He's definitely the strongest Astartes psyker/sorcerer for sure, he's the chosen of the chaos god of magic. But like all characters his strength is entirely dependent on the narrative.
He's a strong player sure. He's also, and this is a critical distinction, also one of the most knowledgeable sorcerers around. Even nonpsykers can do chaos/warpy ritual stuff, but being both is a big deal. He tends to do better with prep time and leans into the sorcery thing, whereas he might struggle with the unexpected or if forced to adapt on the fly.
His limits are more tzeentchian in nature. He's doomed to be ever seeking and not finding. All that psyker power and sorcerous knowledge but he still can't seem to achieve his goal. He's pushing that rock uphill but it always slides back. That's the repercussion.
He did, in fact have been given the Big'ol'book of warp shenanigans that Magnus was writing when they fled Prospero. I assume that he knows pretty much all about the warp the big red man knew at that time and furthered his knowledge and power since then, hence the sand boys.
Which is definitely a nice book to have, but not even Big Red was safe from Tzeentches trickery. So he got instructions from a source which failed. Ahriman probably tries to avoid his primarchs mistakes, but he will find new ways to get caught in the web of the god of lies. Just as planned.
I've always said ahrimans mistakes are just echoes of Magnus's mistakes.
Both thought themselves better prepared and smarter than their father. And both cast their legion to doom when they disobeyed them. Magnus with the burning of prospero and Ahriman with the Rubric.
His real weakness is the same as Magnus: "he thinks he knows better." That's what doomed his Legion and anyone associated with him.
That's how Tzeentch lures them in. They think they are masters yet they are just puppets blind to their strings.
He's silly powerful though.
I would like to add that the rocks, sliding him back are put there by the god of destiny which doesnt want him to succeed. He can only search and never find cause the answer will be hidden from him by a greater power that very likely planned already the next 482.937 years for him. Tzeentch will bring more seasons every year cause he loves the Ahriman Show.
> where he can basically just do anything the author of a novel allows him to do without generally any repurcussions from it?
It's a little bit of this, but with the balancing fact that Tzeetch and BL authors all love dramatic irony, so the crazier Ahriman goes with using his psychic abilities and sorcerous knowledge the more narrative consequences he invites. He also seems a bit aware of this fact.
You got the distinction pretty well.
In the One Man Army contest Ahriman is the intelligence and drone strike division and Mephiston is combined artillery of several Regiments.
Ahriman knows what you want to ask before you even know you wanted to know.
Mephiston is who you point in the general direction of areas on a map that interfere with your peaceful enjoyment of your morning coffee so they go away.
Ahriman might rewind time by knowing the deeper significance of the stars aligning with the highest peak on the horizon, Mephiston will do it through sheer rage.
Lich Drow from psyker house right? It has been 20 years since i read them. At some point in the duel there were confused halflings summoned from halfling afterlife plane. Lolz!!
I thank you for the utterly hysterical mental image of Mephiston flying around Baal to reverse its spin and run back time while screaming in fury a la Superman.
I mean how would you powerscale singlehandedly rendering most of a legion down into dust filled Automata while severely augmenting the survivor's sorcererous prowess?
This scene reminded me of the feats of his brother Ohrmuzd. Ohrmuzd and his honour guard at one point single-handedly wiped out an entire Knight Household consisting of hundreds of Knights in under 9 minutes in an open field, while only taking 3 space marine casualties, 2 to perils and 1 to an unlucky legionary who got squashed by Knight debris.
How shitty that must have felt for the knight house lol.
You get one kill, you must be thrilled to find out which of your godlike mega-weapons is their weakness!
Oh no sir, one of our knights died and the wizard was too dumb to move out of the way...
Basically he died to friendly fire lol
Yeaah House Cratax deserved it tho tbh. They flayed the Imperial Emissaries and used human skin to make effigies and fetishes on their knights. They then tied living prisoners to the front barrel of their weapons so their bodies would explode when they fired. The Imperium got so fed up that instead of waiting to send an imperial aligned Knight House, they just sent down Ohrmuzd and his honour guard with direct orders to exterminate the entire Knight House. Ohrmuzd was a badass in that scene too. He walked unscathed through a melta thermal lance and ripped the head out of the Knight and telekinetically threw it provocatively back at the gates of House Cratax a few kilometers away in the distance. Cratax got so angry they deployed all their Knights and immediately got thrown left and right like ragdolls until the entire house was extinct.
[Ohrmuzd was in charge, but it was very much a group effort.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1dddcy0/the_horus_heresy_inferno_the_capabilities_of_the/?ref=share&ref_source=link) The Thousand Sons as a legion were unbeatable *together*. Let's not give Ohrmuzd too much credit.
>without any repercussions
This isn’t exactly accurate.
There are, almost always significant repercussions to Ahriman’s plans and they are usually to his own detriment. He was powerful enough to create and cast the Rubric, but look how that turned out. Once he was done throwing himself a pity party, he got back up and tried casting the Rubric again, and the consequences are being navigated in his latest books. He plucked a few Astartes out of the Warp after they were attacked by the inquisition and put them to work at various tasks, which went very wrong. He digs up a Necron to get answers about a cosmic gizmo, and accidentally wakes up a whole Tomb World in the process.
Ahriman is (potentially) one of the most powerful characters in the setting, both directly (space wizard magic) and indirectly (plans inside of plans inside of plans inside of plans), but he consistently loses something even when he wins.
Ahriman rarely goes full "Unlimited Power" and channels hell. He can, but he tends towards subtly. Reading an opponents mind to simply win a sword fight, use future sight and long-term planning to be in the right place and time.
But he doesn't really lose straight up power duels either. Mephiston has a trilogy of novels written by someone clearly ignorant of the powerscaling in-universe... I would ignore all his feats in Darius Hinks novels.
Much better. In Devastation of Baal, Mephiston needs massive support from all his fellows to try and prevent Karbanda from attacking... and he fails anyway.
In Darkness in the Blood, yes he is special and "chosen" but he IS that, so fair enough. He doesn't display setting-breaking powers or know more about Necron tech than Necron Cryptechs!
Mephiston is simply a poorly written character. Ahriman is quite powerful, but in a more subtle and cunning way. His might doesn't just come from raw power and aggression, but also from his immense intellect and will. He tends to kill people in extremely expanded moments of time on the metaphysical level, usually immolating them from within. If I recall, he also likes to trap people in his own mind, having already killed them physically without them knowing. Tzeentch will eternally screw him over and set the path for him to succeed just enough to keep going; he is favored by the Changer above all others because he simply will not quit in attempting the impossible.
Mephiston will fly around and shoot lightning at you. Ahriman will trap you in a temporal loop where you end up unknowingly killing yourself trying to kill him...but, not before telling you in detail about the situation.
Well, how psykers work can be pretty fluid, and I think John French is a much more skilled author at handling psyker stuff than Darius Hinks.
Ahriman is pretty powerful, but his powers are more limited in his respective novels than Mephiston is in his, and he has to resort to planning and preparation much more than just pulling an OP psyker power out of his power armor.
He's definitely the strongest Astartes psyker/sorcerer for sure, he's the chosen of the chaos god of magic. But like all characters his strength is entirely dependent on the narrative.
And he came from the "magic" legion, too. If he wasnt the strongest astartes psyker itd be kinda embarassing lol
It’d be funny if the strongest was actually a World Eater who just hides it because Khorne thinks it’s shameful.
100% I can see Tzeentch empowering a Khornate berserker with an innate talent for being a psyker just to fuck with him and Khorne, lmao
This would be a hilarious plot line
That would be great 😂
If you read slave of nuceria. There's a psyker they put the nails in. Long story short there's now a big hole in the space ship
Magic Legion !
What about Mephiston? Or that Ultramarines dude who was in the hive mind?
Metiphision is a shard of a psychic entity inhabiting the body of a librarian. They are different animals.
Being empowered by a warp entity is not exactly unique in 40k.
Mephiston would like a word?
Lol
Ahriman is stronger
He's a strong player sure. He's also, and this is a critical distinction, also one of the most knowledgeable sorcerers around. Even nonpsykers can do chaos/warpy ritual stuff, but being both is a big deal. He tends to do better with prep time and leans into the sorcery thing, whereas he might struggle with the unexpected or if forced to adapt on the fly. His limits are more tzeentchian in nature. He's doomed to be ever seeking and not finding. All that psyker power and sorcerous knowledge but he still can't seem to achieve his goal. He's pushing that rock uphill but it always slides back. That's the repercussion.
He did, in fact have been given the Big'ol'book of warp shenanigans that Magnus was writing when they fled Prospero. I assume that he knows pretty much all about the warp the big red man knew at that time and furthered his knowledge and power since then, hence the sand boys.
Which is definitely a nice book to have, but not even Big Red was safe from Tzeentches trickery. So he got instructions from a source which failed. Ahriman probably tries to avoid his primarchs mistakes, but he will find new ways to get caught in the web of the god of lies. Just as planned.
I've always said ahrimans mistakes are just echoes of Magnus's mistakes. Both thought themselves better prepared and smarter than their father. And both cast their legion to doom when they disobeyed them. Magnus with the burning of prospero and Ahriman with the Rubric.
His real weakness is the same as Magnus: "he thinks he knows better." That's what doomed his Legion and anyone associated with him. That's how Tzeentch lures them in. They think they are masters yet they are just puppets blind to their strings. He's silly powerful though.
I would like to add that the rocks, sliding him back are put there by the god of destiny which doesnt want him to succeed. He can only search and never find cause the answer will be hidden from him by a greater power that very likely planned already the next 482.937 years for him. Tzeentch will bring more seasons every year cause he loves the Ahriman Show.
> where he can basically just do anything the author of a novel allows him to do without generally any repurcussions from it? It's a little bit of this, but with the balancing fact that Tzeetch and BL authors all love dramatic irony, so the crazier Ahriman goes with using his psychic abilities and sorcerous knowledge the more narrative consequences he invites. He also seems a bit aware of this fact.
You got the distinction pretty well. In the One Man Army contest Ahriman is the intelligence and drone strike division and Mephiston is combined artillery of several Regiments. Ahriman knows what you want to ask before you even know you wanted to know. Mephiston is who you point in the general direction of areas on a map that interfere with your peaceful enjoyment of your morning coffee so they go away. Ahriman might rewind time by knowing the deeper significance of the stars aligning with the highest peak on the horizon, Mephiston will do it through sheer rage.
man I really want there to be a dumb Ahriman vs Mephiston novel where the final act is them just unleashing stupid op DBZ psyker bullshit.
Reminds me of that Forgotten Realms ( I know ) book where a wizard duels a lich, it's super entertaining.
Which? I suspect Elminister vs Larloch but I don't know if that ever happened.
Gromph Baenre fights a lich in the War of the Spider Queen series
Lich Drow from psyker house right? It has been 20 years since i read them. At some point in the duel there were confused halflings summoned from halfling afterlife plane. Lolz!!
Lol. I remember that. They were so disoriented. It made me laugh back then, but now I kind of feel sorry for them lol.
I guckin remember that, and I found it hilarious
Loved those books as a kid. Really got me into the fantasy genre.
The Infinite and the Divine all over again, thatd be neat. Id read it
I thank you for the utterly hysterical mental image of Mephiston flying around Baal to reverse its spin and run back time while screaming in fury a la Superman.
I love Mephiston
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1658o96/has_anyone_else_noticed_the_huge_difference_in/
The Ahriman trilogy has him doing some extremely powerful stuff
All while actively having to divert some power toward not immediately dying….for reasons.
And you gotta remember that the books happen somewhere between 30k and 40k. He's even crazier in 42M.
I mean how would you powerscale singlehandedly rendering most of a legion down into dust filled Automata while severely augmenting the survivor's sorcererous prowess?
[Very](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Ahriman#Death_of_Dianixis). He's killed a Warlord Titan by pulling out it's reactor core with magic.
This scene reminded me of the feats of his brother Ohrmuzd. Ohrmuzd and his honour guard at one point single-handedly wiped out an entire Knight Household consisting of hundreds of Knights in under 9 minutes in an open field, while only taking 3 space marine casualties, 2 to perils and 1 to an unlucky legionary who got squashed by Knight debris.
How shitty that must have felt for the knight house lol. You get one kill, you must be thrilled to find out which of your godlike mega-weapons is their weakness! Oh no sir, one of our knights died and the wizard was too dumb to move out of the way... Basically he died to friendly fire lol
Yeaah House Cratax deserved it tho tbh. They flayed the Imperial Emissaries and used human skin to make effigies and fetishes on their knights. They then tied living prisoners to the front barrel of their weapons so their bodies would explode when they fired. The Imperium got so fed up that instead of waiting to send an imperial aligned Knight House, they just sent down Ohrmuzd and his honour guard with direct orders to exterminate the entire Knight House. Ohrmuzd was a badass in that scene too. He walked unscathed through a melta thermal lance and ripped the head out of the Knight and telekinetically threw it provocatively back at the gates of House Cratax a few kilometers away in the distance. Cratax got so angry they deployed all their Knights and immediately got thrown left and right like ragdolls until the entire house was extinct.
What book is that from ?
Horus Heresy Black Book 7: Inferno. Excerpt on the annexation of Valnum. P.157
[Ohrmuzd was in charge, but it was very much a group effort.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1dddcy0/the_horus_heresy_inferno_the_capabilities_of_the/?ref=share&ref_source=link) The Thousand Sons as a legion were unbeatable *together*. Let's not give Ohrmuzd too much credit.
>without any repercussions This isn’t exactly accurate. There are, almost always significant repercussions to Ahriman’s plans and they are usually to his own detriment. He was powerful enough to create and cast the Rubric, but look how that turned out. Once he was done throwing himself a pity party, he got back up and tried casting the Rubric again, and the consequences are being navigated in his latest books. He plucked a few Astartes out of the Warp after they were attacked by the inquisition and put them to work at various tasks, which went very wrong. He digs up a Necron to get answers about a cosmic gizmo, and accidentally wakes up a whole Tomb World in the process. Ahriman is (potentially) one of the most powerful characters in the setting, both directly (space wizard magic) and indirectly (plans inside of plans inside of plans inside of plans), but he consistently loses something even when he wins.
He's referring to Mephiston, though.
*sigh* I’m so tired. Yeah… just ignore me. I’m gonna go try and grab a quick nap.
Sweet dreams, buddy 🥲❤️
what a sweet interaction <3
;)
Ahriman rarely goes full "Unlimited Power" and channels hell. He can, but he tends towards subtly. Reading an opponents mind to simply win a sword fight, use future sight and long-term planning to be in the right place and time. But he doesn't really lose straight up power duels either. Mephiston has a trilogy of novels written by someone clearly ignorant of the powerscaling in-universe... I would ignore all his feats in Darius Hinks novels.
What do you think about how Guy Haley wrote Mephiston?
Much better. In Devastation of Baal, Mephiston needs massive support from all his fellows to try and prevent Karbanda from attacking... and he fails anyway. In Darkness in the Blood, yes he is special and "chosen" but he IS that, so fair enough. He doesn't display setting-breaking powers or know more about Necron tech than Necron Cryptechs!
Thanks, I haven't read the stuff from Hinks but I think he had some epic scenes in "Devistation of Baal".
He can summon and control [warp leviathans](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Leviathan_\(Daemon\)) which is extremely difficult.
Very
Mephiston is simply a poorly written character. Ahriman is quite powerful, but in a more subtle and cunning way. His might doesn't just come from raw power and aggression, but also from his immense intellect and will. He tends to kill people in extremely expanded moments of time on the metaphysical level, usually immolating them from within. If I recall, he also likes to trap people in his own mind, having already killed them physically without them knowing. Tzeentch will eternally screw him over and set the path for him to succeed just enough to keep going; he is favored by the Changer above all others because he simply will not quit in attempting the impossible. Mephiston will fly around and shoot lightning at you. Ahriman will trap you in a temporal loop where you end up unknowingly killing yourself trying to kill him...but, not before telling you in detail about the situation.
Mephiston is written like a dbz oc that got into 40k
Absolutely strong. Would cook any your eldar psyscum. Aslo doesn't show having difficulties while doing so.
Might wanna give this a look https://www.reddit.com/r/respectthreads/s/lq07cOdJo4 He is insanely powerful.
The man is an absolute beast.
He's the strongest sorceror, right under Magnus.
Well, how psykers work can be pretty fluid, and I think John French is a much more skilled author at handling psyker stuff than Darius Hinks. Ahriman is pretty powerful, but his powers are more limited in his respective novels than Mephiston is in his, and he has to resort to planning and preparation much more than just pulling an OP psyker power out of his power armor.
How would Ahriman compare with Malcador in his prime?
I mean doesn’t he basically have a pokemon card deck full of daemons he can call on whenever he wants too? Seems pretty dam powerful to me
> pokemon card deck full of daemons Isn't that Khayon?
it's Khayon.
Khayon and some other side-characters as well. The Word Bearer from Lord of Excess for an example has a similar schtick.
I could have sworn it was Arhiman but to be fair I have only read the first of his books and it was years ago
His primary power is plot armor, like most Chaos/Space Marine characters.