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Also wow I can't believe I forgot about these.

  • This is the scale of conceptual manipulation Madail performed with the Necrosphere. Bolded stuff is Madail speaking.
"This is the death of all dreams. The voice was authoritative, proselytising. It did not feel like his. It felt like the whisper he had heard in the fight against the Word Bearers. Past and present and to come, all the hopes are here. Their murder has happened, the promises are over. This is their silence. The end of words."

  • Sanguinius directly states that every fight with Madail's forces has also taken place on a symbolic/metaphorical level.
"He thought about what he could say, even to his brothers. 'We did not triumph through brute force. We have been confronting the symbols. Our successful attacks have been symbolic too. They have been the only ones possible, and targeted at the heart of what opposed us. This war has taken us far beyond the realm of the rational. And think about why we are here at all. Why do you think destroying Davin will defeat the Ruinstorm? Because this is where Horus fell, and this is where the war began. The logic is symbolic. Very well, then. We must follow the symbolism to its end. We must stand on the spot where Horus fell.'"

I'm going to reread the entire fight and see if there's anything else I forgot.
 
That's not what those are there for. The first just shows Madail isn't exactly on a low-end of the scale. The second shows the fight with Madail isn't purely physical, but an actual battle of symbols and ideas.

I'm rereading the actual fight to see if there's anything more clear.
 
Idea and concept are not synonymous. A concept is an abstraction of something (Concept of a car is "autonomous moving vehicle with four wheels"), while an idea is a mental representation of something (a plan on how to break into a building is an idea, but no concept).

If one sees concepts soley as mind constructs, then one could probably say that concepts are special kinds of ideas, but not vice versa.


That said, if we talk about conceptual manipulation, I believe we usually don't talk about concepts as mental constructs on this wiki (or at least I don't remember a case where this was done). Usually we talk about concepts in the sense of the abstract building blocks of the world (to formulate it really badly) and if we do so they are nothing like ideas.

It is easier to explain on an example:

If we say someone uses conceptual manipulation to erase the concept of magic, what we usually refer to is that magic stops to exist and can not be used anymore. The laws of nature are basically rewritten so that magic stops existing due to the erasure of the concept of magic.

If we talk about a concept as a mental construct on the other hand the range of effects of erasing it would go fro one person forgetting what magic is (only affecting the concept of magic that this one person has in its thoughts) to everyone forgetting what magic is (erasing the general understanding on magic), but magic itself it technically still perfectly useable and still exists.


If I am wrong and we actually intermix the two things, then we should in the future aim to make distinctions in the descriptions on profiles, as the effect is completly different depending on the interpretation and so is the resistance one requires to withstand it.
 
I fail to see how this applies to a verse where "mental constructs" are actual, metaphysical things that make up reality. Thus is the nature of the Immaterium. That's what it's all about.
 
Azathoth the Abyssal Idiot said:
That's not what those are there for. The first just shows Madail isn't exactly on a low-end of the scale. The second shows the fight with Madail isn't purely physical, but an actual battle of symbols and ideas.
I'm rereading the actual fight to see if there's anything more clear.
Considering that Sanguinius and Madail fought on a symbolical / metaphorical level, I can agree with you.

Fits with Leman Russ and Magnus trading blows on every level of existence, too.
 
@Matt

Yeah, not to mention the Lion realizing his attacks have to hit on a symbolic/metaphorical level to have any effect, as well.

"The Lion knew the strengths of myth on Caliban. He valued the light of his father's reason above all superstition, but he understood the power of symbolism, and of the foundational truths that could animate it. The barriers the Legions had fought through on the journey to Davin had been as much symbolic as they had been physical. There was a principle to the warp and its denizens that the Lion could still see only imperfectly, but appeared to be in the order of a reification of the abstract. Ideas became things. Symbols became fortresses. And so he had to fight the daemonic on the very grounds that gave it so much awful power. His attack had to have symbolic strength, too. If anyone other than Guilliman and himself struck the portal now, they would dilute the strength of the moment. He and Guilliman were hitting the portal with more than their own strength and the power of their weapons. They were turning the force of meaning against it. Meaning had almost destroyed them. They had pulled back from the edge of their ruin."
 
Azathoth the Abyssal Idiot said:
I fail to see how this applies to a verse where "mental constructs" are actual, metaphysical things that make up reality. Thus is the nature of the Immaterium. That's what it's all about.
I don't know anything about the verse, so I can not really know by myself if verse specific rules influence it. So you tell me:

Is it so that the ideas referred to here would fundamentally change how the world works, if they are changed, so that if, for example, the idea of something doesn't exist anymore it becomes impossible for it to ever exist or happen?
 
In Warhammer there is this thing called the Warp. Also known as the Immaterium.

It is the antithesis to reality. It lacks space, time, logic, matter, physics, etc etc. It is shaped and defined by thoughts, emotions, ideas, dreams, desires, symbols, metaphors. Things which are not actually tangible, and are rather more abstract. Or, as you put them, mental constructs.

All these things are real in the Warp. Every dream, desire, hope, thought, emotion ripples in the Warp, defining things. Sometimes these thoughts / emotions / idea coalesce together to form greater "Beings" in the Warp, the greatest of which are the Chaos Gods, which are the four primary aspects of reality itself.

And just as our thoughts and emotions shape the Warp, the Warp shapes the physical universe. Slaanesh may supposedly have been born from the collective debauchery of the entire Aeldari Empire, but it actually has always existed and simultaneously never existed since the dawn of time. Slaanesh is all desire, all pleasure, and all pain. Without it, these concepts wouldn't even exist.

The Daemons in Warhammer are either independent minor Warp-entities, or shards of their respective Gods. Which is why metaphors, ideas, and symbols are so important when battling daemons. They are ideas made manifest, not physical beings.
 
@DT

Basically what Matt said. The Immaterium is the counterpart to the Materium; the metaphysical to everything that is physical. It's a bit difficult to properly explain without delving more into the setting, but I'll try.

Roboute Guillima sees the bones of Imperium Secundus within the Necrosphere. This shows that the Imperium Secundus and the idea + philosophy behind it no longer exist within the material universe. It is an ideal that has died. However, were this physical manifestation of it, and by extension the idea itself, to disappear entirely, it would mean such a thing could never exist, because there would be no such thing as the idea, philosophy, or concept of "Imperium Secundus". I'm hoping I worded this in a way that wasn't too ****** up.
 
If it were just ideas being physically manifested in the warp I would say no, but from what you said about the interaction if Slaanesh for example is killed nobody in existence would be able to feel pain, since pain doesn't exist anymore, yes?

In that case ideas seem in function similar enough to concepts to be taken as such, so it should be fine.
 
@DT

Essentially, yeah. For instance, Nurgle is powered and formed by despair and decay, yet he is those things, and if he did not exist, then they could and would not, either. Due to the nature of the Immaterium, the Chaos Gods are abstract, acausal, and self-perpetuating.
 
Also not entirely related, but I thought the feat of Sanguinius and Madail clashing in this vortex of unreality was pretty neat.

"Angel and priest trapped the other's weapon in their body. The vortex spun them. Power burst around them. They clashed in the heart of a crucible where reality was made and unmade, where futures birthed and died. The enginarium vanished from Sanguinius' sight. The spike in his chest, the icon of the priest's office, sent the torments of the future through him. Psychic waves shook him, seeking to detach him from purpose and throw him into an abyss of unfettered pride. He balanced between two tempests, abstract storms of triumph and of the fall into the blackness. He could barely make out the shape of the daemon before him. He held on to the reality of his foe. He cut deeper with the Blade Encarmine. The spear grew hot in his grip as it burned the daemonflesh."
 
Also, since the only thing really being discussed at all is Conceptual Manipulation Resistance, should we just add everything else for right now, since it's unanimous?
 
Might as well. Was gonna ask to help adding them but i have a really bad headache so...do the work for now bois!
 
Would it though? I kind of think it'd operate like say, Masada's Dies Irae series, where you have characters there that can not only inflict physical damage but you also have them attacking your soul. Or in simplier words, attacking on both planes or fronts at the same time.

Doesn't the Primarchs (and their father, the Emperor) have something like this? If Lemun Russ and Magnus to Emperor and Chaos Horus can fight on multiple planes at the same time should give that in a way, no?
 
I usually just write "Can attack on every level of existence simultaneously" at the end of the Powers and Abilities, with not power attached to it.
 
I get ignored once more...

Okay how's this then: If you're going to add that, at least it should be noted clearly on what the "every level of existence" part entail.

And i'm going on a limb and assume by every, it means physical, mental, spiritual, and psychic right?
 
So... what's the difference between mental and psychic here?

Isn't psychic a branch term for most powers in 40K?
 
Back for just one comment.

Okay so in that case we have physical, mental/psychic, spiritual, and "conceptual" which sounds like we'll have it as "symbolic/metaphorical" yeah?

@Azzy
 
Hmm. The last one adding as that sounds kind of weird even for this verse. I probably would just post the last one as conceptual for easier wording than symbolic/metaphorical level even if they mean the same. But that seems okay enough and if needed should someone ask what that means, we can at least direct them to here (specifically on the Lion part you posted earlier above).
 
For the "Attack on every level of existence" thing, maybe something like this?

"Can attack on every level of existence (Physical, mental, spiritual, metaphorical)" linking each level to the power that does the most similar thing (mental to mind manip, spiritual to soul manip etc)
 
Basically what Kaltias wrote. Looks about exactly what I had in mind.

Also yes, I kind of lied on the one comment thing but that's only because I'm only awake enough for one thread (remember the headache comment from earlier above? Yeah...).
 
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