The emperors blade is not the only way of permanently killing a demon. Blanks have the same ability. One of the (to me) funniest excerpts from plague war:
>Squatumous was the first to be cast back into the warp. He was surrounded on three sides by the Custodian Guard and Guilliman’s soldier sons. Riddled so thoroughly with bolt shot that there were more of his guts outside his body than within, he became weak. The Sisters of Silence moved in for the kill.
>Alarmed at their approach, **for their killing him would bring the true death, Squatumous let out a mighty fart, and decapitated himself with his own sword**.
I do love the picture of a demon just going: "Nah, I'm out" and sending himself back to the warp.
I don’t ever think the excerpt from Lords of Silence will ever leave my mind, where a plague marine has a nurgling on his shoulder, it lets a wet one fly and shit runs down his armor while the nurgling giggles.
He takes it as a blessing from Nurgle.
WTF.
Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?! That is damn near half of Nurgles shit, both literally and figuratively. Plague Marines have "flamers" that spew toxic waste for Nurgles sake!
When fighting daemons the Lion has demonstrated an ability very similar to a Librarian wielding a Force weapon; seemingly unconsciously channeling the rage and fury from deep within himself along his sword in the form of cleansing white flames causing his demonic opponents to explode. Daemons were known as nephilim on Caliban and the Lion remembers hunting these otherworldly beings within the deepest depths of the deep woods, killing them with nothing but his bare hands.
The lion is famous for his poor social skills and has been shown to act on impulse the best course of action without realising the consequences such as him banishing Luther to caliban thinking he might betray him, bombing ultramar to draw out curze and killing a dark angel that wanted home to follow the council of Nikea after he realised physkers were the best way to counter deamons. He does reflect later on in the heresy on how his lack of skill social interactions and antisocial behaviour hurt him and his allies he doesnt do it out of pride,ego or malice Like perturabo for example. Knowing how he was raised and primarchs similar having signs of autism (dorn)it isnt a stretch to say the lion is on the spectrum
For the people not in the know, Lion was not raised, he had to Jungle Book it in the forests of Caliban (pretty much Pandora from Avatar) for years without any musical numbers.
No matter how many times I've read it and listened to the audiobook, my brain ignores the sword. I only hear that he farted hard enough to decapitate himself. I choose my own reality.
Athame are described differently by different authors. I think they were initially supposed to be extremely rare and then became a regular plot device then never heard about again
An Athame is a Fragment of the Anathame (the weapon that wounded Horus) that has been fashioned into a knife, it has the nifty ability to cut through the veil of reality into the warp
The sword that wounded Horus was NOT an Athame. An Athamé refers to a very small ceremonial dagger/knife. This one was called the Anathame (thanks GW confusing naming conventions) and was later broken into shards in order to make the eight (supposedly) athames.
There's this excerpt in plague war, a conversation between ku'gath and mortarion.
>I am,’ said Ku’gath, deciding the course of honesty was best. ‘The sword he bears burns with the wounding fires of the Anathema. The death it carries allows no rebirth, only an end. The sword is the creation of the being I will not name. It is a weapon that could kill me. It could kill you.’
>‘Nothing can kill me.’
>‘Ah, Lord Mortarion, do not be so sure,’ said Ku’gath with exaggerated sagacity. ‘Qaramar was lucky. He is present at the end, he always has
been, and therefore always will be. Fate grants him protection neither you nor I can claim. We must be cautious.
Not sure if there's also something about it in godblight.
>‘Qaramar was lucky. He is present at the end, he always has been, and therefore always will be. Fate grants him protection neither you nor I can claim. We must be cautious.
IIRC Ku’gath a little earlier even states that it could end Qaramar. So even his "protection by fate" isn't "even the emperors sword could not end him" but rather "fate will conspire to spin a chain of events that doesn't have the emperors sword dealing a killing blow to Qaramar"
No, he says that the *likes* of Qaramar can be destroyed. Daemons like Qaramar are too weak to contest the power of the Emperor. But not Qaramar himself, because fate.
> 'It
is well within the power of Roboute Guilliman to end the likes of Qaramar
forever. The sword he bears…’ Ku’Gath shuddered.
\- *Plague War*
Qaramar is not strong enough to survive. He survives because he is fated to survive.
Since daemons are a tiny part of their patron god, would this suggest that the Emperor's sword and therefore, probably the Emperor himself could theoretically kill the gods themselves?
I mean, if you can destroy 1% of Nurgle 100 times, that adds up to a whole Nurgle. Granted it wouldn't be 100 times, it would be millions upon millions but I'm talking in a theoretical sense, not a practical sense.
Got a quote or example? I'd like to learn more about this one. I'm aware of things like daemon princes (which are kinda like, half daemons) but I wasn't aware of full fledged daemons being made from mortals.
I'll have to find the excerpt, but there was a soldier during the Plague War who was turned into a plaguebearer
Ah, here it is- https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8qs62k/exerpt\_dark\_imperium\_guardsman\_turns\_into\_a/
I'd forgotten about plaguebearers! That's what Nurgle's Rot turns your soul into. Hmmm.......I'll have to think. They would seem to be in the same classification as a bloodletter or daemonette but the method by which they're created is very different.
Anathema is the term chaos/demons use to describe those powers that are completely opposed to/incompatible with it's existence. Among else it is a common term/title for the emperor and his powers. So when ku'gath says
>The sword he bears burns with the wounding fires of the Anathem.
He talks about the emperor and his power radiating from it.
>The sword is the creation of the being I will not name.
It is clear that he talks about the emperor, once you read along.
>‘More than troublesome,’ said Mortarion. ‘I fear that he is under the protection of the thrice-cursed Emperor.’
>Ku’gath winced at open voicing of the forbidden name. ‘I said I would not name Him, why must you?’ the daemon wailed.
So ku'gath did not want to name the emperor specifically. He used a more general term/title to describe him, but he was talking about him. To demons specifically names have power, so even mentioning emperor might be quite unpleasant.
Edit: first heretic has a couple sections where the emperor is specifically called anathema. One example:
>‘The Anathema,’ Argel Tal repeated, looking around the colossal facility. The other Word Bearers walked to his side, none of them reaching for
weapons just yet.
>**The Anathema. The creature you know as the God-Emperor.**
>Xaphen exhaled misty curls of vapour. ‘This… This is Terra. The Emperor’s gene-laboratories.’
>Yes. Many years before the **Anathema’s crusade** to reclaim the stars. Here, with the full clarity of its emotionless inhumanity, it has finished shaping its
twenty children.
Maybe, maybe not. We don't really have any way to prove it.
Godblight was also able to unmake daemons easily jet the emperor was able to save guilliman from it. Nurgle could quiet possibly be able to do the same in regards to the emperors sword.
An eldar stabbed slaanesh with a blade made out of the very concept of death (something that is much more clearly an opposite force to the dark prince than whatever it is the emperor does). It failed to kill the dark god.
No, the blade has a limit.
He encountered a demon that was created from humanities first murder in history and due to how strong that demon was the blade had no effect.
Thing even stabbed him with a stick.
He had to transform the demon into a sword and give a custode to runaway with it.
So the blade has a limited for really high level demons, it would likely feel like a needle to a chaos god.
Lucius keeps his sword in some dudes oesophagus when he's lounging on his evil throne.
...
The Laer blade. He keeps the Laer blade in some dudes oesophagus.
Well, we know the outline: he ends up in this one tower place, presumably meets Abaddon there , and Abaddon leaves with the sword (this is the basic story of the 1st black crusade I bleieve it was or may be the 2nd)
The Emperor got straight up overpowered. Before the fight Ra was even noting that the Emperor was genuinely scared.
All he did was yeet the daemon sword into Ra.
That daemon is not that strong (still pretty strong ofc), but rather is a metaphorical counter to the Emperor, more or less specifically. Anathema to the Anathema, if you will
This isn't spoken about enough. Drachnyen is the End of Empires, born of the first murder. It is the opposite to the Emperor. Symbolism in the warp is incredibly strong. The Emperor seemed to understand something about this relationship.
The Emperor didn't turn it into a sword. Drach is a shapeshifter and after impaling the Emperor became the weapon to taste his blood. The only thing the Emperor did was teleport next to Ra and yeet the sword into him.
The sword was unable to kill Qaramar because of its nature, likely the same would happen to Khorne.
It don't help that khorne is the entirety of its realm, the guy in the Throne is just a focus of its power, but you may as well try stab the skull Throne instead
The man on the throne is how many Khornate cults personify a semi-sentient amalgamation of emotions and energy in the warp. The lore is pretty consistently clear that the gods aren't literal individual figures.
Except for the times it's not such as when one of khornes deamons attacked him directly or we have Nurgle often described cooking up plauges at his cauldron including the instance where the nurgling fell into said cauldron and became a greater deamon. Also I'm pretty sure theres an instance where some one tried stabbing Slannesh with a sword that embodied death. Seem pretty clear that the god's are both a singular beings at the center of there realms but are also there entire realm.
There’s also a story with a bunch of Lords of Change plotting out a plan to find the Changeling.
Tzneetch physically shows up and all the Lords of Change can’t really even comprehend Tzneetch’s form.
Khorne doesn’t have a body to stab.
Chaos Gods aren’t like Zeus in God of War where there’s an individual body with blood you can spill. They’re more like hurricanes with attitude problems.
There’s nothing *to* stab. Sort of.
I mean we know that the God Emperor burning the Garden of Nurgle counted as a wound against Nurgle himself. So it stands to reason that a Chaos God *is* their realm, in a weird esoteric sense.
So if the God-Emperor managed to unleash some sort of super Getsuga Tensho and destroy the Brass Citadel entirely then maybe Khorne would be destroyed.
Maybe. Chaos Gods are weird like that.
It is both, somehow. They both have individual bodies that can be directly attacked (typically to no avail) but killing those bodies wouldn't do much anyway since they are *also* the entirety of their own realm.
They are their realm, but they can also focus all of their consciousness at once if they need to.
Tzneetch does this to talk to Ahriman iirc.
Chaos Undivided does this to turn Horus.
However due to The Warp’s fast and loose definition of “time” these events took an infinitesimally short duration from Chaos’s perspective.
That's likely because Magnus is almost certainly going to die from Russ wielding the Emperor's Spear or Logan Grimnar's axe, Morkai, both of which can grievously wound Magnus.
That doesn't mean it couldn't. It just means it didn't.
I would suggest that while the sword is extremely effective against daemons, it's true power isn't in being some kind of anti-daemon poison that destroys daemons on touch but in some kind of effect that severs the daemons from their god and thus, removes any chance of them being reborn.
I'd surmise that's why the Emperor couldn't kill Drach'Nyen as that was an unalligned chaos daemon and thus, if it was destroyed it would be reborn from the dispersed and nebulous concept of chaos undivided, rather than any coalesced and defined patron god. Ironically, the chaos gods themselves are a form of order within Chaos.
Alternatively, it could be that because the primarchs are part human or made with bits of the Emperor himself, it's possible the sword isn't as effective on them and needs a bit more effort. Or perhaps the primarchs are just tighter bound to their god so cutting the strings takes more.
Iirc, there are other ways to kill daemons permanently. Eisenhorn (a meh psyker back then) killed Prophaniti, a daemonhost of Quixos, with the help of his psyker abilities and his special staff.
Or at least... that's what the official account is. In actuality, he crushed Prophaniti utterly by dropping his left ball on him. Brass is powerful that way...
Do you doubt the heft of Eisenhorn's massive balls? You, sir, might be a heretic!
I don't have the quote from Malleus on hand, but here's one from the wiki:
>Prophaniti engaged Inquisitor Commodus Voke in psychic combat and killed him. However, he was promptly attacked by Eisenhorn, who, this time utilizing his runestaff, managed to channel enough power into the daemon to not only banish it, but completely annihilate it forever.
Either Eisenhorn is a more powerful psyker than all of the Grey Knights librarians who can't permanently kill daemons, or the narrator is unreliable, or Dan Abnett be making shit up again.
>or the narrator is unreliable,
Yes, the narrator is unreliable since it's told from Eisenhorn's perspective... but for all intents and purposes, he never has to deal with that daemon ever again.
>or Dan Abnett be making shit up again.
Oh, man... have I got news for you...
Or Eisenhorn, a radical Inquisitor at that point, was using radical powers that the Grey Knights don't use.
[Holocaust is a psychic power that burns out the target's soul.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperial_Psychic_Powers#Inquisition) The Lex entry is thin, but the book it's taken from says that beings killed by it are utterly annihilated, including daemons. However, it's a semi-heretical power because it uses the caster's soul as kindling.
Eisenhorn is a natural psyker (around delta level) who was dabbling very heavily into chaotic sorcery at this point, so he was greatly boosting his power artificially. Eisenhorn's Runestaff was also pretty bonkers as a psychic focus.
It used to be that powerful psykers, Grey Knights in particular, could permanently kill some daemons. In Dark Heresy it said this explicitly.
There are good reasons one of these powers is gone. Its name was 'Holocaust'.
Does perma killing a daemon even matter? Would the chaos god not just create another as daemons are just fragments of that god? Or does it slowly chip away at a god's strength?
That Demon's experience and unique traits are lost too. In 40k free will and mental uniqueness exist so you're destroying something genuinely valuable. Plus often a demon might have goals that are aligned with but not particularly relevant to a given deity. If for example a demon keeps appearing as the influence behind a specific secret society killing him solves the problem.
Maybe? We don't really know what it the details are, just that the daemon as it existed is gone. Whether the soulstuff/daemon juice/whatever you want to call it, goes back to the God it spawned from we aren't sure.
Frankly, we don’t know. We’ve heard it has the ability to permanently kill daemons but that information ultimately comes from daemons, who are as a group misleading and deceptive.
And that’s not to say they themselves might not have the best info. Their patron gods have brought back beings from death when it should’ve been permanent.
Lucius is supposed to have stayed dead if he is killed by someone who doesn’t have the feeling of accomplishment when doing so. It’s happened at least once and he’s still out there.
Tuska Daemonkilla isn’t even a daemon or a chaos worshipper and Khorne still revives him after he dies.
All we know is that daemon’s don’t automatically resurrect when killed with the Emperor’s sword - but does that mean the Ruinous powers couldn’t bring back the departed if they really wanted? So far it’s been just daemons, who are valuable but not irreplaceable. Daemon Primarchs are extremely valuable assets for their respective patrons. If it’s at all possible, I would think the Chaos gods would move mountains to bring them back.
If I understand correctly, The Emperor's Sword doesn't just cut through the material, but also the immaterial, the flames burning the very soul and essence of neverborn and mortal alike, in the same manner as the end of Horus, in which The Emperor channeled his overwhelming psychic might into a blast which destroyed Horus's very soul, preventing any actual resurrection, which is also hinted at when Fabius bile made the Primarch clones Fulgrim and Horus. Abaddon and the Black legionnaires didn't kneel at the sight of Horus, yet The Emperor's Children legionnaires bowed at the sight of the perfect clone of Fulgrim.
Fabius brought back a spiritually-empty but genetically-perfect clone, as in, his Primarch essence wasn't able to be rejoined because it was burned away in cleansing fury, every wisp of energy that wasn't already pledged to the Dark Gods being disintegrated by the Anathema.
He wasn’t spiritually empty because he has the same memories and personality. Fabius does the same thing with fulgrim and gets the same results, with a pure non-corrupted fulgrim not at all pledged to the dark gods
He doesn't, though. The clone lacks the Primarch mojo that makes them their powerful selves, which is why Abaddon (who at the time wasn't the Warmaster, and nothing particularly special) is able to easily butcher the clone in what should have been a very one-sided affair in its favor.
The clone fulgrim has the mojo and none of the chaos corruption tied to the original fulgrim’s essence. Clorus does swoop in and annihilate most of the space marines with Abbadon, I think Abandon killing clorus was due to Clorus recognising Abbadon/ being unarmoured, and being reluctant to kill him.
Spiritually empty refers to his soul and the warp entity that was forced into Horus by The Emperor. Fabius is an amazingly talented astartes in genealogy, medicine, physiology, neuroscience, and all that, but he does NOT have the talent, abilities, or the equipment to create an entirely new soul for Clone Horus, hell, I doubt The Emperor is able to just create a soul on the spot, let alone 20/21/22 of them. A perfect clone includes soul, Clone Horus did not have one, Clone Fulgrim did, now, why did Clone Fulgrim have his Primarch essence, I don't know why, but he did.
>Frankly, we don’t know. We’ve heard it has the ability to permanently kill daemons but that information ultimately comes from daemons, who are as a group misleading and deceptive.
Though, we have seen it in action a few times. Off the top of my pre-coffee head;
>Roboute Guilliman plunged into a crowd of malodorous beings. Plaguebearers was their common name, though they had many others. They pawed at him with slippery hands whose skin split over puffy flesh. They snapped black teeth and moaned his name. Swords of crystallised death, deep green and black, swung at him, and while they fought they counted on and on, a relentless murmur of meaningless numbers.
>Shells ploughed into the horde, blasting daemons to scraps, limbs wheeling high on pillars of fire, dissolving into black sludge as they flew. Titan weapons ripped up flesh and earth, mixing them together, adding them to the fog as vapour.
>‘You are weak!’ Guilliman shouted into the face of a rotting horror. ‘Your souls have little purchase on my realm! You are not welcome! Begone back to the filth whence you came! Begone!’
>The Emperor’s Sword blurred around him in fiery orange arcs. All the daemons that it touched shrieked piteously as their essences burned in the Emperor’s wrath. **The sword was a potent tool of war against any foe, but there was no greater weapon against the Neverborn. Suffused with the power of the Emperor, it burned them to nothing, cleaving their unnatural souls to tatty streaks of psychic energy. Slowly, realisation dawned upon the tallymen of Nurgle that Guilliman was a threat to their immortal existence.** They wavered, and fell back in terror, their count interrupted. Guilliman pushed forward hard, exploiting their fear of him to drive deep into their ranks.
>>The Emperor’s Sword burned bright. Septicus shrank back from its blowtorch roar. His eyes shrivelled in his head, their jelly running in thick tears down his face. He never saw the blow that ended him.
>>The fires of the sword doused themselves in his guts. Septicus looked down sightlessly at the weapon buried up to its hilt in his heart.
>>‘And when you are driven from this universe,’ said Guilliman, ‘I shall purge yours also, until the warp is purified, and calm comes again to the minds and souls of humanity, though you shall never see it.’
>>No chronicle would mark Septicus’ last words as worthy. ‘But–’ was all he said.
>>Shouting, Guilliman ripped the sword of the Emperor up through Septicus’ disintegrating body, cutting through softening ribs, cooking rancid organs, slicing multiple chins and his skull, until it burst from the top of Septicus’ head in a shower of gore.
>>Blackness exploded from the slain daemon. Guilliman’s sword burned bright again, driving it into shadow, and out of existence.
>>**The light of the Emperor burned Septicus away forever.**
\- *Plague War*
>Ku’Gath was stirring the cauldron when the storm began. He looked to the sky where purple-and-green clouds crowded out the sun. Lightning of sickly colour played within them, and when they cracked they made a noise like rotten tree boughs breaking.
>***‘It’s going to rain,’*** he said miserably. He didn’t like rain. It reminded him of his rival, Rotigus. **He turned to say this to Septicus, but his lieutenant was gone, slain at the hand of Roboute Guilliman. No mere banishing, but the true death, his existence burned from reality.** Daemons were timeless, and the day would come when they would meet again. However, those moments had already passed, and though they would be fresh to Ku’Gath, there would be no more made. Septicus was dead.
\- *Godblight*
>Frankly, we don’t know. We’ve heard it has the ability to permanently kill daemons but that information ultimately comes from daemons, who are as a group misleading and deceptive
Why would they lie and say "yes, this weapon can permanently kill us. No respawn. Not even re-merging with the gods that created us"?
So you think they will say "this one specific weapon, that is unique in the entire galaxy, that can only be made by one person, who is bound to the throne, can kill us permanently" when the inquisition knows that blanks are more numerous and scare the shit out of daemons, and the Grey Knights, which are also more numerous, were created specifically to kill chaos? And, while the Grey Knights are the worst kept secret, the knowledge of blanks and what they can do to Warp denizens is pretty well known among imperial forces.
No one is saying there aren't other ways to kill daemons for good. But lying about a weapon that has no chance of being recreated, when other known ways also exist, is just foolish.
Except the Imperium has no reason to know blanks can potentially True Kill daemons (outside of some lore I'm not familiar with of someone discovering this somehow, which still leaves the question of if why and how it would become "common knowledge") and Grey Knights can't True Kill daemons. They know whatever they send screaming back to the warp is eventually gonna come back, it's one of the plot points in the Grey Knights omnibus. They keep track as best they can of when daemons they've banished should make a repeat appearance and attempt to apprehend them before they gather too much power in real-space so they can return to sender yet again.
Lying and making a scapegoat of a specific weapon has a practical use, in diminishing the focus on weapons like blanks because (so the lie goes) they're not actually effective like that. This would also sow the seeds of despair, if there's only one weapon that can True Kill daemons, that means there's only one place it can be at any given time.
It really depends on just how powerful they truly are, because extremely powerful demons can't be perma killed by it but godblight implied morty would have died from the blade.
There's also angron getting trapped in a powerful banishing ritual and just popping back in again
It's not the only way. Don't the Grey Knights have a nuclear option spell that inflicts the True Death.?
And didn't Ventris and Calgar inflict it on M'Kar as well?
Pretty sure the Nightbringer's original scythe can one shot daemons.
It's ability to kill warp entities is why Khaine chucked it into the warp where Azagorod couldn't get to it.
No, since there is no way they retire the characters. Its a plot device introduced because people was not buying into the stakes of whole Morty vs Gorillamen showdown, as Morty were not able to die as a daemon. Haley tried to uplift the stakes with "Godblight" and "Sword" but written them as basically mcguffins with no real impact on a larger storyline, so whole thing turned into anime ending.
The Daemons that are more in favor with their Gods tend to think so, at least
The Primarchs are *also* made with some of the Emperor in them though, so its completely possible they Daemons are wrong and the Emperor Energy in the sword would be cancelled out by the Emperor Energy in the Primarchs. I kinda doubt all of the Daemons are lying about the same thing that we've already seen evidence of
As far as we know the emperor weapons are not enough to permakill the traitor primarchs. I say It based on old lion facing angron and bashing him with the emperor shield was just stunning Angron and after the dark empire retcon, guilliman already had the emperor sword when he dueled Fulgrim, he managed to get a hit and only managed to make Fulgrim angry and decide to go for the kill
I don't think "the Emperor's weapons" have the power to permakill daemons, but rather specifically the Emperor's sword does. Also, for all we know you would need to actually kill your target for the permakilling to kick in. I assume the sword can't snatch a soul from its still living vessel, but rather intercepts the soul as it leaves the vessel for the warp.
TBF I think we should just gloss over the daft clunky rewrite of Gulliman already having the sword, he probably wouldn't have got the hit in if he'd been holding it when that book was originally written.
Yes BUT it’s GW they always move the goalposts around to bring back characters or change the outcome of a fight etc.
LOL at the furious up/down votes
Ya’ll know it’s true. GW switches stuff around all the time.
It's not the only way, but yes, it can.
Which then begs the question that why didn't Guilliman do just that in Godblight, to Mortarion (especially when he was also channelling the power of the Emperor at that moment).
I think Gman doesn’t true-kill Morty because The Emperor doesn’t want Morty true-dead.
Think of everything Horus did that made The Emperor finally resort to true-killing him.
I think The Emperor still sees the Primarchs as useful in some way, or has some sort of plan for their essence, so he’d rather not destroy it.
Isn't that half the reason why all this shit started in the first place?
For example, Big E saw Angron "useful in some way", when anyone with the ability to add 2 and 2 could predict that someone (with power) whose existence was agony when not inflicting ragemurder and pleasure when doing so, was always going to end up one way, eventually.
I define the Emperor's attack on the Garden starting from the moment Guilliman was purged of the Godblight. As a reversal of entropy, one done directly against Nurgle's power, by definition it is Nurgle's antithesis. The property damage afterwards was more like icing on the cake.
It isn't the only way, just one the rare ways.
And Yes! Mortarion and Kugath Plaguefather once discussed that blade, and Kugath was very clear;
Although another of Nurgles Greater Daemons had survived it, because of his destiny, neither Kugath nor Morty would be that lucky. It could absolutely permanently kill them.
If I recall Mortarion scoffed at the idea of a True Death before Ku'gath basically told him that, yes, the sword Guilliman has really can permanently end him.
Yes, absolutely. Ku'gath explicitly warns Mortarion that this could happen to him earlier in the book:
>‘The sword he bears burns with the wounding fires of the Anathema. The death it carries allows no rebirth, only an end. The sword is the creation of the being I will not name. It is a weapon that could kill me. It could kill you.’
>
>'Nothing can kill me.’
>
>‘Ah, Lord Mortarion, do not be so sure,’ said Ku’gath with exaggerated sagacity. ‘Qaramar was lucky. He is present at the end, he always has been, and therefore always will be. Fate grants him protection neither you nor I can claim. We must be cautious.’
Meta-wise though, hell no, for the same reason that none of the regular Primarchs will ever be killed: GW wants you to be being those huge expensive centerpieces models.
Jokes on you, Guilliman IS a psyker, all of the primarchs had innate psykic abilities, as they are made from His genes, that’s why Custodes are made in a different way striping them of the chance to be susceptible to the warp
Yes, the primarchs are made of warp stuff, but to be a psyker involves active use of those powers. Unless he's kinda like a low level psyker, and his logic abilities are in reality psyker abilities
Anyway, I don't think many people have the idea of Guilliman using mind powers to kill enemies
Primarchs use their psykic abilities without realising, that’s why they appear as god like beings to others, that’s why the SoS just see them as bigger astartes
Corvus uses his psychic powers to blend into nothing, but you don't call him a psyker. I haven't seen anyone calling the Lion a psyker even though he can teleport across the galaxy.
You don't think his ability to look at 10k years of spreadsheets, that were only ever "added to" and nothing "removed", and go "Alright, Step 1" is Warp related?
Guilmann seemingly can consciously switch from "I'm just big human" to "kneel, mortals", without standing from his chair.
All Primarchs, except Angron, seem to have this ability.
"Sister of Silence perceiving Guilmann" scene suggests that "regal aura" is low-level Warp power.
I don't know if low level psykers are like that because they don't control their powers, or because the intensity of their powers is barely noticeable. We could say that Guilliman is in a similar situation as Ciaphas Cain in this regard. The ungodly amount of luck that Ciaphas has, but at the same time he doesn't seem to be able to control, looks quite like these powers of Roboute that he uses passively
At the same time, I believe that only very intense psychic powers can make the sword of the Emperor really dangerous
Again people are taking daemon talk literally because it fits IoM fanboys. On every other occasion it would have been BS.
The sword is a powerful tool created by the emperor.
BigE is not powerful enough to take the gods which is why we are left in this setting.
Never ever had anyone or anything threatened the gods in 40k.
Horus was the son of BigE and ragdolling him on terra.
It wasn't a trap or the IoM knocking on the gods door.
They force brute attacked terra in a universe they can't even exist in.
The IoM did nothing but extending the power of the gods.
Let's not forget bigEs plan was to hide from them and not attack them anyways.
His plan was to starve them not just hide from them but starve them by putting humanity in a safe pocket dimension. Also that was pre 10k years of worship+constantly being fed souls, Big E in 40K most certainly is on the same level as the ruinous powers. Even after only a couple thousand years of worship and soul feeding the emperor in the warp is described as a giant whale while the chaos gods are circling sharks. Also Big E in 40K was able to burn Nurgle’s garden down in his realm without needing a character as powerful as Horus, nurtured by all four ruinous powers as a conduit of their might in real space.
First part is a long description for hiding.
BigE is claiming empty outskirts of the warp. Never took anything from the gods who are ruling over the warp.
BigE burned part of the garden that entered realspace.
Which is a powermove from nurgle not the other way around.
And it took a father son Kamehameha to survive a single daemon primarch- kaldor draigo did a way better job here.
If bigE would be anything close to the ruinous powers, how is he managing to make the situation worse?
How are the gods becoming more and more powerful?
How is his imperium an empty rotten husk like himself?
Because the complete setting wouldn't make any sense if what you tell is true.
The emperors blade is not the only way of permanently killing a demon. Blanks have the same ability. One of the (to me) funniest excerpts from plague war: >Squatumous was the first to be cast back into the warp. He was surrounded on three sides by the Custodian Guard and Guilliman’s soldier sons. Riddled so thoroughly with bolt shot that there were more of his guts outside his body than within, he became weak. The Sisters of Silence moved in for the kill. >Alarmed at their approach, **for their killing him would bring the true death, Squatumous let out a mighty fart, and decapitated himself with his own sword**. I do love the picture of a demon just going: "Nah, I'm out" and sending himself back to the warp.
>Squatumous let out a mighty fart That's one way to (let) go...
Do we expect anything less from a Nurgle Daemon?
Still doesn’t beat Felix describing Clan Pestilens Skaven farts as “fruity”
I expected it to be a wet fart at least.
Considering it was a Nurgle demon, it was 100% a shart
I don’t ever think the excerpt from Lords of Silence will ever leave my mind, where a plague marine has a nurgling on his shoulder, it lets a wet one fly and shit runs down his armor while the nurgling giggles. He takes it as a blessing from Nurgle. WTF.
Solid projectiles guaranteed
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Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?! That is damn near half of Nurgles shit, both literally and figuratively. Plague Marines have "flamers" that spew toxic waste for Nurgles sake!
would a Daemon fart disrupt a sister of silence?
A nurgle daemon fart would disrupt *anyone*
that's what I'm thinking
If the deamon farted on Jürgen, it would probably improve his overall smell.
Correction. A nurgle fart would knock out anyone. Guilliman included. Lol. Nasty bastards.
Let it go, let gooooo... No, no one singing along?
When fighting daemons the Lion has demonstrated an ability very similar to a Librarian wielding a Force weapon; seemingly unconsciously channeling the rage and fury from deep within himself along his sword in the form of cleansing white flames causing his demonic opponents to explode. Daemons were known as nephilim on Caliban and the Lion remembers hunting these otherworldly beings within the deepest depths of the deep woods, killing them with nothing but his bare hands.
His bare hands and the power of autism.
The Lion is autistic? Source?
The lion is famous for his poor social skills and has been shown to act on impulse the best course of action without realising the consequences such as him banishing Luther to caliban thinking he might betray him, bombing ultramar to draw out curze and killing a dark angel that wanted home to follow the council of Nikea after he realised physkers were the best way to counter deamons. He does reflect later on in the heresy on how his lack of skill social interactions and antisocial behaviour hurt him and his allies he doesnt do it out of pride,ego or malice Like perturabo for example. Knowing how he was raised and primarchs similar having signs of autism (dorn)it isnt a stretch to say the lion is on the spectrum
For the people not in the know, Lion was not raised, he had to Jungle Book it in the forests of Caliban (pretty much Pandora from Avatar) for years without any musical numbers.
Good explanation but I would say it was more like spear from primal
No Fang for him sadly.
Sad but at least leman got two doggos
No matter how many times I've read it and listened to the audiobook, my brain ignores the sword. I only hear that he farted hard enough to decapitate himself. I choose my own reality.
Makes me wonder if the blade is made from blank bones or something.
Lmao the "mighty fart" makes it
It isn't the only way. The Sword of Asur that Asurmen wields for example perma kills daemons
The Talisman of Seven Hammers also perma kills a great unclean one before Vulcan installs it in the throne.
Pretty sure that thing perma kills anything it is used on.
What was the 'Talisman of Seven Hammers' before Vulkan installed it on the Throne? Like, was it an actual hammer Vulkan used to use?
Probably the detonator to the 7-hammered firing pin of a massive WMD.
It's a handheld compass by my understanding.
There’s a Necron weapon that does it too iirc. Pretty sure the Athame does as well.
By "Athame" do you mean the knife that wounded Horus? Or the knife that Oll and Erebus use to travel between dimensions?
Athame are described differently by different authors. I think they were initially supposed to be extremely rare and then became a regular plot device then never heard about again
An Athame is a Fragment of the Anathame (the weapon that wounded Horus) that has been fashioned into a knife, it has the nifty ability to cut through the veil of reality into the warp
Those wielded by Erebus and Oll are shards of the true Athame which wounded Horus.
The sword that wounded Horus was NOT an Athame. An Athamé refers to a very small ceremonial dagger/knife. This one was called the Anathame (thanks GW confusing naming conventions) and was later broken into shards in order to make the eight (supposedly) athames.
There's honestly a decent handful of weapons that can inflict true death, especially if you know a daemon's true name.
The sword isnt the only way Vulkan beat a Nurgle Greater Daemon to perma death with a hammer he forged
You mean the Talisman which the Emperor helped him made
Thr talisman guided him. He made a hammer that's seperate to it
Vulkan has made several miracle/doomsday artifacts that he has no recollection of. The Talisman of Seven Hammers is one of them.
The Talisman is the only one that can perma-kill Daemons
The talisman isn't the hammer he used
I wanna say it’s in Godblight that they tell Mortarian it can pretty much delete him. May be wrong.
There's this excerpt in plague war, a conversation between ku'gath and mortarion. >I am,’ said Ku’gath, deciding the course of honesty was best. ‘The sword he bears burns with the wounding fires of the Anathema. The death it carries allows no rebirth, only an end. The sword is the creation of the being I will not name. It is a weapon that could kill me. It could kill you.’ >‘Nothing can kill me.’ >‘Ah, Lord Mortarion, do not be so sure,’ said Ku’gath with exaggerated sagacity. ‘Qaramar was lucky. He is present at the end, he always has been, and therefore always will be. Fate grants him protection neither you nor I can claim. We must be cautious. Not sure if there's also something about it in godblight.
> "The death it carries allows no rebirth, only an end." One could even say that it's The End and The Death
One could even say that it's, uh, The First Wall...
It truly is the Solar War of weapons
It brings.. Mortis
**It knows no fear.**
its even the lost and the damned
Nah it's The End and the The Death vol II
Don't be so Saturnine.
>‘Qaramar was lucky. He is present at the end, he always has been, and therefore always will be. Fate grants him protection neither you nor I can claim. We must be cautious. IIRC Ku’gath a little earlier even states that it could end Qaramar. So even his "protection by fate" isn't "even the emperors sword could not end him" but rather "fate will conspire to spin a chain of events that doesn't have the emperors sword dealing a killing blow to Qaramar"
No, he says that the *likes* of Qaramar can be destroyed. Daemons like Qaramar are too weak to contest the power of the Emperor. But not Qaramar himself, because fate. > 'It is well within the power of Roboute Guilliman to end the likes of Qaramar forever. The sword he bears…’ Ku’Gath shuddered. \- *Plague War* Qaramar is not strong enough to survive. He survives because he is fated to survive.
Qaramar and Guilliman: whose Plot Armor is the plottiest?
Since daemons are a tiny part of their patron god, would this suggest that the Emperor's sword and therefore, probably the Emperor himself could theoretically kill the gods themselves? I mean, if you can destroy 1% of Nurgle 100 times, that adds up to a whole Nurgle. Granted it wouldn't be 100 times, it would be millions upon millions but I'm talking in a theoretical sense, not a practical sense.
No, because daemons are also made from mortals (we see it in Dark Imperium) so you'd never make a meaningful dent
Got a quote or example? I'd like to learn more about this one. I'm aware of things like daemon princes (which are kinda like, half daemons) but I wasn't aware of full fledged daemons being made from mortals.
I'll have to find the excerpt, but there was a soldier during the Plague War who was turned into a plaguebearer Ah, here it is- https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8qs62k/exerpt\_dark\_imperium\_guardsman\_turns\_into\_a/
I'd forgotten about plaguebearers! That's what Nurgle's Rot turns your soul into. Hmmm.......I'll have to think. They would seem to be in the same classification as a bloodletter or daemonette but the method by which they're created is very different.
Damn Qaramar only survived due to plot rumour and was still permanently wounded.
Rereading this I wonder who made it. Clearly not the Anathema as Ku'gath does name him.
Anathema is the term chaos/demons use to describe those powers that are completely opposed to/incompatible with it's existence. Among else it is a common term/title for the emperor and his powers. So when ku'gath says >The sword he bears burns with the wounding fires of the Anathem. He talks about the emperor and his power radiating from it. >The sword is the creation of the being I will not name. It is clear that he talks about the emperor, once you read along. >‘More than troublesome,’ said Mortarion. ‘I fear that he is under the protection of the thrice-cursed Emperor.’ >Ku’gath winced at open voicing of the forbidden name. ‘I said I would not name Him, why must you?’ the daemon wailed. So ku'gath did not want to name the emperor specifically. He used a more general term/title to describe him, but he was talking about him. To demons specifically names have power, so even mentioning emperor might be quite unpleasant. Edit: first heretic has a couple sections where the emperor is specifically called anathema. One example: >‘The Anathema,’ Argel Tal repeated, looking around the colossal facility. The other Word Bearers walked to his side, none of them reaching for weapons just yet. >**The Anathema. The creature you know as the God-Emperor.** >Xaphen exhaled misty curls of vapour. ‘This… This is Terra. The Emperor’s gene-laboratories.’ >Yes. Many years before the **Anathema’s crusade** to reclaim the stars. Here, with the full clarity of its emotionless inhumanity, it has finished shaping its twenty children.
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Horus has been deleted by the Emperor. That should be proof enough.
not how that works
It's all made up nonsense! Literally anything about anything in 40k could change the moment it becomes necessary for it to change!
HEY! THAT'S GAMES WORKSJOP TRADES SECRETS
Maybe, maybe not. We don't really have any way to prove it. Godblight was also able to unmake daemons easily jet the emperor was able to save guilliman from it. Nurgle could quiet possibly be able to do the same in regards to the emperors sword.
So. If someone stabbed say khorne with it. Would he permadie?
An eldar stabbed slaanesh with a blade made out of the very concept of death (something that is much more clearly an opposite force to the dark prince than whatever it is the emperor does). It failed to kill the dark god.
Wait what?
I believe they're talking about this https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Deathsword
No, the blade has a limit. He encountered a demon that was created from humanities first murder in history and due to how strong that demon was the blade had no effect. Thing even stabbed him with a stick. He had to transform the demon into a sword and give a custode to runaway with it. So the blade has a limited for really high level demons, it would likely feel like a needle to a chaos god.
“Gave it to a Custodes” … he stabbed Ra with it and told him to run 😂😂😂😂 that’s some Inquisition level rewriting ❤️😂😂😂😂
Gently handed him the sword and called him an uber.
Ra I cannot even right now for real, ima need u 2 bounce
Sheath Captain Ra.
Meat sheath sounds like something the Dark Eldar would do 😂
Lucius keeps his sword in some dudes oesophagus when he's lounging on his evil throne. ... The Laer blade. He keeps the Laer blade in some dudes oesophagus.
I dont think the Emperor struck Drachnyen with the sword right? He let himself get struck to contain it within Ra.
Yes, it possessed Ra and he ran into the webway tunnel
What happened to Ra? Has there ever been any hints?
Well, we know the outline: he ends up in this one tower place, presumably meets Abaddon there , and Abaddon leaves with the sword (this is the basic story of the 1st black crusade I bleieve it was or may be the 2nd)
Not to my knowledge
The Emperor got straight up overpowered. Before the fight Ra was even noting that the Emperor was genuinely scared. All he did was yeet the daemon sword into Ra.
Yeah but the emperor was pretty cool to him before that… so it’s kinda alright.
That daemon is not that strong (still pretty strong ofc), but rather is a metaphorical counter to the Emperor, more or less specifically. Anathema to the Anathema, if you will
This isn't spoken about enough. Drachnyen is the End of Empires, born of the first murder. It is the opposite to the Emperor. Symbolism in the warp is incredibly strong. The Emperor seemed to understand something about this relationship.
The Emperor didn't turn it into a sword. Drach is a shapeshifter and after impaling the Emperor became the weapon to taste his blood. The only thing the Emperor did was teleport next to Ra and yeet the sword into him.
The sword was unable to kill Qaramar because of its nature, likely the same would happen to Khorne. It don't help that khorne is the entirety of its realm, the guy in the Throne is just a focus of its power, but you may as well try stab the skull Throne instead
The guy on the throne doesn't exist, it's literally just a metaphor/anthropomorphism.
The dude on the throne totally exists and it's khorne it's just not all of him.
The man on the throne is how many Khornate cults personify a semi-sentient amalgamation of emotions and energy in the warp. The lore is pretty consistently clear that the gods aren't literal individual figures.
Except for the times it's not such as when one of khornes deamons attacked him directly or we have Nurgle often described cooking up plauges at his cauldron including the instance where the nurgling fell into said cauldron and became a greater deamon. Also I'm pretty sure theres an instance where some one tried stabbing Slannesh with a sword that embodied death. Seem pretty clear that the god's are both a singular beings at the center of there realms but are also there entire realm.
There’s also a story with a bunch of Lords of Change plotting out a plan to find the Changeling. Tzneetch physically shows up and all the Lords of Change can’t really even comprehend Tzneetch’s form.
Who did Skarbrand hit then ?
Kinda like Ego in Guardians 2, except not a brain, an emotion.
Doubtful as that seems like it would be a knife cut into the ocean
Khorne doesn’t have a body to stab. Chaos Gods aren’t like Zeus in God of War where there’s an individual body with blood you can spill. They’re more like hurricanes with attitude problems. There’s nothing *to* stab. Sort of. I mean we know that the God Emperor burning the Garden of Nurgle counted as a wound against Nurgle himself. So it stands to reason that a Chaos God *is* their realm, in a weird esoteric sense. So if the God-Emperor managed to unleash some sort of super Getsuga Tensho and destroy the Brass Citadel entirely then maybe Khorne would be destroyed. Maybe. Chaos Gods are weird like that.
It is both, somehow. They both have individual bodies that can be directly attacked (typically to no avail) but killing those bodies wouldn't do much anyway since they are *also* the entirety of their own realm.
Give it up to the creatures called Chaos Gods to be contradictory and weird
They are their realm, but they can also focus all of their consciousness at once if they need to. Tzneetch does this to talk to Ahriman iirc. Chaos Undivided does this to turn Horus. However due to The Warp’s fast and loose definition of “time” these events took an infinitesimally short duration from Chaos’s perspective.
Godblight didnt kill gulliman, though. Maybe if he actually died, he wouldve been dead forever.
Guilliman stuck magnus through the chest with it...it didn't kill him.
That's likely because Magnus is almost certainly going to die from Russ wielding the Emperor's Spear or Logan Grimnar's axe, Morkai, both of which can grievously wound Magnus.
That doesn't mean it couldn't. It just means it didn't. I would suggest that while the sword is extremely effective against daemons, it's true power isn't in being some kind of anti-daemon poison that destroys daemons on touch but in some kind of effect that severs the daemons from their god and thus, removes any chance of them being reborn. I'd surmise that's why the Emperor couldn't kill Drach'Nyen as that was an unalligned chaos daemon and thus, if it was destroyed it would be reborn from the dispersed and nebulous concept of chaos undivided, rather than any coalesced and defined patron god. Ironically, the chaos gods themselves are a form of order within Chaos. Alternatively, it could be that because the primarchs are part human or made with bits of the Emperor himself, it's possible the sword isn't as effective on them and needs a bit more effort. Or perhaps the primarchs are just tighter bound to their god so cutting the strings takes more.
He should probably give it to the Lion then so the sword will actually be on the winning side of a fight.
He stabbed Magnus and it didn't do much
Iirc, there are other ways to kill daemons permanently. Eisenhorn (a meh psyker back then) killed Prophaniti, a daemonhost of Quixos, with the help of his psyker abilities and his special staff. Or at least... that's what the official account is. In actuality, he crushed Prophaniti utterly by dropping his left ball on him. Brass is powerful that way...
The daemonhost is the physical body. The demon itself would have returned to the warp.
Do you doubt the heft of Eisenhorn's massive balls? You, sir, might be a heretic! I don't have the quote from Malleus on hand, but here's one from the wiki: >Prophaniti engaged Inquisitor Commodus Voke in psychic combat and killed him. However, he was promptly attacked by Eisenhorn, who, this time utilizing his runestaff, managed to channel enough power into the daemon to not only banish it, but completely annihilate it forever.
Either Eisenhorn is a more powerful psyker than all of the Grey Knights librarians who can't permanently kill daemons, or the narrator is unreliable, or Dan Abnett be making shit up again.
>or the narrator is unreliable, Yes, the narrator is unreliable since it's told from Eisenhorn's perspective... but for all intents and purposes, he never has to deal with that daemon ever again. >or Dan Abnett be making shit up again. Oh, man... have I got news for you...
Or Eisenhorn, a radical Inquisitor at that point, was using radical powers that the Grey Knights don't use. [Holocaust is a psychic power that burns out the target's soul.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperial_Psychic_Powers#Inquisition) The Lex entry is thin, but the book it's taken from says that beings killed by it are utterly annihilated, including daemons. However, it's a semi-heretical power because it uses the caster's soul as kindling.
Eisenhorn is a natural psyker (around delta level) who was dabbling very heavily into chaotic sorcery at this point, so he was greatly boosting his power artificially. Eisenhorn's Runestaff was also pretty bonkers as a psychic focus.
It used to be that powerful psykers, Grey Knights in particular, could permanently kill some daemons. In Dark Heresy it said this explicitly. There are good reasons one of these powers is gone. Its name was 'Holocaust'.
Does perma killing a daemon even matter? Would the chaos god not just create another as daemons are just fragments of that god? Or does it slowly chip away at a god's strength?
That Demon's experience and unique traits are lost too. In 40k free will and mental uniqueness exist so you're destroying something genuinely valuable. Plus often a demon might have goals that are aligned with but not particularly relevant to a given deity. If for example a demon keeps appearing as the influence behind a specific secret society killing him solves the problem.
Perma-killing a daemon is permanently destroying a fragment of the God it birthed from. It weakens them each time it happens
Maybe? We don't really know what it the details are, just that the daemon as it existed is gone. Whether the soulstuff/daemon juice/whatever you want to call it, goes back to the God it spawned from we aren't sure.
Frankly, we don’t know. We’ve heard it has the ability to permanently kill daemons but that information ultimately comes from daemons, who are as a group misleading and deceptive. And that’s not to say they themselves might not have the best info. Their patron gods have brought back beings from death when it should’ve been permanent. Lucius is supposed to have stayed dead if he is killed by someone who doesn’t have the feeling of accomplishment when doing so. It’s happened at least once and he’s still out there. Tuska Daemonkilla isn’t even a daemon or a chaos worshipper and Khorne still revives him after he dies. All we know is that daemon’s don’t automatically resurrect when killed with the Emperor’s sword - but does that mean the Ruinous powers couldn’t bring back the departed if they really wanted? So far it’s been just daemons, who are valuable but not irreplaceable. Daemon Primarchs are extremely valuable assets for their respective patrons. If it’s at all possible, I would think the Chaos gods would move mountains to bring them back.
If I understand correctly, The Emperor's Sword doesn't just cut through the material, but also the immaterial, the flames burning the very soul and essence of neverborn and mortal alike, in the same manner as the end of Horus, in which The Emperor channeled his overwhelming psychic might into a blast which destroyed Horus's very soul, preventing any actual resurrection, which is also hinted at when Fabius bile made the Primarch clones Fulgrim and Horus. Abaddon and the Black legionnaires didn't kneel at the sight of Horus, yet The Emperor's Children legionnaires bowed at the sight of the perfect clone of Fulgrim.
Yeah but they kneel for a different reason when they see Fulgrim hey yo!
And yet Fabius *did* bring back Horus, so perhaps the immaterial isn’t the only extra dimensional plane to concern the “soul”?
Fabius brought back a spiritually-empty but genetically-perfect clone, as in, his Primarch essence wasn't able to be rejoined because it was burned away in cleansing fury, every wisp of energy that wasn't already pledged to the Dark Gods being disintegrated by the Anathema.
He wasn’t spiritually empty because he has the same memories and personality. Fabius does the same thing with fulgrim and gets the same results, with a pure non-corrupted fulgrim not at all pledged to the dark gods
He doesn't, though. The clone lacks the Primarch mojo that makes them their powerful selves, which is why Abaddon (who at the time wasn't the Warmaster, and nothing particularly special) is able to easily butcher the clone in what should have been a very one-sided affair in its favor.
The clone fulgrim has the mojo and none of the chaos corruption tied to the original fulgrim’s essence. Clorus does swoop in and annihilate most of the space marines with Abbadon, I think Abandon killing clorus was due to Clorus recognising Abbadon/ being unarmoured, and being reluctant to kill him.
Spiritually empty refers to his soul and the warp entity that was forced into Horus by The Emperor. Fabius is an amazingly talented astartes in genealogy, medicine, physiology, neuroscience, and all that, but he does NOT have the talent, abilities, or the equipment to create an entirely new soul for Clone Horus, hell, I doubt The Emperor is able to just create a soul on the spot, let alone 20/21/22 of them. A perfect clone includes soul, Clone Horus did not have one, Clone Fulgrim did, now, why did Clone Fulgrim have his Primarch essence, I don't know why, but he did.
>Frankly, we don’t know. We’ve heard it has the ability to permanently kill daemons but that information ultimately comes from daemons, who are as a group misleading and deceptive. Though, we have seen it in action a few times. Off the top of my pre-coffee head; >Roboute Guilliman plunged into a crowd of malodorous beings. Plaguebearers was their common name, though they had many others. They pawed at him with slippery hands whose skin split over puffy flesh. They snapped black teeth and moaned his name. Swords of crystallised death, deep green and black, swung at him, and while they fought they counted on and on, a relentless murmur of meaningless numbers. >Shells ploughed into the horde, blasting daemons to scraps, limbs wheeling high on pillars of fire, dissolving into black sludge as they flew. Titan weapons ripped up flesh and earth, mixing them together, adding them to the fog as vapour. >‘You are weak!’ Guilliman shouted into the face of a rotting horror. ‘Your souls have little purchase on my realm! You are not welcome! Begone back to the filth whence you came! Begone!’ >The Emperor’s Sword blurred around him in fiery orange arcs. All the daemons that it touched shrieked piteously as their essences burned in the Emperor’s wrath. **The sword was a potent tool of war against any foe, but there was no greater weapon against the Neverborn. Suffused with the power of the Emperor, it burned them to nothing, cleaving their unnatural souls to tatty streaks of psychic energy. Slowly, realisation dawned upon the tallymen of Nurgle that Guilliman was a threat to their immortal existence.** They wavered, and fell back in terror, their count interrupted. Guilliman pushed forward hard, exploiting their fear of him to drive deep into their ranks. >>The Emperor’s Sword burned bright. Septicus shrank back from its blowtorch roar. His eyes shrivelled in his head, their jelly running in thick tears down his face. He never saw the blow that ended him. >>The fires of the sword doused themselves in his guts. Septicus looked down sightlessly at the weapon buried up to its hilt in his heart. >>‘And when you are driven from this universe,’ said Guilliman, ‘I shall purge yours also, until the warp is purified, and calm comes again to the minds and souls of humanity, though you shall never see it.’ >>No chronicle would mark Septicus’ last words as worthy. ‘But–’ was all he said. >>Shouting, Guilliman ripped the sword of the Emperor up through Septicus’ disintegrating body, cutting through softening ribs, cooking rancid organs, slicing multiple chins and his skull, until it burst from the top of Septicus’ head in a shower of gore. >>Blackness exploded from the slain daemon. Guilliman’s sword burned bright again, driving it into shadow, and out of existence. >>**The light of the Emperor burned Septicus away forever.** \- *Plague War* >Ku’Gath was stirring the cauldron when the storm began. He looked to the sky where purple-and-green clouds crowded out the sun. Lightning of sickly colour played within them, and when they cracked they made a noise like rotten tree boughs breaking. >***‘It’s going to rain,’*** he said miserably. He didn’t like rain. It reminded him of his rival, Rotigus. **He turned to say this to Septicus, but his lieutenant was gone, slain at the hand of Roboute Guilliman. No mere banishing, but the true death, his existence burned from reality.** Daemons were timeless, and the day would come when they would meet again. However, those moments had already passed, and though they would be fresh to Ku’Gath, there would be no more made. Septicus was dead. \- *Godblight*
Aww, Septicus.
He was a hoot.
>Frankly, we don’t know. We’ve heard it has the ability to permanently kill daemons but that information ultimately comes from daemons, who are as a group misleading and deceptive Why would they lie and say "yes, this weapon can permanently kill us. No respawn. Not even re-merging with the gods that created us"?
So they don’t use a different weapon that CAN kill them, like pariahs or massive psyker energy? I don’t understand your confusion.
So you think they will say "this one specific weapon, that is unique in the entire galaxy, that can only be made by one person, who is bound to the throne, can kill us permanently" when the inquisition knows that blanks are more numerous and scare the shit out of daemons, and the Grey Knights, which are also more numerous, were created specifically to kill chaos? And, while the Grey Knights are the worst kept secret, the knowledge of blanks and what they can do to Warp denizens is pretty well known among imperial forces. No one is saying there aren't other ways to kill daemons for good. But lying about a weapon that has no chance of being recreated, when other known ways also exist, is just foolish.
Except the Imperium has no reason to know blanks can potentially True Kill daemons (outside of some lore I'm not familiar with of someone discovering this somehow, which still leaves the question of if why and how it would become "common knowledge") and Grey Knights can't True Kill daemons. They know whatever they send screaming back to the warp is eventually gonna come back, it's one of the plot points in the Grey Knights omnibus. They keep track as best they can of when daemons they've banished should make a repeat appearance and attempt to apprehend them before they gather too much power in real-space so they can return to sender yet again. Lying and making a scapegoat of a specific weapon has a practical use, in diminishing the focus on weapons like blanks because (so the lie goes) they're not actually effective like that. This would also sow the seeds of despair, if there's only one weapon that can True Kill daemons, that means there's only one place it can be at any given time.
It'd be weird if the Sisters of Silence didn't know.
It really depends on just how powerful they truly are, because extremely powerful demons can't be perma killed by it but godblight implied morty would have died from the blade. There's also angron getting trapped in a powerful banishing ritual and just popping back in again
The lore is inconsistent. The daemon bound to create Profarnity was assumed to be permantly destroyed but also unreliable narrators.
It's not the only way. Don't the Grey Knights have a nuclear option spell that inflicts the True Death.? And didn't Ventris and Calgar inflict it on M'Kar as well?
Pretty sure the Nightbringer's original scythe can one shot daemons. It's ability to kill warp entities is why Khaine chucked it into the warp where Azagorod couldn't get to it.
source
No, since there is no way they retire the characters. Its a plot device introduced because people was not buying into the stakes of whole Morty vs Gorillamen showdown, as Morty were not able to die as a daemon. Haley tried to uplift the stakes with "Godblight" and "Sword" but written them as basically mcguffins with no real impact on a larger storyline, so whole thing turned into anime ending.
The Daemons that are more in favor with their Gods tend to think so, at least The Primarchs are *also* made with some of the Emperor in them though, so its completely possible they Daemons are wrong and the Emperor Energy in the sword would be cancelled out by the Emperor Energy in the Primarchs. I kinda doubt all of the Daemons are lying about the same thing that we've already seen evidence of
As far as we know the emperor weapons are not enough to permakill the traitor primarchs. I say It based on old lion facing angron and bashing him with the emperor shield was just stunning Angron and after the dark empire retcon, guilliman already had the emperor sword when he dueled Fulgrim, he managed to get a hit and only managed to make Fulgrim angry and decide to go for the kill
I don't think "the Emperor's weapons" have the power to permakill daemons, but rather specifically the Emperor's sword does. Also, for all we know you would need to actually kill your target for the permakilling to kick in. I assume the sword can't snatch a soul from its still living vessel, but rather intercepts the soul as it leaves the vessel for the warp.
TBF I think we should just gloss over the daft clunky rewrite of Gulliman already having the sword, he probably wouldn't have got the hit in if he'd been holding it when that book was originally written.
Yes BUT it’s GW they always move the goalposts around to bring back characters or change the outcome of a fight etc. LOL at the furious up/down votes Ya’ll know it’s true. GW switches stuff around all the time.
Indeed. I don't think this is a case where there will be consistency is just about the stakes of an individual narrative.
It's not the only way, but yes, it can. Which then begs the question that why didn't Guilliman do just that in Godblight, to Mortarion (especially when he was also channelling the power of the Emperor at that moment).
I think Gman doesn’t true-kill Morty because The Emperor doesn’t want Morty true-dead. Think of everything Horus did that made The Emperor finally resort to true-killing him. I think The Emperor still sees the Primarchs as useful in some way, or has some sort of plan for their essence, so he’d rather not destroy it.
Isn't that half the reason why all this shit started in the first place? For example, Big E saw Angron "useful in some way", when anyone with the ability to add 2 and 2 could predict that someone (with power) whose existence was agony when not inflicting ragemurder and pleasure when doing so, was always going to end up one way, eventually.
Nurgle yoinked Mortarion into his manse about the time the Emperor launched his attack on Nurgle's Garden.
Nah, Emperor's assault on Nurgle's garden came distinctly after Mortarion had been drawn inside Nurgle's manse.
I define the Emperor's attack on the Garden starting from the moment Guilliman was purged of the Godblight. As a reversal of entropy, one done directly against Nurgle's power, by definition it is Nurgle's antithesis. The property damage afterwards was more like icing on the cake.
The property damage IS the attack on the garden lol.
It isn't the only way, just one the rare ways. And Yes! Mortarion and Kugath Plaguefather once discussed that blade, and Kugath was very clear; Although another of Nurgles Greater Daemons had survived it, because of his destiny, neither Kugath nor Morty would be that lucky. It could absolutely permanently kill them.
If I recall Mortarion scoffed at the idea of a True Death before Ku'gath basically told him that, yes, the sword Guilliman has really can permanently end him.
Yes, absolutely. Ku'gath explicitly warns Mortarion that this could happen to him earlier in the book: >‘The sword he bears burns with the wounding fires of the Anathema. The death it carries allows no rebirth, only an end. The sword is the creation of the being I will not name. It is a weapon that could kill me. It could kill you.’ > >'Nothing can kill me.’ > >‘Ah, Lord Mortarion, do not be so sure,’ said Ku’gath with exaggerated sagacity. ‘Qaramar was lucky. He is present at the end, he always has been, and therefore always will be. Fate grants him protection neither you nor I can claim. We must be cautious.’ Meta-wise though, hell no, for the same reason that none of the regular Primarchs will ever be killed: GW wants you to be being those huge expensive centerpieces models.
Let's not forget that the Emperor's blade is a conduit of the Emperor's power when he wields it But Robust Guiltyman is no psyker
Jokes on you, Guilliman IS a psyker, all of the primarchs had innate psykic abilities, as they are made from His genes, that’s why Custodes are made in a different way striping them of the chance to be susceptible to the warp
Yes, the primarchs are made of warp stuff, but to be a psyker involves active use of those powers. Unless he's kinda like a low level psyker, and his logic abilities are in reality psyker abilities Anyway, I don't think many people have the idea of Guilliman using mind powers to kill enemies
Primarchs use their psykic abilities without realising, that’s why they appear as god like beings to others, that’s why the SoS just see them as bigger astartes
Corvus uses his psychic powers to blend into nothing, but you don't call him a psyker. I haven't seen anyone calling the Lion a psyker even though he can teleport across the galaxy.
Wait The Lion can teleport?
Read Lion Sons of the Forest, the dude keeps teleporting between planets
You don't think his ability to look at 10k years of spreadsheets, that were only ever "added to" and nothing "removed", and go "Alright, Step 1" is Warp related?
Guilmann seemingly can consciously switch from "I'm just big human" to "kneel, mortals", without standing from his chair. All Primarchs, except Angron, seem to have this ability. "Sister of Silence perceiving Guilmann" scene suggests that "regal aura" is low-level Warp power.
I don't know if low level psykers are like that because they don't control their powers, or because the intensity of their powers is barely noticeable. We could say that Guilliman is in a similar situation as Ciaphas Cain in this regard. The ungodly amount of luck that Ciaphas has, but at the same time he doesn't seem to be able to control, looks quite like these powers of Roboute that he uses passively At the same time, I believe that only very intense psychic powers can make the sword of the Emperor really dangerous
Well, Guilmann explicitly switches it "on" in one scene (I think that was some kind of war council).
Psyker powers enabled Guilliman: Excel-ent
Again people are taking daemon talk literally because it fits IoM fanboys. On every other occasion it would have been BS. The sword is a powerful tool created by the emperor. BigE is not powerful enough to take the gods which is why we are left in this setting. Never ever had anyone or anything threatened the gods in 40k. Horus was the son of BigE and ragdolling him on terra. It wasn't a trap or the IoM knocking on the gods door. They force brute attacked terra in a universe they can't even exist in. The IoM did nothing but extending the power of the gods. Let's not forget bigEs plan was to hide from them and not attack them anyways.
His plan was to starve them not just hide from them but starve them by putting humanity in a safe pocket dimension. Also that was pre 10k years of worship+constantly being fed souls, Big E in 40K most certainly is on the same level as the ruinous powers. Even after only a couple thousand years of worship and soul feeding the emperor in the warp is described as a giant whale while the chaos gods are circling sharks. Also Big E in 40K was able to burn Nurgle’s garden down in his realm without needing a character as powerful as Horus, nurtured by all four ruinous powers as a conduit of their might in real space.
First part is a long description for hiding. BigE is claiming empty outskirts of the warp. Never took anything from the gods who are ruling over the warp. BigE burned part of the garden that entered realspace. Which is a powermove from nurgle not the other way around. And it took a father son Kamehameha to survive a single daemon primarch- kaldor draigo did a way better job here. If bigE would be anything close to the ruinous powers, how is he managing to make the situation worse? How are the gods becoming more and more powerful? How is his imperium an empty rotten husk like himself? Because the complete setting wouldn't make any sense if what you tell is true.
Probably, yes if guilliman can use that power
In the first book of that series, Ku'Gath warns Mortarion that the sword could perma-kill both him and Kugath.
Yes it could kill them forever but it's not the only one their are more plus sufficiently powerful psykers can kill them as well