#cawlposting

[minweber]

One implication from The Infinite and The Divine’s strong worldbuilding that I keep coming back to is that, time being so meaningless to necrons, mortal species must be extremely annoying for them to deal with. So annoying, in fact, that it must border on being terrifying. 

Half a dozen generations of Tau can change during the time it takes Orikan the Diviner to have a proper meditation. And sure, it’s all “pathetic mortals” until you realize that, without the trademark imperial stagnancy, that is a lot of time to do something.

When Trazyn met Cawl on Cadia, the latter seemingly knew next to nothing about necron technology, and probably even necrons in general. But not much more than 20 years later - barely a discrete amount of time for immortals - we see Cawl hacking and manipulating necron tech on Pharos and slamming it with a C’tan shard.

Imagine going away for the weekend, and when you are back, the crows outside your house have learned to drive a fucking car. Probably yours. And will continue in that vein if you don’t do something about it very quickly and constantly. Because what for you is a distraction of a menial task, for them could be the purpose of their whole existence, at which they will come again, and again and again, never stopping, always dragging you down to their level of chaotic short-term existence.

I guess what I am saying is that it must be very hard to enjoy being untethered from the flow of time, while someone very tethered to it is out there trying to steal your whole shit.

#warhammer #warhammer 40000 #wh40k #The Infinite and The Divine #necrons #he is mentioned #so technically #cawlposting

[wanderingmausoleum]

my gender is whatever the fuck belisarius cawl has going on

#the last line? i’d love to be referred to like that thanks #sorry for all the cawlposting i’ve just been thinking about him #this is an excerpt from belisarius cawl: the great work by guy haley btw #warhammer #40k #belisarius cawl #queer shit #speaketh #roboposting #greatest hits #admechposting

[v6-version]

Thank you for sharing your excellent Cawlposts. I enjoy them greatly.

thanks a lot, mate! haven't read Genefather so I feel quite awkward when talking about Belisarius Cawl. I actually became a proper fan not when I read The Great Work, but after I assigned one of my ocs to be his student, so I mostly get ideas from a story I'm too shy to write.

#as in: the oc existed long before being copied into another time to become Cawl's understudy #40k

[minweber]

Have been once again retreading what limited official Cawl content we have (cursed as I am to ever do so), and noticed how much of Cawl-like little shits Qvo iterations tend to be, once they had chance to run about for a bit.

In "To Speak as One", when Qvo-87 is having sort of a solo adventure, he appears both smartass and prone to theatrics in his scheming against the inquisitor - a downright Belisarius Cawl in miniature. Whereas Qvo-89, upon his awakening, is much more like Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo we meet in Cawl's flashbacks - a somewhat timid, pious man, a "straight man" and an exasperated witness to Cawl's antics.

This, of course, can be explained as a result of each iteration getting closer to the original, with Qvo-89 being a particularly close copy, as Cawl smugly notes. But at the same time it does not seem like that much of a radical breakthrough - Cawl navigates their initial conversation like one he already had dozens of times, suggesting that most iterations of Qvo at least start out this way.

Which, to me, suggests two, not necessarily contradictory explanations:

First one is that, not originally having the entirety of Friedisch's mind to save, Cawl had to "fill in the blanks" with something - his own ideas of what his friend was like, perhaps? And wouldn't it have been nice if poor Friedisch, ever so serious, always stressed and sweating the unimportant details, could, over time, learn to relax and enjoy himself a little?

But second is that Cawl's reconstruction of him has nothing to do with this. Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo was actually always like that. A man who acted indecisive and skittish as an unappreciated low ranking adept at the bottom of a paranoid, schism-torn priesthood in the middle of an apocalyptic civil war, suddenly finds himself as essentially immortal right-hand man to a messianic genius at the head of one of the most powerful human institutions in the galaxy. Wonder if it's going to help him shed some self-confidence issues and express himself more freely?

I guess what I am saying is that for every bit of "opposites attract" that defines Cawl and Qvo's relationship, there seems to be a non-insignificant bit of "birds of a feather" dynamic to tag along. That is to say, that they were two glorious little gremlin shits against the galaxy from the very beginning - one of them just had a little more self-preservation instinct about the whole thing.

#warhammer 40000 #adeptus mechanicus #belisarius cawl #friedisch adum silip qvo #qvo-87 #qvo-89 #cawlposting #and I guess its qvoposting also #though I doubt that it would become a regular tag around here #not until haley sees the light and writes at least three more Cawl books #and yeah I guess it's only fair to tag #guy haley

[minweber]

Belisarius Cawl, hiding for his life, his ass kicked, ship crashing, friends in mortal peril: I am such a smart boy, he-he-he =)

#I love him so much your honor #warhammer 40000 #adeptus mechanicus #belisarius cawl #genefather #guy haley #cawlposting #(kinda going to finish my thoughts on the book here since I ran out of space on the last post) #but a huge HUGE part of what I loved about this book were all the fun relationships and dynamics that it had set up #I literally want to see all of those characters again #Cawl and AsanethAyu? Absolutely. Not necessarily in a shipp-y way (Unless?) But god do I love seeing necrons bicker apparently #Cawl and Bile? Do my eyes deceive me or did Haley actually pull off 'we are not so different you and I' thing in a genuinely interesting wa #Cawl and Primus? What can I fucking say?! #Guy Haley should be awarded a prize for bringing back emotion and weight into what is surely one of the top 5 most overused words in 40k #Cawl and Qvo? Never before have I so thoroughly understood shippers of something that I don't personally ship. #I (barely) write a different type of fanfiction but somewhere in here there is a potential for the most wonderfully fucked up family #Primus and Porter? They did not talk but parallels between them were set up SO hard. This one is definitely not shippy for me #just so fucking charged with storytelling potential #All the minor guys? X99 whom I now love dearly? Oswen who was set up to be the traitor so hard and then just sort of wasn't? (Unless?!) #Skitarii Marshal named Iota?! Maybe later on that one #and that is to say absolutely nothing about the MASSIVE (eh? get it?) set up for the next big Cawl thing? #god so many threads to follow up on #Guy Haley you owe me like at least three follow-up books

[minweber]

“See, young one. That is where we will be getting fucked from next”.

#let’s just say that I haven’t gotten the hang of 10th edition AdMech yet #It’s been one humbling experience after the other #but as a great forebear of cult mechanicus once said #we stay silly #warhammer #warhammer 40000 #Adeptus mechanicus #and skirting in on a technicality #cawlposting

[minweber]

So, it’s time to sexualize old men talk about Belisarius Cawl headcanons.

Today’s topic: the Sub-Cawls, or the Cawl Minors - not to be confused with everyone’s favorite non-AI Cawl Inferior.

In “In the Grim Darkness” by Guy Haley (who is the main Cawl writer currently) it is vaguely mentioned that Cawl has created smaller subordinate consciousnesses of himself, which he uses for some sweet multitasking. The way it is written in the text most likely implies that they are virtual things - like multiple programs running on the same hardware that is his brain, but it was vague enough for me have assumed that they also have separate bodies on my first read through.

Which is interesting - because for them to have bodies of their own there would have to be, well... bodies for that. Publicly Cawl infuriates everybody by balancing on the very edge of techno-heresy, not by outright breaking the greatest taboo of the Cult Mechanicus. So any thinking automaton of his, however subordinate to his will, has to have a human brain somewhere in there.

Which is not a problem - technically or ethically - for a Martian priest. Not very hard to get your hands on a human brain in the grim darkness of the 42nd millennium - what’s with everybody much more interested in skulls. It’s safe to assume that downloading a little sub-persona of his on a freshly scrubbed piece of grey matter is a child’s play for archmagos biologis - which can easily be considered an explanation, and an end to this particular tangent.

Except that Belisarius Cawl also has followers.

The big narrative mostly casts Cawl as this secretive and enigmatic genius, locked away in his lab or exploring ancient ruins with a handful of companions, so it’s easy to forget that he is a whole ass lord. A monumental political figure within Adeptus Mechanicus who has thousands, if not millions of tech-priests of all calibers working for him - some probably by circumstance, but many others likely by conviction. There were always radicals within the Cult, after all, and it’s not hard to imagine them flocking to his banner in the days of the Era Indomitus. Even those with not particularly revolutionary views don’t seem out of place in his entourage - tech-priests crave knowledge above all, and Prime Conduit of the Omnissiah has nothing if not knowledge to share.

In fact, he probably even has to share it.

It was stated in Cawl’s original release lore that he was mind-wiped many times by his enemies, and later expanded on by mentioning that he is so ancient and genius that even with all his augmentations he can’t hold all of his own knowledge within his head, having to regularly dump huge amounts of it to make space for new research. Both of these certainly align with the state in which he is shown in “The Great Work” (thank you, Guy Haley, for my life) - of sober mind, sure, but barely able to remember his life past a certain point, his personal memories fragmented and stored on a myriad physical drives across the galaxy.

But what strikes me as a little odd is that knowledge is sacred to Adeptus Mechanicus - they don’t delete anything, things both trivial and heretical included. So I find it hard to imagine that even Cawl’s political opponents would destroy anything extracted from his head - because of their own hunger for knowledge, if not because of religious reverence. And no less doubtful I find the idea that Cawl would just let knowledge (his own, no less!) sit around in storage, instead of being used.

And look, here comes good new old Qvo-88, talking about how to Cawl’s followers service to the archmagos is a great honor and a boon, but one that comes at a price. Ever sure of his intellectual superiority, Cawl likes to keep his hand in everything he can, so the price of his patronage is a part of your own autonomy. “The Great Work” doesn’t specify it beyond that, but to my drama loving ass the whole thing seems clear:

Cawl is a genius with a strong will, who came to be by consuming the personalities and knowledge of those who tried to consume his. He has to remove huge chunks of his precious knowledge from time to time, but would much rather prefer they be useful than just sit in storage. He is carrying out the impossibly large work of trying to seal The Great Rift and has many places to be - but he doesn’t really trust anybody but himself to do things the right way. And he has dozens of tech priests - perhaps geniuses in their own right - clamoring for his favor and the chance to work at his side. It’s great when a problem seems to solve itself is it not?

The price of service to the Prime Conduit of the Omnissiah is also it’s greatest boon. If you prove yourself worthy of it, Archmagos Dominus will pass his knowledge on to you - the part of it that relates most closely to the job he wants you to do for him, most likely. And knowledge is more than just data - it is also the way of thinking, the motivation, the will. The more of such gifts you get, the more of a genius of the mind that is ten thousand years old you take on... well, the less there is of you, isn’t there? Succeed enough times, be rewarded with enough parts of Cawl, and that is what you become - a smaller, compartmentalized part of a great genius. Not so much you as much an aspect of him. A Cawl Minor, if you will.

For a techpriest, one of those who proclaim themselves to be but a cog in the great mechanism that is Machine God - is that not a good deal, I wonder?

#warhammer #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #adeptus mechanicus #admech #Belisarius Cawl #cawlposting #its back baybeeeeee #oh yeah #Guy Haley

[minweber]

a quote from 'Darkness in the blood' relevant to your last cawlpost: ''Three Navigators of Navigator compliment = negative existence,' canted one of his transmechanics. This being had abandoned his human name in favour of a number string. Being somewhat impish in humour, like his creator Cawl, Qvo called the transmechanic Sixer after the first numeral. There was a lot of Cawl in Qvo.' (that is Qvo-87)

Yeah, there is definitely that too - in a lot of ways Cawl seems incapable of letting things be as they are - untouched and unshaped by him in one way or another.

But to put a bit of a more romantic spin on that - what is the difference and where is the border, really, between being infected by someone else's personality by having them remake you from ash and memory over and over again, or by simply staying by their side through ten thousand years and a hundred lives of shared struggles?

Who could say =)

#belisarius cawl #adeptus mechanicus #warhammer 40000 #friedisch adum silip qvo #no Tumblr I was not trying to tag this as frieren #though ironically I imagine she would be able to relate the whole thing #cawlposting

[minweber]

Assuming for a second that AdMech are indeed as disproportionately popular with transgender fans as more tolerable parts of warhammer meme culture would suggest, it does seem like a very natural thing. The alignment of transhuman and transgender in the act of reshaping your body and all that.

But it does always feel to me like there is a certain... vibe that goes further than that. A compelling thematic connection, not reliant on the immortality of the machine. Something about the way Adeptus Mechanicus are often presented as the ones who are so clearly mistaken, their religion seen as absurd both in and out of universe, stemming from delusion rather than insight. Something about most human characters of the setting seeing them as alien and off-putting and them reveling in all the things that make them this way.

Something about being this... creature, so weird and abhorrent to normalcy, that has so willingly abandoned acceptance of others in pursuit of some bizarre truth? Being inexorably drawn towards a journey of which most others will never hear the call? Being pitied for the perceived unmaking of self, while knowing, in your heart of hearts, that it is through it that you have discovered the very secret of creation?

Could anyone possibly relate to that, I wonder.

#Adeptus mechanicus #transgender #trans rights #warhammer #warhammer 40000 #wh40k #this too is cawlposting to me and I refuse to elaborate

[v6-version]

maybe I should start Cawlposting, since this fellow doesn't get content too often. only problem is, my understanding of the character is very closely tied to an oc storyline, so it's hard to think of what to say without going into Left-Field Unhinged Deeplore Nobody Asked For

#40k #thought #belisarius cawl #warhammer 40k

[minweber]

Warhammer is famously capable of high drama - it’s what it does best, in my opinion. Tales of gods and kings, tragic falls from grace and heroic rises to the challenge are inherently appealing to our nature, if told halfway competently. And for all the shit GW gets and rightfully deserves, they do employ a lot of writers who are - at the very least - halfway competent.

And out of all the recent tales none tug at my drama-prone heartstrings quite like the resurrection of Roboute Guilliman.

Imagine a sorrowful demigod, awakened from a horrible age to the one somehow much worse, the last bearer of a forgotten dream that was barely real even in his own time - his horror and apprehension compounded by realization of his own role in creation of this dark age. Resurrection that, for all its miracle, came ages too late. Almost a cruel joke of fate - the last vision of a dying galaxy, glimpsed by its once-supposed savior, the chance for its salvation so thin as to be mocking. A punishment for hubris past.

And yet, hope. For one who died being crushed by the weight of failure, his last thoughts of the impending catastrophes his moment of weakness will unleash - the miracle of a true second chance. Of righting wrongs, of rising above past mistakes, of resurrection, of redemption. The light that only shines brighter for all the darkness that surrounds it.

...

And then imagine just how FUCKING ANNOYINg has to be the dude who gave him that second chance, for Guilliman to experience all this and be like “ugh, this guy again” every single time they have to interact.

#you thought it was a normal post #but it was me! cawlposting #I post like twice a month #but I am still going to start a separate tag for this #cawlposting #because I aspire to be like my hero #fucking annoying #warhammer #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #wh40k #dark imperium #Roboute Guilliman #Belisarius Cawl #Guy Haley #since you know #he is the main provider of both Guilliman and Cawl content