Did he view the Primarchs as tools?

Did he view the Primarchs as tools?

Well, he didn't make them with emphasis on intelligence.

If he viewed the Primarchs as tools, he should've culled Angron immediately. If he didn't view them as tools, he should've been a better fucking parent.

I believe canonical answer is Yes, but it's pretty shitty writing either way.

He held back until he realized Horus was absolutely beyond all salvation, letting himself get corpsed in the process. Unless they're rewriting canon so he straight up LOST, he cared more about saving that particular tool than his own life.

If that's really the angle they're going with now, I'm going to assume it's 40k-induced callousness.

Depends - how much do you hate your dad?

>If he viewed the Primarchs as tools, he should've culled Angron immediately.

Angron was still useful and the nails were going to kill him eventually. He wanted to use him instead of waste him. The nails saved him the trouble of killing him.

Authors and editors pretty much said it was retconned. Also Laurie Goulding said that the HH is already finished. They are steadily releasing the books until the end.

He viewed them as gay lovers. Horus was his main squeeze and he didn't want to hurt that penis.

No he viewed the Primarchs as an 'experiment', an experiment that he ultimately deemed a failure long before he even met the primarchs in person.

He viewed them as fools.

I don't see how it would have any impact on anyone's game. I don't see why it had to be set in stone.

But the backstory is a bit better if he didn't.

That's a bit of a season-to-taste thing.
For some people, the Darkness of the Future is made better when they know there was a brief period of hope in the past that got ruined.
For others, they prefer knowing that there was never really a chance, and/or that the failures of the past were borne from their successes, or something along those lines.
Execution could be better, but that's a minor nitpick.
Though yeah, you're right - people really should keep the 'soft canon' mentality in mind more often with 40k.

In the most recent fluff, yes. In the context of the shared canon of the Horus Heresy novels and the attendant Primarch soap opera that much of Veeky Forums enjoys, yes.

Canon is flexible and changeable and goes through phases and fashions. If you prefer a less dickish Emperor; there are other slices of canon that may suit you better.

But the simple answer is "Yes". Early Horus Heresy novels showed hints of it; things that didn't make a lot of sense if he viewed them as sons; behaviour that seemed weird and unproductive. More recent novels have made it totally explicit and unambiguous (in the context of those novels and of that stream of canon).

I'm more worried about what it's being replaced with. If the Emperor is indeed impersonal and calculating, everything about the final confrontation fails to make sense.

You know, given how much Black Library usually likes to push the 'soft canon' angle, Goulding really comes across as kind of an asshole in that post.

Yes. Canonically yes. It's pretty much outright stated in Master of Mankind.

but did he pity them?

Only tbe shit ones like Angron and Magnus

it's because he is one. him and ADB are some of the worst parts about the heresy with projecting their headcanons and convoluted bullshit. I love ADB's prose but... fucking hell he has issues.

Master of Mankind was a mistake. The Emperor clearly called his Primarch sons to their faces or to Malcador in several other books. Notice how he only refers to the traitors in a derogatory fashion. Calling them by their number or simply refering to them as creatures.

Seriously, I don't want to hate the Heresy. I don't want to hate the idea of filling in gaps, or making things more ambiguous, or showing characters as flawed.
But there has to be a better way to do it.
I mean, I was making 'daddy issues' jokes about the HH before I even knew about ADB's upbringing. (And after finding out, I see no reason to stop - it doesn't make me feel guilty, it makes me feel justified.)

Explain his up bringing, i thought the daddy issue thing was just a meme.

>Also Laurie Goulding said that the HH is already finished
Not been following the series too much, did they already did the Siege on Terra?

Well, let's face it, it's entirely possible that Veeky Forums made this up, but apparently, his dad was an actual abusive alcoholic.
I give it like 64% chance of truth.

At least the former makes for a believable flaw, as even gods have fucked over parenthood more often than not.

The later just turns Emps into a drooling moron for not culling Angron and going "duuuur, what I do now?" when facing Horus.

Tools or sons?

I think the answer is both.

The Emperor was a human being, but despite his humanity he never seemed to have the impulse to create life. There's no mention of an Empress, or an imperial consort, or any female companions. No male companions, either, despite the attire (or lack thereof) of the Custodes later on.

In 70,000 years, the Emperor chose to create life twenty-one times. If he wanted sons, he would have sired them the conventional way, or adopted worthy men of talent like Malcador. If he wanted tools, a thousand generals of lesser power would have been more tractable and less erratic. And as the conquerer of the War of Union, the Emperor certainly could have led the Astartes alone, and ventured out at the head of a numberless army.

I think that the Emperor wanted to create an atheistic sort of pantheon -- a small group of identifiable beings that individual humans and Astartes could look up to, and venerate outside of themselves, and shape their image of the Emperor through their perspective. To primitives, Russ and Angron were the Emperor's wildness, and to the civilized Horus and Guilliman were the Emperor's brilliance. Each Primarch was an evangel to the wider galaxy, tailoring his message to the lost children of humanity as needed. Instead of the Emperor, he was a Father bringing his children home.

And maybe he started to see himself as that -- as Father, with Horus as his most beloved son.

After the Vengeful Spirit, the Emperor saw that humanity didn't need a ruler or a father. It needed a God. Gods are eternal, and distant, and have no use for sons. In order to be that God, the Emperor had to expel all humanity and compassion, and embrace the cold logic and iron will that let him conquer Terra in the beginning. Fathers don't slay their children. But a God can demand sacrifice, and drink rivers of blood in the name of keeping the monsters away.

Scientist. Conquerer. Father. God.

I am bumping this thread

>'soft canon' angle
>'soft canon'
Da hell does that even mean?

It means ignore the bits you think are dumb or contradict bits you like

To be fair it sounds like personal relationships are something he doesn't quite get, the female perpetual loathed him, Grammaticus was afraid of him and Ollanius found his lack of empathy (at one point the Emperor and he meet, he is mourning his family and the Emperor essentially says ''who cares? you're immortal there will be plenty of time for as many families as you want!'').

He's so powerful that even his memories as a young child show him as being very detached from others, he just doesn't get why other people need to seek comfort in people and things.

Girlyman flat out states that the Emps didnt think of the Primarchs as sons only as tools. And that he had no love for them. He only called them sons to cultivate loyalty...which worked out well

Big E probably viewed them as sons in the beginning, with how he treated them during the Great Crusade. I mean, he had a drinking contest with Russ and everything, you don't do that with a tool. But 10,000 years probably stripped him of fatherly love.

To be fair, that's after 10,000 years of mind crushing agony and torture, and as a corpse.

I would unironically fuck the Emperor's corpse.

>Horny Sororitas spotted!

I thought the female one liked him? I may have to re-read Vengeful Spirit, but I recall her talking somewhat highly of him, and even willingly stayed behind to close that warp rift if needed (which she promptly failed to do when it was time).

Yeah but Girlyman isn't a perfect narrator: he's looking for someone to blame for the mess the Imperium has become and he has had issues with daddy for some time now. His adopted father was less autistic, so of course space dad was disappointing in that regard. You'll also note that he acknowledges that Emps may well be insane after all this time but then just takes his spin on their psychic conversation as the whole story. He also blames Emps alone for Magnus falling when that was a result of the manipulation of Horus, the retardation of Russ, and the prideful disobedience of Magnus alongside the Emperors miscalculation.

Robooty Girlyman's inferiority complex really is showing isn't it? God I want him to die or fall or something.

He'll get his ass kicked by Morty, making him 0-4 against his brothers he fought, then go back to Ultramar with his not!Legion. I just wish Vulkan or Khan or hell even Lion el comes back and calls him out on that shit.

I hope the Lion wakes up so Chaos can torturemurder the shit out of him. That is, if he really was loyal to begin with.

Rumours of Sanguinius are pretty big right now - revival of the fallen Angel to battle against his brother is an interesting idea. Especially with Girlyman's daemons constantly taunting him inside his brain. Plus there was that whole 'two primarchs will come back, one will be a traitor and the other will fight him' prophecy too.

The problem with his Master of Mankind chat with Land is that while he refers to Angron by his number, when he's talking with a Custodes, he's calling Horus by his name and using "he" rather than "it" when he has absolutely no reason to bother doing so unless he does actually see him as a person.

So it seems puzzling. I tend to go with the headcanon of both: yes, they were tools, he made them to reconquer the galaxy as warlords after all, not because he was hankering for a family get together. He has shit that needs to get done, and he's on a timetable to do it. But he DID like some of them, such as his blatant favouritism of Dorn for example. Of course, some he never really cared about as much, often those who seemed obsessed with doing the opposite of what he wanted, like Lorgar. But even then, he still gave them an absurd number of second chances, where if they're just tools and they're broken or keep fucking up, had he truly been cold and callous he'd have just deleted them. A tool that can't do its job isn't worth keeping.

So it depends.

A lot of opinion here considering that this is the first and only information that is had about the entire scenario.
A lot of what you are hedging on is old lore that is being drastically rewritten even as we speak, and serves little besides trying to keep tg's Guilliman hatemongering alive.

Guilliman also admits that Emps was right to do so, and immediately compares it with how he himself doesn't really like his current day Ultramarines or explicitly what he refers to as Cawl's blasphemous hordes: the Primaris are tools, not sons.

So he lies, like his father. And in doing so, he understands why. Guilliman still winds up liking some of the Ultras, of course, but if he has to spend their lives then he will. Very like the Emperor, except replace "Custodes" with "Ultramarines".

Guilliman is also not in the best of mental states.

Loyalty is its own reward, chaosfag.

>But even then, he still gave them an absurd number of second chances
Which makes you wonder what the hell the two missing Primarchs did that caused Emps to delete them...

They were a little and a rockfucker?

>a little and a rockfucker?
Wot?

ADB WUZ A GUD BOI HE FID NUTHIN RONG

Him being unhappy with the way the Imperium turns out or his pre-emps family being one of the best isn't old lore. I don't hate Gillie suit. I'd probably put it all on Emps too honestly because a lot of it was his short-sightedness and being surrounded by people insisting he's a god must be horrible. He's awfully human for something they treat like a supposed demi-god.

That ADB again, if you read The Last Church the Emperor is basically 'subtly' painted as exactly this kind of Hypocrite

Post quotes so that us poorfags may read.

It's written down already. Just need to get around to release it.

No, LG doesn't support this.

Horus curnstomps the Emperor (who isn't holding back). Horus gets stabbed with the true anathme by Olly leaving him exposed to the Emperor's attack.

user, the book is available for free in the usual places.

I think of him as like a Pagent mom but with way better motives

Maybe not "tools" per say but close enough. Emperor was an extremely good leader in all sense of the word, but he was really shitty at actually understanding people, which is probably what ultimately caused his plans to fail.

Here you go user. Have a pdf.

Reminder that the Primarch of the Ultramarines, gene-father and spiritual liege, thinks Cato Sicarius is an arrogant twat.

that there's a basic plot but don't take the details for word of god because they'll probably just change it all anytime they feel like it.

>LG doesn't support this.
And who made that arrogant asshole the spokesman of Black Library?

Most definitely. But he probably also genuinely loved his tools.

When GW elected him as chief editor of the HH and FW's HH.

Well I guess girlyman isn't all bad then.

Guilliman's chapters are some of the best in the book just because of all his internal monologues of "not muh" as he reacts to all the shit in the 41st millennium.

>wants his Legion back, not the hero-worshipping Chapter
>hates Ecclesiarchy, wants Imperial Truth and has to keep his mouth shut
>cringes internally every time the Tech Priests start praising the Omnissiah
>wants Greater Ultramar back
>Custodes were better in his time
>wants his brothers back, or at least some of them

He almost comes off as a cranky old Primarch shouting at the young kids to get off his lawn.

He loved His tools until Chaos whisked 19 of them away. Since then, He has always favored Horus as His own, and viewed the other 19 as 'less' for being in the keeping of others.

There were some He did view with potential, some who would have a place in the new future of mankind: chief among them Dorn, Guilliman, and Magnus.

Guilliman's chapters are really the only reason to read the otherwise disappointingly average book. The Mortarion chapters were just a pleasant surprise.

I'm still peeved at how Guilliman was adamantly against reusing the Primaris sons of the traitors and the [REDACTED]. He took in a chapter of Iron Warriors, and he witnessed the Second Founding where loyalist traitors earned the right to fight on as their own independent chapters. There should have been a better explanation for his reluctance, such as the idea that Cawl's laboratory cannot account for factors in the field - where the Primaris Marines will be constantly exposed to their erstwhile "brothers" and to the truth of the traitor legions.

My guess is that he's worried because the chapter of Iron Warriors and Second Founding is reasonably small scale. The Primaris marines, though? Cawl pumped out tens upon tens of thousands of what are ALREADY "blasphemous hordes", I can see why he might not want to push that further right now and create potentially dozens of chapters of them.

That said, the book also confirms that all gene-lines now have the full array of implants back to their use, plus some Chapters should already be receiving Primaris reinforcements even though they're already from Traitor gene-stock (e.g. Minotaurs, Blood Ravens, Silver Skulls, Death Eagles). Otherwise it'll be a "why aren't these chapters getting them, what's up with their gene-seed that they can't have Primaris" problem for him to deal with.

So it's up in the air, especially since Cawl both has access to that gene-seed and Guilliman knows he'll probably ignore the order to not use it.

>space marine
>not canon

It's really good, fuck you

Cawl will eventually start pumping them out en masse...thats the only way GW will justify squatting minimarines and having chaos primaris marines. Altho it probably wont happen for a long time yet considering they're releasing all new CSM in mini size

The new chaos from the last two starter sets are a good half head to full head taller than other normal marines

so they are running with them being additionally enhanced wth Chaos power, and thus the Primaris are just evening the field

Its implied what happened to them was more of a tragic accident and he deleted their records to not have a bitter reminder. The other primarchs tend to speak fondly of them

So will this become the new status quo or is GW going to push the metaplot forward more, with more primarchs getting involved and the eldar Gods resolving wutever is happening over there.

>. Also Laurie Goulding said that the HH is already finished. They are steadily releasing the books until the end.

I hope the siege of Terra starts next year.

It's a Heretical Tome.

Only a few bits are really non canon, like squats being in it and the Fists having all of dorn's skeleton

No, the whole book was stamped with the Heretical Tome. It's straight out removed from the canon.

To be fair BL are shit writers and useless at keepoing their IP going
Also he's old user, he's probably lost so many people he no longer cares

I'm actually not too far into 40k lore and I've never read the books. I got into it from a friend teaching me about it and playing only war and deathwatch. I want to read this but can anyone tell me if I'd be able to understand everything with only the overall knowledge of the lore?

Here's what you need to know:

>Failbaddon the Armless launches Black Crusade
>Fucks up Cadia, Eye of Terror massively expands to encompass a lot of the galaxy
>Cadian survivors, an Imperial Saint and Eldar Booty Babe, join forces with FOR SCIENCE Mechanicum archmagos
>together, they will fight crime
>go to Macragge
>they're going to wake up Rowboat Gorillaman from his stasis field and heal him
>Failbaddon the Armless proceeds to fuck up stopping said Primarch's return
>Robby G.man goes to Terra
>becomes Imperial Regent and Lord Commander of the Imperium
>declares Indomitus Crusade against massive Chaos incursion and shit
>has 50000+ Primaris Space Marines for his Crusade
>crusades for 100 years

And that's the basic overview.

thanks man.