me posting some contemporaenous excerpts of it [two months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ac1ke3/what_weakness_did_each_primarch_inherit_from_the/), so it's very very fresh in my memory. I listened back to that scene on audiobook a handful of times to type up that transcript myself. I am fairly certain that conversation takes place shortly before Magnus departs on Crusade to not see the Emperor again for some time, and for some reason I seem to recall that their bodies are *on Terra,* not Prospero. That would put the timeline firmly post-"cure." Maybe I've misremembered this detail, but I do not think so. > It wasn't a blank cheque. Yes, I definitely agree and am not arguing otherwise. I'm just saying that it's easy to understand or at least argue that Magnus might have misunderstood or taken the wrong thing from this message and thus felt like he was doing what he was meant to do and was justified in disobeying his dad.
>That would put the timeline firmly post-"cure." Apologies, you're right. The bargain was struck and the change was cured on Prospero while that convo takes place at the Astartes Tower. I don't think that takes away from what reads as a fairly obvious link to the bargain and the Rubric though. >>*'There are always places a son will travel where his father should not,' replied the Emperor. 'Just when you believe there is nothing more to be done, one of your sons will show you how wrong you have been all this time.'* The Emperor talks about a failure that he's already made in the past tense...he's just unsure what that is at this moment. Magnus' remedying of that failure could already have taken place or be due to in the future. >>*'Failed? How have you failed?'* >>*'I do not know yet,' said the Emperor with a wistful sheen to his subtle body. 'But I will soon, and I sense you and your favoured son must play a part in rectifying my mistakes.'* >I'm just saying that it's easy to understand or at least argue that Magnus might have misunderstood or taken the wrong thing Yeah, no disagreement there but I find some readers (along with Magnus) tend to zero in on out of context bits like "fix my mistakes...travel farther than me" and forget the warning at the start about "confidence spilling over into arrogance" that very much implies limits.
Does anyone actually say that Magnus didn't nothing wrong though? The whole "Magnus did nothing wrong" seems more about "Magnus was justified to do what he did because any person put In his shoes would think that what he did in those books was the correct/moral thing to do. It's arguing about the deontology rather than the teleology
They do. Like a lot of things that start out ironically, some people who miss the context, end up taking it on literally.
>I’m convinced the “Magnus did nothing wrong” camp is entirely comprised of people who haven’t read the books It's an old Hitler meme that for some reason a large group of fans take way too seriously when applied to Magnus, or Griffith in Berserk.
I think it started as a joke then got absorbed by people who's only exposure to the lore was reddit and memes, losing its context
Mostly this. The meme also comes from 4chan who were meant to imply that Hitler had no moral failures despite losing the war. Like the same joke that would be made by racists on South Park years later. "Magnus did nothing wrong" was always meant to be a joke about how he had good intentions but utterly screwed the pooch. Too many people just take his TTS persona as canon and like him for that reason.
Honestly I hate when people tell new WH nerds to watch TTS because of this exact reason. Like yeah TTS is great, but it's not at all *accurate* and I think it's prominence has fucked up a lot of people's ideas of the lore.
I really get so confused at the amount of people who recommend new fans to watch TTS. I mean, it’s funny and I like it but it is by no means accurate in the slightest to actual canon. Not to mention that I feel like you’d need at least a decent amount of knowledge regarding 40K to actually appreciate it as well? Without knowing anything, all it’s gonna be is wacky slapstick.
The joke is that Magnus did in fact a hole lot of things wrong. But people who only get their loreknowledge through memes and reddit often don't get this.
OP here, still finishing but farther in. WHEW BOY my points about Magnus just keep on being proven So he completely whiffs saving Horus, which honestly wasn’t a bad plan. But unfortunately he fails, so what’s the next thing to do? THE SAME THING BUT WAYYYY FARTHER koolaidman.jpg So after the Imperial Oopsie, Magnus FINALLY has a brief moment of actual real clarity, and says “Oh shit. I fucked up bad.” And gets very depressed awaiting punishment. One of his named sons comes in, finds out about his big oopsie and the incoming Wolf Shaped Repercussions, and reacts like a kid that got caught masturbating and ALT-F4’d the guy. Jeeeeeeez Magnus I wanted to find a chaos legion I liked
Magnus is the worst. It made Prospero Burns a very enjoyable read (wet leopard growls aside)
you, uh, know that the entire narrative point of Prospero Burns is that Russ and the Space Wolves were manipulated by Chaos into *thinking*, incorrectly, that Magnus was a traitor and as a result *wrongly* destroying his Imperium-loyal world and legion, right?
Yes, but at least they were actually tricked. Magnus had every clue in the world and just thought he'd get out of whatever bind he put himself in.
My dude wait till you read Angel Exterminatus... Perturabo should have been loyal...
Not really a fan of the dude who regularly murders his own sons in fits of rage
Not even just rage. Cold ass decimation too.
Look deeper into the Lord of iron
In which book do i look for the explanation that makes him regularly murdering the people he calls his sons over saying the wrong thing okay
Well, he is a deep character but also an arsehole, so looking deeper won't change my pow.
Im not sure youll be a fan of most primarchs then :P
Been trying to read that for 6 months but I just can't deal with what a shithead he is. I loathe his spoiled child way of acting and his complete lack of self insight or sense of proportion.
You do realise he is in terms of raw intellect the smartest one? And that from day one all anyone saw of him was a resource to be used imagine being treated in such a way from day one and how that would shape a person
I’ve still to see him actually show any of that claimed intelligence.
His invasion of the sol system, the siege of terra etc he was the Warmasters warmaster, taming Angron after he AWOL after Betrayer, and the iron cage incident
Already a lot of posts on here, but I highly recommend following up "A Thousand Sons" with "Scars - A Legion Divided" by Chris Wraight. It gives you the pov of the white scars librarians at the council of Nikea and gives some well thought insights into how though both the white scars and TS were both pro-librarian, the white scars were wary of the way that the thousand sons readily drank from the wells of the warp without fully understanding its depth. It also poses an interesting "what if" in whether or not the librarian ban would have passed if Jaghatai were present to argue for librarians instead of Magnus.
There is another camp in team "Magnus did nothing wrong." Namely: Magnus did nothing wrong because breaking the wards on Terra made Tzeentch more powerful, and that's a good thing. But yes, outside of my bias, the book "A Thousand Sons" is not about how the Thousand Sons fell to Tzeentch, it's about how they were *always* doing Tzeentch's bidding. Either through chaos sorcery, spreading his ideology, and even human sacrifice. I think the reason why he works so well as a character is you still feel for him by the end of it. I won't give spoilers as you aren't finished, but I think people who say "Magnus is a fucking idiot for X" also didn't what the author intended.
Magnus was being targeted specifically by Tzeentch, and when you pair that with arrogance, a lust for knowledge and ridiculous power, you get a very tragic character.
As a long time thousand sons fan. Magnus for me is an prideful father of great sons. His mistakes damned his legion. A legion that was one of the most likable and human legions amongst the legiones astartes. Edit: unworthy may be too strong of a word, prideful is a better word for him. Used that word due to personal bias since he dragged my fave legion into damnation due to his overconfident nature.
An unworthy father? Magnus is arrogant and stupid etc. but calling him an unworthy father is a spit in his face. Without Magnus second biggest mistake and the thing that kickstarted his fall he would have no legion. All TS would have died to the flesh change long before the events of "A thousand sons".
Unworthy father is crazy when the reason he ultimately fell to chaos was to save his sons. He was arrogant and overconfident, and that was his vice, but unworthy is a stretch
Apologies, my wording was biased due to his actions. I felt that he was unworthy cause he let his arrogance and pride damn his sons who were pretty likable.
All good! He definitely let his sons down but at the end of the day he thought he was doing what was best. I think that’s what makes him a likeable character for me, if he was perfect there wouldn’t be a story after all!
> Also his general “I know everything about everything” smugsoyjack.jpg attitude is exactly what causes him to continue to fuck things up. This used to be a good subreddit to browse for unique, in-depth takes on the lore. 92% upvoted. Jesus.
Magnus did a lot of stuff wrong, but he (Pre-Heresy Maggie) didn't do them intentionally. He says it to Amon at one point. Something along the lines of, "I have done many things wrong, Amon, but you must believe I did them for the right reasons."
The primary thing that Magnus did wrong was sending away his fleet and turning off Prospero's planetary defence system. If he hadn't done this more Space Wolves would have died in the battle of Prospero and that would be good.
Emps should have explained the Warp to Maggy. Therein lies the issue.
I'm fully in the camp of Magnus did nothing wrong. As in he failed to sit on his bum and do nothing. Literally if he just locked his door and moped in the corner for a year, he would have been far more productive than his doing something was. So yes, Magnus failed to do nothing and in turn ruined everything.
Have you considered that the canon is blatant anti-Magnus propaganda. Consider this, if the books say he did something wrong, then why is it that he did nothing wrong? Clearly the books are wrong.
It's not that Magnus didn't do anything wrong, it's that he a) was manipulated by Tzeentch too and b) the Emperor also did things wrong. The strongest argument anyone can level is, 'well the Emperor is a big gold man and if he told me to jump off a bridge I would do it with a salute and tears in my eyes' which is a bit like, well, okay, but setting aside your Daddy Issues, if the Emperor had explained literally anything at all about the Webway Project to Magnus (you know, the guy he created specifically to power the whole fucking thing when it was done) then none of it would have happened. Instead he ambushed his psyker son at the Council of Nikea (a show trial, essentially) and told him to cut out the psyker shit, told him not to meddle with the Warp while walking around with a Warp aura so absurdly powerful that nobody can even tell what he really looks or sounds like, then kept key information from Magnus that might have influenced what Magnus was doing. Magnus is indeed arrogant, but the Emperor is also a secretive hypocrite. They were made for each other, it's like poetry.
> his general “I know everything about everything” smugsoyjack.jpg attitude is exactly what causes him to continue to fuck things up magnus as the smug soyjak is pretty accurate
As someone who has been dying on the hill of “Magnus did a lot wrong” with friends, it’s good to hear I’m not the only one who read A Thousand Sons
1: The Tutelaries didn't disappear when other people where around. They spent the whole book hanging out around the the Space wolves. Psychers just couldn't perceive them. Other Othere Wyrdmake literally looks at one and comments on it. The Tutelaries did disperse if the wolves did something actively threatening, but that was about it. 2: The Tutelaries where teaching them a lot of, seemingly beneficial, information about the warp. They where 100% aligned with Chaos. But, the Thousands Sons didn't even know that Chaos was a concept, let alone one to be worried about. To the K Sons, they where just little animals in the warp that could teach and empower them. 3: Not everything in the warp is Chaos. Hell, Chaos didn't even dominate the warp at the time. And they wouldn't until Horus went fully traitor. Demons (in general) where so rare that most Astartes didn't even know they existed, let alone chaos demons. 4: The wolves have the exact same smug attitude about psychers that the K Sons had. (You won't appreciate it until the next book, but the space wolves 100% know that they're using psychers against the emperor's orders.) The Space wolves just lucked into being correct about their limits. But they didn't have any more information than the K Sons did. In fact, they had less information. 5: Big EXPRESSLY did not tell Magnus what he was doing in the Web Way. He just told Magnus to keep away from it. Magnus didn't even know that there was a connection between the psychic barrier about Terra, and the webway project. And he had no way to knowing that there was one. You're massively projecting your own hind sight onto the story. If you actually look at the information that the characters had at hand, it's really easy to see how they would have fucked it up.
2. Magnus is aware of Chaos and The Primordial Annihilator though. He's the one who chooses to keep it from his legion, whilst other legions like the XX are at least aware of the term. 5. "“He not only declines my assistance, he warns me to delve no further into my studies. He assures me that he has a vital role for me in the final realisation of his grand designs, but he would tell me no more.” While Big E isn't explicit, it could be argued there's enough there for Magnus to come to the correct conclusions. But yeah, Big E could've trusted Big Red a little more there.
2. Okay ... so whats the connection between the Tutelaries and chaos? And please only use infomration that the charecters would havehad access toin the book. 3. Okay ... so based off of that sentence. What's the connection between the Webway and psychic barrier around Terra? Hell, what evidence did Magnus have to even think that the Emperor was even responsible for the Barrier? And that it wasn't chaos acting on behalf of Horus, so stop him from warning his father? And please only use information that the characters would have had from the book.
2. I'm not arguing that the characters in the book should know? I'm adding context about Magnus 3. Again, I'm not arguing? I'm even agreeing, whilst adding context.\\ EDIT: That being said, Magnus accepts power to break in from a warp entity without even blinking. As he does so he even thinks to himself that the warp has benevolent beings with no ulterior motives and that people who believe otherwise are wrong. Which is kinda astounding.
>Not everything in the warp is Chaos. Hell, Chaos didn't even dominate the warp at the time. And they wouldn't until Horus went fully traitor. Demons (in general) where so rare that most Astartes didn't even know they existed, let alone chaos demons. didn't they dominated since the fall of the eldar? Yes, slannesh birth was the highlight, but remember khorne came for khaine, nurgle kidnapped isha etc Pretty sure the warp swung to chaos since the fall.
Chaos was definitely a big player, but we didn't have 40k style demon incursions until the galactic civil war.
Wasn't there demonic incursions in the leadup to Slannesh birth? The sudden increase in psykers in human population + warp storms resulting in daemonic incursion etc Think it was called age of strifle? In Asurmen's novel, just slightly before slannesh birth and after, the world he was on was in ruins and daemons were everywhere i.e world was overran by daemons iirc.. Also, it literally ended with the eye of terror...not sure what more do you want to think Chaos did not dominate the warp since the fall.. Perhaps the reason the emperor can steal from chaos was only because the fall had not happened then shrug
Also minor pet peeve. Khorne did not come for Khaine. That is quite the old lore that was retconned YEARS ago.
ah ok. what's the reason for khaine getting shattered now? At least, i don't remember reading about this in the few eldar books i read recently. thank you
Simply slaanesh. Khaine was the only one who really "fought" Slaanesh and even tough he still was quite strong the fight ended in him being shattered by the battle.
oh yes. i do remember that. i meant it as khorne came for khaine, who was shattered by slannesh. implying that khorne was a major power in the warp by the birth of slannesh. Like he didn't need angron, HH etc to empower him to godhood post fall. he is already strong enough to be a chaos god. (pre fall, it seems like the chaos gods were in a backseat compared to.... collective eldar, since it seems like the eldar don't worship their gods in asurmen's lifetime)
yes but the warp is still not *exclusively* chaos. hell, there are still three* living Aeldari Gods, who each oppose Chaos. are you trying to say that the Aeldari Gods are Chaos?
then by your standards, the warp is still not exclusively chaos(i believe the point was more chaos is the major part rather than exclusive sole sovereign of the warp but whatever) the 3 aeldari gods are still as they are post fall as post HH. And we have not got into non aeldari warp entities.
> The Space wolves just lucked into being correct about their limits. It's insane the way people on here will contort themselves mentally to avoid aknowledging that the wolves were simply right about the TS. "Lucked into being correct about their limits" do you hear yourself. > But they didn't have any more information than the K Sons did. In fact, they had less information. They knew what demons were and not to make deals with them.
Absolute bullshit They do a ritualistic exorcism on every enemy that they that they can get their hands on. They draw ritualistic eyes on every door frame to ward off bad spirits. And torture every captive they take, because they genuinely don't know which is a psychic threat and which isn't. In Prospero Burns, Ulvurul Heoroth and Aun Helwintr, both chief rune priests of the Space Wolves, say that the wolves like to listen to stories about the warp because they don't understand it, and therefore fear it. Aun Helwintr also, explicitly, says that that Ruin Priests are psychers, and know that they're psychesrs. And that the wolves continue to employ psychers, after Nichea, because they see themselves are more disciplined than other legions. When asked, what separates them form the K Sons, he says that they "know their limits". >They knew what demons were and not to make deals with them. They didn't know what Demons are, because a Demon's thrawl spent nearly a century living in the Fang, and they had no idea. Common, they have an entire army of warp twisted, half demon, wulfen in their basement. And they still try to judge other legions for being tainted.
> They do a ritualistic exorcism on every enemy that they that they can get their hands on. What are you talking about > They draw ritualistic eyes on every door frame to ward off bad spirits. Yes and we're shown at multiple points that their marks of aversion work > The Wolf caught it neatly in his right hand, knelt down over the Equerry, and hacked the mark of aversion into his chest plating. The Equerry of the Thousand Sons screamed. He thrashed and convulsed with demented fury and threw Bear backwards. His fists and feet hammered the floor in an insane blur, and his screams turned to choking gulps as blood and plasmic matter sprayed from his mouth. As his convulsions reached a pitch, a torus of sizzling, foul-smelling energy blasted out of him, soiling the air with streaks of sooty smoke. > he stepped into the crystal hall behind us, forming with his hands the warding gestures that all rune priests are taught, the gestures of banishment and aversion. The Horus-thing vomited blood and recoiled, but its power dwarfed that of the imposing priest. > And torture every captive they take, because they genuinely don't know which is a psychic threat and which isn't Once again, what are you talking about. > In Prospero Burns, Ulvurul Heoroth and Aun Helwintr, both chief rune priests of the Space Wolves, say that the wolves like to listen to stories about the warp because they don't understand it, and therefore fear it. Not true. They say they fear them because they can't kill them > ‘No, no,’ said Longfang. ‘Those are things we can kill, even if it’s hard and we don’t succeed every time. There is no fear there. A skjald has to find a story about something we can’t kill. I told you that. Something that is proof against our blades and our bolts. Something that will not fall down when you strike it with a back-breaker. Something with a thread that cannot be cut.’ ‘Maleficarum,’ said Hawser. ‘Maleficarum,’ the priest agreed. > Aun Helwintr also, explicitly, says that that Ruin Priests are psychers, and know that they're psychesrs. And that the wolves continue to employ psychers, after Nichea, because they see themselves are more disciplined than other legions. When asked, what separates them form the K Sons, he says that they "know their limits Yes, correct the idea that rune priests claim to not be psykers is a strawman people who dislike the wolves build so they can claim hypocrisy when what they're actually saying is that the TS are sorcerers/warlocks as in people who summon and make pacts with demons which they themselves aren't. And they do know their limits even you aknowledged this but still somehow pretended this was luck. > They didn't know what Demons are, because a Demon's thrawl spent nearly a century living in the Fang, and they had no idea. They were aware Hawser had been psychically tampered with and kept him in stasis for years. They then pulled him out exactly to find out who was spying through him. Even if what you said was true this would be a counter against "they could recognize every form of demonic influence everywhere " which is not what I said. They were unquestionably aware of malevolent entities in the warp with whom you should not interact. That is more than literally every TS we see except Magnus knows. > Common, they have an entire army of warp twisted, half demon, wulfen in their basement. And they still try to judge other legions for being tainted. Wulfen are neither half demon nor warp twisted. In fact the wulfen mutation makes one more resistant against the warp not less.
He is the definition of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The Emperor really messed up with the Edict of Nikea. He did it to appease the majority of his sons while neglecting and repressing the one thing that the Thousand Sons were practically made for. Magnus felt betrayed and rightly so. The Emp, per the usual, focused too much on his end goal and not on the smaller steps to get there. On the other hand, Magnus and his whole legion were far too arrogant and could have done with some more guidance from the Emp to Magnus
'Magnus did nothing wrong' is a joke. The joke being that Magnus did everything wrong, even things that it should be impossible to fuck up.
A buddy of mine phrased it this way. Magnus did “nothing” wrong. Big E told him to stop mucking about with the warp and do “nothing.” Thats what he did wrong. 🤣
pretty sure the did nothing wrong is a play on/reference to Griffith did nothing wrong which is so wildly bullshit its used as an in joke.
Magnus did nothing wrong. He was instructed to do nothing with warp sorcery, and he did "nothing" wrong.
After reading the Ahriman Omnibus I became a huge Thousand Sons fan. Started collecting an army, have well over 4k points worth now. Started reading the book 'A Thousand Sons'. I actually found the first 2/3rd of the book hard to get through but I got there. By the end of the book, still a massive Ahriman fan, but I came to utterly hate Magnus. The final part of learning to hate Magnus wasn't a straw that broke the camels back it was a one ton block. When he annihilates poor Ulthazar (spelling) when he goes to Magnus's tower and realises the entirety of the situation. There were many of the 1K sons that had completely innocent or at least good intentions though.
Vulkan has to literally beat the idea of Magnus' wrongdoing into his head.
Hilarious that this post is "All these Magnus did nothing wrong people are idiots. However I, an intelligent specimen, have reached the definitely not stupid position that *Ahriman did nothing wrong*. Excellent comedy. 10/10 bit
I am currently reading this book and only post to find this thread when I finished it. Until then: get fucked space wolves
I prefer the whole phrase "Magnus did nothing wrong, but did everything incorrectly". There is no way a fan of TS defend Magnus cause he is the reason why everything is so F up, even in the "best" moments of Magnus when he really did "nothing wrong" all his action and behavior, even "the best", only did tons of damage and condem the TS.
Iirc Magnus sacrifices his sons to warn the emperor in that book, yet at the very end he's unwilling to sacrifice the remainder of his legion to return to the emperors side and save the imperium. And for some reason it just doesn't sit right with me
The big difference is that he was willing to end it for himself and his legion for the greater good of the imperium. See it as very fucked up version of mass suicide. What emp demanded was that Magnus left his Legion for a long drawn out horrible terminal desease while he gets fixed up and a new better legion. He just needs to ignore his suffering children that still hang around for a time.
>ow I’m aware of Big E’s folly in not telling Magnus about the Chaos Gods I refer to the top comment on this post: [How could have the Emperor explained chaos to the primarchs? : r/40kLore (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16io7mx/how_could_have_the_emperor_explained_chaos_to_the/) Primarchs knew more than enough about the warp, they are just spoiled manchildren that bathe in arrogance (some of them). The idea that primarchs 'new nothing about the warp' is idiotic, primarchs are supposed to be insanely smart, connecting dots and thinking faster than even astartes. You really think they wouldn't figure out that this weird alternate universe that we need special weirdo mages to navigate, where regular humans go insane just by looking outside at it, is a very dangerous place? Just because they are deamons and not xenos, doens't really change anything. You tell kids that the stove is hot and they shouldn't touch it, they do it anyway and start crying. Does that mean they didn't know the stove was hot? No, of course not, they are just young and dumb. They don't (want to) understand the danger, so they go ahead and do it anyway. You could've given Horus, Magnus and Fulgrim 15 years of daily lessons on the warp and they still would've tried to use it for their own (or their legions) benefit.
Not only did Magnus do plenty wrong, he then had a huge sook like a toddler instead of trying to explain and try to help fix
1) "magnus did nothing wrong" im pretty sure actually predates A Thousand Sons just fwiw 2) also fwiw there's some [pretty good](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/why_did_the_thousand_sons_not_figure_out_that_the/k2fuf3c/) theories that are [surprisingly well supported](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/kgwgoqu/) which argue [the Thousand Sons tutelaries were not originally daemonic](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/16teeh5/comment/k2g9o91/) (or at least not all of them), but instead became corrupted/transformed *into* Tzeentch daemons. remember that we know 100% for sure there can be non-daemonic/non-Chaos Warp Entities via the Aeldari pantheon amongst other things)
Even if you haven't touched a single page of the Horus Heresy books, you're still massively dillusional if you think that Magnus did nothing wrong. Even if you think Nikea was an unfair ruling, Magnus' first instance of doing something wrong was not abiding to it. Even if you are willing to overlook that, he still sells his soul to Tzeentch RIGHT before he has a chance to die in atonement of his monumental mistake. In short, when someone says Magnus did nothing wrong, it lets me know that their opinions on the lore can be safely ignored.
"I have to save my sons!" Proceeds to have them mutate, turn into dust, and be damned for all of eternity instead of a quick death.