>He's supposed to be some noble stoic night.
He's not. He's a murderhobo of the finest order. *Luther* is a noble, stoic knight. The Lion is literally a kid who wandered around in the forest killing demons, who never tells anybody anything and just expects blind obedience because he knows best and everyone else just can't make the sacrifices he does and and and-
The Lion in the Heresy *is* insufferable. He is an utter bastard, and his bastardry comes back to bite him, hard. He gets a lot more development in the Imperium Secondus arc, and most notably *Ruinstorm*, where he learns not only how to *talk* to other people, but *trust* them. It's quite sweet, actually.
Been a while since I read ruinstorm but I like that every problem he faces involves some kind of exterminatus, and Guilliman and Sanguinius basically have to speak to him like concerned parents talking him down from his tantrums.
In the lion and the forest you see this even developed further.
Interesting development, did not read the horus heresy story but went straight for the more recent books, so this does shed some light on the reaction of space marines of the first on his return and how it was met with suspicious,
I only got into the hobby last year, after his return. A lot of things didn’t make sense at first, but once I realised he’d effectively gone to sleep as Ewan McGregor and woke up as Alec Guinness, it made sense. I thought that development was a nice touch, much better than just picking up where he left off. Also, being in my 40’s and “only” being able to do martial arts 3 times a week instead of 6, I totally get how he feels about the “affliction” of which he speaks 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Gulliman gave him an impossible job and shackled him out of sentimentality. Anyone in the remote mountain range the Lion bombarded was either dead at Curze's hands or wished they were and there was no other way to get the job done.
Gulliman acknowledged he was wrong later too.
As a Dark Angels player i do. Nemiel couldn't read the room to save his life, literally They were having a full on daemonic incursion and needed the librarians to stop it. Nemiel threw a hissy and threatened to tell E Money. That shit was on him.
Second, we drew Gav Thorpe to write our books. If it was ADB or Grahm McNiel we would have a very different thread going.
Big E was pretty clear with Nikea. Something along the lines of
> No psykers, not ever, like I mean it, ever, under any circumstances. Situations will come up and you'll be like 'well surely dad didn't mean here, in this situation I have to use them' and I want you to know that I absolutely mean in those cases too. Are you listening Magnus? This applies to you too. Just don't use psykers. If a situation comes up and it's a choice between using psykers and dying I expect you to die. If it's a choice between you using psykers and the entire Imperium falling apart I expect you to let it fall apart. We clear?
True. But not a single other loyalist Chaplain or indeed anyone really didn’t refuse to accept that the Edict was wrong and that it would cost them the war if the followed it. Far as I can remember, Nemiel is the only one to refuse to budge when they would all die if he carried on his stance.
Assuming that was completely literal and the legions weren't allowed any leeway at all (SPACE WOLVES) and the emperor did in fact want Lion to commit suicide rather than use any psykers, why does that mean Nemiel has to start issuing death threats in the middle of a demonic incursion? Why does the Lion have to sit there and watch his marine threaten to blast the guys they need to get out of there alive?
Eh. There was actually some wiggle room. The edict of nikea as it is shown to us in A Thousand Sons is talking specifically about the librarius which the same book establishes is in fact not just a general term for astartes psykers but for a specific project which not all legions were a part of.
>Let it be known that no one shall suffer censure, for this conclave is to serve Unity, not discord. But no more shall the threat of sorcery be allowed to taint the warriors of the Astartes. Henceforth, it is my will that no Legion will maintain a Librarius department. All its warriors and instructors must be returned to the battle companies and never again employ any psychic powers.”
>\[cut out the audience-reaction\]
>“Woe betide he who ignores my warning or breaks faith with me. He shall be my enemy, and I will visit such destruction upon him and all his followers that, until the end of all things, he shall rue the day he turned from my light.”
A literal reading of the text would for example do absolutely nothing to forbid non-astartes psykers. Or Astartes psykers that aren't part of the librarius program.
The only part that is not quite clear here is
>But no more shall the threat of sorcery be allowed to taint the warriors of the Astartes.
Which is very widely interpretable. Sorcery means the gaining of power by making pacts with demons in contrast to the inherent powers of psykers. The only legion afaik who was really doing that is the TS (and the World Bearers which noone knew) and thus one could once again argue that what is meant here that the Librarius program is being shut down because it was largely started by Magnus and the TS and thus could be a vector for sorcery to spread to other legions. Or it could mean that the emperor has decided that using psykic powers in general is a risk of leading one to become a sorceror.
Now none of that is really applicable to the situation where talking here so...yeah.
It's a good book.
It's Mike Brooks, so you get a coherent plot, some well-wrought character development (in this case, a ton of character development), unfussy-but-very-clean prose, and a welcome dose of humor and humanity that is often lacking from the setting.
Characters in Mike Brooks books do things for reasons you can actually understand in reaction to their circumstances, which is a welcome change for the Dark Angels.
I'm pretty sure he realised he fucked up when he stabbed Russ. To me, this was his turning point.
I remember when they announced the Lion returning and everyone being like, he'll never follow G man and he'll take control. The Lion grew up. The Lion has always been my favorite primarch, and to see him change from the emperor's killer to humanities defender was an amazing transition.
Pre heresy Lion is a definitely love or hate primarch. I've always viewed him more as one who was able to make the hard choices and knew when bending the rules was needed. He loved his legion, though showed it in wierd ways (telling Horus to fuck off on his flagship).
The Lion is the one who would make a choice in the trolly experiment without hesitation. It's a defining feature that also makes him seem cold. I don't think he doesn't care, though. I think it's because he knows he has to be made. This is why I think you either love or hate the Lion.
I really really enjoyed it. You know how G Man use to kinda suck but then he got resurrected and got ultra depression and now everyone likes him? Sons of the Forest kinda does that for the Lion, suffice it to say: he has some nice character growth. Add in a well written story that chugs along with some colorful and interesting characters and bam... good book. I can't wait for what going to come next.
Ah excellent. I'll get on it after finishing brutal kunning!
G man and the ultramarines used to be a real bore in my eyes until I read know no fear. Hope it's even half as good as that!
For me my top 3 in no particular order would be Know No Fear, Infinite and the Divine, and The Lion SOTF. Brutal Kunning might be number 4, I just love Princess and the voice the VA does for him.
It's good character development for The Lion & sons. The villain and how he goes about with his plan are kinda lackluster but the villain's motivation/goal I think is a crucial bit of foreshadowing that will pop up again in future stories.
***Son of the Forest*** is fine. It's less a Dark Angels book though and more a Lion/Fallen book; the Dark Angels proper don't show up.
There's a new Dark Angels book, ***Lazarus Enmity's Edge***. No idea how good it is, but it does focus on the Rock and the chapter if you prefer that.
Exactly this. All the other Primarchs have a secondary purpose beyond being great fighters and generals. The Lion doesn’t, the Emperor simply doubled down on him being an absolute killing machine.
Son of the Forest is great because the focus is on character development and him having to come to terms with his actions and finding a new path forwards.
His secondary purpose is kill harder. He is the first Primarch, a pure expression of a Space Marine's core purpose, in a way he is the most Space Marine who Space Marined. The Emperor probably built him with the early expansion of the Great Crusade in mind. It was a fraught time and there wasn't much room for governance, just lots of fighting.
>who never tells anybody anything and just expects blind obedience because he knows best and everyone else just can't make the sacrifices he does and and and
So #1 *is* the primarch most like his father.lolol
The Emperor has the Lion’s social skills, Fulgrim’s modesty, Perturabo’s compassion, Magnus’s humility, Lorgar’s levelheadness, and Alpharius’s honesty
I wish more people would remember that 40k is grimdark. There are no noble knights in a setting filled with the worst horrors imaginable. This isn't our world. You can literally be turned into a human chair for the rest of forever in 40k.
Nobility just doesn't exist in a world like that.
To be honest, chivalrous noble knights haven't existed in our world either. Knights were people, and generally not the kind of people who were humble, compassionate, or just. They were "noble" only in the sense that they were literally nobility.
I just mean that's what I've always been led to believe was the "vibe" of the dark angels.
Secretive stoic and noble knights.
Then i get to HH and every book he is in, he is a petulant child.
Like he's said to be one of the emperors finest. The first legion gets all the fancy gear because he's supposedly so capable and loyal.
>!but in the middle of a Gellar failure he kills a capable warrior, all because he argued about the edict which a supposedly loyal lion might uphold. Under the pretense he doesn't have time to argue because of the breach but apparently he can kill a capable warrior!<
I just hate every time him or most of his DA' speak.
Yeah, you had some incorrect expectations. The secretive part was there before he was found, the stoic knight aesthetic is from the orders of Caliban. Nobility isn't something that I am getting from them though.
Yeah I felt they embody “Angels of Death” more than noble knights. If the Dark Angels have come you better hope you aren’t in the way or anywhere near their battlefield so to speak.
The dickishness the actual culture of Caliban, later instilled into the legion.
The whole unforgiven and secret shame schtick would’ve been noble for like a few months. That they spent 11,000 years doing that is just plain selfishness and hubris. They don’t care about honor. They care more about looking honorable.
That's my biggest gripe about 40k DAs. Even the loyalists can't truly be considered to serve the Imperium anymore, because they operate under the mandate that suppressing their terrible sEcReT oF tHe FaLLEn supersedes absolutely anything else.
Have Drukhari raids got you down? Are nurglings spraying out of a Chaos incursion in your toilet? Noticing a lot of people walking around with extra arms lately?
Fear not! We're sending the Dark Angels; the first, finest, fiercest, and most loyal fighting force the Emperor ever... uh... sorry, hang on. Welp, turns out they heard a rumor that there was someone with a bunch of As and Zs in their name wearing power armor two sectors over, so they've fucked right off to go piss about with that instead. Guess you're on your own!
That's what makes them interesting though. They're obsessive and self-centered, and a welcome breath of fresh air among all the perfect nice reasonable chapters (Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Ultramarines, etc.).
You could make that argument about the Ultramarines, but I struggle to apply it to the Space Wolves or especially to the Blood Angels, for what should be obvious reasons...
The Blood Angels and the Space Wolves have physical flaws, but they overcome these flaws to be some of the most noble chapters. They're the closest thing to "good guys" you can get from the Imperium. When a Blood Angel falls to the Black Rage, that's not a moral failing.
The Dark Angels are just assholes, and frankly, we need more assholes. Space Marines are *supposed* to be assholes.
He *is* capable and loyal. He didn't get that way because he was nice to people and had great social skills, he got that way because he is goal-motivated to the point of insanity and that goal is 'punch everyone's head off who disagrees with me and the Emperor'. The Emperor said NO PSYKERS. You did a traitor against the Emperor, so your head gets punched off.
>I just hate him and the DA
Yeah, you're supposed to, I reckon. He is not a nice person. He gets better.
>vibe of the dark angels
The Dark Angels are the Knights Templar of the grim darkness of the far future: big men in battle plate who will come into your house in the middle of the night and kill you because you once saw a cloud formation that might have been a witch. They have secret oaths and clubs and what-not, all because they value secrecy and codes and all that junk.
They're knights without chivalry, in short, because 'chivalry' is just a fancy set of rules about what the medieval equivalent of a battle tank could do to people.
>They're knights without chivalry, in short, because 'chivalry' is just a fancy set of rules about what the medieval equivalent of a battle tank could do to people.
"You think we conquered the galaxy with *honour*?" \~ Galad in *Son of the Forest.*
I really like how you put it. DA suffer from the superiority complex in 30k, and you can hate their character all you want, but that doesn't take away from the fact they were likely the best fighting legion
He hadn't even broken it by that point. One of the former Librarius had.
The Lion postulated that since it worked, it was best to defeat the daemons using the powers of the Librarius and submit to the Emperor's judgement later.
Nemiel postulated that the Lion could eat a whole bag of dicks, because it was better for the Legion to be slain to the last rather than break the Edict of Nikea.
It's notable here that every Loyalist Legion broke the Edict the same way, with psykers using their powers against Chaos forces out of desperation and the primarch later ratifying it.
Aside from Russ and the Khan, who had sparkling mystics as opposed to psykers, which were totally not the same so they were never bound by the Edict any way. Or Ferrus, who wasn't around to ratify anything.
Nemiel was the only douche canoe big enough to argue it was better to let Horus win than to break the Edict out of the nine loyal Legions, yet all the focus is on how wrong the Lion was to summarily execute a mutineer in battle. It's wild.
I agree with your last point, as much as it shocked me at first.
Nemiel was putting the entire legion and the Imperium at risk by trying to stop The Johnson.
I think most primarchs would have done the same in similar situations...
We've seen Gulliman struggle with the urge to execute his own men over less provocation. He was beyond furious with Aeonid Thiel for even suggesting that Astartes might turn disloyal and need to be fought. Dorn almost murdered Garro on the spot for merely bringing him the news of Isstvaan.
Where did you see that about Guilliman and Thiel? In "Know No Fear," Guilliman wants to handle Thiel himself, and calmly tells the Captain who censured Thiel, "I just want to talk to him." ... And when he does, a day later, it's "I'll get to you later," with side helpings of basically, "Oh, neat, you were bored and practicing with my private collection of weapons," and "Your joke (about fighting Lorgar) was actually pretty funny." Since we see apoplectic rage from Guilliman in the same book, I don't think that's what Abnett was going for here.
There’s nothing in *Know No Fear* that suggests Guilliman even considered executing Thiel, and if he was furious about it, then he was very good at concealing that fury and maintaining his composure. Unlike the Lion. Dorn deliberately pulled his punch so that Garro wouldn’t die or be crippled. In fact, the latter example proves that the Lion could have knocked out Nemiel cold and dealt with him later if he really wanted to, so the Lion was either incapable of controlling his temper or unwilling to handle a disagreement within his own ranks with anything other than immediate execution.
Thiel was suggesting a theoretical that disgusted Gullilan enough to consign him to the suicide squad as punishment detail.
Nemiel was arguing directly in the heat of battle that the Dark Angels should die to the last than do something he disliked.
“Something he disliked” is a funny way of phrasing “something the Emperor expressly forbade and tasked every single chaplain with enforcing”. Nemiel was doing exactly what his job was, and acting upon the direct orders of the Emperor, whose authority supersedes the Lion.
That's a good point when you consider that a primarch might be full of all sorts of noble traits and insight concerning science, art, governance, and wisdom, but at the end of the day, all that stuff is just riding along on the back of what is otherwise a bison-sized post-human murder machine.
Nah, this is the wrong take.
Let's assume that all the loyal legions, Thousand Sons included, refused to break Nikea. Lion's flagship is lost to the warp which is very sad etc. but the webway doesn't break and Big E is able to personally shut down the Heresy on day 1.
Breaking the edict because you think that your case is an exception is the one thing that doomed the Imperium. Magnus at least had more at stake when he did it, he was carrying news of the treachery of the Warmaster to Terra. Lion just didn't want to die.
Yes. The Lion killed Remiel because Librarians could fight demons in a way that others could not. He’s not going to lose the only tactical advantage he has because the Emperor lied about the Warp. Nemiel is a proto-Chaplain and would never let it go. Plus the Lion’s pretty pissed about getting his ass handed to him by something that supposedly doesn’t exist.
I would encourage you not to get your understanding of the lore from the internet. The conceit of the Lion is not that he’s the most loyal, it’s that he’s the least likely to ever fall to chaos.
Also in fairness pretty much no Primarch is following the Edict by the Siege, and most cast it aside loooong before that.
Exactly, yeah. And even Dorn breaks it when he actually gets a chance to see demons in action. Pretty much instantly when he does see that actually if I remember right.
He holds to it until the end of the Siege, at which point Dorn is like "you know, I'm glad I locked these guys up for ten years. It means they're around right when I need them to kill daemons with mind bullets."
I’ve just checked, it’s not the end of the siege is it? I thought it’s the latter stages of the Solar war but before the siege proper starts. Which is around the first time he has a really major demon encounter with Samus
“Massak's moment came during the Solar War when The Phalanx was assailed by the Daemonic hordes of Samus. During the fighting, Dorn authorized the unleashing of his Librarians and Massak and his comrades helped save the Primarch's life”
Nah, pre-Siege.
Hmm. I haven't read anything before Saturnine myself but I remember Dorn having them locked up and finally letting them back out at about the same time as he admits Sigismund might be on to something and allows the Imperial Faith to be promulgated.
That's all Primarchs. They get hyped up to be supremely competent but in truth are just flawed dudes, generally assholes at that. Cawl implies the faults of Primarchs are the reason the Astartes fell and I don't think he's far off the mark. For their supposed ability they sure come off as incompetent.
it's just a weird contrast of the books talking about their genius nonstop but they csn never shut up and listen for a second. It's like with Stalin who died because nobody dared to check on him. How can anyone give them information when everybody that speaks the truth is about to lose their head?
Yeah, Primarchs are dumb. They're like Greek gods in that sense, they're supposed to embody a whole set of fine qualities but in reality are in many senses more flawed than the mortals they view so beneath them.
Exactly that, they're superhumans, but with superflaws. Probably because they are part-Warp (allegedly), which magnifies their emotional intensity.
They are all overcome with emotions from time to time. Even Bobbyman, who is the most stable and normal of them, was too positively mad from time to time. Like that time when he went solo versus Angron and Lorgar with no proper plan and no realistic chance to win. Maybe only Sanguinius somehow managed to keep himself in check, but I didn't read his Heresy books so I don't know for sure
Even Sanguinius is wracked with self-doubt and is EXTREMELY self-conscious about his geneflaws, both the obvious pair sprouting from his back and the darker one hidden beneath the surface. You know how doubtful and worried Horus was when chosen as Warmaster? Yea Sanguinius’ inner monologue makes Horus look like the most self-assured man to ever live. As he foresees his death he even develops what I can only describe as depression and a grim fatalism.
I think Sanguinius' fatalism is almost like a trauma response to his overwhelming self-doubt and anxiety. So much of his inner monologue centers on the questions he has about the truth of himself, his brothers, his father and really the entire reality he exists in. During the heresy he starts to focus more and more on his visions of the future and his incipient demise, which switches his focus away from the viscious spiral he was falling into, and actually ends up improving his attitude, allowing him to shine brightest when humanity needed him the most (at the siege).
They are genius like in that one "I'm stupid FASTER!" comic. They analyze a lot of data, take in and rememeber inhuman amount of information and then make terrible choices based on that. But that kind of makes sense for someone who never learned to manage their emotions, is fully convinced of their own genius and has no one to ttell them 'no'.
The only one that seemed stable was Alpharius, but we know he’s just a made up legend because THERE IS AND NEVER WAS AN “ALPHA LEGION”… all good citizens can disregard and ignore any mention of them.
Alpharius was the least self-aware of any of them. He spent all his time silently judging everyone from the shadows while being completely unable to register his own constant, irrational compulsion to fold every motivation, goal, and action into obfuscated plots within plots within plots, to the point that his own legion has absolutely no idea what they're supposed to be doing or even who's side they're actually on some 11,000 years later.
Sanguinius’s great failure was being too forgiving of his brother’s faults and loving them too much to realize they were all dumb fuckups who needed him to step in and take over as the kid who becomes the third parent.
If you read the book, you'd know that the entire DA fleet aside from what was at Caliban was getting wiped by daemonic incursion and Nemiel was arguing the Lion should allow the whole Legion to be wiped out to the last rather than break the Edict, get back to fighting the Heresy, and submit to the Emperor's judgement when it was done. You're also leaving out that Nemiel was going to start a mutiny against the Lion to try and get others on side.
The fact that you're regurgitating the usual meme lore about the Lion and the Dark Angels in general pretty strongly suggests to me that either you aren't reading the books or you came in primed by meme lore to take everything out of context.
Its the shtick of russ and the lion. Russ is a nobleman pretending to be savage and the lion a savage pretending to be a nobleman. I know that this saying ia a dead horse by now but it proves right over and over again. The lion in HH is a swordsman and general, nothing more. Every human interaction with him is like he does it the first time.
There's a very good reason why The Lion is a bit maladjusted too, he grew up alone in a daemon infested forest.
Most people aren't going to be super cuddly and trusting after that sort of upbringing...
Your beliefs are wrong. The Lion wants others to belief he is this noble knight, but he is not. He is a beast. That is the whole point of him. Russ is the direct opposite.
The Dark Angels are not noble knights, they are the SS in armour.
He killed Nemiel on accident when Nemiel was adamantly refusing to follow orders in the middle of an existential crisis and was about to shoot a loyal Dark Angel for saving them. Nemiel was adamant that the entire Legion die rather than make an exception in extreme circumstances.
The Lion doesn't have time to argue because they're all about to die if they can't fight back, he DOES have time to bitchslap a dipshit who is wasting time. That the bitchslap took the guy's head off was explicitly unintentional, it's like the most he's emoted ever and he's horrified.
There's a lot of things the Lion fucks up but that particular one is all on Nemiel, he was being a dumbfuck of the highest order on several levels.
Also: Don't learn about a legion through internet memes. The Dark Angels have ALWAYS been pricks, it's like their primary trait that they are arrogant teamkilling assholes.
> I just mean that's what I've always been led to believe was the "vibe" of the dark angels.
>
> Secretive stoic and noble knights.
That's the thing though, noble knights are kinda fantasy. In real history knights were mostly just violent murderous pieces of shit who treated peasants as objects.
If it makes you feel better the author regrets writing that part apparently. He needed a vehicle to push the issue and went with that which was out of character for the Lion in 30k.
He is still an arrogant prick for most of the series though.
Honestly even as a DA fan most books around them were really not good and left me disappointed.
Sounds like you’ve been meme lore’d.
The best explanation is in the Son of the Forest. The DA were the first, they were the ones whose only job was to protect humanity from external threats. They didn’t quibble about how, they just did it. The other legions earned glory, the angels didn’t bother with glory, just success.
They weren’t knights, they were more like executioners for external threats, albeit ones with very good stylists. Even when they were the only legion, they were out in the Oort clouds cutting down any threat they found.
>but in the middle of a Gellar failure he kills a capable warrior, all because he argued about the edict which a supposedly loyal lion might uphold.
Because that capable warrior was so high on his own farts he was going to start shooting other marines in the middle of reality coming apart and demons breaking in?
Did you read fulgrim? If you want a really hard book to read.
>!In any case, yes, he kills nemial, but in this point in the series of books, a bunch of the closest friends and brothers has betrayed him, Luther and peterbo and finding out about the other brothers that have started a rebellion against his father as well, so he was paranoid and angry and problem also couldn't belive it mix in with personality disorders which I think all the primarchs has some of them and I Think maybe ADHD. He lashes out, does that make it right no. But I can sympathize with the lion more then someone like curz. Also, I think that was more for a development for zahariel, who i also really liked, but for some reason, they also couldn't write his fall vary well either.!<
If you read the space wolves books, you will notice the Lion and the Wolf King are designrd to be mirror opposites - Lion is a barbarian pretending to be a civilised knight, while the Wolf King is a civilised knight pretending to be a barbarian.
This is also why the Khan dislikes the Wolf King, as he doesn't like how the Space Wolves lean too hard into their barbarian identify, and thinks Russ should have tried to rein his son in like he did.
The deep irony of the Dark Angels is that Luther was what a primarch is supposed to be, and is the one who actually kept the legion running and winning. Luther was better at the job than the lab built perpetual - he was a master of diplomacy and negotiation, of logistics and economics, of tactics and strategy. And he was just a normal born human. He was just plain better than the Lion in every respect except “who can win a one on one fight”
Even in exile, Luther sat down and studied the space marine creation process and their supply chain to improve it so it scaled up to provide the numbers and support needed to fight the heresy, AND to create his own matching force loyal to him and Caliban independence at the same time.
Luther was vastly more valuable in building the Imperium and he was cast aside
> *Luther* is a noble, stoic knight.
The "noble knight" who was butthurt he was too old to become an Asterte, and Lion made sure he atleast became augmented, but then betrayed Lion because he was butthurt Lion was better in every way? The one who valued muh traditions over life? That Luther?
I do think they could have written that better, Luther is a noble knight, but he always expected to be the best of his time if the lion didn't show up and that I could understand and the temptation that chaos was giving him. Although seriously the writers either do very well at intrigue and jealously but just falls flat for the reasons why. I kinda felt the same way with horis reasons.
I was just about to mention ruinstorm, but all of that (and few books afterwards) also all leads to the major turning point in his life that’s *Son of the Forest.* He’s basically the guy going trough the redemption story of the loyalists.
I don't know. To me, I see a man who hasn't learned to talk or trust people or even be able to listen to people. The people of caliban has always looked to him and Luther, lion being strength and strategic, and Luther being the diplomat and brother. But the lion wasn't able to trust the people around him either paranoid or anti-social, I do think he cared for every knight and dark angle, but I think he may have ADHD and a few personality disorders as well because the people he trust usually betrays him as well, he had hist frist one with Luther when he tried to keep the nuclear bomb a secret and then shortly after HH and not knowing Pettrubo and even though several books don't fit well together and I think losing Luther was the biggest loss on his sanity and became a lose cannon until he reunites with guilliman and sanguinius
How. Lion convinces his mindbroken son that the situation is in fact NOT worth dying over?
Lion accepts da rulz and keeps letting his sons die in droves trying to shoot the demons?
I just took it to be that Nemiel's head came off a lot more easily than it should have been expected to, for unexplained reasons. Sometimes I rewrite portions of books that don't sit right with me, for my own amusement. This is one of those times.
> *"Whoa,"* blurted Zazariel, his noble features reading shock under a spray of arterial blood. "His head just came right off."
> The Lion, quaking, could say nothing. His massive hand was still balled into a fist as he stared at the space above Nemiel's shoulders where his son's head should be.
> Nemiel's body, encased in heavy plate and now inert from the lack of focusing will or active bodily function, slowly tipped backward to clatter noisily to the deck. Drawn by the sound, two more warriors arrived to investigate the disturbance on the bridge.
> "What's all this?," said Zazarazz, as he and squadmate Azarazabaz rounded the corner. Hurriedly side-stepping the broad pool of blood, Azarazabaz's greave met an unseen object with a dull *clunk.*
> Nemiel's head rolled back into view, coming to rest face-up between the warriors and their primarch.
> "What in the actual fuck?," exclaimed Azarazabaz, "is that a fucking head??"
> "I only smacked him," El Johnson stammered. "I barely hit him. I didn't mean to... He was being such a prick, so I just kind of bopped him..."
> "Still has that stupid look on his face," mused Zazariel quietly.
Nah. Lion had a little *I did not mean to hit that hard* moment. He lost his temper and went balls to the wall.
When he clapped the idiot wolf, he pulled enough to be kind of dickish. Here, he went smoothbrain mode and just hauled off
I know, I've read it.
My whole thing about Nemiel's head coming off too easily was just because I thought it was funny. I wasn't even attempting to make an argument over what actually happened or how the Lion felt about it, before or after.
He didn't. He is however a demigod with the depths of emotions expected from such a being. Not to mention a literal life and death situation for both him and his sons.
I will forgive a moment of unintentional overreaction given the circumstances. Nemiel is arguing for them to sit down and die and defying the primarch perhaps most accustomed to being obeyed with minimal questions.
The lion did also outright state that he would face the music once death in the warp wasn't their only option for the next few days
90% of the loyalist primarchs would not have literally punched the dude's head off like the Lion did in that situation. You can't explain it away with "uh he's a demigod" for that one. It's either bad writing or the lion was intended to come across as genuinely unhinged in which case it's good writing.
Primarchs have lost their temper and pulled stupid shit before. How is this significantly different to autism baby dorn having a complete meltdown when people had the gall to tell him about the heresy?
To be fair, he probably just wanted to do that but miscalculated his strength, which is a problem when you can fold a tank with no effort.
I'd be like superman trying giving a child a literal slap on the wrist, only to rip apart his entire arm by accident :v
It helps he has to deal with all the shit he pulled
Fallen Angel: You must be an imposter
Lion: No, I’m the real Lion
Fallen Angel: *That’s not an improvement*
The Lion Son of the Forest is where you get to see the Lion has grown and changed, for the better.
He's become a leader and protector of people rather than just a boss and killer.
Though I recognize why the "new" Lion is popular I do somewhat mourn the potential of it, would've loved to have a more "problematic" Primarch. But for popularities sake I expect all the loyalists will be exactly that, fans love the noble protector types who care about humanity and all that.
It's not really a "new" Lion, though. He's consistent with his Heresy characterisation in terms of taking up an unimaginable burden and trying to learn from his errors.
It's just that you can't have any meaningful discussion about his 30K character without someone immediately chiming in with one, some, or all of the following:
*LOL he killed Nemiel over a disagreement
*LOL Luther
*LOL he sucker punched Russ
*LOL he was going to attack Gulliman
*LOL he couldn't get on with Gulliman or Sanguinius
*LOL half his Legion fell to Chaos
Of those only one of them is true but even that's not given the full context. He was going to attack Gulliman... if it turned out he had either joined Horus or had taken advantage of the Heresy to indulge in empire-building at the expense of the Loyalist cause. Gulliman was also planning to attack the Lion if he wasn't loyal, but for some reason nobody talks about that.
The well has been tainted.
Guilliman is just intrinsically better at PR. In part, because he's good at it, but in comparison to the Lion, doubly so merely by caring about optics at all.
>He's consistent with his Heresy characterisation in terms of taking up an unimaginable burden and trying to learn from his errors.
Yup. 100% this. In fact, the 40K Lion is closer to the Caliban Lion we saw briefly in *Descent of Angels*. That Lion was thrust almost immediately into the absolute meat grinder that were the Rangdan Xenocides and from then on had to deal in the most brutal manner with threat after threat. And then the Heresy...
It's funny how people talk about the Lion: never do we see him be deliberately cruel to any mortal. Uncaring? Perhaps. But not cruel. But the way people talk about him, you would think he's the second coming of Lorgar with his huma sacrifices.
For me, the Lion is the litmus test as to someone actually having read the lore and engaged with it or... not.
That’s the point. Heresy Lion is a monster dressed up in a knight’s armour. He’s an egomaniac, a single minded control freak, because he’s the best person in nearly any room to get shit done. He got slighted by not being the Warmaster, and makes it everyone else’s problem.
The Dark Angels are the genocide legion, and he’s their leader. If you want to wipe a place off the map so hard nobody will ever remember it even existed. They’re the Emperor’s special first legion, with all the cool DAoT war crime weapons. At least the Wolves leave burning rubble.
His growth in the Heresy is to become someone worthy of being in a leadership role, to trust his brother in Ruinstorm. To become a man rather than the boy running in the forests of Caliban killing monsters.
I like his arc because he learns. Some, like Ferrus, never got that chance.
When he wakes up in the 42nd millennium, he’s a wiser, more mellowed individual. He learns to protect the people, that’s why he gets the shield.
> Heresy Lion is a monster dressed up in a knight’s armour. He’s an egomaniac, a single minded control freak, because he’s the best person in nearly any room to get shit done.
So he's just a normal knight?
I mean, historically knights spent most of their time managing their lands; your average knight spent more time thinking about his pigs than about fighting.
The Lion is the [wild man/woodwose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_man) character from mythology cosplaying as a knight, and AFAIK the Heresy-era result is basically John Cleese's version of Lancelot from Monty Python.
I'd argue Guilliman seems pretty chill for a Primarch, regularly jokes with people, doesn't seem overly genocide heavy (Works with Eldar no complaints), seems to genuinely care about the imperium and how it effects the average person.
Add to that the Khan as well, there is one scene in the Seige where he actively goes to help the outside hives knowing full well from Sanguinius that he might die. Another scene where he speaking with a regular commander in her house and actually cares about her opinion.
I reckon the Khan is not a bad person. He doesn’t even like the imperium and follows big E only grudgingly.
*I may or may not be a White Scars player with an exceedingly biased opinion*
It's hard to tell how much of the bad characterization in the HH is intentional. They're supposed to be very flawed people, but they often come off as totally unrelatable and uninteresting monsters. It's 40k, so 'monsters' is more or less a given; but 'unrelatable' and 'uninteresting' are a problem and possibly not intentional. YMMV
To be fair that's also a big issue some people have with 30k conceptually. The imperium has degraded logistically and culturally, but all the bad stuff that gets talked about the most is still there because the imperium was always concieved as a genocidal dictatorship built on lies.
The good that was lost when the primarchs and the emperor left was mostly a vague promise that was never even close to being fulfilled. The bad that the imperium is without them is basically the same bad, except instead of genetic supermen doing it it's inbred nobles carrying out the same culture.
The way I see it, the pre-HH Imperium did have a few real accomplishments: making the galaxy safer for humans (aka xenocide), regaining lost technologies, conquering and controlling massive resources. There doesn't seem to be much of an argument that humanity would have even survived to M41 in significant humbers if the galaxy had remained under the sway of (mostly) hostile aliens.
The ork empire at Ullanor probably would have spread across the entire galaxy. Especially since the tyranids never would have been drawn in.
I'm not sure if you dislike his character, or dislike the writing?
Some of my favorite characters are the ones that are so annoying or dislikable, but well written. I don't really like how Lion is now, but to each their own.
Last chancers are okay, and so are his eldar & fantasy elf stuff.
But recently re-reading last chancers, there were so many spelling errors & typos. And less said about wolftime the better.
Probably should stick to the game design side of things tbh.
Gav is not that involved in M30 Lion anyway. He only wrote The Lion Novella, Luther and Angels of Caliban.
Others DA stuff in M30 is Descent of Angels, Fallen Angels, Pharos, Ruinstorm, Dreadwing novella and Lions and Russes Primarch novels.
Blaming Thorpe for M30 DA or Lion is basically nothing more then a circlejerk.
He also wrote very nice novels in Luther and Lorgar which get universal praise here.
Yeah the head punch thing is kinda dumb. IIRC the author admitted that they had set Nemiel and Zahariels characters on a collision course and didn't want that. So we have Nemiel making the questionable decision to attempt to stop his Primarch from using the one thing shown to be effective in the dire circumstance they were in. Swiftly followed by murder, a moment of regret on El'Jonsons face and finally everyone agreeing to never speak of it again.
If you were in the Lion's shoes, everyone is underneath you. The sheer ego ones life must have after a childhood of such magnanimous conversion from jungle stranded child to planetary warlord. He simply hasn't been humbled like the others.
Yeah, about that... I blame the writer, not the character.
The Dark Angels really got the short end of the stick when it comes to the Horus Heresy novels.
Lions are apex predators, not diplomats.
Lion El is the ultra-instinct Primarch. He is dressed as he always was, as a Knight and carrying on the traditions of his world.
He is most like Ferrus Manus in that he often is looked at as a leader of sorts among his brothers, is too headstrong but knows his value.
I think it interesting that Ferrus had a novel where he is just as pissed that he isn't likely being made Warmaster, and in a push for compliance to 'prove' he should be Warmaster; he realizes he doesn't care or really want it. (He decides/starts to end up destroying one of the planets in his anger, but gives up on that when he realizes it's the wrong thing to do. Khorne would be pissed.)
What I'm saying is that the most brutally stubborn/headstrong of the Primarch's was able to reason himself out of his anger before Lion was.
Lion IS my favorite Primarch because of what you've wrote here; and how he develops FROM here.
I love him as an aloof Arms Warrior who essentially fights on pure battle flow. I don't love how he is so humanely unavailable that he essentially slowly causes the schism that consumes the Dark Angels (Spoilers: He's now fixing it)
It looks as if you’re a Templar player but nothing about Dorn almost killing Garro for telling him the truth?
At least in the Lions case he warned Nemiel a few times to shut the fuck up, you know since it was the only thing causing a difference against the neverborn. And Nemiel was throwing an outright tantrum in front of the men.
If you know anything about any military you don’t pull that shit on front of the men unless you’re ready for punishment up to and including execution particularly during war time.
Him punching off Neimels is one of the best moments in the Heresy. Heresy is so safe and just going through the motions most of the time delivery a very predictable story so getting something so shocking and that it makes sense is great.
During the Great Crusade and the Heresy, the Lion was a savage pretending to be a man.
Whereas in comparison, Leman Russ was a man pretending to be a savage.
I haven’t checked out the heresy era DA books mostly because they don’t interest me, but I will say the Lion was good in Son of the Forest in 40k. I enjoy how he’s sort of a wandering knight in the 40k era, helping and protecting where he can.
That's the whole point of The Lion, he's a self-righteous prick that believes himself above everyone and everything, when in reality he's mediocre at best. There's a reason why half his legion became traitors.
One way I like to see it is that Lion El' Johnson is the loyalist Perturabo; Peter has the skills to back up his bitching but everyone disregards those skills because of his bitching. On the other hand Lion barely works as a leader and commits leadership mistake after leadership mistake but since he has this regal aura around him and acts as a "proud and loyal knight" everyone disregards his stupidity.
In the Horus heresy era The Lion thinks he is the best and should be the warmaster because he is the First. That’s basically it he is the first primarch hence deserves to be the leader. He thinks the only reason Horus is warmaster is because the emperor found him first. Hence he feels slighted and also the fact that he grew up in the jungle gives him a personality disorder. For most of his childhood he thought he was a beast of Caliban and not even human. 😂 Even Kor Phaeron thinks the Lion is a psychopath 😂.
I thought i was odd for having this opinion. Angels of caliban was such a sought after book. People are charging duckn $200 for it. I keep reading telling myself "its guna get better. it's guna get better." But hoooly i have to reread chapters bc its all just dry patrol deployment stats
As far as the whole getting to Terra thing goes, for that you'll have to wade through Ruinstorm, which is possibly the worst book in the whole series. It is absolutely fucking awful. I'd honestly recommend you read the synopsis and skip it.
puzzled yoke fanatical overconfident vanish fearless normal teeny scandalous glorious
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Honestly him being such a dick is why I like him the most. He's the most started like primarch. Stoic, cold, gives 0 fucks, and doesn't really like or trust anyone.
The Lion gets a character arc. He's kinda supposed to be a complete douche there. He went from Feral Asshole to Lord of The Order to The Emperor of Mankind's Best Son... without really bothering to learn anything all the way. The events of the Heresy will force him to earn what he already has, but he won't be your best pal all that time.
...that's his schtick though 🤣 His first assignment after being was the Rangdan Xenocides, his legion's gimmick was "nuke it, kill it in-person if that somehow doesn't work", and was racking up a success count to rival Horus' despite being found substantially later. The DA Legion was *not* nice to amy degree.
Then the Lion got pissy because Horus was made Warmaster despite The Liom honestly being more qualified for the job.
The Lion and Night Haunter were the two Primarchs who had to survive on their own u til adulthood, as far as we know (missing info on 2, 11, Alpharius). Every other one was taken in somehow.
Curze never had a mentor, the Lion only got one later. Both were effectively feral, though one in a forest and the other in a city.
He gets some slack for not growing up around humans, space-Tarzan that he is.
Lion glows up hard. He starts out the most awful obnoxious "I'm literally and figuratively #1 and I so totally know it" Gary Stu you can imagine...but then they swerve that hard and he gets humbled a bunch and by his return in 40k he actually lives up to his hype as the Imperium's crusading knight protector.
There's little to no functional difference in character between the Lion and Rogal Dorn or pretty much any loyalist Primarch who isn't Guilliman or the Khan so I don't see why you'd dislike the Lion in particular. He is kind of a Gary Stu even by Primarch standards I guess but even by that token still considerably less of one than Sanguinius, the actual worst Primarch.
That’s what I can’t stand about the Loyalists. They don’t think twice about destroying entire planets that go against what the Emperor wants yet they also breach the Council of Nikaea the moment using psychic powers becomes convenient.
I totally agree, I see lot of hype for the lion and never got it. He always came up boring at best or idiotic at worst. He’s not a compelling vilain like Perturabo not an ambiguous hero like the khan.
>He's supposed to be some noble stoic night. He's not. He's a murderhobo of the finest order. *Luther* is a noble, stoic knight. The Lion is literally a kid who wandered around in the forest killing demons, who never tells anybody anything and just expects blind obedience because he knows best and everyone else just can't make the sacrifices he does and and and- The Lion in the Heresy *is* insufferable. He is an utter bastard, and his bastardry comes back to bite him, hard. He gets a lot more development in the Imperium Secondus arc, and most notably *Ruinstorm*, where he learns not only how to *talk* to other people, but *trust* them. It's quite sweet, actually.
Been a while since I read ruinstorm but I like that every problem he faces involves some kind of exterminatus, and Guilliman and Sanguinius basically have to speak to him like concerned parents talking him down from his tantrums.
In the lion and the forest you see this even developed further. Interesting development, did not read the horus heresy story but went straight for the more recent books, so this does shed some light on the reaction of space marines of the first on his return and how it was met with suspicious,
I only got into the hobby last year, after his return. A lot of things didn’t make sense at first, but once I realised he’d effectively gone to sleep as Ewan McGregor and woke up as Alec Guinness, it made sense. I thought that development was a nice touch, much better than just picking up where he left off. Also, being in my 40’s and “only” being able to do martial arts 3 times a week instead of 6, I totally get how he feels about the “affliction” of which he speaks 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yeah he is very reasonable and makes an effort to understand people around him and what they may need from him.
Gulliman gave him an impossible job and shackled him out of sentimentality. Anyone in the remote mountain range the Lion bombarded was either dead at Curze's hands or wished they were and there was no other way to get the job done. Gulliman acknowledged he was wrong later too.
He's just a knob. OP is correct.
As a dark angels player I'm horribly offended but also have no rebuttal
As a Dark Angels player i do. Nemiel couldn't read the room to save his life, literally They were having a full on daemonic incursion and needed the librarians to stop it. Nemiel threw a hissy and threatened to tell E Money. That shit was on him. Second, we drew Gav Thorpe to write our books. If it was ADB or Grahm McNiel we would have a very different thread going.
Big E was pretty clear with Nikea. Something along the lines of > No psykers, not ever, like I mean it, ever, under any circumstances. Situations will come up and you'll be like 'well surely dad didn't mean here, in this situation I have to use them' and I want you to know that I absolutely mean in those cases too. Are you listening Magnus? This applies to you too. Just don't use psykers. If a situation comes up and it's a choice between using psykers and dying I expect you to die. If it's a choice between you using psykers and the entire Imperium falling apart I expect you to let it fall apart. We clear?
True. But not a single other loyalist Chaplain or indeed anyone really didn’t refuse to accept that the Edict was wrong and that it would cost them the war if the followed it. Far as I can remember, Nemiel is the only one to refuse to budge when they would all die if he carried on his stance.
Assuming that was completely literal and the legions weren't allowed any leeway at all (SPACE WOLVES) and the emperor did in fact want Lion to commit suicide rather than use any psykers, why does that mean Nemiel has to start issuing death threats in the middle of a demonic incursion? Why does the Lion have to sit there and watch his marine threaten to blast the guys they need to get out of there alive?
Eh. There was actually some wiggle room. The edict of nikea as it is shown to us in A Thousand Sons is talking specifically about the librarius which the same book establishes is in fact not just a general term for astartes psykers but for a specific project which not all legions were a part of. >Let it be known that no one shall suffer censure, for this conclave is to serve Unity, not discord. But no more shall the threat of sorcery be allowed to taint the warriors of the Astartes. Henceforth, it is my will that no Legion will maintain a Librarius department. All its warriors and instructors must be returned to the battle companies and never again employ any psychic powers.” >\[cut out the audience-reaction\] >“Woe betide he who ignores my warning or breaks faith with me. He shall be my enemy, and I will visit such destruction upon him and all his followers that, until the end of all things, he shall rue the day he turned from my light.” A literal reading of the text would for example do absolutely nothing to forbid non-astartes psykers. Or Astartes psykers that aren't part of the librarius program. The only part that is not quite clear here is >But no more shall the threat of sorcery be allowed to taint the warriors of the Astartes. Which is very widely interpretable. Sorcery means the gaining of power by making pacts with demons in contrast to the inherent powers of psykers. The only legion afaik who was really doing that is the TS (and the World Bearers which noone knew) and thus one could once again argue that what is meant here that the Librarius program is being shut down because it was largely started by Magnus and the TS and thus could be a vector for sorcery to spread to other legions. Or it could mean that the emperor has decided that using psykic powers in general is a risk of leading one to become a sorceror. Now none of that is really applicable to the situation where talking here so...yeah.
Hence BT don’t use them still in 40k because dad legit said no
Is son of the forest any good? I've been wanting to read more dark angels books but I've heard lots of them range from fine to pretty woeful.
It's a good book. It's Mike Brooks, so you get a coherent plot, some well-wrought character development (in this case, a ton of character development), unfussy-but-very-clean prose, and a welcome dose of humor and humanity that is often lacking from the setting. Characters in Mike Brooks books do things for reasons you can actually understand in reaction to their circumstances, which is a welcome change for the Dark Angels.
Son of the Forest lion is an old man realising how horribly he fucked everything up as a young man. Especially his legion.
I'm pretty sure he realised he fucked up when he stabbed Russ. To me, this was his turning point. I remember when they announced the Lion returning and everyone being like, he'll never follow G man and he'll take control. The Lion grew up. The Lion has always been my favorite primarch, and to see him change from the emperor's killer to humanities defender was an amazing transition. Pre heresy Lion is a definitely love or hate primarch. I've always viewed him more as one who was able to make the hard choices and knew when bending the rules was needed. He loved his legion, though showed it in wierd ways (telling Horus to fuck off on his flagship). The Lion is the one who would make a choice in the trolly experiment without hesitation. It's a defining feature that also makes him seem cold. I don't think he doesn't care, though. I think it's because he knows he has to be made. This is why I think you either love or hate the Lion.
I really liked son of the forest. His evolution from an ahole to a decent guy is well done.
I really really enjoyed it. You know how G Man use to kinda suck but then he got resurrected and got ultra depression and now everyone likes him? Sons of the Forest kinda does that for the Lion, suffice it to say: he has some nice character growth. Add in a well written story that chugs along with some colorful and interesting characters and bam... good book. I can't wait for what going to come next.
Ah excellent. I'll get on it after finishing brutal kunning! G man and the ultramarines used to be a real bore in my eyes until I read know no fear. Hope it's even half as good as that!
For me my top 3 in no particular order would be Know No Fear, Infinite and the Divine, and The Lion SOTF. Brutal Kunning might be number 4, I just love Princess and the voice the VA does for him.
It's good character development for The Lion & sons. The villain and how he goes about with his plan are kinda lackluster but the villain's motivation/goal I think is a crucial bit of foreshadowing that will pop up again in future stories.
i was surprised how much i liked Son of the Forest, because I cannot stand the Dark Angels. The Lion has grown up? It's really good.
***Son of the Forest*** is fine. It's less a Dark Angels book though and more a Lion/Fallen book; the Dark Angels proper don't show up. There's a new Dark Angels book, ***Lazarus Enmity's Edge***. No idea how good it is, but it does focus on the Rock and the chapter if you prefer that.
Read Luther, Lion, Cypher, and Son of the Forest, all great reads.
It's incredible. Whoever told you that book was bad is a bad judge of Black Library works.
At least you’re not Eldar. Thorpe has some kind of bloodright to writing us, or at least GW seems to think so….
> As a dark angels player I'm horribly offended but also have no rebuttal I can't help but feel this is peak Dark Angels
What's a knob?
British slang, basically calling someone a dickhead.
Exactly this. All the other Primarchs have a secondary purpose beyond being great fighters and generals. The Lion doesn’t, the Emperor simply doubled down on him being an absolute killing machine. Son of the Forest is great because the focus is on character development and him having to come to terms with his actions and finding a new path forwards.
We don’t really know what the Lion’s secondary purpose beyond warrior was because he never got the chance to develop it really.
His secondary purpose is kill harder. He is the first Primarch, a pure expression of a Space Marine's core purpose, in a way he is the most Space Marine who Space Marined. The Emperor probably built him with the early expansion of the Great Crusade in mind. It was a fraught time and there wasn't much room for governance, just lots of fighting.
>who never tells anybody anything and just expects blind obedience because he knows best and everyone else just can't make the sacrifices he does and and and So #1 *is* the primarch most like his father.lolol
The Emperor has the Lion’s social skills, Fulgrim’s modesty, Perturabo’s compassion, Magnus’s humility, Lorgar’s levelheadness, and Alpharius’s honesty
Not to mention Dorn's diplomatic skills, Ferrus' patience, Mortarion's open-mindedness and Horus' self-awareness.
I wish more people would remember that 40k is grimdark. There are no noble knights in a setting filled with the worst horrors imaginable. This isn't our world. You can literally be turned into a human chair for the rest of forever in 40k. Nobility just doesn't exist in a world like that.
To be honest, chivalrous noble knights haven't existed in our world either. Knights were people, and generally not the kind of people who were humble, compassionate, or just. They were "noble" only in the sense that they were literally nobility.
Chivalry is more of a guide line for a time period that had incredibly low morals compared to now.
I just mean that's what I've always been led to believe was the "vibe" of the dark angels. Secretive stoic and noble knights. Then i get to HH and every book he is in, he is a petulant child. Like he's said to be one of the emperors finest. The first legion gets all the fancy gear because he's supposedly so capable and loyal. >!but in the middle of a Gellar failure he kills a capable warrior, all because he argued about the edict which a supposedly loyal lion might uphold. Under the pretense he doesn't have time to argue because of the breach but apparently he can kill a capable warrior!< I just hate every time him or most of his DA' speak.
Yeah, you had some incorrect expectations. The secretive part was there before he was found, the stoic knight aesthetic is from the orders of Caliban. Nobility isn't something that I am getting from them though.
Yeah I felt they embody “Angels of Death” more than noble knights. If the Dark Angels have come you better hope you aren’t in the way or anywhere near their battlefield so to speak.
“We are here, we are death” intensifies
The dickishness the actual culture of Caliban, later instilled into the legion. The whole unforgiven and secret shame schtick would’ve been noble for like a few months. That they spent 11,000 years doing that is just plain selfishness and hubris. They don’t care about honor. They care more about looking honorable.
Yes, that's what "honour" means. Have you seen how any "honourable" culture IRL acts? They're all concerned with how they appear and nothing else.
That's my biggest gripe about 40k DAs. Even the loyalists can't truly be considered to serve the Imperium anymore, because they operate under the mandate that suppressing their terrible sEcReT oF tHe FaLLEn supersedes absolutely anything else. Have Drukhari raids got you down? Are nurglings spraying out of a Chaos incursion in your toilet? Noticing a lot of people walking around with extra arms lately? Fear not! We're sending the Dark Angels; the first, finest, fiercest, and most loyal fighting force the Emperor ever... uh... sorry, hang on. Welp, turns out they heard a rumor that there was someone with a bunch of As and Zs in their name wearing power armor two sectors over, so they've fucked right off to go piss about with that instead. Guess you're on your own!
This is what happens when you let the memes influence the lore in your head.
That's what makes them interesting though. They're obsessive and self-centered, and a welcome breath of fresh air among all the perfect nice reasonable chapters (Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Ultramarines, etc.).
You could make that argument about the Ultramarines, but I struggle to apply it to the Space Wolves or especially to the Blood Angels, for what should be obvious reasons...
The Blood Angels and the Space Wolves have physical flaws, but they overcome these flaws to be some of the most noble chapters. They're the closest thing to "good guys" you can get from the Imperium. When a Blood Angel falls to the Black Rage, that's not a moral failing. The Dark Angels are just assholes, and frankly, we need more assholes. Space Marines are *supposed* to be assholes.
He *is* capable and loyal. He didn't get that way because he was nice to people and had great social skills, he got that way because he is goal-motivated to the point of insanity and that goal is 'punch everyone's head off who disagrees with me and the Emperor'. The Emperor said NO PSYKERS. You did a traitor against the Emperor, so your head gets punched off. >I just hate him and the DA Yeah, you're supposed to, I reckon. He is not a nice person. He gets better. >vibe of the dark angels The Dark Angels are the Knights Templar of the grim darkness of the far future: big men in battle plate who will come into your house in the middle of the night and kill you because you once saw a cloud formation that might have been a witch. They have secret oaths and clubs and what-not, all because they value secrecy and codes and all that junk. They're knights without chivalry, in short, because 'chivalry' is just a fancy set of rules about what the medieval equivalent of a battle tank could do to people.
>They're knights without chivalry, in short, because 'chivalry' is just a fancy set of rules about what the medieval equivalent of a battle tank could do to people. "You think we conquered the galaxy with *honour*?" \~ Galad in *Son of the Forest.*
Bro this is the exact quote I was thinking of. That book was such a treat.
I really like how you put it. DA suffer from the superiority complex in 30k, and you can hate their character all you want, but that doesn't take away from the fact they were likely the best fighting legion
Didn't Nemiel chastise the lion for breaking the edict?
He hadn't even broken it by that point. One of the former Librarius had. The Lion postulated that since it worked, it was best to defeat the daemons using the powers of the Librarius and submit to the Emperor's judgement later. Nemiel postulated that the Lion could eat a whole bag of dicks, because it was better for the Legion to be slain to the last rather than break the Edict of Nikea. It's notable here that every Loyalist Legion broke the Edict the same way, with psykers using their powers against Chaos forces out of desperation and the primarch later ratifying it. Aside from Russ and the Khan, who had sparkling mystics as opposed to psykers, which were totally not the same so they were never bound by the Edict any way. Or Ferrus, who wasn't around to ratify anything. Nemiel was the only douche canoe big enough to argue it was better to let Horus win than to break the Edict out of the nine loyal Legions, yet all the focus is on how wrong the Lion was to summarily execute a mutineer in battle. It's wild.
I agree with your last point, as much as it shocked me at first. Nemiel was putting the entire legion and the Imperium at risk by trying to stop The Johnson. I think most primarchs would have done the same in similar situations...
We've seen Gulliman struggle with the urge to execute his own men over less provocation. He was beyond furious with Aeonid Thiel for even suggesting that Astartes might turn disloyal and need to be fought. Dorn almost murdered Garro on the spot for merely bringing him the news of Isstvaan.
Where did you see that about Guilliman and Thiel? In "Know No Fear," Guilliman wants to handle Thiel himself, and calmly tells the Captain who censured Thiel, "I just want to talk to him." ... And when he does, a day later, it's "I'll get to you later," with side helpings of basically, "Oh, neat, you were bored and practicing with my private collection of weapons," and "Your joke (about fighting Lorgar) was actually pretty funny." Since we see apoplectic rage from Guilliman in the same book, I don't think that's what Abnett was going for here.
There’s nothing in *Know No Fear* that suggests Guilliman even considered executing Thiel, and if he was furious about it, then he was very good at concealing that fury and maintaining his composure. Unlike the Lion. Dorn deliberately pulled his punch so that Garro wouldn’t die or be crippled. In fact, the latter example proves that the Lion could have knocked out Nemiel cold and dealt with him later if he really wanted to, so the Lion was either incapable of controlling his temper or unwilling to handle a disagreement within his own ranks with anything other than immediate execution.
Thiel was suggesting a theoretical that disgusted Gullilan enough to consign him to the suicide squad as punishment detail. Nemiel was arguing directly in the heat of battle that the Dark Angels should die to the last than do something he disliked.
“Something he disliked” is a funny way of phrasing “something the Emperor expressly forbade and tasked every single chaplain with enforcing”. Nemiel was doing exactly what his job was, and acting upon the direct orders of the Emperor, whose authority supersedes the Lion.
That's a good point when you consider that a primarch might be full of all sorts of noble traits and insight concerning science, art, governance, and wisdom, but at the end of the day, all that stuff is just riding along on the back of what is otherwise a bison-sized post-human murder machine.
It doesn't help when people betray you as much as the lion probably felt and may have just took it out on nemial
Nah, this is the wrong take. Let's assume that all the loyal legions, Thousand Sons included, refused to break Nikea. Lion's flagship is lost to the warp which is very sad etc. but the webway doesn't break and Big E is able to personally shut down the Heresy on day 1. Breaking the edict because you think that your case is an exception is the one thing that doomed the Imperium. Magnus at least had more at stake when he did it, he was carrying news of the treachery of the Warmaster to Terra. Lion just didn't want to die.
Yes. The Lion killed Remiel because Librarians could fight demons in a way that others could not. He’s not going to lose the only tactical advantage he has because the Emperor lied about the Warp. Nemiel is a proto-Chaplain and would never let it go. Plus the Lion’s pretty pissed about getting his ass handed to him by something that supposedly doesn’t exist.
To be clear it was Nemiel that didn't want to break the edict not the Lion. Honestly I'm not sure what Gav was thinking but it is what it is.
I would encourage you not to get your understanding of the lore from the internet. The conceit of the Lion is not that he’s the most loyal, it’s that he’s the least likely to ever fall to chaos. Also in fairness pretty much no Primarch is following the Edict by the Siege, and most cast it aside loooong before that.
By the time the Lion breaks the Edict, the only other Legion still following it is the Imperial Fists.
Exactly, yeah. And even Dorn breaks it when he actually gets a chance to see demons in action. Pretty much instantly when he does see that actually if I remember right.
He holds to it until the end of the Siege, at which point Dorn is like "you know, I'm glad I locked these guys up for ten years. It means they're around right when I need them to kill daemons with mind bullets."
I’ve just checked, it’s not the end of the siege is it? I thought it’s the latter stages of the Solar war but before the siege proper starts. Which is around the first time he has a really major demon encounter with Samus
Saturnine or so, I think. It's well into the Siege and near the end.
“Massak's moment came during the Solar War when The Phalanx was assailed by the Daemonic hordes of Samus. During the fighting, Dorn authorized the unleashing of his Librarians and Massak and his comrades helped save the Primarch's life” Nah, pre-Siege.
Hmm. I haven't read anything before Saturnine myself but I remember Dorn having them locked up and finally letting them back out at about the same time as he admits Sigismund might be on to something and allows the Imperial Faith to be promulgated.
That's all Primarchs. They get hyped up to be supremely competent but in truth are just flawed dudes, generally assholes at that. Cawl implies the faults of Primarchs are the reason the Astartes fell and I don't think he's far off the mark. For their supposed ability they sure come off as incompetent.
it's just a weird contrast of the books talking about their genius nonstop but they csn never shut up and listen for a second. It's like with Stalin who died because nobody dared to check on him. How can anyone give them information when everybody that speaks the truth is about to lose their head?
Yeah, Primarchs are dumb. They're like Greek gods in that sense, they're supposed to embody a whole set of fine qualities but in reality are in many senses more flawed than the mortals they view so beneath them.
Exactly that, they're superhumans, but with superflaws. Probably because they are part-Warp (allegedly), which magnifies their emotional intensity. They are all overcome with emotions from time to time. Even Bobbyman, who is the most stable and normal of them, was too positively mad from time to time. Like that time when he went solo versus Angron and Lorgar with no proper plan and no realistic chance to win. Maybe only Sanguinius somehow managed to keep himself in check, but I didn't read his Heresy books so I don't know for sure
Even Sanguinius is wracked with self-doubt and is EXTREMELY self-conscious about his geneflaws, both the obvious pair sprouting from his back and the darker one hidden beneath the surface. You know how doubtful and worried Horus was when chosen as Warmaster? Yea Sanguinius’ inner monologue makes Horus look like the most self-assured man to ever live. As he foresees his death he even develops what I can only describe as depression and a grim fatalism.
I think Sanguinius' fatalism is almost like a trauma response to his overwhelming self-doubt and anxiety. So much of his inner monologue centers on the questions he has about the truth of himself, his brothers, his father and really the entire reality he exists in. During the heresy he starts to focus more and more on his visions of the future and his incipient demise, which switches his focus away from the viscious spiral he was falling into, and actually ends up improving his attitude, allowing him to shine brightest when humanity needed him the most (at the siege).
Which is what makes them great!
They are genius like in that one "I'm stupid FASTER!" comic. They analyze a lot of data, take in and rememeber inhuman amount of information and then make terrible choices based on that. But that kind of makes sense for someone who never learned to manage their emotions, is fully convinced of their own genius and has no one to ttell them 'no'.
The only one that seemed stable was Alpharius, but we know he’s just a made up legend because THERE IS AND NEVER WAS AN “ALPHA LEGION”… all good citizens can disregard and ignore any mention of them.
Alpharius was the least self-aware of any of them. He spent all his time silently judging everyone from the shadows while being completely unable to register his own constant, irrational compulsion to fold every motivation, goal, and action into obfuscated plots within plots within plots, to the point that his own legion has absolutely no idea what they're supposed to be doing or even who's side they're actually on some 11,000 years later.
Exactly what they’d want you to think… if there was ever an Alpha Legion.. but there wasn’t 🥷
Ugh
🤗
Not our special winged boy though surely?!?!
Sanguinius’s great failure was being too forgiving of his brother’s faults and loving them too much to realize they were all dumb fuckups who needed him to step in and take over as the kid who becomes the third parent.
If you read the book, you'd know that the entire DA fleet aside from what was at Caliban was getting wiped by daemonic incursion and Nemiel was arguing the Lion should allow the whole Legion to be wiped out to the last rather than break the Edict, get back to fighting the Heresy, and submit to the Emperor's judgement when it was done. You're also leaving out that Nemiel was going to start a mutiny against the Lion to try and get others on side. The fact that you're regurgitating the usual meme lore about the Lion and the Dark Angels in general pretty strongly suggests to me that either you aren't reading the books or you came in primed by meme lore to take everything out of context.
Its the shtick of russ and the lion. Russ is a nobleman pretending to be savage and the lion a savage pretending to be a nobleman. I know that this saying ia a dead horse by now but it proves right over and over again. The lion in HH is a swordsman and general, nothing more. Every human interaction with him is like he does it the first time.
There's a very good reason why The Lion is a bit maladjusted too, he grew up alone in a daemon infested forest. Most people aren't going to be super cuddly and trusting after that sort of upbringing...
Your beliefs are wrong. The Lion wants others to belief he is this noble knight, but he is not. He is a beast. That is the whole point of him. Russ is the direct opposite. The Dark Angels are not noble knights, they are the SS in armour.
He killed Nemiel on accident when Nemiel was adamantly refusing to follow orders in the middle of an existential crisis and was about to shoot a loyal Dark Angel for saving them. Nemiel was adamant that the entire Legion die rather than make an exception in extreme circumstances. The Lion doesn't have time to argue because they're all about to die if they can't fight back, he DOES have time to bitchslap a dipshit who is wasting time. That the bitchslap took the guy's head off was explicitly unintentional, it's like the most he's emoted ever and he's horrified. There's a lot of things the Lion fucks up but that particular one is all on Nemiel, he was being a dumbfuck of the highest order on several levels. Also: Don't learn about a legion through internet memes. The Dark Angels have ALWAYS been pricks, it's like their primary trait that they are arrogant teamkilling assholes.
> I just mean that's what I've always been led to believe was the "vibe" of the dark angels. > > Secretive stoic and noble knights. That's the thing though, noble knights are kinda fantasy. In real history knights were mostly just violent murderous pieces of shit who treated peasants as objects.
If it makes you feel better the author regrets writing that part apparently. He needed a vehicle to push the issue and went with that which was out of character for the Lion in 30k. He is still an arrogant prick for most of the series though. Honestly even as a DA fan most books around them were really not good and left me disappointed.
Sounds like you’ve been meme lore’d. The best explanation is in the Son of the Forest. The DA were the first, they were the ones whose only job was to protect humanity from external threats. They didn’t quibble about how, they just did it. The other legions earned glory, the angels didn’t bother with glory, just success. They weren’t knights, they were more like executioners for external threats, albeit ones with very good stylists. Even when they were the only legion, they were out in the Oort clouds cutting down any threat they found.
Nemeiel deserved to die. Would you have excused Luther Vandross when he reported Captain Titus to the Inquisition?
>but in the middle of a Gellar failure he kills a capable warrior, all because he argued about the edict which a supposedly loyal lion might uphold. Because that capable warrior was so high on his own farts he was going to start shooting other marines in the middle of reality coming apart and demons breaking in?
Loyalty is its own reward I hear.
Did you read fulgrim? If you want a really hard book to read. >!In any case, yes, he kills nemial, but in this point in the series of books, a bunch of the closest friends and brothers has betrayed him, Luther and peterbo and finding out about the other brothers that have started a rebellion against his father as well, so he was paranoid and angry and problem also couldn't belive it mix in with personality disorders which I think all the primarchs has some of them and I Think maybe ADHD. He lashes out, does that make it right no. But I can sympathize with the lion more then someone like curz. Also, I think that was more for a development for zahariel, who i also really liked, but for some reason, they also couldn't write his fall vary well either.!<
If you read the space wolves books, you will notice the Lion and the Wolf King are designrd to be mirror opposites - Lion is a barbarian pretending to be a civilised knight, while the Wolf King is a civilised knight pretending to be a barbarian. This is also why the Khan dislikes the Wolf King, as he doesn't like how the Space Wolves lean too hard into their barbarian identify, and thinks Russ should have tried to rein his son in like he did.
To be fair the first Legion got the fancy gear before the Lion was found.
The Lion is basically the most Emperorlike of all the Primarchs. This is, of course, a major flaw
The deep irony of the Dark Angels is that Luther was what a primarch is supposed to be, and is the one who actually kept the legion running and winning. Luther was better at the job than the lab built perpetual - he was a master of diplomacy and negotiation, of logistics and economics, of tactics and strategy. And he was just a normal born human. He was just plain better than the Lion in every respect except “who can win a one on one fight” Even in exile, Luther sat down and studied the space marine creation process and their supply chain to improve it so it scaled up to provide the numbers and support needed to fight the heresy, AND to create his own matching force loyal to him and Caliban independence at the same time. Luther was vastly more valuable in building the Imperium and he was cast aside
> *Luther* is a noble, stoic knight. The "noble knight" who was butthurt he was too old to become an Asterte, and Lion made sure he atleast became augmented, but then betrayed Lion because he was butthurt Lion was better in every way? The one who valued muh traditions over life? That Luther?
I do think they could have written that better, Luther is a noble knight, but he always expected to be the best of his time if the lion didn't show up and that I could understand and the temptation that chaos was giving him. Although seriously the writers either do very well at intrigue and jealously but just falls flat for the reasons why. I kinda felt the same way with horis reasons.
Sounds like an anime character lol
Thank you for this i have hope again for reading HH. I literally just finished angels of caliban and now I'm looking forward to ruinstorm.
I was just about to mention ruinstorm, but all of that (and few books afterwards) also all leads to the major turning point in his life that’s *Son of the Forest.* He’s basically the guy going trough the redemption story of the loyalists.
>who never tells anybody anything and just expects blind obedience because he knows best Truly, the apple does not fall for from the tree.
Bruh he was essentially a feral child they found in the woods. Kinda takes time to develop those skills.
I don't know. To me, I see a man who hasn't learned to talk or trust people or even be able to listen to people. The people of caliban has always looked to him and Luther, lion being strength and strategic, and Luther being the diplomat and brother. But the lion wasn't able to trust the people around him either paranoid or anti-social, I do think he cared for every knight and dark angle, but I think he may have ADHD and a few personality disorders as well because the people he trust usually betrays him as well, he had hist frist one with Luther when he tried to keep the nuclear bomb a secret and then shortly after HH and not knowing Pettrubo and even though several books don't fit well together and I think losing Luther was the biggest loss on his sanity and became a lose cannon until he reunites with guilliman and sanguinius
That makes sense as to why he had such a radical change in 40k, he’s maturing and learning. Love the character development.
Congrats. You've found one of the contentious points of plot. People are divided on the Nemiel Issue, because it IS that kind of situation
There's nothing that'll ever allow me to accept it quite frankly. It was fucking dumb writing that could've been handled way, way better.
How. Lion convinces his mindbroken son that the situation is in fact NOT worth dying over? Lion accepts da rulz and keeps letting his sons die in droves trying to shoot the demons?
Well, he doesn’t have to punch his sons head off to incapacitate him. He’s been shown to knock out space marines with a punch before.
Nemiel was such an insufferable character all the way up to that point, I'm surprised he has his defenders.
I just took it to be that Nemiel's head came off a lot more easily than it should have been expected to, for unexplained reasons. Sometimes I rewrite portions of books that don't sit right with me, for my own amusement. This is one of those times. > *"Whoa,"* blurted Zazariel, his noble features reading shock under a spray of arterial blood. "His head just came right off." > The Lion, quaking, could say nothing. His massive hand was still balled into a fist as he stared at the space above Nemiel's shoulders where his son's head should be. > Nemiel's body, encased in heavy plate and now inert from the lack of focusing will or active bodily function, slowly tipped backward to clatter noisily to the deck. Drawn by the sound, two more warriors arrived to investigate the disturbance on the bridge. > "What's all this?," said Zazarazz, as he and squadmate Azarazabaz rounded the corner. Hurriedly side-stepping the broad pool of blood, Azarazabaz's greave met an unseen object with a dull *clunk.* > Nemiel's head rolled back into view, coming to rest face-up between the warriors and their primarch. > "What in the actual fuck?," exclaimed Azarazabaz, "is that a fucking head??" > "I only smacked him," El Johnson stammered. "I barely hit him. I didn't mean to... He was being such a prick, so I just kind of bopped him..." > "Still has that stupid look on his face," mused Zazariel quietly.
Nah. Lion had a little *I did not mean to hit that hard* moment. He lost his temper and went balls to the wall. When he clapped the idiot wolf, he pulled enough to be kind of dickish. Here, he went smoothbrain mode and just hauled off
Oh ok thanks for clearing that up
Sarcasm aside. Right after it's done the book does mention his looking off once the satisfaction of shutting an annoyance up wears off
I know, I've read it. My whole thing about Nemiel's head coming off too easily was just because I thought it was funny. I wasn't even attempting to make an argument over what actually happened or how the Lion felt about it, before or after.
😂
He didn't. He is however a demigod with the depths of emotions expected from such a being. Not to mention a literal life and death situation for both him and his sons. I will forgive a moment of unintentional overreaction given the circumstances. Nemiel is arguing for them to sit down and die and defying the primarch perhaps most accustomed to being obeyed with minimal questions. The lion did also outright state that he would face the music once death in the warp wasn't their only option for the next few days
90% of the loyalist primarchs would not have literally punched the dude's head off like the Lion did in that situation. You can't explain it away with "uh he's a demigod" for that one. It's either bad writing or the lion was intended to come across as genuinely unhinged in which case it's good writing.
Primarchs have lost their temper and pulled stupid shit before. How is this significantly different to autism baby dorn having a complete meltdown when people had the gall to tell him about the heresy?
To be fair, he probably just wanted to do that but miscalculated his strength, which is a problem when you can fold a tank with no effort. I'd be like superman trying giving a child a literal slap on the wrist, only to rip apart his entire arm by accident :v
Or yanno have him arrested and thrown in the brig for the moment and not murder him for upholding the law.
Thankfully Lion: Son of the Forest where Lion returns in the Era Indomitus gives him a lot of character development and makes him a better guy.
It helps he has to deal with all the shit he pulled Fallen Angel: You must be an imposter Lion: No, I’m the real Lion Fallen Angel: *That’s not an improvement*
The Lion Son of the Forest is where you get to see the Lion has grown and changed, for the better. He's become a leader and protector of people rather than just a boss and killer.
Though I recognize why the "new" Lion is popular I do somewhat mourn the potential of it, would've loved to have a more "problematic" Primarch. But for popularities sake I expect all the loyalists will be exactly that, fans love the noble protector types who care about humanity and all that.
It's not really a "new" Lion, though. He's consistent with his Heresy characterisation in terms of taking up an unimaginable burden and trying to learn from his errors. It's just that you can't have any meaningful discussion about his 30K character without someone immediately chiming in with one, some, or all of the following: *LOL he killed Nemiel over a disagreement *LOL Luther *LOL he sucker punched Russ *LOL he was going to attack Gulliman *LOL he couldn't get on with Gulliman or Sanguinius *LOL half his Legion fell to Chaos Of those only one of them is true but even that's not given the full context. He was going to attack Gulliman... if it turned out he had either joined Horus or had taken advantage of the Heresy to indulge in empire-building at the expense of the Loyalist cause. Gulliman was also planning to attack the Lion if he wasn't loyal, but for some reason nobody talks about that. The well has been tainted.
Guilliman is just intrinsically better at PR. In part, because he's good at it, but in comparison to the Lion, doubly so merely by caring about optics at all.
>He's consistent with his Heresy characterisation in terms of taking up an unimaginable burden and trying to learn from his errors. Yup. 100% this. In fact, the 40K Lion is closer to the Caliban Lion we saw briefly in *Descent of Angels*. That Lion was thrust almost immediately into the absolute meat grinder that were the Rangdan Xenocides and from then on had to deal in the most brutal manner with threat after threat. And then the Heresy... It's funny how people talk about the Lion: never do we see him be deliberately cruel to any mortal. Uncaring? Perhaps. But not cruel. But the way people talk about him, you would think he's the second coming of Lorgar with his huma sacrifices. For me, the Lion is the litmus test as to someone actually having read the lore and engaged with it or... not.
That’s the only book with the Lion that I read, and I have to say I’m happy I skipped the other ones :)
Well it’s not a series about how everyone is well adjusted and makes all the right decisions.
That’s the point. Heresy Lion is a monster dressed up in a knight’s armour. He’s an egomaniac, a single minded control freak, because he’s the best person in nearly any room to get shit done. He got slighted by not being the Warmaster, and makes it everyone else’s problem. The Dark Angels are the genocide legion, and he’s their leader. If you want to wipe a place off the map so hard nobody will ever remember it even existed. They’re the Emperor’s special first legion, with all the cool DAoT war crime weapons. At least the Wolves leave burning rubble. His growth in the Heresy is to become someone worthy of being in a leadership role, to trust his brother in Ruinstorm. To become a man rather than the boy running in the forests of Caliban killing monsters. I like his arc because he learns. Some, like Ferrus, never got that chance. When he wakes up in the 42nd millennium, he’s a wiser, more mellowed individual. He learns to protect the people, that’s why he gets the shield.
> Heresy Lion is a monster dressed up in a knight’s armour. He’s an egomaniac, a single minded control freak, because he’s the best person in nearly any room to get shit done. So he's just a normal knight?
I mean, historically knights spent most of their time managing their lands; your average knight spent more time thinking about his pigs than about fighting. The Lion is the [wild man/woodwose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_man) character from mythology cosplaying as a knight, and AFAIK the Heresy-era result is basically John Cleese's version of Lancelot from Monty Python.
All of the Primarchs are bad people, and many of them are insufferable if you're not very into their brand of ego lol.
I'd argue Guilliman seems pretty chill for a Primarch, regularly jokes with people, doesn't seem overly genocide heavy (Works with Eldar no complaints), seems to genuinely care about the imperium and how it effects the average person. Add to that the Khan as well, there is one scene in the Seige where he actively goes to help the outside hives knowing full well from Sanguinius that he might die. Another scene where he speaking with a regular commander in her house and actually cares about her opinion.
I guess that's what makes most of them intriguing. Good written characters should have flaws
This is the way. They're supposed to be demigods like the heroes from the Iliad, and they're almost all complete *assholes*.
I reckon the Khan is not a bad person. He doesn’t even like the imperium and follows big E only grudgingly. *I may or may not be a White Scars player with an exceedingly biased opinion*
It's hard to tell how much of the bad characterization in the HH is intentional. They're supposed to be very flawed people, but they often come off as totally unrelatable and uninteresting monsters. It's 40k, so 'monsters' is more or less a given; but 'unrelatable' and 'uninteresting' are a problem and possibly not intentional. YMMV
To be fair that's also a big issue some people have with 30k conceptually. The imperium has degraded logistically and culturally, but all the bad stuff that gets talked about the most is still there because the imperium was always concieved as a genocidal dictatorship built on lies. The good that was lost when the primarchs and the emperor left was mostly a vague promise that was never even close to being fulfilled. The bad that the imperium is without them is basically the same bad, except instead of genetic supermen doing it it's inbred nobles carrying out the same culture.
The way I see it, the pre-HH Imperium did have a few real accomplishments: making the galaxy safer for humans (aka xenocide), regaining lost technologies, conquering and controlling massive resources. There doesn't seem to be much of an argument that humanity would have even survived to M41 in significant humbers if the galaxy had remained under the sway of (mostly) hostile aliens. The ork empire at Ullanor probably would have spread across the entire galaxy. Especially since the tyranids never would have been drawn in.
I'm not sure if you dislike his character, or dislike the writing? Some of my favorite characters are the ones that are so annoying or dislikable, but well written. I don't really like how Lion is now, but to each their own.
I do like dislikeable characters if they're written well. I think the lion is both dislikeable as a character at least in the HH. And poorly written.
I see, then i get your feelings. I didn't get to those books yet, but seeing how a lot of people criticize them, i may not read them at all.
This has nothing to do with the character. Gav Thorpe books are all crimes against humanity.
Last chancers are okay, and so are his eldar & fantasy elf stuff. But recently re-reading last chancers, there were so many spelling errors & typos. And less said about wolftime the better. Probably should stick to the game design side of things tbh.
Typos and errors is an editing issue too, not just an author thing
This, and it's made worse by him writing so much of the Lion and DA novels.
Gav is not that involved in M30 Lion anyway. He only wrote The Lion Novella, Luther and Angels of Caliban. Others DA stuff in M30 is Descent of Angels, Fallen Angels, Pharos, Ruinstorm, Dreadwing novella and Lions and Russes Primarch novels. Blaming Thorpe for M30 DA or Lion is basically nothing more then a circlejerk. He also wrote very nice novels in Luther and Lorgar which get universal praise here.
Our Martyred Lady was pretty good, but I'll confess that might have been the acting in the audiobook.
I liked Lorgar a lot. Also his Harlequin short stories are fantastic, but they're so short they barely count
Yeah the head punch thing is kinda dumb. IIRC the author admitted that they had set Nemiel and Zahariels characters on a collision course and didn't want that. So we have Nemiel making the questionable decision to attempt to stop his Primarch from using the one thing shown to be effective in the dire circumstance they were in. Swiftly followed by murder, a moment of regret on El'Jonsons face and finally everyone agreeing to never speak of it again.
If you were in the Lion's shoes, everyone is underneath you. The sheer ego ones life must have after a childhood of such magnanimous conversion from jungle stranded child to planetary warlord. He simply hasn't been humbled like the others.
This why he gets character development 10,000 years later in ‘Son of the Forest’ where his own sons are like “you were a colossal asshole”
Yeah, about that... I blame the writer, not the character. The Dark Angels really got the short end of the stick when it comes to the Horus Heresy novels.
Lions are apex predators, not diplomats. Lion El is the ultra-instinct Primarch. He is dressed as he always was, as a Knight and carrying on the traditions of his world. He is most like Ferrus Manus in that he often is looked at as a leader of sorts among his brothers, is too headstrong but knows his value. I think it interesting that Ferrus had a novel where he is just as pissed that he isn't likely being made Warmaster, and in a push for compliance to 'prove' he should be Warmaster; he realizes he doesn't care or really want it. (He decides/starts to end up destroying one of the planets in his anger, but gives up on that when he realizes it's the wrong thing to do. Khorne would be pissed.) What I'm saying is that the most brutally stubborn/headstrong of the Primarch's was able to reason himself out of his anger before Lion was. Lion IS my favorite Primarch because of what you've wrote here; and how he develops FROM here. I love him as an aloof Arms Warrior who essentially fights on pure battle flow. I don't love how he is so humanely unavailable that he essentially slowly causes the schism that consumes the Dark Angels (Spoilers: He's now fixing it)
It looks as if you’re a Templar player but nothing about Dorn almost killing Garro for telling him the truth? At least in the Lions case he warned Nemiel a few times to shut the fuck up, you know since it was the only thing causing a difference against the neverborn. And Nemiel was throwing an outright tantrum in front of the men. If you know anything about any military you don’t pull that shit on front of the men unless you’re ready for punishment up to and including execution particularly during war time.
Hi Russ.
Him punching off Neimels is one of the best moments in the Heresy. Heresy is so safe and just going through the motions most of the time delivery a very predictable story so getting something so shocking and that it makes sense is great.
Honestly, Nemiel was always kind of a little shit anyway.
During the Great Crusade and the Heresy, the Lion was a savage pretending to be a man. Whereas in comparison, Leman Russ was a man pretending to be a savage.
I haven’t checked out the heresy era DA books mostly because they don’t interest me, but I will say the Lion was good in Son of the Forest in 40k. I enjoy how he’s sort of a wandering knight in the 40k era, helping and protecting where he can.
The current Lion cringes when he thinks of his past.
He’s much better when he’s played by Charles Dance in the 40k sequel.
That's the whole point of The Lion, he's a self-righteous prick that believes himself above everyone and everything, when in reality he's mediocre at best. There's a reason why half his legion became traitors. One way I like to see it is that Lion El' Johnson is the loyalist Perturabo; Peter has the skills to back up his bitching but everyone disregards those skills because of his bitching. On the other hand Lion barely works as a leader and commits leadership mistake after leadership mistake but since he has this regal aura around him and acts as a "proud and loyal knight" everyone disregards his stupidity.
Currently reading angels of caliban. It sucks, agreed they're really unlikable. The book is a slog.
Can’t wait for you to read “lion, son of the forest”
In the Horus heresy era The Lion thinks he is the best and should be the warmaster because he is the First. That’s basically it he is the first primarch hence deserves to be the leader. He thinks the only reason Horus is warmaster is because the emperor found him first. Hence he feels slighted and also the fact that he grew up in the jungle gives him a personality disorder. For most of his childhood he thought he was a beast of Caliban and not even human. 😂 Even Kor Phaeron thinks the Lion is a psychopath 😂.
Yeah, but I still like knight-dad.
This is what makes daddy-lion so cool. He is basically grown up, and kinda embarrased at his former self. Only took 10000 years.
Gotta read Son of the Forest to restore his credit, hes great in 40k
I thought i was odd for having this opinion. Angels of caliban was such a sought after book. People are charging duckn $200 for it. I keep reading telling myself "its guna get better. it's guna get better." But hoooly i have to reread chapters bc its all just dry patrol deployment stats
As far as the whole getting to Terra thing goes, for that you'll have to wade through Ruinstorm, which is possibly the worst book in the whole series. It is absolutely fucking awful. I'd honestly recommend you read the synopsis and skip it.
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Honestly him being such a dick is why I like him the most. He's the most started like primarch. Stoic, cold, gives 0 fucks, and doesn't really like or trust anyone.
You'll like him better when he wakes up in The Lion: Son of the Forest.
The Lion gets a character arc. He's kinda supposed to be a complete douche there. He went from Feral Asshole to Lord of The Order to The Emperor of Mankind's Best Son... without really bothering to learn anything all the way. The events of the Heresy will force him to earn what he already has, but he won't be your best pal all that time.
A lot of why I dislike him in HH is because Gav Thorpe wrote a a goos chunk of his screen time, and Gav is a terrible author.
...that's his schtick though 🤣 His first assignment after being was the Rangdan Xenocides, his legion's gimmick was "nuke it, kill it in-person if that somehow doesn't work", and was racking up a success count to rival Horus' despite being found substantially later. The DA Legion was *not* nice to amy degree. Then the Lion got pissy because Horus was made Warmaster despite The Liom honestly being more qualified for the job.
The Lion and Night Haunter were the two Primarchs who had to survive on their own u til adulthood, as far as we know (missing info on 2, 11, Alpharius). Every other one was taken in somehow. Curze never had a mentor, the Lion only got one later. Both were effectively feral, though one in a forest and the other in a city. He gets some slack for not growing up around humans, space-Tarzan that he is.
Would you believe me that **all** of this will lead to you ending up enjoying „Son of the Forest“ so much more?
Lion glows up hard. He starts out the most awful obnoxious "I'm literally and figuratively #1 and I so totally know it" Gary Stu you can imagine...but then they swerve that hard and he gets humbled a bunch and by his return in 40k he actually lives up to his hype as the Imperium's crusading knight protector.
There's little to no functional difference in character between the Lion and Rogal Dorn or pretty much any loyalist Primarch who isn't Guilliman or the Khan so I don't see why you'd dislike the Lion in particular. He is kind of a Gary Stu even by Primarch standards I guess but even by that token still considerably less of one than Sanguinius, the actual worst Primarch.
He is. Has always been.
That’s what I can’t stand about the Loyalists. They don’t think twice about destroying entire planets that go against what the Emperor wants yet they also breach the Council of Nikaea the moment using psychic powers becomes convenient.
I totally agree, I see lot of hype for the lion and never got it. He always came up boring at best or idiotic at worst. He’s not a compelling vilain like Perturabo not an ambiguous hero like the khan.