The Outcast Dead - Uttam vs. Tagore - what the hell went wrong there?

[Servant of the Emperor]

Okay, first up here's a SPOILER WARNING FOR THE OUTCAST DEAD.
There, now you can read on, if you wanna spoil stuff.





I am in complete shock and disbelief.
The "duel" between Custodian Uttam and World Eater Tagore - what the hell snapped inside McNeill's head for him to write that?
It's a naked Space Marine fighting an armed and armoured Custodian Guard and killing him, without any further injury than a few broken teeth - no broken or severed limbs, no nasty internal damage, he basically kicks the *** of one of the Emperor's Very Finest, and only breaks a nail.

I was horrified with that.
Now, it may just be me, but I've always been told that the Custodian Guard are the best of the best. They are more than equal to the Space Marines, as is their gear.
Now I see one slapped around by a Sergeant and I hear the word "humiliation!" in that Unreal Tournament voice in the back of my head.

Also, secondary and not-quite-important question - how did he survive the whole storm of fire/las that the auto-turrets rained on the cells, seeing how he stayed outside?

Have I got it all wrong? Anyone got any clue how that could happen? McNeill smoking too much of something or am I the one smoking it?

[wittdooley]

No.. I'm sort of with you on that one. Whenever a Custodes dies to less than reasonable circumstances, I question it a bit. However, remember that Tagore does have the Butcher's Nails implant, so he's being pumped so full of junk that it's possible he is, in fact, more capable than a Custodes. I mean, Ken Griffey Jr. was without a doubt a much better hitter than Sammy Sosa. Sosa hit more homers when he was on the juice. Maybe it's as simple as that.

In the 2nd question, are you talking about the prison break? If so...I thought he barely contained himself enough to stay in the cell.... maybe I'm wrong.

[Anggul]

To be fair... the custodes have the potential to be the best. Sitting around on Terra doing next to nothing without a hope of actually getting into a decent fight isn't very good training/combat experience though.

Still, the very fact that he was in full armour and equipment means he should have won.

[Servant of the Emperor]

No.. I'm sort of with you on that one. Whenever a Custodes dies to less than reasonable circumstances, I question it a bit. However, remember that Tagore does have the Butcher's Nails implant, so he's being pumped so full of junk that it's possible he is, in fact, more capable than a Custodes. I mean, Ken Griffey Jr. was without a doubt a much better hitter than Sammy Sosa. Sosa hit more homers when he was on the juice. Maybe it's as simple as that.

In the 2nd question, are you talking about the prison break? If so...I thought he barely contained himself enough to stay in the cell.... maybe I'm wrong.

I wrote a long reply to this, then it seems to have disappeared.
Basically, it went along the lines of this:
A bar brawler high on drugs fighting a ninja will last longer than a bar brawler who isn't on drugs, but in the end the superior technique and training of the ninja will break the man eventually.
And that's not counting armour and weapons.

Aquillon or whatever the dude was called, the one with the big sword in First Heretic, he took down a group of Marines before being taken down.

Now, about the prison break, first I have to add something else that annoyed me: the biggest, baddest Alcatraz of Doom of the Imperium isn't properly psi-shielded?
I can only hope it is because a lot of their wards blew out when Magnus arrived, like in the Whisper Tower (or whatever that was called) or it just makes no sense.
The whole Atharva-psychic-breakout struck me as a (kinda cheap) way of making an impossible prison break happen.

I wrote the quote before, but this time I won't bother, check out lines 2-6 on page 246 - I get the distinct impression he remains outside the walls and on purpose. But I could be wrong, English is my second language and sometimes, I get things wrong.

[Servant of the Emperor]

Double-post it seems

[isotope99]

It wasn't a completely 1on1 duel. IIRC he was distracted by someone the KSons guy was mind controlling.

[Servant of the Emperor]

My long reply appears gone. Either way, the gist of it was, that if a bar brawler, who's high on drugs, fights a ninja, then the bar brawler will hold out longer than usual, but eventually the ninja will win, due to his better technique and higher grade of training.

I also found the notion that the biggest, baddest prison in the Imperium isn't properly psi-shielded completely laughable (if it wasn't so tragic) - as I see it, it was a bad bad excuse for making an impossible prison break possible.

About Tagore not dying, he presses himself against the outer wall of the cell, but does not enter it. On page 246, at the top. I might have misunderstood it though, seeing how English is, after all, my second language.


It wasn't a completely 1on1 duel. IIRC he was distracted by someone the KSons guy was mind controlling.

I do not recall reading anywhere at all that Atharva in any way interfered in the duel, so no, I'd assume it was a completely one on one duel.

[long reply still gone, I wrote this afterwards, then wrote the other one when this failed to appear either. Now it's appeared.]

[Deadlift]

Nope, I don't buy the "Custodes sit around doing nothing all day" idea. I have always read that the Custodes are to space marines, as space marines are to humans. I would think in-between sitting around, they train harder than any space marine. As for Tagore being jacked up to his eyeballs enough to even the odds. Again too unbelievable. Everything previously said about the Custodes would indicate that Uttam should have taken Tagore apart much like a Matador would a raging bull. Ok the bull wins sometimes but not usually.
Personally I think this fight, whilst entertaining is a little too far for me in the context of the lore of warhammer 40k. Maybe my soft spot for the Custodes is part of my issue with this fight clouds my view.

[wittdooley]

Tagore is hardly a bar brawler. And he was crudely armoured. I still contend that those butchers nails do it.

I thought the Psi-Shielding in the prison got shut down....

[plawolf]

I was struggling to suspend disbelief long enough to take that fight in myself, but to be fair, it was stated earlier on that Uttam's reflexes have been badly degraded by some Orky bioweapon that pretty much invalidated him out of frontline combat duties for the Custodes, which is why he ended up being a prison guard.

It is still pretty stupid how McFail has a World Eater punch through artificer armor with hims bare hands. And he punched through the breastplate, which would be pretty much the strongest part of the armor, ruling out even the possibility that he ripped open the joints.

The Custodians' guardian spears are also written as if they were made of matchwood as the world eaters were breaking them in two for fun.

I can only assume he was high, drunk or both when he wrote that fight scene.

[Servant of the Emperor]

Tagore is hardly a bar brawler. And he was crudely armoured. I still contend that those butchers nails do it.

I thought the Psi-Shielding in the prison got shut down....

And Uttam is no ninja. D'oh.
I meant to say something with better technique and greater training will win the fight against someone simpler, but junked up.

He was crudely armoured? Do you consider a yellow prison bodyglove armour? I really don't.

I must have missed that part. As I read, Atharva was all "lol they think they got me cut off" because of all the anti-psyker gear, because he was just superduper powerful (though not powerful enough to heal Gyutha, for some reason) and just bypassed the psi-shielding, being more powerful than it was.
But I could be wrong...

And yea Plawolf, I thought about the ork toxin too, but it just...it still just doesn't make sense to me, every bit of 40k nerd inside me screams with nerdrage at such injustice done to the Custodian Guard.

[The Lyzer]

Armor and equipment aint everything =)

[Varinus]

I was struggling to suspend disbelief long enough to take that fight in myself, but to be fair, it was stated earlier on that Uttam's reflexes have been badly degraded by some Orky bioweapon that pretty much invalidated him out of frontline combat duties for the Custodes, which is why he ended up being a prison guard.

It is still pretty stupid how McFail has a World Eater punch through artificer armor with hims bare hands. And he punched through the breastplate, which would be pretty much the strongest part of the armor, ruling out even the possibility that he ripped open the joints.

The Custodians' guardian spears are also written as if they were made of matchwood as the world eaters were breaking them in two for fun.

I can only assume he was high, drunk or both when he wrote that fight scene.

I agree entirely with Plawolf. Yes, Tagore is a Berzerker Sergeant and yes the Custodian was way below peak efficiency but there is no way on Terra that he should be able to punch him to death through Custodian Armour, particularly where it would be strongest. That made no sense whatsoever. Having said that McNeill has a thing for doing really weird stuff for no better reason than it is needed for the immediate narrative - the worst example, for me, is where Fulgrim can dragon punch an Avatar to death, but fails to break the skin on Ferrus' cheek

[Dlatrex]

Hmmmm.... As best explanation we then have a Custodian who is out of practice, slowed due to previous injuries served in the line of duty, and perhaps mild lingering effects from the scrum he had with the guards who had been subject to Atharva's mind control vs. a Berzerker Sergeant who specializes in hand 2 hand combat full of hate drugs, but who is otherwise still naked. Do we have any other examples of naked marines successfully wrecking ceramite? I can't think of any other situation where either a loyalist or a heretic was able to get through power-armor without aid.

Uttam was also done a disservice when he 'came up short' at seeing Tagore being released. Even if he wasn't displaying fear, it was still a very human 'startled' reaction which the astartes and custodes training and reflexes are typically shown to completely prevent. It caused great stress for the reader, but I felt it did not show the custodes properly.

McNeill may have done better with the second fight: Saturnalia is basically shown to be able to handle two World Eaters simultaneously. It's true that he died, and probably did not have the tally that Aquillion did, but it does still show the Custodes as the superior combatant on the whole.

[Wildcard]

For 200 pages i kept coming back to that fight scene in prison. There are so many things that just felt wrong. Many of them are already described on the previous posts, but i want to give few points more:

- Even though one might argue that it was the arrogance of belief in prison guards own supremacy that allowed all that to happen i find it still too hard to digest.

- Those custodians would not have been placed in guard duty, unless they were supposed to be more than enough match for anything that was kept jailed.

- Being on a guard duty on terran prison does not mean a custodes will do 9-5 work and go for a beer and hang in a couch for the evening watching telly.. They do have their training schedules and sparring sessions like any other custodian or space marine.

- Basic custodian armor is by far more durable and protective than good power armor. There are some occasions where real good blow (with a gauntleted fist) will crack some part of the power armor, but generally those layered ceramite plates takes multiple hits to completely give up (thats why they are layered - it gives really much protective value than equal amount of non layered armor). There are only few weapons in imperial arsenal that would penetrate the chest plate with single shot, most weapons would require multiple hits in the same spot to chip and crack away layer by layer the armor.. Impossible for one mere space marine, no matter how high on drugs to be able to strike through. And even more unbelievable is that he wouldn't get his fist into a pulp while having so much force behind the critical punch.

- I mean, whats the point of elite super guard if they cannot beat your ordinary troop on 1 on 1. You do not put, under any circumstance a handicapped person on guard duty, no matter how honored that person might be.

- And why not have Angron take the custodians and make Berserkers your honor guard if they are so over the top? :D