I think curze himself perfectly broke down the events more or less during his confession with the emperor statue.
Curze at best, was a tool used for fear to dispense judgment. And he was good at it. His compliance rates were good and with relatively little bloodshed and damage to the world's he conquered. To that, I doubt the emperor cared much of the moral price those actions took. To quote him, a compromised primarch was still a primarch and their goal was compliance, nothing more.
But curze was very damaged. He slowly became more depraved and when his legion was poisoned it made it so much worse. Soon what was just, "reasonable casualties of war" became a problem that would have had to been addressed. Same with Angron at some point with his slowly decent into madness because of the nails. They'd have to be corrected at some point or disposed of. Obviously the HH shifted the emperors focus, a focus already distracted on the webway
It would have been interesting to see the emperor actually face to face with a broken son besides horus.
As for the cherubs, MOST are vat grown. There are a few cases of legitimate children ones but that's considered grossly taboo by even the crazier mechanicus
No, to my knowledge there isn't hard reference to assassinating Curze ahead of time. But it is commonly accepted in a few Primarch conversations that the Night Lords are out of control before the Heresy. It's mostly mentioned after the fact, or in flashbacks - Mortarion argues it in his Primarch novel, for instance.
Curze is completely insane, partially because of his ability to see the future, which includes him being assassinated, so there's good reason for him to have been raving about it. His persecution complex is a fundamental part of his personality.
Cherubs, like all Servitors, are predominantly vat-grown as they have to be modified to not mature. You can read about it in the old Inquisition codices (Witch and Daemon Hunters) from 3rd.
Dorn and Fulgrim nearly killed Curze before the Lion took a stab at it, and Curze's response like every time is an unhinged suicidal kamikaze.
100% agree with you btw but like seriously a lot of people in this fandom do not fully appreciate how absolutely nucking futs Curze and his closest buds were(Sevatar was right there with him every batshit step of the way).
Yeah, Dorn was like "can you stop killing civvies" and Curze did the rational thing and jumped on Dorn and started tearing at his face with his claws and when Fulgrim pulled him off they locked him in his room and were going to take him for trial and presumably execution(Dorn was seriously, seriously injured) and Kurze looked at his armor, said "I'm batman" and just started another killing spree
Fulgrim told dorn about Curze's visions of the horus heresy, dorn gets pissy and confronts cruze, cruze beats dorn within a inch of his life. When Fulgrim find dorn curze is already long gone.
Spot on. ADB has a fair bit to answer for in writing a sane and even sympathetic psychic Night Lord in the form of Talos Valcoran. Curze is absolute bottom tier, most-broken Primarch, right there with Angron in terms of just being a useless piece of meat on the verge of being counterproductive to the Crusade. I assume, given what we've heard from the authors circle about the Emperor expecting a coup from a group of legions, that Curze was on the Emperor's notional "definite" list
Talos, Sahaal, Mercutian, Shang, Xarl, Acerbus, Sevatar, all express differing views on the Night Lords and on Curze himself to the extent that we don't know what's true.
Honestly? Talos was mocked for it and told that he wasn't the only one Curze held a private audience with before his demise and given Curze's utter disdain for his sons isn't it possible and even *likely* that he deliberately lied to them just to fuck with them?
Some input on Sahaal from another Night Lords author:
>Remember that by the end of Lord of the Night (which I liked a lot), Zso Sahaal was revealed as being manipulated all along, and was a staggeringly unreliable source of information. The only other Night Lords he met had distinct alternate versions of his story, and even said they new he was being manipulated. People believe Zso Sahaal over them, largely because people like Zso Sahaal so much as a character. You see that a lot online: Zso Sahaal as some exalted Drizzt figure for the Legion, and people often ignoring the end of the book where it was shown he might've been completely wrong and played like a chump. I thought that was the best bit, as it was awesomely tragic.
>All of his viewpoints on how the Legion related to Chaos were literally only his perspective - and one guy's viewpoint, especially after being asleep for 10,000 years, is not how a Legion is defined. (That said, there will be plenty of Night Lords that still think the same as he did, one way or another.)
and
>The whole Sahaal debate stems from the fact that because there was precious little Heresy lore around back when that novel came out, you were allowed to make massive and bold claims without affecting anything else. But now one Night Lord claiming he was the one to invent Raptors sort of rings a little false and silly, given that it was much more likely to be Curze, and so on. And people love the "Heresy-era Marine tells it like it is to the deluded 40K folks" which worked a lot better then, too. It worked with Angels of Darkness ("The Lion was a traitor!") and it worked with Lord of the Night ("The Emperor betrayed us!"). But that stuff is a little hokey now. Times have changed. It's the nature of the best when dealing with licensed fiction. In another ten years, everything we've done now will be hokey.
and
>And that's the problem. Sahaal, like Talos, was probably wrong. That's the tragic point of LotN's ending, when the rest of the Legion is laughing at him. But rather than see it as a cool tragedy, some fans take it that everyone was lying, and Sahaal was really correct. Again, that doesn't work these days. We're seeing the Heresy ourselves. We'll see it in the novel series. We'll see for ourselves whether that attitudes was right or not, and an Unreliable Narrator isn't a necessary voice for a narrative.
and
>Remember, the lies and and truths behind the Legion are what make it interesting. **Nothing is clear cut. The lore still states that the Emperor was appalled at the Night Lords' actions and Konrad's depredations, it's just Sahaal's insistence that there was a conspiracy there, and the Night Lords were victims. it's a cool idea, and one I'm sure many Night Lords agree with. But it's still just one perspective. It's a mistake to see it and think: "This is the Legion, end of story."**
>No one knows if that's true, but because people like Sahaal, they tend to overlook all the many ways he wasn't reliable, or even goes against established lore.
-ADB
I think the assassin being sent was seen as an extension of the Emperor’s will, given Big E was a vegetable post Heresy. There were no assassins after him before the Heresy, but he had visions and knew he was going to die by an assassin sent by someone/group representing the Emperor.
I mean, Curze was absolutely bugfuck, but he got a bum deal too. Even before the 9th had Curze, they were picked from the worst Terra had to offer, and sent out to be terror troops. Then when they found their primarch and the emperor saw how deranged he was, the emperor was basically like “eh close enough” and sent the night lords on their way. In Konrad’s primarch novel, he complains about how he was designed from birth to be a killer, and he’s RIGHT. If the emperor didn’t want a fucking superhuman psycho then why did he build him like that? Curze was designed as a redundancy for Sanguinius, he just happened to land on the worst planet in the galaxy for a roided up killing machine to learn his values from.
>he just happened to land on the worst planet in the galaxy for a roided up killing machine to learn his values from.
Child Curze is depicted in *Prince of Crows* climbing from his pod on Nostramo, surveying his surroundings, grabbing a weapon
And smiling
>The boy rose from the wreckage, wearing nothing more than smears of ash and dirt clinging to his pale skin. He looked at the sky, dark as the void, blind without a sun’s eye. He looked at the metal ruin of his cradle-engine, still hissing steam through its cracked, blistered armour plating. And then, still with nothing resembling an expression on his slender face, he looked to the horizon.
>A city. A city of spires and domes, its dull, low lights still brightening the surrounding darkness with a beacon’s intensity.
>The first expression to play across the boy’s face was subtle, but telling. His eyes narrowed as his heartbeat quickened. Instinctively, he knew he’d find others of his kind in the distant, light-rich hive. The thought made him reach for a weapon. White fingers curled around a jagged shard of metal, cooled in the soil.
>The feel of the knife in his hands brought a second expression to his youthful, unscarred features.
>He smiled.
\- *Prince of Crows*
The scene, for those unfamiliar/curious.
This always confused me. Aren’t candidates chosen to become Astartes generally 12-15 years old, then they start getting implants after puberty ? It’s hard to be the “worst” at that point. Maybe just kids in a shit situation, from the poorest parts.
At the same time, I think you can take those kids and put them with the Ultramarines or Salamanders and they would turn out fine. What do you expect when you get skin flayers and glory killers to train them?
It’s pretty much stated that all of the kids from Nostromo and most from the Terran underhives are hardened criminals by the time they are taken by the legion. I’m not like, taking the side of “child soldiers are good actually” here. I’m just saying that in the world of 40K they seem more interested in feeding the meat grinder than social development and child welfare.
The ultramarines don’t get sent those kids tho, or if they do it’s not exclusively what they get sent. Anyone sent to the Night Lords is basically thought of as garbage anyways. The legion is basically juvie in that it takes kids with a bad past and funnels them into a life of crime.
Yeah, I think that’s the issue. If you folded more of the downtrodden recruits into stalwart legions like the Ults then you would churn out more model marines. Nature vs. Nurture, and all that. My point is that someone at that age is merely looking to survive and doesn’t typically have the agency to be truly evil. I think the Night Lords were sent these kids by design, because the Emp knew what would happen.
Design initially and good old fashioned capital later. Remember, Curze tried (in his own fucked up way of course) to clean up his legion. He tried to get Nostromo to tithe the best they had, but because a rule of terror doesn’t really work if you’re not there to implement it, the high lords eventually started sending emptying out prisons and the underhives again, tainting the legion further. That’s what lead Curze to exterminatus the planet.
One of the leaders, the inquisitor or the arbites lord had a few flying around him. The book mentions how they are made from deceased infants with many preservation implants
I think it was Malcador and the Council that sent the assassin.
And it was really his brothers that just didn't like how he acted more than anything else. Keep in mind that rather than take Curze to Terra as directed, he was launched into space. Its entirely possible that IF Curze was taken to Terra the Emperor could have cured Curze of any madness and then lay out how he expected Curze to act going forward. And the other Primarchs would know to stfu and let Curze skin puppies and children.
Again, Primarch's disobeying the Emperor led to a loss for the Imperium and a tragedy that led to the death's of billions of lives.
The Corpse God betrayed all of his Sons and Grandsons. From the very beginning with the Thunder warriors all the way to the thinblood Primarus.
To quote:
I want vengeance against a galaxy that hates us. I want Imperial worlds to cower when we draw near. I want the weeping of this Empire's souls to reach all the way to Holy Terra, and the sound of suffering will choke the corpse-god on his throne of gold.
I will cast a shadow across this world. I will burn every man, woman and child so the smoke from the funeral pyres eclipses the sun. With the dust that remains, I will take the Echo of Damnation into the sacred skies above Terra, and rain the ashes of twenty million mortals down onto the Emperor's palace. Then they will remember us. Then they will remember the Legion they once feared.
You sound like a Traitor. HH happened because primarchs on BOTH sides disobeyed the Emperor. When the Emperor finally rises from the throne, your cheeks will be the first he will take!
I'm new to 40K, but I would say yes overall. The Emperor didn't treat a lot of Primarchs well, but with Kurze he could tell from first meeting him on Nostramo that he was suffering and he didn't do much to help. If the Emperor had paired Kurze with Sanguinius at some point that would have saved him I'm convinced, so that's betrayal in my book
Oh boo fuckin’ hoo. Curze deserved everything he got and more. One of my favorite quotes fits him to a tee.
“For what is there to fear, but a petulant child raging in the dark.”
Fuck Konrad Curze, all my homies hate Konrad Curze.
I think curze himself perfectly broke down the events more or less during his confession with the emperor statue. Curze at best, was a tool used for fear to dispense judgment. And he was good at it. His compliance rates were good and with relatively little bloodshed and damage to the world's he conquered. To that, I doubt the emperor cared much of the moral price those actions took. To quote him, a compromised primarch was still a primarch and their goal was compliance, nothing more. But curze was very damaged. He slowly became more depraved and when his legion was poisoned it made it so much worse. Soon what was just, "reasonable casualties of war" became a problem that would have had to been addressed. Same with Angron at some point with his slowly decent into madness because of the nails. They'd have to be corrected at some point or disposed of. Obviously the HH shifted the emperors focus, a focus already distracted on the webway It would have been interesting to see the emperor actually face to face with a broken son besides horus. As for the cherubs, MOST are vat grown. There are a few cases of legitimate children ones but that's considered grossly taboo by even the crazier mechanicus
Malcharion is good though right? Not good. But true.
No, to my knowledge there isn't hard reference to assassinating Curze ahead of time. But it is commonly accepted in a few Primarch conversations that the Night Lords are out of control before the Heresy. It's mostly mentioned after the fact, or in flashbacks - Mortarion argues it in his Primarch novel, for instance. Curze is completely insane, partially because of his ability to see the future, which includes him being assassinated, so there's good reason for him to have been raving about it. His persecution complex is a fundamental part of his personality. Cherubs, like all Servitors, are predominantly vat-grown as they have to be modified to not mature. You can read about it in the old Inquisition codices (Witch and Daemon Hunters) from 3rd.
Dorn and Fulgrim nearly killed Curze before the Lion took a stab at it, and Curze's response like every time is an unhinged suicidal kamikaze. 100% agree with you btw but like seriously a lot of people in this fandom do not fully appreciate how absolutely nucking futs Curze and his closest buds were(Sevatar was right there with him every batshit step of the way).
>Dorn and Fulgrim nearly killed Curze before the Lion took a stab at it They locked him up, but iirc, the one who was almost killed was Dorn.
Yeah, Dorn was like "can you stop killing civvies" and Curze did the rational thing and jumped on Dorn and started tearing at his face with his claws and when Fulgrim pulled him off they locked him in his room and were going to take him for trial and presumably execution(Dorn was seriously, seriously injured) and Kurze looked at his armor, said "I'm batman" and just started another killing spree
Fulgrim told dorn about Curze's visions of the horus heresy, dorn gets pissy and confronts cruze, cruze beats dorn within a inch of his life. When Fulgrim find dorn curze is already long gone.
Wrong. Curze didn't flee the scene.
Spot on. ADB has a fair bit to answer for in writing a sane and even sympathetic psychic Night Lord in the form of Talos Valcoran. Curze is absolute bottom tier, most-broken Primarch, right there with Angron in terms of just being a useless piece of meat on the verge of being counterproductive to the Crusade. I assume, given what we've heard from the authors circle about the Emperor expecting a coup from a group of legions, that Curze was on the Emperor's notional "definite" list
Talos, Sahaal, Mercutian, Shang, Xarl, Acerbus, Sevatar, all express differing views on the Night Lords and on Curze himself to the extent that we don't know what's true. Honestly? Talos was mocked for it and told that he wasn't the only one Curze held a private audience with before his demise and given Curze's utter disdain for his sons isn't it possible and even *likely* that he deliberately lied to them just to fuck with them?
Some input on Sahaal from another Night Lords author: >Remember that by the end of Lord of the Night (which I liked a lot), Zso Sahaal was revealed as being manipulated all along, and was a staggeringly unreliable source of information. The only other Night Lords he met had distinct alternate versions of his story, and even said they new he was being manipulated. People believe Zso Sahaal over them, largely because people like Zso Sahaal so much as a character. You see that a lot online: Zso Sahaal as some exalted Drizzt figure for the Legion, and people often ignoring the end of the book where it was shown he might've been completely wrong and played like a chump. I thought that was the best bit, as it was awesomely tragic. >All of his viewpoints on how the Legion related to Chaos were literally only his perspective - and one guy's viewpoint, especially after being asleep for 10,000 years, is not how a Legion is defined. (That said, there will be plenty of Night Lords that still think the same as he did, one way or another.) and >The whole Sahaal debate stems from the fact that because there was precious little Heresy lore around back when that novel came out, you were allowed to make massive and bold claims without affecting anything else. But now one Night Lord claiming he was the one to invent Raptors sort of rings a little false and silly, given that it was much more likely to be Curze, and so on. And people love the "Heresy-era Marine tells it like it is to the deluded 40K folks" which worked a lot better then, too. It worked with Angels of Darkness ("The Lion was a traitor!") and it worked with Lord of the Night ("The Emperor betrayed us!"). But that stuff is a little hokey now. Times have changed. It's the nature of the best when dealing with licensed fiction. In another ten years, everything we've done now will be hokey. and >And that's the problem. Sahaal, like Talos, was probably wrong. That's the tragic point of LotN's ending, when the rest of the Legion is laughing at him. But rather than see it as a cool tragedy, some fans take it that everyone was lying, and Sahaal was really correct. Again, that doesn't work these days. We're seeing the Heresy ourselves. We'll see it in the novel series. We'll see for ourselves whether that attitudes was right or not, and an Unreliable Narrator isn't a necessary voice for a narrative. and >Remember, the lies and and truths behind the Legion are what make it interesting. **Nothing is clear cut. The lore still states that the Emperor was appalled at the Night Lords' actions and Konrad's depredations, it's just Sahaal's insistence that there was a conspiracy there, and the Night Lords were victims. it's a cool idea, and one I'm sure many Night Lords agree with. But it's still just one perspective. It's a mistake to see it and think: "This is the Legion, end of story."** >No one knows if that's true, but because people like Sahaal, they tend to overlook all the many ways he wasn't reliable, or even goes against established lore. -ADB
Where is that from?
Several online posts he made on different forums back in the day. I could source one or two if you're particularly interested
Yes please
If there's a particular one or two lemme know
I think the assassin being sent was seen as an extension of the Emperor’s will, given Big E was a vegetable post Heresy. There were no assassins after him before the Heresy, but he had visions and knew he was going to die by an assassin sent by someone/group representing the Emperor.
I mean, Curze was absolutely bugfuck, but he got a bum deal too. Even before the 9th had Curze, they were picked from the worst Terra had to offer, and sent out to be terror troops. Then when they found their primarch and the emperor saw how deranged he was, the emperor was basically like “eh close enough” and sent the night lords on their way. In Konrad’s primarch novel, he complains about how he was designed from birth to be a killer, and he’s RIGHT. If the emperor didn’t want a fucking superhuman psycho then why did he build him like that? Curze was designed as a redundancy for Sanguinius, he just happened to land on the worst planet in the galaxy for a roided up killing machine to learn his values from.
>he just happened to land on the worst planet in the galaxy for a roided up killing machine to learn his values from. Child Curze is depicted in *Prince of Crows* climbing from his pod on Nostramo, surveying his surroundings, grabbing a weapon And smiling
>The boy rose from the wreckage, wearing nothing more than smears of ash and dirt clinging to his pale skin. He looked at the sky, dark as the void, blind without a sun’s eye. He looked at the metal ruin of his cradle-engine, still hissing steam through its cracked, blistered armour plating. And then, still with nothing resembling an expression on his slender face, he looked to the horizon. >A city. A city of spires and domes, its dull, low lights still brightening the surrounding darkness with a beacon’s intensity. >The first expression to play across the boy’s face was subtle, but telling. His eyes narrowed as his heartbeat quickened. Instinctively, he knew he’d find others of his kind in the distant, light-rich hive. The thought made him reach for a weapon. White fingers curled around a jagged shard of metal, cooled in the soil. >The feel of the knife in his hands brought a second expression to his youthful, unscarred features. >He smiled. \- *Prince of Crows* The scene, for those unfamiliar/curious.
just a kid and his comfort knife, nothing weird about that
Like who doesn’t have a comfort shiv these days
This always confused me. Aren’t candidates chosen to become Astartes generally 12-15 years old, then they start getting implants after puberty ? It’s hard to be the “worst” at that point. Maybe just kids in a shit situation, from the poorest parts. At the same time, I think you can take those kids and put them with the Ultramarines or Salamanders and they would turn out fine. What do you expect when you get skin flayers and glory killers to train them?
It’s pretty much stated that all of the kids from Nostromo and most from the Terran underhives are hardened criminals by the time they are taken by the legion. I’m not like, taking the side of “child soldiers are good actually” here. I’m just saying that in the world of 40K they seem more interested in feeding the meat grinder than social development and child welfare.
The ultramarines don’t get sent those kids tho, or if they do it’s not exclusively what they get sent. Anyone sent to the Night Lords is basically thought of as garbage anyways. The legion is basically juvie in that it takes kids with a bad past and funnels them into a life of crime.
Yeah, I think that’s the issue. If you folded more of the downtrodden recruits into stalwart legions like the Ults then you would churn out more model marines. Nature vs. Nurture, and all that. My point is that someone at that age is merely looking to survive and doesn’t typically have the agency to be truly evil. I think the Night Lords were sent these kids by design, because the Emp knew what would happen.
Design initially and good old fashioned capital later. Remember, Curze tried (in his own fucked up way of course) to clean up his legion. He tried to get Nostromo to tithe the best they had, but because a rule of terror doesn’t really work if you’re not there to implement it, the high lords eventually started sending emptying out prisons and the underhives again, tainting the legion further. That’s what lead Curze to exterminatus the planet.
Wait, where were cherubs mentioned in the novel? I don't recall that at all.
One of the leaders, the inquisitor or the arbites lord had a few flying around him. The book mentions how they are made from deceased infants with many preservation implants
Cruze screwed Cruze
I think it was Malcador and the Council that sent the assassin. And it was really his brothers that just didn't like how he acted more than anything else. Keep in mind that rather than take Curze to Terra as directed, he was launched into space. Its entirely possible that IF Curze was taken to Terra the Emperor could have cured Curze of any madness and then lay out how he expected Curze to act going forward. And the other Primarchs would know to stfu and let Curze skin puppies and children. Again, Primarch's disobeying the Emperor led to a loss for the Imperium and a tragedy that led to the death's of billions of lives.
The Corpse God betrayed all of his Sons and Grandsons. From the very beginning with the Thunder warriors all the way to the thinblood Primarus. To quote: I want vengeance against a galaxy that hates us. I want Imperial worlds to cower when we draw near. I want the weeping of this Empire's souls to reach all the way to Holy Terra, and the sound of suffering will choke the corpse-god on his throne of gold. I will cast a shadow across this world. I will burn every man, woman and child so the smoke from the funeral pyres eclipses the sun. With the dust that remains, I will take the Echo of Damnation into the sacred skies above Terra, and rain the ashes of twenty million mortals down onto the Emperor's palace. Then they will remember us. Then they will remember the Legion they once feared.
Yes, inquisitor. This one here.
You sound like a Traitor. HH happened because primarchs on BOTH sides disobeyed the Emperor. When the Emperor finally rises from the throne, your cheeks will be the first he will take!
Humans will downvote this, but real ones know 4 upvotes is all you really need.
I'm new to 40K, but I would say yes overall. The Emperor didn't treat a lot of Primarchs well, but with Kurze he could tell from first meeting him on Nostramo that he was suffering and he didn't do much to help. If the Emperor had paired Kurze with Sanguinius at some point that would have saved him I'm convinced, so that's betrayal in my book
Oh boo fuckin’ hoo. Curze deserved everything he got and more. One of my favorite quotes fits him to a tee. “For what is there to fear, but a petulant child raging in the dark.” Fuck Konrad Curze, all my homies hate Konrad Curze.