Alpharius and Eskrador, What exactly happened?

Lay, perhaps consider this. The sight of a supposed Primarch charging at you. Even an Astartes would take pause from this. Enough time for whoever it was doing the charging to royaly mess you up.

And if they don't, the plan fails.

So instead of ambushing or isolating Guilliman from his men (which they manage to do afterwards), they throw an imposter into the fray and hope that he lasts long enough for Guilliman himself to show up and finish him off.

And the only reason why Guilliman doesn't notice that Alpharius hits like a common grunt or why anyone else doesn't get suspicious about the fact that every Alpha Legionnaire looks almost identical is because they are such obnoxious jerks.

Nah, that doesn't convince me.

I'm going to have to fall back to my position of this is most likely propaganda spread by one of our agents to:
1. Make the Ultrasmurfs look completely foolish.
2. Perhaps, as its been suggested, to allow our Primarch(s) to operate without worrying about being hunted.

If you remember too, it was difficult to distinguish the Primarchs from many of the other Legionnaires. Not even a thousand-year-honed logokine could do it decisively, it took races of hundreds of thousands of years of psychic and psionic heritage to do it. They were really tall and strong even for Astartes after they received their gene-seed.

The dudes with the high ground automatically have close combat advantage, especially if they are heavy. That's ancient war wisdom. And it was a point-blank ambush Alpha-style, producing a shock effect that could convince the defender that their leader was a Primarch if he fought with enough ferocity, which an Astartes ambush attacker would be likely to do. Alpharius would have hand-picked and hand-drilled him. And he might have worn Alpharus' plate and panoply, which was nearly no different to a battle brother's and which he let Sheed Ranko do on Nurth.

And Guilliman wasn't the brightest tool in the box. He was a mental dullard who needed codices, circumstance and routine to get by. He morely saw a conceited opportunity in killing Alpharius rather than a strategic objective. If Alphie had Guilliman's time, he would have produced a record even shinier than his 'more experienced' brother. As I said, pride, ego, verbal cheap shots. Gets to orbit and just says he won't bother with someone so slithery and "dishonourable". You mean, Bob, you can't handle it!

Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Toolliman AKA Roboute Guilliman... the Paris Hilton of the early Imperium.

wonderful analogy. I think thats kinda what I was going for earlier about tricking them. Now I don't know about saying Bobby the Box wasn't too bright. He was a Primarch after all. Course many of the other Primarchs have shown to have a greater tactical knowledge over the years. But there is something to be said for the fact that his codex is the standard for the SM(this may just be because of control but that means its well written.).

True. But compared to say Alpharius, Horus and Perturabo, he wasn't really there. And he was amazingly pig-headed, which is a greater form of ignorance than not being able to get a Space Marine Legion to conquer a planet which is not really that difficult at all and is why the Codex came into place. It was for control rather than tactical efficiency. Man, the dude nearly started the war all over again which was kinda what he wanted the Codex to be accepted to prevent. He had supernaturally keen ears, but the same couldn't be said for the brain between them.

I think that it was meant to be 'Alpharius' (And by that I'm including either half), that was killed. The impression I have is of Alpharius being pretty noble towards his fellow legionnaires; I'm not sure telling someone else to sacrifice themselves on his behalf would be one of the choices he may make. Well, mostly.

Although the veracity of the original story is in doubt, the message remains the same; cut off the head and the body lives on, and in fact grows stronger - the very reason behind the hydra symbol.

Really, whether it was Alpharius who died, or not, is almost mute; the legion concocted either the story or engineered the actual events to present a specific 'outward persona' to the Ultramarines and/or the Imperium as a whole.

I love this thread. People take my incoherent rantings and make them sound pretty

Very true on the first paragraph. If ever I got to talk to a Primarch of my choice, I reckon I'd get the best manners and most enriching chat out of Alph'. Maybe someone volunteered. Although, to be honest, they were not scared of making tactical sacrifices.

Or perhaps that's just what you want to see in Guilliman.

I will admit that much, I guess. Minus the want. I did lose it a bit to zeal there. Maybe Al' did on Eskrador. I was simply arguing the odds are in favour of his survival, despite the actual outcome, if indeed it is definitely written what happened somewhere.

I gota disagree.
The odds are not in his favor.

I stand by the reasoning that the evidence is still far too circumstantial to assume the battle took place.