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[Kot]

Nenjin, but it all makes perfect sense if you think about it...

Spoiler: After all, Emperor planned everything all along. (click to show/hide)

Jokes aside:
Cruze can be easily explained as Emperor wanting an Judge Dredd/Batman style dude to police everything and be justice incarnate, possibly with abilities to see the future so he can prevent crime before it happens. After all, his quirk was supposed to be protecting innocents and punishing criminals, but he ended up landing on one of most fucked up (Depression-world, overpopulation controlled by suicide) places around, where there are pretty much no innocents and only form of punishment that is feasible is murdering people into submission. No fucking suprise he turned out as a psychopath.
Lorgar could be planned as exact opposite of what he became - an great charismatic speaker convincing people to abandon false religions and talking prophets and priests down to atheism, but he landed in place where religion was very srs bsns and been made to belive it all from the start. After all, his legion was originally named Imperial Heralds.

No weird chaos-secret-stealing. No weird six-shamans-in-one. No omniscience.

Chaos-secret-stealing just makes him a Prometheian figure, basically a Human fucking Gods over for the good of Humanity. It's cool.
Emperor isin't exactly six-shamans-in-one (it would be more like sixty-thousand-shamans-in-one anyways), it was just that the shamans sacrificed themselves and then they joined up their souls and went back to get born as one being. Emperor had proably pretty regular childhood and life and shit, and was proably HORRENDOUSLY confused. He's regular human, not bunch of people inside one body.
Omniscience? He was never omniscient, IIRC, he's just very goddamn experienced. He had enough time to learn a lot about a lot of things which combined with being reasonably intelligent means that he can pass off as omniscient to lesser people.

[Grim Portent]

Well that's another beef. Why does the Emperor create a person like Cruze or Lorgar? Angron might have been ok had he not landed where he did. But Lorgar and Cruze were basically preprogrammed to be fuck ups.

They weren't intended to work out the way they did. Had they been raised elsewhere they likely would have taken very different perspectives on the proper way to rule.

As is Curze learned fear was the only way to keep humans in line and Lorgar learned that faith was the single most important thing to humanity, but those were taught to them and learned from their observations rather than built in

Now assume they grew up on Terra under the Emperor's guidance, Curze learning that fear and intimidation are useful tools but not an end in themselves. Useful for conquering people but ultimately something they should be able to grow out of. Lorgar turning his demagoguery and charisma to the refutation of gods and the teaching of scientific principles rather than to faith and superstitions.

[nenjin]

Except in Lorgar's case, it's Faith that is baked into his genetic code. Not skepticism.

It works, in the end. Like I said though, it smacks of retroactive storytelling. "Oh I made Zugard, Raper of Worlds, 20 years ago. Now I need to explain why the hero created him."

I guess that's what happens when you build up a mythology over 20 years with no real need for consistency or consequence, then decide you need to explain it. Lorgar and Cruze and Angron worked when they were just half-whispered myths and who they were as people was lost to time. You didn't need them to be people, you just needed them to be bad ass. But when you move away from Codex blurbs, suddenly making the whole thing work sensibly is a lot trickier. And it wouldn't be such a problem, again, if GWS hadn't continued to play up the Emperor's godliness throughout the HH. Dude literally bathes in the stream of time FFS. If he'd known his creations would be this fucked up, why did he bother? Because the universe would have been WORSE without Angron, Cruze and Lorgar? I doubt it.

I guess I'm just perturbed (arabo) because I get annoyed when I can clearly see the author's fingerprints on shit.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Cruze and the Emperor's meeting suggests that Emps didn't know about Night Haunter initially, which shows the whole issue. Rule through fear is all well and good in the foundation of the Imperium, it's just that it isn't rule exclusively through fear like Cruze ended up falling to. Cruze also never even attempted to reform Nostramo through any other means, which was the flaw in him. Clogging the sewers with the gore of the guilty and telling the less depraved half of Nostramo's leaders that they could submit or all die was a perfectly good start for that kind of place, and had he moved on to try and reform society afterwards it probably would have held up alright.

And that's the whole thing. Cruze never had adoptive parents, unlike literally every other Primarch. He was wracked with a sense of prescient certainty his whole life, and never was given any compassion to make him aspire to see if it could be changed. Instead of being uniquely able to avert BAD END he accepted it. Him seeing it confirmed the belief that humans were wretched animals, which in turn allowed him to support BAD END as a perverse form of justice. Repeat ad infinitum. Hell, he never even turned to Chaos. He betrayed the Imperium because he saw he was going to betray the Imperium.
Lorgar was also botched due to circumstance. Had he invested himself in the human-centered idealism of the Imperium instead of being halfway to Chaos from the beginning it probably would have been fine. Lorgar was meant to be the ultimate version of everyone who believes in claiming the stars for the common good of humanity, instead that sense of wonder was diverted to ethereal gods and the rest is history.

Even that could have been averted had the Emperor just controlled himself in reacting to being worshiped and resenting Lorgar for not being a warrior.

To put it in short: Lorgar's thing isn't faith per se, but more of the same feeling that some people get in cathedrals and others get from looking at photos of Earth from space.

[Xantalos]

Lorgar is wonder personified, basically.

[Kot]

Remember that the religion Lorgar grew up in was basically better version of Chaos Gods... and the main priest of them, Kor Phaeron, was half-turned into a Space Marine (since he was too old for full transformation) and became first captain anyways.

[pisskop]

tbh i found the whole 'scattered the genebabies across the galaxy' thing a little too saturday morning villian for me.

you couod argue it was a plan but then why couldnt you plan all the marines to join horus?  and several other gibblies

[Grim Portent]

tbh i found the whole 'scattered the genebabies across the galaxy' thing a little too saturday morning villian for me.

you couod argue it was a plan but then why couldnt you plan all the marines to join horus?  and several other gibblies

2 possible reasons off the top of my head.

1: While powerful the gods are not unlimited in their abilities. There are those they cannot readily corrupt, generally those sufficiently dedicated to another purpose such as various loyalists from the traitor legions in the HH.

2: The god's desired state of affairs is the current status quo. As is the Galaxy provides endless amusement, opportunities for them to compete with one another, and a plentiful source of prey. The 41st millennium is in most ways the perfect board for their great game.

[Tack]

But we can all agree the emperor fucked over Angron.

Also it wasn't the banning worship which turned Lorgar. It was making him kneel in front of his entire legion in the ashes of his greatest creation and forcing him to say it all meant shit.

Personally at that point I'd go chaos too.

Also Zugard, Raper of Worlds sounds like a bro.
Maybe chap master of the Marines Malevolent?

[misko27]

Except in Lorgar's case, it's Faith that is baked into his genetic code. Not skepticism.

It works, in the end. Like I said though, it smacks of retroactive storytelling. "Oh I made Zugard, Raper of Worlds, 20 years ago. Now I need to explain why the hero created him."

I guess that's what happens when you build up a mythology over 20 years with no real need for consistency or consequence, then decide you need to explain it. Lorgar and Cruze and Angron worked when they were just half-whispered myths and who they were as people was lost to time. You didn't need them to be people, you just needed them to be bad ass. But when you move away from Codex blurbs, suddenly making the whole thing work sensibly is a lot trickier. And it wouldn't be such a problem, again, if GWS hadn't continued to play up the Emperor's godliness throughout the HH. Dude literally bathes in the stream of time FFS. If he'd known his creations would be this fucked up, why did he bother? Because the universe would have been WORSE without Angron, Cruze and Lorgar? I doubt it.

I guess I'm just perturbed (arabo) because I get annoyed when I can clearly see the author's fingerprints on shit.

The problem is you want to fix that, it would take a retcon to end all retcons. Something above and beyond retcons in scope and scale. A purge, if you will.

tbh i found the whole 'scattered the genebabies across the galaxy' thing a little too saturday morning villian for me.

you couod argue it was a plan but then why couldnt you plan all the marines to join horus?  and several other gibblies

Just for future reference, can I ask for an example of saturday morning villains? I hear it all the time - hell I say it myself - but at this moment I find I can't actually name a villain along those lines.

But we can all agree the emperor fucked over Angron.

Also it wasn't the banning worship which turned Lorgar. It was making him kneel in front of his entire legion in the ashes of his greatest creation and forcing him to say it all meant shit.

Personally at that point I'd go chaos too.

Also Zugard, Raper of Worlds sounds like a bro.
Maybe chap master of the Marines Malevolent?

That name just screams 'I am going to take your eyesocket, and stick my penis into it."

[Tack]

"The harem-ships vigorously thrusting their way through warp space toward the Solar System, his intention to fall upon holy terra, to prise away the great steel belt protecting its virgin soil. To peel back the golden foliage and plumb the depths of the Mariana Trench.

[pisskop]

Skeletor, megatron, mummrah, scar, cobra.

"With this, the bubble beam -my greatest weapon-, I cast all of your allies into nigh-impenetrable force fields!  You will have no one left to save you from my wrath as I steal your sword of omens!  Just.  As.  Planned."

^^ instead of you know, killing them, collapsing said force field and gibbing the prisoners, or any number of quick and effective plans?


Or the 'ninja turtles syndrome', where they all have potent weapons but only ever use them to cut curtains that fall on the foe?




Yea no.  Instead of killing the genebabies they planned the unassured rebellion of the primarches?
Instead of allowing the galaxy to remain as a divided bunching of humies and countless minor factions of aliens?

I mean, meh.  Taking the emperor out of the picture would have been the goal of any plan they had.  The gods planning only showed that they were incapable of fielding anything the emperor could work up better.

[GiglameshDespair]

Except in Lorgar's case, it's Faith that is baked into his genetic code. Not skepticism.

It works, in the end. Like I said though, it smacks of retroactive storytelling. "Oh I made Zugard, Raper of Worlds, 20 years ago. Now I need to explain why the hero created him."

I guess that's what happens when you build up a mythology over 20 years with no real need for consistency or consequence, then decide you need to explain it. Lorgar and Cruze and Angron worked when they were just half-whispered myths and who they were as people was lost to time. You didn't need them to be people, you just needed them to be bad ass. But when you move away from Codex blurbs, suddenly making the whole thing work sensibly is a lot trickier. And it wouldn't be such a problem, again, if GWS hadn't continued to play up the Emperor's godliness throughout the HH. Dude literally bathes in the stream of time FFS. If he'd known his creations would be this fucked up, why did he bother? Because the universe would have been WORSE without Angron, Cruze and Lorgar? I doubt it.

I guess I'm just perturbed (arabo) because I get annoyed when I can clearly see the author's fingerprints on shit.

The problem is you want to fix that, it would take a retcon to end all retcons. Something above and beyond retcons in scope and scale. A purge, if you will.

"The Emperor woke up from his Power-Nap with a gasp.

'Christ,' he muttered. 'Good thing it was all a dream. Guess I better not be a tard when designing and working with my super-powerful demigod sons.'

And so the Emperor was slightly more sensible and a whole lot of unpleasantness was avoided."

GOOD END

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Remember: If the Chaos Gods had killed the Primarchs Big E could have made more or gone without them. By corrupting them they came closer than they ever did to being rid of the Emperor.

[nenjin]

I think pisskop and I are on the same page. Before the HH was put to text, I was ok with the situation. It was Saturday morning cartoon villains, and that was ok because it wasn't trying to be anything but. They were just trying to sell games and have some badass iconic figures to do it, with some nice but ultimately inconsequential fluff to back it up. ("They used to be the good guys!")

But suddenly 40k starts trying to get literary and it has a lot of 'splaining to do, further aggravated because they. Keep. Building. Up. The. Emperor. The Perpetuals shit. The dream walking. The time and space fuckery. The "Just as planned." They should have stopped short of where they did. But that's what happens when you try to explain myth; it ends up sounding contrived as it continues to buckle under its own epic proportions.

Lorgar is wonder personified, basically.

I don't buy this. Him and the WBs have a pathological need to bow down to SOMETHING. Otherwise they'd have just made giant statues of generic ubermensch putting his foot on a planet's neck and called it good. But instead they need an icon, a figure, as the object of their worship. Otherwise they would have been the greatest proponents of the Imperial Truth.....but they weren't. They were its biggest naysayers by directly contradicting it. Put another way, there were far easier and less problematic targets of their "wonder" than the Emperor. It's Faith, not just simple wonder at the vastness of existence. The universe already offered plenty of that.

But we can all agree the emperor fucked over Angron.

Again another example of "Why exactly did you do this again, Emps? Why did you antagonize the guy you gene-bred to be a RAEG machine, who you knew was already even more doped up on the Butcher's Nails?" Emps gave weeks, maybe even months to the other Primarchs, to know them and meet them and understand them. Angron? He treated Angron in exactly the way necessary to produce the Red Angel. All according to plan, I guess? Right. The plan of the drafting team at the Black Library desperately trying to connect the dots of 40k's mythology to a 400-page novel.

The problem is you want to fix that, it would take a retcon to end all retcons. Something above and beyond retcons in scope and scale. A purge, if you will.

Oh I'm well aware of that. I'm just re-reading the whole series again right now and these moments, choices and justifications keep sticking in my craw. I can usually tell when an idea proceeds the rationale that underpins it.

Put another way: two guys making a movie are sitting together planning it out. Guy A goes "Dude we totally need fucking dragons in our movie."
Guy B goes "Yeah man, dragons. Wait, aren't we making a futuristic sci-fi space movie?"
Guy A goes "Yeah. But I had an idea. What if there's like, Space Dragons, who once lived on Earth and helped create humans as they're known today before they fucked off to the distant reaches of the galaxy, blah blah blah blah blah."
And Guy B goes "Fuck yeah man, dragons."

That's kind of what I feel like has happened in 40k, where the decision to have dragons was made 20 years ago and the attempt to explain it in a way that doesn't insult the reader's intelligence is only a couple years old.

Remember: If the Chaos Gods had killed the Primarchs Big E could have made more or gone without them. By corrupting them they came closer than they ever did to being rid of the Emperor.

Facts not in evidence. It begs the question why he made Space Marines at all when he could have just made legions of Primarchs. It goes back to the theory that the Primarchs were made from a not-infinite resource. (Be that the Emperor's own essence, the stolen power of the Chaos Gods, what have you.)

Also when are we going to learn about the two lost Legions and the Primarchs. Considering how fucked up the Traitor Legions are and their names are still remembered, and how fucked up some of the Loyalist Legions can be.....how bad did the lost legions and Primarchs have to be, to be literally scrubbed from history? Can you get much danker than Chaos corrupted and/or mutated? What, did he accidentally create Ork and Tyranid Primarch Hybrids?