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Vulka, physically the strongest of the Primarchs, crying in despair when he sees 40K Lifting Strength
Introductio
Hello everyone, hope you're doing well.
So. Recently I was checking through the Warhammer 40,000 profiles and discovered something that brought me much distress. Namely, that the justifications for the various Lifting Strengths are either greatly exaggerated, completely incorrect, or... carry no justification whatsoever.
First, the generic Space Marines:
Adeptus Astartes
Currently, their Lifting Strength justification reads as:
Lifting Strength: Class 5 to Class 25 at max | Higher (Effortlessly able to lift and toss around several ton slabs of metal as weapons) | Much higher | At least Class 50, likely higher
This is... Very bad, to put it lightly. First, Class 5 to Class 25 has no justification, and the "Higher" for Terminator Marines carries a justification that wouldn't wield anything over Class 25 without Context. Over Class 50 for Dreadnoughts makes sense in-scaling, but once again Class 25 has no justification.
However, I think this can be fixed. I am aware of at least some Space Marine Lifting feats that could be used to fix the profile.
A "starting" Marine can carry 1,350 kg, lift 2,700 kg, and push 5,400 kg.
- Deathwatch RPG Rulebook
The absolute weakest Space Marines can lift 2.7 tons over their head, and push 5.4 tons.
He saw Tycho's combi-weapon lying on the floor and took a half-step toward it. The idea of taking it up himself died in this mind; the gun was so massive he would never have been able to lift it.
- Blood Ravens Omnibus
The heavier Space Marine guns weight so much that baseline humans can't pick them up. So they probably weight around 500 lbs at tops.
Tanks did not slow the Space Marines down. They clambered up on to them, ripped off durasteel hatches as if they were made of paper and dropped grenades into the interior.
- Angel of Fire
One of the Isstvanian soldiers ran at him, shrieking and aflame, and pulled Temeter into an embrace. The captain let the flamer drop from his grip and ripped the man in two, tearing him apart effortlessly. He beat out the flames and grimaced as the rest of his troop waded in and finished the task.
- Flight of the Eisentei
Space Marines can rip off tank hatches and split men in half with sheer strength.
Blocks had sunk into the floor of the arena, lined by the towers between which the Space Marines had been leaping. Dirty water had rapidly seeped up through grilles in the block-bottom of the large pit and filled it to a reasonable depth. Montalbán watched the weapon fly across the water's expanse and clatter to the ground on the other side. Instead of waiting for Alighieri to join him on his tower, the Imperial Fist dropped down the side of the column, sending a quake through the dark stone as he landed. The Black Templar wouldn't have been able to make good on his bold opening since Kersh had come back at him with a lunge that had every right to gut the Castellan. Somehow the nimble Alighieri managed to arc his palsied form about the sword's stabbing path.
The tower suddenly bucked. Kersh initially assumed that the blocks were once more on the move, but a second impact convinced him otherwise. The giant Montalbán was throwing his bulk at the tower base like a beast of the plains felling titanwoods. The third slam of superhuman shoulder against stone took out the base block and toppled the tower. As the column shook and tipped, Kersh lost his footing and went down in an ugly fashion. Striking his chest against the block edge he felt the shell of his fused ribs crack. He clawed at the smooth surface of the dark stone, allowing his gladius to tumble from his grip and into the filthy water below. The unsuccessful Scourge followed the weapon and was in turn followed and buried by the falling blocks of the collapsed tower.
- Legion of the Damned
Here, a Space Marine pushes and topples a stone tower large enough to have three Astartes fighting on top of it. No idea how this would wield, specially since the tilted it rather that actually push or lift it, but it is a start.
They had done this to him, his so-called brothers. The killing, the slaughter ― it had to continue. The craven Angels of the corpse-Emperor failed to see this. Dastards all, they had mobbed him like cowards, holding him down and prising the steaming sword from his hand. Not before the Scarioch-Thing had broken a few more jaws and noses with his brow and flailing knuckles. When he would not soothe to the lullaby of their weakling words and fraternal entreaties, they cut the cable-fibres of his armour and stripped him of his pack power-plant. They stretched his arms behind him and bound his wrists behind a cloister-pillar, using the bent length of a nearby railing bar. The berserker thrashed against the deadweight of his plate. The pillar groaned. The metal of his bindings squealed and contorted. The raging Angel strained and struggled against his captivity. His teeth clenched and his gums oozed blood. The whites of his eyes were thread-shattered and deep red while his Adeptus Astartes flesh ruptured with the mosaic distension of bruising and exertion.
- Legion of the Damned
From the same novel, an unarmoured Space Marine nearly breaks free of being shackled to a pillar, shaking it in the process. Would scale to every Power Armoured marine for obvious reasons.
Several of the pod's ramps had managed to open fully, while others, like Nemiel's, had been blocked by piles of debris. Brother-Sergeant Kohl was braced against the side of the pod and helping free Brother Vardus and his cumbersome heavy bolter. Brother Askelon came around the side of the pod closest to Nemiel. His powerful servo arm deployed above his shoulder with a faint whine as he placed his feet carefully among the rubble.
'Stand clear!' he called, then opened the gripping claw of his arm and extended it against the side of the pod. Servo-motors hummed with gathering power. Askelon slid backwards a few centimetres; Nemiel stepped forward and tried to help brace him. Then, with a grating of powdered masonry and a groan of metal, the pod shifted slowly upright.
'Well done, brother,' Nemiel said, clapping the Techmarine on the shoulder as the pod's ramps fully deployed.
- Fallen Angels
A Techmarine uses his mechanic limbs to lift a Drop Pod off the ground. Drop Pods weight 14 tons. This would scale to Terminator Marines and Dreadnoughts at least.
A fuzzy image swam into focus; grey blobs became the distinct shapes of Adeptus Astartes in Maximus-pattern armour, moving to block the path of the monorail. As the Callidus watched, they dragged the husks of burned-out vehicles across the line, assembling a makeshift barricade.
- Nemesis
Space Marines dragging one of their armoured vehicles through sheer strength. The most common Space Marine vehicles are the Razorback and the Rhino, which both weight 30 Tons. If they were moving a tank, we are talking of much higher weights, of at least 72 tons. But there are multiple Marines doing the lifting.
They were destructive, the firepower at their immediate disposal able to flatten urban blocks. With his bare hands, gloved in ceramite, he could crush and pry open sheets of metal, maybe even the support girders of a building.
- Blood Gorgons
Supposedly Space Marines can crush the support girders of a building.
Adeptus Astartes Characters
The problem here is a little more complex, as there are multiple profiles profiles. So, let us go through them one by one and see what the issues are:
Marneus Calgar
Lifting Strength: At least Class K (Capable of lifting super heavy Necron Pylons out of the ground and swinging them around as weapons)
Ah, the age-old "Marneus Calgar can wield Necron Pylons" as weapons.
For those who doesn't know, the myth is that Marneus Calgar [lifted a Necron Gauss Pylo], and used it as a melee weapon in combat. That would indeed required a Lifting Strength of Kilotonnes, at least. This "feat" is incredibly well known and infamous across the 40K community, so much so that it was parodied in Text-to-Speech.
It's just a shame that it never happened.
Here is the actual feat, straight from the source:
Jumping up onto the metallic base of the malfunctioning Pylon, Calgar braced himself and heaved with both hands at its crescent-shaped superstructure. Servos and pistons whined in protest as the famed Gauntlets of Ultramar left grooves in its living metal.
Teeth gritted and eyes screwed tight, the Chapter Master pushed with everything he had, veins popping under his close-cropped grey hair. He roared in pain with the bone-breaking effort of his feat, but sure enough the Pylon began to move on its bearings, its flaring gauss beam crackling across the skies above the warring armies. Slowly, inexorably, Calgar pushed the war engine's crescent back upon itself until its beam met the energy grid that protected the floating necropolis.
- Apocalypse: Warzone Damnos
As you can see, Marneus Calgar just turned the Pylon on its own axis, a feat of strength that took him incredible effort. I doubt this is even Class 100, and even if it is it wouldn't scale to other Marines as Calgar can only do this because he has the Gauntlets of Ultramar amping his strength.
Abaddon the Despoiler (Yes, he is technically a Space Marine despite his level of power)
Lifting Strength: Class P
Someone please give me evidence of Abaddon being able to move small moons with his physical strength. It is obvious why this should go.
My solution for the strongest Space Marine characters? Scale them from Brother Baltus, who crawled out of the rubble of a blown up city.
Another good feat for top-tier Astartes would be Khârn the Betrayer physically overpowering and pushing back the Chainblade of an Imperial Knight:
The ground shook with pounding footfalls, and a vox-horn boomed out with a binharic war cry. Looking up, the Betrayer saw a red-hulled Knight looming over him, its head tilted down to pin him with its dispassionate stare. The war engine's roaring chainblade swept down, and Khârn hurled himself aside. He rolled to his feet with a manic laugh, sweeping Gorechild up in a thunderous arc. Mica-dragon teeth bit through adamantium and ceramite in a rain of sparks, and the Knight's severed chainblade crashed to the ground.
- Traitor's Hate
That is probably around Class 50 - Class 100 at least.
Primarchs
Ohboi. This is the greatest problem, and the most complicated thing to be fixed.
Currently, they are ranked as Class T, based out of Angro's feat of crawling out of the rubble of a mountain. Well, let us take a look at this feat, shall we?
LOKEN SAW THAT the Iron Citadel was aptly named, its gleaming walls rearing from the rock like jagged metal teeth. The midmorning light reflected from its shimmering walls, the air rippling in the haze of energy fields, and clouds of metal shavings raining down from self-repairing ramparts. The outer precincts of the fortress were in ruins, the result of a four-month siege waged by the warriors of Angron and the war machines of the Mechanicum.
The Dies Irae and her sister Titans bombarded the walls daily, hurling high explosive shells and crackling energy beams at the citadel, slowly but surely pushing the Brotherhood back to this, their last bastion.
The citadel itself was a colossal half moon in plan, set against the rock of a range of white mountains, its approach guarded by scores of horn-works and redoubts. Most of these fortifications were little more than smouldering rubble, the Mechanicum's Legio Reductor corps having expended a fearsome amount of ordnance to flatten them in preparation for the storm of the Iron Citadel.
After months of constant shelling, the walls of the citadel had finally been broken open and a half-kilometre wide breach had been torn in its shining walls. The citadel was ready to fall, but the Brotherhood would fight for it to the bitter end, and Loken knew that most of the warriors who were to climb that breach would die.
- False Gods
The "Mountain" proper. It is actually a colossal metallic fortress built around around and on top of a mountain range.
Loken turned from the splendid sight of the marching soldiers as he heard a deep, bass rumbling that seemed to come from the ground itself. Powdered rubble and rocks danced as the vibrations grew stronger still and Loken knew that something was terribly wrong.
Ahead, he could see Angron and the World Eaters reaching the crest of the breach. Blazing columns of smoke surrounded Angron, and Loken heard the mighty primarch's bellowing cry of triumph even over the thunderous explosions of battle.
The rumbling grew louder and more violent, and Loken had to grip onto a rusted spar of rebar to hold himself in place as the ground continued to shake as though in the grip of a mighty earthquake. Great cracks split the ground and plumes of fire shot from them.
'What's happening?' he shouted over the noise.
No one answered and Loken fell as the top of the breach suddenly exploded in a sheet of flame that reached hundreds of metres into the air. Rocks and metal were hurled skywards as the top of the wall vanished in a massive seismic detonation.
Like the bunkers in the cities, the Brotherhood destroyed what they could not hold, and Loken's reactive senses shut down briefly with the overload of light and noise. Twisted rubble and wreckage slammed down around them, and Loken heard screams of pain and the crack of splintering armour as scores of his men were pulverised by the storm of boulders.
Dust and matter filled the air, and when Loken felt safe enough to move, he saw in horror that the entire crest of the breach had been destroyed.
Angron and the World Eaters were gone, buried beneath the wreckage of a mountain.
- False Gods
A chunk of the fortress is detonated as the Astartes are scalling the mountain, and Angron is buried under the collapsing rubble.
Before Varvarus could react to the senior preceptor's declaration, the rubble behind him shifted and groaned, cracks splitting the rock and metal as something vast and terrible heaved upwards from beneath the ground.
At first Loken thought that it was the second seismic charge he had feared, but then he saw that these tremors were far more localised.
Janizars scattered, and men shouted in alarm as more debris clattered from the breach. Loken gripped the hilt of his sword as he saw many of the Brotherhood warriors reach for their weapons.
Then the breach exploded with a grinding crack of ruptured stone, and something immense and red erupted from the ground with a bestial roar of hate and bloodlust. Soldiers fell away from the red giant, hurled aside by the violence of his sudden appearance.
Angron towered over them, bloody and enraged, and Loken marvelled that he could still be alive after thousands of tonnes of rock had engulfed him. But Angron was a primarch and what - save for an anathame - could lay one such as him low?
- False Gods
And Angron breaking free out of the rubble, provoking an Earthquake as he does so.
Some things to consider:
- 1) Angron wasn't literally crushed under a mountain, just the rubble of a good chunk of one.
- 2) The narration states that angron had been buried under "Thousands of tonnes of rock". I personally think that this is silly, and a case of Authors not knowing math. Even a building weights more than just a few thousand tones, let alone a chunk of a mountain.
So, what do?
Well, we can look at other Primarch lifting feats for help.
First, there is Angron holding the weight of a Warhound Titan:
The Word Bearer lifted a scalded hand, not for aid, but in warning. Angron had no time to lift his mutilated brother, sprawled at his feet. The sun went dark, as dark as night falling in an instant.
He turned, raising his arms, and took a god-machine's weight on his shoulders. Every muscle in his body locked tighter than the iron trying to crush him. Drool stringed through his metal teeth, skinned knuckles white as he defied the will of a Titan. He gave a bear's roar as the foot lowered another half-metre. Sinews crackled in his shoulders. His broken boots skidded back on the patch of unglassed rock; something cracked in his spine, something else cracked in his left knee. The compression of his bones sounded like twigs breaking underfoot, which was a vivid burst of imagination he didn't appreciate.
But he could hear his men cheering. He could hear them howling as they killed, and crying his name.
He blinked to clear away his sweat's greasy sting, and dug his boots into the ground. With a smile slitting across his broken-angel face, he shifted his slipping, blood-slick grip on the Titan's clawed foot, and started pushing back.
'Lorgar.' Angron spoke in something that wasn't quite a growl and wasn't quite a laugh. 'Get up. I can't hold this forever.'
- Betrayer
This is a Warhound Tita. Officially, these babies weight in at 410 tons, although I feel that this is yet another case of the authors not understanding how scale and weight work.
The Daemon Primarch gestured, and spectral claws tore several hundred tons of machinery loose from a nearby wreck. Guilliman had time to brace himself before the ungainly mass impacted like a comet, burying him completely beneath an avalanche of crushing metal.
Guilliman was entombed. Alarms chimed in his ears, red warning signs flashing in his peripheral vision. The pain of lacerated organs and shattered bones dragged at him,and for a moment the Lord of Ultramar was tempted simply to give in. Then he thought again of his long-suffering sons, fighting so hard for the ideals of an Imperium they had never even known. He would not betray them. He would not let one of his degenerate brothers keep him from his responsibilities ― not again.
Muscles tensing, strength surging, Guilliman ripped his way up through the tumbled mountain of wreckage. He roared as he hurled aside a capacitor unit the size of a Land Raider, and stepped, bloodied but unbroken, into the hard light of Luna. Magnus arched an eyebrow at the sight,and braced his glaive to hurl another spell.
- The Gathering Storm: Rise of a Primarch
Roboute Guilliman forces his way from under several hundred tons of rubble. Although, again, this requires plenty of effort from him, and he is noticeably hurt from it.
I personally find this to be a bit of a low-end, as Primarchs are consistently shown manhandling tanks and the like with ease:
He reached the first of the battle tanks, a Demolisher that the primarch lifted with his bare hands and turned over. A second he punched through the hull with his hammer, wrenching out the crew within before the Pyre Guard, his retinue and inner circle warriors, followed up with grenades. The back of the tank blew out in a plume of fire, smoke and shrapnel.
Then Heka'tan was running, back up the hill towards his father. 'Forward in the name of Lord Vulkan! Unto the anvil!'
The ring of three hundred took up the charge, ragged banners snapping defiantly in the icy wind. Snow turned to slush with the heat of their flamers, levelled at the crumbling line of Iron Warriors.
'Perturabo!' The voice shook the very ridgeline as deep and forbidding as a Nocturnean lava chasm. Vulkan was enraged, battering tanks aside like children's toys. He was not the most gifted swordsman, nor was he a master strategist or a psyker of any note, but his strength and fortitude… in that, the Eighteenth Primarch was unrivalled.
- Age of Darkness
With machine precision, their shields parted and Perturabo surged from within their aegis with Forrix and Kroeger at his side. Forgebreaker swept out and hammered down onto the deck. Seismic shockwaves surged out in a radial pattern, flipping over armoured vehicles and sending debris flying through the air. Iron Hands were swept aside and hurled against the walls like leaves in a hurricane. Mobile gun platforms were smashed into their component parts and the emplaced weapon turrets went offline with the pressure differential.
- Angel Exterminatus
'We need to move that armour.' Through the thickening mob, it might as well have been leagues away. Then Numeon saw the primarch, towering above the madness. Realising the danger presented by the tanks, Vulkan had raced towards them. Not slowing, he shoulder-barged Arvek's Stormsword at full pelt and began to push. Grimacing with effort, booted feet digging trenches in the earth, he heaved the super-heavy back. Its sheer bulk dwarfed the primarch, the veins cording in Vulkan's neck as he exercised his prodigious strength. Even Arvek dared not defy the will of a primarch and could only look on as Vulkan hauled the Stormsword's dead weight across the sand. He roared, body trembling as he forced a gap wide enough for the trapped masses to escape.
- Vulkan Lives
For reference, Stormsword Tanks weight 300 tons.
Also for a higher-end, we have a young, armourless Vulkan tossing a Dark Eldar skimmer skiff around:
Fingers like iron bolts dug into the lamellar nose of the machine as the Nocturnean turned it over. Screeching slavers fell from the tipped vessel before Vulkan tossed it aside like an unwanted spear. The battered skiff rolled over the ground before erupting in a ball of fiery shrapnel.
- Promethean Su
So it would seem that Primarchs can lift, push, and flip hundreds of tons with general ease, and thousands of tons with effort, if we are going by what's consistent.
However, there are some ridiculously high-end Primarch feats that need be addressed:
High-End Primarchs
According to the heretical handwritten chronicle of his lite, entitled simply The Dark. Konrad Curze's earliest memory was of descending from the heavens in a crackling ball of light to the night-shrouded planet of Nostramo. His embryonic form impacted on the dense cityscape of Nostramo Quintus, smashing though countless levels of debris and mouldering architecture, through the planet's crust and into the geosphere before finally coming to a halt near the liquid core of the planet. His descent left a scar in the virtually inviolable adamantium strata of Nostramo, the result of the supernaturally resilient Primarch's violent birth into a world that knew no light. The cratered pit his descent had carved into the planet was closed oft and regarded with fear and suspicion. Theoretically, the only way the Primarch could have reached the surface was to have swum through molten metal, borne upwards through volcanic vents to the surface. The Arcana Progenitum of Nostramo Quintus details the incident in vague, awkward terms:
"...a glowing child-form it was, crawled from the Pit onto the broken street, hissing molten metal dripping from its limbs. It was a daemon, no less, with the body of an infant but the expression of an old man, its eyes black and cold as obsidian."
- Index Astartes
Baby Konrad Curze apparently sunk into the planet of Nostramo when he crashed so much that he was near the core, and then crawled its way out. This is freaking insane.
He was naked, but the absence of clothes did not trouble him. He knew nothing of modesty and took a moment to admire the perfection of his godlike physique. He laughed at the vanity of the thought, and with the grin of a man who knows the world is at his feet, pushed at the damaged section of the curved silver walls. The material was soft and pliant to his touch, and he easily bent the honeycombed structure open enough to allow him egress. He boosted himself up and climbed from the reflective interior like a newborn from a glittering chrysalis.
- Angel Exterminatus
A young, armourless Ferrus Manus effortlessly pushes and breaks through the metal of his pod, the same pod that survived crashing into Medusa.
Finally, the most telling feat in regards to the Lifting Strength of a Primarch comes from the recent novel, Wolfsbane. In it, Leman Russ enters the "Underverse" (AKA, the Warp) after taking part in a spiritual ritual on the world of Fenris. There, he wanders through the Fenrisian Underworld, which is naturally a fragment of the Immaterium, and enters the Hall of the Fenrisian God of the Dead.
There, he is forced to perform three impossible trials to prove his worth. These being: Drink Mjod from a horn, wrestle an old lady, and lift the god's pet wolf, ecept that the mjod is actually the ocean of Fenris, the old lady is actually Old Age itself, and the pet wolf is Death itself.
Here is how he performs against the old woman:
The old woman gave him a toothless smile; then rushed him, moving so quickly he was caught entirely by surprise She locked her arms about his leg. Arms that looked as feeble as kindling possessed a terrifying strength. At her touch his flesh drilled, and the strength flowed from his leg. His knee budded. With a tremendous heave she flipped him over onto his back. Before he could get up, she sprang upon his chest and knelt upon him. A bag of feathers weighed more, and yet she crushed the breath from his lungs until he was gasping.
The wolves chanted, and Russ recognised in their growling speech the numbers used on Fenris, 'Fyf, for, tra, twa, onn!' They howled and yipped and banged their lanxes. Harassed looking wights drifted among them, topping up their drinks as quickly as they were spilled.
The old woman slipped off his chest so cautiously Russ thought she might stumble and break her wasted bones. 'First round to Mother Erla!' howled the Erlking. 'Again!'
The second time Leman Russ was better prepared. The old woman came at him with the same blinding speed. This time he caught her shoulders, and their arms locked. His calloused primarch's hands gripped shoulders no more substantial than sticks wrapped in paper, but in them was the fortitude of mountains. She pushed at him hard, stronger than a full-grown konungur. Russ pitted all his potency against the crone, but it was not enough. Again, the chill of ice and weakness crept into his limbs, starting in his biceps where she held him so viciously, and spreading to his bones and thence his organs. Deep aches plagued him. His joints locked. His vision dimmed. His legs trembled, and the woman forced him down to one knee, then the other, so that his eye-line was level with her gummy mouth. She released one of his enfeebled arms, grabbed him by the hair, and gently pushed his face down onto the iron-hard ice where she held him as the wolves counted down from five, banging out time with their lanxes and horns whether they were full or not.
Russ struggled to rise. The weight of a world was upon him, a cold world, composed of ice and hatred. Too much for any man to bear, primarch or not.
(...)
The third time he moved first attacking with a baresarks fury. The old woman met him, her spindle limbs set against his. He pushed and strained until the sinews stood out on his neck. He might have pushed a mountain back with greater ease. The crone would not budge and so Russ pushed all the harder. By dint of superhuman exertion, he forced the crone back half a step, bringing forth a gasp of amazement from the man-wolves. But the mightier the effort he exerted, the quicker his strength fled and this time, without the Erl-mother doing ought but hold him in place, he sank to the ground and the chanting of the wolves resumed its prior volume. His enfeebled fingers slipped from her arms, and Russ flopped to the floor, where he let out an involuntary groan.
- Wolfsbane
Russ is described as pushing with strength enough to push a mountain with greater ease, and then continues to push harder until he manages to force her (Old Age) back a step.
And his performance agains the pet wolf:
Fur enveloped him. It was soft as a woman's breath, warm as a good spring day. He pushed under the beast until his forearms were completely beneath it, and shoved.
Asleep, the wolf was a deadweight, 'as heavy and boneless as a water resupply sac for a void ship. Russ could not move it at all.
He tried again. His face reddened. A grunt of effort escaped his lips. If this were a mortal wolf, he would have been able to heave the thing onto his shoulders and shift it without breaking a sweat. But like the old woman before, the wolf was as immovable as Asaheim itself.
Russ stood straight, and shook black hairs from his arms. The wolf had not stirred throughout the whole of his attempt.
(...)
Russ shot him a black look, then went to the rear of the wolf. The wolf's back legs were crossed. He eyed the uppermost paw, then spat upon his hands, rubbed them together and slid them around the leg away from the sensitive pads. He bent his legs, preparing to lift. He took in a deep breath, focused, and heaved.
He could not budge it. The paw was no bigger than a feasting plate, but heavier than a Land Raider.
Back straining, Russ pulled at the paw. His face turned crimson to the roots of his hair. He let out a bellow of frustration.
The paw shifted from the ground, creeping upwards fractions of an inch at a time. 'A fine feat!' shouted the Erlking. 'Now you must move the rest of him.'
The wolves laughed and banged their implements on the tables. Russ heaved harder, pushing from his legs, the muscles in his back on the verge of tearing. Up the paw went, past Russ' knees, then past the top of his thighs. Slow as a glacier inching its way down the mountains into the sea, Russ drew himself upright. His teeth were damped, knuckles of his interlaced fingers white, until he had the leg high off the ground.
At this disturbance to its slumber the wolf shivered, and pushed out its paw, sending Russ flying backwards with such force he cracked the post he landed against. On breath ragged with the effort, he tasted blood.
- Wolfsbane
The wolf (Death) is described first as being as heavy as the water supply tanks of a spaceship (Unquantifiable, but Warhammer ships have been known to transport millions of tons of supply), then it is compared to the ******* continent of Asahaim... And then with a Land-raider tank (Which only weight 72 tons, obvious low-end). In the end, Leman Russ only manages to lift one of the wolf's paws with extreme effort.
These two feats are very hard to quantify, but they seem to suggest that at their absolute-best, when pushing themselves so hard that their sinews snap, Primarchs can push mountains.
The Emperor of Mankind
The big guy. Like all the others, his Lifting Strength justification isn't very good.
Lifting Strength: At least Class T+, likely far higher (Should be far superior than his Primarch Angron, who can gradually climb out of a collapsed mountain. Can toss giant metallic space aliens across planets/from Earth to Mars. Tossed a Plasma Core which was a kilometer in diameter into the Warp)
Whatever for the first half. The second half is absolutely incorrect, though. We have absolute no idea as to how the battle between the Emperor and the Void Dragon went, and it is never implied that the Emperor literally punched the Dragon into mars.
As for the Dragon's size, it's impossible to quantify as its very being defies the laws of geometry and science and folds through multiple dimensions and non-euclidian space.
Now in regards to the Plasma Core, that is actually true. One problem though, it is heavily downplayed. First, it is referring to the core of an artificial planet:
The scrapworld of Gorro; that was where it had happened, deep in junkyard space of the Telon Reach. The greenskin empire that once claimed dominion over its stars was in flames, assailed on all sides by the inexhaustible armies of the Imperium. The aliens' empire was being overturned, their muddy fortress-worlds burning, but not quickly enough.
Gorro was the key.
Adrift in the distant light of a bloated red sun, where no planet had ever been wrought by inexorable time and gravity, it drifted on an erratic path. Not a wanderer, an intruder.
- The Wolf of Ash and Fire
However, it is a very small planet. The core area is only a hundred kilometers below surface:
Sejanus had no idea where they were. Everything was smoke and ash and blood. Three of his squad were dead already, and they hadn't even laid eyes on the enemy. Red light painted the interior of the smoke-filled drop pod, dripping wet where Argeddan and Kadonnen's bodies had been explosively gutted by spikes of penetrating debris. Feskan's head rolled at his feet, leaving spirals of blood on the floor.
The drop pod's boosters had failed and what should have been a controlled landing with the rest of the Fourth Company instead became a violent descent through hundreds of layers of honeycombed scrap towards Gorro's core.
According to the squalling, static-filled sensorium on his visor, his company was around two hundred kilometres above him. The reek of scorched metal and rotten food poured in through tears in the side of the drop pod.
- Wolf of Ash and Fire
We get no description of the world's artificial core's size, but the Emperor does lift it and throw it into the Warp... With telekinesis:
The Emperor clenched his fists and the air around the seething plasma ball folded. It turned sickeningly inwards, as though reality was merely a backdrop against which the dramas of the galaxy were played out.
And where it folded, the spaces behind were horribly revealed, great abysses of crawling chaos and unlimited potential. Howling voids where the combined lives of this galaxy were but motes reflected in the cosmic dust storm. An empyrean realm of the never-born, where nightmares were birthed in the foetid womb of mortal lust. Things of void-cold form writhed in the darkness, like a million snakes of ebon glass coiled in endless, slithering knots.
Horus stared deep into the abyss, repulsed and fascinated by the secret workings of the universe.
Even as he watched, the Emperor drew the fabric of the world together, sealing them around the greenskin plasma core. The effort was costing him dear, the golden light at his heart waning with every passing second.
And then it was done.
A thunderous bang of air rushed to fill the void left by the plasma fire, and the backwash blew back into the chamber in a gale of sulphurous wind.
The Emperor fell to one knee, his head bowed.
Horus was at his side a heartbeat later.
'What did you do?' said Horus, helping his father to his feet. The Emperor looked up, colour already returning to his wondrous features.
'Sent the plasma core into the aether,'said the Emperor, 'but it will not last long. We must withdraw before the warp fold implodes and takes everything with it. The entire mass of this scrapworld will be soon crushed as surely as if it had fallen into the grip of a black hole.'
- The Wolf of Ash and Fire
If we are going to scale The Emperor's Lifting Strength to Telekinesis, just scale him to the vastly inferior Malcador the Sigillite, who threw Saturn's moon Titan into the Warp. Or at least divide his strength by upward scaling his physical strength from the Primarchs, and his TK strength from Malcador.
Conclusion
The Warhammer 40,000 Lifting Strength stats are bad. I need your help to fix them.
