Remove ads

Son of Death (30k Mortarion Quest)

Reader mode
Modus_Tollens said:
All we can reasonably conjecture is that figures like the Emperor and Malcador that are so far off the standard distribution curve that they've left the room have something extra letting them be there.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We haven't even met Malcador yet, and we have no idea how powerful this version of the Emperor actually is - all he's done 'on screen' is a few parlour tricks. This is all pure conjecture on your part, based off of... I dunno, the fanfic in your head I guess. Certainly not the quest we're actually reading.

Literally the only thing we can go on currently is that Maugan said he's 'just' a Terran Warlord instead of his canon self.
 
Being fair, we do already have some evidence indicating that the Emperor is probably powerful way beyond the norm. He's described through WoG as "a psyker of immense power" and creating the Primarchs and being the warlord who conquered Terra isn't nothing.
 
Honestly? It makes the Emperor more competent. We know that he was supposedly active as a Warlord since 28k/29k (in canon) and then needed hundreds of years to conquer this one planet.

Compared to the speed of the Great Crusade that's honestly somewhat embarrassing and either means that the Emperor is not as (omnipotent) strong as advertised (ergo creating Primarchs that can shore up his weaknesses) or held himself back for one reason or another, which is what it always comes down to with him.

Him having conquered, studied, trained and worked for three hundred years without thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and skills to fall back on? Much more believable for him to struggle and pace himself to fulfill his goals in a more lengthy time frame.

Right now I believe that Malcador is similar to the Emperor. Exactly as he appears to be. A very competent, administrator and planner of unknown psychic power and confidant and friend to the Emperor.

I mean it makes a bit of sense.
Big E has great charisma, personal power and is a phenomenal scientist, but "lacks" on a strategic and administrative level. Malcador being a Grand Vizir is the man in the background. Mostly off his leash, but loyal.

One has the vision, the other the plans.
Primarchs put it into practice.

Whether that's true or not shrug...
We will see.
 
Last edited:
Woltaire said:
I really don't think geedubs is sniping or being really rude tbqh
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He literally accused me of running a fanfic in my head. Effectively calling me a delusional, self-involved little shit who is talking out of his ass in words barely coached enough to maintain a semblance of plausible deniability. While I'm not planning on escalation beyond simply noting that fact and moving on, the thread deserving better, I very much am noting it. Now moving on...

The Emperor was at the very least the most terrifying thing left standing after the Age of Stife by virtue of survival. There were brilliant mad scientists standing upon the relic technologies of mankind's zenith, there were psykers who could act as planetary extinction level events, abominations of all orders that GW chooses not to fully describe because they can't do them justice, and yet he won in a very timely fashion of less than three hundred years. He may not be the thing that is a nascent Chaos God in denial like in canon but if this is just the way he is... if he did all of this without either building on some previous legacy or doing some serious bootstrapping on himself... then every statistician in the galaxy would spontaneously combust. Tzeentch would call bullshit.

I don't think self tinkering seems unlikely considering how many of his projects involved either human enhancement or creating things that are human in name only. Nor would his being something of a project himself be unlikely or, in my mind, contradictory to Maugan's text. Is it the case? Fuck if I know and, yeah, maybe is isn't. Maybe he won almost exclusively due to his creations with his own high, but not unprecedented, psychic potence just tipping the scales. Maybe he is just naturally someone who can learn faster than the Primarch he created and avoid getting splattered by Angron. But I don't think its unreasonable to keep in mind that some degree of shenanigans could still be in play for him even if its not the degree of shenanigans in canon.

I'd say its likely. Other people disagree. That is fine.
 
Modus_Tollens said:
The Emperor was at the very least the most terrifying thing left standing after the Age of Stife by virtue of survival. There were brilliant mad scientists standing upon the relic technologies of mankind's zenith, there were psykers who could act as planetary extinction level events, abominations of all orders that GW chooses not to fully describe because they can't do them justice, and yet he won in a very timely fashion of less than three hundred years. He may not be the thing that is a nascent Chaos God in denial like in canon but if this is just the way he is... if he did all of this without either building on some previous legacy or doing some serious bootstrapping on himself... then every statistician in the galaxy would spontaneously combust. Tzeentch would call bullshit.

I don't think self tinkering seems unlikely considering how many of his projects involved either human enhancement or creating things that are human in name only. Nor would his being something of a project himself be unlikely or, in my mind, contradictory to Maugan's text. Is it the case? Fuck if I know and, yeah, maybe is isn't. Maybe he won almost exclusively due to his creations with his own high, but not unprecedented, psychic potence just tipping the scales. Maybe he is just naturally someone who can learn faster than the Primarch he created and avoid getting splattered by Angron. But I don't think its unreasonable to keep in mind that some degree of shenanigans could still be in play for him even if its not the degree of shenanigans in canon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

While I don't normally weigh in on stuff like this, I think its probably a good idea to at least put a few words together about how I read the odds involved.

Put simply, I don't think its actually as unlikely as you are presenting it? If we take a ruined world of archaeotech and forgotten wonders like Old Terra, and we populate it with a number of powerful warlords and other claimants - Dume, Kalagan, the Unspeakable King, the Emperor himself etc - the idea that the result would be one of them ultimately emerging victorious isn't actually that unlikely. Even in canon it wasn't "everyone versus the Emperor" after all, we had notes of Panpacifica fighting Ursh, the Unspeakable King overthrown by his own people, the Emperor making peace and common cause with the Ironsides of Old Albia etc etc.
 
Maugan Ra said:
While I don't normally weigh in on stuff like this, I think its probably a good idea to at least put a few words together about how I read the odds involved.

Put simply, I don't think its actually as unlikely as you are presenting it? If we take a ruined world of archaeotech and forgotten wonders like Old Terra, and we populate it with a number of powerful warlords and other claimants - Dume, Kalagan, the Unspeakable King, the Emperor himself etc - the idea that the result would be one of them ultimately emerging victorious isn't actually that unlikely. Even in canon it wasn't "everyone versus the Emperor" after all, we had notes of Panpacifica fighting Ursh, the Unspeakable King overthrown by his own people, the Emperor making peace and common cause with the Ironsides of Old Albia etc etc.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The string connecting the two differing views might be another relic of The Anethema Plotline. Much of the HH Lore put the conflict as being The Emperor vs. The Chaos Gods, and the Horus Heresy was Chaos getting a fairly unified, highly trained and well-equipped force of worshiper-soldiers with an axe to grind. The Terran Unification War was simply an earlier chapter of the struggle. While the Nord-Afrik and Ursh war has a more vague and indirect mention of their psykers calling on Chaos using Sorcery and other dark arts, Maulland Sen and the "Nordyc" Confederacy are pretty much the other, far more explicit, example of the Chaos Gods fighting the Emperor before Horus ever entered the picture. Techno-Barbarians of every shape and stripe still struggled with each other and the Emperor. But Chaos is the looming puppetmaster over the key players opposing Big E, thus reducing non-aligned entities to secondary, or background status. It kinda did feel like the "important" part was a two-sided conflict instead of a multi-faction scrum.

With the removal of the Emperor being the Anathema and his awareness of Chaos limited, the plotline of Chaos pulling the strings of Terran Warlords is something that at best would only be known by the Lost and the Damned. If it even exists in this quest at all. Without the Chaos plotline of canon, it's more reasonable to conclude that in a struggle where Terra's limited strategic resources had been depleted by five thousand years of nuclear and psychic free-for-all, someone would run out of bullets and bread last. And that someone was the guy who remembered how economics, science, and logistics worked. By all means, correct me on this, but pretty much the only information we have on the Techno-Barbarians trying to rebuild or improve anything comes from the lips of a known liar who wanted both the Emperor and Horus to lose at The Siege. At best some factions stood on their lines on the map, secured by technology they couldn't replicate or understand, and were content to waste resources based on whatever mad delusions and bigotry they held.

When you're a big warlord, and your rule is defined by "bloody pogroms, death camps and genocides", and eugenics enforced by death squads, you're not gonna take over the world without some seriously twisted logic.
 
Sometimes I wonder whether someone will take a chance at Mouli's multipolarity idea. A DAOT Core world surviving (in a degraded state) and the Emperor being unable to deal with it in his typical way, resulting in another Mars situation or an uneasy truce with an alternative human government.

Just a thought bouncing around for a while with all the talk of Emps not being all powerful.
 
Last edited:
Dutch said:
Sometimes I wonder whether someone will take a chance at Mouli's multipolarity idea. A DAOT Core world surviving (in a degraded state) and the Emperor being unable to deal with it in his typical way, resulting in another Mars situation or an uneasy truce with an alternative human government.

Just a thought bouncing around for a while with all the talk of Emps not being all powerful.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

So sort of like Mortarion meeting the Interex and not having Erebus sabotage everything?
 
Dutch said:
Sometimes I wonder whether someone will take a chance at Mouli's multipolarity idea. A DAOT Core world surviving (in a degraded state) and the Emperor being unable to deal with it in his typical way, resulting in another Mars situation or an uneasy truce with an alternative human government.

Just a thought bouncing around for a while with all the talk of Emps not being all powerful.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There's the formal "Survivors Of A Dark Age", and then there's Mouli's quasi-intact pre-Strife system. The former has Space Marine technology being available for standard infantry, people with power armor, bolters, or really big lasguns fighting from Land Raiders and Rhinos.

The latter is what Big E breaks out the First Legion's Basement Robots, for the exact reason the historian talked about when the Imperium props up locals vs. tearing them down. While much of the old Emperor lore is gone to one degree or another, I'd argue the Emperor still has a need, a desire, to remake humanity's perception of itself according to his own design. The preceding interstellar human government can't persist, there can't be another Emperor of Mankind, another Earth, because that would create Alternatives.

I would strongly advice against mistaking the choice to manipulate local politics as a gentle hand. This is still The Imperium Of Man.
 
Always Late said:
There's the formal "Survivors Of A Dark Age", and then there's Mouli's quasi-intact pre-Strife system. The former has Space Marine technology being available for standard infantry, people with power armor, bolters, or really big lasguns fighting from Land Raiders and Rhinos.

The latter is what Big E breaks out the First Legion's Basement Robots, for the exact reason the historian talked about when the Imperium props up locals vs. tearing them down. While much of the old Emperor lore is gone to one degree or another, I'd argue the Emperor still has a need, a desire, to remake humanity's perception of itself according to his own design. The preceding interstellar human government can't persist, there can't be another Emperor of Mankind, another Earth, because that would create Alternatives.

I would strongly advice against mistaking the choice to manipulate local politics as a gentle hand. This is still The Imperium Of Man.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, sure. But it is an interesting what if. What if the Papal State on sterioids existed. What if the Emperor somehow had to make a deal with remnants of the pre-Strife government. What if some of the old Megacorps were still around and continued to function within the feudal stucture of the Imperium. What if a begrudged truce existed between the Imperium and an alternative government centered around mankind's oldest extra-solar colony.
 
Dutch said:
I mean, sure. But it is an interesting what if. What if the Papal State on sterioids existed. What if the Emperor somehow had to make a deal with remnants of the pre-Strife government. What if some of the old Megacorps were still around and continued to function within the feudal stucture of the Imperium. What if a begrudged truce existed between the Imperium and an alternative government centered around mankind's oldest extra-solar colony.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, then you run into the same problem that the Leagues of Votann do, which is that at every point you have to ask the same question: "How in the hell are they even supposed to lose at any fight?"

And that immediately cuts out any and all tension from the narrative.
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
Well, then you run into the same problem that the Leagues of Votann do, which is that at every point you have to ask the same question: "How in the hell are they even supposed to lose at any fight?"

And that immediately cuts out any and all tension from the narrative.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


the leagues of Votann aren't magically immune to defeat. A higher technology human polity is not free from a galaxy that is vast and full of terrors. The Votann have lost hearths to hive fleet tendrils just the same as anyone else and any hypothetical other human polity could have suffered the same slow degradation of capabilities as anyone else following the fall of the Federation. It's an interesting idea for 30k and would result in a very different 40k setting too that would be fun to explore if the author wants to take it that way. The Imperium not holding a dominant monopoly on humanity. Maybe the imperium might be a the lower tech but higher capability revanchist power would be an interesting take to explore in greater detail than canon or any other variation on the idea like having the remnants of ancient megacorps as quasi independent from the Imperium but contributing too it.
 
Last edited:
Godzillaslayer10 said:
I feel like we have. He just isn't calling himself Malcador.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If he is pulling that trick I'm all for legitimately putting him on our Christmas List despite our not knowing what Christmas is. It would be a sign that the Emperor and his administration are taking things entirely seriously in terms of both putting us on the best possible footing and weighing us as a thread. We'd approve entirely.

After all, the Emperor has only seen our guarded face and that is all we ever would show to a major player. I'd even say that Malcador doing this would count as passing our humility test. It can't be fun to discard your name and privilege in the name of seeing us become a functional, productive gear in the Crusade. He may as well be hauling manure.

Assuming any of this is the case, anyways.
HalfTangible said:
He can have more than one advisor! There is no way in the Warp that Big E would just hand over Malcador or his Malcador equivalent to a son he just met. Not on a permanent basis anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I see no reason to think this has to be Malcador and no reason to think it isn't. Yes, the Emperor would not give him to us on a permanent basis but nothing says this is a permanent basis. Just long enough to make sure we actually know what we should be doing unlike last quest's Angron who didn't even know what a mutant was.

And, of course, to make sure we aren't a rabid dog.
 
Remove ads
Dramatis Persona
  • Informational
    • Working on the next update now but I figured I should make a quick Dramatis Persona for the quest thus far.

    Children of Barbarus

    The Unbroken Few - The seven surviving mortals who stood with Mortarion against his father Necare, and thus the Primarch's closest companions and advisors.
    • Typhon - Mortarion's oldest friend, a fellow outcast who first extended the hand of welcome to the strange spectre who came down off the mountain. Tends to serve as his right hand and second in command, is also a powerful psyker, though only barely trained.
    • Caipha - Youngest and boldest of the Unbroken and perhaps the most dedicated. Caipha all but worships the Primarch, regarding him as a saviour figure and idol.
    • Murnau - Quiet and thoughtful, Murnau is the most overtly spiritual of the Unbroken, near obsessed with Barbaran numerology and the idea of a secret pattern underlying the universe.
    • Morghax - Brutal and bloodthirsty and almost supernaturally lucky, Morghax stood in Mortarion's vanguard for the entirety of his war against the overlords, a record he sees as justifying his contemptuous attitude to anyone without similar pedigree.
    • Lhorgath - Relaxed and eloquent, Lhorgath is a curious and philosophical man, willing to talk with just about anyone on any topic imaginable.
    • Vioss - Blessed with keen eyes and a fascination with the macabre, Vioss is one part engineer to two parts chirurgeon. He likes to take things apart to see how they work, and isn't fussy whether they are living or inert.
    • Skorvall - Aims for laconic, mostly comes across as caustic. Mortarion has never heard Skorvall speak more than a dozen words in one sitting, but is perpetually amazed by how much feeling he can pack into a single curse.

    Mortarion's Court

    Lackland Thorn - Once the Emperor's own historian and member of the Remembrancer Order, now Mortarion's personal advisor. Slightly pudgy man with a taste for understated luxury, genius polymath and insightful diplomat.

    The Imperial Court

    The Emperor of Mankind - Visionary scientist, psychic juggernaut and conquering warlord; the Emperor needs no introduction.
     
  • Informational
    • We can nix the idea of Lackland Thorn being anything besides what he says he is, barring some extra special trickery. It seems he is a fully canon character who tried to be assigned to Mortarion but was refused because the Primarch was in one of his moods.

    The good news is that he is probably the greatest possible source of information on the Emperor himself because, more than being an advisor, he was the guy personally in charge of recording the early part of the Crusade from the Emperor's perspective. That makes him one of the chief propagandists rather than just historian and thus somebody in-the-know in regard to most of the Emperor's necessary lies and contextual reframings.

    We absolutely lucked out here even if he's likely to feed us only carefully cultivated truths until we prove we would be working for the Emperor's benefit even if we knew everything.

    Why he wanted to go to us I don't know. Most of the other Primarchs are kind of shit postings too, I admit, and Remembrancers were not given much respect at all... but you would still think that we would not be at the top of this guy's list. Regardless, we should treat this man like he is made out of gold until the day he shows his feet of clay.

    If anything the man needs a department under him to help consolidate information
     
    Last edited:
    That numerology is going to come up later, I swear on my soul it is, it's just too convient for a culture to be obsessed with "the underlying pattern of the universe" and not be tempted by one of the four. (Nurgle especially in this case with 1,3,7…)
     
    Found something peculiar when I searched for Primarch Psyker powers.
    Mortarion could "walk in places", meaning he know dark passes and where to go through it.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Can anyone confirm this or explain what is meant by this? Haven't heard of it before so I assume this is either a misunderstanding or something extremely esoteric.
     
    Last edited:
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top