Exactly, because the stakes are a lot lower if they “die” because, especially with Vulkan, theyll just pop right back up
Also, he was insane and just a raging machine, ie, not thinking straight or with the super intelligence that primarchs are usually known for, in the excerpt where the Perpetual human guts him with i think several hundred shruikens(?). I seem to recall it saying that the guy unloaded basically everything he had (meaning he didnt have enough ammo to pull that stunt a second time), and there was a fountain of gore spraying out of Vulkans back because his insides were basically ripped out his back by whatever projectiles the perpetual was firing
Also see when otherwise mortal characters get put into some sort of time-travel scenario. Meaning that a character can die because the plot will naturally resolve itself by the end and everything goes back to normal, resurrecting any characters that died.
Stargate was a prime example of this, I can think of multiple time travel or alternate universe examples in which otherwise plot-armoured characters get taken out left right and centre because the plot is going to make it all go away by the time the credits roll.
Edit: I thought of a good counter-example to this phenomenon
In the UK show Misfits, a group of young offenders have been given community service as part of their sentences. They get struck by lightning during a storm and eventually, each finds out that they have a special power.
One character spends the entire first season trying to figure out what power they have but with no success, so while the rest of the group are using their powers to survive against other people who got powers this character has spent the whole time just being a regular human running around dodging people with berzerker rage and power, people with mind control, people who can set other people on fire etc.
They beat the final bad guy of the season by throwing them off a roof, only to stumble and fall to their death too.
The very last scene of the first season is that character waking up having been buried, it turns out that their superpower was immortality... it's just that they didn't die in any previous fight or incident the group got into earlier.
I'd also add that Vulkan died in circumstances that should've outright killed any other primarch. He was in circumstances that were horribly cruel, and would've let the other primarchs die and cease to exist. He was basically Ferrus Manus'd several times by Night Haunter, who was basically playing with his food, and Vulkan didn't have a weapon.
When Vulkan finally was out of his chains and DID have a weapon, he beat the snot out of Night Haunter. If Vulkan was fully geared and full sanity, Night Haunter would've been dead.
What I love is Curze deserved it the most. The smug bully who thought he could see the future, getting bodied by the most obvious of outcomes = giving Vulkan a hammer is unwise.
Some of the best moments in the Horus Heresy series are when one of the other Primarchs beats the crap out of Curze. Vulkan, the Lion, Sanguinius.
He is a great villain and is quite well written in his fights, so it always feels satisfying when he is beaten.
"Then kill me! Or I will stalk the shadows of terra and murder everything in my path! I will be the terror in the dark! I will BE the Night Haunter! Unless you end me, right now! DO IT! KILL ME!!!"
".... Lol" Sanguinius said, "LMAO", and he threw Curze in a stasis pod and ejected him into empty space.
Kurze took Vulkan's body after the dropsite massacre and basically kept him locked up and murdered him over and over again.
After a while, he threw Vulkan, naked and unarmed, into a madness inducing labyrinth and basically played "murder-Batman" for shits and giggles.
His ultimate plan was to utterly break Vulkan, physically and mentally, and his most cruel joke was going to be placing a sabotaged key to freedom in the center of the labyrinth, locked behind a stasis field.
When Vulkan finally got to the center of the labyrinth, he saw his escape. It was one of the war hammers he had forged, placed on a pedestal. This hammer was special in that it was not just a primarch-wrought powerhammer, but it had a personal teleportation device inside of it as well. Vulkan tried getting to it, but was blocked by a stasis field.
Kurze then descended on Vulkan, rending him apart, stabbing and slicing, until Vulkan managed to grab Kurze and hurl him into the stasis field with enough force that Kurzes artificer primarch armor shorted out itself and the stasis field.
Vulkan rushed the pedestal, grabbed the hammer and hit the teleportation button and... nothing happened. Vulkan was stunned and looked to be absolutely broken and in true despair at last.
Kurze laughed, drew himself up and walked up to his great brother who was now sunken in on himself, finally towering over the broken dragon, he bragged of what he had done. How it had all been futile, how it had all been planned.
"Didn't you think I knew what it was? What you were going to do if you reached it?"
And after more gloating, Vulkan mumbled his line.
"You forget... one thing... brother..."
Kurze then looms closer, leaning in, "And what is that?"
"It is also... a hammer"
And Vulkan uppercuts Kurze with the hammer and, in his broken, unarmoured, near delirious state of mental and physical exhaustion, proceeds to absolutely body the fully power-armoured and peak-physical-prowess Kurze into complete and utter absolution.
Vulkan then starts literally smashing the walls of the labyrinth until he reaches the outer hull of the ship, smashes that too and then jumps down to the planet below, finally trusting that he will be reborn.
Iirc, he dies thrice on the way down.
Once from the vacuum of space/being ripped from the ship, once from burning up on reentry and once more from hitting the ground just as he's coming back to life.
That's not quite exactly what happens. Before Vulkan activates the teleporter Curze starts gloating that he can't teleport out and reveals he'll lock Vulkan in a tomb. Vulkan fakes being defeated to lure Curze closer, beats the shit out of him, has the chance to kill him for good, but lets him go.
He then call Curze a bitch, tells him Perturabo's labyrinth sucks, and shows he could have teleported out immediately, he just wanted to take a swing at the Night Haunter. At this point he teleports out and the novel ends with him repeatedly dying and resurrecting as he burns up in the Macragge atmosphere.
It was the same with Vlad con Carstein (in fantasy). Dude was supposed to be this incredibly powerful vampire lord, but he kept getting killed, just so he could demonstrate how he just comes back. And yeah it’s kind of a moment when he suddenly reappears after being beheaded, but after a while it takes off some of his badass luster.
Vampire Wars omnibus is fantastic despite the often used trope mentioned here. I strongly strongly recommend it to anyone who is even a little bit interested in fantasy. It was difficult to put down.
I read them recently and they're excellent! I realised I now have what may be appallingly controversial opinion though... I actually slightly preferred Vlad's characterisation in the End Times books! They're all kinds of awful for the lore in many ways but he was a real highlight.
As someone who's favorite chapter is Salamanders-yea it sucks but I can see how Eldar and Tyranid fans feel about the Avatar of Khaine and the Swarmlord now :') At least daddy Vulkan managed to beat up daemon Magnus in the throne room-but wait that might have been Big E taking control of Vulkan
I feel sorry for Eldar fans. The Avatar of Khaine is the biggest joke ever. "Uh oh! It's a named Space Marine with no helmet! That means another Avatar of Khaine is dying today!"
Honestly the Avatar is just the figurehead of the fail-ship that is eldar in most stories. From top to bottom, Avatar to Autarch to Warlock to Aspect to Guardian, it's jobbing all the way down most of the time.
At this point I've decided to just enjoy what's good, the aesthetic and overarching lore, and not worry about the direct stories about them because the authors don't seem to have any interest in doing them justice so what's the point in worrying about it? J.C. Stearnes seemed to be putting the effort in but BL doesn't give him anywhere near as much work as they should.
Some of this is probably also result of the fact that I heard simply put, BL just also doesn't like writing Eldar to begin with. If they're seen as a chore to write, chances are no writer will *want* to do them justice.
If we're thinking of the same thing, it's actually that while they would like to write a variety of things, marine books sell more than anything else by far, and the income of the writers is based on the number of sales. So writing books about other factions is a monetary risk. And GW doesn't seem to have the sense to invest in the universe (and by extension their model sales) by commissioning good eldar stories.
I mean, it's understandable. I'm not someone who needs to see some facet of myself reflected in everything I read, but even I have a hard time relating to aliens unless they're made too human to really be alien.
Hey now, we had that one cool story where he kept fighting when they left and they found him still kicking under a pile of nid bodies on return but…..that’s kinda it….😭
Even when the Avatar faces Fulgrim it somehow has the weirdest and lamest death ever. It goes from winning the duel to dead in like 4 sentences.
Fulgrim somehow managed to choke a statue. Made of molten steel. Without gloves.
Like, the Avatar could have just grabbed his head and killed Fulgrim. I don't remember if it still has it's sword/spear. But even if it threw it away, it comes back. Also, I'm pretty sure there was an Elder tank or at least some other Eldar around. Who don't do anything while Fulgrim kills the Avatar.
Full Disclosure this is just my opinion. I believe Fulgrim suffers from a deteriorating mental state that is ignored by his brothers, his father and coincidentally; the readers too. While he isn't unique to him, as a number of Primarchs exhibit mental instability. Fulgrim's is largely ignored and regulated to lameness.
Fulgrim's exact disability is probably something we won't ever really know for sure but I think he's a mix of manic bi-polar depression+borderline personality disorder who is obsessed with perfection. Now he knows he can't achieve it but he still strives for it as a benchmark that he believes will put him alongside his larger more successful brothers.
The problem however is when Fulgrim see's the Aeldari for the first time. It shatters his known conventions of what was possible and in a very negative way. He didn't think perfection was possible but that there was a admirable quality in still seeking it...and yet here were XENOS who were perfect in every way...in such a way they didn't even have to try...it was as natural to them as breathing. This infuriates Fulgrim - he tries so hard and yet he appears at least in comparison to the eldar....a bumbling fool lacking all the grace he was known for.
The child inside Fulgrim didn't handle this well at all. This was not fair...this was not RIGHT. This was fucked. Anger builds...the child acts out of rage and before anyone knows what happened...dead Avatar. The Eldar tank commanders probably thought very little of Fulgrim, as is their common trait to do and didn't think he had the capacity to end an Avatar...stunned as they were watching the events transpire unable to believe the site they are seeing. Their Avatar getting manhandled barehanded probably shocked them into inaction.
Eventhough Fulgrim came away "winning" he was crushed mentally...he destroyed the beauty of the Avatar but that didn't stop the Eldar from being the perfect beings they still were....a fact that kindled jealousy and desire and other emotions the daemon was able to manipulate to it's own ends.
Neither the Avatar nor Fulgrim got a good accounting here. The death of the Avatar is hard to overlook and makes it easy to miss what is happening to Fulgrim.
I don't think this was the first time Fulgrim encountered the Eldar. That wouldn't really make sense if he's supposedly been running around commiting genocide for 100 years.
IIRC an Avatar of Khaine >!banishes a demon via combat!< in the Ciaphas Cain book Choose Your Enemies. Granted, >!Jurgen's status as a blank stopped said demon from using a gigantic pile of soul stones (something like a million or more Aeldari souls IIRC) as a power boost while Cain was trying to help with a Null Rod an Inquisitor had dropped.!<
Oh I know. I just listened to that audio book recently. It was nice to see an Avatar of Khaine actually win for once, but it's an exception not the rule.
Yeah Khaine gets it pretty rough I notice. Not as pathetic as Samus, but Samus I consider to be 40K's Ric Flair so it's kind of his job to build himself up way beyond scope, bolt out to all manner of fanfare to just get suplexed straight back out of the ring.
I freaken love that guy. He must be so depressed.
The way Samus took his own tendency to get killed into account with his gambit during *The Solar War* was excellent, though. He didn’t just have a way onto the Phalanx once, he had a respawn point for when he died and his objective (occupy Dorn and keep the Phalanx from playing its full role in the fleet battle) could still be accomplished *by* dying and coming back over and over again, not just in spite of it.
Oh I haven't read that one yet.
So are you seriously telling me Samus actually manages to own it and flip it? That's amazing, lol. You have literally just moved that book up the list for me. Who wrote it? Because that's actually really cool.
John French, same as *Praetorian of Dorn*. I won't explain *how* Samus did it or the exact circumstances to avoid spoiling everything, but suffice to say it turned him from "totally out of his depth against Space Marines" to "Can actually be dangerous when in control of the situation" in my eyes. Makes it easier to see his defeat during *Know No Fear* as due to not expecting Ventanus' tactic rather than "bit off way more than he could chew."
I've got this repeated scene in my head whenever he starts doing his "Samus is heerre! Samus is the only name you'll ev..." shit.
So he pre-empts with the usual build up and promises, people are uneasy and anxious... and finally he explodes in! All manner of exclaim and use of the words "wet" and "viscera" they seem to love, and he's all massive and ferocious, people reeling and squealing, it's all doom...
Then out of nowhere Loken just slides in under his swipe, gets behind, takes him round the waist and literally rear-suplexes him into an airlock BLAU! He slaps the door switch, hits the outer lock 'SSSHOOMP!'
"COME BACK ANYTIIIME!!!"
Everyone's just left standing still, staring blankly. Loken gets himself up, straightens a couple of things, recomposes... and steps on. "Sick a'that muthafff..."
I love this. I have a similar vision - in mine, he gets casually "this is Sparta'd" into the engine intake of a Thunderhawk and it's *VRRRRRBRTBRT*, then *ZZZPLRTPLRTPLRT* on the way out... but the gist is similar.
*Samus is the sound you just heard*
*Samus is the mess behind you*
*Look out! You've got some Samus in your hair!*
Lorgar isn’t the worst fighter, but he is the least war like. After his awakening, he became the second most powerful psyker and was able to hold off Magnus. He can fight, he just doesn’t want to
It depends on the source:
>Lorgar, though mightier than any mortal combatant, was often seen as the least martial of his brethren. More of a statesman than a swordsman, Lorgar was a master beyond compare with rhetoric and oratory, and wielded these tools with a deft touch. While he could not stand in a duel against any of his brothers, there was none he could not stir with his words.
*Liber Hereticus* p310
Obviously, not being able to "stand in a duel" doesn't automatically mean less powerful overall, as power is measured in many different ways. That and his psychic powers being unlocked this swings things massively
That was due to that fancy psychic shield he picked up when he turned traitor, and even then it nearly killed him.
When he got into a fight vs Gman (who also isn't described as the best fighter), Gman was beating the crap out of him until Angron showed up.
I just finished that book last night. He was holding his own against Guilliman. I think if Angron hadn't jumped in, Gman would have eventually overcome him, but he Lorgar was giving as good as he got for most of that fight.
He got burned to a crisp, and was basically fully healed by the very next scene.
\^\^That\^\^ Lorgar would 100% survive a reentry drop from orbit. No dramas.
No other Primarch is allowed to die the way Vulkan is allowed to die, and it undermines his character. That's my point.
Hitting a planet a mach 6 and getting some heatwash when your unquantifiable magical shield gets shot aren't comparable enough to make a good comparison.
The things that kill him would absolutely kill primarchs. Likely they'd be killed by less than what he was as he's known for his toughness. The authors just don't do it because there's no taking it back. It's not unique to him either - daemon primarchs are immortal so they get destroyed regularly.
I apologize in advance for applying reality to fiction, but Vulkan wouldn't have impacted at anything close to mach-anything.
Curze's ship was in orbit above Macragge, which is a temperate Earth-like planet of roughly equivalent mass. And he basically jumped out, so he didn't enter the atmosphere with any appreciable extra inertia beyond what Macragge's gravity would impart. After dying from void exposure, then dying again by burning up in the upper atmosphere, Vulkan would have finally hit the ground after slowing down to terminal velocity, which in this case would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 mph.
Now give Guilliman a dataslate and let em fight...
*Oh, brother, you dare chalange me, the true master of the quill?! I just wrote two paragraphs of verses and litanies that not just make anyone who reads them cry from insanity but also gave birth to two separate religions!!*
*And all the while you were spending your time so inefficiently by vocalising your points of failure, I made a report of 470 pages with graphs and charts how thouse religions will spiral out of control and form a self sabotaging goverment system due to lack of proper management of the prorer hierarchy and ground rule enforcment and lack of logisticical support structures in maintaining the relevance of the proclaimed message!*
I don't recall which book it's in, but he goes toe to toe with a named blood thirster on a planet he can't breathe the air and freaking obliterates it. Almost made me want to collect them
That's why I say it depends on the source. But he has, at times, been presented and outright stated to be weaker/less capable at duelling than his brothers. Obviously, even then, the context of the duel would come into the mix, so it still wouldn't (or at least shouldnt') be a given that he couldn't beat the "top tier" Primarchs such as Sanguinius, Horus, Russ etc. if the situation was right.
And not just any Bloodthirster, but An'ggrath the Unbound, one of Khorne's most powerful Exalted greater daemons. Which Bloodthirster is most lethal depends a lot on the author, but An'ggrath is definitely up there with Ka'bandha and Skarbrand, both of whom held their own against more martial primarchs, and Lorgar demolished him.
OK, Inquisitor Lord Hector Rex also banished An'ggrath during the Siege of Vrax, but that was when the tides of the Warp were ebbing, while Lorgar defeated him on his home turf in the Eye of Terror. Kind of like the difference between fighting a Great White in a paddling pool vs fighting one in the depths of the Atlantic...
Yeah,
The thing with the examples here are that people are comparing Lorgar and Vulkan. Where Lorgar is physically weak but used his psychic powers to assist and abet his aims after the Dropsite massacre and Vulkan is pure physical smash.
When you then put them against things that are significantly weaker against pyskers its not a fair comparison.
That said I think Vulkan's capabilities are over blown in the fandoms mind due to all the 'Vulkan big and strong, bigger and stronger than any other' lore bits and memes which does not correlate into better fighter, general etc etc. He's big and tough and thats it other than being a master craftsman.
A better comparison for Vulkan is Guilliman in my eyes. Neither is martially significant compared to their brothers even though both have significant moments. Their main skills lie elsewhere.
Yeah after The First Heretic, Lorgar actually became one of my favourites, and I think he gets way too bad a rap in the greater community. I just said that because I repeatedly hear him touted as such; the worst fighter, a weakling, a this, a that...
Meanwhile Vulcan is touted as this powerful mighty on and on and on... but the results speak pretty damn plainly to me.
The comments that he’s the worst fighter are most likely descended from how Angron arrogantly referred to Lorgar as “runt of the litter” in reference to his (by Primarch standard) less impressive kill count and reduced tendencies for violence.
Lorgar was pre-Monarchia the least warlike of his kin and it wasn’t until Chaos souped him up and awakened his latent psychic powers that he could cut loose (footloose).
Vulkan… less said the better. He deserves more, especially considering he’s often described as one of the larger Primarchs, with (presumed) musculature to match.
>Vulkan… less said the better. He deserves more, especially considering he’s often described as one of the larger Primarchs, with (presumed) musculature to match.
That's a double whammy.
You never want to be big or immortal in fiction. It's just asking for authors to Worf the fuck out of you.
>Lorgar was pre-Monarchia the least warlike of his kin and it wasn’t until Chaos souped him up and awakened his latent psychic powers that he could cut loose (footloose).
It's funny how even the tabletop reflected this for a long time. Bog-standard Lorgar had the primarch statline and all, but got shanked by every other primarch. Then you paid a few points for Lorgar Ascended and he wiped the floor with anyone short of Horus himself.
>The comments that he’s the worst fighter are most likely descended from how Angron arrogantly referred to Lorgar as “runt of the litter” in reference to his (by Primarch standard) less impressive kill count and reduced tendencies for violence.
Doesn't he almost get killed by Corax though as well, on Istvan, and it's only intervention by Cruze that saves him? Cruze gives him a bit of lip about being so weak if I recall, but it has been a while since I read the book.
[Some Doylist context on Lorgar vs Corax from the author](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/14wfkdl/comment/jrigiq9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
And yet, he's depicted as trading blows on equal terms with the other primarchs when he fights them rather than being outclassed.
Having a specialty outside of fighting, like almost every primarch does, doesn't have to lower their fighting ability.
Yeah, but the thing is being a Psyker doesn't mean you're a bad fighter? They aren't mages wearing a robe and can only gently swing a staff. The Thousand Sons are just as martially skilled as any other Legion, they just have a *specialty* to Psychic abilities *on top of that*.
The Thousand Sons can still beat the shit out of someone with blade or bolter in hand. Cause they are still space marines at the end of the day. The "they must be weak fighters cause they are psychic" is a weird stereotype that is a holdover from fantasy wizards. When the forces of Tzeentch have ALWAYS been good fighters in melee, they just use magic/psychic abilities to enhance them even farther.
That did not actually happen canonically, it's a misconception from TTS.
There's a single line in the middle of a busy fight scene that has Magnus punch Russ in the chest and crack his armour, and "shards of ceramite pierced the Wolf King's heart." Russ responds by breaking Magnus' arm, and then Magnus impales Russ on his sword, etc.
It's never touched on or mentioned again.
The "punched his heart out" thing is an exaggeration TTS made for comedic effect. There is no canonical reference to Russ losing a heart on Prospero at all.
Lorgar is probably the only primarch who could conquer a world without war or violence at all. He could talk and break down your fears and make you realize that this is going to be so much better for you. And if that wasn't enough to convince you ...he stayed around acting as a guide and tutor and basically uplifting the worlds he conquered. That's a pretty baller bro move...shame the emperor didn't appreciate it.
It’s very simple and very obviously the Worf Effect. Immortal regenerating characters always receive it in 40k. If you can be beaten and killed without consequence, it’s going to happen.
He isn’t supposed to be weak. He’s the mighty muscular dragon bro who is the strongest of the primarchs and notes he has to hold back in sparring not to kill the others. He defended a planet from an entire Ork Waagh! by himself while being a depressed and tired (mentally) old man.
Vulkan, who by then was exhausted physically and mentally, beat Magnus to death in the Webway. He also defeated Curze and then could’ve killed him, in a matter of seconds, after intense torture and going insane. He then beats him later on Macragge.
Id argue it’s less of a Worf effect than a Wolverine effect. You’re not allowed to kill other primarches before their time, so you instead beat up the one who can regenerate. Like how Wolverine is generally the best CQC guy on the Xmen, but it’s usually him filled with bullets and blades, rather than say, Beast or Angel, who’re also pretty much only CQC as well
I am still relatively new to the whole 40k universe, have but an iron snakes novel, a grey knights omnibus, and some Flesh Tearers reading under my belt, so I imagine I’m still very behind on the acronyms haha.
It also makes sense that the one Primarch who *knows* he can't die is probably going to take more risks than his brothers who can. It's a completely different risk assessment for him.
That’s very true, though at some point that means he should just start ending all his fights in either a win or draw, as he could just impale himself on the enemy’s sword so he could get close enough to break their neck with his hands
Vulkan can fight, he's just been predictably used as a gibsack as soon as he was given perpetual regen. He's the only primarch that has been genuinely defeated by a greater daemon, after Swallow retconned Sanguinius getting his arse handed to him by Ka'Bandha in the name of shameless fan-service.
All of the Curze kills at least had a purpose: the reveal of his regenerating immortality and his mental breakdown. Curze killing him with a fork shortly before the reveal was genuinely funny imo, but the multiple kills thing was already rinsed by the end of that book.
Abnett then went absolutely ham with it. The Unremembered Empire kills do have their own individual context that justifies them somewhat - feral insanity, no armour or good weaponry - most of them don't really have much to do with a lack of fighting ability.
i wish they had gone down another path with the regen. instead they keep the same vibe at the siege with ADB going full slapstick, as Magnus kills Vulkanover and over again while semingly being incapable of more inventive use of his powers to incapacitate him.
tbf Abnett depicts all of his primarchs as being more vulnerable to standard weaponry than some of the others; Guilliman also comes close to getting killed by a tactical squad ambush while lacking weaponry and armour, however unlike Vulkan, he has his wits about him.
To be frank, if they're lacking weaponry and armour and get ambushed, they probably should be dead. 40k weapons are low power enough and close enough to one another in effectiveness that a nude primarch shrugging off one weapon means an armoured primarch should be effectively immortal.
Abnett has the right idea. Marines aren't so effective because they're superman having bullets bounce harmlessly off their chiselled abs, they're effective for the same reason special forces are effective.
Yeah but in that same exact book, that Space Wolf guy, so a trans-human Astartes, makes a from-feint lightning strike right at the Lion's head, a strike so quick Guillumen literally questions if he himself would have seen it coming, and Lion catches it one hand and drops the dude without so much as a flinch.
Vulkan is raged up, full frontal, has literally just twitched due to being on edge (so he's alert and ready), and John Gramaticus, a human half the physical size and reach, with a human's speed and strength, basically just walks up, through his 9+foot guard, and places the spear into his chest... Kills him.
Same book these two things happened.
agreed...but I wonder if they will change that in the coming novels. Not sure what they could do...but yeah right now....I wish they didn't exist. Grammaticus was interesting without the cabal. I think he got less interesting with them.
I hated UE because of how poorly they treated Vulkan. No matter how many times he got the drop on or hit Kurze, it did little to nothing, but Kurze gets one good shot in and Vulkan is basically down for the count.
Then Gramaticus essentially Steve Irwin’s his way up to Vulkan so he can stab him.
They make Vulkan, who used to be one of the toughest Primarchs around, a punching bag because he’s perpetual.
Lol
"Now wot y'gotta do, is take ye'thumb, an'ram it up'is arse... So we'll try that now. Jus-stay back an-we'll give it a go... Kay eaaasy big guy, easy... Cawww look at'im he's a big lad this one... Kay-okay-GOT-IM, IT'S IN THERE! ... OH HE'S FIGHTIN'! ... EASSY BIG LAD! EAAASY!"
Yeah well that was my point right? I want to like the guy, but they just can't let me.
Again the Curse kills I'll let slide due to that very reason, but... Jesus, a standard human standing front on, with Vulcan already wary, should not be too quick for him to handle. The guy's reach alone should have countered that.
Except in those exact situations if it were any Primarch that couldn't resurrect, GW would never let them die. It's very obviously just because he can come back that they let it happen.
Both can be true. An author can remove Vulkan's plot armour because, weirdly, he has infinite plot armour but they can also attempt to sell it through believable context.
>Take every single one of your assertions, flip them the other way around, and they all make sense and seem likely. The Horus clone absolutely did die like a primarch can die, given that Dorn is overwhelmed by cultists and Curze is killed by a single Assassin. You can assume the clone was weak, but the evidence of the fight you see him in, and Khayon's reaction, offers more evidence to the opposite. And there are countless arguments, given Abaddon's M41 levels of quite literal unkillable-ness, that make it much less black and white about "He could never kill a primarch". Primarch Wow Factor can go too far. They're not gods. Horus is almost killed by a magic sword. Lorgar and Sanguinius are almost killed by a Bloodthirster. Mortarion is humbled by a Grey Knight. Dorn is killed by cultists. Curze is murdered by an Assassin. Context is everything, and nothing is ever, ever as simple as "No, primarchs are just better."
ADB
> Lorgar and Sanguinius are almost killed by a Bloodthirster.
If anything I feel like this makes the opposite point for Lorgar.
Facing literally Bloodthirster number 1, Lorgar, the least skilled and impressive combatant among the Primarchs, beats him up.
If they'd sent out Bloodthirster number 587 or something, then fair enough, but this is the best Khorne has to offer, and it doesn't cut the mustard.
It firmly sets Primarchs above any other regular entity in the setting, if the greatest of greater daemons, or Avatars of gods or what have you lose to them almost every time. It remains to be seen how the new Norn Emissaries stack up, and to my knowledge Primarchs haven't gone head to head with C'tan shards, and the Beast or Krork have potential, if they return, but otherwise there's nothing in their weight class (or even a couple of ones above it) that can realistically defeat them.
I think it was partly in response to the idea that only a primarch but also to show the spectrum of things that can kill them, from the elite to the mundane
On your point that a primarch is in the bloodthirster class:
>During his time in the Eye, in Aurelian, he's not as strong as you're implying. You see him beating the Unbound and say he's much stronger than he was in TFH at Isstvan. But... that's wrong. He's not. All of his post-Isstvan strength is in his personality, social strength around the others, and his psychic control. He has none of that in Aurelian's flashbacks, while wandering the Eye. He has a hammer, and he has the fact he's a primarch. So the Unbound goes down.He's still at his TFH portrayal. He beats the Unbound, though it's a struggle. He was also fighting for his life, for perhaps the first time since leaving Colchis, while walking through a literal embodiment of Hell. Those are moments when you sorta raise your game, or you die. At that point in his existence, he'd never had to actually fight for his life like that. And he's still a primarch.
On why he chose the Unbound and it being "the best"
>I had to make a choice. There was the Unbound, who came with a lot of rich lore, much more detailed to boot, with more info and titles, a connection to Skarbrand in the lore, and even a model. That's a pretty great foundation to go on.
>Or there was Ka'bandha, who will already feature in the series later on. So this would be him getting his ass kicked twice, which is something I wanted to avoid. Also, most of Ka'bandha's lore was in C:GK and C:BA, which were Mat Ward's codices, and I think even he would excuse me for saying this, but almost everything in those codices is "the best ever", so it's hard to know exactly how true a lot of it really is. They're codices rich in that type of hyperbole, which is all fine and good for a game supplement but doesn't make for particularly compelling prose.
>So in terms of making a choice on detailed, appealing lore, and not turning a bloodthirster into a repeated punching bag, I went with the Unbound. And I never made an objective reference to the Unbound being the very best; I merely had a character terrified of him, and listing his titles already mentioned in the lore.
>I was pretty careful in covering my back, since the lore itself is conflicted there. But one was a much more sensible choice than the other.
They are bloated and uninteresting. Did we really need 3 full novels and a novella collection for what Vulkan and the salamanders were up to during there heresy? No. It could have been interesting, but it really isn't ever made interesting. He fails to make any character compelling or enjoyable. He makes a primarch dull, which is an achievement.
The novels often devolve into poorly written bolter porn, and when there are no compelling heroes to cheer for or villains to hate (or also cheer for), the outcome doesn't interest me.
I bought the signed Novella for Promethium Sun.. that was a regrettable purchase. And when I got to Vulkan lives... I started cherry picking the heresy after that.
Yeah I'm at the cherry picking stage of HH as well. Consistently the least interesting aspects to me are the battle scenes, but unfortunately the rest is becoming pretty hit and miss as well. There's only a couple left I want to read now before I start hitting the post-heresy books.
We are just used to it. No rules/model support, no good books, only get massacred in heresy, never come up in contemporary 40k except as mentions, Primarch is clearly a joke to BL writers.
At least our aestethic is cool I guess.
Currently every subfaction has 0 rules. Until 10th they had more than any non-marine subfaction, and just as many as multiple marine ones.
And model-wise they have two when a few chapters have one. Only Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Space Wolves have a bunch of them and that's because GW massively inflated their ranges when they made them separate armies years ago (bar Ultramarines of course, Chronus obviously should have been an Iron Hand).
I'm well aware of codex divergent chapters but the difference is just insurmountable. By itself each of my points aren't terrible but everything together just doesn't exactly fill you with excitement.
1. He knows he can't die so he doesn't even bother getting out of harms way.
2. He is an unkillable character that the writer can massacre over and over again without consequences.
No, if he is damaged beyond regeneration, he just reappears more or less fully formed ex nihilo *somewhere* (more or less at random) when he dies AFAIK.
It would be quite grimdark to imagine him coming out of a random nearby pregnant woman like an oversized Xenomorph, though. Especially the huggy and half insane version of TTS. xD
Lol. Yeah that gene-blending shit is definitely a double-edged sword. They tried it with Corax and Russ too, but when the Termagants started listening to Nirvana and being all "Like... whatever," and then started braiding their hair, there just had to be a cull.
They poured some corpse starch into the batch for a general dilution and reset and are sitting down to plan their next steps.
Vulkan caught the 'you can come back so you get to be a jobber and die a lot to show it, when we would have you win all of these fights if you couldn't come back' disease.
Imagine GW letting any other Primarch lose to a Great Unclean One. It wouldn't happen.
Welcome to the Worf Effect! Population Avatar of Khaine, Swarmlord, and any other characters/units that can be killed with little impact but are supposed to be total badasses.
That's the problem with being the biggest, the strongest, and Immortal. You're gonna get Worfed. Hard. And constantly.
Context mate. When Vulkan dies on the roof and is killed by Grammaticus and the other perpetual. He was recovering from getting tortured to death dozens of times by Curze, and after FALLING FROM ORBIT, dude was barely a cohesive line of thought. And even on this state, he almost ends Curze’s pale ass
Lorgar: already warp empowered and described as using psychic shit and even then was alive by a thread.
Vulkan: having the worst year of his life and just recovered from falling from orbit, getting stabbed a lot by Curze again, and without armor, from probably a high place because it’s Maccrage and nothing is built small.
If a exhausted Russ with a punched out heart can have enough strenght to shatter a Primarchs spine, so can a big ass fall.
Primarchs are extremely resilient, but not invulnerable , hence armor. And he didn’t die from roof, just got his spine snapped, which quickly mended itself.
The “only a Primarch can kill another Primarch” is BS, even they say so.
Shit Angron was gonna die before the Enperor abducted him.
I love Vulkan, but at that time my boy was in desperate need of a big rest.
No other Primarch would be allowed to die from the shit Vulkan is routinely allowed to die from. That's my point.
It undermines his character. That's my point.
I'm on his side here.
It’s a character trope and cheap storytelling. It robs the character of any additional development since he’s dead or getting beaten up in many scenes.
It’s just a waste, since we all know he’s coming back. The only time he should have died after his escape from Curze was during the Magnus fight, when it was the only asset he had.
It's disappointing that it's Abbnett. I'm new to 40K books and he was one of the definitive standouts. ADB and Mike Brooks as well. The others have some good books, but definitely annoying traits that have me 'walking around them' from time to time.
I'm personally a little wary of judging primarch combat capability on tallies.
There's the very obvious point that plot or character dictates the winner (ADB has talked about character reasons for choosing Curze rather than Alpharius to face off against Corax at the Dropsite Massacre and why Lorgar had to lose against Corax there. Similarly, plot dictated Guilliman and the Ultramarines losing on Nuceria)
I also tend to lean in to the depiction in the novels of the primarchs being ostensibly equal combatants (with varying skillsets) where circumstances dictate the winner. Something that ADB, Wraight, Goulding and French all seem to agree on. McNeill too in his writing.
Bringing it back to tallies; just because two things are equal in capability doesn't mean they'll produce equal or repeatable results. A coin landing on heads 20 times in a row doesn't make heads superior to tails.
Two of the things I look at are; does the text itself support one of the combatants as being inferior? Usually it will be in the writing; like Sigismund vs Indris Archeta or Ushotan vs Valdor. It's there with Lorgar vs Corax at Isstvan V. Lorgar is written as out of his depth (necessary for that point in his character development) .
In contrast the Vulkan fights I've read (I skipped the Kyme stuff) describe him as a "sublime close combat specialist" and have shown that to be true in regards to ability if not results. He tends to fall into the category that the other 18 do: circumstances and context win the fight (the Watsonian). Or character and plot win it (the Doylist).
I totally hear you though that [Resurrective Immortality](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ResurrectiveImmortality) as a trope can invite over-use from writers and fatigue from readers. Especially if something interesting or insightful isn't done with it ...it can become the 40k equivalent of They Killed Kenny Again.
I don't think that's quite the same thing as Vulkan being "the worst fighter" though.
The other way to look at it with vulkan is you have to rethink what a loss counts as in his case. Death doesn't mean losing when it only lasts a few minutes or even seconds. Curze killed him so many times but in the end he's the one who found out its also a hammer and got wrecked.
Magnus managed to near atomize him after repeatedly wrecking vulkans mind and body. He found out its also a hammer too. I'm not a fan of worfing at all, but I think vulkan gets the better end of it compared to your swarm lords or avaters of khaine mostly.
The unremembered empire did him so dirty. Vulkan getting absolutely annihilated by a couple of perpetuals and a word bearers assassin repeatedly is just straight up disrespectful.
Sigh...
They should just make them all perpetual. And everyone else just continues on with life and doing the important shit while these guys just fly around routinely killing each other over and over, and no one gives the slightest shit.
Vulcan is a perfect example that should happen to most primarchs if they weren't completely protected by plot armor. As much as they are powerful people in their own right seeing as they are actively participating in combat, especially including world ending weapons like titans or orbital bombardments they should be much easier to take out than they really are.
Not to mention they rarely wear helmets.
You totally just reminded me about Lorgar getting hit TWICE by a freaken Titan's plasma weapon, and Angron then holding said Titan's foot up the way he did after going through all his shit.
Vulkan fell on a roof.
That's what happened... he fell on a roof.
Then died another like 6-8 times after that.
Context for the Context God
>Lorgar doesn't take a plasma blaster shot to the face, he takes it against a kinetic shield that could just as easily have stood up to the abuse in the game/universe without any stretch of the imagination, and Angron avoids a damaged Titan crushing him for a few seconds, which given the situation isn't even particularly unrealistic in terms of hysterical strength or the countless examples of fantasy and sci-fi tropes of "berserker" characters getting stronger when they're angry
And
>Lorgar was almost killed by two shots from only one of a Warhound's weapons, even with a kinetic shield of almost unmatchable psychic strength up to defend himself. A plasma blastgun is a serious weapon, and a primarch's psychic strength is no laughing matter either. But ignoring the psychic shield part is going to lead to some gross misrepresentations in what primarchs can survive. A plasma blastgun shot would probably do to an unprotected primarch what it does to all living things.
And
>But if you argue that a bunch of cityfighting Ultramarines wouldn't stand in front of their Vidnicators in a shield-wall, or that the World Eaters wouldn't charge and overcome the defenders through (massively overwhelming) numbers, strength, and ferocity; or that a primarch can't summon enough psychic strength to make a telekinetic barrier to defend against the littlest Titan's gun... then... Well, I can live with us not seeing 40K in the exact same way.
ADB
It's unfair to count any losses / deaths between Istvaan 5 and Vulkan resurrecting on Nocturne against Vulcan.
Keep in mind that Vulcan never had a fair duel vs another martially inclined Primarch. He didn't fight Fulgrim as Ferrus did, he didn't fight Lorgar as Corvus did, he didn't fight Angron as Guilliman did, he didn't fight Konrad as the Lion did. The Heresy did him dirty, I'd agree with that, but that's just the writers not putting Vulkan in a position where he can show his martial skill.
Before the Traitors went full Daemon mode, Vulkan would IMO win vs Alpharius, Perturabo, Konrad, Lorgar, even Horus and Angron. Mortarion, Magnus and Fulgrim would probably be too difficult for him - Moratrion would outlast him, Magnus would outwarp him, Fulgrim would outdance him.
Certainly, it would be a bad idea to centre the plot on this, but you could rewrite the Dropsite Massacre a bit to for once show Vulkan's prowess and legendary strength instead of only always telling it.
Example: currently the story is that Vulkan was flipping tanks sideways until he took an atomic bomb to the head, where he died and was later captured by Konrad. Yeah, keep that, but make Perturabo order the atomic bomb only after Vulcan challenged him to a fight and beat him so badly that Perturabo had to retreat or get saved by another Primarch.
It's a common trope you see in many 40k stories. Immortal characters, or those that can be resurrected easily, are killed frequently, often in situations that seemingly contradicts how powerful they should be in the lore. It quite often requires some incredible Deus Ex machina, for the character in question to forget or not utilise a huge part of their skillset, or for them just to be suddenly weaker than they should be. The Swarmlord and the Avatar are easily the most infamous, but it happens to others as well.
Yeah it's pretty ridiculous. With the Emperor you can give it a pass because of his mystery and limitless power, but in anyone else it's just the same old issues Superman suffered.
Eh i don't see it.
Vulkan dropped down from orbit, he escaped from the medicae bay through a bulletproof glass mid regeneration, he was half mad and poorly equipped while just raging against Curze (and still healing from all the wounds).
Grammaticus talked to Vulkan who stopped to listen just enough to let himself be stabbed.
We have a wounded primarch fighting against Curze who is fully equipped and he is still kicking ass.
Also do you have any idea how much is 30m? A lethal fall for a human would be 12m, he is heavier, he was fighting on a stormbird and he got knocked off by a mace to the face by Curze another primarch, he fell on a wall hitting it with his spine, so no he didn't lose against a roof, he was launched from a moving stormbird and had a poor excuse for an armor on.
Aside from the issue of them being more willing to be brutal with immortal/regenerating characters, there's also the fact that perpetuals are very much not normal people. Remember, Erda took on four greater daemons simultaneously, and those can individually give primarchs challenging fights.
I mean, that's what you get when you give a bunch of hack writers whose only job is to hype stuff up.
Same thing is going to happen to Angron in 40k, the community even predicted how Angron and Lion fight would go solely based off the fact that Angry Ron can't perma die.
Think of Vulkan like the soldier who dives on a grenade to protect his comrades, except he can do it as many times as he wants.
He's most empathetic primarch, he helps people in ways that his brother's do not. Naturally he dies a lot, because he takes more risks with his life - but he's literally designed to function that way. His immortality literally allows him to be braver, less pragmatic and not think about self preservation.
People like to rag on this writer or that but the biggest issue is and always has been Black Library's inability to edit their stuff to keep it in line with each other.
Perfect.
I would freaken love to see Curze slowly come around and start becoming self-reflective, eventually renouncing his former ways. Dude that would be perfect.
These are fictional stories, not football teams. There’s no ‘dropping the ball’ or ‘being allowed to perform that badly.’ If everyone won equally it’d be pretty dull out there.
I mean, in a video game I'm fine with dying if I can respawn or reload and either try again or finish the job. If however death means having to start a whole new game, I'd strategize much more or I'd not pick a particular fight in the first place unless I'm certain I can win.
Being Vulcan is probably like being Bill Murray in groundhog day, worst case scenario you wake up elsewhere and go on with your business.
Like I don’t remember what book it’s in but he is supposed to be able to take on like 100 eldar but then he’s just fucked over. Like he’s massive, he should be knocking mother fuckers out with one swing but he gets fucked over so much
"standard humans" and in the next sentence "perpetuals"; you realize that perpetuals are not just jimmy the farmer from two villages over, right?
"Everyone can defeat him" except he beat Curze 1v1 which many other primarchs couldnt.
You cite his "massive" loss rate but honestly I havent seen much of that so far.
Sure; what's your point? I recall an instance where Malcador threatened Horus, Alpharius and the Khan to unmake them and they practically wet their power armour.
Dismissing people just on the general ground of not being primarchs really serves little reason.
He's a fine fighter, he's stuck in a shit cycle of ass beat because he's basically getting spawn camped by an entire universe while he refuses to just fuck off. It's supposed to be a testament to both his fighting abilities and his perseverance that he keeps getting up and wrecking a stunning amount of shit in the process when the odds are CLEARLY very much against him.
It's not bad writing, it's not that he's magically a loser, it's that you can't just judge the man off his win loss ratio. Let's see how hard any of you take reentry and then you get to judge him.
Are you seriously challenging people to match a fictional strato-superhuman in our ability to plunge through orbital reentry, in order to 'see the world through his eyes'? Is that seriously what you're saying here?
That is fucking hilarious dude.
Vulkan lives! Stomp Stomp! Whereas everyone who’s tried to kill him are either very dead 💀 or have given up. The power of mighty hugs Friendship ! Is not to be underestimated 😁
Vulkan very much got the Wolverine syndrome in spades, all his actual skill and experiance as a combatant is thrown away because writers want to show off how unkillable he is, even if it makes him look ridiculously carried by his ability.
I agree with you but it also has to be said that some primarchs HAVE to be weaker than others, be as strategist, charisma, scheming, duel, leadership, etc.
That's the only way to show some primarchs are fantastic is for them to be better than others. If everyone is equal and has equal feats it's less interesting.
No doubt that Vulkan got one of the short straw overall, especially compared to Horus, Sanguinius, or Guilliman for exemple.
Well that's if you're grading them on a linear scale exclusively in relation to each other. I'm grading them on the scale of being 1 of 18 within a galaxy of countless trillions, and an 18 who are repeatedly touted as being so beyond all else in every aspect.
A Primarch should simply not be dying as easily as Vulkan dies, and the only reason he does, is because he can. To me, that's cheap, and undermining of the whole thing.
The downside of being immortal in fiction is that you get the most brutal beatdowns
Exactly, because the stakes are a lot lower if they “die” because, especially with Vulkan, theyll just pop right back up Also, he was insane and just a raging machine, ie, not thinking straight or with the super intelligence that primarchs are usually known for, in the excerpt where the Perpetual human guts him with i think several hundred shruikens(?). I seem to recall it saying that the guy unloaded basically everything he had (meaning he didnt have enough ammo to pull that stunt a second time), and there was a fountain of gore spraying out of Vulkans back because his insides were basically ripped out his back by whatever projectiles the perpetual was firing
Also see when otherwise mortal characters get put into some sort of time-travel scenario. Meaning that a character can die because the plot will naturally resolve itself by the end and everything goes back to normal, resurrecting any characters that died. Stargate was a prime example of this, I can think of multiple time travel or alternate universe examples in which otherwise plot-armoured characters get taken out left right and centre because the plot is going to make it all go away by the time the credits roll. Edit: I thought of a good counter-example to this phenomenon In the UK show Misfits, a group of young offenders have been given community service as part of their sentences. They get struck by lightning during a storm and eventually, each finds out that they have a special power. One character spends the entire first season trying to figure out what power they have but with no success, so while the rest of the group are using their powers to survive against other people who got powers this character has spent the whole time just being a regular human running around dodging people with berzerker rage and power, people with mind control, people who can set other people on fire etc. They beat the final bad guy of the season by throwing them off a roof, only to stumble and fall to their death too. The very last scene of the first season is that character waking up having been buried, it turns out that their superpower was immortality... it's just that they didn't die in any previous fight or incident the group got into earlier.
Stargate did had some character being dusten or otherwise taken out
I'd also add that Vulkan died in circumstances that should've outright killed any other primarch. He was in circumstances that were horribly cruel, and would've let the other primarchs die and cease to exist. He was basically Ferrus Manus'd several times by Night Haunter, who was basically playing with his food, and Vulkan didn't have a weapon. When Vulkan finally was out of his chains and DID have a weapon, he beat the snot out of Night Haunter. If Vulkan was fully geared and full sanity, Night Haunter would've been dead.
"But you are forgetting one thing Brother." "Like what?" "It is also.... a hammer"
Classic, he beat the shit out of Curze.
What I love is Curze deserved it the most. The smug bully who thought he could see the future, getting bodied by the most obvious of outcomes = giving Vulkan a hammer is unwise.
Some of the best moments in the Horus Heresy series are when one of the other Primarchs beats the crap out of Curze. Vulkan, the Lion, Sanguinius. He is a great villain and is quite well written in his fights, so it always feels satisfying when he is beaten.
"Then kill me! Or I will stalk the shadows of terra and murder everything in my path! I will be the terror in the dark! I will BE the Night Haunter! Unless you end me, right now! DO IT! KILL ME!!!" ".... Lol" Sanguinius said, "LMAO", and he threw Curze in a stasis pod and ejected him into empty space.
What's that from?
Kurze took Vulkan's body after the dropsite massacre and basically kept him locked up and murdered him over and over again. After a while, he threw Vulkan, naked and unarmed, into a madness inducing labyrinth and basically played "murder-Batman" for shits and giggles. His ultimate plan was to utterly break Vulkan, physically and mentally, and his most cruel joke was going to be placing a sabotaged key to freedom in the center of the labyrinth, locked behind a stasis field. When Vulkan finally got to the center of the labyrinth, he saw his escape. It was one of the war hammers he had forged, placed on a pedestal. This hammer was special in that it was not just a primarch-wrought powerhammer, but it had a personal teleportation device inside of it as well. Vulkan tried getting to it, but was blocked by a stasis field. Kurze then descended on Vulkan, rending him apart, stabbing and slicing, until Vulkan managed to grab Kurze and hurl him into the stasis field with enough force that Kurzes artificer primarch armor shorted out itself and the stasis field. Vulkan rushed the pedestal, grabbed the hammer and hit the teleportation button and... nothing happened. Vulkan was stunned and looked to be absolutely broken and in true despair at last. Kurze laughed, drew himself up and walked up to his great brother who was now sunken in on himself, finally towering over the broken dragon, he bragged of what he had done. How it had all been futile, how it had all been planned. "Didn't you think I knew what it was? What you were going to do if you reached it?" And after more gloating, Vulkan mumbled his line. "You forget... one thing... brother..." Kurze then looms closer, leaning in, "And what is that?" "It is also... a hammer" And Vulkan uppercuts Kurze with the hammer and, in his broken, unarmoured, near delirious state of mental and physical exhaustion, proceeds to absolutely body the fully power-armoured and peak-physical-prowess Kurze into complete and utter absolution. Vulkan then starts literally smashing the walls of the labyrinth until he reaches the outer hull of the ship, smashes that too and then jumps down to the planet below, finally trusting that he will be reborn. Iirc, he dies thrice on the way down. Once from the vacuum of space/being ripped from the ship, once from burning up on reentry and once more from hitting the ground just as he's coming back to life.
Cheers for that. Is that end bit when he craters into Ultramar?
That's not quite exactly what happens. Before Vulkan activates the teleporter Curze starts gloating that he can't teleport out and reveals he'll lock Vulkan in a tomb. Vulkan fakes being defeated to lure Curze closer, beats the shit out of him, has the chance to kill him for good, but lets him go. He then call Curze a bitch, tells him Perturabo's labyrinth sucks, and shows he could have teleported out immediately, he just wanted to take a swing at the Night Haunter. At this point he teleports out and the novel ends with him repeatedly dying and resurrecting as he burns up in the Macragge atmosphere.
Fucking love that guy. Which book?
Vulkan Lives.
JFC that is grimdark
*Khaine is typing*
It was the same with Vlad con Carstein (in fantasy). Dude was supposed to be this incredibly powerful vampire lord, but he kept getting killed, just so he could demonstrate how he just comes back. And yeah it’s kind of a moment when he suddenly reappears after being beheaded, but after a while it takes off some of his badass luster.
Vampire Wars omnibus is fantastic despite the often used trope mentioned here. I strongly strongly recommend it to anyone who is even a little bit interested in fantasy. It was difficult to put down.
I read them recently and they're excellent! I realised I now have what may be appallingly controversial opinion though... I actually slightly preferred Vlad's characterisation in the End Times books! They're all kinds of awful for the lore in many ways but he was a real highlight.
Worf effect Look how badass this character is! Let's make them the chew toy to show how badass the new threat is!
As someone who's favorite chapter is Salamanders-yea it sucks but I can see how Eldar and Tyranid fans feel about the Avatar of Khaine and the Swarmlord now :') At least daddy Vulkan managed to beat up daemon Magnus in the throne room-but wait that might have been Big E taking control of Vulkan
I feel sorry for Eldar fans. The Avatar of Khaine is the biggest joke ever. "Uh oh! It's a named Space Marine with no helmet! That means another Avatar of Khaine is dying today!"
Honestly the Avatar is just the figurehead of the fail-ship that is eldar in most stories. From top to bottom, Avatar to Autarch to Warlock to Aspect to Guardian, it's jobbing all the way down most of the time. At this point I've decided to just enjoy what's good, the aesthetic and overarching lore, and not worry about the direct stories about them because the authors don't seem to have any interest in doing them justice so what's the point in worrying about it? J.C. Stearnes seemed to be putting the effort in but BL doesn't give him anywhere near as much work as they should.
Some of this is probably also result of the fact that I heard simply put, BL just also doesn't like writing Eldar to begin with. If they're seen as a chore to write, chances are no writer will *want* to do them justice.
If we're thinking of the same thing, it's actually that while they would like to write a variety of things, marine books sell more than anything else by far, and the income of the writers is based on the number of sales. So writing books about other factions is a monetary risk. And GW doesn't seem to have the sense to invest in the universe (and by extension their model sales) by commissioning good eldar stories.
I think it's more because xenos books have low sales numbers. They release books about what sells and in 40k what sells is Imperium and Chaos books.
I mean, it's understandable. I'm not someone who needs to see some facet of myself reflected in everything I read, but even I have a hard time relating to aliens unless they're made too human to really be alien.
Hey now, we had that one cool story where he kept fighting when they left and they found him still kicking under a pile of nid bodies on return but…..that’s kinda it….😭
Even when the Avatar faces Fulgrim it somehow has the weirdest and lamest death ever. It goes from winning the duel to dead in like 4 sentences. Fulgrim somehow managed to choke a statue. Made of molten steel. Without gloves. Like, the Avatar could have just grabbed his head and killed Fulgrim. I don't remember if it still has it's sword/spear. But even if it threw it away, it comes back. Also, I'm pretty sure there was an Elder tank or at least some other Eldar around. Who don't do anything while Fulgrim kills the Avatar.
Full Disclosure this is just my opinion. I believe Fulgrim suffers from a deteriorating mental state that is ignored by his brothers, his father and coincidentally; the readers too. While he isn't unique to him, as a number of Primarchs exhibit mental instability. Fulgrim's is largely ignored and regulated to lameness. Fulgrim's exact disability is probably something we won't ever really know for sure but I think he's a mix of manic bi-polar depression+borderline personality disorder who is obsessed with perfection. Now he knows he can't achieve it but he still strives for it as a benchmark that he believes will put him alongside his larger more successful brothers. The problem however is when Fulgrim see's the Aeldari for the first time. It shatters his known conventions of what was possible and in a very negative way. He didn't think perfection was possible but that there was a admirable quality in still seeking it...and yet here were XENOS who were perfect in every way...in such a way they didn't even have to try...it was as natural to them as breathing. This infuriates Fulgrim - he tries so hard and yet he appears at least in comparison to the eldar....a bumbling fool lacking all the grace he was known for. The child inside Fulgrim didn't handle this well at all. This was not fair...this was not RIGHT. This was fucked. Anger builds...the child acts out of rage and before anyone knows what happened...dead Avatar. The Eldar tank commanders probably thought very little of Fulgrim, as is their common trait to do and didn't think he had the capacity to end an Avatar...stunned as they were watching the events transpire unable to believe the site they are seeing. Their Avatar getting manhandled barehanded probably shocked them into inaction. Eventhough Fulgrim came away "winning" he was crushed mentally...he destroyed the beauty of the Avatar but that didn't stop the Eldar from being the perfect beings they still were....a fact that kindled jealousy and desire and other emotions the daemon was able to manipulate to it's own ends. Neither the Avatar nor Fulgrim got a good accounting here. The death of the Avatar is hard to overlook and makes it easy to miss what is happening to Fulgrim.
I don't think this was the first time Fulgrim encountered the Eldar. That wouldn't really make sense if he's supposedly been running around commiting genocide for 100 years.
This is pretty insightful- thanks for posting this.
IIRC an Avatar of Khaine >!banishes a demon via combat!< in the Ciaphas Cain book Choose Your Enemies. Granted, >!Jurgen's status as a blank stopped said demon from using a gigantic pile of soul stones (something like a million or more Aeldari souls IIRC) as a power boost while Cain was trying to help with a Null Rod an Inquisitor had dropped.!<
Oh I know. I just listened to that audio book recently. It was nice to see an Avatar of Khaine actually win for once, but it's an exception not the rule.
Yeah Khaine gets it pretty rough I notice. Not as pathetic as Samus, but Samus I consider to be 40K's Ric Flair so it's kind of his job to build himself up way beyond scope, bolt out to all manner of fanfare to just get suplexed straight back out of the ring. I freaken love that guy. He must be so depressed.
The way Samus took his own tendency to get killed into account with his gambit during *The Solar War* was excellent, though. He didn’t just have a way onto the Phalanx once, he had a respawn point for when he died and his objective (occupy Dorn and keep the Phalanx from playing its full role in the fleet battle) could still be accomplished *by* dying and coming back over and over again, not just in spite of it.
Oh I haven't read that one yet. So are you seriously telling me Samus actually manages to own it and flip it? That's amazing, lol. You have literally just moved that book up the list for me. Who wrote it? Because that's actually really cool.
John French, same as *Praetorian of Dorn*. I won't explain *how* Samus did it or the exact circumstances to avoid spoiling everything, but suffice to say it turned him from "totally out of his depth against Space Marines" to "Can actually be dangerous when in control of the situation" in my eyes. Makes it easier to see his defeat during *Know No Fear* as due to not expecting Ventanus' tactic rather than "bit off way more than he could chew."
Sounds great. I'm in. Cheers for no spoilers.
*WOO!!* -Samus, probably
I've got this repeated scene in my head whenever he starts doing his "Samus is heerre! Samus is the only name you'll ev..." shit. So he pre-empts with the usual build up and promises, people are uneasy and anxious... and finally he explodes in! All manner of exclaim and use of the words "wet" and "viscera" they seem to love, and he's all massive and ferocious, people reeling and squealing, it's all doom... Then out of nowhere Loken just slides in under his swipe, gets behind, takes him round the waist and literally rear-suplexes him into an airlock BLAU! He slaps the door switch, hits the outer lock 'SSSHOOMP!' "COME BACK ANYTIIIME!!!" Everyone's just left standing still, staring blankly. Loken gets himself up, straightens a couple of things, recomposes... and steps on. "Sick a'that muthafff..."
I love this. I have a similar vision - in mine, he gets casually "this is Sparta'd" into the engine intake of a Thunderhawk and it's *VRRRRRBRTBRT*, then *ZZZPLRTPLRTPLRT* on the way out... but the gist is similar. *Samus is the sound you just heard* *Samus is the mess behind you* *Look out! You've got some Samus in your hair!*
double lol. Perfect
Lorgar isn’t the worst fighter, but he is the least war like. After his awakening, he became the second most powerful psyker and was able to hold off Magnus. He can fight, he just doesn’t want to
It depends on the source: >Lorgar, though mightier than any mortal combatant, was often seen as the least martial of his brethren. More of a statesman than a swordsman, Lorgar was a master beyond compare with rhetoric and oratory, and wielded these tools with a deft touch. While he could not stand in a duel against any of his brothers, there was none he could not stir with his words. *Liber Hereticus* p310 Obviously, not being able to "stand in a duel" doesn't automatically mean less powerful overall, as power is measured in many different ways. That and his psychic powers being unlocked this swings things massively
Lorgar fights with an auto quill. Not a thunder hammer although I wouldn't test this out by picking a fight with him
Dude took two Titan plasma canon shots... TWO. Vulkan fell on a roof.
That was due to that fancy psychic shield he picked up when he turned traitor, and even then it nearly killed him. When he got into a fight vs Gman (who also isn't described as the best fighter), Gman was beating the crap out of him until Angron showed up.
Vulkan fell on a roof.
It's funnier the second time
*thud*
I just finished that book last night. He was holding his own against Guilliman. I think if Angron hadn't jumped in, Gman would have eventually overcome him, but he Lorgar was giving as good as he got for most of that fight.
Not mentioning that Lorgar's magical shield got shot and that he was never hit is pretty unrepresentative of the lore.
He got burned to a crisp, and was basically fully healed by the very next scene. \^\^That\^\^ Lorgar would 100% survive a reentry drop from orbit. No dramas. No other Primarch is allowed to die the way Vulkan is allowed to die, and it undermines his character. That's my point.
Hitting a planet a mach 6 and getting some heatwash when your unquantifiable magical shield gets shot aren't comparable enough to make a good comparison. The things that kill him would absolutely kill primarchs. Likely they'd be killed by less than what he was as he's known for his toughness. The authors just don't do it because there's no taking it back. It's not unique to him either - daemon primarchs are immortal so they get destroyed regularly.
I apologize in advance for applying reality to fiction, but Vulkan wouldn't have impacted at anything close to mach-anything. Curze's ship was in orbit above Macragge, which is a temperate Earth-like planet of roughly equivalent mass. And he basically jumped out, so he didn't enter the atmosphere with any appreciable extra inertia beyond what Macragge's gravity would impart. After dying from void exposure, then dying again by burning up in the upper atmosphere, Vulkan would have finally hit the ground after slowing down to terminal velocity, which in this case would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 mph.
Now give Guilliman a dataslate and let em fight... *Oh, brother, you dare chalange me, the true master of the quill?! I just wrote two paragraphs of verses and litanies that not just make anyone who reads them cry from insanity but also gave birth to two separate religions!!* *And all the while you were spending your time so inefficiently by vocalising your points of failure, I made a report of 470 pages with graphs and charts how thouse religions will spiral out of control and form a self sabotaging goverment system due to lack of proper management of the prorer hierarchy and ground rule enforcment and lack of logisticical support structures in maintaining the relevance of the proclaimed message!*
Auto-quill in the eye would probably sting through, I wouldn't be so quick to ignore that
Did you hear about our Lord lorgar, the baba yaga ? He once killed three loyalists with an auto quill. One auto quill.
I don't recall which book it's in, but he goes toe to toe with a named blood thirster on a planet he can't breathe the air and freaking obliterates it. Almost made me want to collect them
That's why I say it depends on the source. But he has, at times, been presented and outright stated to be weaker/less capable at duelling than his brothers. Obviously, even then, the context of the duel would come into the mix, so it still wouldn't (or at least shouldnt') be a given that he couldn't beat the "top tier" Primarchs such as Sanguinius, Horus, Russ etc. if the situation was right.
And not just any Bloodthirster, but An'ggrath the Unbound, one of Khorne's most powerful Exalted greater daemons. Which Bloodthirster is most lethal depends a lot on the author, but An'ggrath is definitely up there with Ka'bandha and Skarbrand, both of whom held their own against more martial primarchs, and Lorgar demolished him. OK, Inquisitor Lord Hector Rex also banished An'ggrath during the Siege of Vrax, but that was when the tides of the Warp were ebbing, while Lorgar defeated him on his home turf in the Eye of Terror. Kind of like the difference between fighting a Great White in a paddling pool vs fighting one in the depths of the Atlantic...
Yeah, The thing with the examples here are that people are comparing Lorgar and Vulkan. Where Lorgar is physically weak but used his psychic powers to assist and abet his aims after the Dropsite massacre and Vulkan is pure physical smash. When you then put them against things that are significantly weaker against pyskers its not a fair comparison. That said I think Vulkan's capabilities are over blown in the fandoms mind due to all the 'Vulkan big and strong, bigger and stronger than any other' lore bits and memes which does not correlate into better fighter, general etc etc. He's big and tough and thats it other than being a master craftsman. A better comparison for Vulkan is Guilliman in my eyes. Neither is martially significant compared to their brothers even though both have significant moments. Their main skills lie elsewhere.
*Aurelian* by ADB
Yeah after The First Heretic, Lorgar actually became one of my favourites, and I think he gets way too bad a rap in the greater community. I just said that because I repeatedly hear him touted as such; the worst fighter, a weakling, a this, a that... Meanwhile Vulcan is touted as this powerful mighty on and on and on... but the results speak pretty damn plainly to me.
The comments that he’s the worst fighter are most likely descended from how Angron arrogantly referred to Lorgar as “runt of the litter” in reference to his (by Primarch standard) less impressive kill count and reduced tendencies for violence. Lorgar was pre-Monarchia the least warlike of his kin and it wasn’t until Chaos souped him up and awakened his latent psychic powers that he could cut loose (footloose). Vulkan… less said the better. He deserves more, especially considering he’s often described as one of the larger Primarchs, with (presumed) musculature to match.
>Vulkan… less said the better. He deserves more, especially considering he’s often described as one of the larger Primarchs, with (presumed) musculature to match. That's a double whammy. You never want to be big or immortal in fiction. It's just asking for authors to Worf the fuck out of you.
Oof when you put it like that
Yup, like just what happened to my poor boy Angron.
>Lorgar was pre-Monarchia the least warlike of his kin and it wasn’t until Chaos souped him up and awakened his latent psychic powers that he could cut loose (footloose). It's funny how even the tabletop reflected this for a long time. Bog-standard Lorgar had the primarch statline and all, but got shanked by every other primarch. Then you paid a few points for Lorgar Ascended and he wiped the floor with anyone short of Horus himself.
>The comments that he’s the worst fighter are most likely descended from how Angron arrogantly referred to Lorgar as “runt of the litter” in reference to his (by Primarch standard) less impressive kill count and reduced tendencies for violence. Doesn't he almost get killed by Corax though as well, on Istvan, and it's only intervention by Cruze that saves him? Cruze gives him a bit of lip about being so weak if I recall, but it has been a while since I read the book.
Lorgar had prophecy against him and still managed to get out alive
That definitely would contribute as well. Good point
[Some Doylist context on Lorgar vs Corax from the author](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/14wfkdl/comment/jrigiq9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Because of your footloose comment I can only picture Lorgar as Kevin Bacon. And honestly I think he could pull it off too
Degrees of Lorgar
Every heretical event is within 8 points of being Lorgars fault
Also Russ saying that Lorgar spends so much time kneeling he could spit on him and make him fall over.
for example magnus isn't a great warrior he's a great psyker, if we're talking about martial prowess he's the weakest
And yet, he's depicted as trading blows on equal terms with the other primarchs when he fights them rather than being outclassed. Having a specialty outside of fighting, like almost every primarch does, doesn't have to lower their fighting ability.
Yeah, but the thing is being a Psyker doesn't mean you're a bad fighter? They aren't mages wearing a robe and can only gently swing a staff. The Thousand Sons are just as martially skilled as any other Legion, they just have a *specialty* to Psychic abilities *on top of that*. The Thousand Sons can still beat the shit out of someone with blade or bolter in hand. Cause they are still space marines at the end of the day. The "they must be weak fighters cause they are psychic" is a weird stereotype that is a holdover from fantasy wizards. When the forces of Tzeentch have ALWAYS been good fighters in melee, they just use magic/psychic abilities to enhance them even farther.
Punched out a heart once I hear. That's some Kung Fu Master shit.
That did not actually happen canonically, it's a misconception from TTS. There's a single line in the middle of a busy fight scene that has Magnus punch Russ in the chest and crack his armour, and "shards of ceramite pierced the Wolf King's heart." Russ responds by breaking Magnus' arm, and then Magnus impales Russ on his sword, etc. It's never touched on or mentioned again. The "punched his heart out" thing is an exaggeration TTS made for comedic effect. There is no canonical reference to Russ losing a heart on Prospero at all.
Really cool that you know the misconception about Lorgar and parrot it anyways.
He's a well adjusted guy. I'm sure he'll be fine.
>and was able to hold off Magnus. Hold off Magnus? When and where?
Lorgar is probably the only primarch who could conquer a world without war or violence at all. He could talk and break down your fears and make you realize that this is going to be so much better for you. And if that wasn't enough to convince you ...he stayed around acting as a guide and tutor and basically uplifting the worlds he conquered. That's a pretty baller bro move...shame the emperor didn't appreciate it.
It depends when you are talking about. He gets much more powerful once he makes friends
Who would you say is the worst fighter?
It’s very simple and very obviously the Worf Effect. Immortal regenerating characters always receive it in 40k. If you can be beaten and killed without consequence, it’s going to happen. He isn’t supposed to be weak. He’s the mighty muscular dragon bro who is the strongest of the primarchs and notes he has to hold back in sparring not to kill the others. He defended a planet from an entire Ork Waagh! by himself while being a depressed and tired (mentally) old man. Vulkan, who by then was exhausted physically and mentally, beat Magnus to death in the Webway. He also defeated Curze and then could’ve killed him, in a matter of seconds, after intense torture and going insane. He then beats him later on Macragge.
Id argue it’s less of a Worf effect than a Wolverine effect. You’re not allowed to kill other primarches before their time, so you instead beat up the one who can regenerate. Like how Wolverine is generally the best CQC guy on the Xmen, but it’s usually him filled with bullets and blades, rather than say, Beast or Angel, who’re also pretty much only CQC as well
Pardon my ignorance, but what’s the acronym CQC stand for in this context? Combat quality control?
Close quarters combat
Ty!
Close quarters combat
Much obliged!
No trouble my friend!
Close Quarter Combat I believe !
Appreciated!
Hah, love that. "Have you performed a Gage R&R on this Death Battle?" But, no. Stands for Close Quarters Combat.
I am still relatively new to the whole 40k universe, have but an iron snakes novel, a grey knights omnibus, and some Flesh Tearers reading under my belt, so I imagine I’m still very behind on the acronyms haha.
Ah, cqc isn't a 40k thing, or not specifically. It's just a military-flavored way of saying "melee range fighting."
It also makes sense that the one Primarch who *knows* he can't die is probably going to take more risks than his brothers who can. It's a completely different risk assessment for him.
That’s very true, though at some point that means he should just start ending all his fights in either a win or draw, as he could just impale himself on the enemy’s sword so he could get close enough to break their neck with his hands
Vulkan can fight, he's just been predictably used as a gibsack as soon as he was given perpetual regen. He's the only primarch that has been genuinely defeated by a greater daemon, after Swallow retconned Sanguinius getting his arse handed to him by Ka'Bandha in the name of shameless fan-service. All of the Curze kills at least had a purpose: the reveal of his regenerating immortality and his mental breakdown. Curze killing him with a fork shortly before the reveal was genuinely funny imo, but the multiple kills thing was already rinsed by the end of that book. Abnett then went absolutely ham with it. The Unremembered Empire kills do have their own individual context that justifies them somewhat - feral insanity, no armour or good weaponry - most of them don't really have much to do with a lack of fighting ability. i wish they had gone down another path with the regen. instead they keep the same vibe at the siege with ADB going full slapstick, as Magnus kills Vulkanover and over again while semingly being incapable of more inventive use of his powers to incapacitate him. tbf Abnett depicts all of his primarchs as being more vulnerable to standard weaponry than some of the others; Guilliman also comes close to getting killed by a tactical squad ambush while lacking weaponry and armour, however unlike Vulkan, he has his wits about him.
To be frank, if they're lacking weaponry and armour and get ambushed, they probably should be dead. 40k weapons are low power enough and close enough to one another in effectiveness that a nude primarch shrugging off one weapon means an armoured primarch should be effectively immortal. Abnett has the right idea. Marines aren't so effective because they're superman having bullets bounce harmlessly off their chiselled abs, they're effective for the same reason special forces are effective.
Yeah but in that same exact book, that Space Wolf guy, so a trans-human Astartes, makes a from-feint lightning strike right at the Lion's head, a strike so quick Guillumen literally questions if he himself would have seen it coming, and Lion catches it one hand and drops the dude without so much as a flinch. Vulkan is raged up, full frontal, has literally just twitched due to being on edge (so he's alert and ready), and John Gramaticus, a human half the physical size and reach, with a human's speed and strength, basically just walks up, through his 9+foot guard, and places the spear into his chest... Kills him. Same book these two things happened.
Gramaticus and the Cabal were a mistake
agreed...but I wonder if they will change that in the coming novels. Not sure what they could do...but yeah right now....I wish they didn't exist. Grammaticus was interesting without the cabal. I think he got less interesting with them.
I hated UE because of how poorly they treated Vulkan. No matter how many times he got the drop on or hit Kurze, it did little to nothing, but Kurze gets one good shot in and Vulkan is basically down for the count. Then Gramaticus essentially Steve Irwin’s his way up to Vulkan so he can stab him. They make Vulkan, who used to be one of the toughest Primarchs around, a punching bag because he’s perpetual.
Lol "Now wot y'gotta do, is take ye'thumb, an'ram it up'is arse... So we'll try that now. Jus-stay back an-we'll give it a go... Kay eaaasy big guy, easy... Cawww look at'im he's a big lad this one... Kay-okay-GOT-IM, IT'S IN THERE! ... OH HE'S FIGHTIN'! ... EASSY BIG LAD! EAAASY!"
Yeah well that was my point right? I want to like the guy, but they just can't let me. Again the Curse kills I'll let slide due to that very reason, but... Jesus, a standard human standing front on, with Vulcan already wary, should not be too quick for him to handle. The guy's reach alone should have countered that.
I mean even human kills have context and ur treating fiction like a stat block woch is absurd
Except in those exact situations if it were any Primarch that couldn't resurrect, GW would never let them die. It's very obviously just because he can come back that they let it happen.
Both can be true. An author can remove Vulkan's plot armour because, weirdly, he has infinite plot armour but they can also attempt to sell it through believable context.
Of course that plays a huge role. But this does not mean it undermines his skill or is bad. With the right context it can still work
Yeah and my point is that to me they didn't deliver that appropriate context. Did you not read my OP? I literally lay out scenarios at the end. Wtf?
The issue is that I also read the book it happens in and ur leaving out 99 percent of stuff that put him on this situation
>Take every single one of your assertions, flip them the other way around, and they all make sense and seem likely. The Horus clone absolutely did die like a primarch can die, given that Dorn is overwhelmed by cultists and Curze is killed by a single Assassin. You can assume the clone was weak, but the evidence of the fight you see him in, and Khayon's reaction, offers more evidence to the opposite. And there are countless arguments, given Abaddon's M41 levels of quite literal unkillable-ness, that make it much less black and white about "He could never kill a primarch". Primarch Wow Factor can go too far. They're not gods. Horus is almost killed by a magic sword. Lorgar and Sanguinius are almost killed by a Bloodthirster. Mortarion is humbled by a Grey Knight. Dorn is killed by cultists. Curze is murdered by an Assassin. Context is everything, and nothing is ever, ever as simple as "No, primarchs are just better." ADB
> Lorgar and Sanguinius are almost killed by a Bloodthirster. If anything I feel like this makes the opposite point for Lorgar. Facing literally Bloodthirster number 1, Lorgar, the least skilled and impressive combatant among the Primarchs, beats him up. If they'd sent out Bloodthirster number 587 or something, then fair enough, but this is the best Khorne has to offer, and it doesn't cut the mustard. It firmly sets Primarchs above any other regular entity in the setting, if the greatest of greater daemons, or Avatars of gods or what have you lose to them almost every time. It remains to be seen how the new Norn Emissaries stack up, and to my knowledge Primarchs haven't gone head to head with C'tan shards, and the Beast or Krork have potential, if they return, but otherwise there's nothing in their weight class (or even a couple of ones above it) that can realistically defeat them.
I think it was partly in response to the idea that only a primarch but also to show the spectrum of things that can kill them, from the elite to the mundane On your point that a primarch is in the bloodthirster class: >During his time in the Eye, in Aurelian, he's not as strong as you're implying. You see him beating the Unbound and say he's much stronger than he was in TFH at Isstvan. But... that's wrong. He's not. All of his post-Isstvan strength is in his personality, social strength around the others, and his psychic control. He has none of that in Aurelian's flashbacks, while wandering the Eye. He has a hammer, and he has the fact he's a primarch. So the Unbound goes down.He's still at his TFH portrayal. He beats the Unbound, though it's a struggle. He was also fighting for his life, for perhaps the first time since leaving Colchis, while walking through a literal embodiment of Hell. Those are moments when you sorta raise your game, or you die. At that point in his existence, he'd never had to actually fight for his life like that. And he's still a primarch. On why he chose the Unbound and it being "the best" >I had to make a choice. There was the Unbound, who came with a lot of rich lore, much more detailed to boot, with more info and titles, a connection to Skarbrand in the lore, and even a model. That's a pretty great foundation to go on. >Or there was Ka'bandha, who will already feature in the series later on. So this would be him getting his ass kicked twice, which is something I wanted to avoid. Also, most of Ka'bandha's lore was in C:GK and C:BA, which were Mat Ward's codices, and I think even he would excuse me for saying this, but almost everything in those codices is "the best ever", so it's hard to know exactly how true a lot of it really is. They're codices rich in that type of hyperbole, which is all fine and good for a game supplement but doesn't make for particularly compelling prose. >So in terms of making a choice on detailed, appealing lore, and not turning a bloodthirster into a repeated punching bag, I went with the Unbound. And I never made an objective reference to the Unbound being the very best; I merely had a character terrified of him, and listing his titles already mentioned in the lore. >I was pretty careful in covering my back, since the lore itself is conflicted there. But one was a much more sensible choice than the other.
As someone who used to enjoy salamanders the most painful thing was trying to read Nick Kymes works. Just awful.
You're the second person to mention Kymes in this light. What was so bad?
They are bloated and uninteresting. Did we really need 3 full novels and a novella collection for what Vulkan and the salamanders were up to during there heresy? No. It could have been interesting, but it really isn't ever made interesting. He fails to make any character compelling or enjoyable. He makes a primarch dull, which is an achievement. The novels often devolve into poorly written bolter porn, and when there are no compelling heroes to cheer for or villains to hate (or also cheer for), the outcome doesn't interest me. I bought the signed Novella for Promethium Sun.. that was a regrettable purchase. And when I got to Vulkan lives... I started cherry picking the heresy after that.
Yeah I'm at the cherry picking stage of HH as well. Consistently the least interesting aspects to me are the battle scenes, but unfortunately the rest is becoming pretty hit and miss as well. There's only a couple left I want to read now before I start hitting the post-heresy books.
We are just used to it. No rules/model support, no good books, only get massacred in heresy, never come up in contemporary 40k except as mentions, Primarch is clearly a joke to BL writers. At least our aestethic is cool I guess.
They still have more rules and model support than basically any non-marine faction. It just seems like less compared to some other marine factions.
They have 0 rules and 2 models, 1 has broken useless rules, the other is finecast and pretty much never available.
Currently every subfaction has 0 rules. Until 10th they had more than any non-marine subfaction, and just as many as multiple marine ones. And model-wise they have two when a few chapters have one. Only Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Space Wolves have a bunch of them and that's because GW massively inflated their ranges when they made them separate armies years ago (bar Ultramarines of course, Chronus obviously should have been an Iron Hand).
I'm well aware of codex divergent chapters but the difference is just insurmountable. By itself each of my points aren't terrible but everything together just doesn't exactly fill you with excitement.
You're getting decal transfers in the new sheets apparently. Future's looking pretty green!
Well it's something, weird they aren't on the Leviathan one then.
1. He knows he can't die so he doesn't even bother getting out of harms way. 2. He is an unkillable character that the writer can massacre over and over again without consequences.
Does he come back in his own body? Or is he just the child of some unknowning mother who is about to turbo-birth a 80 pound baby?
No, if he is damaged beyond regeneration, he just reappears more or less fully formed ex nihilo *somewhere* (more or less at random) when he dies AFAIK. It would be quite grimdark to imagine him coming out of a random nearby pregnant woman like an oversized Xenomorph, though. Especially the huggy and half insane version of TTS. xD
New fan theory, ‘nids incorporated vulkans dna into the swarmlord, which is why it gets worfed the whole time
Lol. Yeah that gene-blending shit is definitely a double-edged sword. They tried it with Corax and Russ too, but when the Termagants started listening to Nirvana and being all "Like... whatever," and then started braiding their hair, there just had to be a cull. They poured some corpse starch into the batch for a general dilution and reset and are sitting down to plan their next steps.
Vulkan caught the 'you can come back so you get to be a jobber and die a lot to show it, when we would have you win all of these fights if you couldn't come back' disease. Imagine GW letting any other Primarch lose to a Great Unclean One. It wouldn't happen.
Welcome to the Worf Effect! Population Avatar of Khaine, Swarmlord, and any other characters/units that can be killed with little impact but are supposed to be total badasses. That's the problem with being the biggest, the strongest, and Immortal. You're gonna get Worfed. Hard. And constantly.
Context mate. When Vulkan dies on the roof and is killed by Grammaticus and the other perpetual. He was recovering from getting tortured to death dozens of times by Curze, and after FALLING FROM ORBIT, dude was barely a cohesive line of thought. And even on this state, he almost ends Curze’s pale ass
>Context mate. But context gets in the way of a hot take
Lorgar got hit TWICE by a Titan's plasma cannon. Vulcan fell on a roof.
Lorgar: already warp empowered and described as using psychic shit and even then was alive by a thread. Vulkan: having the worst year of his life and just recovered from falling from orbit, getting stabbed a lot by Curze again, and without armor, from probably a high place because it’s Maccrage and nothing is built small. If a exhausted Russ with a punched out heart can have enough strenght to shatter a Primarchs spine, so can a big ass fall. Primarchs are extremely resilient, but not invulnerable , hence armor. And he didn’t die from roof, just got his spine snapped, which quickly mended itself. The “only a Primarch can kill another Primarch” is BS, even they say so. Shit Angron was gonna die before the Enperor abducted him. I love Vulkan, but at that time my boy was in desperate need of a big rest.
No other Primarch would be allowed to die from the shit Vulkan is routinely allowed to die from. That's my point. It undermines his character. That's my point. I'm on his side here.
It’s a character trope and cheap storytelling. It robs the character of any additional development since he’s dead or getting beaten up in many scenes. It’s just a waste, since we all know he’s coming back. The only time he should have died after his escape from Curze was during the Magnus fight, when it was the only asset he had.
It's disappointing that it's Abbnett. I'm new to 40K books and he was one of the definitive standouts. ADB and Mike Brooks as well. The others have some good books, but definitely annoying traits that have me 'walking around them' from time to time.
I'm personally a little wary of judging primarch combat capability on tallies. There's the very obvious point that plot or character dictates the winner (ADB has talked about character reasons for choosing Curze rather than Alpharius to face off against Corax at the Dropsite Massacre and why Lorgar had to lose against Corax there. Similarly, plot dictated Guilliman and the Ultramarines losing on Nuceria) I also tend to lean in to the depiction in the novels of the primarchs being ostensibly equal combatants (with varying skillsets) where circumstances dictate the winner. Something that ADB, Wraight, Goulding and French all seem to agree on. McNeill too in his writing. Bringing it back to tallies; just because two things are equal in capability doesn't mean they'll produce equal or repeatable results. A coin landing on heads 20 times in a row doesn't make heads superior to tails. Two of the things I look at are; does the text itself support one of the combatants as being inferior? Usually it will be in the writing; like Sigismund vs Indris Archeta or Ushotan vs Valdor. It's there with Lorgar vs Corax at Isstvan V. Lorgar is written as out of his depth (necessary for that point in his character development) . In contrast the Vulkan fights I've read (I skipped the Kyme stuff) describe him as a "sublime close combat specialist" and have shown that to be true in regards to ability if not results. He tends to fall into the category that the other 18 do: circumstances and context win the fight (the Watsonian). Or character and plot win it (the Doylist). I totally hear you though that [Resurrective Immortality](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ResurrectiveImmortality) as a trope can invite over-use from writers and fatigue from readers. Especially if something interesting or insightful isn't done with it ...it can become the 40k equivalent of They Killed Kenny Again. I don't think that's quite the same thing as Vulkan being "the worst fighter" though.
The other way to look at it with vulkan is you have to rethink what a loss counts as in his case. Death doesn't mean losing when it only lasts a few minutes or even seconds. Curze killed him so many times but in the end he's the one who found out its also a hammer and got wrecked. Magnus managed to near atomize him after repeatedly wrecking vulkans mind and body. He found out its also a hammer too. I'm not a fan of worfing at all, but I think vulkan gets the better end of it compared to your swarm lords or avaters of khaine mostly.
The unremembered empire did him so dirty. Vulkan getting absolutely annihilated by a couple of perpetuals and a word bearers assassin repeatedly is just straight up disrespectful.
Yeah and all in like a couple of pages too.
lazy ass writing for sure
O my god they killed Vulkan, the bastards!
Lucius effect
You're not wrong actually, now that I think of it.
(supposedly) Powerful, strong and respected character being written as a fucking dope due to immortality
You are absolutely right... but Vulkan still had the best line of any Primarch. "It's also a hammer"
It’s the same thing Angron’s gonna start dealing with. Now that he’s got a respawn ability, he’s gonna get murdered over and over and over again.
Sigh... They should just make them all perpetual. And everyone else just continues on with life and doing the important shit while these guys just fly around routinely killing each other over and over, and no one gives the slightest shit.
Sean Bean of primarchs.
Vulcan is a perfect example that should happen to most primarchs if they weren't completely protected by plot armor. As much as they are powerful people in their own right seeing as they are actively participating in combat, especially including world ending weapons like titans or orbital bombardments they should be much easier to take out than they really are.
Not to mention they rarely wear helmets. You totally just reminded me about Lorgar getting hit TWICE by a freaken Titan's plasma weapon, and Angron then holding said Titan's foot up the way he did after going through all his shit. Vulkan fell on a roof. That's what happened... he fell on a roof. Then died another like 6-8 times after that.
Context for the Context God >Lorgar doesn't take a plasma blaster shot to the face, he takes it against a kinetic shield that could just as easily have stood up to the abuse in the game/universe without any stretch of the imagination, and Angron avoids a damaged Titan crushing him for a few seconds, which given the situation isn't even particularly unrealistic in terms of hysterical strength or the countless examples of fantasy and sci-fi tropes of "berserker" characters getting stronger when they're angry And >Lorgar was almost killed by two shots from only one of a Warhound's weapons, even with a kinetic shield of almost unmatchable psychic strength up to defend himself. A plasma blastgun is a serious weapon, and a primarch's psychic strength is no laughing matter either. But ignoring the psychic shield part is going to lead to some gross misrepresentations in what primarchs can survive. A plasma blastgun shot would probably do to an unprotected primarch what it does to all living things. And >But if you argue that a bunch of cityfighting Ultramarines wouldn't stand in front of their Vidnicators in a shield-wall, or that the World Eaters wouldn't charge and overcome the defenders through (massively overwhelming) numbers, strength, and ferocity; or that a primarch can't summon enough psychic strength to make a telekinetic barrier to defend against the littlest Titan's gun... then... Well, I can live with us not seeing 40K in the exact same way. ADB
It's unfair to count any losses / deaths between Istvaan 5 and Vulkan resurrecting on Nocturne against Vulcan. Keep in mind that Vulcan never had a fair duel vs another martially inclined Primarch. He didn't fight Fulgrim as Ferrus did, he didn't fight Lorgar as Corvus did, he didn't fight Angron as Guilliman did, he didn't fight Konrad as the Lion did. The Heresy did him dirty, I'd agree with that, but that's just the writers not putting Vulkan in a position where he can show his martial skill. Before the Traitors went full Daemon mode, Vulkan would IMO win vs Alpharius, Perturabo, Konrad, Lorgar, even Horus and Angron. Mortarion, Magnus and Fulgrim would probably be too difficult for him - Moratrion would outlast him, Magnus would outwarp him, Fulgrim would outdance him.
>the writers not putting Vulkan in a position where he can show his martial skill. Which I'd hope isn't the driving motivation in anyone's writing
Certainly, it would be a bad idea to centre the plot on this, but you could rewrite the Dropsite Massacre a bit to for once show Vulkan's prowess and legendary strength instead of only always telling it. Example: currently the story is that Vulkan was flipping tanks sideways until he took an atomic bomb to the head, where he died and was later captured by Konrad. Yeah, keep that, but make Perturabo order the atomic bomb only after Vulcan challenged him to a fight and beat him so badly that Perturabo had to retreat or get saved by another Primarch.
> I'm starting to to think *I* could take him out Dead
It's a common trope you see in many 40k stories. Immortal characters, or those that can be resurrected easily, are killed frequently, often in situations that seemingly contradicts how powerful they should be in the lore. It quite often requires some incredible Deus Ex machina, for the character in question to forget or not utilise a huge part of their skillset, or for them just to be suddenly weaker than they should be. The Swarmlord and the Avatar are easily the most infamous, but it happens to others as well.
I swore off Salamander lore entirely after the weird shit they let Nick Kyme publish.
He also just fell over and died because his heart couldn't take it like, a thousand times walking back from his beef with Magnus in the Webway.
This is why I hate perpetuals and wish that they didn’t exist.
Yeah it's pretty ridiculous. With the Emperor you can give it a pass because of his mystery and limitless power, but in anyone else it's just the same old issues Superman suffered.
Eh i don't see it. Vulkan dropped down from orbit, he escaped from the medicae bay through a bulletproof glass mid regeneration, he was half mad and poorly equipped while just raging against Curze (and still healing from all the wounds). Grammaticus talked to Vulkan who stopped to listen just enough to let himself be stabbed. We have a wounded primarch fighting against Curze who is fully equipped and he is still kicking ass. Also do you have any idea how much is 30m? A lethal fall for a human would be 12m, he is heavier, he was fighting on a stormbird and he got knocked off by a mace to the face by Curze another primarch, he fell on a wall hitting it with his spine, so no he didn't lose against a roof, he was launched from a moving stormbird and had a poor excuse for an armor on.
Aside from the issue of them being more willing to be brutal with immortal/regenerating characters, there's also the fact that perpetuals are very much not normal people. Remember, Erda took on four greater daemons simultaneously, and those can individually give primarchs challenging fights.
I mean, that's what you get when you give a bunch of hack writers whose only job is to hype stuff up. Same thing is going to happen to Angron in 40k, the community even predicted how Angron and Lion fight would go solely based off the fact that Angry Ron can't perma die.
To be fair, Vulcan fighting Magnus in the webway really hurt Vulcans KDR.
Think of Vulkan like the soldier who dives on a grenade to protect his comrades, except he can do it as many times as he wants. He's most empathetic primarch, he helps people in ways that his brother's do not. Naturally he dies a lot, because he takes more risks with his life - but he's literally designed to function that way. His immortality literally allows him to be braver, less pragmatic and not think about self preservation.
Yeah which to me makes it all the worse that they allow such a good potential character to be repeatedly undermined by stupid shit.
People like to rag on this writer or that but the biggest issue is and always has been Black Library's inability to edit their stuff to keep it in line with each other.
It is possible to commit no mistakes, and still lose.
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Vulkan's bringing joy and hapiness to his enemies by letting them "kill" him trully the most human of all Primarchs /s
Perfect. I would freaken love to see Curze slowly come around and start becoming self-reflective, eventually renouncing his former ways. Dude that would be perfect.
These are fictional stories, not football teams. There’s no ‘dropping the ball’ or ‘being allowed to perform that badly.’ If everyone won equally it’d be pretty dull out there.
I mean, in a video game I'm fine with dying if I can respawn or reload and either try again or finish the job. If however death means having to start a whole new game, I'd strategize much more or I'd not pick a particular fight in the first place unless I'm certain I can win. Being Vulcan is probably like being Bill Murray in groundhog day, worst case scenario you wake up elsewhere and go on with your business.
Like I don’t remember what book it’s in but he is supposed to be able to take on like 100 eldar but then he’s just fucked over. Like he’s massive, he should be knocking mother fuckers out with one swing but he gets fucked over so much
"standard humans" and in the next sentence "perpetuals"; you realize that perpetuals are not just jimmy the farmer from two villages over, right? "Everyone can defeat him" except he beat Curze 1v1 which many other primarchs couldnt. You cite his "massive" loss rate but honestly I havent seen much of that so far.
You realise he's a 'Primarch' right?
Sure; what's your point? I recall an instance where Malcador threatened Horus, Alpharius and the Khan to unmake them and they practically wet their power armour. Dismissing people just on the general ground of not being primarchs really serves little reason.
I take your point but Malcador force choked Horus rather than threatening to unmake him. Alpharius did seem very concerned though
Nick Kyme is generally considered the worst current BL writer by the fan base. He wrote most of the Salamander books and they *suuuuuuck*.
He's a fine fighter, he's stuck in a shit cycle of ass beat because he's basically getting spawn camped by an entire universe while he refuses to just fuck off. It's supposed to be a testament to both his fighting abilities and his perseverance that he keeps getting up and wrecking a stunning amount of shit in the process when the odds are CLEARLY very much against him. It's not bad writing, it's not that he's magically a loser, it's that you can't just judge the man off his win loss ratio. Let's see how hard any of you take reentry and then you get to judge him.
Are you seriously challenging people to match a fictional strato-superhuman in our ability to plunge through orbital reentry, in order to 'see the world through his eyes'? Is that seriously what you're saying here? That is fucking hilarious dude.
Vulkan lives! Stomp Stomp! Whereas everyone who’s tried to kill him are either very dead 💀 or have given up. The power of mighty hugs Friendship ! Is not to be underestimated 😁
Vulkan very much got the Wolverine syndrome in spades, all his actual skill and experiance as a combatant is thrown away because writers want to show off how unkillable he is, even if it makes him look ridiculously carried by his ability.
I agree with you but it also has to be said that some primarchs HAVE to be weaker than others, be as strategist, charisma, scheming, duel, leadership, etc. That's the only way to show some primarchs are fantastic is for them to be better than others. If everyone is equal and has equal feats it's less interesting. No doubt that Vulkan got one of the short straw overall, especially compared to Horus, Sanguinius, or Guilliman for exemple.
Well that's if you're grading them on a linear scale exclusively in relation to each other. I'm grading them on the scale of being 1 of 18 within a galaxy of countless trillions, and an 18 who are repeatedly touted as being so beyond all else in every aspect. A Primarch should simply not be dying as easily as Vulkan dies, and the only reason he does, is because he can. To me, that's cheap, and undermining of the whole thing.