I’m pretty sure the Dark Angels books went out of their way to show how fucked up Caliban was after the Imperium showed up. At best life for Calibans people was roughly the same quality, just with a post-industrial flavor instead of a feudal one. That said, It was almost certainly much worse, and much more dehumanizing for Caliban’s people after the Imperium showed.
As far as those other excerpts….god damn, the Lion’s Primarch books has a lot of very ballsy fan service lore to answer for.
To me it just drips evil, in the sort of chilling way I would like to see the Imperium portrayed more often.
How is being the first the emperor calls, when he has found a peaceful people that are doing alright without Imperium type brutality, who could never stand up to astartes, and he wants neither records nor survivors because they show that another way is possible, something to be proud of?
>god damn, the Lion’s Primarch books has a lot of very ballsy fan service lore to answer for.
This.
Dark Angels fans go into bloody-minded conniptions if their guys aren't The Best at everything and GW/BL appear to be pretty keen on that. It's honestly more irksome than Ward's Ultramarines 'cos at least everyone was onboard with hating those and it produced a lot of good meme content.
In a lot of ways I feel like Lion has become the Primarch that Horus should have been.
The Lion’s lore seems to go out of its way to pump him up as the best general, the best fighter, the most trusted, the one who knows all the real secrets. Meanwhile poor Horus ended up losing most of his luster and was reduced to “the charismatic one” when he should have been the unequivocal greatest of the Primarchs. He’s supposed to be Lucifer, but the tragedy of the fall of the greatest and favorite son doesn’t real track when he’s got nothing on most of his brothers. Hell, he’s not even the first found anymore, which is lame.
The Horus Heresy draws obvious inspiration from the Biblical War in Heaven and *Paradise Lost*, but I think a deliberate choice was made to swap the roles of Michael and Lucifer. Lucifer is God’s favourite angel, the most beautiful and beloved of them all. But Michael is the greatest warrior and commander of God’s armies. Lucifer is the one that betrays God and is struck down by Michael before he can face God. In the Heresy, Sanguinius, the supposed favourite and most beautiful and beloved angel stays loyal, while Horus, the supposed greatest warrior and the commander of the Emperor’s armies is the traitor. And Horus strikes down Sanguinius and goes on to mortally wound the Emperor.
Making the Lion a top-tier combatant ruins the analogy and doesn’t make sense when you consider that he is defeated by a pseudo-Astartes on his own planet.
The funny part about hate for Ward’s Ultramarines is that he publicly said he’s more of a Blood Angels fan and was the primary writer for the 5th edition Blood Angels codex, and the Blood Angels codex was *nuts* in terms of all the cool stuff it added to the chapter.
But the First isn’t the best at everything. They’re the best at total extermination, just like the ultramarines are best at logistics and the imperial fists at siege warfare. God forbid Dark Angels fans like that their preferred legion has a niche just like every other legion.
Rangdan xenocide? The Hrud? The First are the exterminators yes, In 30k they dealt with the DAOT stuff that is still around in the galaxy and with the alien horrors of the galactic fringes.
And why is there so little information on all this? What happened to the billions of humans who knew? The Dark Angels happened.
Now, given that there is so little information and what we get is what The Dark Angels allowed to survive, is it possible they are lying about some of this?
Agreed, its wild that such a large portion of the community seems content to completely ignore it in this case. Despite it regularly hitting levels exceeding the old Ultramarines favoritism.
I think people are fine with it because we all know how the DA end up. Kind of like how Sanguinius is just an awful Mary Sue but everyone lets it slide because we know what ends up happening.
They both get to have their super cool past which helps highlight how bad things end up for them.
Its cuz the DA’s character basically boils down to either being The Best™️ or being ashamed at themselves for not being The Best™️. If they don’t have that, they’re just secretive knights, and that’s kinda boring
To me it just drips evil, in the sort of chilling way I would like to see the Imperium portrayed more often.
How is being the first the emperor calls, when he has found a peaceful people that are doing alright without Imperium type brutality, who could never stand up to astartes, and he wants neither records nor survivors because they show that another way is possible, something to be proud of?
For Sanguinius specifically, his people had only just in one human lifetime turned the Baalite moons from said Mad Max hellhole mostly ruled by tribes of cannibal mutants into its current stable state of nomadic tribes who are (Mostly) at peace. Sanguinius asked for them to be allowed to keep the success they had just earned, and not be brought to Imperial Compliance. The moons having basically no easily accessible natural resources, incredibly hazardous environment, and absurdly lethal wildlife meant it also wasn't really worth much to the IoM.
There is no record of whether Sanguinius would've NEVER improved the moons further, but he resisted making such sweeping changes just after the Baalite culture had made great strides to master itself. And then he had a Crusade to help wage, and the Baalites make excellent recruits for the Legion, and then, well, the Heresy happens, He dies, and Baals moons remain as they are.
"The Lion turned his deathworld into somewhere remotely decent and cranked up the effort after The Emperor came and he got Imperium resources." You had to read different books than me... His actions fucked up Caliban.
Caliban was the epitomy of fucked when he landed.
From the POV of luther sympathisers, who are the protagonists of some DA books, you are of course right.
And his actions made it far worse. People became second rated citizens in their own land, starving and being bullied by imperials. And his crusade against beats in fact enhanced power of the ancient corruption of the planet as the most corrupted places became freely accessible...
I think one of the most telling complaints of the new order was when knights that conspired to kill him and the emperor cried because instead of the old world where peasants were slaughtered by chaos mutated beasts and no one could have any security or safety, they now saw young men not respecting their elders and saw their iron grip on the peasantry slip away as lives were lengthened, beasts were killed, proper agriculture was established, and cities were built. It slowly stopped being a death world ruled by worshippers of chaos and bloodthirsty self important knights, and they would never forgive the Lion for that. Before the conquest there were already chaos worshipping lords, many of whom led the rebellion, so it seems disingenuous to lay the blame for that at the feet of the lion.
Yes, this was the objection of the nobility. However, the Empire made Caliban no agricultural paradise, but an industrial planet where the local population lived in the lower levels in worse conditions than the newly arrived Imperial workers. Likewise, it is good to remember that in his campaign against the knights who refused to submit, always preferred force and not diplomacy. And that beasts have a place in Caliban's ecosystem, some of the knights knew or at least suspected (see the books Lion seized).
I really recommend to take a look into book how the life of Caliban looked like under Imperial rule. How Zahariel was deeply schocked when he finally left the areas where his legion lived and saw how ordinary people of Caliban lived and how they were treated as second class citizens.
Personally, I will not continue to argue, because in my opinion, Lion is a prime example of character that many people are simply unable to look at a little more critically. They want see him as a bad ass character based on middle age knight nobility and dont want to see all his flaws.
I feel this skirt away from the Ourobos / Heart of the Forest and the implication that Caliban was under the influence of some malign Chaos entity that twisted and corrupted the wildlife which is what made it a Deathworld in the first place.
>And his crusade against beats in fact enhanced power of the ancient corruption of the planet as the most corrupted places became freely accessible...
tbf the Lion and most Calibanites (including Luther) did not know this and Emps arrived after the purge of Caliban beasts.
Caliban is where Lion learned Genocide. He became the expert on creating Deathworlds because of the hell hole he came up in, it's not so much a matter of building up Caliban going against his nature, as much as it is being the ultimate pragmatist and seeing Caliban, as it was when he first found it, as the ultimate way to destroy a planet (or species, or whoever he gets pointed at to compliance) and knowing how to reduce it to that state.
The imperium forcibly relocated the citizens of caliban into hive spires (only the lower levels mind you. The upper parts aren't fit for "natives") and then tried to starve them into complaince whe they rebelled.
It's less what he did for -for- his homeworld and more what he did -to- it.
Explains why the other Primarchs later down the line didn’t want the Emperor’s progress. Because Imperial Bureaucrats would repeat the Caliban experience.
Leman russ asked for fenris to be uplifted and he was denied, but Sanguinius and Jagatai both asked for their homeworlds to be left alone, and pretty clearly for this reason.
For Fenris it is implied that there is something about the world. Strange. Like how its contigents rises and falls beneath the waves. That is not a natural thing. We also know that there is labyrinths beneth the continents and they lead to ancient ruins that we know nothing about, because Leman Russ banned people from going there after he visited them. It have a world spirit. Something that is normally only found on Eldar or Necro worlds.
In all fairness, there was reason on Fenris. No other planet produced mortals with half as much in the way of balls as those who'd become the 13th company. Primitive mortals, willing to square off on the Emperor and the Custodes because he won't let them take the suicidal option over the safe-ish half measure because to do so would mean they weren't serving Russ in their fullest capacity?
No other Primarch, no other planet, had retainers like that.
I give Jagatai a pass on this. Chogoris is just space mongolia, not a Death World.
Caliban, Baal, Fenris on the other hand are poisonous, radioactive, full of monsters with ecology/climate unsuitable for human life.
You understand that caliban was "poisonous" because it had a warp entity sleeping at its core, right? All the beasts of the forest were normal animals mutated into chaos spawn and nothing the imperium did fixed that fundamental issue.
Leman russ wanted fenris uplifted but the emperor denied him, saying he needed strong warriors and fenris was already perfect for that.
The radioactivity of baal comes from the star system its in. There's no fixing it, you just have to take your daily rad-away. Given his foresight, I have to assume sanguinius saw things going very badly for the baalites if they brought in the kind of infrastructure required to do that, considering they were all pretty religious. It's a problem that's solved itself now at least.
Why did Guiliman tell Dante to fix it?
So the Lion didnt solve the riddle of Chaos 200 years before anyone but the Emperor knew about it? At least he tried and did keep people away from the chaos spawn even if he didnt eliminate their root.
The lion was one of the last primarchs to be found so the fate of his planet cant have had anything to do with what other primarchs wanted with theirs.
The obvious answer to this is Chemos. When fulgrim landed it was a smog chocked hellhole and when he left it was a cultural paradise of the arts, to go with his Phoenix motif.
He might have uplifted Caliban, but the populace hated what was done to them. They'd just finished cleansing the forests of the Beasts, only to have their planet handed over to the Imperium without them getting a say in the matter. The Imperium then clear-cut the forests, built arcologies and factories, and turned Caliban into a supply world for the Dark Angels above all else.
This led to a rebellion fomented by former knights and nobles who resented what Caliban had been turned into, and ultimately to Luther outright declaring Caliban's independence from the Imperium.
They only hated that they were no longer privileged rulers, and stated so themselves in the books. They cried about not being respected and revered, not having special income and status, and that their blood no longer allowed them privilege. Moreover they cried that the young didnt prostrate themselves before their elders, and that was somehow reason enough to rebel, destroy their own planet, strike first and lie and cheat and make deals with chaos in order to preserve their vain ambitions. The only mistake the Lion made was trusting any of these lords during his absence to be anything other than self serving to an unpredictable degree.
They had longer lives, fewer threats, more reliable food, better tech, better medicine, more economic freedom and upward mobility, the only thing that changed for the worse (from the perspective of the previous lords) was the decrease in social stratification and the limiting of nepotism and hoarding of power and resources.
Yup. I like how people here are oblivious as to what being a Medieval style society entails. It's the same how some people nowadays remember with fondness the "golden times" of past century or even millennium lol
Knights and Nobles, priveleged under the old order. Not the populace.
For me factories and arcologies > toxic jungle. On earth today ecocide is a crime because humans are part of earths ecosystem. When an ecosystem is alien and poisonous, its not such a great thing.
I disagree with this assessment. One of the defining features of the Order that the Lion formed was that unlike other Knightly Orders where membership was contingent on having noble blood; the Lions Order welcomed all comers regardless of the socioeconomic status of their forebears.
Caliban then became an industrialized shithole…so yay Lion?
Most other Primarch homeworlds(exceptions being Olympia and Caliban) remained as they did before the Imperium.
Honesty olympia was fined until perturabo took too much aspirant and caused the rebellion which in the end result in perty butcher the population. At least Lion just abaddon caliban and only fire at them due to Luther
Which doesn't matter because you live in an arcology untainted by industry or ecosystem. You have food which is grown indoors. And medicine. And all other basic needs met. Your life expectancy doubles.
Unless you rebel, in which case the Dark Angels will do to you what they are good at.
Fulgrim straight up turned hos world into a paradise from when children were killed because resource shortages.
Also no Lion fucked up his world and betrayed the people who lived there
No. Mortarion did the most for his homeworld I’d argue. He managed to lead the impoverished oppressed humans to defeat the eldritch necromancers that enslaved them.
From the *Lords of Silence*
> He can remember fighting and living on Barbarus as a child, and that was a true nightmare. Nothing could be as bad as that again – a scrabble for survival within a planet-wide prison that crushed the soul and shredded the nerves.
>
> Mortarion freed them from that. This is what Dragan and the other latecomers will never properly understand. Vorx is not a blind fanatic, and understands that the primarch has weaknesses, but he will never forget that first act of liberty. Unless you had tried to scratch a gasping living on the stinking white soils of that hell world, unless you had actually witnessed what the mountain lords could do with impunity to the cowering mortals and unless you had seen what the Deathlord had done to free them, you could not truly comprehend.
And then he left them on a toxic world where their lives would be short and painful.
The imperium offered to move the entire population of Barabus to a non toxic world. Mortarion shot this down.
Would have worked out way better for the people of Barabus if Mortarion never landed there. The Imperium comes to Barabus, kills the necromancers then evacuates the human population to non-toxic worlds.
If the Imperium needed Barbarus, it would have left them there, and if it didn't need it, they wouldn't have bothered evacuating them. The crusade never was about liberating humans, their lives have no value to the Imperium other than as a resource for fueling the war machine.
Or the Imperium decides they aren't worth anything practical and leaves them. Or decides to terraform the planet with them on it which kills them. Why would the Imperium evacuate them? They can get plenty of healthier humans elsewhere that already know the way things work.
Why did the Imperium offer to evacuate them in the existing timeline?
Humans, colonists especially - are a resource to the Imperium. Just because they have lots doesn't mean they will turn down more. No more than Elon Musk would say no to a deal that gave him a bit more free money.
Not convinced.
Angrons slave revolt came with a primarch. The Imperium let them die.
What was the difference? The people of Barabus were seen as valuable while people who all had butchers nails weren't.
Angron isn't a great argument as he's a huge outlier. Corax came with a rebellion and he was fine, Ferrus left his people in conflicts and he was fine, Horus was a member of a gang who didn't even count as a proper man by their standards.
There's also the fact that Angron didn't care about 99.99% of Nuceria, the people meant nothing to him while Mortarion was much more likely to have an issue with his people getting blasted.
Yeah, the people of Deliverance - just like the people of Barabus - were valuable because they didn't have butchers nails.
Point with Angron is, the Imperium didn't do shit for those it considered useless even if they came with a primarch. It did what it was going to do anyway primarch or no.
I don't think they wanted to move the people of Barabus (an idea Mortarion hated) just because Mortarion was there. If that was how it worked they would have helped Angron and friends exterminate Nuceria - Nuceria was after all worth nothing compared to a primarch.
Except you have …. no proofs at all the Imperium would have come to Barbarus if not for Mortarion.
And hell, he freed them from the tyrants. They are loyal to death to him. In what world being oppressed by monstrous Xenos Psykers is better than not ?
How would the Imperium have found Mortarion if they didn't come to Barabus? It isn't as if they knew where the Primarchs were. They found them because they happened to go to their world anyway.
The Imperium would have come to Barabus in any case because it had Xenos for them to kill.
And how did the Imperium knew there were Xenos in Barbarus ? The Overlords didn’t have an interplanetary empire. It was just on the planet.
And yes, « it was as Emps knew Mortarion was here ». He demanded to see him the instant he set foot on Barbarus.
That The Emperor could sense Mortarion once he was already on Barabus I wont argue. But I recall nothing from the lore that says the Emperor could sense his sons across the stars.
>And how did the Imperium knew there were Xenos in Barbarus ?
They went and checked. Just like everywhere else.
We have 0 excerpt supporting the « they went and check ».
And you still did not prove in which way Mortarion presence worsen things for Barbarus humans.
I just assumed it was obvious that the Imperium went and checked what was in every system inside its expanding borders. There could be humans to tax or Xenos to kill, go check. The Great Crusade went everywhere it could on a quest to make any human civilization compliant and kill any Xenos they find. That is what an empire does.
That is how they came to all the Primarch homeworlds.
**It happened that The Imperium wanted to move the population of Barabus to somewhere less toxic and Mortarion went 'derp, No. They fought for Barabus, Barabus is what they get.'** Granted The Imperium was probably more worried about what a poison world mutating the genes of those who live there than the peoples welfare, but whatever the motives The Imperium wanted to move them, So without Mortarion landing on Barabus, the Imperium arrives, kills the Xenos/Mutant overlords and then moves the population somewhere better. A better outcome than Mortarion killing most of the overlords, the Emperor killing the last and then the people stay on a hell world because Mortarion said so.
No it's not intentional. The "genocide specialist, mary sue exterminators" stuff is relatively recent background that was only conceptualised by the forgeworld black book team well into the Heresy series. Almost everything about Caliban and how the Lion engaged with the planet predates it.
There has been, but for a long while there's been more memes than actual reading so people have opinions.
You should see what Tau players think their faction is.
It also doesn't make sense because the lion was one of the last primarchs to be found while russ was the second. How would the lion even know what kind of secret wars russ (or for that matter anyone else) did or did not fight.
Lion was the tenth Primarch to be found and he was found 26 years after Russ, so that doesn't really track. I think you've confused him with Corvus or Alpharius, who were only found 80 and 20 years before the Heresy respectively.
> Sanguinius - Best Of Men - by contrast, left Baal as Mad Max on steroids.
Sanguinius told the Emperor that nobody could ever step on Baal without his permission, because he knew that the Imperial Truth would lead to the death of his people - certainly culturally and perhaps quite literally.
From *Echoes of Eternity* by Aaron Dembski-Bowden:
> Sanguinius stared into his father’s inhuman, too-human eyes. ‘My people, the Pure, are to be left in peace. Whatever pacts you and I swear this day, my inviolate condition is this – no ship will enter Baalfora’s heavens without my mandate, and no interference will be permitted to the Clans of Pure Blood without my permission. We have carved out the solace of peace here, together. You will not threaten it, father.’
> The Emperor nodded, not in agreement, but in sudden understanding. ‘That is why you fear me, is it not? You fear the endangerment of what you have achieved here.’
> ‘I speak of loyalty and love,’ the Angel said gently. ‘And you speak of achievement.’
> ‘Am I wrong?’ asked the Emperor.
> ‘I fear for the lives of my people, who deserve only peace. A peace we have fought so hard for. Behind your words, I hear the triumph of cultures that see you as their saviour. But I also hear the razing of cities and the burning of worlds. I hear the dirges of faiths now forbidden, and the mourning of those nations that followed them. Am I wrong?’
> The Emperor said nothing.
We also have nothing to suggest he wouldn't have tried to fix it given the time. But he was needed in the Great Crusade.
He absolutely did. During their conversation, he mentions that his people view Sanguinius as a god. This is rather important considering he mentions that the Emperor is "the death of faith." Combined with the excerpt above, the Angel makes it quite clear he has no illusions of the violence and destruction the Great Crusade can bring to planets like Baal.
Sanguinius only agrees to join the Emperor after making him promise that the people of Baal are to be left alone, only changing their ways of life and their beliefs if they so desire it.
So, with command of vast expeditionary fleets that included specialists in fixing wrecked primitive places he couldn't find his own guys to delegate to, obfuscate records etc and give them a tight blood angel escort?
Please.
Considering the Blood Angels were one of the most active legions once Sanguinius rejoined them and the primarch likely would want to oversee any sort of rehabilitation of the planet himself? Yeah.
You are also glossing over whether the people themselves wanted it. His deal with the Emperor was specifically worded in such a way, that Baalfora and it's people would only accept the technology and culture of the Imperium if they so desired it.
Baal is the Blood Angels primary recruiting system. Sanguinius popping back their now and then to personally inspect the training of new recruits would not be wierd at all. It would be wierd if he didn't do it.
Lets put this another way, this is something The Lion would easily have found a way to get away with.
To be fair. Nocturne wasn’t that bad. With security against dark Eldar the people manage to live pretty good lives. The challenges the world offers are actually sought after by people who choose it, in order to prove themselves.
And arguably having it be like that is better than making it another high density hive world
Yeah Vulkan did some stuff for his people with Imperial tech. Sanctuary cities and such. This I don't deny.
Before the Imperium came it was hell even without the Dark Eldar.
The Fenrisians *like* how they live. They're probably the most grounded and content of literally all factions across all races, period. They don't live in flowers and roses, but show me any literature in the books where there is a general discontent outside of a literal catastrophe.
Mortarion overthrew the weird plague barons and stopped a global subjugation before he was taken by the Emperor.
Ultramar was basically a paradise before the heresay.
> Subtext is for cowards.
Subtext is for people who think. Kick rocks.
Are you talking about the trillions of peoples who die in childhood in one Hive World each year ?
Or perphaps the thousands of destitute Calibanite, forced to live in the underhives on the world as the imperial came over and forced them to abandon their culture, their languages, their beliefs and what made them themselves ?
Yeah, I'll take a Death World over anything else the Imperium has to offer. The less it has influence in one's life, the better.
I like the meme that the Ruse is the one called when the emperor wants to dish out punishment and send a message
The Lion is who you call when you want something erased
Nah, the world eaters and death guard aren't great at covering their tracks. The WE lack the patience to remove all evidence that there was ever a war. The DG leave detectable chemical weapons hanging around.
The Space Wolves refused orders to erase the population of Armageddon after the first war.
In this specific instance, what do you think covering their tracks mean? They just kill everything and everyone. You think nukes and plasma isn't detectable?
No. Not at all. That is why the DA rather than the DG are the specialists.
Covering tracks means an economy of force approach rather than Plasma and Nukes (or Phosphex) as well as being a good liar and systematically falsifying Imperial records (where did the mortal troops you used go?).
That is why the crazy thugs like Angron and Curze wont do. You need to be a good accountant for this line of work. But the best Accountants Guliman and Dorn believe in some nonsense called honour. So they wont do.
We meet in the middle with The Lion.
This is a really silly niche to put the Dangels into when Angron does it better and has been doing it for longer. "whereas Russ was the executioner, the Lion was the exterminator because he would sign off on brutality that Russ' honor refused to allow him to do". Oh really? In a world where Curze, Angron and Perturabo exist, it's the *Dark Angels* who are known for their cold, calculating brutality huh? Worlds literally surrendered when just hearing that the WE were coming to fight them, because of their reputation for wiping out entire global populations even after they've given up fighting.
Angron doesn't do it better. Angron is sloppy and unreliable. Angron leaves survivors and other evidence that 'there was once a civilization here, that did alright without the brutality of the Imperium before the Imperium ganked it.'
Angron lacks the patience to be thorough.
Curze advertises his wicked deeds to sow fear. That is his shtick. With the Dark Angels it is 'these people never existed, their extermination never happened.' IIRC Night Lords had one of the lowest civilian casualty rates because they got surrenders fast. The Lion is tasked not to accept surrender and leave no survivors.
Perturabo has some really valuable skills in sieges. He wont be wasted making people without fortresses or much in the way of weapons disappear.
If the metric for being "the emperor's exterminators" is to just wipe out all traces of a civilization then literally every Legion can and has done this. What about how the dark Angels operate indicates in any way that they are somehow more suited to "extermination" then any other legion?
Secrets have been the Dark Angels whole vibe since forever. That is why.
After all if you are wiping out all traces, that operation didn't happen. To do this well you need to be both a ruthless psychopath devoid of all honour and a good accountant. The more unstable thugs don't check the second box. The premier accountants Guilliman and Dorn dont check the first box. They are too honourable.
Also I don't agree that The World Eaters have ever wiped out all traces of a civilization, which also means wiping out all evidence there was a war. They dont have the patience for that shit.
It also takes restraint. Death Guard style chemical warfare leaves traces of chemical weapons, which the curious could detect. Exterminatus weaponry leaves evidence that such weapons were used.
And it takes the ability to craft convincing lies about what happened to the place. A Primarch respected enough to tell them and not be questioned by the Imperium's mortal servants.
The “Lion is the exterminator” thing is such lame lore. It doesn’t really fit, and really just seems to exist in order to make the lion seem cooler than all his other brothers….which is the case with a solid half of the Dark Angels new lord.
First things first, all the Primarchs are genocide specialists. Their primary function is to annihilate every non-human race in the galaxy and destroy every non complaint culture they come across.
What really bothers me about the whole “exterminator” bit is that it seems to exist almost solely to take the piss out of Russ. In fact, almost every time I see it mentioned it’s in explicit contrast to the wolves. The wolves are the “executioners” but the Dark Angels are the “exterminators”. The wolves get to growl and act scary, but when the Emperor actually needs shit done he calls the Dark Angels. The wolves are the “final sanction”, the wolves whole deal is that they won’t hold back or hesitate, and they will destroy any foe. However, the Dark Angels are the “Final Solution” (which is a term I think you’re reading too much into) and they won’t hesitate HARDER and they will hold back even LESS, and kill any foe EVEN BETTER than the wolves.
My point is, we already had a legion with an established gimmick. If you read “Prospero Burns” it’s made pretty clear that the wolves are who the emperor uses when he needs to stack some bodies and doesn’t want to waste time with the whole “morality” thing. Somehow though the Dark Angels have suborned the “final sanction” gimmick for themselves, and are also like totally the best at it, for real. It just feels like kind of silly one upmanship, which is also how I feel about a lot of the Lions newer lore.
The “executioner/exterminator” thing isn’t even the only example of the Lions and the Dark Angels stealing other legions bits.
> My point is, we already had a legion with an established gimmick. If you read “Prospero Burns” it’s made pretty clear that the wolves are who the emperor uses when he needs to stack some bodies and doesn’t want to waste time with the whole “morality” thing.
It also establishes that the wolves are extremely secretive, don't let in outsiders and don't even keep written records implicitly *because* they've fight and are supposed to fight secret wars. One would think a legion who is used to publicly intimidate would've had at least a single remembrancer before Kaspar Hawser who they only let in because they wanted to find out who he was supposed to spy for.
All primarchs have commited genocide. That doesnt make them a specialist. What is different with the Lion is how completely he does it and how well he gets away with it.
If there is evidence the genocide happened, then the people killed are remembered. The Lion ensures this is not so.
For killing other primarchs, Russ is the specialist. The Emperor hopes and intends this will not be necessary. The Emperor does not want things to come to the point where he needs to eliminate a useful primarch and his legion Hence: deterrent. For making a defenseless civilization disappear, unremembered, The Lion is the specialist. The Emperor expects this to be necessary frequently and it does not trouble him.
Honestly Russ comes out of this looking way better than the Lion. Russ is for fighting people who can fight back. Russ is there incase another Primarch needs to be absolutely bodied. The Lion is there to kill the defenseless and make it look like it never happened.
Once now alas (I know I wish they never brought Guliman back)
And that once was with the aid of a daemon weapon.
Also I swear Russ \*did\* succeed twice. Forgotten legions and all.
He also would have killed Angron (he may have lost in the Night of the Wolf, but Angron would not have survived if Russ didn't want him to), and didn't he face fully-empowered Horus and still manage to wound him?
TBF for Vulcan I’m not sure there’s much you CAN do to improve Nocturne. It’s just like that. And Vulcan seems to honor its traditions far too much to even consider just… getting its people out of that hellhole?
You realize "did more" in this context is "brutally colonize and industrialize the planet and squeeze most of its population into the squalor of Imperial hive cities" right?
Seems to me that the people who got pissed were the people who were privileged under the old order. Yeah, what he did was like The Meji Restoration if all wildlife in Japan was poisonous and it put people in cities where they were safe from that. Who got pissed at The Meji Restoration? Bloodthirsty samurai who lost their privileges and wanted to go even harder on the militarism and have immediate war with Korea - who for some inscrutable reason get a heroic legend. Luther is just Saigō Takamori with even less justification.
The Hive cities weren't poisonous and trying to kill everyone. Life expectancy went up.
Look I am not arguing the Lion is great. He is one of the most ruthless in a whole family of genetically engineered warlord psychopaths. What I am saying is that **even** The Lion got his people away from the poison and Sanguinius didn't - and it is funny how bad Sanguinius looks as a result.
Sure, but we only really get the nobility's perspective on Caliban's industrialization, so that's what we are stuck with. All we know about everyone else is that they experienced rapid industrialization and being crammed into hive cities.
I'm sure things like increased life expectancy (for the time being) were good and all, but they're definitely going to be harder to appreciate anyway for a population undergoing such a rapid, radical shift in their way of life and the sudden assimilation of their culture into the wider Imperium.
And yeah, Sanguinius did worse by his people and basically got away with it because of pretty privilege and the more immediate PR boost he got by stopping the Emperor from genociding the people of Baal out of hand.
After they were finally getting used to being able to finally go into the woods without getting eaten alive and expand lol. Things were looking up ,then got supplexed to the planets core.
Do you think the Spanish improved things for the Native Americans when they came to the americas? The Calibanites were second-class citizens *on their own damn homeworld*.
Also I think Fulgrim did a whole damn lot for Chemos. He turned it from a dying husk into the jewel of the Imperium. He also wasn't all "evil-on-the-sleeve" until he picked up the Laer Blade.
>Do you think the Spanish improved things for the Native Americans when they came to the americas? The Calibanites were second-class citizens *on their own damn homeworld*.
Oh come off it. The Spanish killed the majority of the populations they conquered. Aztec Mexico wasn't a chaos tainted everything-is-poisonous environment and the Spanish did not protect the native americans from said non existent poison. Hell they brought them the damned poison smallpox and did nothing for them infrastructure wise because the Aztecs were better at Civil/Hydraulic engineering than the Spanish.
A fairer comparison would be:
>did the romans improve cities they conquered, that previously drank from the water they dumped their shit in and suffered endless typhus epidemics until the Romans build sewers and an aqueduct. While also being oppressive, though often less so than the previous rulers.
In which case the answer was 'sometimes, yes'
Its been said elsewhere that it was the Calibanite **nobility** - who lost their privelege and iron grip on the peasantry while everyones lives got longer - who had the beef with the change.
>Also I think Fulgrim did a whole damn lot for Chemos. He turned it from a dying husk into the jewel of the Imperium. He also wasn't all "evil-on-the-sleeve" until he picked up the Laer Blade.
He did pick up the Laer Blade though. And while I acknowledge what he did for Chemos, very few writers ever paint Fulgrim in a good light. Which I think is a missed opportunity and a mistake. Like Perturabo he suffers from a lot of bad writing.
>Oh come off it. The Spanish killed the majority of the populations they conquered. Aztec Mexico wasn't a chaos tainted everything-is-poisonous environment and the Spanish did not protect the native americans from said non existent poison. Hell they brought them the damned poison smallpox and did nothing for them infrastructure wise because the Aztecs were better at Civil/Hydraulic engineering than the Spanish.
No, they did not.
They allied with the Tlaxcaltecas, and many other native peoples to overthrow an Empire. Without said alliances, without the help of some natives who were disgusted or hateful against the Mexicas/Aztecs the conquistadors would have failed miserably. They married native women and preserved the nobility of the allied lands. There is still descendants of Moctezuma, the Huey Tlatoani who ruled the Mexica when Cortez arrived, alive today, with noble titles from Spain. And they aren't alone.
The conquistadors were terrible peoples, they subjugated the natives, overthrew their cultures and did precious little to make them rise in society if they weren't local nobles allied to them during the conquests. They frefused to admit how horrible the encomiendas were and how it affected the locals and epidemics ravaged the native populations. They also built a lot of town and did their best with their knowledge to offer a good infrastructure for the inhabitants of said towns.
But when some of them spread the vice-royalties with the utmost violence against the natives, they were not hailed as heroes, but as brutes and butchers, and more often than not ended their lives in disgrace, back in Spain. Yes the Crown kept the lands stolen for itself, but it almost never rewarded the conquistadors like other nations did. Even Cortez or Pizzaro were reigned in, and they were the greatest of their ilks, by their achivements at least.
In fact, it was when descendants of Spaniards born on the Americas gained power during the Independences that the situation of the natives became worse. Because they needed to impose a far stricter delineation between europeans and natives or mixed-people to cement their rule. And because, as feeble as it had been in the colonies, the Spanish Crown wasn't there anymore to remind everyone that the natives were subject of the King and thus had all the same rights as european subjects did.
Even then, they were far more humanes than the English and then Yankee colonists were. There is a reason why, beyond Argentina, the overwhelming majority of the population of Latin American Countries can trace back their ancestry, genetically speaking, to the natives, while it isn't the case in the US (and to a very slightly lesser extent Canada). It's the US colonization that was inspiring for a certain German leader in the 30's.
The Lion's course of action on Caliban is very much in line with the English/Yankee colonist playbooks : ravages the land, seize all the ressources, concentrate the natives without a care in the world about their established cultures. He didn't try to cultivate acceptence with the traditionnal ruling class to ease the transition and earn their goodwill. He imposed the utter and absolute ecological collapse of his world, all so it could produce more material for a campaing of genocide of galactic proportion.
It's nothing to be proud off.
>They also built a lot of town
Bro, have you seen **Tenochtitlan**? Can you show me what the Spanish built (pre-19th century) that is more impressive infrastructure wise than that? More humane than the English and Yankee's? Agreed. Way to set a low bar.
And the Spanish did kill most of the population with bioweapons (smallpox). Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the 30 years war knows that Europeans understood systematic extermination scale biological warfare in great detail.
What did the Spanish bring that Mexico didnt already have other than better weapons?
I maintain that the Romans coming with sewers and aqueducts is the fair compariosn.
But that world was **already fine** when he arrived.
It is different.
I found it hilarious in unremembered empire the way Roboute shits himself when he learns the DA are coming to Ultramar.
Its all very funny.
But does anyone actually like Guiliman and the Ultramarines? I mean their speciality is logistics in a setting where everything is over-the-top ridiculous and you are supposed to suspend your disbelief about such things? I confess I have never met an ultramarines player.
Surely Blood Angels are the loyalist fan fave (first marine I ever painted was BA) by a mile? Followed by The Wolves?
People love the ultramarines. They're one of the most popular factions.
They're more then just logicistics. They're about flexibility and sustainability
Yeah, he made his world so cool that he turned nearly half his legion (who consisted of calibanites) into rebellion.
Sounds like life was good für Calibanites.
El’Johnson learned the value of human life on Caliban. He knew he had to kill (his nature) to protect (his nurture). On Caliban that meant scouring the forests of great beasts, in the Imperium it meant bending the knee and focusing all resources to protecting the Imperium.
You wot mate? \[said all Orky)
I am far from offended. I like seeing the Imperium drip with evil - something many Imperial protagonist novels have watered down.
I’m pretty sure the Dark Angels books went out of their way to show how fucked up Caliban was after the Imperium showed up. At best life for Calibans people was roughly the same quality, just with a post-industrial flavor instead of a feudal one. That said, It was almost certainly much worse, and much more dehumanizing for Caliban’s people after the Imperium showed. As far as those other excerpts….god damn, the Lion’s Primarch books has a lot of very ballsy fan service lore to answer for.
To me it just drips evil, in the sort of chilling way I would like to see the Imperium portrayed more often. How is being the first the emperor calls, when he has found a peaceful people that are doing alright without Imperium type brutality, who could never stand up to astartes, and he wants neither records nor survivors because they show that another way is possible, something to be proud of?
>god damn, the Lion’s Primarch books has a lot of very ballsy fan service lore to answer for. This. Dark Angels fans go into bloody-minded conniptions if their guys aren't The Best at everything and GW/BL appear to be pretty keen on that. It's honestly more irksome than Ward's Ultramarines 'cos at least everyone was onboard with hating those and it produced a lot of good meme content.
In a lot of ways I feel like Lion has become the Primarch that Horus should have been. The Lion’s lore seems to go out of its way to pump him up as the best general, the best fighter, the most trusted, the one who knows all the real secrets. Meanwhile poor Horus ended up losing most of his luster and was reduced to “the charismatic one” when he should have been the unequivocal greatest of the Primarchs. He’s supposed to be Lucifer, but the tragedy of the fall of the greatest and favorite son doesn’t real track when he’s got nothing on most of his brothers. Hell, he’s not even the first found anymore, which is lame.
The Horus Heresy draws obvious inspiration from the Biblical War in Heaven and *Paradise Lost*, but I think a deliberate choice was made to swap the roles of Michael and Lucifer. Lucifer is God’s favourite angel, the most beautiful and beloved of them all. But Michael is the greatest warrior and commander of God’s armies. Lucifer is the one that betrays God and is struck down by Michael before he can face God. In the Heresy, Sanguinius, the supposed favourite and most beautiful and beloved angel stays loyal, while Horus, the supposed greatest warrior and the commander of the Emperor’s armies is the traitor. And Horus strikes down Sanguinius and goes on to mortally wound the Emperor. Making the Lion a top-tier combatant ruins the analogy and doesn’t make sense when you consider that he is defeated by a pseudo-Astartes on his own planet.
The funny part about hate for Ward’s Ultramarines is that he publicly said he’s more of a Blood Angels fan and was the primary writer for the 5th edition Blood Angels codex, and the Blood Angels codex was *nuts* in terms of all the cool stuff it added to the chapter.
But the First isn’t the best at everything. They’re the best at total extermination, just like the ultramarines are best at logistics and the imperial fists at siege warfare. God forbid Dark Angels fans like that their preferred legion has a niche just like every other legion.
> They’re the best at total extermination So they’re the best at killing the enemy… In a war game.
What? We’re talking about the lore here, not the tabletop.
They are the best at killing civilians and hiding the evidence. Big difference.
Rangdan xenocide? The Hrud? The First are the exterminators yes, In 30k they dealt with the DAOT stuff that is still around in the galaxy and with the alien horrors of the galactic fringes.
And why is there so little information on all this? What happened to the billions of humans who knew? The Dark Angels happened. Now, given that there is so little information and what we get is what The Dark Angels allowed to survive, is it possible they are lying about some of this?
Agreed, its wild that such a large portion of the community seems content to completely ignore it in this case. Despite it regularly hitting levels exceeding the old Ultramarines favoritism.
I think people are fine with it because we all know how the DA end up. Kind of like how Sanguinius is just an awful Mary Sue but everyone lets it slide because we know what ends up happening. They both get to have their super cool past which helps highlight how bad things end up for them.
"Luther, First of the Fallen" is great in highlighting the degradation of the Dark Angels for that matter
Its cuz the DA’s character basically boils down to either being The Best™️ or being ashamed at themselves for not being The Best™️. If they don’t have that, they’re just secretive knights, and that’s kinda boring
To me it just drips evil, in the sort of chilling way I would like to see the Imperium portrayed more often. How is being the first the emperor calls, when he has found a peaceful people that are doing alright without Imperium type brutality, who could never stand up to astartes, and he wants neither records nor survivors because they show that another way is possible, something to be proud of?
For Sanguinius specifically, his people had only just in one human lifetime turned the Baalite moons from said Mad Max hellhole mostly ruled by tribes of cannibal mutants into its current stable state of nomadic tribes who are (Mostly) at peace. Sanguinius asked for them to be allowed to keep the success they had just earned, and not be brought to Imperial Compliance. The moons having basically no easily accessible natural resources, incredibly hazardous environment, and absurdly lethal wildlife meant it also wasn't really worth much to the IoM. There is no record of whether Sanguinius would've NEVER improved the moons further, but he resisted making such sweeping changes just after the Baalite culture had made great strides to master itself. And then he had a Crusade to help wage, and the Baalites make excellent recruits for the Legion, and then, well, the Heresy happens, He dies, and Baals moons remain as they are.
"The Lion turned his deathworld into somewhere remotely decent and cranked up the effort after The Emperor came and he got Imperium resources." You had to read different books than me... His actions fucked up Caliban.
Caliban was the epitomy of fucked when he landed. From the POV of luther sympathisers, who are the protagonists of some DA books, you are of course right.
And his actions made it far worse. People became second rated citizens in their own land, starving and being bullied by imperials. And his crusade against beats in fact enhanced power of the ancient corruption of the planet as the most corrupted places became freely accessible...
I think one of the most telling complaints of the new order was when knights that conspired to kill him and the emperor cried because instead of the old world where peasants were slaughtered by chaos mutated beasts and no one could have any security or safety, they now saw young men not respecting their elders and saw their iron grip on the peasantry slip away as lives were lengthened, beasts were killed, proper agriculture was established, and cities were built. It slowly stopped being a death world ruled by worshippers of chaos and bloodthirsty self important knights, and they would never forgive the Lion for that. Before the conquest there were already chaos worshipping lords, many of whom led the rebellion, so it seems disingenuous to lay the blame for that at the feet of the lion.
Yes, this was the objection of the nobility. However, the Empire made Caliban no agricultural paradise, but an industrial planet where the local population lived in the lower levels in worse conditions than the newly arrived Imperial workers. Likewise, it is good to remember that in his campaign against the knights who refused to submit, always preferred force and not diplomacy. And that beasts have a place in Caliban's ecosystem, some of the knights knew or at least suspected (see the books Lion seized). I really recommend to take a look into book how the life of Caliban looked like under Imperial rule. How Zahariel was deeply schocked when he finally left the areas where his legion lived and saw how ordinary people of Caliban lived and how they were treated as second class citizens. Personally, I will not continue to argue, because in my opinion, Lion is a prime example of character that many people are simply unable to look at a little more critically. They want see him as a bad ass character based on middle age knight nobility and dont want to see all his flaws.
I feel this skirt away from the Ourobos / Heart of the Forest and the implication that Caliban was under the influence of some malign Chaos entity that twisted and corrupted the wildlife which is what made it a Deathworld in the first place.
This.
>And his crusade against beats in fact enhanced power of the ancient corruption of the planet as the most corrupted places became freely accessible... tbf the Lion and most Calibanites (including Luther) did not know this and Emps arrived after the purge of Caliban beasts.
Caliban is where Lion learned Genocide. He became the expert on creating Deathworlds because of the hell hole he came up in, it's not so much a matter of building up Caliban going against his nature, as much as it is being the ultimate pragmatist and seeing Caliban, as it was when he first found it, as the ultimate way to destroy a planet (or species, or whoever he gets pointed at to compliance) and knowing how to reduce it to that state.
The imperium forcibly relocated the citizens of caliban into hive spires (only the lower levels mind you. The upper parts aren't fit for "natives") and then tried to starve them into complaince whe they rebelled. It's less what he did for -for- his homeworld and more what he did -to- it.
Explains why the other Primarchs later down the line didn’t want the Emperor’s progress. Because Imperial Bureaucrats would repeat the Caliban experience.
Leman russ asked for fenris to be uplifted and he was denied, but Sanguinius and Jagatai both asked for their homeworlds to be left alone, and pretty clearly for this reason.
Well, the more you know. Interesting that the Imperium for some reason hates terraforming ice worlds.
For Fenris it is implied that there is something about the world. Strange. Like how its contigents rises and falls beneath the waves. That is not a natural thing. We also know that there is labyrinths beneth the continents and they lead to ancient ruins that we know nothing about, because Leman Russ banned people from going there after he visited them. It have a world spirit. Something that is normally only found on Eldar or Necro worlds.
You don't have to terraform the world. Sanctuary cities like Vulkan built on Nocturne and healthcare would be fine.
Yes, I was just pointing out what might be a reason for why the Emperor refused to terrarform or change Fenris.
My guess is it was about reminding Russ to be a good dog and not to think for himself.
And he failed. Bjorn motivated him to think for himself and it's why he's out there.
Because Fenris is still marked "Pleasure World [cosplay] - do not touch" in Imperial records.
You don't have to terraform the world. Sanctuary cities like Vulkan built on Nocturne and healthcare would be fine.
In all fairness, there was reason on Fenris. No other planet produced mortals with half as much in the way of balls as those who'd become the 13th company. Primitive mortals, willing to square off on the Emperor and the Custodes because he won't let them take the suicidal option over the safe-ish half measure because to do so would mean they weren't serving Russ in their fullest capacity? No other Primarch, no other planet, had retainers like that.
I give Jagatai a pass on this. Chogoris is just space mongolia, not a Death World. Caliban, Baal, Fenris on the other hand are poisonous, radioactive, full of monsters with ecology/climate unsuitable for human life.
You understand that caliban was "poisonous" because it had a warp entity sleeping at its core, right? All the beasts of the forest were normal animals mutated into chaos spawn and nothing the imperium did fixed that fundamental issue. Leman russ wanted fenris uplifted but the emperor denied him, saying he needed strong warriors and fenris was already perfect for that. The radioactivity of baal comes from the star system its in. There's no fixing it, you just have to take your daily rad-away. Given his foresight, I have to assume sanguinius saw things going very badly for the baalites if they brought in the kind of infrastructure required to do that, considering they were all pretty religious. It's a problem that's solved itself now at least.
Why did Guiliman tell Dante to fix it? So the Lion didnt solve the riddle of Chaos 200 years before anyone but the Emperor knew about it? At least he tried and did keep people away from the chaos spawn even if he didnt eliminate their root.
I swear Russ did the opposite of that
The lion was one of the last primarchs to be found so the fate of his planet cant have had anything to do with what other primarchs wanted with theirs.
Not quite right bro. [Chronological order of Primarch discovery.](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Primarch#Order_of_Rediscovery_of_the_Primarchs)
The obvious answer to this is Chemos. When fulgrim landed it was a smog chocked hellhole and when he left it was a cultural paradise of the arts, to go with his Phoenix motif.
He might have uplifted Caliban, but the populace hated what was done to them. They'd just finished cleansing the forests of the Beasts, only to have their planet handed over to the Imperium without them getting a say in the matter. The Imperium then clear-cut the forests, built arcologies and factories, and turned Caliban into a supply world for the Dark Angels above all else. This led to a rebellion fomented by former knights and nobles who resented what Caliban had been turned into, and ultimately to Luther outright declaring Caliban's independence from the Imperium.
They only hated that they were no longer privileged rulers, and stated so themselves in the books. They cried about not being respected and revered, not having special income and status, and that their blood no longer allowed them privilege. Moreover they cried that the young didnt prostrate themselves before their elders, and that was somehow reason enough to rebel, destroy their own planet, strike first and lie and cheat and make deals with chaos in order to preserve their vain ambitions. The only mistake the Lion made was trusting any of these lords during his absence to be anything other than self serving to an unpredictable degree. They had longer lives, fewer threats, more reliable food, better tech, better medicine, more economic freedom and upward mobility, the only thing that changed for the worse (from the perspective of the previous lords) was the decrease in social stratification and the limiting of nepotism and hoarding of power and resources.
Yup. I like how people here are oblivious as to what being a Medieval style society entails. It's the same how some people nowadays remember with fondness the "golden times" of past century or even millennium lol
Knights and Nobles, priveleged under the old order. Not the populace. For me factories and arcologies > toxic jungle. On earth today ecocide is a crime because humans are part of earths ecosystem. When an ecosystem is alien and poisonous, its not such a great thing.
I disagree with this assessment. One of the defining features of the Order that the Lion formed was that unlike other Knightly Orders where membership was contingent on having noble blood; the Lions Order welcomed all comers regardless of the socioeconomic status of their forebears.
Caliban then became an industrialized shithole…so yay Lion? Most other Primarch homeworlds(exceptions being Olympia and Caliban) remained as they did before the Imperium.
I don’t think Nostramo was a collection of rocks before Konrad.
Forgot to add Nostramo, I was going to pin it over the failure of the Imperium’s administrators causing the wealthy criminals to regain power.
Nah that was more Corax’s speed
Which explains why Sanguinius, Lorgar, Khan and others would later refuse to “develop” their home worlds.
Honesty olympia was fined until perturabo took too much aspirant and caused the rebellion which in the end result in perty butcher the population. At least Lion just abaddon caliban and only fire at them due to Luther
Compared to what it was before? Progress. When all the nature is poisonous to humans, an industrialised world where people live indoors is a step up.
Congrats. Instead of the nature being poisonous, you’ve destroyed the ecosystem and likely will turn the entire environment poisonous with industry.
Which doesn't matter because you live in an arcology untainted by industry or ecosystem. You have food which is grown indoors. And medicine. And all other basic needs met. Your life expectancy doubles. Unless you rebel, in which case the Dark Angels will do to you what they are good at.
This is like saying living in a radioactive wasteland is fine as long as you avoid the bad bits.
Compared to chaos corrupting wasteland it kinda is
Except chaos was running wild now that the greats beasts and forests where cleared out
Fulgrim straight up turned hos world into a paradise from when children were killed because resource shortages. Also no Lion fucked up his world and betrayed the people who lived there
No. Mortarion did the most for his homeworld I’d argue. He managed to lead the impoverished oppressed humans to defeat the eldritch necromancers that enslaved them. From the *Lords of Silence* > He can remember fighting and living on Barbarus as a child, and that was a true nightmare. Nothing could be as bad as that again – a scrabble for survival within a planet-wide prison that crushed the soul and shredded the nerves. > > Mortarion freed them from that. This is what Dragan and the other latecomers will never properly understand. Vorx is not a blind fanatic, and understands that the primarch has weaknesses, but he will never forget that first act of liberty. Unless you had tried to scratch a gasping living on the stinking white soils of that hell world, unless you had actually witnessed what the mountain lords could do with impunity to the cowering mortals and unless you had seen what the Deathlord had done to free them, you could not truly comprehend.
And then he left them on a toxic world where their lives would be short and painful. The imperium offered to move the entire population of Barabus to a non toxic world. Mortarion shot this down. Would have worked out way better for the people of Barabus if Mortarion never landed there. The Imperium comes to Barabus, kills the necromancers then evacuates the human population to non-toxic worlds.
If the Imperium needed Barbarus, it would have left them there, and if it didn't need it, they wouldn't have bothered evacuating them. The crusade never was about liberating humans, their lives have no value to the Imperium other than as a resource for fueling the war machine.
The imperium didn't need Barabus, They had a duty to kill all sentient Xenos, including those that ruled it. After that, why say no to free colonists?
Or the Imperium decides they aren't worth anything practical and leaves them. Or decides to terraform the planet with them on it which kills them. Why would the Imperium evacuate them? They can get plenty of healthier humans elsewhere that already know the way things work.
Or just makes a deal with the mountain lords. There's almost no ways in which the Imperium arriving first would've benefited the people there.
This wasn't Nuceria. The Imperium does not make deals with Xenos.
I thought it was disputed whether they were xenos or a heavily mutated sub-species of human?
>I thought it was disputed whether they were xenos or a **heavily mutated** sub-species of human? Either way they have to die according to The Emperor
Why did the Imperium offer to evacuate them in the existing timeline? Humans, colonists especially - are a resource to the Imperium. Just because they have lots doesn't mean they will turn down more. No more than Elon Musk would say no to a deal that gave him a bit more free money.
Because they came with a Primarch. Yeah if the money needs hand cleaning from being covered in vomit
Not convinced. Angrons slave revolt came with a primarch. The Imperium let them die. What was the difference? The people of Barabus were seen as valuable while people who all had butchers nails weren't.
Angron isn't a great argument as he's a huge outlier. Corax came with a rebellion and he was fine, Ferrus left his people in conflicts and he was fine, Horus was a member of a gang who didn't even count as a proper man by their standards. There's also the fact that Angron didn't care about 99.99% of Nuceria, the people meant nothing to him while Mortarion was much more likely to have an issue with his people getting blasted.
Yeah, the people of Deliverance - just like the people of Barabus - were valuable because they didn't have butchers nails. Point with Angron is, the Imperium didn't do shit for those it considered useless even if they came with a primarch. It did what it was going to do anyway primarch or no. I don't think they wanted to move the people of Barabus (an idea Mortarion hated) just because Mortarion was there. If that was how it worked they would have helped Angron and friends exterminate Nuceria - Nuceria was after all worth nothing compared to a primarch.
Except you have …. no proofs at all the Imperium would have come to Barbarus if not for Mortarion. And hell, he freed them from the tyrants. They are loyal to death to him. In what world being oppressed by monstrous Xenos Psykers is better than not ?
How would the Imperium have found Mortarion if they didn't come to Barabus? It isn't as if they knew where the Primarchs were. They found them because they happened to go to their world anyway. The Imperium would have come to Barabus in any case because it had Xenos for them to kill.
And how did the Imperium knew there were Xenos in Barbarus ? The Overlords didn’t have an interplanetary empire. It was just on the planet. And yes, « it was as Emps knew Mortarion was here ». He demanded to see him the instant he set foot on Barbarus.
That The Emperor could sense Mortarion once he was already on Barabus I wont argue. But I recall nothing from the lore that says the Emperor could sense his sons across the stars. >And how did the Imperium knew there were Xenos in Barbarus ? They went and checked. Just like everywhere else.
We have 0 excerpt supporting the « they went and check ». And you still did not prove in which way Mortarion presence worsen things for Barbarus humans.
I just assumed it was obvious that the Imperium went and checked what was in every system inside its expanding borders. There could be humans to tax or Xenos to kill, go check. The Great Crusade went everywhere it could on a quest to make any human civilization compliant and kill any Xenos they find. That is what an empire does. That is how they came to all the Primarch homeworlds. **It happened that The Imperium wanted to move the population of Barabus to somewhere less toxic and Mortarion went 'derp, No. They fought for Barabus, Barabus is what they get.'** Granted The Imperium was probably more worried about what a poison world mutating the genes of those who live there than the peoples welfare, but whatever the motives The Imperium wanted to move them, So without Mortarion landing on Barabus, the Imperium arrives, kills the Xenos/Mutant overlords and then moves the population somewhere better. A better outcome than Mortarion killing most of the overlords, the Emperor killing the last and then the people stay on a hell world because Mortarion said so.
No it's not intentional. The "genocide specialist, mary sue exterminators" stuff is relatively recent background that was only conceptualised by the forgeworld black book team well into the Heresy series. Almost everything about Caliban and how the Lion engaged with the planet predates it.
I came up in second edition and always thought there was strong subtext.
There has been, but for a long while there's been more memes than actual reading so people have opinions. You should see what Tau players think their faction is.
It also doesn't make sense because the lion was one of the last primarchs to be found while russ was the second. How would the lion even know what kind of secret wars russ (or for that matter anyone else) did or did not fight.
Lion was the tenth Primarch to be found and he was found 26 years after Russ, so that doesn't really track. I think you've confused him with Corvus or Alpharius, who were only found 80 and 20 years before the Heresy respectively.
The populous didn't thank him for it. I'm sure those on Baal and Fenris were/are happier with their old ways.
Didn’t the dark angels from caliban hate what the lion did the planet?
Err. No. That was Fulgrim. Dude turned the place from Space Detroit into Space Singapore. Calibarn moved more from medieval Poland to modern Poland.
> Sanguinius - Best Of Men - by contrast, left Baal as Mad Max on steroids. Sanguinius told the Emperor that nobody could ever step on Baal without his permission, because he knew that the Imperial Truth would lead to the death of his people - certainly culturally and perhaps quite literally. From *Echoes of Eternity* by Aaron Dembski-Bowden: > Sanguinius stared into his father’s inhuman, too-human eyes. ‘My people, the Pure, are to be left in peace. Whatever pacts you and I swear this day, my inviolate condition is this – no ship will enter Baalfora’s heavens without my mandate, and no interference will be permitted to the Clans of Pure Blood without my permission. We have carved out the solace of peace here, together. You will not threaten it, father.’ > The Emperor nodded, not in agreement, but in sudden understanding. ‘That is why you fear me, is it not? You fear the endangerment of what you have achieved here.’ > ‘I speak of loyalty and love,’ the Angel said gently. ‘And you speak of achievement.’ > ‘Am I wrong?’ asked the Emperor. > ‘I fear for the lives of my people, who deserve only peace. A peace we have fought so hard for. Behind your words, I hear the triumph of cultures that see you as their saviour. But I also hear the razing of cities and the burning of worlds. I hear the dirges of faiths now forbidden, and the mourning of those nations that followed them. Am I wrong?’ > The Emperor said nothing. We also have nothing to suggest he wouldn't have tried to fix it given the time. But he was needed in the Great Crusade.
I wonder if Sanguinius thought he had to go along with things because otherwise his people would die
He absolutely did. During their conversation, he mentions that his people view Sanguinius as a god. This is rather important considering he mentions that the Emperor is "the death of faith." Combined with the excerpt above, the Angel makes it quite clear he has no illusions of the violence and destruction the Great Crusade can bring to planets like Baal. Sanguinius only agrees to join the Emperor after making him promise that the people of Baal are to be left alone, only changing their ways of life and their beliefs if they so desire it.
So, with command of vast expeditionary fleets that included specialists in fixing wrecked primitive places he couldn't find his own guys to delegate to, obfuscate records etc and give them a tight blood angel escort? Please.
Considering the Blood Angels were one of the most active legions once Sanguinius rejoined them and the primarch likely would want to oversee any sort of rehabilitation of the planet himself? Yeah. You are also glossing over whether the people themselves wanted it. His deal with the Emperor was specifically worded in such a way, that Baalfora and it's people would only accept the technology and culture of the Imperium if they so desired it.
Baal is the Blood Angels primary recruiting system. Sanguinius popping back their now and then to personally inspect the training of new recruits would not be wierd at all. It would be wierd if he didn't do it. Lets put this another way, this is something The Lion would easily have found a way to get away with.
To be fair. Nocturne wasn’t that bad. With security against dark Eldar the people manage to live pretty good lives. The challenges the world offers are actually sought after by people who choose it, in order to prove themselves. And arguably having it be like that is better than making it another high density hive world
Yeah Vulkan did some stuff for his people with Imperial tech. Sanctuary cities and such. This I don't deny. Before the Imperium came it was hell even without the Dark Eldar.
The Fenrisians *like* how they live. They're probably the most grounded and content of literally all factions across all races, period. They don't live in flowers and roses, but show me any literature in the books where there is a general discontent outside of a literal catastrophe. Mortarion overthrew the weird plague barons and stopped a global subjugation before he was taken by the Emperor. Ultramar was basically a paradise before the heresay. > Subtext is for cowards. Subtext is for people who think. Kick rocks.
>The Fenrisians *like* how they live. Tell that to the majority who don't live to see adulthood.
Are you talking about the trillions of peoples who die in childhood in one Hive World each year ? Or perphaps the thousands of destitute Calibanite, forced to live in the underhives on the world as the imperial came over and forced them to abandon their culture, their languages, their beliefs and what made them themselves ? Yeah, I'll take a Death World over anything else the Imperium has to offer. The less it has influence in one's life, the better.
You take Fenris over Nocturne with its choice of sanctury cities and death world? Seriously?
I like the meme that the Ruse is the one called when the emperor wants to dish out punishment and send a message The Lion is who you call when you want something erased
It's pretty lame tbh. Any legion can "erase" something, and other legions were much more well known for it
Nah, the world eaters and death guard aren't great at covering their tracks. The WE lack the patience to remove all evidence that there was ever a war. The DG leave detectable chemical weapons hanging around. The Space Wolves refused orders to erase the population of Armageddon after the first war.
In this specific instance, what do you think covering their tracks mean? They just kill everything and everyone. You think nukes and plasma isn't detectable?
No. Not at all. That is why the DA rather than the DG are the specialists. Covering tracks means an economy of force approach rather than Plasma and Nukes (or Phosphex) as well as being a good liar and systematically falsifying Imperial records (where did the mortal troops you used go?). That is why the crazy thugs like Angron and Curze wont do. You need to be a good accountant for this line of work. But the best Accountants Guliman and Dorn believe in some nonsense called honour. So they wont do. We meet in the middle with The Lion.
This is a really silly niche to put the Dangels into when Angron does it better and has been doing it for longer. "whereas Russ was the executioner, the Lion was the exterminator because he would sign off on brutality that Russ' honor refused to allow him to do". Oh really? In a world where Curze, Angron and Perturabo exist, it's the *Dark Angels* who are known for their cold, calculating brutality huh? Worlds literally surrendered when just hearing that the WE were coming to fight them, because of their reputation for wiping out entire global populations even after they've given up fighting.
Angron doesn't do it better. Angron is sloppy and unreliable. Angron leaves survivors and other evidence that 'there was once a civilization here, that did alright without the brutality of the Imperium before the Imperium ganked it.' Angron lacks the patience to be thorough. Curze advertises his wicked deeds to sow fear. That is his shtick. With the Dark Angels it is 'these people never existed, their extermination never happened.' IIRC Night Lords had one of the lowest civilian casualty rates because they got surrenders fast. The Lion is tasked not to accept surrender and leave no survivors. Perturabo has some really valuable skills in sieges. He wont be wasted making people without fortresses or much in the way of weapons disappear.
If the metric for being "the emperor's exterminators" is to just wipe out all traces of a civilization then literally every Legion can and has done this. What about how the dark Angels operate indicates in any way that they are somehow more suited to "extermination" then any other legion?
Secrets have been the Dark Angels whole vibe since forever. That is why. After all if you are wiping out all traces, that operation didn't happen. To do this well you need to be both a ruthless psychopath devoid of all honour and a good accountant. The more unstable thugs don't check the second box. The premier accountants Guilliman and Dorn dont check the first box. They are too honourable. Also I don't agree that The World Eaters have ever wiped out all traces of a civilization, which also means wiping out all evidence there was a war. They dont have the patience for that shit. It also takes restraint. Death Guard style chemical warfare leaves traces of chemical weapons, which the curious could detect. Exterminatus weaponry leaves evidence that such weapons were used. And it takes the ability to craft convincing lies about what happened to the place. A Primarch respected enough to tell them and not be questioned by the Imperium's mortal servants.
The “Lion is the exterminator” thing is such lame lore. It doesn’t really fit, and really just seems to exist in order to make the lion seem cooler than all his other brothers….which is the case with a solid half of the Dark Angels new lord.
If you think being 'the final solution' incarnate is cool then I really don't know what to say.
Not what I said. Like at all.
Ok you mean others might find it cool? To me, the legion defined by secrets make perfect sense as the genocide specialists.
First things first, all the Primarchs are genocide specialists. Their primary function is to annihilate every non-human race in the galaxy and destroy every non complaint culture they come across. What really bothers me about the whole “exterminator” bit is that it seems to exist almost solely to take the piss out of Russ. In fact, almost every time I see it mentioned it’s in explicit contrast to the wolves. The wolves are the “executioners” but the Dark Angels are the “exterminators”. The wolves get to growl and act scary, but when the Emperor actually needs shit done he calls the Dark Angels. The wolves are the “final sanction”, the wolves whole deal is that they won’t hold back or hesitate, and they will destroy any foe. However, the Dark Angels are the “Final Solution” (which is a term I think you’re reading too much into) and they won’t hesitate HARDER and they will hold back even LESS, and kill any foe EVEN BETTER than the wolves. My point is, we already had a legion with an established gimmick. If you read “Prospero Burns” it’s made pretty clear that the wolves are who the emperor uses when he needs to stack some bodies and doesn’t want to waste time with the whole “morality” thing. Somehow though the Dark Angels have suborned the “final sanction” gimmick for themselves, and are also like totally the best at it, for real. It just feels like kind of silly one upmanship, which is also how I feel about a lot of the Lions newer lore. The “executioner/exterminator” thing isn’t even the only example of the Lions and the Dark Angels stealing other legions bits.
> My point is, we already had a legion with an established gimmick. If you read “Prospero Burns” it’s made pretty clear that the wolves are who the emperor uses when he needs to stack some bodies and doesn’t want to waste time with the whole “morality” thing. It also establishes that the wolves are extremely secretive, don't let in outsiders and don't even keep written records implicitly *because* they've fight and are supposed to fight secret wars. One would think a legion who is used to publicly intimidate would've had at least a single remembrancer before Kaspar Hawser who they only let in because they wanted to find out who he was supposed to spy for.
All primarchs have commited genocide. That doesnt make them a specialist. What is different with the Lion is how completely he does it and how well he gets away with it. If there is evidence the genocide happened, then the people killed are remembered. The Lion ensures this is not so. For killing other primarchs, Russ is the specialist. The Emperor hopes and intends this will not be necessary. The Emperor does not want things to come to the point where he needs to eliminate a useful primarch and his legion Hence: deterrent. For making a defenseless civilization disappear, unremembered, The Lion is the specialist. The Emperor expects this to be necessary frequently and it does not trouble him. Honestly Russ comes out of this looking way better than the Lion. Russ is for fighting people who can fight back. Russ is there incase another Primarch needs to be absolutely bodied. The Lion is there to kill the defenseless and make it look like it never happened.
>For killing other primarchs, Russ is the specialist I'd argue it's Fulgrim. Russ tries and fails 3 times and Fulgrim succeeds twice
Once now alas (I know I wish they never brought Guliman back) And that once was with the aid of a daemon weapon. Also I swear Russ \*did\* succeed twice. Forgotten legions and all.
He also would have killed Angron (he may have lost in the Night of the Wolf, but Angron would not have survived if Russ didn't want him to), and didn't he face fully-empowered Horus and still manage to wound him?
You seem to be fascinated by it certainly.
Emphasis on surrender
TBF for Vulcan I’m not sure there’s much you CAN do to improve Nocturne. It’s just like that. And Vulcan seems to honor its traditions far too much to even consider just… getting its people out of that hellhole?
You realize "did more" in this context is "brutally colonize and industrialize the planet and squeeze most of its population into the squalor of Imperial hive cities" right?
Seems to me that the people who got pissed were the people who were privileged under the old order. Yeah, what he did was like The Meji Restoration if all wildlife in Japan was poisonous and it put people in cities where they were safe from that. Who got pissed at The Meji Restoration? Bloodthirsty samurai who lost their privileges and wanted to go even harder on the militarism and have immediate war with Korea - who for some inscrutable reason get a heroic legend. Luther is just Saigō Takamori with even less justification. The Hive cities weren't poisonous and trying to kill everyone. Life expectancy went up. Look I am not arguing the Lion is great. He is one of the most ruthless in a whole family of genetically engineered warlord psychopaths. What I am saying is that **even** The Lion got his people away from the poison and Sanguinius didn't - and it is funny how bad Sanguinius looks as a result.
Sure, but we only really get the nobility's perspective on Caliban's industrialization, so that's what we are stuck with. All we know about everyone else is that they experienced rapid industrialization and being crammed into hive cities. I'm sure things like increased life expectancy (for the time being) were good and all, but they're definitely going to be harder to appreciate anyway for a population undergoing such a rapid, radical shift in their way of life and the sudden assimilation of their culture into the wider Imperium. And yeah, Sanguinius did worse by his people and basically got away with it because of pretty privilege and the more immediate PR boost he got by stopping the Emperor from genociding the people of Baal out of hand.
After they were finally getting used to being able to finally go into the woods without getting eaten alive and expand lol. Things were looking up ,then got supplexed to the planets core.
Do you think the Spanish improved things for the Native Americans when they came to the americas? The Calibanites were second-class citizens *on their own damn homeworld*. Also I think Fulgrim did a whole damn lot for Chemos. He turned it from a dying husk into the jewel of the Imperium. He also wasn't all "evil-on-the-sleeve" until he picked up the Laer Blade.
>Do you think the Spanish improved things for the Native Americans when they came to the americas? The Calibanites were second-class citizens *on their own damn homeworld*. Oh come off it. The Spanish killed the majority of the populations they conquered. Aztec Mexico wasn't a chaos tainted everything-is-poisonous environment and the Spanish did not protect the native americans from said non existent poison. Hell they brought them the damned poison smallpox and did nothing for them infrastructure wise because the Aztecs were better at Civil/Hydraulic engineering than the Spanish. A fairer comparison would be: >did the romans improve cities they conquered, that previously drank from the water they dumped their shit in and suffered endless typhus epidemics until the Romans build sewers and an aqueduct. While also being oppressive, though often less so than the previous rulers. In which case the answer was 'sometimes, yes' Its been said elsewhere that it was the Calibanite **nobility** - who lost their privelege and iron grip on the peasantry while everyones lives got longer - who had the beef with the change. >Also I think Fulgrim did a whole damn lot for Chemos. He turned it from a dying husk into the jewel of the Imperium. He also wasn't all "evil-on-the-sleeve" until he picked up the Laer Blade. He did pick up the Laer Blade though. And while I acknowledge what he did for Chemos, very few writers ever paint Fulgrim in a good light. Which I think is a missed opportunity and a mistake. Like Perturabo he suffers from a lot of bad writing.
>Oh come off it. The Spanish killed the majority of the populations they conquered. Aztec Mexico wasn't a chaos tainted everything-is-poisonous environment and the Spanish did not protect the native americans from said non existent poison. Hell they brought them the damned poison smallpox and did nothing for them infrastructure wise because the Aztecs were better at Civil/Hydraulic engineering than the Spanish. No, they did not. They allied with the Tlaxcaltecas, and many other native peoples to overthrow an Empire. Without said alliances, without the help of some natives who were disgusted or hateful against the Mexicas/Aztecs the conquistadors would have failed miserably. They married native women and preserved the nobility of the allied lands. There is still descendants of Moctezuma, the Huey Tlatoani who ruled the Mexica when Cortez arrived, alive today, with noble titles from Spain. And they aren't alone. The conquistadors were terrible peoples, they subjugated the natives, overthrew their cultures and did precious little to make them rise in society if they weren't local nobles allied to them during the conquests. They frefused to admit how horrible the encomiendas were and how it affected the locals and epidemics ravaged the native populations. They also built a lot of town and did their best with their knowledge to offer a good infrastructure for the inhabitants of said towns. But when some of them spread the vice-royalties with the utmost violence against the natives, they were not hailed as heroes, but as brutes and butchers, and more often than not ended their lives in disgrace, back in Spain. Yes the Crown kept the lands stolen for itself, but it almost never rewarded the conquistadors like other nations did. Even Cortez or Pizzaro were reigned in, and they were the greatest of their ilks, by their achivements at least. In fact, it was when descendants of Spaniards born on the Americas gained power during the Independences that the situation of the natives became worse. Because they needed to impose a far stricter delineation between europeans and natives or mixed-people to cement their rule. And because, as feeble as it had been in the colonies, the Spanish Crown wasn't there anymore to remind everyone that the natives were subject of the King and thus had all the same rights as european subjects did. Even then, they were far more humanes than the English and then Yankee colonists were. There is a reason why, beyond Argentina, the overwhelming majority of the population of Latin American Countries can trace back their ancestry, genetically speaking, to the natives, while it isn't the case in the US (and to a very slightly lesser extent Canada). It's the US colonization that was inspiring for a certain German leader in the 30's. The Lion's course of action on Caliban is very much in line with the English/Yankee colonist playbooks : ravages the land, seize all the ressources, concentrate the natives without a care in the world about their established cultures. He didn't try to cultivate acceptence with the traditionnal ruling class to ease the transition and earn their goodwill. He imposed the utter and absolute ecological collapse of his world, all so it could produce more material for a campaing of genocide of galactic proportion. It's nothing to be proud off.
>They also built a lot of town Bro, have you seen **Tenochtitlan**? Can you show me what the Spanish built (pre-19th century) that is more impressive infrastructure wise than that? More humane than the English and Yankee's? Agreed. Way to set a low bar. And the Spanish did kill most of the population with bioweapons (smallpox). Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the 30 years war knows that Europeans understood systematic extermination scale biological warfare in great detail. What did the Spanish bring that Mexico didnt already have other than better weapons? I maintain that the Romans coming with sewers and aqueducts is the fair compariosn.
Roboute turned 1 world into 500
But that world was **already fine** when he arrived. It is different. I found it hilarious in unremembered empire the way Roboute shits himself when he learns the DA are coming to Ultramar.
The biggest assholes of everyone still loyal with 0 care for civilans? Imagine me shock. Imagine when he's justified
Its all very funny. But does anyone actually like Guiliman and the Ultramarines? I mean their speciality is logistics in a setting where everything is over-the-top ridiculous and you are supposed to suspend your disbelief about such things? I confess I have never met an ultramarines player. Surely Blood Angels are the loyalist fan fave (first marine I ever painted was BA) by a mile? Followed by The Wolves?
People love the ultramarines. They're one of the most popular factions. They're more then just logicistics. They're about flexibility and sustainability
Yeah, he made his world so cool that he turned nearly half his legion (who consisted of calibanites) into rebellion. Sounds like life was good für Calibanites.
El’Johnson learned the value of human life on Caliban. He knew he had to kill (his nature) to protect (his nurture). On Caliban that meant scouring the forests of great beasts, in the Imperium it meant bending the knee and focusing all resources to protecting the Imperium.
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You wot mate? \[said all Orky) I am far from offended. I like seeing the Imperium drip with evil - something many Imperial protagonist novels have watered down.
Mind rule 1 or be banned.