#i cannot be either of those things about ferru.

[alacants]

think i have another tennis hangover

[aqua-the-smiter]

Ferrus trying to make sense of some new feelings he's gained for a very special someone. Ferrus X Argena (OC) Mildly nsfw Song - https://youtu.be/Qebf3c-ZaSM?si=9iJ4A2SS3C635zgd Divider by @squishyowl

XX/XX/XXXX   Damn That Woman

I think I was given too good of a blessing when I met Argena.

Make no mistake, the problem is my own, not hers. It’s like I found a bar of purest silver in a bin full of iron ore and coal. I don’t know what she has done to me. What effect the time we spend together is having on me, but I know this much: I have changed, and I have never felt this way before. Ever.

I’m not sure how to really describe it. This potent mix of possessiveness, lust, and a third, utterly and inescapably magnetic thing that I cannot give word to in any meaningful capacity because I have never felt anything like it in my life. I don’t know what it is, but it has haunted me for months now. After mulling over for some time I believe I have a conclusion, although what to make of it is another matter. Love. I have fallen in love with her in the most embarrassing, whole hearted, and true fashion possible. This feeling is the feeling of love. I’m not sure I like it, but she is a different matter. 

It feels like I met her only a week ago, but it has been over a year. Nearly two, at the time I write this, and that time has slowly chipped away at me, day by day. It’s my fault. I have had her by my side constantly since we met. I made her my senechal. I put myself in a position to be close to her. Even when I didn’t need to I went out of my way to spend time with her, be with her. When it began I was happy to grow close to her as a friend. I don’t have many, even among my own brothers, and she was so different from all of them yet so perfect a compion. Maybe that is why I find myself drawn to her now. In some ways she is just like me. Driven to create, to work with her hands, like I am. She works hard, almost too much. Just as she reminds me to take care of myself, I find myself looking out for her as well. She and I both would rather bite our tongues than ask for help, although she gives it more readily than I do. She is honest and doesn’t wrap her barbs in a layer of sycophancy. She is strong, in her own way, maybe not in the way I would usually measure strength but she is. But she’s much kinder than I am, more easily able to be gentle. The things she makes are delicate and beautiful. Creating for pleasure rather than purely for purpose, where I consider practicality almost entirely. She’s a good shot, and could be quite good with a blade, but she’s no warrior. There’s no thrill in combat or danger for her. At times it shocks me that we have so much in common, and at others I wonder how we get along so well when we’re so different. It’s like comparing a black swan to a raven. Both have the dark feathers, but even those aren’t quite the same, much less the rest of the bird.

Although I could hardly be compared to even a raven. They may eat the eyes out of corpses, but they have an elegance to them, and their feathers gleam with opaline colors in the right light. 

I wonder to myself if that is why she is drawn to beauty. Because she herself is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. Eala dhubh, black swan. Or a selkie maiden, from the stories of old Terra. Either is an apt comparison. It is her grace and elegance that remind me that she was nobility at some point, although you’d never be able to tell if you looked at her now. She is that statue brought to life, the kind of feminine beauty that some men will spend their entire lives trying to capture. She is the woman that gets all the songs and poems written about her, not for her. She is beheld her from afar, gazed at like some masterwork painting, but never approached her for fear of inadequacy. The type of woman that catches the eye of even some of my most stoic brothers. Unapproachable beauty, at least if you’re a coward. I am not, but I am new to love. This warmth deep in my heart when I think of her, when we’re together. It’s not something I ever thought of myself experiencing. I have seen some of my brothers find themselves brides, and I have been content to consign myself to watching, and nothing else. No more.

Damn that woman. She has my heart and doesn’t have the slightest idea. 

If I were anyone else I may have cracked already. But here I have to be cautious, and as in many things I must be practical. If I truly want to woo her, what can I give her? What do I have over my brothers, a few of whom I know she gets along well with and could be with if things become truly FUBAR. If she were mine she would have the life of a queen, but that is true for any Primarch’s wife, and that will not be a factor in her mind at all. She was a princess, and left that life behind anyway to work for me. Any man could give her a family, and any of my brothers could see that she wants for nothing ever again. No, I have had to come to terms with the fact that if she is to be with me, it is because it is me and only me she wants. And I am not a handsome man. My nickname is the Gorgon for a reason. The truth is that I have nothing to offer her. Nothing but myself. In spite of my looks, and my guarded heart. This whole love thing, I am learning, is an extremely messy ordeal. 

I know I am a hard sell, but the thought of her being with one of my brothers or another man hurts. Of course, if that is how things would turn out, so be it. She is her own woman, and I cannot force her to love me back. No, if I have to let her go, I will. But it cuts me deeply. At the very least I can take solace in the fact that she would never go with Fulgrim. I can even assure myself that one of my brothers could take care of her at least as well as I could. But she is mo ghaol, and the thought still makes me sick. I want her to be mine. I want you to be mine.

That has been running through my thoughts frequently as of late. I can’t shake the thought no matter how hard I’ve tried, I have tried. But they linger, and they stick like burrs, no matter how hard I try to push them aside. I want…Throne, I barely even know. This whole romance thing is so bloody nebulous. I want to hold her close, protect her from everything this galaxy may throw. I could gladly spend my  days talking with her, and nothing else. She has made me happy in a way I didn’t know I was lacking, filled a longing for a friend I didn’t know I had, and it has grown out of my control. And she is perfect, in a way. Not a perfect person, nobody is, but for me. Gold to silver, her femininity to my masculinity. Oh Throne, that’s a rabbit hole. 

Maybe not one I should get into, but that is why I have this book. Because the contents will never see the bloody light of day, not if I can help it. It was a good idea, and I’m glad I took Roboute’s suggestion. Otherwise I would have nowhere to express all these…thoughts, I have. Gena has been my confidant for a while, but I think I’d rather burn the entire book then let her see what comes next.

I want her.

Even writing that little feels dirty. Appropriate, I suppose. These thoughts I have are equally unclean. I’m good at pushing them aside, ignoring them. Or maybe they just hide, receding into the cracks of my mind and waiting to nag me again. It’s the worst during my rut, but they come at other times, jab me in the kidney, then run off again. But the fact remains. I want her. That in itself is new. I’ve felt sexual desire before, been through enough bloody ruts to ensure that. She isn’t even the first woman I’ve found attractive, but none have sparked this need in me like she has. Gena is special. Truly special.

I’ve mentioned her beauty before but it bears repeating. It also doesn’t help that she is exactly my type, physically. My brothers have assumptions about my taste in women which are decidedly false. But she is absolutely perfect. Slim and soft and deliciously curvy. It’s hard for me not to note certain things when I look at her. The way her robe flows around the curve of her breasts, her slender waist tapering out to wide hips, the thickness of her thighs filling out her skirts. There’s a grace and smoothness to her movements that’s nearly impossible for me to look away from, as effortless as the flow of molten metal. There’s a certain lilt in her voice when she says my name and I can’t hear it enough these days. Her skin is nearly as fair as mine and her hair is as pitch black as a Medusan sea, falling in waves around her face and over her shoulders. She smiles when she sees me, those lovely full lips of hers quirking up and her golden eyes bright like new coins. 

On their own, in the moment these things about her I can set aside, and see only my senechal and friend. It’s when the moment passes. When I’m lying wide awake in bed thinking about her. That is when my mind assembles these fragments into the pornographic. Those images haunt my dreams, linger in the chill on my bare skin. The faceless woman in my mind during my rut is no longer so. It’s her, now. Dead gods of Medusa. I want her. 

I want to feel her lithe legs coiling around my hips in a futile attempt to hold them in place. I want to hear her out of breath and whispering my name, her naked body pressed against mine, that sweet voice moaning in bliss. I want to make that calm, gentle expression she has shatter with unconstrained rapture. Hear her begging me for more as we're both drenched in sweat and panting. I want to see my seed dripping from between her legs.

Feeling her clench as we both fall off the edge. Making her truly and completely mine, making her come undone completely, tangling my hand in her hair and drawing her even closer. Something that isn’t merely the physical act but the primal ecstasy of truly becoming one.

I take solace in the fact that she doesn’t know I even have this book. She doesn’t need to know about this absurd situation., neither about my love for her or that I crave her carnally.

I’m ashamed to think about her like this, even if it’s not the only capacity I regard her in. Far from it. Still she’s not mine, and she may never be, but she is my friend, and very dear to me outside these new feelings. It feels wrong to think of her like this, so…horny. Especially since she values her purity so highly. I keep them leashed tightly, for all the good it does. They’re only my thoughts though. And I have to wonder if she thinks similar things about me. 

A part of me hopes she does, although I know it’s unlikely. Still, woven in with all my desire is the deep, desperate hope that she shares the same feelings I do. The same love, the same lust, the same need to be close. To be wanted by her. Having her wanting me to be hers in the same way I want her to be mine. It’s a harmless wish, if nothing else. One I can only see remaining a wish. Even though I have never been one to indulge in dreams, this one is excessively sweet and I can’t help but revisit it. I speak as though it will only remain a dream. It sounds negative, but it feels the most realistic.

I care for her deeply, but the fact remains that before anything else she has become my friend. If I told her all this, if she didn’t share my feelings, things could never go back to the way they were. Something between us would be irreparably broken. The casualness, the disregard of proper, stuffy respect. She does not say “my lord” anymore unless she’s joking, and I call her Gena, and “my lady” in jest. I can be honest with her, blunt and even ribald. On many levels we are not equals and never will be, but in this bond we have forged, we are. If she doesn't want me the way I want her, if she doesn’t yearn for my embrace the way I yearn for hers. If I’m stupid enough to tell her that and tip the balance, then…no. If I can’t make her my bride I will content myself with her friendship. That in itself has been enough.

If she wants me, she will have to be the one to tell me, on her terms. I don’t like it, having to sit back and do nothing. It is against my nature to, and feels foreign. But I will hold my tongue and be patient. Rather that, than risking something so precious.

Until then the most I can do is hope that our time together sparks something in her the way it has for me. I want her to be mine.

[castellankurze]

freestyle rewriting the heresy yet again

because stuff occurred to me last night after that post about the traitor primarchs

if you wanna do the greek tragedy right every traitor primarch should have a primary flaw and a lesson that they fail to learn which overcomes them in the end

Fulgrim is obsession, or ‘perfection is the enemy of the good.’  Fulgrim has been good at everything his whole life. he turned Chemos from a dying shitpit into a vibrant and peaceful world, and when called up to become a warrior and commander he became a damn good one.  He even built up his legion from almost nothing after disaster nearly wiped them out.  But now he’s actually competing with people on his level and it gets to him.  He trains himself almost religiously, struggling to cut away the imperfections.  He expects his legion to always improve; uniformly, to Fulgrim there’s nothing more disgraceful than failing to better yourself, no matter the circumstances, no matter how unreasonable it may be.  It’s what leads him to letting Fabius tinker recklessly with the legion geneseed.  To steal a line from the stewniverse “if I’m not perfect then who am I?”

His friendship with Ferrus is something that should be cast as the anchor on Fulgrim’s flights of fancy.  Ferrus is prosaic and hardworking and responsible, gruff and bluff and earthy; he acts as a balance to Fulgrim’s mounting fanatical belief that he must be the best at everything at all times.  Ferrus’ death can thus be cast as the loss of reason amidst the insanity of the heresy, and it’s what snaps Fulgrim’s last ties to sanity leaving him to plunge himself and his legion wholesale into the service of Slaanesh.

Perturabo is cold logic, or ‘humans aren’t rational.’  Perturabo believes that the ideal being is a Renaissance Man, the great thinker, expert in all fields, unburdened by such petty things as ‘emotion’ or ‘bonds’ or ‘human interest’.  Perturabo believes mankind is best served by shutting up, sitting down, and working.  Human error is a failstate and not to be countenanced.  But people don’t function like that, fundamentally can’t function as if they’re datasheets on a page, and Perturabo gets irked when they don’t.  Because even Perturabo doesn’t function like that, not really - he’s like one of those rationalists who claim they can operate perfectly logically, then throw a screaming tantrum when faced with a conclusion they don’t like.

Perturabo alienates everyone around him - his brethren, his legion, even his homeworld.  To his eyes, they all fail him by not meeting his standards; they’re all too human, too soft.  Perturabo’s insistence that he is incapable of failure is what tragically leaves him wide open to manipulation by Horus, who drives him and the Iron Warriors further and further into their self-dug bitterness and isolationism until Olympia itself revolts and the last nail is pounded into the coffin.

Konrad Curze is vengeance, or ‘fear exists to be conquered.’  Curze took control of Nostromo through savage terrorism, cowing the populace and the gangs and the murderers who preyed on people through shocking acts of murder and barbarism.  He’s so good at it, though, that he never acknowledges the critical flaw - when he leaves Nostromo, he takes away the object of people’s fear, and he never setup a system to govern them without the threat of retaliation.  The Night Lords become staffed with psychopaths and murderers, their unity as a legion slowly fraying.  Curze himself sees torturous visions and nightmares, but it’s all without context, and he doesn’t particularly like wearing the device the Emperor made for him to curb the worst of it because he feels like it makes thinking difficult, so he just does without, becoming more erratic and unpredictable.  In the end he lets himself be done in, with the line ‘death is nothing compared to vindication’ which can arguably taken as a recognition that he had become the kind of monster he once hunted.

Angron is, of course, rage or, to quote tumblr, ‘the hate you feel will warm your heart but leave you cold in the grave’.  Of all the primarchs he’s the one with whom you can most do the cycle of violence thematic.  He’s taken as a slave as a gladiator, leads a revolt, he’s ‘rescued’ by the Emperor on the brink of a crushing defeat, and becomes a rampaging one-man slaughterhouse loosed upon the galaxy.  Angron’s response to his mistreatment is two-pronged: a total rejection of any authority deemed untrustworthy, fueled by his upbringing and the Emperor’s high-handedness, and a colossal hate-on for anything and everything.  Angron wallows in his hate, because for him hate and violence are easy.  The result is that he’s something of a foil for Perturabo - Angron doesn’t think, because he doesn’t like to think.  The World Eaters become a riot of bloodthirsty killers, the librarians and chaplaincy first sidelined and then, at least in the case of the former, eliminated, because they’re not savage enough.

If the plot device of the battle cybernetics (’Butcher’s Nails’ in the BL series) is kept, it’s primary use is as a plot device to show the cycle of abuse - Angron has it forced on him as a child, he forces it upon his legion in turn.  I’ve never been a great fan of the Nails as a plot device (especially in the BL series; it makes things too easy) because it’s not like they’re necessary to push someone into a Khornate rage, but they can work as a tipping point to help push the legion over the edge, especially back by Horus’ manipulations.

Mortarion is resentment, specifically, ‘bitterness is a poison.’  Like how Angron wallows in rage and Curze wallows in the fear he causes, Mortarion wallows in bitter hatred.  He hates the aliens who ruled Barbarus, especially the one who raised him, he hates the poisons of his homeworld itself, he hates the Emperor, and most of all he hates himself.  Mortarion falls into the trap of constantly comparing what we might have been to what we are - if he’d been found by humans. if he’d landed on a different world.  if he’d taken the Emperor up on his offer of aid.  if he didn’t need to wear a damn rebreather.  Nevertheless he surrounds himself with the trappings of his home, poisons and toxins and rad-weapons because they’re his, dammit, and fuck you for trying to take them away from him.  Mortarion keeps slogging onwards with what he’s got because there’s nothing else to him.

Magnus the Red is haughtiness, or ‘ivory-tower intellectualism.’  When you’re willing to learn and Magnus is willing to teach, he’s a great guy.  When he’s willing to learn and you’re willing to teach, he’s a great guy.  But Magnus has been either student or teacher for most of his life, and he has trouble defining a relationship outside those bounds.  He’s that guy who’s an expert on anything he’s studied for five minutes, even though you know he never heard of it six minutes ago.  And if you’re better at him than something, well, it’s something he’s never studied.  Magnus can be exasperating, and, in considering the fate of his legion, dangerous.  The Thousand Sons have a very strong ‘for me and not for thee’ streak to him, delving deeply into study of the warp and sorcerous practices that scream Bad Idea and ignore any attempts to warn them off of it, because they know better.  They’re not going to fall into any traps.  Even the Council of Nikaea, what should be taken as a dire warning to shape up, does little more than throw Magnus into a extended snitfit about the Emperor’s unwillingness to see things his way.

Horus is, of course, ambition, and ‘pride goeth before a fall.’  When the Emperor retreats from the Crusade to, you know, run the Imperium, Horus takes over the campaign trail personally, spending long years heading up the Imperium’s conquest of the galaxy, and as the awards and adoration and adulation and accolades and other a-words pile up he starts getting it into his head that he ought to be the rightful ruler of the whole shebang.  While recovering from wounds on the planet Davin, he’s introduced to the powers of the warp through the warrior lodges there, and so strikes a fateful bargain to sway the greater power of the Imperium’s war machine to his side along with his brothers and topple the Emperor.  He becomes a creature unlike any seen before or since, a font of Chaos power such that even the four great powers seem more held than holders of his leash.  Drunk on power - both the political and very, very real kinds - it’s not until things fall apart aboard his flagship that Horus realizes how very, very badly he’s fouled up.

Lorgar is zealotry, or to be more accurate ‘you can’t externalize self-righteousness.’  Lorgar frames his mindset as a search for truth, but really what he wants is what everybody wants: to be on the right side.  Lorgar’s problem is that he fundamentally cannot internalize the idea that morality is what you do, or to quote Horus Rising ‘we must be mighty because we are right, not right because we are mighty.’  Lorgar grows up steeped in the old faith of Colchis, but when he starts having visions and the existing power structure rejects him, he overthrows it because he knows he’s right, the universe told him he’s right, and when the Emperor shows up he feels validated, and doesn’t even notice how Emps is a little put off by the displays of veneration.  When he goes on the Crusade he turns it into a literal religious crusade, stopping at every planet to fully convert it before moving on.

Eventually the Emperor shows up to kick him into gear, because the Word Bearers are the S L O W E S T legion by far and their ties to other legions are fraying and maybe put down some of the religious stuff.  Lorgar cannot reconcile this discrepancy between the image of the God-Emperor he believes he understood perfectly and the actual Emperor telling him to cool it and basically dissociates himself into next month.  Eventually this one dude named Kor Phaeron who Lorgar’s known since they were kids suggests maybe Lorgar should go back and look at the old faiths again, at which point Lorgar starts digging into a new, and to him, even bigger ‘truth’ than the Emperor.  Then a dude from the Sons of Horus arrives and shit goes buckwild.  But for all the work he’s done, Lorgar still can’t see himself as anything but a vessel for truth, effectively sheltering himself under the Horus and the Chaos gods instead of the Emperor, and when things go sideways on Terra he all but collapses because he can’t understand how shit’s gone south again.

Alpharius, finally, is the inferiority complex, or ‘don’t define yourself by your relationships to others.’  Alpharius is not only the last primarch, he’s the last primarch to be publicly discovered, so late in the Crusade that the Emperor’s already handed the reins over to Horus.  As a result, everyone else has an achievement list as long as their arm and people won’t stop fucking comparing Alpharius and the XX Legion against the others.  Alpharius is an A+ tactical commander, but this shit makes him mad as hell.  He names the XX the Alpha Legion to emphasize how badass they are and drills the shit out of them at the chapter, company, and even squad level until they know their shit backwards and forwards.

For Alpharius, there’s no question of whose side he’s on, because Horus is his big bro and he doesn’t care for the Emperor.  Ironically, despite his keen strategic mind, Alpharius is unable to recognize the bigger picture of how Horus and the other traitor legions are...maybe getting a little sketchy?  He just knows this is gonna be his chance to get back at the folks who shit-talked him and his boys.  Instead of joining the march on Terra, the Alpha Legion goes across the galaxy, harrying the Ultramarines, the Space Wolves, and the Dark Angels.  But unlike Alpharius, Guilliman can stay focused on the big picture, and though delayed it’s ultimately the word of the reinforcements coming in that causes Horus to throw down with the Emperor.  Of course the Alpha Legion goes on their merry way, until the fight at Eskrador where Alpharius finally gets to stick it to Bobby G - he dies, but he’s lured the Ultramarines into an untenable position and ultiamtely they’re the ones who have to retreat.  But afterwards, the blind spot comes back into play, and the Alpha legion ultimately fragments and goes sailing into the Eye of Terror and the other warpstorms along with the other traitor legions because nobody knows enough of the Plan anymore.

this post got longer than i meant it to be but  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what can i say even though it’s been almost a decade now since i stopped seriously following 40k books i still have The Thoughts about the little plastic dudes