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[UXLZ]

Did the Emperor program him that way?

[nenjin]

Did the Emperor program him that way?

Well...

This is where fluff meets the meta.

Meta:

Space Marine Chapters need to have well-defined differences, both in fluff and the table top. They need identities, specializations, roles on the battlefield. This is all to provide background and flavor to an over the top war game, after all. So you need your castle builders, your lightning raiders, your terror shock troops, your crazy hand to hand berzerkers, your sorcerers, your "Perfect" soldiers, your "Model" soldiers, your obligatory Nordic troops (cause remember, Kislev is a thing in Warhammer Fantasy), your religious fanatic troops, your moody dark secretive emo troops, your vampire troops, your bike fast attack troops, your drop troops, your bionic troops, your troops that have something to do with dragons...

Fluff:

The Emperor arranged the Astartes as one giant battle group of varied specializations. So since all Space Marine chapters need to typify their special role, and their genes come from their primarchs...their primarchs needed to embody these traits, literally.

So, was the Emperor so awesome at gene coding that he imbued the Primarchs with these traits, and programmed their personalities to match what he needed, or did the needs of the fluff to create strong, clear differences between 20 characters and chapters necessitate it? For that matter, did the Primarchs crash land on planets which directly inform both their identities and the legions that followed them by accident, fate or because the plot and characterization demanded it?

The answer is yes, to all of them, I think. Have I read any text which explicitly states "The Emperor gene-coded [Primarch] to do [X]"? Yes. Have I read it in direct relation to their personality types? No. But the inferences are all over the place. If you buy into the theory that the Emperor "Has A Plan", it makes pretty much any explanation feasible, and gives a fluffy explanation for the careful organization of both the primarchs and the legions. Which if true, again, would make the Emperor a total dick.

This is part of the reason getting to read the Primarchs speak and act has always been somewhat of a problem for me in the HH novels. Throughout my years of 40k, the primarchs were painted with big, bold, almost preposterous characterization. Everything about them was constructed to fit the character of the Chapter they gave life to. When you take characterization like that, and then have to stick a real personality in there somewhere to hold up a 300 page novel...it's not always successful in the novels, for me. The primarchs work better as myths, in my mind. Sometimes some writers get it, other times, they fall back on regular, kinda conversational characterization. Often the most effective portrayals of the Primarchs in the novels come from other character's perspectives of them.

[LordBaal]

Well, I did say the Emperor is a dick, didn't I?

...the Emperor is a dick.

[Tack]

I would say the Angries and Fucklaw agree.

[Xantalos]

Way I see it is it's better to have the shlong of Imperial glory shoved right in front of your face instead of being shoved down one of your various orifices like Chaos does. There's a giant dick involved in each scenario, it's just that the one dick ends up with you bowing to it in compliance while the other rips you to shreds and adds your biomass to itself to grow bigger.

[Tack]

Way I see it, follow Tzeentch and everyone wins.
Except Tzeentch wins more than you.

Unless we're talking on Tabletop in which case everyone wins more than you, you're the laughing-stock of the FLGS.

(Not bitter)

[Xantalos]

I find Tzneetch funny because he manages to make doing things that have a point pointless. He schemes and plots better than any entity in the universe but solely for the sake of scheming and plotting, and he plots against himself as often as for himself. He doesn't have any goal to work towards, so he's effectively scheming towards nothing by scheming towards everything. And he'll never accomplish anything significant because of that. At least the other gods acknowledge their pointlessness, they just don't care.

[Tack]

He's currently trying to remake his staff, so that's a little goal to work towards.
It's important to have hobbies, y'know?

[Xantalos]

Yeah, it definitely is.

One thing that always bugged me about his staff is this though; given that his staff split up to become every magic ever, wouldn't getting it back into his possession require that he kill everything in existence that knows magic?

[Tack]

Judging by the activity of the blue scribes...
I think it's breeding.

[Xantalos]

The staff? Magic? Breeding with everything in existence that knows magic?

[Digital Hellhound]

What's this about Tzeentch's staff? Lexicanum gave me nothing, the traitors. I'm not doubting you, but where's this from?

[Xantalos]

IIRC it was old lore; I forget where I heard it but it went like this:
Tzneetch was once top dog of the chaos gods. Then the other three ganged up on him and broke his staff into a bazillion pieces, which became every magical spell ever.
Tzneetch then sent out two lesser daemons of his to gather up all the spells so he can have his kickass staff again - one writes the spells down but can't read what he writes, and the other can read them and thus use them but can't understand what he's reading or something like that.

[TempAcc]

The whole staff thing is part of a Tzeentchian myth that may or may not have been cooked up by tzeentch worshippers. According to them, Tzeentch was, originally, the most powerful of the chaos gods because he had the power over every kind of magic, so the other chaos gods joined up and broke his staff, causing him to become weaker. So Tzeentch sent his blue scribes all across the universe/galaxy to retrieve its pieces. The blue scribes can write down the spells, but the one that writes cant use them, and the ones that can use them cant learn them, or something like that, so they dont become powerful and betray tzeentch.

That myth also conflicts with other stuff thats been written by chaos, IE that should one of the chaos gods absolutely prevail over others, then chaos as we know it would cease to exist, which is why they wage their "grand game" and whatnot.

[Tack]

Rumor has it that Tzeentch once had a staff which was so powerful it gave him an edge over all of the other Chaos gods.
Them, having an issue with this crazy power-creep, all conspired to jump him in an alley and shattered his staff.

This shattered staff became spells. Like, all of the spells, in that universe.

So he's currently got the blue scribes hopping around the galaxy, recording every spell they can find in the hopes that once they're all in one place, they'll just morph back into his staff or sommat.

But that's the bits of the story that I heard, so I dunno.
Edit: The two ninjas above me have backed that one up pretty well.