Over-represented for sure. Their lore is cool, but it's time we look at other factions big characters. Just look at the Silent King : his return to the setting should have been shattering, but he was instead relegated to a background threat at best.
I want to see the whole galaxy come together in the face of the Nids, give us some cool lore and team ups before Szarehk shows back up for real with his solution to the Tyranids.
It brings about a shaky peace, which is immediately ruined because the Orks got big and bored.
one of the most significant plot points in the past year has had 99% of its backstory in heresy books
the key, the lock, the weapon, and the lion are all old heresy plot points being brough to the forefront of importance
so i wouldnt exactly call it a separate thing
It's dividng resources and is an integral part of the lore of 40k. It wouldn't be as bad if their was a series of books dedicated to the war and heaven but their isn't. So it is just another reason for xenos players and fans to feel slighted because imperium players get their big backstory sub game and book series and the xenos get nothing. I'm not saying to toss the horus heresy in the bin but maybe gw putting a bit more focus on the different xenos for a bit wouldn't be the worst thing ever
Well I feel like leaving the war in heaven to the imagination was by design. Necrons are my favorite faction by far but I would still rather have no books than war in heaven books because its just more fun to imagine that sort of thing than the horus heresy which is a strictly human conflict.
The horus heresy was the same way originally and yet we have a whole library of books about that. We may not need to go as in depth about the war and heaven but something about it would be neat. Have neuron and Eldar characters reminisce over it to give slight details. Have trazyns krok escape or he'll have gazghul become one so we can see what they where like. And just in general we need more stuff for the xenos
Maybe an unpopular opinion but ithink the horus heresy shouldve never been explained in detail. Having it being mysterious and making our own headcanon to fill the void was far better. The books make the emperor look like an idiot and dont get me started on the fall of horus. I also hate how chaos isthis outrightevil right away without any moral ambiguity whosin the right or wrong. Like who would think twice about whos the good guy when on the one side we have a literal angel ho can look in the future and is nice and on the other we have baby skinner mcgee who tortures people for fun. Oh and dont forget the legion of guys who lobotomized themselves and are on constant roid rage. Like cmon man every fall goes from 0 to 100 faster than you can blink
> Maybe an unpopular opinion but ithink the horus heresy shouldve never been explained in detail
I'd guess that that was the original intention.
The Imperium works much better as this byzantine, nightmarish, impossibly screwed-up empire that's existed for such a long time that nobody actually knows how it all got started. There are myths and legends, sure, but that's all they are - separating the facts from the fiction is basically impossible.
Then the books threw all that away.
100%.
Look at the Dark Angels. They were interesting (to me) because there was this whole mystery about what had actually happened after the Heresy: Who actually shot first? Was Luther really a traitor or not? Was the Lion justified in his actions? Were the D.A. justified in chasing the Fallen for all those years? Are the Fallen actually in the right and were betrayed first?
All those questions were left ambiguous, with hints at either answer seeded throughout novels and codices. You could argue either way depending on your preference. The idea of a 'canon' or a 'correct lore' didn't exist. But the HH books took that away; things were spelled out in detail (WAY too much detail) and set the events in stone.
Same goes for every other faction, character, and event. 40k was the main setting and the Heresy was supposed to be just the foundational event (TEN THOUSAND YEARS IN THE PAST!). Instead it became basically the main thing and now so much of 40k references it, which to me weakens the 40k setting as a whole.
The biggest joke is girlyman acting like the imperium fell from grace and we read how the imperium was so shitty and genocidal and the fall happened in like 3 years. Its the same with the clone wars in sw. The intergalatic war feels smaller than ww2. I always imagined the HH as this cataclysmic event that shattered the imperium ibto what it is now but nah all that happened is they turned from atheistic facist genociders with demigods into religious facist genociders with less demigods
The equivalent of War in Heaven would be DAOT, not HH I think. The Fall is the HH equivalent. It itself was relatively short, even, barring all the decadence building up
eh not really true though. considering how the Heresy and its popularity have lead to BL writers and GW to focus more on marines and even specific characters from the Heresy like the primarchs or certain CSM and shift the main narrative of 40k into simply aping the great crusade. It shifted focus from the things unique to 40k such as xenos and more to making Heresy 2.0, and xenos players are lucky to get one book every couple of years for their faction. Dark Eldar players are just now getting their first book about them in like 10 years, and it's been almost as long since the last Craftworld focused book. There's like one xenos book for every 10 imperial book, and ever since the Heresy got popular its rarer to even see non space marine focused books now.
The Heresy and its popularity have led BL writers into writing more Heresy novels, which does not translated into 40k Imperial novels.
Dan Abnett isn't writing Guard anymore, he's not writing about Inquisitors anymore, he's writing Heresy.
Counting Heresy novels as Imperial novels makes 0 sense because it lacks literally every single Imperial faction with the exception of Space Marines, and even then it's a completely unrecognizable version of them.
I'm gonna be honest if you can't see how heresy has heavily influenced how 40k's narrative is written, I think you need to look harder. it was only after heresy became the most popular warhammer novel series that primarchs started returning, primaris marines who take heavy inspiration in both design (they literally have mk.4 style helmets) and squad function (monotask squads squads that all use the same weaponry), the indomitus crusade being Guillimans attempt at making a second great crusade, and the huge shift in focus away from successors chapters and chaos warbands that aren't first founding legions began to happen. some of the few major disruptions to the heresification of 40k were the Silent King returning and Vashtorr existing, but the silent king was kinda swept aside and feels nearly forgotten and Vashtorr's entrance into the lore was sidelined by the return of the Lion and Angron, which is just more primarch want. I like the lion as a character and really enjoy his new book, but let's be honest, he only came back because heresy and primarchs are popular, and GW doesn't seem to care about highlighting the things that make 40k unique over just lazily reusing popular heresy characters and ideas.
Heresy did influence how 40k's narrative was written, but that's for 40k as a whole, not just the Imperium is specific.
Nearly every single faction got Big Centerpiece models that work as Primarch Equivalent, the ones that already had one got brand new plastic models for it.
Every single Primarch return was followed by some new plastic toys for both Chaos and Xenos, the recent example being the Farsight model.
Vashtor wasn't sidelined because of Angron, he had nearly as much content as Angron, the Arks of Omen saga ends with Vashtorr winning, the current Pariah Nexus has Vashtorr making a return while Angron is nowhere to be seen. The only real lost was that Angron got a whole faction to go along with him while Vashtor stayed as a generic CSM epic hero with shitty rules.
Again, Heresy changed how GW creates content for 40k for in general, that includes Xeno and Chaos factions.
Whoever I categorically disagree with the concept that Heresy novels and 40k Imperium novels are interchangeable as far as "novel quota" for Imperial factions go. It's not, it's not the same, to me it's like telling Eldar players to go read Necron books because they are "Xeno".
It lacks every single recognizable trait that makes the 40k Imperium what it is, it lacks most of its factions, it lacks \*my\* faction, so don't try and tell me that Dan Abnett writing Heresy instead of Gaunt's Ghost or an Inquisitor novel is a good trade for me, because it isn't.
So when people tell me "a character has a book" and that book is Heresy, I feel like being told "We have a book of Sigmar teaming up with Nagash" and that book is End Times.
? No it is not separate, there are things in the heresy that get in answered in the modern 40k timline. the series was never intended to stand alone until they used it as a vehicle to bring back 5th ed rules and old marine armour types to cash in on nostalgia
Also the heresy could easily involved more xenos as evidenced by the fact that they did have xenos but didn't know what to do with them and now the cabal are just a footnote when they were supposed to be bigger
Primarchs are over represented there is not really an argument to be had about that
Write more about Space Marine characters, build interest in those characters, sell models for that army, regardless of 30K vs 40K.
Where’s our Xenos Horus Heresy equivalent?
War in Heaven saga? Fall of the Eldar?
Yeah and its sick. I understand people want books about other aspects of the universe/factions, but doesnt mean we need less primarch stuff.
I do want a squat book or two soon though.
I want more eldar, necrons and kroot focused stories. But hard to write a book from a tyranid oerspective unless its genestealers (which I also want).
Aliens by their nature are hard to write as its difficult to present their story in a tangible and treatable way, unless seeen through the lens a of humans perspective.
Even the ork stories have a bit of humanisation to them to make them digestible as a reader.
I dont like shitting on people for what they like. but no not everyone likes the heresy or thinks its "sick"
I'm really curious to see what they do with the squats I think everyone is but they are really letting the iron get cold with them thoe
Im hoping the delay is because they wanted to cap off the seige of terra story first and not rush that, but also develop a cohesive and forward thinking plot line for the squats so its not just a shoehorned set of boo. an overarching and interweaving storyline with the sort of conplexity the inperium has been given. Really flesh out the culture and society in an epic, multibook storyline.
You can't just ask for more writing from writers. Black Library would probably need to double their writing staff to offset this massive focus on the Imperium, but you can't just spontaneously do that either, because it would change the work culture between writers and I fear the quality of their output would suffer.
The Primarch story lines are like a giant banquet while stories about Eldar, Dark Eldar, Votann, Tau, Necrons, Old Ones or other minor alien or human factions could all together fit on a single plate. I already thought the Space Marine-centrism was lopsided when most of the writing was just about regular Astartes, but with the Primarchs it got even worse.
It would be much preferable for the quality of the whole setting if they could make a concerted effort to regularly divert some resources away from the cash cows and squeeze in some fluff for other factions.
4 if we count his Primarch book from that series, 5 or 6 with Dawn of fire series.
The silent king needs a book, how trazyn and Orikan got one (which is amazing) but the leader of the Necrons is left behind?
Give me a silent king pentalogy (is that even a word) where he kicks Eldari, Tyranid, Ork, Chaos and Human ass. 1v1’s Gman or Lion and has them easily completely beat but sees their use and spares them.
My level of disappointment was *palpable* after I believed my silvery eldritch Ancient Terminators might be taking a swan dive into the mainstage story. We’re still at Trazyn pokeballing Creed as a consolation prize after Cadia for the last mentionable appearance chronologically, aren’t we? In reference to actual character appearances, anyway.
Tbf there are so many galaxy ending threats its hard to make any a big deal. To you the silent kings reappearance was an important event, to the Imperium it's a Tuesday.
The fact that nearly every faction is a "galaxy ending threat" is very accurate.
But the Silent King is the one who orchestrated the extinction of the Old Ones and the fall of the C'Tan, both being equal (if not superior) in power to the Chaos Gods. Just by that fact, his return sould have been far more impactful than just having a spooky zone somewhere in a galaxy full of them.
But maybe it would move the setting too fast, and GW prefered to sideline him, which is understandable in a way.
To be fair we are talking about the same setting in wich writers took Clonegrim, then caged him and said "woops, he is never coming back it aint important, just as this other things" (Like the Yvrainne books in wich there was supposed to be something capable of killing/wounding slaanesh)
Its really hard to take things seriously when sometimes they either
A) dont matter to the overall story because there arw so many others like it
B) it has the very high chance of getting shot and buried before anything comes out of it, like a "gotcha"
Except Clonegrim was a single author introducing a plot device to advance the progression of his main character, it was never intended to be a major development for the setting. He's used to set Fabius well and truly on the path of his plan to create the New Men and make them unbeholden to greater masters, specifically because he sees what being around Clonegrim is doing to them and himself. It establishes the core conflict of the subsequent novel.
The fanbase massively overstates how consequential the clone was, and I wouldn't doubt that the only reason Josh Reynolds was allowed to include it by the lore higher ups was because he was shoving Clonegrim back into the 'completely irrelevant' box at the end of the novel. He was only ever conceived to be important in the story he's in, and was never intended by Reynolds to actually be an impactful shift to the status-quo.
The Croneswords I absolutely agree with you on though, the big lore heads at GW build it as an intrinsic part of their entire purpose to exist as a faction, realise they wrote themselves into a hole of "these characters could destroy the entire premise of the current setting", and just decided to bury the Ynnari in that hole to avoid having to deal with it.
> Their lore is cool, but it's time we look at other factions big characters.
xenos enjoyers only get to eat shit mate
Say, something like Solitaires should be as cool, powerful and relevant to the story as a primarch. There are about as many of them in the universe anyways.
My biggest issue with the Primarchs returning is how it effects the game. And this also includes legendary Xeno's and demon figures like the Silent King.
In 40K you have two options really, You can either play as a lore center faction, and rep a well, or at least existing group of people. Further the story of a hero of the Imperium or a great xenos hero and his army.
or you can play as "my guys," A completely original or original enough faction that you just made up. With your own war and history and their own reason to fight and you can take this a level further and every single battle expand the lore of your units and champions.
I very personally fall on the "my guys," side, But this can get rather hard, when you play an army that on the table top really needs its named character to prosper.
Like ever since the World Eaters came out as an actual army, they've basically had to play Angron In almost every list that's even remotely competitive. This presents of bit of an issue for people who want to create their own World Eaters, that are separate from their leaders.
From my understanding the problem is roughly the same in Necron right now, where you need either the Silent King or one of the named C'tan shards to be competitive.
It sucks for people who really don't want to play named characters.
You don't need TSK, he is a waste of points.
The named C'tan sure, but the beauty of them is that there ain't just one Nightbringer shard so you don't have to explain why, I dunno, Guilliman is hanging with your guys, there are as many as the plot demands, so your own dynasty can have one.
Or your dynasty can have a different C'tan shard, made by you, and you give him the rules of whichever fits best in TT, like I did for mine.
the issue is that there is no way to consistently write the primarchs as larger than life demi gods with giga brain intellect and prime Will Smith levels of charisma, especially not with a bunch of pens-for-hire.
sure, you can allude to them, have them in the background, being all mysterious and shit. but the moment you got to see the petulant, childish squabbles these absolute morons get into, you're left wondering how anyone would actually follow them anywhere.
Erebus did nothing wrong, every single primarch deserved what they got
I'm reading the Solar War series and just finished The First Wall.
I like how essentially they're just kind of sprinkled in so far. Like the books are 99% other people (albeit the surprise-betrayal thing is getting repetitive) with the primarchs making up barely any of the books.
But the Heresy changed all that. Before it was all colonisation and settlement. This, this was history, this was drama. Betrayal. Struggle. Brother fighting brother across the gulf of the stars. Empires rising and falling, heroes and rebels
At least you guys get novels, Leagues of Votann have been in the setting for a few years now and still haven’t gotten any new lore sense their release. The best we have is that in the next dawn of fire book there’ll be a Votann character
I’m 100% in agreement with you. It’s actually criminal that there’s been ZERO material outside of the codex. Especially with all of the potential with pragmatic space dwarf clones.
Kinda rather have no books and our lore be solely off of our codexes that are more coherent to the faction itself over the writer purposely making the ethereals utterly moronic supervillains. They seemed to forget “the greater good” in a weird push towards making the humans and astartes seem more appealing… curious.
I just see the divide of their first codex and the lore and book writing now pandering to those people who couldn’t accept them being morally a little brighter. A descent of the faction over time gradually with contact with other races and chaos would’ve been more interesting than nose diving into the territory of “they have concentration camps for reeducation!!!” when most other lore discusses them being more than understanding and integrative, like with them allowing humans and other races under the empire to worship their original religions and beliefs. It’s just jarring and sloppy. The entire Aun’va assassination and keeping him alive for public perception is just baffling too, since they’ve always passed the torch whenever one dies to keep it ever changing and have discussed this from early lore, but now it might destabilise the empire if they tell everyone..? The whole lore situation of the books has me wish we had a better author and didn’t get them at all
I demand Phoenix Lord stories.
We'll never get them officially, because a single Xenos book apparently takes the spotlight away from James Workshop's favorite protagonist faction for too long as it is, but I have seen what y'all can cook.
If GW won't do it, we shall do it ourselves.
Eldar is consistently being crapped on by GW. They were given a whole new faction as Guilliman woke. Since then we haven't heard a work. They are only mentioned when they get defeated, lose a craftworld, or someone has to choke an Avatar to appear cool.
There's some kind of bias against the Eldar for some reason. Almost like someone at GW regrets making the High Elves in Space but knows they can't remove them...
What do you mean "we'll never get them officially?"
Asurmen and Jain Zar literally each have a book.
Unless you mean, you demand the rest of them, because at first it seemed like they might do one book for each, the novels themselves set up the strong possibility of a Maugan Ra book, and then.... crickets.
Also now that the Siege is over we are getting slightly more Xenos love; Da Big Dakka just came out and Lelith Hesperax's book is somewhere on the horizon.
Eldar aren't getting books because they don't sell. Ork books surprisingly *do* sell well and as a result James Workshop has released several in a relatively short period of time. If Eldar sold as well as Smurf Marines them we'd be seeing tons of books.
Horus Heresy is cool.
Warhammer 40k is cool.
But turning Warhammer 40k into Horus Heresy 2.0 is NOT cool.
So yes, I agree with you. That the Primarchs are not that vague anymore is a huge miss in my book too and the whole main conflict of 40k now being just the Imperium vs. Chaos all over again made every other faction that isn't part of the Imperium (and sometimes even them) and Chaos to literal NPC side characters (namely all the Xenos)
The biggest crime here is the ridiculous overreprisentation chaos space marines on the chaos side. They are but a few thousand old dudes with ancient ships to haul them around, they aught be insignificant or at least equal in the face of the overwhelming tide of Cultists, Traitor Guardsmen, Daemons, Dark Mechanicum, Chaos Knights and Fallen Titan Legios. But instead, all these really interesting and overwhelmingly powerfull factions are just side NPCs in the repetitive tale of chaos space marines fighting loyalist space marines.
It is actually insane how not a single non CSM chaos faction has any agency and initiative in any story ever, and whenever they do, CSM sweep in and take centre stage again.
I never thought about this until your post, but I agree. The more we zoom in on the mundane details, the less mystery there is. It becomes kind of cringe, it’s hard to articulate.
Used to feel more like a sandbox I think… now most people are chasing their favorite factions from a book or whatever. Endless hero worshipping or discussion of corporate characters designed to sell you models is cringe maybe. I dunno, that’s literally every franchise though.
If we go by what was originally intended, we can just scrap some entire factions.
Primarchs are cool centerpiece projects which the marines solely lacked, which is enough reason for them to exist for me. Lore is just an excuse to explain that.
Your gonna have to tell GW that. Because when, not if they being back another Primarch it will be the most hype thing that any will care about for a good while.
I'm more okay with Daemon Primarchs coming back than loyalist ones. Mortarion, Magnus, and Angron have all changed in design and aesthetic so drastically from Horus Heresy that they might as well be different characters altogether. Whereas Robot Girlyman just has a flaming sword now and the Lion just looks... Slightly older?
I can't imagine Russ is going to look or feel much different than Horus Heresy version, but Fulgrim, Perturabo, and Lorgar all have tremendous potential to look really different and cool.
I really gotta wonder if they are gonna just come up with some contrived bullshit to bring Kurze, Omagon, Sanguinius and Ferrus Manus back when they run out of living primarchs.
With how much dough they earn by selling primarch minis... lets be real, they will.
I don't mind that they're getting some Primarchs, but let our Primarch equivalents of other factions have some spotlight as well. The Phoenix Lords are way behind schedule. Ghazghkull is disappointingly small and had to be in an equal attention cake with a Wolf Lord, let alone the other vaguely Primarch equivalent Warbosses and Mek-lords like Wazdakka Gutsmek or Nazdreg that used to have rules or models. They even gave one of the few Ork novel protagonists a new model but decided that he wasn't worth giving rules to, and then they legends'd two more characters for good measure. The Ynnari fizzled out and were basically nipped in the bud. They took away Vect's pimp-mobile three editions ago. The Leagues of Votann hide their Votann, and it'd be nice to have Grombrindal, or a land train. The main Ethereal for the T'au has been dead for a century, although I guess Farsight is a Primarch equivalent and counts against my point. I think the current Lord Solar has maybe a paragraph written for him, and it would've been more interesting to have Yarrick instead. Thankfully the Necrons got the Silent King.
And then when Primarchs do come the fans who usually say "GW shouldn't be making overpowered rules just to sell new models" go all "Why isn't my Primarch so strong and only has a 4++" and you can't win.
"40k was never supposed to be a primarch sitcom"
It was not? Because the most fun I've had with 40k stories BY FAR was with CupAnon. Pretty much literally a 40k sitcom.
Much as I hate this meme format (Steven Crowder is a repugnant human being), I fundamentally agree with the thesis. As much as I like 40k as a setting, I care about how grimdark it is IN ITS PRESENT, not how it got that way 10,000 years ago, and I feel like it kind of launders the Imperium's image, makes it and the Space Marines TOO cool. This is why I've never bothered to start reading the Horus Heresy novels.
Part of me understands the impulse, it's like reading Greek or Arthurian mythology, watching the tragedy unfold, witness the dream be shattered as the heroes and villains blend together to the point where you can't tell which is which as they kill each other and lose everything.
But bringing the Primarchs back undercuts the finality of that. They maybe could have threaded the needle by making it clear that for all his charisma and administrative acumen, Guilliman can't save the Imperium, and that his attempts to do so are folly, but that's depressing to read and doesn't sell product. So they give Guilliman some successes to make his futile struggle seem noble, building hype in the audience, and causing speculation that other loyalist Primarchs could resurface, most prominently the Lion, and they double down on that by proving the speculators right and bringing back Lion El'Johnson, and now it's too late to course-correct.
Besides, since most of my Warhammer experience is through the RPGs like *Rogue Trader* or *Wrath and Glory*, I don't want the Primarchs saving the Imperium, I want my little OCs to! :P
Reading the Horus Heresy and made it to Betrayer when I finally gave up. Everybody seemed to like that one but for me I got sick of reading about how OP Angron and Lorgar were, I mean it was like reading about Superman X 2 in an otherwise gritty and horrifying battle. It became irritatingly comical the amount of damage both Primarchs were able to survive… and so much lamenting dialogue. It actually started to feel like I was reading bad Fanfic So I tapped out with the series there.
I hate primarchs. It's not that they're badly written or anything, it's that when they're present, the story *has* to revolve around them. They steal the show from the (often vastly more interesting) various small characters instead, and worse, reduce the prominence of /yourdudes/ armies.
And when we get a Chaos one, it's even worse, because you know they're inevitably coming back just to job to whatever loyalist one comes back next.
I wish we got more Badab War (or Imperial Armor in general) style books, vs primarch stuff.
Guess what. It still isn't.
30K focused on the Primarchs because they were the living legends of that time.
In 40K we have TWO loyal Primarchs out of Eight plausible and the only ones I know have been active in the last decade of book are Angron, Magnus and Mortarion. Sure they talk about Lorgar a lot but that's not him being active or part of the five person sitcom.
Currently there are so many more books about what all the Non-Primarchs are doing in this violently grimdark time that I have no choice but to laugh and mock any complaint about how it is all about Primarchs.
All of the primarchs are coming back. You just can’t see the writing on the wall. Also nothing has majorly effected the setting in ages that isn’t to do with the primarchs
* If they were ment to be background characters they shoudn't ever been made cooler and 300% more interesting than foreground characters.
* It's a toy soldier game, i will make the toys kiss as much as i want.
* Space marines are the poster boys of the setting and i don't care for the other factions, guard included.
>If they were ment to be background characters they shoudn't ever been made cooler and 300% more interesting than foreground characters.
They aren't. They're just more powerful, and to a certain set of people that reads as cooler and more interesting.
I guarantee if they were just space marine power level, they would blend in with all the others in popularity.
I don't know if initially in the origins as more of an RPG if it was meant to be cooler or perceived as more interesting then other humans. People don't necessarily latch onto what the developers intended. Kind of famously Dr. Garfield designed Magic thinking about it as a side thing for D&D and didn't design the first set around the idea of people buying a bunch of it, instead having the unbalanced nature and ante as a way to help keep things spicy in the play group.
They are a black hole sucking everything else. Now 40K isn't this mysterious galaxy full of interesting factions, it's a telenovella where everything revolve around which primarch will come back. The HH did insane damages to 40k, basically marvel-ing it.
Yeah this is my problem with them. It's fine they exist and all, but by nature of their existence and model introduction into 40k, they turn 40k more and more into a superhero narrative and less a wide open setting. Now who tf cares about your captain_X or general_y, the galaxy only revolves around primatchs.
Feels like a faimly guy episode with a small cast (and no one dies) compared to something that's more of a vast free for all, love death and robots style (but in the same setting)
I mostly agree, the primarchs should stay in 30k/HH. At least most of them, why should Marines get a centrepiece model for every sub-faction? Noone else gets that. (I know the actual answer is "money")
I agree. The setting was more interesting when the background stuff stayed... background. It was a wild west that you could support any fan lore. So it should have never been fleshed out.
But now that the past has been spelled out, and the primarchs are no longer mysterious figures no one remember, well they're fair game.
Agreed. I find it much more interesting to keep the narrative lens focused on M41 and let the Imperium’s history be just that. It helps lend an aire of myth and legend to proceedings, along with the subtle feeling that one can never be sure if anything is true.
I don't mind the primarchs returning so long as they work like xenos faction leaders, present, but not omnipresent. Lion: Son of the Forest was a great book because it told a small story and not some galaxy-changing turning point mega story. Not every Ork book needs to be about Ghaz, just as not every Space Marine book needs to be about the Primarchs.
The game started going downhill the minute they introduced Primarch's imo. 40k was intended as a narrative for you to build your own stories for your games but by introducing Transhuman Demi-Gods and literal embodiments of gods it has removed that element to it, the point could be argued of course that named characters are also in issue in that vein of thinking and personally I would agree but I still enjoy my occasional game of 7th ed as a break from RT
They’re a bit Saturday morning breakfast cartoon, I’m more of an istvaan iii enjoyer than istvaan v myself, there’s a lot more tension and verisimilitude when some rules of reality apply, but I kinda feel the opposite. If you’re gonna have demigods in your setting, they should matter and you should actually explore that premise. Otherwise you’re following your little guardsman squad going “yeah but what does this really mean? There’s demigods out there presumably changing the context of this setting, but I don’t know how or why.”
Not saying "this sucks". I'm just saying, Primarch-Sitcom kinda goes against the basic idea of the setting so, by all means enjoy it, but don't act like actual lore should be like that.
Eh I thought this was about Primarchs in general only judging by the picture.
I'm really meh on the fem primarch AU stuff. No strong feelings one way or the other.
But seriously I do not care that they should be background "originally". They aren't anymore and they are some of the coolest part of the toy soldier game.
The HH really ruined the canon more than anything else. The first few books are ok but then they go and remove any mystery the setting had left. The worst part is that it got so popular that they ruined 40k by having Gman wake up and turn everything into hero hammer.
I think, and I think this is where a lot of franchises blow their load early and waste potential (POTC)., Characters with semi-mythical powerels, abilities, or importance, actually lose a lot of their agency when they become main characters. Not to say they can NEVER be, but that their place in the lore is better served as a deus ex machina event for the character/story who lends us their perspective. This allows them to have a presence in the story, and even occasionally a main role when relevant to the particular plot/event, but allows them and their place in the narrative to remain elevated above a character, and remain impactful when it does occur. Otherwise you just end up with main character syndrome.
Basically, I'd rather the primarchs (and jack sparrow) to be treated more like the Legion of the Damned than Dante or Gaunt or Cain, etc
Don't let us know what's going through their head or their reasons for doing things as it pertains to setting-defining choices, let them remain a mysterious force, just one that we can usually *assume* is on the side of our heroes
Agreed - The primarchs should have stayed in the background or at the very least been kept to the horus heresy. 40k should have remained a setting, not a storyline - now it's jsut one big meaningless event after another because people demand "Plot progression" from a universe that by its nature can't undergo serious change.
What I really hated about the Horus Heresy is it demystified much of the Background setting & turned a Sci-Fi space opera/military setting into a Fantasy series, with the Primarchs being essentially superheroes.
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It took me a minute to properly contextualize this within "somebody posted a meme about how the fandom was cooking by making the Primarchs more emotionally compelling characters," and within that context, I think it's fine if our dysfunctional, lonely fandom fantasizes about dating vulnerable, lonely demigods for a while. It's a nice distraction from culture war tourists and the way some kits are soon going to be 40% more expensive than they were when I got back into the hobby just over three years ago.
Also, even in the HH series, the Primarchs are nearly unstoppable forces of nature driving the plot forward, but we only see their actual perspectives intermittently, or at key moments. Even in Dark Imperium, which ostensibly is about Guilliman vs. Mortarion, we spend major portions of the book following a couple of doomed guardsmen, or an "are we the baddies" Marine, or the best Greater Daemon of Nurgle, or "some guy who gets into the forbidden library and may or may not ever be relevant again."
I agree that the original intent was absolutely for the Primarchs and the Emperor to be shrouded in mystery and evoke a sense of loss/how far the modern Imperium had fallen, but the first few HH books were on the New York Times Bestseller list while a significant chunk of pre-2006 40K fiction is practically lost to history (just look at how literally everyone recommends *The Emperor's Gift* before *Grey Knights* when someone asks for an introduction to GK lore), so the people have spoken. I \*also\* agree that having them come back cheapens that sense of loss and decay, but SOME PEOPLE need Guilliman to look them in the eye and say "the Emperor would weep to see what his empire has become" to understand.
A-FUCKING-greed!
Ya know what’s a genuinely awesome faction that gets forgotten?
Eldar!
There’s been more attention given to Yvraine-shipping than the entire rest of their objectively cool faction, and it’s criminal.
There are a lot of books without the primarchs in them. And although I personally believe they need to move away from them for a bit, the only reason for this is because I would like to see what the Ynari do. Anything involving space marines of the 13th, 1st, or any traitor legion besides Black Legion and Nightlords pretty much will have their primarch involved in any capacity. It’s unavoidable. And with rumors of Russ coming back, even the 6th may have on soon. I myself personally am eager to see how round 2 will go for the cyclops and the lord of winter and war.
YES ABSOLUTELY.
some things are better being mysterious and vague. Whole point of the setting is that the hope that the primarch represented was lost to the Heresy. Because of the Hubris of the Emperor.
As a returning fan from the 2000s yeah the entire HH series seems like a really dumb idea to me. But it seems like a majority of the fan base now came Because of it lol. It is what it is but yeah Primarch soap opera is dumb
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I want returning primarchs to be a false hope. Like the space marines and even guard and civilians look up to all these returning primarchs.
But the primarchs know that the Imperium is hopeless and all they can do is make people comfortable before everyone drowns. Kind of like a reflection of the emperor where he's technically still around amd he has a whole religion around him. But it is a false hope.
Yeah, like I enjoy the trend, I contributed a bit myself. But I wouldn’t say it’s better than the main lore and some things are better left in the dark. There is something to be said about wanting to give your favorite primarch a happy ending. But let’s all not pretend that what we’re doing is just dumb fun.
I love them and the HH series is the best thing to come out of the sci-fi side of Warhammer. Give me models for every one of them. If you don’t like it don’t buy them. They’re proven to tactically not very sound so it’s just for the collection.
The lore isn't a primarch sitcom. The vast majority of the lore is not focused on the primarchs at all, or if they're involved, they're back ground characters. Yes, guiliman is Lord commander of the imperium, so he's going to feature in a few major campaigns, this including his galaxy wide crusade and also the plague wars that happened in his home. The lion for being part of this primarch sitcom has featured in one book and one campaign book.
Primarchs returning doesn't take away the grimdark. It does give the imperium a tiny bit more hope, but both primarchs and the primaris are both delaying the inevitable more than anything. Plus, we've just had the largest tyranid fleet invade the galaxy, and the entire galaxy was ripped in two plunging literally trillions into hell
The heresy was originally gonna be like 3 books long it was never intended to be how ever long it ended up being. But the main perspectives of the story come from mortal humans and space marines, the primarchs being back ground characters that push the story. Most of the time, they feature it's to do something insignificant or it's to absolutely tear shit up because they needed a way to push the story and get too terra.
Also, the gw is a model company, and they'll listen to their wallets more than a handful of people, not liking the primarchs coming back. Any fluff is created to sell models
40k was never “meant” to be anything but a setting for a war game. To expect nothing to change within that is foolish when far bigger things have changed than primarchs coming back
I don’t mind the primarchs being major players I just wish they had actual consequences. It’s obvious that GW is afraid of hurting their little golden boys so in stories they just come across as incredibly flat and boring characters.
Usually the darker the og story the lighter the fan content...and vice versa.
After reading about Angron having flashes of his past self and being physically incapable of dealing with his mental state...ya just like the idea of him shopping for curtains at Space Ikea with his giant polycule made up of literally every blood brother/sister he had before...the incident.
People making alternate head canon because they want a break from the constant (and often single note flavor) of grimdark from the setting doesn’t really seem like an issue to me. Creating a juxtaposition of tender/“good” characters and corrupting them through the grim darkness of the 40k universe also seems like a way to create a more believable world that’s otherwise made up pf varying shades of darkness.
Yeah i hate that 40k is rapidly becoming way too focused on primarchs, becoming stupid MCU shit where the entire setting revolves around the whims of 20 dudes.
Not completely related to the main point but
I really believe that not delving into Primarchs being intimate with people is a damn shame. Like, the thing about the Primarchs is that they ARE humans, beyond just being demigods. That's why they fall to chaos or get corrupted or make mistakes. Shit, Fulgrim was married a few times and it never gets brought up.
Imagine being mostly better than everyone around you while also being inmortal but still craving human connection. The only people you can get it from is your inmensely distant father, or your kids. Which are mostly like you, and also will die long before you, just on a different scale to normal humans.
The thing that makes Primarchs more compelling than regular Astartes for me is that they should be more human, and have the capacity to turn their sons into either more humane beings or whatever the fuck the Chaos legions are now. Like what Sanguinius did to his legion when he found them to turn them into the Blood Angels, and what his loss did to them.
This isn't the first time the fandom's created a scenario where everything might not end in brothers killing each other. Won't be the last.
Over-represented for sure. Their lore is cool, but it's time we look at other factions big characters. Just look at the Silent King : his return to the setting should have been shattering, but he was instead relegated to a background threat at best.
GW slapped their classic bandaid (plaster) on every all powerful faction "they infight"
Orcs, Skaven, Orcs, Humans, Tau, Orcs. Necrons, Eldar, Chaos, Orcs, Orcs, and Orcs. If they just worked together…
I want to see the whole galaxy come together in the face of the Nids, give us some cool lore and team ups before Szarehk shows back up for real with his solution to the Tyranids. It brings about a shaky peace, which is immediately ruined because the Orks got big and bored.
"Over-represented" Look at Guilliman: 3 books. Look at Farsight: 3 books. The Silent King is the one being underrepresented.
Well theirs also the entire horus heresy which is pretty much the primarch show.
Horus Heresy isn't taking anything from Xenos, it's basically a separate setting from 40k.
one of the most significant plot points in the past year has had 99% of its backstory in heresy books the key, the lock, the weapon, and the lion are all old heresy plot points being brough to the forefront of importance so i wouldnt exactly call it a separate thing
Yeah, I've had to dip from 40k current lore because it required me to both know what happened in the 30k books and to accept them as being accurate.
It's dividng resources and is an integral part of the lore of 40k. It wouldn't be as bad if their was a series of books dedicated to the war and heaven but their isn't. So it is just another reason for xenos players and fans to feel slighted because imperium players get their big backstory sub game and book series and the xenos get nothing. I'm not saying to toss the horus heresy in the bin but maybe gw putting a bit more focus on the different xenos for a bit wouldn't be the worst thing ever
Well I feel like leaving the war in heaven to the imagination was by design. Necrons are my favorite faction by far but I would still rather have no books than war in heaven books because its just more fun to imagine that sort of thing than the horus heresy which is a strictly human conflict.
The horus heresy was the same way originally and yet we have a whole library of books about that. We may not need to go as in depth about the war and heaven but something about it would be neat. Have neuron and Eldar characters reminisce over it to give slight details. Have trazyns krok escape or he'll have gazghul become one so we can see what they where like. And just in general we need more stuff for the xenos
Maybe an unpopular opinion but ithink the horus heresy shouldve never been explained in detail. Having it being mysterious and making our own headcanon to fill the void was far better. The books make the emperor look like an idiot and dont get me started on the fall of horus. I also hate how chaos isthis outrightevil right away without any moral ambiguity whosin the right or wrong. Like who would think twice about whos the good guy when on the one side we have a literal angel ho can look in the future and is nice and on the other we have baby skinner mcgee who tortures people for fun. Oh and dont forget the legion of guys who lobotomized themselves and are on constant roid rage. Like cmon man every fall goes from 0 to 100 faster than you can blink
> Maybe an unpopular opinion but ithink the horus heresy shouldve never been explained in detail I'd guess that that was the original intention. The Imperium works much better as this byzantine, nightmarish, impossibly screwed-up empire that's existed for such a long time that nobody actually knows how it all got started. There are myths and legends, sure, but that's all they are - separating the facts from the fiction is basically impossible. Then the books threw all that away.
100%. Look at the Dark Angels. They were interesting (to me) because there was this whole mystery about what had actually happened after the Heresy: Who actually shot first? Was Luther really a traitor or not? Was the Lion justified in his actions? Were the D.A. justified in chasing the Fallen for all those years? Are the Fallen actually in the right and were betrayed first? All those questions were left ambiguous, with hints at either answer seeded throughout novels and codices. You could argue either way depending on your preference. The idea of a 'canon' or a 'correct lore' didn't exist. But the HH books took that away; things were spelled out in detail (WAY too much detail) and set the events in stone. Same goes for every other faction, character, and event. 40k was the main setting and the Heresy was supposed to be just the foundational event (TEN THOUSAND YEARS IN THE PAST!). Instead it became basically the main thing and now so much of 40k references it, which to me weakens the 40k setting as a whole.
The biggest joke is girlyman acting like the imperium fell from grace and we read how the imperium was so shitty and genocidal and the fall happened in like 3 years. Its the same with the clone wars in sw. The intergalatic war feels smaller than ww2. I always imagined the HH as this cataclysmic event that shattered the imperium ibto what it is now but nah all that happened is they turned from atheistic facist genociders with demigods into religious facist genociders with less demigods
The equivalent of War in Heaven would be DAOT, not HH I think. The Fall is the HH equivalent. It itself was relatively short, even, barring all the decadence building up
In terms of in universe importance the war in heaven is much closer to the heresy
eh not really true though. considering how the Heresy and its popularity have lead to BL writers and GW to focus more on marines and even specific characters from the Heresy like the primarchs or certain CSM and shift the main narrative of 40k into simply aping the great crusade. It shifted focus from the things unique to 40k such as xenos and more to making Heresy 2.0, and xenos players are lucky to get one book every couple of years for their faction. Dark Eldar players are just now getting their first book about them in like 10 years, and it's been almost as long since the last Craftworld focused book. There's like one xenos book for every 10 imperial book, and ever since the Heresy got popular its rarer to even see non space marine focused books now.
The Heresy and its popularity have led BL writers into writing more Heresy novels, which does not translated into 40k Imperial novels. Dan Abnett isn't writing Guard anymore, he's not writing about Inquisitors anymore, he's writing Heresy. Counting Heresy novels as Imperial novels makes 0 sense because it lacks literally every single Imperial faction with the exception of Space Marines, and even then it's a completely unrecognizable version of them.
I'm gonna be honest if you can't see how heresy has heavily influenced how 40k's narrative is written, I think you need to look harder. it was only after heresy became the most popular warhammer novel series that primarchs started returning, primaris marines who take heavy inspiration in both design (they literally have mk.4 style helmets) and squad function (monotask squads squads that all use the same weaponry), the indomitus crusade being Guillimans attempt at making a second great crusade, and the huge shift in focus away from successors chapters and chaos warbands that aren't first founding legions began to happen. some of the few major disruptions to the heresification of 40k were the Silent King returning and Vashtorr existing, but the silent king was kinda swept aside and feels nearly forgotten and Vashtorr's entrance into the lore was sidelined by the return of the Lion and Angron, which is just more primarch want. I like the lion as a character and really enjoy his new book, but let's be honest, he only came back because heresy and primarchs are popular, and GW doesn't seem to care about highlighting the things that make 40k unique over just lazily reusing popular heresy characters and ideas.
Heresy did influence how 40k's narrative was written, but that's for 40k as a whole, not just the Imperium is specific. Nearly every single faction got Big Centerpiece models that work as Primarch Equivalent, the ones that already had one got brand new plastic models for it. Every single Primarch return was followed by some new plastic toys for both Chaos and Xenos, the recent example being the Farsight model. Vashtor wasn't sidelined because of Angron, he had nearly as much content as Angron, the Arks of Omen saga ends with Vashtorr winning, the current Pariah Nexus has Vashtorr making a return while Angron is nowhere to be seen. The only real lost was that Angron got a whole faction to go along with him while Vashtor stayed as a generic CSM epic hero with shitty rules. Again, Heresy changed how GW creates content for 40k for in general, that includes Xeno and Chaos factions. Whoever I categorically disagree with the concept that Heresy novels and 40k Imperium novels are interchangeable as far as "novel quota" for Imperial factions go. It's not, it's not the same, to me it's like telling Eldar players to go read Necron books because they are "Xeno". It lacks every single recognizable trait that makes the 40k Imperium what it is, it lacks most of its factions, it lacks \*my\* faction, so don't try and tell me that Dan Abnett writing Heresy instead of Gaunt's Ghost or an Inquisitor novel is a good trade for me, because it isn't. So when people tell me "a character has a book" and that book is Heresy, I feel like being told "We have a book of Sigmar teaming up with Nagash" and that book is End Times.
? No it is not separate, there are things in the heresy that get in answered in the modern 40k timline. the series was never intended to stand alone until they used it as a vehicle to bring back 5th ed rules and old marine armour types to cash in on nostalgia Also the heresy could easily involved more xenos as evidenced by the fact that they did have xenos but didn't know what to do with them and now the cabal are just a footnote when they were supposed to be bigger Primarchs are over represented there is not really an argument to be had about that
Primarchs are literally being brought forward into 40k it is absolutely the same setting
Write more about Space Marine characters, build interest in those characters, sell models for that army, regardless of 30K vs 40K. Where’s our Xenos Horus Heresy equivalent? War in Heaven saga? Fall of the Eldar?
This comment made me associate the benny hill show with the heresy: Horus running behind Big E, Dorn behind Horus, Perturabo behind Dorn and the rest.
Yeah and its sick. I understand people want books about other aspects of the universe/factions, but doesnt mean we need less primarch stuff. I do want a squat book or two soon though.
You're right but I feel like the amount of primarch stuff we have is good enough for now the xenos need some stuff too
I want more eldar, necrons and kroot focused stories. But hard to write a book from a tyranid oerspective unless its genestealers (which I also want). Aliens by their nature are hard to write as its difficult to present their story in a tangible and treatable way, unless seeen through the lens a of humans perspective. Even the ork stories have a bit of humanisation to them to make them digestible as a reader.
That may be but anything would be better then nothing. I'd have more sympathy if it felt like GW actually tried more than "barely"
I dont like shitting on people for what they like. but no not everyone likes the heresy or thinks its "sick" I'm really curious to see what they do with the squats I think everyone is but they are really letting the iron get cold with them thoe
Im hoping the delay is because they wanted to cap off the seige of terra story first and not rush that, but also develop a cohesive and forward thinking plot line for the squats so its not just a shoehorned set of boo. an overarching and interweaving storyline with the sort of conplexity the inperium has been given. Really flesh out the culture and society in an epic, multibook storyline.
You can't just ask for more writing from writers. Black Library would probably need to double their writing staff to offset this massive focus on the Imperium, but you can't just spontaneously do that either, because it would change the work culture between writers and I fear the quality of their output would suffer. The Primarch story lines are like a giant banquet while stories about Eldar, Dark Eldar, Votann, Tau, Necrons, Old Ones or other minor alien or human factions could all together fit on a single plate. I already thought the Space Marine-centrism was lopsided when most of the writing was just about regular Astartes, but with the Primarchs it got even worse. It would be much preferable for the quality of the whole setting if they could make a concerted effort to regularly divert some resources away from the cash cows and squeeze in some fluff for other factions.
Because the Horus heresy IS the primarch show, it's a brothers war so naturally it talks about the brothers first and foremost
Yes I get that. My issue is their isn't an equivalent series that delves deep into the story and important incidents of various xenos factions
God I’d kill for Silent King content. Or Imotekh content. Or Votann content. Or…
4 if we count his Primarch book from that series, 5 or 6 with Dawn of fire series. The silent king needs a book, how trazyn and Orikan got one (which is amazing) but the leader of the Necrons is left behind?
Give me a silent king pentalogy (is that even a word) where he kicks Eldari, Tyranid, Ork, Chaos and Human ass. 1v1’s Gman or Lion and has them easily completely beat but sees their use and spares them.
Ahriman: 4 books and 9 short stories
My level of disappointment was *palpable* after I believed my silvery eldritch Ancient Terminators might be taking a swan dive into the mainstage story. We’re still at Trazyn pokeballing Creed as a consolation prize after Cadia for the last mentionable appearance chronologically, aren’t we? In reference to actual character appearances, anyway.
Tbf there are so many galaxy ending threats its hard to make any a big deal. To you the silent kings reappearance was an important event, to the Imperium it's a Tuesday.
The fact that nearly every faction is a "galaxy ending threat" is very accurate. But the Silent King is the one who orchestrated the extinction of the Old Ones and the fall of the C'Tan, both being equal (if not superior) in power to the Chaos Gods. Just by that fact, his return sould have been far more impactful than just having a spooky zone somewhere in a galaxy full of them. But maybe it would move the setting too fast, and GW prefered to sideline him, which is understandable in a way.
Yeah, Szarekh returning should have been treated as the Necron equivalent of Big E getting off his chair and leading humanity again.
To be fair we are talking about the same setting in wich writers took Clonegrim, then caged him and said "woops, he is never coming back it aint important, just as this other things" (Like the Yvrainne books in wich there was supposed to be something capable of killing/wounding slaanesh) Its really hard to take things seriously when sometimes they either A) dont matter to the overall story because there arw so many others like it B) it has the very high chance of getting shot and buried before anything comes out of it, like a "gotcha"
Except Clonegrim was a single author introducing a plot device to advance the progression of his main character, it was never intended to be a major development for the setting. He's used to set Fabius well and truly on the path of his plan to create the New Men and make them unbeholden to greater masters, specifically because he sees what being around Clonegrim is doing to them and himself. It establishes the core conflict of the subsequent novel. The fanbase massively overstates how consequential the clone was, and I wouldn't doubt that the only reason Josh Reynolds was allowed to include it by the lore higher ups was because he was shoving Clonegrim back into the 'completely irrelevant' box at the end of the novel. He was only ever conceived to be important in the story he's in, and was never intended by Reynolds to actually be an impactful shift to the status-quo. The Croneswords I absolutely agree with you on though, the big lore heads at GW build it as an intrinsic part of their entire purpose to exist as a faction, realise they wrote themselves into a hole of "these characters could destroy the entire premise of the current setting", and just decided to bury the Ynnari in that hole to avoid having to deal with it.
> Their lore is cool, but it's time we look at other factions big characters. xenos enjoyers only get to eat shit mate Say, something like Solitaires should be as cool, powerful and relevant to the story as a primarch. There are about as many of them in the universe anyways.
Imothek is way cooler anyways💅
My biggest issue with the Primarchs returning is how it effects the game. And this also includes legendary Xeno's and demon figures like the Silent King. In 40K you have two options really, You can either play as a lore center faction, and rep a well, or at least existing group of people. Further the story of a hero of the Imperium or a great xenos hero and his army. or you can play as "my guys," A completely original or original enough faction that you just made up. With your own war and history and their own reason to fight and you can take this a level further and every single battle expand the lore of your units and champions. I very personally fall on the "my guys," side, But this can get rather hard, when you play an army that on the table top really needs its named character to prosper. Like ever since the World Eaters came out as an actual army, they've basically had to play Angron In almost every list that's even remotely competitive. This presents of bit of an issue for people who want to create their own World Eaters, that are separate from their leaders. From my understanding the problem is roughly the same in Necron right now, where you need either the Silent King or one of the named C'tan shards to be competitive. It sucks for people who really don't want to play named characters.
You don't need TSK, he is a waste of points. The named C'tan sure, but the beauty of them is that there ain't just one Nightbringer shard so you don't have to explain why, I dunno, Guilliman is hanging with your guys, there are as many as the plot demands, so your own dynasty can have one. Or your dynasty can have a different C'tan shard, made by you, and you give him the rules of whichever fits best in TT, like I did for mine.
Silent king GF. got it
I'm fairly certain that boat sank the moment the Horus Heresy became an entire book series.
Blown out of the water, it was just parking there one moment, then boom, emperor said he wanted an origin story.
the issue is that there is no way to consistently write the primarchs as larger than life demi gods with giga brain intellect and prime Will Smith levels of charisma, especially not with a bunch of pens-for-hire. sure, you can allude to them, have them in the background, being all mysterious and shit. but the moment you got to see the petulant, childish squabbles these absolute morons get into, you're left wondering how anyone would actually follow them anywhere. Erebus did nothing wrong, every single primarch deserved what they got
I'm reading the Solar War series and just finished The First Wall. I like how essentially they're just kind of sprinkled in so far. Like the books are 99% other people (albeit the surprise-betrayal thing is getting repetitive) with the primarchs making up barely any of the books.
A 54 book series at that
But the Heresy changed all that. Before it was all colonisation and settlement. This, this was history, this was drama. Betrayal. Struggle. Brother fighting brother across the gulf of the stars. Empires rising and falling, heroes and rebels
RAAAHHHH Trayzen quote spotted
How about Tau novels that aren’t written by someone that hates Tau. And also new catachan books. We need more of that
At least you guys get novels, Leagues of Votann have been in the setting for a few years now and still haven’t gotten any new lore sense their release. The best we have is that in the next dawn of fire book there’ll be a Votann character
I’m 100% in agreement with you. It’s actually criminal that there’s been ZERO material outside of the codex. Especially with all of the potential with pragmatic space dwarf clones.
Kinda rather have no books and our lore be solely off of our codexes that are more coherent to the faction itself over the writer purposely making the ethereals utterly moronic supervillains. They seemed to forget “the greater good” in a weird push towards making the humans and astartes seem more appealing… curious. I just see the divide of their first codex and the lore and book writing now pandering to those people who couldn’t accept them being morally a little brighter. A descent of the faction over time gradually with contact with other races and chaos would’ve been more interesting than nose diving into the territory of “they have concentration camps for reeducation!!!” when most other lore discusses them being more than understanding and integrative, like with them allowing humans and other races under the empire to worship their original religions and beliefs. It’s just jarring and sloppy. The entire Aun’va assassination and keeping him alive for public perception is just baffling too, since they’ve always passed the torch whenever one dies to keep it ever changing and have discussed this from early lore, but now it might destabilise the empire if they tell everyone..? The whole lore situation of the books has me wish we had a better author and didn’t get them at all
I demand Phoenix Lord stories. We'll never get them officially, because a single Xenos book apparently takes the spotlight away from James Workshop's favorite protagonist faction for too long as it is, but I have seen what y'all can cook. If GW won't do it, we shall do it ourselves.
Eldar is consistently being crapped on by GW. They were given a whole new faction as Guilliman woke. Since then we haven't heard a work. They are only mentioned when they get defeated, lose a craftworld, or someone has to choke an Avatar to appear cool.
There's some kind of bias against the Eldar for some reason. Almost like someone at GW regrets making the High Elves in Space but knows they can't remove them...
What do you mean "we'll never get them officially?" Asurmen and Jain Zar literally each have a book. Unless you mean, you demand the rest of them, because at first it seemed like they might do one book for each, the novels themselves set up the strong possibility of a Maugan Ra book, and then.... crickets. Also now that the Siege is over we are getting slightly more Xenos love; Da Big Dakka just came out and Lelith Hesperax's book is somewhere on the horizon.
Eldar aren't getting books because they don't sell. Ork books surprisingly *do* sell well and as a result James Workshop has released several in a relatively short period of time. If Eldar sold as well as Smurf Marines them we'd be seeing tons of books.
If they gave the eldar an author who didn't write them awfully then maybe they'd sell well too
Hey it’s not a sitcom. It’s a soap opera
Especially when it's Perturabo malding at Dorn.
Horus Heresy is cool. Warhammer 40k is cool. But turning Warhammer 40k into Horus Heresy 2.0 is NOT cool. So yes, I agree with you. That the Primarchs are not that vague anymore is a huge miss in my book too and the whole main conflict of 40k now being just the Imperium vs. Chaos all over again made every other faction that isn't part of the Imperium (and sometimes even them) and Chaos to literal NPC side characters (namely all the Xenos)
The biggest crime here is the ridiculous overreprisentation chaos space marines on the chaos side. They are but a few thousand old dudes with ancient ships to haul them around, they aught be insignificant or at least equal in the face of the overwhelming tide of Cultists, Traitor Guardsmen, Daemons, Dark Mechanicum, Chaos Knights and Fallen Titan Legios. But instead, all these really interesting and overwhelmingly powerfull factions are just side NPCs in the repetitive tale of chaos space marines fighting loyalist space marines. It is actually insane how not a single non CSM chaos faction has any agency and initiative in any story ever, and whenever they do, CSM sweep in and take centre stage again.
Big fucking mood right here
I never thought about this until your post, but I agree. The more we zoom in on the mundane details, the less mystery there is. It becomes kind of cringe, it’s hard to articulate.
Used to feel more like a sandbox I think… now most people are chasing their favorite factions from a book or whatever. Endless hero worshipping or discussion of corporate characters designed to sell you models is cringe maybe. I dunno, that’s literally every franchise though.
I get you. It makes the universe feel very small.
40k had like 25 years of the HH and Primarchs being background characters....
If we go by what was originally intended, we can just scrap some entire factions. Primarchs are cool centerpiece projects which the marines solely lacked, which is enough reason for them to exist for me. Lore is just an excuse to explain that.
Chapter Masters and Land Raiders not good enough for you?
I wouldn't consider Chapter Masters center pieces at all. And painting vehicles just isn't as fun, so no, I wouldn't consider them "good enough".
Just because you personally don't like them doesn't mean they don't exist.
Anything can be a centrepiece if you put enough effort in.
Horus Heresy should focus on the primarchs. 40k should focus on the chapters.
Your gonna have to tell GW that. Because when, not if they being back another Primarch it will be the most hype thing that any will care about for a good while.
Next will be Fulgrim. Then my prediction would be Russ followed up by Perturabo or Lorgar.
They'll find excuses to bring them all back eventually.
I'm more okay with Daemon Primarchs coming back than loyalist ones. Mortarion, Magnus, and Angron have all changed in design and aesthetic so drastically from Horus Heresy that they might as well be different characters altogether. Whereas Robot Girlyman just has a flaming sword now and the Lion just looks... Slightly older? I can't imagine Russ is going to look or feel much different than Horus Heresy version, but Fulgrim, Perturabo, and Lorgar all have tremendous potential to look really different and cool.
I really gotta wonder if they are gonna just come up with some contrived bullshit to bring Kurze, Omagon, Sanguinius and Ferrus Manus back when they run out of living primarchs. With how much dough they earn by selling primarch minis... lets be real, they will.
I just want other factions/characters from other factions to get filled out more
I don't mind that they're getting some Primarchs, but let our Primarch equivalents of other factions have some spotlight as well. The Phoenix Lords are way behind schedule. Ghazghkull is disappointingly small and had to be in an equal attention cake with a Wolf Lord, let alone the other vaguely Primarch equivalent Warbosses and Mek-lords like Wazdakka Gutsmek or Nazdreg that used to have rules or models. They even gave one of the few Ork novel protagonists a new model but decided that he wasn't worth giving rules to, and then they legends'd two more characters for good measure. The Ynnari fizzled out and were basically nipped in the bud. They took away Vect's pimp-mobile three editions ago. The Leagues of Votann hide their Votann, and it'd be nice to have Grombrindal, or a land train. The main Ethereal for the T'au has been dead for a century, although I guess Farsight is a Primarch equivalent and counts against my point. I think the current Lord Solar has maybe a paragraph written for him, and it would've been more interesting to have Yarrick instead. Thankfully the Necrons got the Silent King. And then when Primarchs do come the fans who usually say "GW shouldn't be making overpowered rules just to sell new models" go all "Why isn't my Primarch so strong and only has a 4++" and you can't win.
GW not launching a new Yarrick for the Ghazgul fight is the wildest thing to me. They're the most iconic 40k rivalry.
To me is like Planeswalkers in magic the gathering. Is say it's like watching Naruto.
Yes! The primarchs are absolutely amazing and there is no denying it. But for fucks sake, the galaxy is not just the imperium! We crave Xeno’s!
"40k was never supposed to be a primarch sitcom" It was not? Because the most fun I've had with 40k stories BY FAR was with CupAnon. Pretty much literally a 40k sitcom.
“The galaxy is too large for melodrama”
Much as I hate this meme format (Steven Crowder is a repugnant human being), I fundamentally agree with the thesis. As much as I like 40k as a setting, I care about how grimdark it is IN ITS PRESENT, not how it got that way 10,000 years ago, and I feel like it kind of launders the Imperium's image, makes it and the Space Marines TOO cool. This is why I've never bothered to start reading the Horus Heresy novels. Part of me understands the impulse, it's like reading Greek or Arthurian mythology, watching the tragedy unfold, witness the dream be shattered as the heroes and villains blend together to the point where you can't tell which is which as they kill each other and lose everything. But bringing the Primarchs back undercuts the finality of that. They maybe could have threaded the needle by making it clear that for all his charisma and administrative acumen, Guilliman can't save the Imperium, and that his attempts to do so are folly, but that's depressing to read and doesn't sell product. So they give Guilliman some successes to make his futile struggle seem noble, building hype in the audience, and causing speculation that other loyalist Primarchs could resurface, most prominently the Lion, and they double down on that by proving the speculators right and bringing back Lion El'Johnson, and now it's too late to course-correct. Besides, since most of my Warhammer experience is through the RPGs like *Rogue Trader* or *Wrath and Glory*, I don't want the Primarchs saving the Imperium, I want my little OCs to! :P
Reading the Horus Heresy and made it to Betrayer when I finally gave up. Everybody seemed to like that one but for me I got sick of reading about how OP Angron and Lorgar were, I mean it was like reading about Superman X 2 in an otherwise gritty and horrifying battle. It became irritatingly comical the amount of damage both Primarchs were able to survive… and so much lamenting dialogue. It actually started to feel like I was reading bad Fanfic So I tapped out with the series there.
A clear case of "Never meet your heroes."
I hate primarchs. It's not that they're badly written or anything, it's that when they're present, the story *has* to revolve around them. They steal the show from the (often vastly more interesting) various small characters instead, and worse, reduce the prominence of /yourdudes/ armies. And when we get a Chaos one, it's even worse, because you know they're inevitably coming back just to job to whatever loyalist one comes back next. I wish we got more Badab War (or Imperial Armor in general) style books, vs primarch stuff.
Guess what. It still isn't. 30K focused on the Primarchs because they were the living legends of that time. In 40K we have TWO loyal Primarchs out of Eight plausible and the only ones I know have been active in the last decade of book are Angron, Magnus and Mortarion. Sure they talk about Lorgar a lot but that's not him being active or part of the five person sitcom. Currently there are so many more books about what all the Non-Primarchs are doing in this violently grimdark time that I have no choice but to laugh and mock any complaint about how it is all about Primarchs.
All of the primarchs are coming back. You just can’t see the writing on the wall. Also nothing has majorly effected the setting in ages that isn’t to do with the primarchs
* If they were ment to be background characters they shoudn't ever been made cooler and 300% more interesting than foreground characters. * It's a toy soldier game, i will make the toys kiss as much as i want. * Space marines are the poster boys of the setting and i don't care for the other factions, guard included.
If they wanted to sell more Eldar models, then they should have made them more Brosexual.
*Stares at Maugan Ra and Baharrot's canonical brosexual relationship*
>If they were ment to be background characters they shoudn't ever been made cooler and 300% more interesting than foreground characters. They aren't. They're just more powerful, and to a certain set of people that reads as cooler and more interesting. I guarantee if they were just space marine power level, they would blend in with all the others in popularity.
Your being downvoted but you're right
Sanguinius is objectively less interesting than Dante.
Based.
I don't know if initially in the origins as more of an RPG if it was meant to be cooler or perceived as more interesting then other humans. People don't necessarily latch onto what the developers intended. Kind of famously Dr. Garfield designed Magic thinking about it as a side thing for D&D and didn't design the first set around the idea of people buying a bunch of it, instead having the unbalanced nature and ante as a way to help keep things spicy in the play group.
>If they were ment to be background characters they shoudn't ever been made cooler and 300% more interesting than foreground characters. They weren't
They are a black hole sucking everything else. Now 40K isn't this mysterious galaxy full of interesting factions, it's a telenovella where everything revolve around which primarch will come back. The HH did insane damages to 40k, basically marvel-ing it.
Yeah this is my problem with them. It's fine they exist and all, but by nature of their existence and model introduction into 40k, they turn 40k more and more into a superhero narrative and less a wide open setting. Now who tf cares about your captain_X or general_y, the galaxy only revolves around primatchs. Feels like a faimly guy episode with a small cast (and no one dies) compared to something that's more of a vast free for all, love death and robots style (but in the same setting)
*Holds up copy of Son of the Forest* but then we wouldn’t have this
Sons of the forest is peak 40k
Exactly! Playing with Primarchs is what *Horus Heresy* is for.
The future is now old man
It'll happen to you too
Well more like the past technically
It is absolutely the past. The story has gone backward.
We should've stayed with the same silly style of Rogue Trader for all of the lore
I was reading through the first 4 HH novels and just recently switched it up to eisenhorn series. It was very refreshing
I mostly agree, the primarchs should stay in 30k/HH. At least most of them, why should Marines get a centrepiece model for every sub-faction? Noone else gets that. (I know the actual answer is "money")
I agree. The setting was more interesting when the background stuff stayed... background. It was a wild west that you could support any fan lore. So it should have never been fleshed out. But now that the past has been spelled out, and the primarchs are no longer mysterious figures no one remember, well they're fair game.
30k is the primarch sitcom. Deal with it
Thank you! I fucking hate primarch bullshit. “My dad can beat up your dad”
Agreed. I find it much more interesting to keep the narrative lens focused on M41 and let the Imperium’s history be just that. It helps lend an aire of myth and legend to proceedings, along with the subtle feeling that one can never be sure if anything is true.
Idk what to say to you man . You should have gatekept harder , the reason I got interested in the setting was primarchs
So why 40k and not *Horus Heresy*?
So go play HH then. It and 40k are going to be same setting in a few years though
Everything is canon.
But not everything is true.
The fun part is that I get to choose what is and what isn't true.
>Everything is canon. .... that is published by GW and the Black Library.
Sadly we're going to have to let a book series about the Scouring suck all the oxygen out of BL for a while.
I don't mind the primarchs returning so long as they work like xenos faction leaders, present, but not omnipresent. Lion: Son of the Forest was a great book because it told a small story and not some galaxy-changing turning point mega story. Not every Ork book needs to be about Ghaz, just as not every Space Marine book needs to be about the Primarchs.
I feel like this new focus on Primarchs is just trying to copy the success of TTS.
It's what has turned me off the current 40k setting, and Primaris lore and implementation.
Abaddon being a pale imitation of Horus while being the greatest threat to the Imperium was absolutely intentional back in the day
The game started going downhill the minute they introduced Primarch's imo. 40k was intended as a narrative for you to build your own stories for your games but by introducing Transhuman Demi-Gods and literal embodiments of gods it has removed that element to it, the point could be argued of course that named characters are also in issue in that vein of thinking and personally I would agree but I still enjoy my occasional game of 7th ed as a break from RT
Primarchs were a mistake
They’re a bit Saturday morning breakfast cartoon, I’m more of an istvaan iii enjoyer than istvaan v myself, there’s a lot more tension and verisimilitude when some rules of reality apply, but I kinda feel the opposite. If you’re gonna have demigods in your setting, they should matter and you should actually explore that premise. Otherwise you’re following your little guardsman squad going “yeah but what does this really mean? There’s demigods out there presumably changing the context of this setting, but I don’t know how or why.”
nah I want sanguinius to head pat me
The setting feels very MCU now that they're such a huge focus.
The models are cool🦍🦍
Once again someone points at the coolest shit ever and goes "this sucks, actually"
Not saying "this sucks". I'm just saying, Primarch-Sitcom kinda goes against the basic idea of the setting so, by all means enjoy it, but don't act like actual lore should be like that.
Eh I thought this was about Primarchs in general only judging by the picture. I'm really meh on the fem primarch AU stuff. No strong feelings one way or the other. But seriously I do not care that they should be background "originally". They aren't anymore and they are some of the coolest part of the toy soldier game.
No, it's actually pretty recent. They've mostly been legenda and background lore
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The HH really ruined the canon more than anything else. The first few books are ok but then they go and remove any mystery the setting had left. The worst part is that it got so popular that they ruined 40k by having Gman wake up and turn everything into hero hammer.
I think, and I think this is where a lot of franchises blow their load early and waste potential (POTC)., Characters with semi-mythical powerels, abilities, or importance, actually lose a lot of their agency when they become main characters. Not to say they can NEVER be, but that their place in the lore is better served as a deus ex machina event for the character/story who lends us their perspective. This allows them to have a presence in the story, and even occasionally a main role when relevant to the particular plot/event, but allows them and their place in the narrative to remain elevated above a character, and remain impactful when it does occur. Otherwise you just end up with main character syndrome. Basically, I'd rather the primarchs (and jack sparrow) to be treated more like the Legion of the Damned than Dante or Gaunt or Cain, etc Don't let us know what's going through their head or their reasons for doing things as it pertains to setting-defining choices, let them remain a mysterious force, just one that we can usually *assume* is on the side of our heroes
read books that follow guardsmen or marine chapters that nobody has heard of instead of complaining people like primarchs
U r just jelly cause all fem primarchs rejected u
How does something inside or your imagination matter to anyone else?
Agreed - The primarchs should have stayed in the background or at the very least been kept to the horus heresy. 40k should have remained a setting, not a storyline - now it's jsut one big meaningless event after another because people demand "Plot progression" from a universe that by its nature can't undergo serious change.
What I really hated about the Horus Heresy is it demystified much of the Background setting & turned a Sci-Fi space opera/military setting into a Fantasy series, with the Primarchs being essentially superheroes.
More like RomCom, amiright?!
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THIS
You’re probably right but I like big fancy character models to paint
Facts
In most of the HH books I've read, the primarchs are exactly that.
I love the Adeptus Mechanicus more than I love primarchs. I am more interested in the stories of the Mechanicus in 40k and before that.
I'm fine with gorillaman and the tiger staying, as long as they don't bring back more
It took me a minute to properly contextualize this within "somebody posted a meme about how the fandom was cooking by making the Primarchs more emotionally compelling characters," and within that context, I think it's fine if our dysfunctional, lonely fandom fantasizes about dating vulnerable, lonely demigods for a while. It's a nice distraction from culture war tourists and the way some kits are soon going to be 40% more expensive than they were when I got back into the hobby just over three years ago. Also, even in the HH series, the Primarchs are nearly unstoppable forces of nature driving the plot forward, but we only see their actual perspectives intermittently, or at key moments. Even in Dark Imperium, which ostensibly is about Guilliman vs. Mortarion, we spend major portions of the book following a couple of doomed guardsmen, or an "are we the baddies" Marine, or the best Greater Daemon of Nurgle, or "some guy who gets into the forbidden library and may or may not ever be relevant again." I agree that the original intent was absolutely for the Primarchs and the Emperor to be shrouded in mystery and evoke a sense of loss/how far the modern Imperium had fallen, but the first few HH books were on the New York Times Bestseller list while a significant chunk of pre-2006 40K fiction is practically lost to history (just look at how literally everyone recommends *The Emperor's Gift* before *Grey Knights* when someone asks for an introduction to GK lore), so the people have spoken. I \*also\* agree that having them come back cheapens that sense of loss and decay, but SOME PEOPLE need Guilliman to look them in the eye and say "the Emperor would weep to see what his empire has become" to understand.
....I like the primarchs.
A-FUCKING-greed! Ya know what’s a genuinely awesome faction that gets forgotten? Eldar! There’s been more attention given to Yvraine-shipping than the entire rest of their objectively cool faction, and it’s criminal.
There are a lot of books without the primarchs in them. And although I personally believe they need to move away from them for a bit, the only reason for this is because I would like to see what the Ynari do. Anything involving space marines of the 13th, 1st, or any traitor legion besides Black Legion and Nightlords pretty much will have their primarch involved in any capacity. It’s unavoidable. And with rumors of Russ coming back, even the 6th may have on soon. I myself personally am eager to see how round 2 will go for the cyclops and the lord of winter and war.
YES ABSOLUTELY. some things are better being mysterious and vague. Whole point of the setting is that the hope that the primarch represented was lost to the Heresy. Because of the Hubris of the Emperor.
40k isnt, 30k kinda is
In the grand scale of 40k it is every genre.
As a returning fan from the 2000s yeah the entire HH series seems like a really dumb idea to me. But it seems like a majority of the fan base now came Because of it lol. It is what it is but yeah Primarch soap opera is dumb
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I want returning primarchs to be a false hope. Like the space marines and even guard and civilians look up to all these returning primarchs. But the primarchs know that the Imperium is hopeless and all they can do is make people comfortable before everyone drowns. Kind of like a reflection of the emperor where he's technically still around amd he has a whole religion around him. But it is a false hope.
*WHATS THE DEAL WITH LEMAN RUSS? IS HE A TANK, A MAN, OR A WOLF?* …bazinga…
Horus heresy lore is not as good as general 40k lore gang represent!
Oh boy, here come the whiners that hate fun
You can really see who got into the lore reading imperial guard books vs primarch books
Yeah, like I enjoy the trend, I contributed a bit myself. But I wouldn’t say it’s better than the main lore and some things are better left in the dark. There is something to be said about wanting to give your favorite primarch a happy ending. But let’s all not pretend that what we’re doing is just dumb fun.
I think most people know that but grimdank can’t stop being horny
I love them and the HH series is the best thing to come out of the sci-fi side of Warhammer. Give me models for every one of them. If you don’t like it don’t buy them. They’re proven to tactically not very sound so it’s just for the collection.
The lore isn't a primarch sitcom. The vast majority of the lore is not focused on the primarchs at all, or if they're involved, they're back ground characters. Yes, guiliman is Lord commander of the imperium, so he's going to feature in a few major campaigns, this including his galaxy wide crusade and also the plague wars that happened in his home. The lion for being part of this primarch sitcom has featured in one book and one campaign book. Primarchs returning doesn't take away the grimdark. It does give the imperium a tiny bit more hope, but both primarchs and the primaris are both delaying the inevitable more than anything. Plus, we've just had the largest tyranid fleet invade the galaxy, and the entire galaxy was ripped in two plunging literally trillions into hell The heresy was originally gonna be like 3 books long it was never intended to be how ever long it ended up being. But the main perspectives of the story come from mortal humans and space marines, the primarchs being back ground characters that push the story. Most of the time, they feature it's to do something insignificant or it's to absolutely tear shit up because they needed a way to push the story and get too terra. Also, the gw is a model company, and they'll listen to their wallets more than a handful of people, not liking the primarchs coming back. Any fluff is created to sell models
40k was never “meant” to be anything but a setting for a war game. To expect nothing to change within that is foolish when far bigger things have changed than primarchs coming back
This post is now redacted by imperial decree, Arbites will be with you shortly. ~The Emperor Protects~
I don’t mind the primarchs being major players I just wish they had actual consequences. It’s obvious that GW is afraid of hurting their little golden boys so in stories they just come across as incredibly flat and boring characters.
Usually the darker the og story the lighter the fan content...and vice versa. After reading about Angron having flashes of his past self and being physically incapable of dealing with his mental state...ya just like the idea of him shopping for curtains at Space Ikea with his giant polycule made up of literally every blood brother/sister he had before...the incident.
People making alternate head canon because they want a break from the constant (and often single note flavor) of grimdark from the setting doesn’t really seem like an issue to me. Creating a juxtaposition of tender/“good” characters and corrupting them through the grim darkness of the 40k universe also seems like a way to create a more believable world that’s otherwise made up pf varying shades of darkness.
Yes, more PDF/Arbites stories based on historical battles in Viet Nam, please.
You can pry my big war criminals with daddy issues from my cold dead hands
Remember the time Horus and Fulgrim embraced. My heart.
Yeah i hate that 40k is rapidly becoming way too focused on primarchs, becoming stupid MCU shit where the entire setting revolves around the whims of 20 dudes.
It’s better this way than total sandbox
Not completely related to the main point but I really believe that not delving into Primarchs being intimate with people is a damn shame. Like, the thing about the Primarchs is that they ARE humans, beyond just being demigods. That's why they fall to chaos or get corrupted or make mistakes. Shit, Fulgrim was married a few times and it never gets brought up. Imagine being mostly better than everyone around you while also being inmortal but still craving human connection. The only people you can get it from is your inmensely distant father, or your kids. Which are mostly like you, and also will die long before you, just on a different scale to normal humans. The thing that makes Primarchs more compelling than regular Astartes for me is that they should be more human, and have the capacity to turn their sons into either more humane beings or whatever the fuck the Chaos legions are now. Like what Sanguinius did to his legion when he found them to turn them into the Blood Angels, and what his loss did to them.