How exactly did the Edge Lords end up being one of the coolest and relatable space marine legion?

>Was this before or after he started flaying and killing people alongside his legion that started recruiting murders and rapists within it's ranks, simply for the giggles of it?

Look, I too question the need for a legion specifically built to dress themselves in skulls. But that was the Emperor's will. He used the 8th as his terror force even before Kurze came if I recall correctly because he's a huge dick. If anything, recruiting from Nostromo optimizes this purpose.

Also Dorn, gets to have a nice comfy job building awesome things to impress dad while Kurze was designed specifically to spread fear and kill people in awful ways. Theres no way Emps didnt know what Kurze was doing, and only recalled him to censure when his negatives started to outweigh the progress. If he didnt freak out on Dorn, I doubt Big E would even blink an eye.

One of Curze's defining character traits is that he despises his legion, he hates what they become after he has to start recruiting Nostramans into their ranks, he hates what Nostramo becomes the second he turns his back on it and he hates that he's reviled for the admittedly nasty shit he does even though it's been made pretty clear its his job.

That doesn't change the fact he's wrong and his legion are wrong though. ADB has always made it perfectly clear that the Night Lords in general are kidding themselves when they say they do what they do because it's necessary and he's perfectly clear that Curze is absolutely mental. He writes Night Lords to be relateable and to have a self justification for what they do but he never says they're correct.

I do agree with you about Magnus though, as the Emperor says, the warp being dangerous should be common sense given how much trouble it causes.

I'm not going to deny that The Emperor used the Night Lords for their intended purpose, user -- you're right, nobody builds an empire by being nice, but even ADB said that Kurze steadily went down a slope even before the onset of the Heresy.

At the start, it wasn't simply about inducing "terror" for terror's sake, it was to inact justice and to punish criminals, which he did, until his legion started recruiting the very people he'd killed and despised as a child, and so he just went "fuck it" and became a murderhobo and super schizophrenic, which the Emperor didn't want, and when Big E said this, Kurze got his flayed-skin knickers in a twist and went apeshit.

The issue wasn't him almost asphyxiating Dorn, it was more about what he had become, when you're so fucked that even Big E wants you dead, that's saying something.

That's exactly my point. Kurze hated his legion, he told Talos that, yada yada yada, I've read the book, and I liked it. NL's are my favorite traitor legion besides Iron Warriors, but I don't see the point in putting ADB on a pedestal when the guy doesn't really deserve it.

But he never really alluded to the fact that they were "kidding" themselves beyond the a few lines of "some of us worship chaos, but we SHOULDNT", and then they go on some big escapade where they murderfuck an entire settlement yet the mayor can't even fucking shoot Talos in the eye because... reasons?

Then there's the whole Red Corsair "we're better because we don't worship chaos" bullshit and whatever else.

Then there's the whole "we die valiantly at the end, somehow killing eldar and living up to our names/whatever"

It's just very, very forced. The guy obviously has a bias towards Chaos, which I can understand, you're a 40k author, you're going to be biased because you're writing about an army you like, I just don't see the point in ADB getting a free-pass when he's arguably the most guilty of the lot.

>Then there's the whole Red Corsair "we're better because we don't worship chaos" bullshit and whatever else.

Fucking what? Note this guys this how you know someone is full of bullshit. When he says an obvious lie like that.

The Rec Corsairs are totally in the thrall of Chaos. Have you not read anything about them?

Disregard everything this guy says.

I'm talking about the Night Lords perception of the Red Corsairs, you troglodyte.

>The creature breathed through its open jaws, sending tendrils of thought back into its mind. Their questing reach spilled memories and emotions in a ransacking mess.
>Life upon a world of eternal night.
>The stars in the sky, bright enough to hurt the eyes on cloudless evenings.
>The pride of watching an enemy ship burn up in orbit, trembling its way down to crash upon the world below.
>The awe, the love, a devastating rush of emotion felt while staring at a primarch father that took no pride in any of his sons’ accomplishments.
>The same pale corpse of a father, broken by the lies he fed himself, inventing betrayals to sate his devouring madness.

So the Night Lords missed all the preachers, sorcerers, and the bloody daemon familiar following around Huron. Get out of here.

user, you're a fucking idiot.

Reading comprehension has never been Carnac's strong suit.

being cool =/= being relatable

If I'm able to relate to the struggles and emotions of supposedly badass characters, then it means they aren't badass. Because I'm a fucking suburban nerd who reads nerd books and has suburban nerd problems.

I don't want to fucking relate to the Night Lords, I want to be in awe of them and that can't happen if I can understand what goes on in their heads.

I ain't the one lying here. Saying that Corsairs don't worship Chaos. Get out.

You of all people accusing me of that? YOU?!

>But he never really alluded to the fact that they were "kidding" themselves beyond the a few lines of "some of us worship chaos, but we SHOULDNT"

It's made pretty clear through that trilogy that Talos is one of a tiny minority of characters who actually believes in any of what they're doing, a substantial majority of the other NLs are just murdering people for fun or to further their worship of chaos. The allusion to Talos' self deception doesn't come all at once or in a stated way, it comes gradually by comparing what he believes in with how the others act, you eventually get the impression that they follow Talos' lead (and his suggestions and visions earlier on) because he's got historical clout, not because they actually believe in a word of his justification.

>I don't see the point in putting ADB on a pedestal when the guy doesn't really deserve it.

I don't think anyone is putting him on a pedestal user, he just happens to be one of BLs better writers and managed to make what should have been a pure edge legion into one that's still edgy but makes at least some sense and has at least some depth.

>I don't think anyone is putting him on a pedestal user

GW does.

ADB's OC characters are getting models and mentions in mainstream GW stuff. No other BL author got that treatment as far as I know.

I'm another guy butting in

depth at the expense of thematic purity is a nuisance.

I'd rather read about a truly psychopathic asshole NL than about Mr "sympathetic villain".

I don't expect anyone to be able to write a whole novel about a true NL, but then again 40k has never been adapted to writing novels.

Still, when a book's selling point is "DUDE YOU'RE GONNA READ A NOVEL WRITTEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A FUCKING NIGHT LORD" I don't want any moral ambiguity bullshit to interfere with the gleeful gorefest it ought to be.

And if you're fine with ADB's choices, you enjoy NLs for the wrong reasons.

I actually quite liked how slightly bumbling Talos is

And I'm explaining you why you're actually quite wrong to actually quite like it.

>until his legion started recruiting the very people he'd killed and despised as a child, and so he just went "fuck it" and became a murderhobo and super schizophrenic, which the Emperor didn't want

The Emperor did want the murderhobo. Even before the Night Lords were run by Curze, they were tasked with slaughtering people in grotesque ways to send a message. Konrad did exactly what his dad wanted with the legion.

The problem was that a life of inflicting and enduring horrors sends people fucking crazy, and Curze had already drew the short straw when it comes to Primarch flaws, being pretty much a schizo with uncontrollable awful villains. The Emperor wanted a terror legion but he didn't want any of the baggage that came with it - the problem being that you can't have one without the other. He would have been fine with just letting Curze slaughter his way across the galaxy, spreading fear in the Emperor's name, so long as he was relatively stable. But that job does not lend itself to stability, and the Emperor was too disinterested to notice that one of his sons was basically a basket case until it was too late.

The Night Lords' fall is tragic because absolutely everyone was at fault for it. There were so many people that could have taken notice and nipped it in the bud, many of the Night Lords themselves included. But the Emperor, too, was at fault, as were many of Curze's brothers', who failed pretty horribly to recognize that shit had spiraled out of control. The Night Lords are a testament to the fact that the Emperor and his way of rulership was ultimately unsuited to doing anything but ruining people.

Sounds childish. If it was a gorefist, then the Night Lord series wouldn't have been the popular hit it was, and it wouldn't have connected with a lot of fans. One of the most mocked things about the CSM was one quote from Gav's dex "Let no good deed go unpunished, let no evil deed go unrewarded". Seems to me you want the CSM to follow this quote literally and become generic cartoon villains. If that's the case, then head over to the Dark Eldar and Newcrons. They'll give you what you want.

Does that mean you have shit taste and you should get out?

Even Dark Eldar are more nuanced than that.

There's quite a few stories where they show emotions other than Super Evil Badness. There's also the fact that they canonically have the same mindset as drug addicts - many of them have moments where they realize what they're doing is awful and unsustainable and they can't possibly keep it up forever, but they push all this shit to the back of their minds because, fuck, drugs are cool right, and what's even the alternative?

Actually, Vulkan was in charge of Curze treatment and rehabilitation by orders of Horus. However, Horus got corrupted and he told Vulkan to let Curze go.

Nobody it as fault but Horus.

>if you're fine with ADB's choices, you enjoy NLs for the wrong reasons.
I like his choices of making them just criminal assholes in fancy armour, they feel like ex gang members in a way that the Sons of Horus never do no matter how many times they bang on about gang markings. Talos is an unusual narrator because he's not a typical Night Lord, which is basically the whole point of him.

Talos is a Night Lord as they were originally supposed to be, not as they turned into and his disapproval of his comrades behaviour gives it context.

Having said that the Night Lords are only in the top 10 of Legions and Chapters I like, my actual favourites are the Alpha Legion.

Loads of HH characters are, ADB is one of the few authors to provide new Chaos characters since he's writing about a legion that historically lacked for named characters though so it makes sense his characters would get models, most other authors write about pre-existing characters. The HH stuff in general is adding a good number of unique characters to every legion and a good number of those characters are carrying over to 40K

>my actual favourites are the Alpha Legion.

How that convoluted mess of a legion is liked is beyond human understanding.

>Sounds childish
It sounds childish because you've been force-fed the notion that "gory=childish", which is typical of the people who use the word "edgy" in a negative way.

Now that I've explained this to you, maybe you'll be able to correct your opinion.
>If it was a gorefist, then the Night Lord series wouldn't have been the popular hit it was, and it wouldn't have connected with a lot of fans
well, those people have bad taste, as is often the case with the majority.

How is that supposed to validate ADB's choice?
>One of the most mocked things about the CSM was one quote from Gav's dex "Let no good deed go unpunished, let no evil deed go unrewarded".
Wrongfully mocked.
It's an absurd tenet but it's a much more interesting and original premise than the tired old "oh the bad guys are people too you know, they're just misguided and a bit hypocritical" cliché that's so popular right now.

Take "let no good deed go unpunished" as seriously as possible. Build a character around that concept. Force it to make as much sense as possible without compromising it. Let that character loose in the world of 40k. And there you've got something that's really cool.

Eh, Big E still wanted a whole legion of marines that stare into the abyss and let it stare back.

There was no way the Night Lords weren't going to end up as fucked up assholes.

>Kal Jerico
>Gaunt and his Ghosts
>Loken
>Samus

You definitely should, Carnac.

Basically I like that they're overly convoluted in an 'I don't know who's trolling who anymore' kind of way, it's the kind of pointless overly-complex structuring you'd expect from a person with severe crippling paranoia (something they do much better than the Iron Warriors) and who is both pretty damn clever and thinks they're cleverer than they really are.

It's endearing how many contingency plans they have and how into misdirection they are, especially when it smashes up against direct action and the other primarchs end up vindicated in how they said it was just a colossal waste of time and effort.

I also like the paint scheme and the fluffy reason for having a decent number of allies. they're also a flexible legion list on the tabletop which I like.

>I'd rather read about a truly psychopathic asshole NL than about Mr "sympathetic villain".

All Space Marines are psychopaths. Reading about a crazed berserker with no depth to their character would be boring.

>I don't expect anyone to be able to write a whole novel about a true NL, but then again 40k has never been adapted to writing novels.

This is the true NL.

>Reading about a crazed berserker with no depth to their character would be boring.
depth=/=dilution

"he's like that but not that much sometimes he's a bit less like that" is not depth, it's diluting the concept by introducing contradictions into it.

I agree that writing an absolute asshole crazed berserker with depth would be quite a challenge but it's not inherently impossible.

>"he's like that but not that much sometimes he's a bit less like that" is not depth

And simplifying a concept to a ridiculous degree does not constitute a valid argument against that concept.

>I agree that writing an absolute asshole crazed berserker with depth would be quite a challenge but it's not inherently impossible.

It's not impossible. It's just not a character that would be enjoyable to read a whole book about. A small vignette, sure, but a whole novel or series of novels?

No thanks. I'd like my protagonist to be capable of an actual arc.

In addition to whatever ADB did and a person's preferences, I think it helped that in a way Kurze can be one of the more appealing Primarchs due to his sense of morals and his ability to apply them to even himself. Besides getting vindication that his methods were right, when he allowed himself to be assassinated he was admitting that he had done things worthy of death. He also calls his Legion out when it began to go to shit.

>Big E could have just told him a bit more in depth about it.

Except this is the wrong way to go about things and probably wouldn't have stopped Magnus anyway since he was arrogant as fuck. It even says in the Realm of Chaos books that the best way for humans to seemingly go about beating Chaos is to keep the majority of people ignorant about it. Chaos preys on the ambitious and selfish with seemingly most who fall under it's sway not realizing that whether you end up as a Prince or Spawn you're a slave either way. That's why there are characters like Abaddon and certain Night Lords who have seen what Chaos can do firsthand and thus try to at best use it as a tool, and even that may not end up being enough to prevent it from ultimately screwing them over.

>No other BL author got that treatment as far as I know.

As has been pointed, quite a few have. Probably because it's no different with what has likely happened in the Design Studio where one or two people have an idea and a bunch of other people think it's cool and those people have the ability to sculpt, write rules, and write lore.

It has been said that originally the Solar Auxilia was some FW designer's pet project and only became a thing in lore, rules, and models because other FW designers liked the idea.

If you like character arcs more than witnessing extreme feats of brutality you should get the fuck out of the 40k fandom.

And since the Black Library was made to cater to people like you, it was a mistake.

Don't give me the "but if the BL exists then my tastes are validated by GW" argument, because that's the kind of bullshit excuse that would "justify" a decision from GW to appeal to bronies by shoehorning equestria into the Imperium.

>Except this is the wrong way to go about things

I don't think so. It's shown pretty obviously that the Primarchs' greatest weakness against Chaos corruption was that they had no clue what they were dealing with.

The Emperor's policy of ignorance has always been wrong. He's not supposed to be infallible - he's ultimately a hugely flawed man that was brought low by his own hubris and inability to work with anyone. Nobody is the good guy in 40K, Big E included.

>If you like character arcs more than witnessing extreme feats of brutality you should get the fuck out of the 40k fandom.

Please, child, leave.

40K is literally a setting created as a mishmash of allegories, the gore and despair is just a means to them. Brutality in fiction is given meaning by things like character arcs and plot progression - a lack of those things is why your average modern horror movie is so lackluster.

Basically, you fail at all fiction ever, go to bed and rethink your life.

>well, those people have bad taste, as is often the case with the majority.

Not really. There is always some guy who wants to be a unique snowflake so he adopts a shitty taste.

>Wrongfully mocked.

Negative. That quote is the depth of interest and nuance. Developed Faction with depth shouldn't see themselves as evil.

I'm going to reveal you something which is pretty fucking obvious but which you had overlooked because you're probably a pretentious wannabe-writer GM who thinks he knows jackshit about 40k and fiction.

40k isn't a mishmash of allegories. 40k is a spectacle for dumb metalhead nerds. The kind of people who read 2000 AD but don't give a shit about the social commentary in it and just like how gnarly everything looks and sounds.

It's not made for character arcs
It's made for spectacle. And if a mindless barbarian is more apt to display feats of extreme violence than a "deep" character, then the deep character should find himself another IP to mope around in.

And so should the dumbasses who gravitate towards them instead of reveling in the splatterfest and pseudogoth decorum.

You sound like one of those literal faggots who called Deafheaven "mature black metal" just because their singer doesn't wear corpse paints, despite not realizing how simplistic and underwhelming their music is. You're an embarrassment.

Now be sorry.

Punish yourself.

And beg for forgiveness.

Not until you admit that Necrodermis is Living Metal and the Fortoken gets his day

.
>Developed Faction with depth shouldn't see themselves as evil.
that is a fucking baseless and counter-intuitive statement that's the result of not critiquing the "only sympathetic villains are well-written" meme.

Secondly, nobody said the Chaos Space Marines should have depth.

Thirdly, they are deep and developed

they achieve this depth by exploring the various thematic and aesthetic ramification of the "evil warrior" archetype.

>40k isn't a mishmash of allegories. 40k is a spectacle for dumb metalhead nerds.

It can be both.

>The kind of people who read 2000 AD but don't give a shit about the social commentary in it and just like how gnarly everything looks and sounds.

Just because you're an idiot doesn't mean everyone who likes the same things is. 40K has its roots in social commentary, much like, as you said, 2000 AD. Plenty of people like those aspects of the setting and the things they've spawned just as much as the gnarliness. The gnarliness wouldn't even EXIST if it weren't for this stuff.

>You sound like one of those literal faggots who called Deafheaven "mature black metal"

I don't listen to music for children, so I don't know who that is. Sorry.

>"only sympathetic villains are well-written" meme.

Which I at least didn't bring up. Be'lakor and Nagash who are utterly unsympathetic are what I considered among best villains produced by GW because they are ridiculous and cartoony to the extreme but they fall short when compared to Archaon because you cannot relate to any of them. Evil for the sake of evil, while fun to look at, gets old really fast since there is little room to expand on the character. No room for growth.

Compared the character development of Nagash with Archaon, for example.

I say the CSM should have depth. The success of the NL series and the demand for the Black Legion series indicates that the fanbase many depth for their horny marines.

>Thirdly, they are deep and developed

They ain't. The codexes do a piss poor job at flushing characters and factions. CSM characters are undeveloped with no defining traits outside generalities.

>40k isn't a mishmash of allegories. 40k is a spectacle for dumb metalhead nerds. The kind of people who read 2000 AD but don't give a shit about the social commentary in it and just like how gnarly everything looks and sounds.

40K literally would not exist if not for the social commentary and allegory. The core elements of the setting that everything else radiates from are the result of them.

Don't like it? Then just don't engage with it. Don't read anything but units blurbs and just play the game. There being more to the setting than spiky bits doesn't take away your spiky bits.

I think as you said the problem is that such the depiction of such a Night Lord doesn't lend itself well to being the focus of a book unless you're willing to touch on the reason of why the character behaves the way it does. Doesn't even have to be some kind of moral justification, just an explanation of the character's though process. If someone thinks this is boring it's probably because they've been exposed to the concept as that of a mindless character who just exists to do bad shit for the purposes of doing bad shit.

I think there is room with the Night Lords to have the above just as there is room for ADB's interpretation, for Night Lords who scoff at Chaos, and for Night Lords who worship it. GW has made it clear that very few of the Traitor Legions remained cohesive after the Horus Heresy and the Scouring. I think even the FW books hint that the various parts of a Legion could behave and think differently than others, explaining why you could have portions of a Traitor Legion who are Loyalists and portions of the Loyal Legions who went Traitor.

Or the knowledge of Chaos could have just exasperated things. Magnus and Lorgar were seemingly the two Primarchs who knew the most about Chaos and they both fell to it. Magnus because he was arrogant and thought he could control it and Lorgar because he didn't think humanity couldn't survive as a secular species and that it needed a god or gods to worship. Chaos preys on desperation too. Mortarion for most of the Heresy seemed to despise everything to do with Chaos, but when the Death Guard were becalmed in the Warp and he and his Legion were wracked with pain and unable to die he ultimately gave in.

Ignorance is the best solution because the majority of humanity seems unable to even keep Chaos at arms length as a tool, which doesn't work out, or to realize that the promised rewards are all tricks.

>Just because you're an idiot doesn't mean everyone who likes the same things is.
No, but it means that some idiots who think they like 40k actually don't, because they refuse to acknowledge that it's not elegantly compatible with "depth"

>40K has its roots in social commentary, much like, as you said, 2000 AD.
No. It has its roots in social caricature. Social caricature can be a tool for social commentary (like in 2000 AD) but when it's taken as its own thing it's purely cosmetic (as is the case in 40k).

>Plenty of people like those aspects of the setting and the things they've spawned just as much as the gnarliness. The gnarliness wouldn't even EXIST if it weren't for this stuff.
This is the opposite of what you said earlier. But at least it's correct: the social caricatures and "allegories" are a contingent tool that's only here to allow 40k to be as brutal as possible.

If some people like them more than their brutal, spectacular results, then they don't like 40k. They like what 40k could have been if it had different goals. And when these people are given the opportunity to write fanfiction, they write poor fanfiction, with underwhelming characters that fail to live up to the standard of brutality that has been set before them.

Do not attempt to defuse this argument by just saying "oh this isn't meant for you".

The point is that it doesn't have the right (from an artistic standpoint) to exist in 40k published material, and that if you claim to enjoy 40k you should reject it.

>40K literally would not exist if not for the social commentary and allegory. The core elements of the setting that everything else radiates from are the result of them.
Wrong.
those core elements have their place in 40k only insofar as their fulfill their purpose: making 40k appeal to dumb metalheads who like violent and spectacular imagery.

Choosing to make the Imperium a fascist hellhole is only okay if it allows miniatures to look badass.

>40k isn't a mishmash of allegories. 40k is a spectacle for dumb metalhead nerds. The kind of people who read 2000 AD but don't give a shit about the social commentary in it and just like how gnarly everything looks and sounds.
It's wrong tho, you literally can't avoid the social commentary in 40k, and that's not a really recent fact. It's true that's it's a blurred melting pot of social commentary but it is a social commentary in itself.

I didn't say it's not meant for you. 40K is meant for you. You can engage with it on a purely superficial level if that's all you can handle.

Either way, denying that 40K has always been full of allegory and commentary and stuff other than HARDEST CORE GORE SPLATTER PORN is plain wrong. The raw, hard facts are against you. Because you've chosen the stance of idiocy.

They're both equally important, as they feed into one another. You wouldn't have 40K's brand of badassness if it weren't for the social commentary, they're contingent on one another. One isn't above the other because they work together to make the setting what it is.

You can choose to ignore half the setting if you want, but if you removed that half, you wouldn't have everything else, because everything else is supported by that half.