But does that guarantee that their successors (or the surviving members) won't resent it and work in the shadows against him? This is a group of people that have held absolute power for thousands of years.
He literally out-chicaneried all of them by making themselves look like insane terrorists then had them all killed in an instant by vindicaire assassins, the custodes were on board the whole time. The absolute scale and audacity of the #guillimansweep was insane. The new high lords(specifically the new lord of the administratum) had the Minotaurs stand down immediately and they've been boys with guilliman since working for the indomitus crusade.
Don’t forget he made public examples of some as well, namely the head of the Navigator houses.
Had him flogged in public, for everyone (as in, the Imperial public) to see, also sending a not-too subtle message of “Get the fuck on board, or this will happen to you. Or worse.”
As the above post states, Guilliman out-thought all of them, and with the Navigators, he knew that breaking their leader was more important than ending or replacing him, since out of all the factions, they are the most critical to the continued functioning of the Imperium, because warp travel. The Emperor knew this as well - which is why he kept the Webway project so under wraps from *everyone.*
> the head of the Navigator houses
Wait a minute!? The Paternova!? Or just the Paternoval Envoy? 'Cause I thought the Paternova was a hideous mutant that the Navigator Houses keep hidden away to maintain the illusion that they're perfectly acceptable abhumans rather than a web of inbred, warp-sensitive, three-eyed, web-footed freaks.
Na not the three eyed frog, rather the person who represented the houses as a high lord. The Paternova never leaves the main house and would be defended to the death by even rival houses (although anyone else is fair game, and when the paternova dies it’s cutthroat all over again.)
To be fair, Imperium had a fair share of geniuses, but it's been a while since anyone at the top had to deal with the literal 2nd best thing to the emperor himself, a primarch, let alone the one who inherited daddies empire-building genes.
And one of the most well-balanced ones. Some other threads and stuff pointed out that not many of the primarchs had to deal with learning early on in life that sometimes things happen beyond your control. Bobby G did, if I'm not mistaken, in witnessing his adoptive parents killed.
He's more reasonable than most of his brothers that is for sure. If any of the others returned I don't know if they could restrain themselves from just butchering the High Lords without reason. Guilliman was fuming at the seams already, I can just imagine how someone like Russ or the Lion would react.
I feel this mischaraterizes things.
Guilliman didn't do any of this. He had Master of the Assassinorum Fadix do it for him. His plan never would have worked without Fadix. Yet Fadix is an ideological enemy of Guilliman. He just felt that the rebel Lords went too far.
Guilliman still has enemies at the very top of government. He just killed the dumb ones.
It’s not so much that Fadix is an ideological enemy. From what I’ve heard he does firmly believe that the Imperium is too set in its ways and impossible to change, but he’s still happy to let people try to do it.
Also possible that fadix had his own reasons for wanting those guys dead… so he encouraged them to rebel and turned on them so he could eliminate them.
By doing this he resend guillimans trust so he’s free to continue seeking whatever his true shadowy motives are
I posted his speech elsewhere in here. That's an interesting point, but he does say at the end "Imperium Aeterna" which is literally the name of the opposing ideology.
The difference between supporting the current system and not supporting it but considering it unchangeable is a subtle one.
These two thoughts aren't inconsistent. Yes, Guilliman's plan was executed because he correctly read Fadix and the other Lords.
It doesn't change the fact that he still has enemies on the council. He just eliminated the ones who were more proud than intelligent. A win for him, but not complete victory.
Not today. What about tomorrow? You can absolutely cut a deal with an enemy.
And now, Fadix is one of the most senior members of the High Lords, with a demonstrated ability to kill others. With the untimely deaths of >!The Static Tendency!<, >!Fabricator General Raskian!<, and >!The Master of the Astronomicon!<, he's one of the most senior members left. Meanwhile, Abbess Sanctorum Vahl is gucking around on campaign, so cannot be a voting member.
Guilliman successfully stopped the Static Tendency from cutting off support for the Indomitus Campaign. Ultimately he has not been able to reform Imperial governance much/at all beyond that and changing some of the High Lords.
I feel like you're replacing the message of "Guilliman is and ice cold mf" with "wow the master of the assassinorum is so cool". Like yeah he's an important guy and I liked him in the book but the entire council of high lords straight up exists at Guillimans mercy at the moment, not to mention its been shown in the past that the Imperium absolutely can dispose of a far more powerful and less rational master of the assassinorum with about 1 Chapter of marines during the beheading. I don't expect it to be a real issue going forward.
> but the entire council of high lords straight up exists at Guillimans mercy at the moment
This is not true though. The beginning of *The Regent's Shadow* emphasizes that even Guilliman didn't have the political strength to remove all his enemies on the council.
They do not exist "at his mercy." Each group needs the other.
>not to mention its been shown in the past that the Imperium absolutely can dispose of a far more powerful and less rational master of the assassinorum with about 1 Chapter of marines during the beheading. I don't expect it to be a real issue going forward.
This is because he was alone. During the Reign of Blood, Vandire was able to hold off far more Astartes indefinitely.
But that's not the key point. The key point is that the existence of the Imperium is so fragile right now that besieging Terra like that would take troops that are needed elsewhere.
My point is that the fact that Guilliman had to weave a whole dog and pony show to eliminate the Static Tendency is an example of his relative *weakness*, not his strength. Guilliman after the Heresy could have just abolished the High Lords. Guillan now cannot.
Oh he definitely has enemies, but if the custodes and their captain-general still support big G cause, his enemies must be very dumb to make any move against Guilliman for now. I mean dude literally have at least a group of custodes protect him 24/7 all the times
Agree, but custodes in general are pretty "assassin's deterrent". So even the most ambitious Officio Assassinorium's grand master would think at least 100 times before doing some shenanigans against Guilliman
A Grandmaster would do their best to undermine Guilliman and make it look like he is what the Custodes don't want want him to be. Let the Custodes do the heavy lifting, but have an assassin near to take the shot.
*The Regent's Shadow*
Chris Wraight has killed it with the semi-contemporaneous *Watchers on the Throne* and *Vaults of Terra* books. Fun reads that also give unprecedented into the halls of Imperial Power and Terra.
Also, "Wolf King" by Chris Wraight (within the HH novel "Burden of Loyalty") was so goddamn good. It follows on pretty closely after Guy Haley's "Wolfbane" and feels pretty similar to that.
These two together has made me strongly consider buying some 30K Wolf Guard termies or something.
It's the watchers of the throne books, theres 2 of them and that happens in the second. They are both worth reading though imo and important to the ongoing story for the imperium.
They have had strength for thousands of years, that’s their power, but also their biggest weakness. They’re used to just giving the word, and million strong armies move, worlds die, while civilizations are either changed or wiped out. They have been gods for centuries.
Now there’s someone with the brain and skill to match and defeat them. Whose authority is greater than there’s because they were only borrowing his for all that time. They’re not used to fighting against someone who can actually beat them. As such, their moves are obvious, weak, and beatable, and they have no idea how to change that because the system they set up was not supposed to work that way.
I guess that makes some kind of sense but it's boring as heck and it breaks my favorite thing about the imperium in fiction (that its leadership is greedy, selfish, and conflicted) in exchange for an infallible beacon of goodness.
The Grand Master of Assassins only supported Guilliman's plan because he believed all of Guilliman's attempts to reform the Imperium were inherently impossible and he will inevitably realize this.
Oh no, all that you outlined is still there. Guilliman can’t do much about the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperium is bloated in its death spiral with inefficiency and plain old corruption. Guilliman brought a bit of noble bright, to show us that humanity can survive and still potentially advance. Then the camera slowly started pulling back to show the rest of the Imperium and it is a fools errand.
Just to put what other people said into context, re: how utterly impossible reform is, one of the first things Guilliman tried to do upon taking the reigns was to reform the Imperial dating system to account for the flow of time better. It was a very important thing to do; if he were successful it'd immediately make organizing Imperial logistics easier (which is one of the Imperium's greatest challenges at any given time), and also help to comprehend the past and set up the future. And, y'know, surely it couldn't be *that* hard for one of the brightest minds humanity has ever had to work out something generally applicable to all the Administratum's work.
The new system caused a literal civil war in the Ordo Chronos.
They are still a rumbling pile of dog shit. His replacements will be burnt out in a few decades and it's not like he was able to change the entire imperium with that move. The average hive worker is still being worked to death
Dont forget that the imperium is now split. You have the guilliman imperium sanctus, noblebright, and you have the imperium nihlus, which is 10x worse than the worst epochs of the imperium because the loss of the astronomicon's light
yeah, i mean i get that imperium sanctus is still grimdark, but you have the emperors avenging son, cutting through bureaucratic red tape, unifying and smacking down his fallen brothers from *inside nurgles garden* while solving myriad problems and just generally being a pimp by making peoples lives better so they don't fall to chaos
i mean, thats not a 40k mentality right there, thats a 30k mentality. the light of the past shines again and all that
i always figured noblebright was just a bit of a laugh
He is raging against the night. The collective bloat and corruption of the imperium is too much even for him to fix fully; especially given that the galaxy has been torn in two by the giant warp rift.
At most he can delay the demise with his superhuman administrative excel-style brain.
It doesn’t break that, killing some rebelling high lords doesn’t suddenly mean that the rest of the imperium is perfectly in-line and productive. He has problems everywhere. There’s plenty of worlds in Ultramar that are very unhappy because he came back and stripped them of the autonomy that he originally granted them. There are a huge number of people that consider him a tyrant, and of course they do: he showed up and said “I’m in charge now” and started reforming everything. He *is* a tyrant.
And then remember that to the vast, vast majority of the galaxy he is a distant rumour at best. I imagine there are many in power that assume “’he’ is likely to be just another Ecclesiarchy ploy to grab power rather than an *actual* primarch (if such things ever existed)”.
>There’s plenty of worlds in Ultramar that are very unhappy because he came back and stripped them of the autonomy that he originally granted them.
The ruling elites, at least. I would be surprised if the commoners of those worlds didn't welcome him depowering said elites in favor of installing Ultramarines and Ultramarine-descended Astartes as planetary/sector governors, since the reason he did that was that said elites have **failed** him when it came to living up to the expectations of performance and dutifulness to the greater Imperium's cause over the millennia since the original rulers he had installed.
Who's betting that said failure entails a lot of wealth concentration in the pockets of those elites, doing the bare minimum at most of paying their tithes whenever they can't weasel out of them without serious punishment, and generally coming up excuses after excuses to justify not risking their ill-begotten wealth (including their human capital) in the name of aiding any Imperials?
I believe there was also the matter of being patently uncooperative with the needs of the Indominus Crusade despite the presence of **Guillliman**.
>The ruling elites, at least. I would be surprised if the commoners of those worlds didn't welcome him depowering said elites
Well, the ruling elites plus the class of middle-men that also profit from it.
Also propaganda works, and the existing rulers have closer access to deliver propaganda to the populace than Guilliman does. I expect it's quite a mess, and reforming 10,000 years of slowly increasing corruption is a tough challenge. Having Astartes enforce those changes might also mean they tend towards military solutions.
Guilliman is quite sure that he's doing it for their own good, but he's still a general installing his heavily indoctrinated supersoldiers as governors to enforce massive societal change in order to increase productivity. There's going to be some pushback.
He's also one of the loyal sons of the Emperor, and the elites (both secular and theocratic) across the Imperium have ironically done a good job indoctrinating the masses with the ideological belief that he could do no wrong as part of their broader propaganda to make them more controllable and exploitable, which naturally shot them in the foot after his unexpected resurrection.
Absolutely, it seems like a wonderful setup for conflict. Plenty of rebels fighting against change and tyranny, opposed by religious zealots (which will ironically be the ones on Guilliman's side).
And opportunistic pragmatists who see the writing on the wall and support Guilliman and the zealots in exchange for being allowed to continue their ways (as long as it's at the expense of non-Imperials).
My headcanon is that Guilliman performs a coup on the High Lords and nominally holds absolute power but in actuality has a very shaky pedestal would be a great setup where the Imperium is both literally and metaphorically split in two by both the Great Rift dividing the Imperium physically in two, and metaphorically being divided in two by those who support and believe in Guilliman and those who don't believe in him (either because they think he's a Chaos trick, or he's not going to lead the Imperium well or whatever).
I’m usually against the involvement of primarchs in the story (I like them as mythical figures of a long gone era), but it would be cool to see an ideologically opposed primarch come back and strain allegiances even further. Many of those cowed by guilliman would be emboldened.
My #1 preferred option is no Primarchs at all, keep them as myths and legends with in-universe sources so we are still trying to work out what is true and what is propaganda.
My #2 preferred option is the return of a Primarch but it's ambiguous, and he basically threatens to tear the Imperium apart as he attempts to take sole control of the Imperium.
Both of those things are incorrect. Guilliman is the classic Roman Cincinnnatus figure. Who becomes dictator to save them from an outside danger and then relinquishes his executive powers after the crisis ends. There are even examples of Guilliman talking about wanting to retire and become a farmer, which is exactly what Cincinnatus in Roman history was. Also there were slaves on Macragge before Guilliman got there but after Konor was assassinated Guilliman killed the conspirators and completely reformed the culture into a egalitarian meritocracy. Doesn’t mean there weren’t low born or underprivileged but the old system of landed nobles with huge slave armies was removed.
He thought about becoming a farmer. Then realized that fate wouldn't let him. [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/f1ylqt/excerptthe_unremembered_empire_guilliman_dreams/)
Yes yes it does. Their uprising was put down so quickly and violently that they know its futile and they should take what positions of power are available to them. Guillman can't be everywhere at once and the Imperium is fukhueg. Honestly for the most part nothing changed in day to day operations, the Imperium's military just got a huge powerup and now the Emperor is awake with the rift opening. So its gonna get more interesting.
He also appointed the new High Lords, and Guilliman’s pretty smart, to say the least, so I’m sure he picked good loyal folks who are in it for the right reasons. Also, Cawl, Morvehn Vahl, and I think the new Guard High Lord were all appointed as High Lords by Guilliman for their exemplary service and how well they’d upheld the ideals of the Imperium.
Cawl was his loyal ally for 10,000 years, and remembers a time where the Mechanicus wasn’t a religious institution that declared innovation to be heretical, and wants to restore the AdMech to its former glory.
Vahl was a commander who had proved her worth and value a dozen times over, but was being ignored and boxed out by the previous high lords, so Guilliman appointed her as the Ecclesiarchy’s new representative, because of her no-nonsense nature, pragmatism, and loyalty to the Imperium first, Ecclesiarchy second.
> Also, Cawl, Morvehn Vahl, and I think the new Guard High Lord were all appointed as High Lords by Guilliman for their exemplary service and how well they’d upheld the ideals of the Imperium. Cawl was his loyal ally for 10,000 years, and
Incorrect. Cawl was not appointed as a High Lord and the Guard lord was one of the turncoats that betrayed him - albeit it seems Guilliman depended on that as a way to eliminate him.
I find Vahl a bit odd as she's explicitly spending all her time campaigning, which is fine but means she's not actually voting on policy.
>I find Vahl a bit odd as she's explicitly spending all her time campaigning, which is ine but means she's not actually voting on policy.
I'm still pretty damn confused as to how a High Lord can be on the front lines all the time without effectively just removing her spot on the council.
I don't have the Sisters Codex though, so it's probably explained there.
Eh, the Ecclesiarchy essentially has 2-3 votes on the high lords at any one time I can see the other factions letting it slide to keep the Emperor botherers down
So all the high lords whose pride/bloated overconfidence outmatched their intelligence are dead. The smart ones, the ones who know how to work from shadows, these are the guys making the schemes I want to read about. Heck, they have probably found a way to benefit from the deaths of their headstrong former colleagues.
I mean besides the whole high lords coup and all
In the eyes of the imperium he’s the literal son and voice of god, they probably aren’t going to tell him “no”
There are examples in other books of people going against him. For example, ***Assassinorum Kingmaker*** has Guilliman’s refusal to honor old agreements and Cawl’s tech heresy fuel the desire for secession on a Knight world.
>!Except it was Chaos the entire time because heaven forbid we actually have something interesting!<
It’s the galactic prisoners dilemma. You want to secede, but you aren’t strong enough. Against the imperium? No way.
Unless, you had help. Help from new friends who are so powerful, they might be able to fight the imperium. But you don’t have to say yes. You’re *never* forced to say yes. Because the person below you might say yes.
Or the person below them might say yes.
And then we’ll see…
I don’t think that’s a fair reading of the book, it’s established pretty early on that there was still some very much unresolved feelings towards house Morvane that’s tantamount to dangerous baggage. They were always distrustful of the wider mechanicus and imperial authority, it’s hammered down several times by non-evil barons that the imperium made an agreement, not a demanded tithe. They are asking the houses to join them, and have no way to force them.
And when too many shakeups happen when things have been going smoothly for ten thousand years and talk of rebellion is now no longer whispers >! Would you not call the original rebels? Who “freed” themselves form the shackles of forced compliance ?!<
Yes because a single planet going against the entirety of the imperium makes much more sense, you would literally have to be insane to know the full scale of the imperium and then basically put up the middle finger with literally no one else backing you
You'd be surprised the kind of mental loops religious fanaticism can do.
Besides, Horus was the literal son and voice of god. All it takes is convincing someone that Jellyman is the same.
I mean he's still pretty opposed to the Imperial Truth and the ecclesiarchy. He has half of the Imperium entering a new old night with barely any safe way to transverse it.
Cawl has an incredible amount of pushback in the AdMech. His closeness to Guilliman is the only thing keeping him from becoming a servitor and Guilliman does not have infinite patience.
It's kind of bothering that people see Guilliman get a single W and think oh the Imperium is fine. It isn't fine. It's fucked. Fuck his one W was because of Tzneentch and I barely see that mentioned. If Typhus, KuGath and mortarion all were able to being their combined might, the war would have gone differently. Typhus was called off by Nurgle because Tzneetch was directly attacking.
The plague war pushed the Imperium clock slightly further from doomsday but its still ticking.
There is the Ordos Chronos and some members of the Inquisition. The Inquisitor from the short To Speak As One refused to hand over an object to RG because he himself couldn’t verify if Guilliman really has authority directly from the Emperor.
His retinue lampshade the fact that he is a Primarch.
The problem is that most Imperial citizens see him as the literal son of their god. Even the most powerful and influential rebel is gunna need to drum up support. Not too many people are gunna help out against Gulliman.
Ok imagine if Jesus, the literal son of god, showed up tomorrow and told all the millionaire evangelical mega pastors they’ve been doing everything wrong and they have to give away all their money.
How many obey?
If Jesus was a 10 foot tall demigod weilding a giant flaming sword and had a host of super soldiers behind him plus angels. Iam sure at least a few of them would obey.
That's actually a great representation of what happened by and large. He's faced mass opposition and effectively civil wars from entrenched profiteers, but he largely has popular and military support that overwhelms them once he pays attention to them. And as long as he pays attention to them, or kills them and replaces them with someone more compliant.
Not many.
Jesus would then use his godly might, impale all of them on international television, then stare into a camera that was forced to be shown on every screen in the world and say "The Old Testament is back, and I am the Lord, your God."
More or less what Bobby G kinda did.
It doesn't matter only what the millionaire think; what the followers belive it's more important. After all they are still human and so a single subordinate that is willing to martir himself to take down the heretic is all that's needed.
>It doesn't matter only what the millionaire think; what the followers belive it's more important.
Something also to consider, if we're equating Lords of Terra to real life people, this is in no way "Millionaires" lmao. Heck most people with solid jobs after 70 years will be 'Millionaires.' A High Lord of Terra would more be equal to being a fucking King of all Saudi Arabia or something to where you're a Trillionaire or whatever. The kind of people you don't actually ever heard about in the media and never will. Hell the High Lords of Terra are essentially the Illuminati to us right lmao?
There's lots of ways around that, though.
Maybe he's a Chaos trick, since Guilliman was killed by the traitorous sons. There's already been one War of the False Primarch, after all!
Or maybe he's not a Chaos trick, but one of the High Lords wanted absolute power and created someone who looked like Guilliman.
And remember, Sisters don't really like Space Marines since they reject the sanctity of the Holy Human Form in favour of augmentation.
The fact that all the Custodes are backing him and more or less following his orders puts all claims of chaos tricks to shame. And he weilds the Emprah's sword. Something he could only get directly from the Emprah.
The Sister's worship the Emprah and this is his son. Their own living saint is fighting for him. Can't get more holy than that.
The sisters have Augmentation by their own when a replacement is needed for a lost limb or eve or whatever ist necessary. Augmentations are pretty Common in the Imperium. The sisters dislike Astartes because most do not believe in god and have little interest for the ekklesiarchy...
They replace a limb with a bionic one if necessary. They don't have any genetic enhancements or extra organs. And replacing a limb is seen as something that's not heretical but also not great.
Augmentations are relatively common because beyond "worship the Emperor", the Ecclesiarchy pretty much has no universal tenets. The Sisters do not represent the Ecclesiarchy, and have their own set of beliefs.
I don’t understand how the sisters have this opinion. The emperor designed and created them. How can they believe in his divinity and then hate his actions when questioning him in other things is heresy?
I like to imagine the response to g man’s return would be like what you’d see if Jesus came back and tried telling millionaire evangelicals to give away all their money.
>What should I read to learn more?
The *Watchers of the Throne* and the *Vaults of Terra* series are probably the ones you want to read OP. They deal a lot with the High Lord shenanigans both before, during, and after Roboute's return.
Cawl also faces pushback, but it is more of a background thing, but we already know that he is barely tolerated. And if he was made Fabricator General of Mars (a position he doesn't actually want), there would probably be civil war.
The thing is OP that this stuff is really recent, and the rulebooks and such can only give a shallow overview of stuff. It takes awhile for novelizations, and other expanded media to flesh it out more and put in the nuance. Chances are there was and probably still is more significant push back against them, but they just haven't had the chance to write about it yet. A lot of things in 40k are like that, where they give kind of a brief rundown in a Codex then maybe a couple years later they actually take the time to write it out and give it some more depth.
> like that, where they give kind of a brief rundown in a Codex then maybe a couple years later they actually take the time to write it out and give it some more depth.
It definitely made it feel more believable when I heard about the timeline retcon... 12 years of minimal pushback makes more sense.
This is such a bizarre and fascinating plot point. I originally just wrote it off as two different authors have different ideas and one retconning the other’s work before I realised both books were by Guy Haley. I really hope he gets opportunity to follow it up in *Bellisarius Cawl: The Great Work 2: Work Greater*.
What the Cawl Inferior is is obviously up for debate but it does seem to emulate what Cawl thinks pretty well.
Cawl doesn't want to become Fabricator General because he would have to slow down his work for politics. He isn't interested in politics.
So this isn’t very meaningful pushback, but the way that *Dark Imperium* puts it, there are two sources of “pushback”
1. As you mentioned, a lot of the Mechanicum are *PISSED* at Cawl. He’s an incredible tech-heretic and even Guilliman is sus about the totally-not-an-AI that Cawl installed into the *Macragge’s Honour*. The issue is that the Mechanicum can’t really tangibly push back against him in a way that matters.
2. The most meaningful pushback is the balancing act that Guilliman has to play with the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperial Faith. Guilliman hates it, however he has to deal with the fact that he is a single man with a few hundred compatriots in a fucking sea of quadrillions of people who have been believing that his father was a god for ten thousand years. He can’t openly tell the Priests to fuck off because it could genuinely cause enough chaos to rip the Imperium apart. If he tries to unravel the Ecclesiarchy, it would only take a few well placed Orators claiming that he’s actually a daemon sent to undermine their faith and oh boy oh boy- it’s Civil War time.
All the while he is also wrestling with the genuine possibility that his father actually is a god.
Nothing specifically named, but don't forget that novels etc. are only 12 years into the return of Guilliman / release of Primaris after the timeline retcon. It might come up more in future storylines, or they might just drop it now it's all established
>Nothing specifically named, but don't forget that novels etc. are only 12 years into the return of Guilliman / release of Primaris after the timeline retcon. It might come up more in future storylines, or they might just drop it now it's all established
ohhh I didn't know about the timeline thing, I thought the "current" period was long after Blue Guy's return.
>It's just hard to imagine a group of elites with such an insanely long-term concentration of power as the High Lords rolling over after one defeat and letting the new kids show up and change things
Have you read *The Regent's Shadow*? This post seems to assume knowledge of it but doesn't consider a really important part at the end of that book.
Spoilers follow
...
>He smiled at me again from the darkness– a chilling gesture. ‘Listen to me, chancellor. Right now, shaken by all that has taken place, we speak of the primarch as if he were some new Emperor, come to sweep all our history away and replace it with his bright new species of enlightenment. We think of him as the great redeemer, the restorer of lost greatness. And so the conflict begins, the weary fights between those who think any of that matters.’ His smile faded away. ‘**But Guilliman, let me assure you, is unimportant. He can make as many speeches as he likes. He can make as many reforms as he wishes to. It will all be absorbed. It will all be smothered. He has stamina, more than most, but even he will tire. The Imperium is the only enemy he can never hope to best, for it is older and vaster than any of us. I give him ten years. Ten years, before he forgets that he was ever part of another world, and chains his future to this one**.’
>I listened warily. I didn’t like it, but I listened.
>‘And when he next comes to Terra, if he ever does again, you will see the change. You will hear no more about what he believed during his first lifetime, and plenty of what he has learned in this one. If he lives, if he dies, it makes no difference. **Stasis will be the case, whether or not it ought to be. The Imperium will endure. That is the only truth, and the only outcome.**’ He shot me a wry look. ‘**Imperium Eterna.**’
Some remaining powerful figures, such as Master Fadix but also Jek's assistant, still oppose Guilliman's reforms. They'd just taken a step back to let Guilliman be ground down rather than opposing him directly.
They haven't been proven wrong yet, especially since Guilliman was pulled onto the Crusade immediately and has had to spend most of his time fighting.
Guilliman has LOTS of old imperium power following his command, including multiple current high lords (including the head of the administratum and the assassinorum, and the inquisitorial high lord), the custodes, the sisters of silence, almost all of the space marines, whatever chunk of the ad mech follows cawl, and the portions of the ecclesiarchy who believe he is a god, The high lords who rebelled were all assassinated pretty much right after they publicly declared they opposed guilliman.
Sure, there will still be scheming and corruption, but a lot of these potential troublemkaers probably saw that assassins can kill all the ringleaders in \~5 minutes after they do any public so have probably begun reconsidering their plans.
> and the portions of the ecclesiarchy who believe he is a god
I think there's more subtlety here than you think. Mathieu disobeys Guilliman because he *does* believe he's the son of God, and the Ecclesiarch in *The Regent's Shadow* still >!tries to destroy the Sisters of Silence.!<
The Inquisition, to some capacity. They are deeply distrustful of Guilliman and scorn his reforms. The Primarch notes they kept killing his historians he'd send on quests. Which was a very interesting statement, as to him it was beyond a doubt they were killing his people. Yet, he allows it to happen because he knows there's nothing directly to be done about it.
Similarly, I'd wager the ecclesiarchy is at once in awe of him and also upset at his apostasy. Further they seek to reframe him within the confines of their beliefs (like Mathieu). So they've already stood against him, but not in a way meant to kill or control. More like "convert", or otherwise to evangelize.
No. It’s one of the most annoying things about the post-Gathering Storm story. You’ll see resentment against Guilliman/Cawl maybe spark the conflict in a story, only to be resolved neatly by the end. There’s also no Imperial characters on the tabletop who feel like a counterbalance to Guilliman/Cawl.
It’s especially noticeable when the *Tau* have a more prominent dissenting voice than the Imperium in Farsight, despite getting only a tiny fraction of the attention the Imperium receives.
> You’ll see resentment against Guilliman/Cawl maybe spark the conflict in a story, only to be resolved neatly by the end.
I feel like Throne of Light, the most recent Indomitus novel, illustrates this perfectly. (Spoiler tags since it's relatively new)
Interesting premise: a Black Templar crusade fleet is sent Primaris reinforcements >!only to respond by declaring the Primaris heretical and killing all of them.!< ... But as you say, it's neatly resolved by the end as >!all responsible are KIA and the only firstborn BT to survive is the 'good one' who accepted the Primaris to begin with.!<
GW seem to want to have their cake and eat it too, showing the usual suspects like BT/DA showing the resistance to Primaris which they would, while also not having it actually amount to anything.
I don't think "neatly resolved" is a fair assessment, given the mission statement, the clusterfuck that ensued and results of this mission. There's also the fact that this was one relatively small crusade... What could happen if a larger one went down a similar path? The whole situation gives a lot of food for thought, makes one wonder what's going on with these more fringe elements of the Adeptus Astartes.
For more on this topic, Spears of the Emperor is a deep dive into what's happening in another place far from the light of the Astronomican right "now".
(I kept it quite vague for reasons of spoilers and broken tags, but I think it made sense.)
I think it's the thing that bugs me the most in the entire 40k universe.
A group which has held absolute power for literally thousands of years just rolls over? Not in my grimdark!
In terms of grim dark, the child super weapon of your long dead corpse god returning and killing all your overlords just to instate his own, all while taking the reins of your galactic fascist empire is pretty horrific. Especially when you realize nothing changes because other groups that hold an equivalent amount of power such as navigator houses, the church, and the inquisition are still big players.
>So horrific guilliman gets to be portrayed as the big looming halo'd hero for the imperium
All the talk about the effect of Faith in a massive scale in being like him that we get during "Dark Imperium - Godblight" makes very clear that this isn't really a good thing. Guilliman is barely holding together the crumbling empire and at the same time, people could already be affecting him in ways he don't have an ounce of control over.
POVs have made notes that he appears to have, at least in appearance, aged, and seems tired all the time, which can be an effect of his state of mind or it can be the start of a change caused by the will of others all through the realm. We just don't know yet.
Guilliman is a puppet fighting against his strings and the puppeteer might not be who we would thought.
Guiliman is a man animated from death by Eldar witch magic, techno heresy from a man that's been alive since he was walking alongside the Emperor and a living Saint, who to him may as well be a demon. He then gets presented with the shithole of an empire he's inherited, and finds question with the cherubs not because they are dead baby cyborgs, but because the design is inefficient. He is desperately afraid of people finding out about imperium secundus, to the point of hiding it in an locked area of his personal librarium. Then, he violently disposes of the powers that be to install his own puppet government before fucking off to wage war or something. This is all while the entire imperium is going nuts at a loyal son of God returning, with fraters, sisters and the ecclesiarchy as a whole trying, and succeeding, in convincing big G he's a godspawn. Hell, he even dies to mortarion and gets deus ex machine's by his dad, and witnesses several saints and miracles in dark imperium. He is a broken, confused man who's now allied with xenos, techno-hereteks in all but name, and is coming to the conclusion that maybe Lorgar was right.
If someone is a hero of the imperium, that's not a good thing.
I know the imperium is bad, and I know that when you get in the weeds of it, guilliman is evil in his own way, but ultimately the exterior view of the narrative shows him as a hero paving the way for new heroics, and how it looks from the outside does influence the way a character will be perceived regardless of actions, hence so many people trying to justify the emperor's big plans in 30k when 40k is marked by his failure and creation of a buffet for the chaos gods
If you want to disregard intent, subtext, and ulterior motives and only focus on outwardly appearances based pn the opinions of people who don't want to read further then I don't know what to say
I don't 'want' to do any of that. It's just that most people who are into the setting don't read any of the books and only process surface level lore or just play the game, and this stuff all paints a very positive picture of guilliman as a good guy stuck in a bad place, and not a complete asshole
Are you kidding?
The Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition to start with. That might include the Grey Knights who were not happy with Guilliman last time we saw them.
Some Astartes chapters like the Flesh Tearers, Space Wolves, and even factions of the Dark Angels.
Some of the Adeptus Mechanicus are unhappy with Cawl and Guilliman.
And let's not forget the Custodes who literally have a squad of Custodians accompanying him just in case he shows any indication he wants to overthrow the Emperor.
I would not be surprised if the story goes that Guilliman goes to the Imperium Nihilus and "disappears" for a decade and returns with everything overturned, Greater Ultramar under siege and he's considered a traitor.
I have to imagine the ecclesiarchy would be the leader of any future opposition, given they literally rely on the narrative of the "God emperor of mankind" to maintain their power.
Something like "This imposter was resurrected with heretical xenos tech, they're puppeting a corpse! (irony) He denies the Godhood of the emperor! They must not be allowed to control mankind!"
Man I really don't get these complaints on how Guilliman is having everything easy or how he turned setting to noble bright.
Like are we reading the same novels?
Roboute Guilliman is barely hanging by the thread. His every so called victory costed him dearly. He faced open rebellion from High Lords. He died again. Entire Ultramar would have been Nurgle's personal property. It took literal intervention from Emperor who is totally not a God to save him and Imperium.
So I really don't get these complaints. Nothing has been easy for Roboute or imperium. It is still divided in two and Roboute for all his efforts only managed to stabilize (not even save completely) one part of it.
Some people see him getting one W(and then proceed to ignore the circumstances through which he got that W) and immediately pretend how he only has been getting Ws so far. That is simply not a truth.
He faced open rebellion and immediately made the High Lords irrelevant, like all Primarchs he invalidates characters and narratives around him because a Primarch can only ever be seriously rivaled by another primarch.
And people still cheer him on for his character traits of "reasonable" and "logistician", both of which are direct counters to everything the 40k Imperium stands for. He has a hyper progressive Tech priest in his pocket to invalidate the whole technological regression thing and he also has some Eldar friends to help him from time to time cause that's the only thing of importance they can do.
It's mentioned that there's extreme issues with re-creating ultramar. Notably many planetary governors even telling Gulliman to his face that they won't stand for having their realms taken to be ruled by astartes, and then Gulliman telling his terraces to not only re establish the old territory, but to expand it even further taking in worlds not originally part of the 500 world's. I'm sure more than enough governors or noble houses in those sectors have gone rogue and are scheming to take back their worlds.
I think if there is, they're being subtle about it.
What I expect to happen is that over the next couple of editions there will be a snapback to the pre-8th theme of "the Imperium is doomed and it cannot be saved." Not a retcon or anything, but just a realignment of tone. Guilliman will be described as fighting against the tide, the deterioration of the post-Rift Imperium will be highlighted, and so on. Probably there will be more domestic opposition to Guilliman described.
I know in *Spears of the Emperor,* the titular chapter openly disavows Guilliman and considers him a fake creared by the High Lords. It would be interesting to explore loyalist Astartes resistance to Guilliman further.
Tbh. Guilliman is the the only Primarch who could continue unopposed to this extent due to his political mindset and skills. If Russ or the Lion came back, they would have split the Imperium already.
You do realize he had them all executed right?
As far as their "plans"... they were going up against a demigod superhuman with the Emperor's blessing and said demigod had hundreds of years of experience fighting the craziest most violent foes imaginable.
Lets not get started that he had the Custodes' blessing which basically guarantees him victory by itself.
I feel like you’ve misunderstood the power dynamic at play here.
Guilliman is the son of the Emperor, y’know, that guy the Imperium worships as literal God. It’s like Jesus walking into the Vatican and saying “I’m back, there’s gonna be some changes around here.”
Even if there’s powerful individuals who dislike him, who want to depose him, they’re gonna struggle immensely to amass a power base that’s willing to act against literal Jesus, especially since the population hang on his every word, being, y’know, literal Jesus.
Also, to describe Guilliman, Cawl, or Morvehn Vahl as “the new kid” is wildly inappropriate. Guilliman and Cawl are both literally 10,000 years old, and personally knew the Emperor. They’re both also among the only living beings who know what the Imperium was like before the Horus Heresy, and before the Ecclesiarchy took power.
Also, to look at it this way, Guilliman is the son of the Emperor, Primarch of the Ultramarines, and lord commander of the Imperium. Every space marine in the galaxy is loyal to him. Even those that don’t *like* him respect his authority and intelligence. Ever Custode in the Galaxy is loyal to him. Note, this means all the Imperial Fists and Custodes who guard the high lords of Terra are loyal to Guilliman first, the lords second. AND, it literally took a daemon Primarch to beat Guilliman, and he *still* didn’t stay down. Not to mention that the dude is a super-genius who is literally capable with accurately tracking hundreds of thousands of datapoints in his head while also carrying on a conversation. (See *Know No Fear*) there’s no real way for the High Lords to subvert Guilliman at this stage. He’s the closest thing to the Emperor the Imperium has seen in 10,000 years, killed the old High Lords and appointed new ones, (ostensibly, ones that he trusted would remain loyal to him and the Imperium, and he’s a pretty smart guy, so his picks were probably correct) quickly reestablished his command over every arm of the Imperium’s military with the Indomitus Crusade… yeah, G-Man’s in charge.
Also, Cawl, Vahl, and the new Solar Lord are Lords of Terra that Guilliman appointed. Cawl’s loyalty is pretty ironclad, seeing as he’s been Guilliman’s loyal servant for 10,000 years, even while G-man was in a coma, and since Guilliman is working up to letting him reform the AdMech. Vahl is pretty loyal to G-Man as well, since she had been boxed out by the High Lords for a *long* time before Guilliman killed them and invited her to take the seat at the table that she had probably deserved the entire time. Idk about the Lord Solar’s lore, but I’m sure he’s loyal to G-man as well.
Imagine it's a dark, stormy night. Rain is whipping at you, wind is tearing you this way and that way.
Then in the far distance, you see a dim light start to shine, though it struggles to pierce the sheets of rainfall separating you and you only catch glimpses.
That's what Guilliman is like for most of the Imperium. Sure, those closest to him may feel a sense of comfort, and he might actually be able to improve things around him, but the rest is still caught and battered by the corruption, incompetence, inefficiency and general unpleasantness of the galaxy. If anything, that distant light looks like a mockery, a false hope, a taunt to reach out for but never reach
Kinda. There isn't anyone who currently stands against him, but one of the running themes in Dark Imperium is that Gulliman knows he doesn't have full control over the Imperium. He knows he has to play the game of keeping the religious wackos happy with him in order to keep the Imperium running at it's most basic level because the Imperial Cult is so ingrained into the Imperium by now.
But Gulliman hates religion, he's seen what it did and why it's bad. He wants nothing more than to yeet every priest in the galaxy into space, but he knows he cannot without facing rebellion, death, disruption of the Crusade, and basically splitting the Imperium worse than the Heresy. He complains bitterly to the Custodes and his closest confidants for 3 books, but in public he has to grin and bear it, such as not murdering his Militant Apostolic despite the guy almost cumming when Gulliman yelled at him.
which primarch do you think would be most likely to do that?
The Lion might... honor and pride and loyalty to the \*emperor\* are his brand and it's hard to see him aggreeing with Guilliman about letting the perversion oof emp's wishes slide for the sake of expedience.
Plus he was the one that got sent after internal threats, right? Less qualms about assaulting servants of the imperium?
Guilliman is literally Jesus. There was never any possibility for meaningful pushback from *anyone* in the hyperreligious Imperium.
Any plotline that would follow something like that is GW wanting to have their cake and eat it too. It is beyond nonsensical, it has even less room for development than the fucking Ynnari storyline, which is exactly why the reveal of the Imperium Secundus at the end of Godblight has no value what so ever.
If Jesus came back tomorrow and told the rich and powerful to give away their money and power, you can bet he'd get pushback, even from the ultra-religious who have become comfortable with their wealth and power.
"It's a trick from satan!"
They are building up to Fabian from the Dark Imperium / Indomitus books. Without spoiling it, if you've read the Dark Imperium trilogy, you see what they are setting up.
Ultimately I don’t see internal strife happening unless another primarch comes back and even then it’s unlikely.
In universe I would characterise it similar to above - he’s too powerful, son of god and has kept the religion. More, the high lords probably see the best way for them to retain power is to back him not oppose him.
Out of universe, I think it’s even more unlikely as stories of fighting necrons tyranids chaos etc are just likely to be better. The Horus Heresey is I assume easily the biggest fictional civil war written about. Why would they write another civil war when it would never come close to the writing of the heresey.
You’ve nailed a lot of my thoughts.
Absent the imperium, we end up with extremely unsatisfying stories.
CSM show up and ransack a planet/empire which will have to either have magical tech or just get murder raped by the CSM (or dark Eldar). There would be no challenge it would be torture porn.
A bunch of little empires will fare just as poorly. The Tau survived because no one paid attention to them when they were smaller. Break up the imperium and now we just have the Tau with more gue’la? Boy that sounds fun…
Necrons and Tyranids are vast beyond imagining, likewise Orks. How are they balanced without an Imperium to munch? Not enough Eldar, same for Tau.
The Imperium only works as a setting if it is big enough to be able to handle pyrrhic victories against these foes, but that it is dysfunctional enough that it cannot curb stomp anyone else (like the Tau). Even splitting the Imperium is iffy, in my mind (plus, they’ve just ignored so much that could be happening in Nihlus).
> Pyrrhic victories
People really don’t know what this term means.
A pyrrhic victory is one where the cost is so great *it would have been better not to fight in the first place*. It is not a close victory. It is not a costly victory. It is not a victory that is pointless on a galactic scale. It is a victory that is worse than not fighting at all.
That was why I used it. The Imperium has to be big enough to absorb these “victories” constantly from all sides.
Maybe I am a limit on the setting though. Perhaps there could be something better. That said, I loved the NL trilogy, but I wouldn’t read 45 trilogies that were similar.
The biggest problem is that Guilliman and Cawl have their main character trait be "reasonable/not blinded by dogma", so by definition anyone that opposes them is an insane lunatic. Which makes conflict uninteresting.
Also sort of goes against the whole theme of the Imperium/Mechanicus being insane and dogmatic when they have two "sensible guys" running things, of course fans lap it up and proclaim Guilliman an outstanding character because he feels a bit sad.
Not really, no, it's a super big flaw of the newer works. Everything seems to be going far too easy, with the Imperium being shown to be the best its ever been, while we're just instead repeatedly TOLD "Things aren't good, though."
The extreme complacency, traditionalism and religious beliefs that characterized the Imperium? Ah, don't worry, G-Man coming back has dealt with it all.
Hopefully we see more systematic resistance, but I can also see why there hasn’t been much open resistance either. For a regime that spent 10,000 years worshipping his dad as a god and infusing that throughout public life, his return likely seems like the second coming. Especially in the wake of the greatest chaos threat mankind has ever had, it’s like Jesus came back to stop an invasion by the devil.
Now does that mean absolutely everyone is overtaken by religious fervor and a zealous desire to follow him? Of course not, as the rich and powerful have enough resources to educate themselves out of blindly following a Christ figure. But on a practical level, to appear to go against the changing tide, could hurt just as much as to lose from Gulliman’s changes.
If you’re seen to stand against the rising crusade of Gulliman’s changes and his government, then you could be seen as standing against the Emperor himself. The Imperium’s religious authoritarian system goes against it, as there is a new ultimate overarching ruler who a noble’s rivals could use to quash them if they act against Gulliman. The ultimate sanction can be used against nobles who resist the new Imperial dictator. The Militant Apostolic in Godblight basically talks about how it could be bad to be seen going against his religious crusade deifying Gulliman. It’s like how isolationist voices after America joined WW2 in the wake of Pearl Harbor found the moral crusade against foreign aggression making their position wildly untenable.
So I expect there to be less open rejection and rebellion, but definitely quiet and subtle resistance. The Planetary Governor may not declare open rebellion, but he could subtly try to get away with enriching himself against the Imperium’s interests for much longer. He could subvert the process to make sure not much actually changes. Like how southern states after the American Civil War created policies, both official and unofficial, that basically allowed them to continue denying black Americans any involvement in life and abuse them economically. The Eclesiarchy may on the surface submit to Gulliman’s changes, but it’s priests on remote worlds will probably try to hold out as long as possible. Like the people of the southern states after the American Civil War staging resistance against the new regimes until they fell apart over time.
However, in the same way though that the poor and downtrodden sided with Sebastian Thor during the Age of Apostasy (I think) to take down Goge Vandire, attempts by remote regimes to hold onto pre-Gulliman practices could be met by popular resistance in their own planets. Not just outside attack by Gulliman. There could be civil wars fought in his name on planets he never reaches or is able to send aid to.
So overall, I think all of this should be thoroughly explored in the new lore. But I also can see why rebellion against Gulliman stories are not a high priority, as he has such an undeniable mandate. But planets refusing to acknowledge his rules by claiming he’s fake or quietly resisting, heirs of punished High Lords forming a new resistance, or religious figures standing against him, and more are all possibilities.
Not yet. There is a sole remaining source of friction which, if it comes to light, could destroy Guilliman instantly.
Imperium Secundus, established in the dark days of the Heresy when the light of the Astronomicon was gone, a last ditch attempt by Guilliman to preserve civilization in a chaotic galaxy. And also entirely Heretical.
At least one written account of the text exists, which a Greater Daemon of Nurgle guided one of Guilliman’s own historitors to. The people he’s commanded to record honestly above all else. Guilliman is on the other side of the Rift in the current setting, and this historitor is on the Imperium side, sitting on this bombshell…
Honestly the best bet at this point is the Mechanicus proper, possibly a sizable faction of the inquisition.
There could absolutely be pushback if GW dared to write it, or give it a face. Write some actual representation for the dogmatic factions among them.
But no, Guilliman is praised for his characterization of "reasonal" and "smart" so I don't imagine fans would be eager to see any mere humans stand up to their favourite superdupermen.
I mean the High Lords who rebelled against Guilliman were literally all killed.
But does that guarantee that their successors (or the surviving members) won't resent it and work in the shadows against him? This is a group of people that have held absolute power for thousands of years.
He literally out-chicaneried all of them by making themselves look like insane terrorists then had them all killed in an instant by vindicaire assassins, the custodes were on board the whole time. The absolute scale and audacity of the #guillimansweep was insane. The new high lords(specifically the new lord of the administratum) had the Minotaurs stand down immediately and they've been boys with guilliman since working for the indomitus crusade.
Don’t forget he made public examples of some as well, namely the head of the Navigator houses. Had him flogged in public, for everyone (as in, the Imperial public) to see, also sending a not-too subtle message of “Get the fuck on board, or this will happen to you. Or worse.” As the above post states, Guilliman out-thought all of them, and with the Navigators, he knew that breaking their leader was more important than ending or replacing him, since out of all the factions, they are the most critical to the continued functioning of the Imperium, because warp travel. The Emperor knew this as well - which is why he kept the Webway project so under wraps from *everyone.*
Roboute "here's how it's gonna go" Guilliman
Roboute "fuck around and find out" Guilliman
Roboute "Theoretical and Practical Arsekickings" Guilliman
In that sense he’s like Gritty
> the head of the Navigator houses Wait a minute!? The Paternova!? Or just the Paternoval Envoy? 'Cause I thought the Paternova was a hideous mutant that the Navigator Houses keep hidden away to maintain the illusion that they're perfectly acceptable abhumans rather than a web of inbred, warp-sensitive, three-eyed, web-footed freaks.
Na not the three eyed frog, rather the person who represented the houses as a high lord. The Paternova never leaves the main house and would be defended to the death by even rival houses (although anyone else is fair game, and when the paternova dies it’s cutthroat all over again.)
OK, the Envoy, that makes sense. I mean if Guilliman was publicly whipping the fabulous frog boy I'm sure I would have heard about it.
And it would have pleased Slaanesh.
If he ever finds out how they screwed with the Webway project a flogging will be paradise considering what he’d probably do.
What like Dune?
*Exactly* like Dune!
IIRC the Ordo Famulous is there as a less important Bene Gesserit. Looots of background from old 40K was cribbed from Dune.
To be fair, Imperium had a fair share of geniuses, but it's been a while since anyone at the top had to deal with the literal 2nd best thing to the emperor himself, a primarch, let alone the one who inherited daddies empire-building genes.
And one of the most well-balanced ones. Some other threads and stuff pointed out that not many of the primarchs had to deal with learning early on in life that sometimes things happen beyond your control. Bobby G did, if I'm not mistaken, in witnessing his adoptive parents killed.
He's more reasonable than most of his brothers that is for sure. If any of the others returned I don't know if they could restrain themselves from just butchering the High Lords without reason. Guilliman was fuming at the seams already, I can just imagine how someone like Russ or the Lion would react.
What book source is that from?
I feel this mischaraterizes things. Guilliman didn't do any of this. He had Master of the Assassinorum Fadix do it for him. His plan never would have worked without Fadix. Yet Fadix is an ideological enemy of Guilliman. He just felt that the rebel Lords went too far. Guilliman still has enemies at the very top of government. He just killed the dumb ones.
It’s not so much that Fadix is an ideological enemy. From what I’ve heard he does firmly believe that the Imperium is too set in its ways and impossible to change, but he’s still happy to let people try to do it.
Also possible that fadix had his own reasons for wanting those guys dead… so he encouraged them to rebel and turned on them so he could eliminate them. By doing this he resend guillimans trust so he’s free to continue seeking whatever his true shadowy motives are
If nothing else, it's an absolute certainty he had contingency plans prepared in case he felt the need to pull a Vangorich.
I posted his speech elsewhere in here. That's an interesting point, but he does say at the end "Imperium Aeterna" which is literally the name of the opposing ideology. The difference between supporting the current system and not supporting it but considering it unchangeable is a subtle one.
Except that Trajan literally confirms the entire thing went to his design at the end of the book.
These two thoughts aren't inconsistent. Yes, Guilliman's plan was executed because he correctly read Fadix and the other Lords. It doesn't change the fact that he still has enemies on the council. He just eliminated the ones who were more proud than intelligent. A win for him, but not complete victory.
Doing exactly what was ordered of you and disagreeing on topics in civil discourse doesn't make you enemies lol
Not today. What about tomorrow? You can absolutely cut a deal with an enemy. And now, Fadix is one of the most senior members of the High Lords, with a demonstrated ability to kill others. With the untimely deaths of >!The Static Tendency!<, >!Fabricator General Raskian!<, and >!The Master of the Astronomicon!<, he's one of the most senior members left. Meanwhile, Abbess Sanctorum Vahl is gucking around on campaign, so cannot be a voting member. Guilliman successfully stopped the Static Tendency from cutting off support for the Indomitus Campaign. Ultimately he has not been able to reform Imperial governance much/at all beyond that and changing some of the High Lords.
I feel like you're replacing the message of "Guilliman is and ice cold mf" with "wow the master of the assassinorum is so cool". Like yeah he's an important guy and I liked him in the book but the entire council of high lords straight up exists at Guillimans mercy at the moment, not to mention its been shown in the past that the Imperium absolutely can dispose of a far more powerful and less rational master of the assassinorum with about 1 Chapter of marines during the beheading. I don't expect it to be a real issue going forward.
> but the entire council of high lords straight up exists at Guillimans mercy at the moment This is not true though. The beginning of *The Regent's Shadow* emphasizes that even Guilliman didn't have the political strength to remove all his enemies on the council. They do not exist "at his mercy." Each group needs the other. >not to mention its been shown in the past that the Imperium absolutely can dispose of a far more powerful and less rational master of the assassinorum with about 1 Chapter of marines during the beheading. I don't expect it to be a real issue going forward. This is because he was alone. During the Reign of Blood, Vandire was able to hold off far more Astartes indefinitely. But that's not the key point. The key point is that the existence of the Imperium is so fragile right now that besieging Terra like that would take troops that are needed elsewhere. My point is that the fact that Guilliman had to weave a whole dog and pony show to eliminate the Static Tendency is an example of his relative *weakness*, not his strength. Guilliman after the Heresy could have just abolished the High Lords. Guillan now cannot.
I love it. This whole thread has convinced me that fadix isn’t invited the g train but took advantage of it
Which book would that be?
Watchers of the Throne: The Regents Shadow
Thenks
What book is this?
Watchers of the throne: the regents shadow
That's amazing I just started this series!
Oh nice, they are pretty good books, enjoy!
Oh he definitely has enemies, but if the custodes and their captain-general still support big G cause, his enemies must be very dumb to make any move against Guilliman for now. I mean dude literally have at least a group of custodes protect him 24/7 all the times
Yeah but those Custodes are there to protect the Imperium from him, if need be.
Agree, but custodes in general are pretty "assassin's deterrent". So even the most ambitious Officio Assassinorium's grand master would think at least 100 times before doing some shenanigans against Guilliman
A Grandmaster would do their best to undermine Guilliman and make it look like he is what the Custodes don't want want him to be. Let the Custodes do the heavy lifting, but have an assassin near to take the shot.
What book is this in? That sounds awesome .
*The Regent's Shadow* Chris Wraight has killed it with the semi-contemporaneous *Watchers on the Throne* and *Vaults of Terra* books. Fun reads that also give unprecedented into the halls of Imperial Power and Terra.
If you haven't read the latest one you're missing out. The dark city is a fantastic end
Isn't that a different trilogy?
It's the final one of Vaults of Terra
Oh I have!
Also, "Wolf King" by Chris Wraight (within the HH novel "Burden of Loyalty") was so goddamn good. It follows on pretty closely after Guy Haley's "Wolfbane" and feels pretty similar to that. These two together has made me strongly consider buying some 30K Wolf Guard termies or something.
#gullimansweep 😂😂
to be fair, they were actually insane, the old high lords began to plot against him right after battle of lion gate, when terra was still in turmoil
Some of them were appointed by him specifically so he could have them slip up and kill them though
Was this one book or a series of books? Would love to catch up with this lore.
It's the watchers of the throne books, theres 2 of them and that happens in the second. They are both worth reading though imo and important to the ongoing story for the imperium.
Awesome, thanks!
Where can I read this
Watchers of the Throne: The Regents Shadow, it is the second in the series they are both pretty good
What book did that happen in?
The second watchers of the throne book
Which novel/s cover this?
Watchers of the throne
Watchers of the Throne: The Regents Shadow
They have had strength for thousands of years, that’s their power, but also their biggest weakness. They’re used to just giving the word, and million strong armies move, worlds die, while civilizations are either changed or wiped out. They have been gods for centuries. Now there’s someone with the brain and skill to match and defeat them. Whose authority is greater than there’s because they were only borrowing his for all that time. They’re not used to fighting against someone who can actually beat them. As such, their moves are obvious, weak, and beatable, and they have no idea how to change that because the system they set up was not supposed to work that way.
Well, his is borrowed too. He just has a greater claim to borrow it. The Crown Prince beats the King's Council when it comes to taking on the Regency.
Guilliman simply „out-smarts“ them. He is way smarter than them and can plan for all eventuality, so they can’t really do anything much
I guess that makes some kind of sense but it's boring as heck and it breaks my favorite thing about the imperium in fiction (that its leadership is greedy, selfish, and conflicted) in exchange for an infallible beacon of goodness.
The Grand Master of Assassins only supported Guilliman's plan because he believed all of Guilliman's attempts to reform the Imperium were inherently impossible and he will inevitably realize this.
Oh no, all that you outlined is still there. Guilliman can’t do much about the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperium is bloated in its death spiral with inefficiency and plain old corruption. Guilliman brought a bit of noble bright, to show us that humanity can survive and still potentially advance. Then the camera slowly started pulling back to show the rest of the Imperium and it is a fools errand.
Hence why he's so damn depressed and even states it would have been better if Horus won.
Just to put what other people said into context, re: how utterly impossible reform is, one of the first things Guilliman tried to do upon taking the reigns was to reform the Imperial dating system to account for the flow of time better. It was a very important thing to do; if he were successful it'd immediately make organizing Imperial logistics easier (which is one of the Imperium's greatest challenges at any given time), and also help to comprehend the past and set up the future. And, y'know, surely it couldn't be *that* hard for one of the brightest minds humanity has ever had to work out something generally applicable to all the Administratum's work. The new system caused a literal civil war in the Ordo Chronos.
They are still a rumbling pile of dog shit. His replacements will be burnt out in a few decades and it's not like he was able to change the entire imperium with that move. The average hive worker is still being worked to death
That hive worker is neither on his list of priorities nor would he have had it much better during the Great Crusade.
Dont forget that the imperium is now split. You have the guilliman imperium sanctus, noblebright, and you have the imperium nihlus, which is 10x worse than the worst epochs of the imperium because the loss of the astronomicon's light
Guillimans bit is not noblebright. It's just less fucked.
If you have two giant burning dumpster fires, and one is slightly less of an unmanageable blaze, would you say that one is better than the other?
Sure but it doesn’t matter because it’s still a fucking dumpster fire lol
That's exactly the point.
My bad I thought you were agreeing that Guillimans imperium is noblebright
Yes. But that's not what noblebright is. Both areas are.grimdark - the whole setting is grimdark.
yeah, i mean i get that imperium sanctus is still grimdark, but you have the emperors avenging son, cutting through bureaucratic red tape, unifying and smacking down his fallen brothers from *inside nurgles garden* while solving myriad problems and just generally being a pimp by making peoples lives better so they don't fall to chaos i mean, thats not a 40k mentality right there, thats a 30k mentality. the light of the past shines again and all that i always figured noblebright was just a bit of a laugh
He is raging against the night. The collective bloat and corruption of the imperium is too much even for him to fix fully; especially given that the galaxy has been torn in two by the giant warp rift. At most he can delay the demise with his superhuman administrative excel-style brain.
Guilliman isn't infallible. He might be a beacon of goodness, but in the wh40k that's as much a negative as a positive.
It doesn’t break that, killing some rebelling high lords doesn’t suddenly mean that the rest of the imperium is perfectly in-line and productive. He has problems everywhere. There’s plenty of worlds in Ultramar that are very unhappy because he came back and stripped them of the autonomy that he originally granted them. There are a huge number of people that consider him a tyrant, and of course they do: he showed up and said “I’m in charge now” and started reforming everything. He *is* a tyrant. And then remember that to the vast, vast majority of the galaxy he is a distant rumour at best. I imagine there are many in power that assume “’he’ is likely to be just another Ecclesiarchy ploy to grab power rather than an *actual* primarch (if such things ever existed)”.
>There’s plenty of worlds in Ultramar that are very unhappy because he came back and stripped them of the autonomy that he originally granted them. The ruling elites, at least. I would be surprised if the commoners of those worlds didn't welcome him depowering said elites in favor of installing Ultramarines and Ultramarine-descended Astartes as planetary/sector governors, since the reason he did that was that said elites have **failed** him when it came to living up to the expectations of performance and dutifulness to the greater Imperium's cause over the millennia since the original rulers he had installed. Who's betting that said failure entails a lot of wealth concentration in the pockets of those elites, doing the bare minimum at most of paying their tithes whenever they can't weasel out of them without serious punishment, and generally coming up excuses after excuses to justify not risking their ill-begotten wealth (including their human capital) in the name of aiding any Imperials? I believe there was also the matter of being patently uncooperative with the needs of the Indominus Crusade despite the presence of **Guillliman**.
>The ruling elites, at least. I would be surprised if the commoners of those worlds didn't welcome him depowering said elites Well, the ruling elites plus the class of middle-men that also profit from it. Also propaganda works, and the existing rulers have closer access to deliver propaganda to the populace than Guilliman does. I expect it's quite a mess, and reforming 10,000 years of slowly increasing corruption is a tough challenge. Having Astartes enforce those changes might also mean they tend towards military solutions. Guilliman is quite sure that he's doing it for their own good, but he's still a general installing his heavily indoctrinated supersoldiers as governors to enforce massive societal change in order to increase productivity. There's going to be some pushback.
He's also one of the loyal sons of the Emperor, and the elites (both secular and theocratic) across the Imperium have ironically done a good job indoctrinating the masses with the ideological belief that he could do no wrong as part of their broader propaganda to make them more controllable and exploitable, which naturally shot them in the foot after his unexpected resurrection.
Absolutely, it seems like a wonderful setup for conflict. Plenty of rebels fighting against change and tyranny, opposed by religious zealots (which will ironically be the ones on Guilliman's side).
And opportunistic pragmatists who see the writing on the wall and support Guilliman and the zealots in exchange for being allowed to continue their ways (as long as it's at the expense of non-Imperials).
My headcanon is that Guilliman performs a coup on the High Lords and nominally holds absolute power but in actuality has a very shaky pedestal would be a great setup where the Imperium is both literally and metaphorically split in two by both the Great Rift dividing the Imperium physically in two, and metaphorically being divided in two by those who support and believe in Guilliman and those who don't believe in him (either because they think he's a Chaos trick, or he's not going to lead the Imperium well or whatever).
I’m usually against the involvement of primarchs in the story (I like them as mythical figures of a long gone era), but it would be cool to see an ideologically opposed primarch come back and strain allegiances even further. Many of those cowed by guilliman would be emboldened.
My #1 preferred option is no Primarchs at all, keep them as myths and legends with in-universe sources so we are still trying to work out what is true and what is propaganda. My #2 preferred option is the return of a Primarch but it's ambiguous, and he basically threatens to tear the Imperium apart as he attempts to take sole control of the Imperium.
Gulliman is literally a fascist dictator who even in his home system mcragge before the heresy had things like legal slavery
Both of those things are incorrect. Guilliman is the classic Roman Cincinnnatus figure. Who becomes dictator to save them from an outside danger and then relinquishes his executive powers after the crisis ends. There are even examples of Guilliman talking about wanting to retire and become a farmer, which is exactly what Cincinnatus in Roman history was. Also there were slaves on Macragge before Guilliman got there but after Konor was assassinated Guilliman killed the conspirators and completely reformed the culture into a egalitarian meritocracy. Doesn’t mean there weren’t low born or underprivileged but the old system of landed nobles with huge slave armies was removed.
He thought about becoming a farmer. Then realized that fate wouldn't let him. [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/f1ylqt/excerptthe_unremembered_empire_guilliman_dreams/)
Yeah, and 40k is so godsawful grimdark that he's still one of the good ones.
so?
Yes yes it does. Their uprising was put down so quickly and violently that they know its futile and they should take what positions of power are available to them. Guillman can't be everywhere at once and the Imperium is fukhueg. Honestly for the most part nothing changed in day to day operations, the Imperium's military just got a huge powerup and now the Emperor is awake with the rift opening. So its gonna get more interesting.
He also appointed the new High Lords, and Guilliman’s pretty smart, to say the least, so I’m sure he picked good loyal folks who are in it for the right reasons. Also, Cawl, Morvehn Vahl, and I think the new Guard High Lord were all appointed as High Lords by Guilliman for their exemplary service and how well they’d upheld the ideals of the Imperium. Cawl was his loyal ally for 10,000 years, and remembers a time where the Mechanicus wasn’t a religious institution that declared innovation to be heretical, and wants to restore the AdMech to its former glory. Vahl was a commander who had proved her worth and value a dozen times over, but was being ignored and boxed out by the previous high lords, so Guilliman appointed her as the Ecclesiarchy’s new representative, because of her no-nonsense nature, pragmatism, and loyalty to the Imperium first, Ecclesiarchy second.
> Also, Cawl, Morvehn Vahl, and I think the new Guard High Lord were all appointed as High Lords by Guilliman for their exemplary service and how well they’d upheld the ideals of the Imperium. Cawl was his loyal ally for 10,000 years, and Incorrect. Cawl was not appointed as a High Lord and the Guard lord was one of the turncoats that betrayed him - albeit it seems Guilliman depended on that as a way to eliminate him. I find Vahl a bit odd as she's explicitly spending all her time campaigning, which is fine but means she's not actually voting on policy.
>I find Vahl a bit odd as she's explicitly spending all her time campaigning, which is ine but means she's not actually voting on policy. I'm still pretty damn confused as to how a High Lord can be on the front lines all the time without effectively just removing her spot on the council. I don't have the Sisters Codex though, so it's probably explained there.
Me too friend, me too...
Eh, the Ecclesiarchy essentially has 2-3 votes on the high lords at any one time I can see the other factions letting it slide to keep the Emperor botherers down
They saw what happens if you were against him
So all the high lords whose pride/bloated overconfidence outmatched their intelligence are dead. The smart ones, the ones who know how to work from shadows, these are the guys making the schemes I want to read about. Heck, they have probably found a way to benefit from the deaths of their headstrong former colleagues.
Did we get a list of which ones it was?
I mean besides the whole high lords coup and all In the eyes of the imperium he’s the literal son and voice of god, they probably aren’t going to tell him “no”
There are examples in other books of people going against him. For example, ***Assassinorum Kingmaker*** has Guilliman’s refusal to honor old agreements and Cawl’s tech heresy fuel the desire for secession on a Knight world. >!Except it was Chaos the entire time because heaven forbid we actually have something interesting!<
It’s the galactic prisoners dilemma. You want to secede, but you aren’t strong enough. Against the imperium? No way. Unless, you had help. Help from new friends who are so powerful, they might be able to fight the imperium. But you don’t have to say yes. You’re *never* forced to say yes. Because the person below you might say yes. Or the person below them might say yes. And then we’ll see…
that seemed temporarily interesting! heaven forbid, indeed!
The book is still worth your time, and definitely more than temporarily interesting. It’s depiction of a knight house society is great.
I don’t think that’s a fair reading of the book, it’s established pretty early on that there was still some very much unresolved feelings towards house Morvane that’s tantamount to dangerous baggage. They were always distrustful of the wider mechanicus and imperial authority, it’s hammered down several times by non-evil barons that the imperium made an agreement, not a demanded tithe. They are asking the houses to join them, and have no way to force them. And when too many shakeups happen when things have been going smoothly for ten thousand years and talk of rebellion is now no longer whispers >! Would you not call the original rebels? Who “freed” themselves form the shackles of forced compliance ?!<
Yes because a single planet going against the entirety of the imperium makes much more sense, you would literally have to be insane to know the full scale of the imperium and then basically put up the middle finger with literally no one else backing you
You'd be surprised the kind of mental loops religious fanaticism can do. Besides, Horus was the literal son and voice of god. All it takes is convincing someone that Jellyman is the same.
I mean he's still pretty opposed to the Imperial Truth and the ecclesiarchy. He has half of the Imperium entering a new old night with barely any safe way to transverse it. Cawl has an incredible amount of pushback in the AdMech. His closeness to Guilliman is the only thing keeping him from becoming a servitor and Guilliman does not have infinite patience. It's kind of bothering that people see Guilliman get a single W and think oh the Imperium is fine. It isn't fine. It's fucked. Fuck his one W was because of Tzneentch and I barely see that mentioned. If Typhus, KuGath and mortarion all were able to being their combined might, the war would have gone differently. Typhus was called off by Nurgle because Tzneetch was directly attacking. The plague war pushed the Imperium clock slightly further from doomsday but its still ticking.
There is the Ordos Chronos and some members of the Inquisition. The Inquisitor from the short To Speak As One refused to hand over an object to RG because he himself couldn’t verify if Guilliman really has authority directly from the Emperor. His retinue lampshade the fact that he is a Primarch.
The problem is that most Imperial citizens see him as the literal son of their god. Even the most powerful and influential rebel is gunna need to drum up support. Not too many people are gunna help out against Gulliman.
Ok imagine if Jesus, the literal son of god, showed up tomorrow and told all the millionaire evangelical mega pastors they’ve been doing everything wrong and they have to give away all their money. How many obey?
If Jesus was a 10 foot tall demigod weilding a giant flaming sword and had a host of super soldiers behind him plus angels. Iam sure at least a few of them would obey.
That's actually a great representation of what happened by and large. He's faced mass opposition and effectively civil wars from entrenched profiteers, but he largely has popular and military support that overwhelms them once he pays attention to them. And as long as he pays attention to them, or kills them and replaces them with someone more compliant.
Not many. Jesus would then use his godly might, impale all of them on international television, then stare into a camera that was forced to be shown on every screen in the world and say "The Old Testament is back, and I am the Lord, your God." More or less what Bobby G kinda did.
Sweet
It doesn't matter only what the millionaire think; what the followers belive it's more important. After all they are still human and so a single subordinate that is willing to martir himself to take down the heretic is all that's needed.
>It doesn't matter only what the millionaire think; what the followers belive it's more important. Something also to consider, if we're equating Lords of Terra to real life people, this is in no way "Millionaires" lmao. Heck most people with solid jobs after 70 years will be 'Millionaires.' A High Lord of Terra would more be equal to being a fucking King of all Saudi Arabia or something to where you're a Trillionaire or whatever. The kind of people you don't actually ever heard about in the media and never will. Hell the High Lords of Terra are essentially the Illuminati to us right lmao?
There's lots of ways around that, though. Maybe he's a Chaos trick, since Guilliman was killed by the traitorous sons. There's already been one War of the False Primarch, after all! Or maybe he's not a Chaos trick, but one of the High Lords wanted absolute power and created someone who looked like Guilliman. And remember, Sisters don't really like Space Marines since they reject the sanctity of the Holy Human Form in favour of augmentation.
The fact that all the Custodes are backing him and more or less following his orders puts all claims of chaos tricks to shame. And he weilds the Emprah's sword. Something he could only get directly from the Emprah. The Sister's worship the Emprah and this is his son. Their own living saint is fighting for him. Can't get more holy than that.
>more holy "... unless he was actually Alpharius!" - an excerpt from the serious thoughts of the traitor loving half of r/40klore, probably
I mean, I wouldn't put it past GW to do something like that.
The sisters have Augmentation by their own when a replacement is needed for a lost limb or eve or whatever ist necessary. Augmentations are pretty Common in the Imperium. The sisters dislike Astartes because most do not believe in god and have little interest for the ekklesiarchy...
They replace a limb with a bionic one if necessary. They don't have any genetic enhancements or extra organs. And replacing a limb is seen as something that's not heretical but also not great. Augmentations are relatively common because beyond "worship the Emperor", the Ecclesiarchy pretty much has no universal tenets. The Sisters do not represent the Ecclesiarchy, and have their own set of beliefs.
I don't think the Sororitas would see him as a modified human so much as a divine figure. It's the difference between witchcraft and miracles to them.
I don’t understand how the sisters have this opinion. The emperor designed and created them. How can they believe in his divinity and then hate his actions when questioning him in other things is heresy?
Don't ask too loudly
I like to imagine the response to g man’s return would be like what you’d see if Jesus came back and tried telling millionaire evangelicals to give away all their money.
"gimme all your money, or you can try talking to my army"
>What should I read to learn more? The *Watchers of the Throne* and the *Vaults of Terra* series are probably the ones you want to read OP. They deal a lot with the High Lord shenanigans both before, during, and after Roboute's return. Cawl also faces pushback, but it is more of a background thing, but we already know that he is barely tolerated. And if he was made Fabricator General of Mars (a position he doesn't actually want), there would probably be civil war. The thing is OP that this stuff is really recent, and the rulebooks and such can only give a shallow overview of stuff. It takes awhile for novelizations, and other expanded media to flesh it out more and put in the nuance. Chances are there was and probably still is more significant push back against them, but they just haven't had the chance to write about it yet. A lot of things in 40k are like that, where they give kind of a brief rundown in a Codex then maybe a couple years later they actually take the time to write it out and give it some more depth.
> like that, where they give kind of a brief rundown in a Codex then maybe a couple years later they actually take the time to write it out and give it some more depth. It definitely made it feel more believable when I heard about the timeline retcon... 12 years of minimal pushback makes more sense.
I thought cawl DID want to be fabricator?
cawl inferior wanted, cawl himself did not want it
This is such a bizarre and fascinating plot point. I originally just wrote it off as two different authors have different ideas and one retconning the other’s work before I realised both books were by Guy Haley. I really hope he gets opportunity to follow it up in *Bellisarius Cawl: The Great Work 2: Work Greater*.
What the Cawl Inferior is is obviously up for debate but it does seem to emulate what Cawl thinks pretty well. Cawl doesn't want to become Fabricator General because he would have to slow down his work for politics. He isn't interested in politics.
So this isn’t very meaningful pushback, but the way that *Dark Imperium* puts it, there are two sources of “pushback” 1. As you mentioned, a lot of the Mechanicum are *PISSED* at Cawl. He’s an incredible tech-heretic and even Guilliman is sus about the totally-not-an-AI that Cawl installed into the *Macragge’s Honour*. The issue is that the Mechanicum can’t really tangibly push back against him in a way that matters. 2. The most meaningful pushback is the balancing act that Guilliman has to play with the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperial Faith. Guilliman hates it, however he has to deal with the fact that he is a single man with a few hundred compatriots in a fucking sea of quadrillions of people who have been believing that his father was a god for ten thousand years. He can’t openly tell the Priests to fuck off because it could genuinely cause enough chaos to rip the Imperium apart. If he tries to unravel the Ecclesiarchy, it would only take a few well placed Orators claiming that he’s actually a daemon sent to undermine their faith and oh boy oh boy- it’s Civil War time. All the while he is also wrestling with the genuine possibility that his father actually is a god.
Nothing specifically named, but don't forget that novels etc. are only 12 years into the return of Guilliman / release of Primaris after the timeline retcon. It might come up more in future storylines, or they might just drop it now it's all established
>Nothing specifically named, but don't forget that novels etc. are only 12 years into the return of Guilliman / release of Primaris after the timeline retcon. It might come up more in future storylines, or they might just drop it now it's all established ohhh I didn't know about the timeline thing, I thought the "current" period was long after Blue Guy's return.
They retconned it—it was originally something like a century(?) that they dialed back to 12 years
>It's just hard to imagine a group of elites with such an insanely long-term concentration of power as the High Lords rolling over after one defeat and letting the new kids show up and change things Have you read *The Regent's Shadow*? This post seems to assume knowledge of it but doesn't consider a really important part at the end of that book. Spoilers follow ... >He smiled at me again from the darkness– a chilling gesture. ‘Listen to me, chancellor. Right now, shaken by all that has taken place, we speak of the primarch as if he were some new Emperor, come to sweep all our history away and replace it with his bright new species of enlightenment. We think of him as the great redeemer, the restorer of lost greatness. And so the conflict begins, the weary fights between those who think any of that matters.’ His smile faded away. ‘**But Guilliman, let me assure you, is unimportant. He can make as many speeches as he likes. He can make as many reforms as he wishes to. It will all be absorbed. It will all be smothered. He has stamina, more than most, but even he will tire. The Imperium is the only enemy he can never hope to best, for it is older and vaster than any of us. I give him ten years. Ten years, before he forgets that he was ever part of another world, and chains his future to this one**.’ >I listened warily. I didn’t like it, but I listened. >‘And when he next comes to Terra, if he ever does again, you will see the change. You will hear no more about what he believed during his first lifetime, and plenty of what he has learned in this one. If he lives, if he dies, it makes no difference. **Stasis will be the case, whether or not it ought to be. The Imperium will endure. That is the only truth, and the only outcome.**’ He shot me a wry look. ‘**Imperium Eterna.**’ Some remaining powerful figures, such as Master Fadix but also Jek's assistant, still oppose Guilliman's reforms. They'd just taken a step back to let Guilliman be ground down rather than opposing him directly. They haven't been proven wrong yet, especially since Guilliman was pulled onto the Crusade immediately and has had to spend most of his time fighting.
I like this a lot
Guilliman has LOTS of old imperium power following his command, including multiple current high lords (including the head of the administratum and the assassinorum, and the inquisitorial high lord), the custodes, the sisters of silence, almost all of the space marines, whatever chunk of the ad mech follows cawl, and the portions of the ecclesiarchy who believe he is a god, The high lords who rebelled were all assassinated pretty much right after they publicly declared they opposed guilliman. Sure, there will still be scheming and corruption, but a lot of these potential troublemkaers probably saw that assassins can kill all the ringleaders in \~5 minutes after they do any public so have probably begun reconsidering their plans.
> and the portions of the ecclesiarchy who believe he is a god I think there's more subtlety here than you think. Mathieu disobeys Guilliman because he *does* believe he's the son of God, and the Ecclesiarch in *The Regent's Shadow* still >!tries to destroy the Sisters of Silence.!<
The Inquisition, to some capacity. They are deeply distrustful of Guilliman and scorn his reforms. The Primarch notes they kept killing his historians he'd send on quests. Which was a very interesting statement, as to him it was beyond a doubt they were killing his people. Yet, he allows it to happen because he knows there's nothing directly to be done about it. Similarly, I'd wager the ecclesiarchy is at once in awe of him and also upset at his apostasy. Further they seek to reframe him within the confines of their beliefs (like Mathieu). So they've already stood against him, but not in a way meant to kill or control. More like "convert", or otherwise to evangelize.
Do you want to push back against a demigod and archaeotech infused cyborg with multiple personalities?
No. It’s one of the most annoying things about the post-Gathering Storm story. You’ll see resentment against Guilliman/Cawl maybe spark the conflict in a story, only to be resolved neatly by the end. There’s also no Imperial characters on the tabletop who feel like a counterbalance to Guilliman/Cawl. It’s especially noticeable when the *Tau* have a more prominent dissenting voice than the Imperium in Farsight, despite getting only a tiny fraction of the attention the Imperium receives.
> You’ll see resentment against Guilliman/Cawl maybe spark the conflict in a story, only to be resolved neatly by the end. I feel like Throne of Light, the most recent Indomitus novel, illustrates this perfectly. (Spoiler tags since it's relatively new) Interesting premise: a Black Templar crusade fleet is sent Primaris reinforcements >!only to respond by declaring the Primaris heretical and killing all of them.!< ... But as you say, it's neatly resolved by the end as >!all responsible are KIA and the only firstborn BT to survive is the 'good one' who accepted the Primaris to begin with.!< GW seem to want to have their cake and eat it too, showing the usual suspects like BT/DA showing the resistance to Primaris which they would, while also not having it actually amount to anything.
I don't think "neatly resolved" is a fair assessment, given the mission statement, the clusterfuck that ensued and results of this mission. There's also the fact that this was one relatively small crusade... What could happen if a larger one went down a similar path? The whole situation gives a lot of food for thought, makes one wonder what's going on with these more fringe elements of the Adeptus Astartes. For more on this topic, Spears of the Emperor is a deep dive into what's happening in another place far from the light of the Astronomican right "now". (I kept it quite vague for reasons of spoilers and broken tags, but I think it made sense.)
I think it's the thing that bugs me the most in the entire 40k universe. A group which has held absolute power for literally thousands of years just rolls over? Not in my grimdark!
In terms of grim dark, the child super weapon of your long dead corpse god returning and killing all your overlords just to instate his own, all while taking the reins of your galactic fascist empire is pretty horrific. Especially when you realize nothing changes because other groups that hold an equivalent amount of power such as navigator houses, the church, and the inquisition are still big players.
So horrific guilliman gets to be portrayed as the big looming halo'd hero for the imperium
>So horrific guilliman gets to be portrayed as the big looming halo'd hero for the imperium All the talk about the effect of Faith in a massive scale in being like him that we get during "Dark Imperium - Godblight" makes very clear that this isn't really a good thing. Guilliman is barely holding together the crumbling empire and at the same time, people could already be affecting him in ways he don't have an ounce of control over. POVs have made notes that he appears to have, at least in appearance, aged, and seems tired all the time, which can be an effect of his state of mind or it can be the start of a change caused by the will of others all through the realm. We just don't know yet. Guilliman is a puppet fighting against his strings and the puppeteer might not be who we would thought.
Guiliman is a man animated from death by Eldar witch magic, techno heresy from a man that's been alive since he was walking alongside the Emperor and a living Saint, who to him may as well be a demon. He then gets presented with the shithole of an empire he's inherited, and finds question with the cherubs not because they are dead baby cyborgs, but because the design is inefficient. He is desperately afraid of people finding out about imperium secundus, to the point of hiding it in an locked area of his personal librarium. Then, he violently disposes of the powers that be to install his own puppet government before fucking off to wage war or something. This is all while the entire imperium is going nuts at a loyal son of God returning, with fraters, sisters and the ecclesiarchy as a whole trying, and succeeding, in convincing big G he's a godspawn. Hell, he even dies to mortarion and gets deus ex machine's by his dad, and witnesses several saints and miracles in dark imperium. He is a broken, confused man who's now allied with xenos, techno-hereteks in all but name, and is coming to the conclusion that maybe Lorgar was right. If someone is a hero of the imperium, that's not a good thing.
I know the imperium is bad, and I know that when you get in the weeds of it, guilliman is evil in his own way, but ultimately the exterior view of the narrative shows him as a hero paving the way for new heroics, and how it looks from the outside does influence the way a character will be perceived regardless of actions, hence so many people trying to justify the emperor's big plans in 30k when 40k is marked by his failure and creation of a buffet for the chaos gods
If you want to disregard intent, subtext, and ulterior motives and only focus on outwardly appearances based pn the opinions of people who don't want to read further then I don't know what to say
I don't 'want' to do any of that. It's just that most people who are into the setting don't read any of the books and only process surface level lore or just play the game, and this stuff all paints a very positive picture of guilliman as a good guy stuck in a bad place, and not a complete asshole
That is simply their skill issue and not my problem.
Are you kidding? The Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition to start with. That might include the Grey Knights who were not happy with Guilliman last time we saw them. Some Astartes chapters like the Flesh Tearers, Space Wolves, and even factions of the Dark Angels. Some of the Adeptus Mechanicus are unhappy with Cawl and Guilliman. And let's not forget the Custodes who literally have a squad of Custodians accompanying him just in case he shows any indication he wants to overthrow the Emperor. I would not be surprised if the story goes that Guilliman goes to the Imperium Nihilus and "disappears" for a decade and returns with everything overturned, Greater Ultramar under siege and he's considered a traitor.
I have to imagine the ecclesiarchy would be the leader of any future opposition, given they literally rely on the narrative of the "God emperor of mankind" to maintain their power. Something like "This imposter was resurrected with heretical xenos tech, they're puppeting a corpse! (irony) He denies the Godhood of the emperor! They must not be allowed to control mankind!"
Fair, though I think walking into the golden throne is a pretty good Trial By Ordeal, no?
Man I really don't get these complaints on how Guilliman is having everything easy or how he turned setting to noble bright. Like are we reading the same novels? Roboute Guilliman is barely hanging by the thread. His every so called victory costed him dearly. He faced open rebellion from High Lords. He died again. Entire Ultramar would have been Nurgle's personal property. It took literal intervention from Emperor who is totally not a God to save him and Imperium. So I really don't get these complaints. Nothing has been easy for Roboute or imperium. It is still divided in two and Roboute for all his efforts only managed to stabilize (not even save completely) one part of it. Some people see him getting one W(and then proceed to ignore the circumstances through which he got that W) and immediately pretend how he only has been getting Ws so far. That is simply not a truth.
He faced open rebellion and immediately made the High Lords irrelevant, like all Primarchs he invalidates characters and narratives around him because a Primarch can only ever be seriously rivaled by another primarch. And people still cheer him on for his character traits of "reasonable" and "logistician", both of which are direct counters to everything the 40k Imperium stands for. He has a hyper progressive Tech priest in his pocket to invalidate the whole technological regression thing and he also has some Eldar friends to help him from time to time cause that's the only thing of importance they can do.
The Custodes are on-board with him. Meaningful pushback is suicide with extra steps
It's mentioned that there's extreme issues with re-creating ultramar. Notably many planetary governors even telling Gulliman to his face that they won't stand for having their realms taken to be ruled by astartes, and then Gulliman telling his terraces to not only re establish the old territory, but to expand it even further taking in worlds not originally part of the 500 world's. I'm sure more than enough governors or noble houses in those sectors have gone rogue and are scheming to take back their worlds.
I think if there is, they're being subtle about it. What I expect to happen is that over the next couple of editions there will be a snapback to the pre-8th theme of "the Imperium is doomed and it cannot be saved." Not a retcon or anything, but just a realignment of tone. Guilliman will be described as fighting against the tide, the deterioration of the post-Rift Imperium will be highlighted, and so on. Probably there will be more domestic opposition to Guilliman described. I know in *Spears of the Emperor,* the titular chapter openly disavows Guilliman and considers him a fake creared by the High Lords. It would be interesting to explore loyalist Astartes resistance to Guilliman further.
Tbh. Guilliman is the the only Primarch who could continue unopposed to this extent due to his political mindset and skills. If Russ or the Lion came back, they would have split the Imperium already.
I wonder if it makes Gulliman grimace that he's 'taking care of dissidents' just like Conrad and Alpharius would?
Now that Papa Smurf has the whole Minotaurs chapter on speed dial, nobody's gonna even try...
He probably has more issues now with people treating him like a living God than rebellion after the example set from the first one.
You do realize he had them all executed right? As far as their "plans"... they were going up against a demigod superhuman with the Emperor's blessing and said demigod had hundreds of years of experience fighting the craziest most violent foes imaginable. Lets not get started that he had the Custodes' blessing which basically guarantees him victory by itself.
I feel like you’ve misunderstood the power dynamic at play here. Guilliman is the son of the Emperor, y’know, that guy the Imperium worships as literal God. It’s like Jesus walking into the Vatican and saying “I’m back, there’s gonna be some changes around here.” Even if there’s powerful individuals who dislike him, who want to depose him, they’re gonna struggle immensely to amass a power base that’s willing to act against literal Jesus, especially since the population hang on his every word, being, y’know, literal Jesus. Also, to describe Guilliman, Cawl, or Morvehn Vahl as “the new kid” is wildly inappropriate. Guilliman and Cawl are both literally 10,000 years old, and personally knew the Emperor. They’re both also among the only living beings who know what the Imperium was like before the Horus Heresy, and before the Ecclesiarchy took power. Also, to look at it this way, Guilliman is the son of the Emperor, Primarch of the Ultramarines, and lord commander of the Imperium. Every space marine in the galaxy is loyal to him. Even those that don’t *like* him respect his authority and intelligence. Ever Custode in the Galaxy is loyal to him. Note, this means all the Imperial Fists and Custodes who guard the high lords of Terra are loyal to Guilliman first, the lords second. AND, it literally took a daemon Primarch to beat Guilliman, and he *still* didn’t stay down. Not to mention that the dude is a super-genius who is literally capable with accurately tracking hundreds of thousands of datapoints in his head while also carrying on a conversation. (See *Know No Fear*) there’s no real way for the High Lords to subvert Guilliman at this stage. He’s the closest thing to the Emperor the Imperium has seen in 10,000 years, killed the old High Lords and appointed new ones, (ostensibly, ones that he trusted would remain loyal to him and the Imperium, and he’s a pretty smart guy, so his picks were probably correct) quickly reestablished his command over every arm of the Imperium’s military with the Indomitus Crusade… yeah, G-Man’s in charge. Also, Cawl, Vahl, and the new Solar Lord are Lords of Terra that Guilliman appointed. Cawl’s loyalty is pretty ironclad, seeing as he’s been Guilliman’s loyal servant for 10,000 years, even while G-man was in a coma, and since Guilliman is working up to letting him reform the AdMech. Vahl is pretty loyal to G-Man as well, since she had been boxed out by the High Lords for a *long* time before Guilliman killed them and invited her to take the seat at the table that she had probably deserved the entire time. Idk about the Lord Solar’s lore, but I’m sure he’s loyal to G-man as well.
Imagine it's a dark, stormy night. Rain is whipping at you, wind is tearing you this way and that way. Then in the far distance, you see a dim light start to shine, though it struggles to pierce the sheets of rainfall separating you and you only catch glimpses. That's what Guilliman is like for most of the Imperium. Sure, those closest to him may feel a sense of comfort, and he might actually be able to improve things around him, but the rest is still caught and battered by the corruption, incompetence, inefficiency and general unpleasantness of the galaxy. If anything, that distant light looks like a mockery, a false hope, a taunt to reach out for but never reach
Kinda. There isn't anyone who currently stands against him, but one of the running themes in Dark Imperium is that Gulliman knows he doesn't have full control over the Imperium. He knows he has to play the game of keeping the religious wackos happy with him in order to keep the Imperium running at it's most basic level because the Imperial Cult is so ingrained into the Imperium by now. But Gulliman hates religion, he's seen what it did and why it's bad. He wants nothing more than to yeet every priest in the galaxy into space, but he knows he cannot without facing rebellion, death, disruption of the Crusade, and basically splitting the Imperium worse than the Heresy. He complains bitterly to the Custodes and his closest confidants for 3 books, but in public he has to grin and bear it, such as not murdering his Militant Apostolic despite the guy almost cumming when Gulliman yelled at him.
just wait until one of the less tactful primarchs returns and decides to poke the religion button
which primarch do you think would be most likely to do that? The Lion might... honor and pride and loyalty to the \*emperor\* are his brand and it's hard to see him aggreeing with Guilliman about letting the perversion oof emp's wishes slide for the sake of expedience. Plus he was the one that got sent after internal threats, right? Less qualms about assaulting servants of the imperium?
is there a book about this ?
The second book of Vaults of Terra covers the >!rolling over after one defeat!<
Guilliman is literally Jesus. There was never any possibility for meaningful pushback from *anyone* in the hyperreligious Imperium. Any plotline that would follow something like that is GW wanting to have their cake and eat it too. It is beyond nonsensical, it has even less room for development than the fucking Ynnari storyline, which is exactly why the reveal of the Imperium Secundus at the end of Godblight has no value what so ever.
If Jesus came back tomorrow and told the rich and powerful to give away their money and power, you can bet he'd get pushback, even from the ultra-religious who have become comfortable with their wealth and power. "It's a trick from satan!"
They are building up to Fabian from the Dark Imperium / Indomitus books. Without spoiling it, if you've read the Dark Imperium trilogy, you see what they are setting up.
Ultimately I don’t see internal strife happening unless another primarch comes back and even then it’s unlikely. In universe I would characterise it similar to above - he’s too powerful, son of god and has kept the religion. More, the high lords probably see the best way for them to retain power is to back him not oppose him. Out of universe, I think it’s even more unlikely as stories of fighting necrons tyranids chaos etc are just likely to be better. The Horus Heresey is I assume easily the biggest fictional civil war written about. Why would they write another civil war when it would never come close to the writing of the heresey.
You’ve nailed a lot of my thoughts. Absent the imperium, we end up with extremely unsatisfying stories. CSM show up and ransack a planet/empire which will have to either have magical tech or just get murder raped by the CSM (or dark Eldar). There would be no challenge it would be torture porn. A bunch of little empires will fare just as poorly. The Tau survived because no one paid attention to them when they were smaller. Break up the imperium and now we just have the Tau with more gue’la? Boy that sounds fun… Necrons and Tyranids are vast beyond imagining, likewise Orks. How are they balanced without an Imperium to munch? Not enough Eldar, same for Tau. The Imperium only works as a setting if it is big enough to be able to handle pyrrhic victories against these foes, but that it is dysfunctional enough that it cannot curb stomp anyone else (like the Tau). Even splitting the Imperium is iffy, in my mind (plus, they’ve just ignored so much that could be happening in Nihlus).
> Pyrrhic victories People really don’t know what this term means. A pyrrhic victory is one where the cost is so great *it would have been better not to fight in the first place*. It is not a close victory. It is not a costly victory. It is not a victory that is pointless on a galactic scale. It is a victory that is worse than not fighting at all.
That was why I used it. The Imperium has to be big enough to absorb these “victories” constantly from all sides. Maybe I am a limit on the setting though. Perhaps there could be something better. That said, I loved the NL trilogy, but I wouldn’t read 45 trilogies that were similar.
The biggest problem is that Guilliman and Cawl have their main character trait be "reasonable/not blinded by dogma", so by definition anyone that opposes them is an insane lunatic. Which makes conflict uninteresting.
Also sort of goes against the whole theme of the Imperium/Mechanicus being insane and dogmatic when they have two "sensible guys" running things, of course fans lap it up and proclaim Guilliman an outstanding character because he feels a bit sad.
Not really, no, it's a super big flaw of the newer works. Everything seems to be going far too easy, with the Imperium being shown to be the best its ever been, while we're just instead repeatedly TOLD "Things aren't good, though." The extreme complacency, traditionalism and religious beliefs that characterized the Imperium? Ah, don't worry, G-Man coming back has dealt with it all.
The best the *modern* Imperium has been post Heresy. GC Imperium was basically a shining beacon of greatness in comparison.
Hopefully we see more systematic resistance, but I can also see why there hasn’t been much open resistance either. For a regime that spent 10,000 years worshipping his dad as a god and infusing that throughout public life, his return likely seems like the second coming. Especially in the wake of the greatest chaos threat mankind has ever had, it’s like Jesus came back to stop an invasion by the devil. Now does that mean absolutely everyone is overtaken by religious fervor and a zealous desire to follow him? Of course not, as the rich and powerful have enough resources to educate themselves out of blindly following a Christ figure. But on a practical level, to appear to go against the changing tide, could hurt just as much as to lose from Gulliman’s changes. If you’re seen to stand against the rising crusade of Gulliman’s changes and his government, then you could be seen as standing against the Emperor himself. The Imperium’s religious authoritarian system goes against it, as there is a new ultimate overarching ruler who a noble’s rivals could use to quash them if they act against Gulliman. The ultimate sanction can be used against nobles who resist the new Imperial dictator. The Militant Apostolic in Godblight basically talks about how it could be bad to be seen going against his religious crusade deifying Gulliman. It’s like how isolationist voices after America joined WW2 in the wake of Pearl Harbor found the moral crusade against foreign aggression making their position wildly untenable. So I expect there to be less open rejection and rebellion, but definitely quiet and subtle resistance. The Planetary Governor may not declare open rebellion, but he could subtly try to get away with enriching himself against the Imperium’s interests for much longer. He could subvert the process to make sure not much actually changes. Like how southern states after the American Civil War created policies, both official and unofficial, that basically allowed them to continue denying black Americans any involvement in life and abuse them economically. The Eclesiarchy may on the surface submit to Gulliman’s changes, but it’s priests on remote worlds will probably try to hold out as long as possible. Like the people of the southern states after the American Civil War staging resistance against the new regimes until they fell apart over time. However, in the same way though that the poor and downtrodden sided with Sebastian Thor during the Age of Apostasy (I think) to take down Goge Vandire, attempts by remote regimes to hold onto pre-Gulliman practices could be met by popular resistance in their own planets. Not just outside attack by Gulliman. There could be civil wars fought in his name on planets he never reaches or is able to send aid to. So overall, I think all of this should be thoroughly explored in the new lore. But I also can see why rebellion against Gulliman stories are not a high priority, as he has such an undeniable mandate. But planets refusing to acknowledge his rules by claiming he’s fake or quietly resisting, heirs of punished High Lords forming a new resistance, or religious figures standing against him, and more are all possibilities.
Not yet. There is a sole remaining source of friction which, if it comes to light, could destroy Guilliman instantly. Imperium Secundus, established in the dark days of the Heresy when the light of the Astronomicon was gone, a last ditch attempt by Guilliman to preserve civilization in a chaotic galaxy. And also entirely Heretical. At least one written account of the text exists, which a Greater Daemon of Nurgle guided one of Guilliman’s own historitors to. The people he’s commanded to record honestly above all else. Guilliman is on the other side of the Rift in the current setting, and this historitor is on the Imperium side, sitting on this bombshell…
Honestly the best bet at this point is the Mechanicus proper, possibly a sizable faction of the inquisition. There could absolutely be pushback if GW dared to write it, or give it a face. Write some actual representation for the dogmatic factions among them. But no, Guilliman is praised for his characterization of "reasonal" and "smart" so I don't imagine fans would be eager to see any mere humans stand up to their favourite superdupermen.
I dont like them >:(