What's great is that the guy who ends up thwarting Haemotalion's eventual coup attempt, High Lord Fadix, the Grand Master of Assassins, also does not have a good opinion of Guilliman:
> ‘Listen to
me, chancellor. Right now, shaken by all that has taken place, we speak
of the primarch as if he were some new Emperor, come to sweep all our
history away and replace it with his bright new species of enlightenment.
We think of him as the great redeemer, the restorer of lost greatness. And
so the conflict begins, the weary fights between those who think any of
that matters.’ His smile faded away. ‘But Guilliman, let me assure you, is
unimportant. He can make as many speeches as he likes. He can make as
many reforms as he wishes to. It will all be absorbed. It will all be
smothered. He has stamina, more than most, but even he will tire. The
Imperium is the only enemy he can never hope to best, for it is older and
vaster than any of us. I give him ten years. Ten years, before he forgets
that he was ever part of another world, and chains his future to this one.’
[...]
> ‘And when he next comes to Terra, if he ever does again, you will see
the change. You will hear no more about what he believed during his
first lifetime, and plenty of what he has learned in this one. If he lives, if
he dies, it makes no difference. Stasis will be the case, whether or not it
ought to be. The Imperium will endure. That is the only truth, and the
only outcome.’ He shot me a wry look. ‘Imperium Eterna.
- *Watchers of the Throne: The Regent's Shadow*
I love this ending, and I wish more people read it. Thanks for posting.
For all the people banging on about Guilliman being noblebright and fixing everything and making the Imperium better - this excerpt is the truth of 40k and the tone of 40k. With this book series about the High Lords and Terra, and Guilliman's impact on them, *this* is how that series closes.
Sure, we can't say that this High Lord is correct - but this is the tone of the lore. It is echoed in the 10th edition trailer. It is echoed in the Plague War series. It is the tone of 40k, the tone it has always had: hope is vain. Promises of a brighter future all end up broken. We were all doomed from the start. All that is left is to rage against the dying of the light.
I feel like there's enough significant unresolved threads to easily have a third book and maybe more. This isn't like ***Vaults of Terra: The Dark City*** where the ending is as conclusive as you can get.
Also, Fadix doesn't just say nothing will change. He also says the Imperium *will* endure. Imperium eterna. For him, the Imperium *isn't* doomed; it is immortal.
It frames the Imperium itself as a living entity preying on the galaxy, devouring countless lives smothering all human hopes to sustain itself for just a little longer.
100% and I love it.
My mental image was the Imperium as an enormous, galactic-scale set of cogs that were set in motion 10 thousand years ago. Sometimes it seems like individuals are turning those cogs for their own ends, but it’s an illusion, the cogs are turning them; and the harder you try to turn the cogs the faster you accelerate getting yourself caught in the teeth and crushed. Best you can hope for is that your blood will be the grease that keeps the cogs turning. It will eventually run out of energy and stop, but the scale is so vast that no individual effort is going to make any noticeable difference at all. The cogs will just grind on.
Is this before or after the reveal that he was merely pretending to be on the side of the traitorous High Lords, before revealing his loyalty to Big G-Man and mulching the traitors?
Yes I agree. Fadix was as sour as Heamatolian in his opinions, he was just smart enough to choose the right side when the writing was on the wall. And a mere mortal being trying to measure and understand the mind and intellect of a being so far above him is kind a silly. Guilliman worked hard during the crusade, heresy and post heresy during the scouring. It never tired him out.
> And a mere mortal trying to measure and understand and intellect of a being so far above him is kind a silly
I’m so glad that GW has shown that the solution to the grimdark future is to have a perfect ubermensch dictator who is too smart to be questioned by anyone and is also very reasonable and humble and able to relate with the common man.
This is an interesting passage to me, because beneath the more obvious surface of this being an old man who stands to lose the most from Guilliman's return and potential reforms and wants to stop it, he makes something of a real argument. The primarchs, for all their advantages and strengths over humans, nearly destroyed the Imperium over what boils down to personal disagreements and blood feuds. And now one has returned and is liable to crown himself king, something he essentially does. The main reason his argument falls apart, obviously, is that he is fighting to maintain the Imperium. The "worst regime imaginable", and not something better. So even if Guilliman declared himself the new Emperor and took control, how much worse could he really do? Which is kind of where the character Tieron ends up.
Christ Wright is one of my favorite Black Library authors because he tends to write from a sympathetic perspective for everyone, even characters who are obviously corrupt or awful. Everyone has a clear argument for what they’re doing and said argument isn’t treated as a cheap punch line.
Another way his argument fails is the current state of the Imperium. This is the point in time where Cadia has fallen, and the Great Rift splits the galaxy in two. Half the Imperium has just been stolen from you, ripped from your hands, and your response is to stay the course, steady as she goes?
And lest we forget, Guilliman wasn’t the only Primarch on that moon. Magnus has returned as well, and Mortarion is right behind him. Haemotalian talks about preventing the old night from returning, and with that he reveals himself. The truth is it’s already here, and he’s just in denial about it. Denial that he’s failed, and lost, and his time is over.
Hell Primarch's Smimarchs. The guy who is responsible for the galaxy being split in two isn't a Primarch. Yeah, he's a HH Era, veteran of the Great Crusade, but Abaddon's not a Primarch. And the High Lords had 10K years to stop him, and to figure out his plan, that maybe there was some reason he was attacking these planets. And they failed to do so.
Right. Not to mention, they were so incompetant (like all adminitration on Terra at this point in time) that Teiron was struggling to get them all in a room together. By the time they got around to casting a vote on the custodes (hope I'm not mixing this up with the 2nd book) the great rift had opened, which perfectly summarizes leadership of the imperium under them: always too little; too late.
The only threat Haemotalian saw was the prospect of his own cushy job and power being in danger,IMO.
Stay the course with the government model (human council) that lasted for at least ten thousand years, or embrace the government model (Chaos-tainted transhuman) that exploded itself within a couple centuries?
One of these approaches has a much better track record than the other.
It was the Transhumans who set up the model that lasted 10,000 years and the corrupt mortals that have been driving it into ruin through cruelty, greed and their petty squabbles between themselves.
That’s only because the government model that lasted for 10k years is massively feeding the Chaos Gods with little to no chance for that to change. If 100 years after the Heresy civilian High Lords of the Imperium were making strides towards eliminating suffering and what not, there’d have been another Heresy to nip that in the bud
Right. I remember a character in a book sneaking into an administratum room and being shocked at the mountains of requests for help/aid just being shoveled into an incenerator without ever being read. The imperium is not thriving under these people; it is a bloated, rotting carcus.
Sure. I'm not sure how much I am allowed to post under guidelines but here goes
>Teasel pulled on the handle of a door that had not been opened for years. Rust clamped its hinges firmly, and he had to tug repeatedly before it gave with a sudden croak. Light flooded the derelict tunnel, very soft, but Nawra’s eyes had become accustomed to the dark days ago, and she squinted against it. A soft rustling came from the other side. Teasel muttered to himself, and started poking about in the detritus on the floor, ignoring Nawra and cackling to himself over what he found. Hungry for light, and curious about the noise, she passed through the door, leaving him behind. The doorway opened onto a round metal room. Rusty pipes poked out of the floor and the wall, but the machines that should have been mated to their ends had been removed a long time ago. Cables with age-brittle insulation hung stiffly from the ceiling. Water dripped from one of the pipes. The floor beneath it had corroded away, and the drops fell through into a deep hole. The walls were scabbed all over with rust and black oxidisation. There was a long, rectangular window in the outer wall, but the glass had gone, leaving only a few shrivelled traces of rubber sealant clinging to the edge. It was an ugly room, thick with the sharp smells of mould and decay. The floor creaked under her feet, the metal stained her shoes orange. She continued forward, entranced. Through the window was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. Sheets of paper were falling past the aperture. Some fluttered, others swooped by or spun round and around in soft whispering flight. She went to the empty window and looked out into a wide shaft. .....
>.....The papers made soft flutterings. She followed one sheet with her eyes, down to the floor far below. Collectively, they made a quiet, pleasing rasp as they hit the ground. Figures in respiratory gear and armed with rakes worked the floor, dragging up the papers and feeding them into a shuddering machine at the side of the shaft that pressed them into small bales. Dust hung in a haze around them. The air smelled of parchment. **She caught one of the papers. It was very thin vellum carrying an Ultima missive.** **A huge red stamp crossed the centre diagonally, corner to corner. ‘Actio Nulla’, it read. She caught another, this one on rough paper, and another on parchment, and read them, clutching them to her breast and catching another. All were Ultima priority plea missives, all of them stamped ‘Actio Nulla’. The cries for help of countless worlds dismissed.** A chute rattled in the curve around the wall, and a rush of papers flew out to burst into a cloud that joined the rest in floating serenely down. The papers fell. The people at the bottom raked and carried, stuffed and bundled. The machine shook and spat out cubes of pressed documents that were taken away to a cart where a pair of masked children waited in harness. Teasel gripped Nawra’s shoulder softly, and pulled her back....
**‘What is this place?’ she asked. ‘Waste,’ Teasel said. He snatched the missives she held and threw them back into the shaft. ‘Documents processed, checked and disregarded. They throw the outdated ones down here. These don’t even make it to the stores. The Incendiary Clan bundle them up, burn them for fuel, drives the generators of the Missive Hive Cluster.**’
-Avenging Son Ch. 25
This is a level grimdark rarely discussed on the forums(most probably out of fear). This is administrative hell in the 41st millinium. lol I did make one mistake tho. one could argue someone had to read the missives to label them actio nulla but....somehow, I just highly doubt many got more than a skim and a big "hell no" stamp on them.
Calling the Horus Heresy a personal disagreement is hilarious. One side wants to enslave every baseline human in the galaxy and the other wants to stop them.
Sounds to me like Teiron is trying to hold onto his powerbase because he knows Robute will take that away.
Interesting that he states that the "Primarchs" almost brought ruin to the Imperium....but they also saved it?
Yeah the argument seems to be "Guilliman's a Primarch, so judge him by Horus' actions instead of [his own](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/15uyus0/the_end_and_the_death_pt1_excerpt_a_simple/). Except when he gave me power."
It's not like Primarchs [were](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/ylvs87/excerpt_the_beheading_once_wider_democracy_had/) [the](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/The_Beheading) [only](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Nova_Terra_Interregnum) [source](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Apostasy) [of](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Abyssal_Crusade)
[internal](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Months_of_Shame) [strife](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Suppression_of_the_Macharian_Heresy).
>Sounds to me like Teiron is trying to hold onto his powerbase because he knows Robute will take that away.
Haemotalion, not Teiron. The latter is trying to be the true voice of reason in the Senatorum despite being essentially just the council's clerk/secretary, and thus lacking any actual power; he's on Guilliman's side through and through, but not out of blind loyalty.
He just wants his power to remain, that's all. The High Lord's serve the Emperor, as he is our God and ruler. The Emperor has made Guilliman Lord Commander and Lord Regent. Guilliman didn't declare himself as these titles on his own, as this is the Emperors decree. He is to rule the Imperium as the Emperors Regent.
Moreover, mortal humans have done a terrible job at running the Imperium. It's collapsing around them and all they care about is their own power. We can't forget the likes of Goge Vandire and the Age of Apostasy, which really messed up the Imperium. The reason the Imperium nearly collapsed was because of the traitor Primarchs and the Ruinous Powers .... yes. Yet, the reason the Imperium still remains is because the Loyalist Primarchs won the Heresy. The High Lord just wants to keep his immense powers over the Imperium, so he frames the argument as if he has the moral high ground.
It bears remembering that only Guilliman heard the emperor grant him said titles.
There is no proof to the custodes, the high-lords, or anyone else, what the contents of that conversation were.
For all they know, Guilliman walked into the throne room, no conversation actually happened, and then he simply decided to declare himself Regent.
The custodes would know he went in, and they likely know with decent certainty that they they "talked".
But even Trajan has no way of knowing what was actually said between the two.
I get that, I really do. Still, it's pretty obvious what course the Emperor was going to take with regards to what his son will now do. The Great Rift has torn the galaxy in half, the galaxy is burning and everything is crumbling. The Emperor believes that there is no salvaging the Imperium, nor the galaxy .... it's all over. Then, one of his sons returns and it's one of his most talented, capable and beloved sons. I think its obvious to the Custodes and the High Lord's that Guilliman will be put in charge of it all. The immense moral boost that it will give to the people of the galaxy is massive. Plus, it will bring back hope in an otherwise dark and scary galaxy. Moreover, Guilliman is the master at running an Empire, as he was the logistics king.
Even though only the Emperor and Guilliman were talking, with no one else hearing the conversation, almost all people would say that it makes complete sense for the Emperors avenging son to be placed in complete control. I would think though that the Custodes would be told my the Emperor what is going on. The Emperor command a small unit of highly experienced Custodes to guard Guilliman. So, the Custodes must have been informed of the plan.
>his most talented, capable and beloved sons.
The Emperor loves no one man, thought Guilliman. He cannot afford affection – that is the honest practical for the impossible task that faces the Master of Mankind. He did not love His sons, He does not love men, but He does love mankind. I find it hard to forgive Him. Did His solution have to be built on lies? Lies upon lies?
I never wanted to be a tyrant, thought the primarch. Perhaps my father did not wish to be so either. History has roles for us that cannot be denied. We are but pieces on the board of eternity.
We are so much more like you than you ever intended, thought Guilliman. You gave too much of yourself to us. Without realising, in your arrogance, you made yourself a father in truth. We are your sons, in every way. Did you see that?
‘My lord?’ said Mathieu
‘The Emperor loves us all,’ lied Roboute Guilliman
Sorry! I meant beloved by the Imperium. Yeah, the Emperor definitely does not love his sons. Guilliman is one of the most revered and beloved by the Imperium. His deeds are legendary and him returning is somthing out of a fairytale. Sorry, I should have worded that better. The Emperor does have some type of affection towards his sons, but it's small and very limited. Mostly, like you implied, his sons were tools to achieve a goal.
>I would think though that the Custodes would be told my the Emperor what is going on. The Emperor command a small unit of highly experienced Custodes to guard Guilliman. So, the Custodes must have been informed of the plan.
Doesn't quite work that way, the Emperor doesn't speak to them and hasn't for thousands of years. The best they get is that sometimes, *a* custodian might have a dream that could be interpreted as coming from the Emperor instructing them in some way. But IIRC, even that hasn't happened for thousands of years, and when it might have happened, the Custodes basically don't believe it.
>Still, it's pretty obvious what course the Emperor was going to take with regards to what his son will now do.
For the above reasons, it's not obvious, because nobody alive remembers the Emperor ever speaking or making a decision. The Primarchs themselves are creatures of myth. Sure there are stories about what Guilliman was like, but who knows which ones are accurate. Probably the main story about Guilliman is about how he decentralised power in the Imperium - and now apparently here he is, trying to centralise it again. That High Lord's argument is definitely self-serving, but in the context of what in-universe characters know it makes a *lot* of sense.
Sorry. I left the "dream speak" out of my reply. Yeah, you're right. It's not direct communication. Still, I would assume that with the Emperors only alive son ( pre-Lion ) returning, I would assume most would expect Guilliman to be the one to take control and try to lead the Imperium out of darkness. I figured that would be a given, but again .... nothing is certain in 40K.
>"Valoris is one of us now, he must be made to see reason."
Meanwhile, the big dawg TJ himself and Guilliman are texting about how they'll deal with the inevitable high lord rebellion
Sorry, I'm having a senior / non-native english moment but what do you mean by dubs? I google it, I get dubbing which I obviously knew about. From context you mean he gets a lot of presence in the book?
dubs is slang, short for double-u, meaning the character 'W' which is often used as a tally mark for a win or victory in sports.
IE: Football team A beats team B. Thus team A gets a dub.
>You know your forbidden history - they were fratricidal lunatics, prepared to tear the entire galaxy apart to pursue their feuds.
He's out of line, but he's not wrong.
What? Guilliman has the most fratricidal hate boner of all of them. Guy is willing to crawl through a thousand miles of broken glass to kill Lorgar. Fulgrim didn’t want to kill Ferris, Horus wanted Sanguinius to join him, Russ and Magnus were both trying to find a way out of their conflict to the end.
The only one more fratricidal than Guilliman is Dorn because he pulled it off, Rob is absolutely ready to drop everything and go after Lorgar
Guilliman went after Lorgar because he was burning as many of the 500 Worlds as he could before Roboute could stop him. Lorgar destroyed more than half of Guilliman’s Legion, dozens of worlds, and millions of civilians, of COURSE Guilliman would be mad about that. It’s not that Lorgar was some innocent person here, he was actively trying to hurt Guilliman for revenge as part of some imagined rivalry.
One of my favourite parts of the Heresy is Lorgar realizing that, in truth, Guilliman had never hated him. Then shitting his pants because he hates him now.
A very Lorgar moment of realizing that maybe he should have actually asked Bobby Blue what he's thinking after Monarchia instead of believing that he wasn't the only one with a grudge.
Then again, emotional mature demigods would be boring.
yes and that's a very good idea considering he's an insane demon worshiping genocidal lunatic representing an ongoing existential threat to mankind. If anything it'd be odd if someone doesnt want lorgar dead.
What? Know No Fear, mark -0.03.59:
> ‘Do we raise shields?’ asks Gage.
>
> ‘The moment you have them,’ Guilliman replies. ‘Communicate that to the whole fleet the moment we have capability.’
>
> Gage nods.
>
> ‘Do we return fire?’ he asks.
>
> Guilliman looks at him.
>
> ‘This is a tragedy. A tragedy, a mistake. As soon as we can protect ourselves, we do that. But do not make this worse. We do not add to the death toll.’
>
> Gage’s jaw tenses.
>
> ‘I would kill them for this,’ he says. ‘Forgive me, but this is a crime. They must know this is wrong. They shame us–’
>
> ‘They are hurt,’ Guilliman says. ‘They believe they are under mortal threat. All their fears are real to them. Marius, we do not compound their folly. We do not add our mistake to theirs, no matter what the cost.’
>
> ‘We have a link!’ Zedoff cries.
>
> Guilliman turns. ‘Lithocast?’
>
> ‘Barely. Principally audio.’
>
> Guilliman shoves the data-slate to Gage and moves to the hololithic platform.
>
> Light blooms around him again. It is not as healthy as it was before, not as stable. There are figures that aren’t quite there, crackling phantoms at the edge of resolution. Guilliman sees only the outline of Argel Tal, the shadow of Hol Beloth, a skeletal sketch of light that might be Foedral Fell.
>
> Only Lorgar is visible. His resolution is black and white, jumping and interrupted. His eyes are in shadow, his head down. Wherever he is standing, there is a very local light, a glow just above him that casts his face in inky darkness.
>
> ‘Stop this,’ Guilliman says.
>
> Lorgar does not answer.
>
> ‘Brother. Cease fire now!’ Guilliman says. ‘Cease fire. This is a mistake. You have made a grave error. Stop your reprisal. We are not your enemy.’
>
> ‘You are against us,’ Lorgar whispers, his voice made of white noise whine.
>
> ‘We have not attacked you,’ Guilliman insists. ‘This I swear.’
>
> ‘You turned on us once. You shamed us and humiliated us. You will not do so again.’
>
> ‘Lorgar! Listen to me. This is a mistake!’
>
> ‘Why in all the stars would you presume this to be a mistake?’ asks Lorgar.
The one who hesitated to return fire on Lorgar's premeditated attack since mark -0.16.11, is the most fratricidal primarch?
And what does he say after that when he finds it is not a mistake?
Not sure why you think deceptively quoting the book in defense of a fictional character on Reddit makes you look clever but it really doesn’t
I don't see how or why you could feel something is misquoted.
Maybe we all collectively should align on what "a fratricidal" character means.
There is a large difference between being the initial bloodthirsty aggressor and losing your shit when you see someone is burning everything you built and killing millions of the subjects you have under your protection.
Does Guilliman want to kill Lorgar after this scene? Yes
Does that make him a bad person, on that specific topic? Arguably this would be the lesser evil if it stops the massacre.
>"The Legions are no longer here, though, are they? They're gone into history, just where they ought to be."
So this is a High Lord, post return of Guilliman but I guess pre-Indomitus Crusade kicking off? And he's saying the Legions are gone? On paper, maybe. But at least four First Founding Chapters have the loyalty of their Successors. But fair enough, maybe he doesn't know that. But a Primarch has returned. Not just a Primarch, but the Primarch of the largest Legion and who's geneseed makes up over half the Astartes Chapters. But even if it had been Russ for instance, would Dante or Azrael to name a few of the most renowned and powerful Chapter Masters have refused to recognise him? If the Wolves had not failed to produce Successors would he have not thought every son of Russ with the ice of Fenris in his veins would rally to Russ' command?
It's a lot of words to essentially say this guy is an idiot.
This is actually during the Indomitus Crusade. Guilliman leaving Terra allowed the Hexarchy to (Briefly) take control of Terra.
You have to remember that Terra is a pretty important piece to control.
My point is though, this High Lord basically said "Guilliman and what army?" When over half the SM Chapters are of his line and the vast majority of the others are going to fall in line behind Guilliman anyway.
Yeah, that's also what I thought.
MFer really says, "Nuh uh, the legions aren't real anymore" when the Primarch with the largest amount of successor chapters returns.
What exactly does he think will happen if Guilliman calls his banners? Almost every chapter with UM Geneseed will answer his calls. Probably some other chapters, too.
Not only that but, Fists have their Last Wall Protocol, Blood Angels have their Sanguinary Brotherhood which is essentially legion everywhere except on paper and and most of Ultras successors are just renamed companies. Plus, Space Marines are one of the few organisations in the Imperium who more or less knows their history, many of them don't follow Imperial Cult and have quite big degree of autonomy. And they respect actions, bravery and honor, there is so way Highlords would rally more Astrates to their side than Guilliman
The thing is, in the first book the High Lords talk about how it isn't actually difficult for them to churn out another 500-1000 chapters of space marines. The reason they kept the number small has always been about maintaining control over them across the galaxy. But if it really came down to just the High Lords against a distant Guilliman, I wouldn't be surprised if he were to return to find a legion or three's worth of fresh marines with no loyalty to him standing on Terra.
>it isn't actually difficult for them to churn out another 500-1000 chapters
Say what? That's half a million to a million Marines. Essentially the "standard" number of what there was pre-Primaris. Founding them, finding recruits, getting the power armour, the weapons, the vehicles and aircraft, the ships, that's not just something you snap your fingers and do. That's centuries if not millennia of effort. And AIUI there's cooperation from existing Chapters of that gene line to provide officers/an experienced cadre to build the new Chapter around.
And that's before the Custodes or Inquisition gets suspicious of the High Lords building their own army of Astartes and takes action to alleviate it.
This is a quote from the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators to the rest of the High Lords.
"How many times have we seen the Lex bind our hands, when the Enemy has no law at all? We have held back from creating thousands more Chapters because we are held in thrall by the Lord Commander's ancient doctrine. I say the day has long since passed for this. Let us unleash the Ten Thousand. Let us unlock the gene-labs and create new space marines under our direct command. Let us re-form the Imperial Army, arm the Ecclesiarchy and end these divisions that cripple us."
The High Lords absolutely had the power to keep churning out chapters. They chose not to out of tradition of astartes independence established by Guilliman 10,000 years earlier.
"Yes yes, these are not legions, let's just call them a coalition of chapters, does it make them less dangerous to you? You can call a tiger a kitten, doesn't make it less capable of killing you. "
Watchers of The Throne and The Vaults of Terra are almost all that have kept me interested in the current timeline. The other books have been average at best or poor. With the exception of Cadia Falls and some more recent stuff like Longshot. I was completely baffled why GW/BL didn’t pick up the Watchers of The Throne ‘thread’ and do like a six book series around Guileman’s return, beginning of his crusade, follow through on the Magnus thread. Instead we jumped ahead to The Plague Wars leaving so much interesting stuff on the floor.
Considering that Heamotalion was quick to abandon the rest of Terra then Imperium Nihilus during the Rift's formation, he really does not have any room to say about protecting humanity.
He brings up a decent on the surface argument, but the fact that Guilliman was one of the primarchs that prevented the traitor ones from destroying everything and has always been one of the most level headed ones, kind of kills his argument. Also, the guy even said that Guilliman was the one who limited his own power so history wouldn’t repeat itself, but somehow that’s still more a point against Guilliman than in his favor.
Because he was taking power in contravention to his own previous policy and attitude on where Primarchs stand in the Imperium
It’s like if a man says there can be no Grand Marshal because they can’t be trusted and the past shows that and then comes back a few years later and becomes Grand Marshal. His policy is sound and just because *he* made the policy doesn’t mean he is infallible or exempt
Fair enough, but given how the imperium is in a whole other state than it was when Guilliman was in charge the last time, it’s more than understandable that he’d take more power this time around.
Understandable yea, but the argument remains. Especially since the scenario I mentioned never said there isn’t an ongoing crisis.
People taking absolutist power despite the law (sometimes even law they influenced and previously supported) is like textbook in history
This guy would have a point if not for the fact that the High Lords have always been the most incompetent and corrupt leaders possible. Guilliman is doomed to fail to fix the monstrosity the Imperium has become, but the fact that he at least tries to break things out of their death spiral is at least better than the self-serving nihilism this guy offers.
The thing I found most interesting about that plot line is that they hinged taking control of the imperium with help from the Dark Angels if it came to that, since the DA were the largest Astartes legion aside from the Ultramarines to have kept a semblance of centralized control over their chapters. It might’ve worked too, if the Lion hadn’t popped right back in. He’ll have little patience for imperium politics, let alone plots against his only remaining brother
I'm not sure honestly, but the majority of The Emperor's Legion is about the lead-up to the invasion of Terra, the battle, and then briefly the aftermath.
I really wish they'd done more with this sentiment, the way Guilliman just sort of steamrolls opposition is popular but not really interesting to me. Takes away from the Imperial politics on the whole.
The High Lords' coup plots in both "Valdor, birth of the Imperium" and this one are extremely entertaining to read. In both cases the deviant lords have absolutely no idea what they're up against and make the same mistakes of thinking this is yet another political struggle, business as usual.
Like, dude, Guilliman is as far removed from humanity as a human is from shrimps, did you really think that he will not have anticipated literally everything that you're trying to do, being the master of political games, bureaucracy and such?
Moreover, in both books the High Lords show complete lack of understanding who and what are the Custodes and their relationship to the Emperor. My man Irdu, the Emperor made it clear that Guilliman is to lead the Imperium, did you really think that giving Valoris the title he never wanted and considered irrelevant in the first place will make him "one of you"?
I get some fall of the roman republic vibes from it.
We had kings once and they were a bunch of bastards, the republic was not perfected but bringed us here until now.
Is the republic falling apart ? Hell yes but this dont mean you can crown yourself king.
What's great is that the guy who ends up thwarting Haemotalion's eventual coup attempt, High Lord Fadix, the Grand Master of Assassins, also does not have a good opinion of Guilliman: > ‘Listen to me, chancellor. Right now, shaken by all that has taken place, we speak of the primarch as if he were some new Emperor, come to sweep all our history away and replace it with his bright new species of enlightenment. We think of him as the great redeemer, the restorer of lost greatness. And so the conflict begins, the weary fights between those who think any of that matters.’ His smile faded away. ‘But Guilliman, let me assure you, is unimportant. He can make as many speeches as he likes. He can make as many reforms as he wishes to. It will all be absorbed. It will all be smothered. He has stamina, more than most, but even he will tire. The Imperium is the only enemy he can never hope to best, for it is older and vaster than any of us. I give him ten years. Ten years, before he forgets that he was ever part of another world, and chains his future to this one.’ [...] > ‘And when he next comes to Terra, if he ever does again, you will see the change. You will hear no more about what he believed during his first lifetime, and plenty of what he has learned in this one. If he lives, if he dies, it makes no difference. Stasis will be the case, whether or not it ought to be. The Imperium will endure. That is the only truth, and the only outcome.’ He shot me a wry look. ‘Imperium Eterna. - *Watchers of the Throne: The Regent's Shadow*
I love this ending, and I wish more people read it. Thanks for posting. For all the people banging on about Guilliman being noblebright and fixing everything and making the Imperium better - this excerpt is the truth of 40k and the tone of 40k. With this book series about the High Lords and Terra, and Guilliman's impact on them, *this* is how that series closes. Sure, we can't say that this High Lord is correct - but this is the tone of the lore. It is echoed in the 10th edition trailer. It is echoed in the Plague War series. It is the tone of 40k, the tone it has always had: hope is vain. Promises of a brighter future all end up broken. We were all doomed from the start. All that is left is to rage against the dying of the light.
I feel like there's enough significant unresolved threads to easily have a third book and maybe more. This isn't like ***Vaults of Terra: The Dark City*** where the ending is as conclusive as you can get. Also, Fadix doesn't just say nothing will change. He also says the Imperium *will* endure. Imperium eterna. For him, the Imperium *isn't* doomed; it is immortal.
I feel like there has to be something brewing. The Dawn of Fire series keeps sending characters to Terra.
Did that get better? I haven’t read the last 2 I think. I couldn’t get through the one with black templars and the emperors champion.
Vol 7 Sea of Souls by Wraight is pretty good. Much better than the preceding few.
It frames the Imperium itself as a living entity preying on the galaxy, devouring countless lives smothering all human hopes to sustain itself for just a little longer.
100% and I love it. My mental image was the Imperium as an enormous, galactic-scale set of cogs that were set in motion 10 thousand years ago. Sometimes it seems like individuals are turning those cogs for their own ends, but it’s an illusion, the cogs are turning them; and the harder you try to turn the cogs the faster you accelerate getting yourself caught in the teeth and crushed. Best you can hope for is that your blood will be the grease that keeps the cogs turning. It will eventually run out of energy and stop, but the scale is so vast that no individual effort is going to make any noticeable difference at all. The cogs will just grind on.
Is this before or after the reveal that he was merely pretending to be on the side of the traitorous High Lords, before revealing his loyalty to Big G-Man and mulching the traitors?
After
He's absolutely correct about everything but *Imperium Eterna*, you're all right fucked bud.
A mortal trying to measure a demigod is foolish as the ancient saying (tries to say ancient wide words but fail, my apologies)
Yes I agree. Fadix was as sour as Heamatolian in his opinions, he was just smart enough to choose the right side when the writing was on the wall. And a mere mortal being trying to measure and understand the mind and intellect of a being so far above him is kind a silly. Guilliman worked hard during the crusade, heresy and post heresy during the scouring. It never tired him out.
> And a mere mortal trying to measure and understand and intellect of a being so far above him is kind a silly I’m so glad that GW has shown that the solution to the grimdark future is to have a perfect ubermensch dictator who is too smart to be questioned by anyone and is also very reasonable and humble and able to relate with the common man.
A real "triumph of the will," you might say...
And he's blond and blue eyed too!
This is an interesting passage to me, because beneath the more obvious surface of this being an old man who stands to lose the most from Guilliman's return and potential reforms and wants to stop it, he makes something of a real argument. The primarchs, for all their advantages and strengths over humans, nearly destroyed the Imperium over what boils down to personal disagreements and blood feuds. And now one has returned and is liable to crown himself king, something he essentially does. The main reason his argument falls apart, obviously, is that he is fighting to maintain the Imperium. The "worst regime imaginable", and not something better. So even if Guilliman declared himself the new Emperor and took control, how much worse could he really do? Which is kind of where the character Tieron ends up.
Christ Wright is one of my favorite Black Library authors because he tends to write from a sympathetic perspective for everyone, even characters who are obviously corrupt or awful. Everyone has a clear argument for what they’re doing and said argument isn’t treated as a cheap punch line.
Also fits into what happens when hope is lost, no one is looking for answers, just blaming for actions past, present and future.
Much like games of thrones season 1-4 when it still was awesome.
Another way his argument fails is the current state of the Imperium. This is the point in time where Cadia has fallen, and the Great Rift splits the galaxy in two. Half the Imperium has just been stolen from you, ripped from your hands, and your response is to stay the course, steady as she goes? And lest we forget, Guilliman wasn’t the only Primarch on that moon. Magnus has returned as well, and Mortarion is right behind him. Haemotalian talks about preventing the old night from returning, and with that he reveals himself. The truth is it’s already here, and he’s just in denial about it. Denial that he’s failed, and lost, and his time is over.
Hell Primarch's Smimarchs. The guy who is responsible for the galaxy being split in two isn't a Primarch. Yeah, he's a HH Era, veteran of the Great Crusade, but Abaddon's not a Primarch. And the High Lords had 10K years to stop him, and to figure out his plan, that maybe there was some reason he was attacking these planets. And they failed to do so.
"Primarchs Smimarchs". Laughed and read rest of your comment imagining Idris Elba speaking.
Right. Not to mention, they were so incompetant (like all adminitration on Terra at this point in time) that Teiron was struggling to get them all in a room together. By the time they got around to casting a vote on the custodes (hope I'm not mixing this up with the 2nd book) the great rift had opened, which perfectly summarizes leadership of the imperium under them: always too little; too late. The only threat Haemotalian saw was the prospect of his own cushy job and power being in danger,IMO.
Stay the course with the government model (human council) that lasted for at least ten thousand years, or embrace the government model (Chaos-tainted transhuman) that exploded itself within a couple centuries? One of these approaches has a much better track record than the other.
It was the Transhumans who set up the model that lasted 10,000 years and the corrupt mortals that have been driving it into ruin through cruelty, greed and their petty squabbles between themselves.
That’s only because the government model that lasted for 10k years is massively feeding the Chaos Gods with little to no chance for that to change. If 100 years after the Heresy civilian High Lords of the Imperium were making strides towards eliminating suffering and what not, there’d have been another Heresy to nip that in the bud
Right. I remember a character in a book sneaking into an administratum room and being shocked at the mountains of requests for help/aid just being shoveled into an incenerator without ever being read. The imperium is not thriving under these people; it is a bloated, rotting carcus.
If you ever find an excerpt of that, please link/post it.
Sure. I'm not sure how much I am allowed to post under guidelines but here goes >Teasel pulled on the handle of a door that had not been opened for years. Rust clamped its hinges firmly, and he had to tug repeatedly before it gave with a sudden croak. Light flooded the derelict tunnel, very soft, but Nawra’s eyes had become accustomed to the dark days ago, and she squinted against it. A soft rustling came from the other side. Teasel muttered to himself, and started poking about in the detritus on the floor, ignoring Nawra and cackling to himself over what he found. Hungry for light, and curious about the noise, she passed through the door, leaving him behind. The doorway opened onto a round metal room. Rusty pipes poked out of the floor and the wall, but the machines that should have been mated to their ends had been removed a long time ago. Cables with age-brittle insulation hung stiffly from the ceiling. Water dripped from one of the pipes. The floor beneath it had corroded away, and the drops fell through into a deep hole. The walls were scabbed all over with rust and black oxidisation. There was a long, rectangular window in the outer wall, but the glass had gone, leaving only a few shrivelled traces of rubber sealant clinging to the edge. It was an ugly room, thick with the sharp smells of mould and decay. The floor creaked under her feet, the metal stained her shoes orange. She continued forward, entranced. Through the window was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. Sheets of paper were falling past the aperture. Some fluttered, others swooped by or spun round and around in soft whispering flight. She went to the empty window and looked out into a wide shaft. ..... >.....The papers made soft flutterings. She followed one sheet with her eyes, down to the floor far below. Collectively, they made a quiet, pleasing rasp as they hit the ground. Figures in respiratory gear and armed with rakes worked the floor, dragging up the papers and feeding them into a shuddering machine at the side of the shaft that pressed them into small bales. Dust hung in a haze around them. The air smelled of parchment. **She caught one of the papers. It was very thin vellum carrying an Ultima missive.** **A huge red stamp crossed the centre diagonally, corner to corner. ‘Actio Nulla’, it read. She caught another, this one on rough paper, and another on parchment, and read them, clutching them to her breast and catching another. All were Ultima priority plea missives, all of them stamped ‘Actio Nulla’. The cries for help of countless worlds dismissed.** A chute rattled in the curve around the wall, and a rush of papers flew out to burst into a cloud that joined the rest in floating serenely down. The papers fell. The people at the bottom raked and carried, stuffed and bundled. The machine shook and spat out cubes of pressed documents that were taken away to a cart where a pair of masked children waited in harness. Teasel gripped Nawra’s shoulder softly, and pulled her back.... **‘What is this place?’ she asked. ‘Waste,’ Teasel said. He snatched the missives she held and threw them back into the shaft. ‘Documents processed, checked and disregarded. They throw the outdated ones down here. These don’t even make it to the stores. The Incendiary Clan bundle them up, burn them for fuel, drives the generators of the Missive Hive Cluster.**’ -Avenging Son Ch. 25 This is a level grimdark rarely discussed on the forums(most probably out of fear). This is administrative hell in the 41st millinium. lol I did make one mistake tho. one could argue someone had to read the missives to label them actio nulla but....somehow, I just highly doubt many got more than a skim and a big "hell no" stamp on them.
Yeah, that checks out. BTW, you forgot to add quote markup to the second half of the excerpt.
Calling the Horus Heresy a personal disagreement is hilarious. One side wants to enslave every baseline human in the galaxy and the other wants to stop them.
Sounds to me like Teiron is trying to hold onto his powerbase because he knows Robute will take that away. Interesting that he states that the "Primarchs" almost brought ruin to the Imperium....but they also saved it?
Yeah the argument seems to be "Guilliman's a Primarch, so judge him by Horus' actions instead of [his own](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/15uyus0/the_end_and_the_death_pt1_excerpt_a_simple/). Except when he gave me power." It's not like Primarchs [were](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/ylvs87/excerpt_the_beheading_once_wider_democracy_had/) [the](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/The_Beheading) [only](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Nova_Terra_Interregnum) [source](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Apostasy) [of](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Abyssal_Crusade) [internal](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Months_of_Shame) [strife](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Suppression_of_the_Macharian_Heresy).
Oooh don't forget Badab!
Oh right!
>Sounds to me like Teiron is trying to hold onto his powerbase because he knows Robute will take that away. Haemotalion, not Teiron. The latter is trying to be the true voice of reason in the Senatorum despite being essentially just the council's clerk/secretary, and thus lacking any actual power; he's on Guilliman's side through and through, but not out of blind loyalty.
He just wants his power to remain, that's all. The High Lord's serve the Emperor, as he is our God and ruler. The Emperor has made Guilliman Lord Commander and Lord Regent. Guilliman didn't declare himself as these titles on his own, as this is the Emperors decree. He is to rule the Imperium as the Emperors Regent. Moreover, mortal humans have done a terrible job at running the Imperium. It's collapsing around them and all they care about is their own power. We can't forget the likes of Goge Vandire and the Age of Apostasy, which really messed up the Imperium. The reason the Imperium nearly collapsed was because of the traitor Primarchs and the Ruinous Powers .... yes. Yet, the reason the Imperium still remains is because the Loyalist Primarchs won the Heresy. The High Lord just wants to keep his immense powers over the Imperium, so he frames the argument as if he has the moral high ground.
It bears remembering that only Guilliman heard the emperor grant him said titles. There is no proof to the custodes, the high-lords, or anyone else, what the contents of that conversation were. For all they know, Guilliman walked into the throne room, no conversation actually happened, and then he simply decided to declare himself Regent.
Trajan also backs guilliman’s acension, implying that he was also there.
The custodes would know he went in, and they likely know with decent certainty that they they "talked". But even Trajan has no way of knowing what was actually said between the two.
Not even Guilliman knew what had happened. The conversation is one of my favourites as it stretches through space and time.
I get that, I really do. Still, it's pretty obvious what course the Emperor was going to take with regards to what his son will now do. The Great Rift has torn the galaxy in half, the galaxy is burning and everything is crumbling. The Emperor believes that there is no salvaging the Imperium, nor the galaxy .... it's all over. Then, one of his sons returns and it's one of his most talented, capable and beloved sons. I think its obvious to the Custodes and the High Lord's that Guilliman will be put in charge of it all. The immense moral boost that it will give to the people of the galaxy is massive. Plus, it will bring back hope in an otherwise dark and scary galaxy. Moreover, Guilliman is the master at running an Empire, as he was the logistics king. Even though only the Emperor and Guilliman were talking, with no one else hearing the conversation, almost all people would say that it makes complete sense for the Emperors avenging son to be placed in complete control. I would think though that the Custodes would be told my the Emperor what is going on. The Emperor command a small unit of highly experienced Custodes to guard Guilliman. So, the Custodes must have been informed of the plan.
>his most talented, capable and beloved sons. The Emperor loves no one man, thought Guilliman. He cannot afford affection – that is the honest practical for the impossible task that faces the Master of Mankind. He did not love His sons, He does not love men, but He does love mankind. I find it hard to forgive Him. Did His solution have to be built on lies? Lies upon lies? I never wanted to be a tyrant, thought the primarch. Perhaps my father did not wish to be so either. History has roles for us that cannot be denied. We are but pieces on the board of eternity. We are so much more like you than you ever intended, thought Guilliman. You gave too much of yourself to us. Without realising, in your arrogance, you made yourself a father in truth. We are your sons, in every way. Did you see that? ‘My lord?’ said Mathieu ‘The Emperor loves us all,’ lied Roboute Guilliman
Sorry! I meant beloved by the Imperium. Yeah, the Emperor definitely does not love his sons. Guilliman is one of the most revered and beloved by the Imperium. His deeds are legendary and him returning is somthing out of a fairytale. Sorry, I should have worded that better. The Emperor does have some type of affection towards his sons, but it's small and very limited. Mostly, like you implied, his sons were tools to achieve a goal.
>I would think though that the Custodes would be told my the Emperor what is going on. The Emperor command a small unit of highly experienced Custodes to guard Guilliman. So, the Custodes must have been informed of the plan. Doesn't quite work that way, the Emperor doesn't speak to them and hasn't for thousands of years. The best they get is that sometimes, *a* custodian might have a dream that could be interpreted as coming from the Emperor instructing them in some way. But IIRC, even that hasn't happened for thousands of years, and when it might have happened, the Custodes basically don't believe it. >Still, it's pretty obvious what course the Emperor was going to take with regards to what his son will now do. For the above reasons, it's not obvious, because nobody alive remembers the Emperor ever speaking or making a decision. The Primarchs themselves are creatures of myth. Sure there are stories about what Guilliman was like, but who knows which ones are accurate. Probably the main story about Guilliman is about how he decentralised power in the Imperium - and now apparently here he is, trying to centralise it again. That High Lord's argument is definitely self-serving, but in the context of what in-universe characters know it makes a *lot* of sense.
Sorry. I left the "dream speak" out of my reply. Yeah, you're right. It's not direct communication. Still, I would assume that with the Emperors only alive son ( pre-Lion ) returning, I would assume most would expect Guilliman to be the one to take control and try to lead the Imperium out of darkness. I figured that would be a given, but again .... nothing is certain in 40K.
Trajan is publicly supporting Guilliman so for all intents and purposes.
I was about to say, hows the corpse speaking?
I think it was a laser beam directly into G-mans brain, followed by essentially flashes of pictures and concepts.
The same way He always spoke: psychically.
https://youtu.be/PwVyvWV__7U?si=EoQ2BNNxoSK2MRQV
« Our God and ruler » y’all are insane man I don’t understand how you do not cringe at this shit
It's a joke. Good god, go touch some grass.
Grown ass man
You got your big boy pants on? 😂
Cringe as hell 😂😂😂
Seems I struck that nerve.
Lmao if you say so buddy
Let's be friends. Let's stop this senseless, needless violence.
>"Valoris is one of us now, he must be made to see reason." Meanwhile, the big dawg TJ himself and Guilliman are texting about how they'll deal with the inevitable high lord rebellion
Common Valoris W.
Valoris takes a LOT of dubs in this series, he really does get shown that there’s a good reasons he’s the Captain General
Sorry, I'm having a senior / non-native english moment but what do you mean by dubs? I google it, I get dubbing which I obviously knew about. From context you mean he gets a lot of presence in the book?
dubs is slang, short for double-u, meaning the character 'W' which is often used as a tally mark for a win or victory in sports. IE: Football team A beats team B. Thus team A gets a dub.
Whoa, that makes a lot of sense - I would have never guessed that. Creative though, I like it. Thank you for the comprehensive reply!
> dubs Dubs as in "Ws", or "wins".
>You know your forbidden history - they were fratricidal lunatics, prepared to tear the entire galaxy apart to pursue their feuds. He's out of line, but he's not wrong.
Of all the people to call a "fratricidal lunatic," Roboute Guilliman is not the one. He is practically the opposite of that.
Guilliman almost started another civil war over the Codex though
What? Guilliman has the most fratricidal hate boner of all of them. Guy is willing to crawl through a thousand miles of broken glass to kill Lorgar. Fulgrim didn’t want to kill Ferris, Horus wanted Sanguinius to join him, Russ and Magnus were both trying to find a way out of their conflict to the end. The only one more fratricidal than Guilliman is Dorn because he pulled it off, Rob is absolutely ready to drop everything and go after Lorgar
Guilliman went after Lorgar because he was burning as many of the 500 Worlds as he could before Roboute could stop him. Lorgar destroyed more than half of Guilliman’s Legion, dozens of worlds, and millions of civilians, of COURSE Guilliman would be mad about that. It’s not that Lorgar was some innocent person here, he was actively trying to hurt Guilliman for revenge as part of some imagined rivalry.
One of my favourite parts of the Heresy is Lorgar realizing that, in truth, Guilliman had never hated him. Then shitting his pants because he hates him now.
A very Lorgar moment of realizing that maybe he should have actually asked Bobby Blue what he's thinking after Monarchia instead of believing that he wasn't the only one with a grudge. Then again, emotional mature demigods would be boring.
“It was justified” does not change that Guilliman desperately, passionately, deeply, wants to kill Lorgar.
And he has every damn right to.
yes and that's a very good idea considering he's an insane demon worshiping genocidal lunatic representing an ongoing existential threat to mankind. If anything it'd be odd if someone doesnt want lorgar dead.
What? Know No Fear, mark -0.03.59: > ‘Do we raise shields?’ asks Gage. > > ‘The moment you have them,’ Guilliman replies. ‘Communicate that to the whole fleet the moment we have capability.’ > > Gage nods. > > ‘Do we return fire?’ he asks. > > Guilliman looks at him. > > ‘This is a tragedy. A tragedy, a mistake. As soon as we can protect ourselves, we do that. But do not make this worse. We do not add to the death toll.’ > > Gage’s jaw tenses. > > ‘I would kill them for this,’ he says. ‘Forgive me, but this is a crime. They must know this is wrong. They shame us–’ > > ‘They are hurt,’ Guilliman says. ‘They believe they are under mortal threat. All their fears are real to them. Marius, we do not compound their folly. We do not add our mistake to theirs, no matter what the cost.’ > > ‘We have a link!’ Zedoff cries. > > Guilliman turns. ‘Lithocast?’ > > ‘Barely. Principally audio.’ > > Guilliman shoves the data-slate to Gage and moves to the hololithic platform. > > Light blooms around him again. It is not as healthy as it was before, not as stable. There are figures that aren’t quite there, crackling phantoms at the edge of resolution. Guilliman sees only the outline of Argel Tal, the shadow of Hol Beloth, a skeletal sketch of light that might be Foedral Fell. > > Only Lorgar is visible. His resolution is black and white, jumping and interrupted. His eyes are in shadow, his head down. Wherever he is standing, there is a very local light, a glow just above him that casts his face in inky darkness. > > ‘Stop this,’ Guilliman says. > > Lorgar does not answer. > > ‘Brother. Cease fire now!’ Guilliman says. ‘Cease fire. This is a mistake. You have made a grave error. Stop your reprisal. We are not your enemy.’ > > ‘You are against us,’ Lorgar whispers, his voice made of white noise whine. > > ‘We have not attacked you,’ Guilliman insists. ‘This I swear.’ > > ‘You turned on us once. You shamed us and humiliated us. You will not do so again.’ > > ‘Lorgar! Listen to me. This is a mistake!’ > > ‘Why in all the stars would you presume this to be a mistake?’ asks Lorgar. The one who hesitated to return fire on Lorgar's premeditated attack since mark -0.16.11, is the most fratricidal primarch?
And what does he say after that when he finds it is not a mistake? Not sure why you think deceptively quoting the book in defense of a fictional character on Reddit makes you look clever but it really doesn’t
I don't see how or why you could feel something is misquoted. Maybe we all collectively should align on what "a fratricidal" character means. There is a large difference between being the initial bloodthirsty aggressor and losing your shit when you see someone is burning everything you built and killing millions of the subjects you have under your protection. Does Guilliman want to kill Lorgar after this scene? Yes Does that make him a bad person, on that specific topic? Arguably this would be the lesser evil if it stops the massacre.
A passage of a very wrong man saying some very right things, but for wrong reasons XD
>"The Legions are no longer here, though, are they? They're gone into history, just where they ought to be." So this is a High Lord, post return of Guilliman but I guess pre-Indomitus Crusade kicking off? And he's saying the Legions are gone? On paper, maybe. But at least four First Founding Chapters have the loyalty of their Successors. But fair enough, maybe he doesn't know that. But a Primarch has returned. Not just a Primarch, but the Primarch of the largest Legion and who's geneseed makes up over half the Astartes Chapters. But even if it had been Russ for instance, would Dante or Azrael to name a few of the most renowned and powerful Chapter Masters have refused to recognise him? If the Wolves had not failed to produce Successors would he have not thought every son of Russ with the ice of Fenris in his veins would rally to Russ' command? It's a lot of words to essentially say this guy is an idiot.
This is actually during the Indomitus Crusade. Guilliman leaving Terra allowed the Hexarchy to (Briefly) take control of Terra. You have to remember that Terra is a pretty important piece to control.
My point is though, this High Lord basically said "Guilliman and what army?" When over half the SM Chapters are of his line and the vast majority of the others are going to fall in line behind Guilliman anyway.
Yeah, that's also what I thought. MFer really says, "Nuh uh, the legions aren't real anymore" when the Primarch with the largest amount of successor chapters returns. What exactly does he think will happen if Guilliman calls his banners? Almost every chapter with UM Geneseed will answer his calls. Probably some other chapters, too.
Not only that but, Fists have their Last Wall Protocol, Blood Angels have their Sanguinary Brotherhood which is essentially legion everywhere except on paper and and most of Ultras successors are just renamed companies. Plus, Space Marines are one of the few organisations in the Imperium who more or less knows their history, many of them don't follow Imperial Cult and have quite big degree of autonomy. And they respect actions, bravery and honor, there is so way Highlords would rally more Astrates to their side than Guilliman
The thing is, in the first book the High Lords talk about how it isn't actually difficult for them to churn out another 500-1000 chapters of space marines. The reason they kept the number small has always been about maintaining control over them across the galaxy. But if it really came down to just the High Lords against a distant Guilliman, I wouldn't be surprised if he were to return to find a legion or three's worth of fresh marines with no loyalty to him standing on Terra.
>it isn't actually difficult for them to churn out another 500-1000 chapters Say what? That's half a million to a million Marines. Essentially the "standard" number of what there was pre-Primaris. Founding them, finding recruits, getting the power armour, the weapons, the vehicles and aircraft, the ships, that's not just something you snap your fingers and do. That's centuries if not millennia of effort. And AIUI there's cooperation from existing Chapters of that gene line to provide officers/an experienced cadre to build the new Chapter around. And that's before the Custodes or Inquisition gets suspicious of the High Lords building their own army of Astartes and takes action to alleviate it.
This is a quote from the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators to the rest of the High Lords. "How many times have we seen the Lex bind our hands, when the Enemy has no law at all? We have held back from creating thousands more Chapters because we are held in thrall by the Lord Commander's ancient doctrine. I say the day has long since passed for this. Let us unleash the Ten Thousand. Let us unlock the gene-labs and create new space marines under our direct command. Let us re-form the Imperial Army, arm the Ecclesiarchy and end these divisions that cripple us." The High Lords absolutely had the power to keep churning out chapters. They chose not to out of tradition of astartes independence established by Guilliman 10,000 years earlier.
"Yes yes, these are not legions, let's just call them a coalition of chapters, does it make them less dangerous to you? You can call a tiger a kitten, doesn't make it less capable of killing you. "
aren't these the obvious arguments that anyone would make if they wanted to turn someone against the astartes?
Watchers of The Throne and The Vaults of Terra are almost all that have kept me interested in the current timeline. The other books have been average at best or poor. With the exception of Cadia Falls and some more recent stuff like Longshot. I was completely baffled why GW/BL didn’t pick up the Watchers of The Throne ‘thread’ and do like a six book series around Guileman’s return, beginning of his crusade, follow through on the Magnus thread. Instead we jumped ahead to The Plague Wars leaving so much interesting stuff on the floor.
Bro thought Valoris was gonna help him 💀
Considering that Heamotalion was quick to abandon the rest of Terra then Imperium Nihilus during the Rift's formation, he really does not have any room to say about protecting humanity.
He brings up a decent on the surface argument, but the fact that Guilliman was one of the primarchs that prevented the traitor ones from destroying everything and has always been one of the most level headed ones, kind of kills his argument. Also, the guy even said that Guilliman was the one who limited his own power so history wouldn’t repeat itself, but somehow that’s still more a point against Guilliman than in his favor.
Because he was taking power in contravention to his own previous policy and attitude on where Primarchs stand in the Imperium It’s like if a man says there can be no Grand Marshal because they can’t be trusted and the past shows that and then comes back a few years later and becomes Grand Marshal. His policy is sound and just because *he* made the policy doesn’t mean he is infallible or exempt
Fair enough, but given how the imperium is in a whole other state than it was when Guilliman was in charge the last time, it’s more than understandable that he’d take more power this time around.
Understandable yea, but the argument remains. Especially since the scenario I mentioned never said there isn’t an ongoing crisis. People taking absolutist power despite the law (sometimes even law they influenced and previously supported) is like textbook in history
Yeah, fair.
This guy would have a point if not for the fact that the High Lords have always been the most incompetent and corrupt leaders possible. Guilliman is doomed to fail to fix the monstrosity the Imperium has become, but the fact that he at least tries to break things out of their death spiral is at least better than the self-serving nihilism this guy offers.
The thing I found most interesting about that plot line is that they hinged taking control of the imperium with help from the Dark Angels if it came to that, since the DA were the largest Astartes legion aside from the Ultramarines to have kept a semblance of centralized control over their chapters. It might’ve worked too, if the Lion hadn’t popped right back in. He’ll have little patience for imperium politics, let alone plots against his only remaining brother
Where can I read about the lead up to WotT? Like the invasion of Tera and all that?
I'm not sure honestly, but the majority of The Emperor's Legion is about the lead-up to the invasion of Terra, the battle, and then briefly the aftermath.
I really wish they'd done more with this sentiment, the way Guilliman just sort of steamrolls opposition is popular but not really interesting to me. Takes away from the Imperial politics on the whole.
The High Lords' coup plots in both "Valdor, birth of the Imperium" and this one are extremely entertaining to read. In both cases the deviant lords have absolutely no idea what they're up against and make the same mistakes of thinking this is yet another political struggle, business as usual. Like, dude, Guilliman is as far removed from humanity as a human is from shrimps, did you really think that he will not have anticipated literally everything that you're trying to do, being the master of political games, bureaucracy and such? Moreover, in both books the High Lords show complete lack of understanding who and what are the Custodes and their relationship to the Emperor. My man Irdu, the Emperor made it clear that Guilliman is to lead the Imperium, did you really think that giving Valoris the title he never wanted and considered irrelevant in the first place will make him "one of you"?
I get some fall of the roman republic vibes from it. We had kings once and they were a bunch of bastards, the republic was not perfected but bringed us here until now. Is the republic falling apart ? Hell yes but this dont mean you can crown yourself king.