fisrt of there is no die hard fans who said that cawl is importand in fact they said he is deus ex machina and retcon of 40k and shity one second of we don't talk about cawl here Here's what doesn't make sense: how many AdMech members currently exist in 40k? Hundreds of billions, trillions, more? Next, extrapolating from this, how many AdMech members have there been over the last 10k years? Probably quadrillions. We know that Cawl is hardly the first or only heretek and yet not one out of those countless people, all of them tinkering and augmenting themselves in a myriad of ways, have achieved even a tiny fraction of what Cawl has. Just making a better bolter or new mark of power armor would have already made him one of the greatest Magi in history and then he does so much more that it's beyond ridiculous. They've set him up to be such an anomaly that he's no less special than the Emperor. A once in a billion years type of person. Imagine if tomorrow DC released a super hero that was better, smarter, and more powerful than everyone else and was nust hand waived him away by saying "yeah he's been here the whole time and participated in all these super important events even though you've never seen him before" would you accept that or would you be calling that out as a mary sue author insert. Cawl isn't young or inexperienced, however he does things he reasonably should not be able to do given in universe constraints on the Tech Priests. If any Tech Priest could become just as skilled at different fields of study as him, then why didn't they. Cawl is a nearly messianic figure at this point, regardless of whether he's liked or not he is doing things that he should not be able to do. In doing so he is rendering the rest of the Mechanicus irrelevant, this is people's main complaint. If Cawl is objectively the best, smartest, most powerful Tech Priest who can do whatever he wants up to and including breaking previously stated in universe rules (taking control of Necron tech) and he can clone himself effectively allowing him to be everywhere at once, what's the point of the rest of the Mechanicus? He makes everyone else pointless that's the sign of a poorly thought out character in any setting.
Warhammer 40K metaphysics are simply originated from the dualism between Materium & Immaterium, Emperor tried to balance the psychic and physical qualities of humanity but as Live! From Black library channel guy said: His works are so rushed and unnecessarily secretive even among the Imperium humanity allies that causes Emperor's projects in shambles The hubris of Emperor's pasts during Unification Wars, Great Crusade and Horus Heresy are ironically absolved by his successors regardless of the Imperial Cult or Chaos-oriented ones, they will be instrumental in repelling Tyrannids, mending the Dark Eldar to be less sadistic with new beacons, giving Necrons more 'humane' purposes to unified themselves, all while threatening Imperial Cult's status quo to enact The End Times, The King in Yellow also are opposed by those in Imperial Cult's bureaucracy and administrations which already rotting for 10.000 years and further after Age of Apostasy, Months of Shame, etc The End Times in Warhammer 40K will end with both bang and whimper, or at least as series of Implosions from the legacies of War in Heaven and Dark Age of Technological marvels, meanwhile Trazyn, Vulkan, Farsight and Cegorach are breakdancing and dabbing surrounding his magnificent historical collections to the dismay of soyfaced clone Fulgrim (with real lesser warp god soul of his own) are seething in confusion and laughter as all of them seeing all of Undivided Chaos, 99.99% of Imperium's worlds, all of Xenos factions and Tyrannids' Hivemind destroying each other in The End Times of Warhammer 40K
yeah Cawl and Bile are like Human mirrors of the Necrons and Dark Eldar. when I saw some of Bile's creations, I immediately thought of the works of the Drukhari Homunculi and their fleshcraft abominations. and many Skiitari are almost as mindless as Necron Soldiers, and Cawl himself is almost entirely mechanical at this point, he even has a body plan shared with some Cryptek Lords.
@@nicholai7300let's hope not. Although I don't mind another grand war that leads the Traitors to Terra again. They need to finish HH, The Scowering, and do some novels of The Dark Age of Tech.
Cawl became one of my favorite characters. Hes just so delightfully arrogant yet can somehow back it up. Its great! Also that he intentionally retains his humanity is a great twist to the usual Mechanicum philosophies.
This. I love that cawl doesn’t praise the mechanicus to the point where he thinks new technology is heresy and believes most of the mechanicus are morons. The only thing I really dislike about the character, is his looks. I think he’s just one of the ugliest, stupid, looking character in all of 40k. Nothing about him looks cool at all.
Yes I think for Cawl always appreciated the human desire to achieve and he didn’t want to lose that piece… really just his internal drive to continue to be great. He wants to shape the future by creating. Rediscovering will not make him happy
I think there is one feat that is forgotten about Bile. In the book, "Black Tide" bile hides his facility on a tyranid world using a zoanthrope's pheromones to confuse where he was located.
@@qwaeszrdxtfcgvbqwaeszrdxtf5733 I think he means a world being 'occupied' by Tyranids (like how a soldier would 'occupy' an enemy outpost on their way through hostile territory.)
@@woohoogdo The question isn't 'could' he, the question is *WOULD* he? Even for Cawl that sounds a bit Much to ask. Wouldn't he had rather glassed the planet, then dug a hole in the remaining rock?
And after a hour later Bellsarius comes back and says, "Your Machine had proven incable of handling my designs." Translation: it took me an hours to crash the game. it would of been shorter but I have better things to do.
Cawl would absolutely make the most insanely efficient, self-reliant factory imaginable in like a hour, maybe two if he is doing something else at the same time.
I gave the edge to Cawl just bc he has to work with a guillotine over his head. He's always either hiding or dumbing down his work for fear of being labeled a heretic by Gman or the mechanicus. We see Bile's unrestricted peak. We dont know what Cawl's is.
Agreed, and that's a good way to put it. Cawl is a one man cabal with the amount secrets he keeps from his peers, his general long-term goal causes him to innovate and create and it seems generally like a good thing; Bile's long term goal has him travelling world to world flaying and torturing whatever life he can find... Even if his goal of creating a race to supercede humanity is ultimately meant to be for the greater good, all he has done so far is make perfect fuel for the chaos gods to feed on.
I adore the end of Genefather as it focuses on the values of love and respect, which was a very pleasant surprise. Especially Bile, a being so evil and monstrous, is still allowed to have positive traits and moments where you see a kinder side of him. And Cawl is ironically one of the most human characters in all of 40k. Especially his relationship with his friend/boyfriend Friedisch is just heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.
@@niacyn2548because they have to twist anything remotely interesting into some weird LGBT nonsense. May this series never become mainstream we all know what would happen
The way Porter moves and fights is so sick. She must have the calorie intake of a small farm. But the way she's built makes it read like she's one of the fastest individuals in the setting.
IIRC all iterations of the new men were designed to be 100% capable of breeding with all forms of baseline humanity (not sure if abhumans as well) with all the children being born as new men. This is why there has been issues of entire populations of new men springing up on planets. So not really an issue of extermination so much as (sorta) forced and rapid evolution.
I love their interactions in Genefather. And it basically boils down to Bile saying, 'oh when you tinker with the emperor's work in a lab paid for by the imperium you're a hero, but I have to play chop shop Bob out here and do better work, I'm a monster'
Fabius Bile is one of my favorite 40K characters. He embodies the mad scientist trope really well (not to mention the fact that his TTS counterpart is just f*cking awesome! xD)
If you haven't read it, Wolfsbane is primarily a space wolf and Leman Russ Horus Heresy novel, but Cawl features heavily in it, and its actually the events in Wolfsbane that lead to his backstory in The Great Work.
(Spoilers) Man the book was really good. I was scared for what the ending could be as I went through it. Bile might be smarter but Cawl knows what he is fighting for. He is fighting for humanity, his friends, his family. With the Great Work it gave me the vibe that Cawl saw all of the primas marines as his sons but Alpha Primas is his first born and actually is his son. It’s interesting to see Cawl be ever so lonely and has remade his best friend and has a made a son and both are fed up with his shit.
If you're giving an edge for clarity of vision, they're also tied there. Cawl gets the monologue at the end, but it echoes what Bile had already been saying throughout the book.
@@Mondy667I’m on the 3rd book now myself, but it’s odd that Bile’s visit there is all in the past. Almost like there’s a side quest/book in between. It’s explained well enough, but it feels like there should be a novel there..
For me Cawl is the clear winner. Not due to his intellect but through his humor. After listening to both the Great Work and Genefather, the guy is absolutely hilarious and i love him.
Its interesting how Cawl, the man sworn into a faith where a core tenant is to not innovate, is himself one of the most innovative people in the galaxy. And then Bile, powered by chaos and change, struggles to make more than copies of imperfection.
He was from the time Innovation was still in gray area. Not to say mechanicus fully outlaw innovation, if one could point to something proven and prove the advancement came from that then it is okay😅 Also, undercover researches never stopped. Really high ranking magus wouldn't care about the rules all that much
My brother in christ, please go actually read the books for yourself before spouting nonsense. Fabius Bile is an atheist and probably the only marine left in existence that actually adheres to the imperial truth. He is certianly not "powered by chaos", and he doesn't struggle to make copies of imperfection, he can literally produce perfect clones of every Primarch. He just doesn't do it because he did it for Fulgrim and then changed his mind saying "the age of gods and monsters is over" before trading Fulgrim away to Trazyns collection.
On the topic of innovation, Cawl is so far ahead of the rest of his "peers" that it wouldn't be hard for him to reverse engineer xenos tech and build it so it looks nice and _Standard_ , then say it's an STC that he found in some far off cave on a dead planet. I think Cawl would argue that innovation is neccessary, not only for humanity but to keep himself occupied, of course humanity has completely twisted the original creed of the imperium, worshipping big E as a god when it's the opposite of what he wants, so in that regard Cawl would see innovation as an integral part to worshipping the Omnissiah even if the greater imperium sees it as heresy- because they're idiots, and I (Cawl) am a gigagenius chad scholar. Bile's goal is interesting and I admire that he rejects the ruinous powers completely, but he is an extremely twizted fella even without boons from the chaos gods. I think Cawl would beat him if they had to square up, they're both geniuses and physically nothing to scoff at, but neither are primarchs and Cawl is utterly chromed out with all his augments and dendrites. Like a comment from @Paradise2003 below this chain said "We see Bile's unrestricted peak. We dont know what Cawl's is."
Fair, maybe he can't repeat endless perfect Primarch clones, but seeing as he did an imperfect cloning of Horus followed by a perfect cloning of Fulgrim, it's fair to say he can reliably recreate Primarchs, even if they wouldn't go on a whole redemption arc like Fulgrim did. It does however piss me off that most lore youtuber just say whatever and the people in the comments talk even more nonsense without actually having any knowledge about the lore. Saying Fabius Bile is "powered by chaos" is ludicrous and saying that he's struggling to copy others is BS as well, as he managed to create a new lifeform out of Astartes geneseed, Eldar DNA and Human DNA that can naturally reproduce and kill a space marine 1v1 while the space marine is armed and they are naked.@@eliasmagus5086
One of the best 40K videos if seen in a long time! These characters are fascinating and important, they have more impact in the 40K universe than most others!
its kinda hinted that alpha Primus is a mix of a handful of traitor primarchs, bile claims he “senses the presence of the Cyclops” after Primus almost kills him with his psychic powers while personality wise he acts quite a lot like a form a Perty
fisrt of there is no die hard fans who said that cawl is importand in fact they said he is deus ex machina and retcon of 40k and shity one second of we don't talk about cawl here Here's what doesn't make sense: how many AdMech members currently exist in 40k? Hundreds of billions, trillions, more? Next, extrapolating from this, how many AdMech members have there been over the last 10k years? Probably quadrillions. We know that Cawl is hardly the first or only heretek and yet not one out of those countless people, all of them tinkering and augmenting themselves in a myriad of ways, have achieved even a tiny fraction of what Cawl has. Just making a better bolter or new mark of power armor would have already made him one of the greatest Magi in history and then he does so much more that it's beyond ridiculous. They've set him up to be such an anomaly that he's no less special than the Emperor. A once in a billion years type of person. Imagine if tomorrow DC released a super hero that was better, smarter, and more powerful than everyone else and was nust hand waived him away by saying "yeah he's been here the whole time and participated in all these super important events even though you've never seen him before" would you accept that or would you be calling that out as a mary sue author insert. Cawl isn't young or inexperienced, however he does things he reasonably should not be able to do given in universe constraints on the Tech Priests. If any Tech Priest could become just as skilled at different fields of study as him, then why didn't they. Cawl is a nearly messianic figure at this point, regardless of whether he's liked or not he is doing things that he should not be able to do. In doing so he is rendering the rest of the Mechanicus irrelevant, this is people's main complaint. If Cawl is objectively the best, smartest, most powerful Tech Priest who can do whatever he wants up to and including breaking previously stated in universe rules (taking control of Necron tech) and he can clone himself effectively allowing him to be everywhere at once, what's the point of the rest of the Mechanicus? He makes everyone else pointless that's the sign of a poorly thought out character in any setting.
Half of Modern medicine is feat of engineering tbh. There is the biology factor in it, but to maintain sterile systems and biomonitoring systems of today, we need extensive engineering. There's even a bachelor's degree thats associated with it. It's called biomedical engineering. On the flip side, we have biology entering engineering today, with biomimetic design taking the forefront to modifying and developing our current engineering systems. From compliant mechanisms in biomechanics to studying communication between ants in a colony to model swarm behavior for drones and studying deep sea bioluminescent creatures to further develop optical fibre tech, biology and engineering are getting together more than ever.
Bile is a perfect example of "Perfection is the enemy of Good Enough". There is something else to be considered other than pure intelligence and that is wisdom. And I think Cawl has that many times over Bile. sm
I think its interesting that both Cal and Bile where taught skills by Dark Eldar and Necros. Like they where doing just good enough for the old races to teach someone who is just starting to grasp the basics of what their tech and skill would be. Not saying either of them are dumb in anyway but just that they are starting to become an interest for the people who have gone through what they have.
I really wanted Trazyn to make an actual appearance (besides just a mention) in the novel. He has interacted with and assisted/stood against both Bile and Cawl at various points in their history; another link and similarity between these rivals.
I recently finished reading the Fabius Bile omnibus, and it made me a huge fan of Bile, and I recommend everyone here check out those books. A little bit of everything in them.
The First Heretic: Argel Tal and the other Word Bearers spent 7 months in the warp while from Lorgar and the others waiting for them outside the warp, it was 60 seconds…. It’s not uncommon or odd in any way at all! Loved this one though, keep it up brother!
It’d be interesting if Cawl ends up working alongside Tau at some point, making use of their AI knowledge to further his own implementation of it, and in turn some of them actively become his disciples. Regardless of what you think about the Tau, their growth is absolutely insane, and just think about what they could be capable of with even a fraction of the knowledge Cawl could teach them
I'd have to say Cawl, hands down is smarter. While Fabius is getting knowledge from different clones of himself, the knowledge he gains would be biased in Fabius's favor. I.E. seeing things from the same angle. Meanwhile Cawl's soul transference is him getting knowledge from different perspectives and angles. There is bias, but different kinds of bias from different sources, counteracting each other. I'd also like to point out Cawl is basically processing multiple selves at the same time, like actively working on multiple projects at the same time with the same mind, meanwhile Fabius has split minds that might be linked by wraithbone, but at the end of the day... Fabius is like a colony of ants and his original form is the queen so to speak that directs the hive. Cawl is more like.. well... a computer with many different processes running on it.
@@fmlAllthetime The point I was trying to make was the intelligence of Fabius is spread out across multiple versions of himself, separate instances so to speak. With Cawl its basically all in one to the point where he has to occasionally delete parts of his memory to make room for new memories. I'd say memory does play a part in intelligence in this manner I think Cawl definitely has Fabius beat. I don't think Fabius has had to delete his own memory just to make room for more lol.
Wouldn't that mean Cawls retention is worse by definition? @@winterwolf1250 Idk how Fabius wouldn't have to do the same shit considering how old he is, but ain't no one ever accused 40 k of making actual sense.
One of the key indicators of high intelligence is the ability to colate seemingly unrelated information and draw connections between them. Cawl having such a mastery of numerous fields exemplifies this, as his knowledge of engineering and technology directly effected his improvements of the primarus marines, from the steel cables reinforcing tendons to the cybernetic enhancements to their hearts allowing for a huge surge of strength when at deaths door. Bile, in his 100% focus on genetic engineering lacks the knowledge in other fields to compete with Cawl in that regard.
This seems as good a place as any to mention my pet tinfoil hat theory which is that what took Bile aback when he managed to examine Alpha Primus' genes wasn't that Cawl tried to make a homebrew Primarch as many speculate but rather it is that Cawl bootlegged the Grey Knight's method of artificially making a Blank to make the first viable Blank/Psyker Hybrid (as all Primarchs are implied to be inherently tied to the Warp), albeit one only barely held together by a dash of Vulkan's Perpetual Genes. Something that can wield the warp but is simultaneously immune to Chaos' influence? That is something that would get Bile's attention I think. It would also explain the reason Primus is constantly in pain (his Blank side is constantly annihilating the Psyker part of his soul, the damage being healed at a similar rate by his Vulkan-sourced Perpetual Genes). This constant annihilation and regeneration of the soul is also why it is "loose" in Primus' body. I know as a theory it has its flaws but it does seem pretty cool in concept to me at least!
I think saying "Who's smarter, Cawl or Bile" is like asking "Which is tastier, pizza or strawberries" because the answer is going to be "yes." They've got very different specialties and they're impressively skilled at those specialties. Not that either one would admit it.
Daddy Change is always and forever going to be my favourite of these two. His trilogy is such a good read, and he's been top of my list of (named) Chaos dudes since the 3rd edition codex.
Cawl has more resources, but he's stuck trying to keep the rotting and doomed superstructure of the Imperium going. Bile's plan with the New Men has none of those resources, but it appears to be working completely independently of his influence and limited resources. I give it to Fabulous Bill, not for the skill or capacity of either character, but for the simple fact that Cawl is on a sinking ship and Bile is not.
Ya'know, at first I was kind of put off by the topic of this video. But after getting about 5 minutes into it I realize this is a fantastic, and very original idea. Great work man!
Well if we consider that The Emperor had a whole team and unlimited ressources when creating the Primarchs Biles's work on cloning them is unparalleled but his stubbornness in not including warp base tech in his bio-engineering in a setting where the soul has so much impact must be in someway hurting his progress.
Did he have a whole team for the Primarchs? He had one for the spare marines which struck me as odd considering he created the Custodes first (before the Thunder Warriors) and they are superior to the space marines. But I always thought the Primarchs were the product of very few, with a great deal of personal input by the Emperor himself.
@@RichardStrong86 well actually in First Heretic Argel Thal is sent back in the past by the Chaos Gods to visit the laboratory of the Primarch project and he describes whole teams of scientist working on it and in Saturnine we learn that part of the Primarch DNA comes from a perpetual named Erda so he was not alone on those works
Cawl is like a huge swiss army knife / a giant toolbox on space steroids. Whereas, Bile is more like a surgical tool set, also on space steroids. The former is super useful in a truly vast range of applications but if you need to deal with flesh and blood, then you are better off getting the latter
Hey Wes! Your voice sounds fine. I'm going to pause the video and save the rest of it for when I get home from work; looking forward to watching this will help me get through the day. Always happy to see you upload. I hope you're feeling better soon!
Thé twist at the end was really incredible. It showed such a great side of Cawl’s personality and mentality. It made Cawl appear less like a Mary sue who gets away with anything cause he’s so smart and important, and more like an interesting and fun character full of flaws.
my first exposure to Fabius Bile was in that Warhammer Inquisitor game (i personally recommend it) and thought he was ok as an antagonist. After reading the Fabius Bile omnibus, I realized just how dirty they did him in the game. Dude in the books did not give a single fuck about anyone or anything but his children or "new men" which was weirdly nice to read.
Honestly, I love Bile as a character and his making of a superior human that can naturally replace itself and interbreed with baseline humans with no loss of abilities and a high resistance to chaos, he is probably the closest to achieving (or at least advancing) the goal of the emperor to elevate humanity. When it comes to intelligence... I also feel that has to go to Bile. As you said in the video, Cawl has massive amounts of knowledge but he also has huge amounts of resources and much of his knowledge and work comes from others or iterative processes, whereas Bile has basically nothing in comparison resource wise and the majority of his great works are the result of his own personal work and research. Though yes, the whole specialist vs generalist issue does also apply.
As this series continues I want them to add more mad scientist characters. Like now that Cawl i going into the Pariah Nexus I want him to meet Illuminor Szeras and while him, Fabius and Szeras are fighting, Mad Dok Grotsnik comes in with the steel chair.
Great video Wes as always, I wanted to ask you for a video about the people that are naturally attracted to the Warp, I only know Typhus and Erebus but would like to hear about this from your POV
There actually is precedent for the warp making time move faster or slower for individuals, specifically in the Warhammer plus animation Angels of Death. The crew on the Sword of Baal thought it had only been traveling for around 40 days in the warp but when they reached Niades they discovered they had actually been in the warp for years. I also recall one instance somewhere in a different work where a crew trapped in the warp they thought 10 years had passed but when they got to their intended destination only a day had passed real space. And then there is the nonsense regarding time travel due to warp shenanigans so, while it’s probably due to a typo it’s also possible Bile really had been working for 10,000 years from his perspective.
I love Cawl. He’s awesome, I love that he is so brilliant he can see the problems with the dogma of the mechanicus. I especially love that he’s a willing heretic and his friendship with Guilliman. Cawl Inferior and Guilliman Inferior are hilarious to me
Seeing as he already had his encounter with the Haemonculi of the Dark Eldar and now has had his showdown with Belisarius Cawl I hope the next adventure of ol' Fabulous Bill will be a meeting with Illuminor Szeras. Lore wise it doesn't make much sense, but a man can dream.
Bile kind of reminds me of a Bruce Lee (I think) quote somewhat along the lines of 'fear not the man of a thousand kicks but the one who was practiced one kick a thousand times' but I love both bile and cawl each in their own rights
both Fabius Bile & Belisarius Cawl re very smart in there own craft, and one of them has something more the other does not . Belisarius Cawl is more focused in Gene manipulation and necron tech . Fabius Bile is on Gene manipulation and Eldar tech . tho Belisarius Cawl does that thing where he expand his knowledge by merging diff minds from other scientists a very risky procedure bc you dont know what mind will take over , so far B Cawl has won these battles having the strongest personality , so in my mind there is no question here Belisarius Cawl is the smarter one (sry about my English not my first or second language)
💯 B Cawl is the smartest one. Not to take away anything from Bile but Cawl is the superior scientist with knowledge and memories from multiple other very smart ppl
I have read books about bile and Cawl . They re different they do focus in 2 different xeno techs and do have a lot of similarities but Cawl has multiple minds of few of the smartest ppl of the Imperium
fisrt of there is no die hard fans who said that cawl is importand in fact they said he is deus ex machina and retcon of 40k and shity one second of we don't talk about cawl here Here's what doesn't make sense: how many AdMech members currently exist in 40k? Hundreds of billions, trillions, more? Next, extrapolating from this, how many AdMech members have there been over the last 10k years? Probably quadrillions. We know that Cawl is hardly the first or only heretek and yet not one out of those countless people, all of them tinkering and augmenting themselves in a myriad of ways, have achieved even a tiny fraction of what Cawl has. Just making a better bolter or new mark of power armor would have already made him one of the greatest Magi in history and then he does so much more that it's beyond ridiculous. They've set him up to be such an anomaly that he's no less special than the Emperor. A once in a billion years type of person. Imagine if tomorrow DC released a super hero that was better, smarter, and more powerful than everyone else and was nust hand waived him away by saying "yeah he's been here the whole time and participated in all these super important events even though you've never seen him before" would you accept that or would you be calling that out as a mary sue author insert. Cawl isn't young or inexperienced, however he does things he reasonably should not be able to do given in universe constraints on the Tech Priests. If any Tech Priest could become just as skilled at different fields of study as him, then why didn't they. Cawl is a nearly messianic figure at this point, regardless of whether he's liked or not he is doing things that he should not be able to do. In doing so he is rendering the rest of the Mechanicus irrelevant, this is people's main complaint. If Cawl is objectively the best, smartest, most powerful Tech Priest who can do whatever he wants up to and including breaking previously stated in universe rules (taking control of Necron tech) and he can clone himself effectively allowing him to be everywhere at once, what's the point of the rest of the Mechanicus? He makes everyone else pointless that's the sign of a poorly thought out character in any setting.
@@whiteeye9584 not everyone is going to like him. 2 Ain't reading all that 3 there is a simple solution if you don't like something in the 40k books just don't read it. Read what you enjoy the most
@@nemdenemam9753 While the Primaris is a noticeable upgrade, they hardly come near perfected. Something both Bile and Cawl agreed upon. Bile has upgraded marines combat abilities since before Cawl was a student of Biology, but his work often comes with severe drawbacks, mutations or addictions. The real feat Cawl archived was the scale of Primaris production and the comprehensive upgrade/redesign of their gear and armoury. Again, Bile and Cawl agreed on this as well.
The worst part about this discussion is that people are acting as if what Belisarius Cawl has done is unprecedented in actual, real life human history. Belisarius Cawl, for me, is an interesting expy of Leonardo da Vinci (or the more generic Renessaince Man archetype) set in the 41st Millenium, with the time and resources to actualize his concepts . Dwelt in anatomical studies? Check Designed flying and war machines? Check Actually built a mechanically powered suit of armour? Check! Hell he even dwelt in Geo morphology when he designed the diversion of the Arno river (which Machiavelli worked on) Nothing that Cawl has is out of the ordinary for what "baseline" humans can achieve and since I have yet to see him paint as a minimum: The Last Triumph Aeldari Lady with Gyrinx Le Guilliman his capabilities are actually less of what "baseline" humans at their best can achieve. Accomplishments aren't what define a mary sue. A mary sue is defined by a lack of effort, a mary sue accomplishes what no one else can with minimal or no effort rendering other "cast members" irrelevant. Rey for example (the most egregious example of this) is a mary sue not because of what she does but because of how she got there. She beats everyone around her is better at everything than everyone else with zero training or experience. That's a mary sue. Cawl creates better space marines, better armor, and better weapons, all of this without any prior experience working on or with the space marine project. He even arguably did a better job than the Emperor who may as well be an actual god. On top of all this he is also skilled in engineering and biology, not only re-engineering the space marines but also their equipment. Single handedly reinvinting anti grav tech with zero outside help. Something that the mechanicus has been working on for millenia. Its not what he accomplishes but how he got there and the inplications of what that means. Cawl single handedly outdid every tech priest who ever lived and the Emperor himself with almost zero outside help. He rendered the mechanicus obsolete in much the same way Rey renders her cohorts obsolete. There is nothing they can do that she can't do better, there is nothing the mechanicus can do that Cawl can't do better. He is absolutely a mary sue but unfortunately a necessary one. GW set 40k up in such a way that the Imperium could only be saved by a mary sue. There was no way out of the literary corner they trapped themselves in except for this. So while ordinarily I hate mary sue plot devices this one I'm ok with, and at least he has a modicum of personality unlike most other mary sue characters (eg: Rey)
Have you considered the topic of who is smarter from the perspective of whether they have ever been outsmarted by someone? What are the major L-s on part of each of those?
Everyone knows how bile cloned fulgrim, but almost no one mentions in the first of his trilogy books, he successfully implants a geneseed into a woman and it is one of his most favorite creations who even other chaos marines fear. I really don't know anything about cawl but bile has done things only the emperor should know how to do and done things that don't even make sense. Bile did something the marketing team couldn't even do, those female marines.
25:39 "Both believe what they are doing is for the Greater Good" Since both are working for the Greater Good, Tau are clearly the smartest. Now I understand how Tau are able to create so many incredible machines, with such great minds helping them.
Bile on the way to becoming a chaos god? I need to know more about this! Still learning about both characters, got the Bile trilogy and GeneFather on my reading list
Spoilers for Genefather: Honestly, one of my biggest take aways from this book is that the chaosandroid, aka the original model that would become the necrons, has officially been reinstated as canon. It is a hell of a meme, and I am all here for it.
Im in the gym and watching this amazing video, and now im wondering: wich one of those crazy scientists would optimize my body better for training? Anyway thanks for the great video!
You provide a valuable service to your ADHD brothers my man. My brain calms to one line listening to you warble on about mad space army men lunacy. A valuable service indeed. We need more mad Ciaphas yarns. Please.
You would think that instead of forgetting large chunks of knowledge wouldn't cawl be able to make like a storage unit for the things he needs to forget
I believe I know one instance where time slows down in the warp. Also spoilers for "The First Heretic". I'm listening to "The First Heretic" right now and there was a point in the book where Lorgar sends one of his ships with Argel Tal into the Eye of Terror. Lorgar watches them go in, and 60 seconds later they come out. Argel Tal and a handful of space marines were the only survivors. Argel Tal said he was drifting in the warp for around 7 MONTHS! Space Marines had to eat the dead humans and then each other to survive while being possesed. 😢 Time is weird in the warp.
I would say Bile, Cawl is far more knowledgeable, but in Genefather, Bile won. He had Cawl on the back foot the whole way. When Cawl had the final confrontation with Bile, he had no plan B, no threat or bluff to buy time. He could not come up with a lie or a counter offer to attempt to gain control of the situation. Cawl is lucky it didn't turn out worse.
Great stuff! So Is Fabius cloning all the Primarchs and finding their flaws unavoidable strike anyone else as the flaws might also be intentional? Like, their flaws would lead to conflict which leads to struggle which fueled the Emperor somehow? I feel like that might have been what Hours was mad about if he somehow found something like that to be the case, haven't read the books. Second though, I feel Belisarius wins this one for two reasons: first, his cleverness in working in such a rigid structure as the Imperium. He has tons of resources yes, but he must do league more mental work to justify his actions and do things in a proper way where as Fabius kinda doesn't have an of these mental obstacles just physical ones. Secondly though and connected, their goals are an indicator of their intelligence to me. There is a more irrational essence to Fabius Biles goal, it feels like he took the "battle not with monsters" quote and twisted it to "just become the monster lol" which is cute but not nearly as clever as Belisarius explanation of innovation and how he logically justified it.
Honestly, while I am a major fan of the ruinous powers, I would have to give the title to Cawl. Simply because he has a vaster knowledge bank. A generalist is more useful in war than a specialist in my opinion
@@hieioni3354 Uh, in the video Wes mentioned that Bile was being worshipped by millions or billions of new men and was starting to become some kind of lesser chaos deity. Sounds pretty rad, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to circumvent it rather than lean into it. Still. Pater Mutatis. Fucking cool shit.
@@ginnungagaplemniscates1405 I see. Yeah, Bile won't go with it. He's the last adherent of the Imperial Truth and all he cares about is creating the perfect lifeform rather than getting involved in Chaos shenanigans.
![[FREE] Freestyle Type Beat “Cold Hands” Prod. By AC](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/waRtqxkKxv4/mqdefault.jpg)
Get 10% off site-wide at Into The AM when you use this link intotheam.com/weshammer
Thank you Into the AM for these Amazing Graphic Tees.
I wonder if cawl has ever been voted for to become domnice of the machnicas
in another words i despize him and primaris
i don't accept them as cannon but what i can do about it
fisrt of there is no die hard fans who said that cawl is importand in fact they said he is deus ex machina and retcon of 40k and shity one
second of we don't talk about cawl here
Here's what doesn't make sense: how many AdMech members currently exist in 40k? Hundreds of billions, trillions, more? Next, extrapolating from this, how many AdMech members have there been over the last 10k years? Probably quadrillions.
We know that Cawl is hardly the first or only heretek and yet not one out of those countless people, all of them tinkering and augmenting themselves in a myriad of ways, have achieved even a tiny fraction of what Cawl has. Just making a better bolter or new mark of power armor would have already made him one of the greatest Magi in history and then he does so much more that it's beyond ridiculous.
They've set him up to be such an anomaly that he's no less special than the Emperor. A once in a billion years type of person.
Imagine if tomorrow DC released a super hero that was better, smarter, and more powerful than everyone else and was nust hand waived him away by saying "yeah he's been here the whole time and participated in all these super important events even though you've never seen him before" would you accept that or would you be calling that out as a mary sue author insert.
Cawl isn't young or inexperienced, however he does things he reasonably should not be able to do given in universe constraints on the Tech Priests. If any Tech Priest could become just as skilled at different fields of study as him, then why didn't they. Cawl is a nearly messianic figure at this point, regardless of whether he's liked or not he is doing things that he should not be able to do. In doing so he is rendering the rest of the Mechanicus irrelevant, this is people's main complaint.
If Cawl is objectively the best, smartest, most powerful Tech Priest who can do whatever he wants up to and including breaking previously stated in universe rules (taking control of Necron tech) and he can clone himself effectively allowing him to be everywhere at once, what's the point of the rest of the Mechanicus? He makes everyone else pointless that's the sign of a poorly thought out character in any setting.
I love Bile’s male pattern baldness….
Looks like an old gym teacher from the 90’s..
@@houseadams4841 the ultimate skullet
It’s interesting that Cawl was taught by Necrons and Bile by Dark Eldar. Like a warped mirror of the war in heaven.
Warhammer 40K metaphysics are simply originated from the dualism between Materium & Immaterium, Emperor tried to balance the psychic and physical qualities of humanity but as Live! From Black library channel guy said: His works are so rushed and unnecessarily secretive even among the Imperium humanity allies that causes Emperor's projects in shambles
The hubris of Emperor's pasts during Unification Wars, Great Crusade and Horus Heresy are ironically absolved by his successors regardless of the Imperial Cult or Chaos-oriented ones, they will be instrumental in repelling Tyrannids, mending the Dark Eldar to be less sadistic with new beacons, giving Necrons more 'humane' purposes to unified themselves, all while threatening Imperial Cult's status quo to enact The End Times, The King in Yellow also are opposed by those in Imperial Cult's bureaucracy and administrations which already rotting for 10.000 years and further after Age of Apostasy, Months of Shame, etc
The End Times in Warhammer 40K will end with both bang and whimper, or at least as series of Implosions from the legacies of War in Heaven and Dark Age of Technological marvels, meanwhile Trazyn, Vulkan, Farsight and Cegorach are breakdancing and dabbing surrounding his magnificent historical collections to the dismay of soyfaced clone Fulgrim (with real lesser warp god soul of his own) are seething in confusion and laughter as all of them seeing all of Undivided Chaos, 99.99% of Imperium's worlds, all of Xenos factions and Tyrannids' Hivemind destroying each other in The End Times of Warhammer 40K
@@ohamatchhams New beacons? Explain. I wish to hear about this.
@@ohamatchhams There wont be an end times in 40k. Business needs to business.
yeah Cawl and Bile are like Human mirrors of the Necrons and Dark Eldar. when I saw some of Bile's creations, I immediately thought of the works of the Drukhari Homunculi and their fleshcraft abominations. and many Skiitari are almost as mindless as Necron Soldiers, and Cawl himself is almost entirely mechanical at this point, he even has a body plan shared with some Cryptek Lords.
@@nicholai7300let's hope not. Although I don't mind another grand war that leads the Traitors to Terra again. They need to finish HH, The Scowering, and do some novels of The Dark Age of Tech.
Cawl became one of my favorite characters. Hes just so delightfully arrogant yet can somehow back it up. Its great! Also that he intentionally retains his humanity is a great twist to the usual Mechanicum philosophies.
It's only arrogance if you can't back it up. If you can it's pride.
This. I love that cawl doesn’t praise the mechanicus to the point where he thinks new technology is heresy and believes most of the mechanicus are morons. The only thing I really dislike about the character, is his looks. I think he’s just one of the ugliest, stupid, looking character in all of 40k. Nothing about him looks cool at all.
@@Reformed322 only cool thing about his looks is the 5 extra arms holding the giant chain axe. I mean, go to 7:54 and tell me thats not badass
Well "retaining his humanity" is rather debatable.
Yes I think for Cawl always appreciated the human desire to achieve and he didn’t want to lose that piece… really just his internal drive to continue to be great. He wants to shape the future by creating. Rediscovering will not make him happy
I think there is one feat that is forgotten about Bile. In the book, "Black Tide" bile hides his facility on a tyranid world using a zoanthrope's pheromones to confuse where he was located.
Bile is resourceful and that's what I love about him.
Tyranid world?
@@qwaeszrdxtfcgvbqwaeszrdxtf5733 I think he means a world being 'occupied' by Tyranids (like how a soldier would 'occupy' an enemy outpost on their way through hostile territory.)
Report the account above me. It's scam.
@@woohoogdo The question isn't 'could' he, the question is *WOULD* he? Even for Cawl that sounds a bit Much to ask. Wouldn't he had rather glassed the planet, then dug a hole in the remaining rock?
He even has an extra mechadendrite just for jangling the keys. Truly he is the Warp-Squirrel.
I wanna see a science fair between Illuminor Szeras, Belisarius Cawl, Fabius Bile, Urien Rakarth, and Mad Dok Grotsnik.
I'm sure it would be called Something something "horrors beyond comprehension" 😂
Most beings would go mad in the foyer if not just by seing a poster for such an event.
And Arkhan Land in the corner
Knowing orks he would accidentally win first prize for making something work that shouldnt.
@@weshammer from the timeline where the horus heresy never happened
I want to see one of Belisarius' enemies introduce him to Factorio as a plan to cripple his progress.
The factory must grow...
And after a hour later Bellsarius comes back and says, "Your Machine had proven incable of handling my designs."
Translation: it took me an hours to crash the game. it would of been shorter but I have better things to do.
Cawl would absolutely make the most insanely efficient, self-reliant factory imaginable in like a hour, maybe two if he is doing something else at the same time.
Cawl would solve Factorio in seconds as if it was one of those shitty fake banner ad games, then he'd release it as an STC that he "found"
I gave the edge to Cawl just bc he has to work with a guillotine over his head. He's always either hiding or dumbing down his work for fear of being labeled a heretic by Gman or the mechanicus. We see Bile's unrestricted peak. We dont know what Cawl's is.
Agreed, and that's a good way to put it. Cawl is a one man cabal with the amount secrets he keeps from his peers, his general long-term goal causes him to innovate and create and it seems generally like a good thing; Bile's long term goal has him travelling world to world flaying and torturing whatever life he can find... Even if his goal of creating a race to supercede humanity is ultimately meant to be for the greater good, all he has done so far is make perfect fuel for the chaos gods to feed on.
I thought guiliman gave him permission to do what he needs to
This is the main point for me as well. There is no telling the tech miracles cawl could perform were he not held back.
@@TitaniumAlloyz
To quote the man: _"I am Belisarius Cawl. There is no thing that I cannot do."_
I adore the end of Genefather as it focuses on the values of love and respect, which was a very pleasant surprise. Especially Bile, a being so evil and monstrous, is still allowed to have positive traits and moments where you see a kinder side of him. And Cawl is ironically one of the most human characters in all of 40k. Especially his relationship with his friend/boyfriend Friedisch is just heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.
why would you call him cawl's boyfriend...
@@niacyn2548because they have to twist anything remotely interesting into some weird LGBT nonsense. May this series never become mainstream we all know what would happen
The way Porter moves and fights is so sick. She must have the calorie intake of a small farm. But the way she's built makes it read like she's one of the fastest individuals in the setting.
Practically overheating by the end of that fight.
As Wes said, if the newest New Men are like her... Damm old humanity is I trouble!
IIRC all iterations of the new men were designed to be 100% capable of breeding with all forms of baseline humanity (not sure if abhumans as well) with all the children being born as new men. This is why there has been issues of entire populations of new men springing up on planets. So not really an issue of extermination so much as (sorta) forced and rapid evolution.
One thing I like about Cawl and was a little surprised about was that he's a genuine believer when it comes to his faith in the Omnissiah.
I love their interactions in Genefather. And it basically boils down to Bile saying, 'oh when you tinker with the emperor's work in a lab paid for by the imperium you're a hero, but I have to play chop shop Bob out here and do better work, I'm a monster'
lol though he hates it when Lucious calls him bob especially over vox (lol tts)
- "Yes, but at least I do not wear a coat made of flesh." 😏
@@Archon3960 but at least Fabius looks 'somewhat' human XD
@@Narakuda
Look, the Mechanicus doesn't exactly has much fashion sense. XD
@@Archon3960 I mean, fair. At least Bile's fashion is a statement! XD
Fabius Bile is one of my favorite 40K characters. He embodies the mad scientist trope really well (not to mention the fact that his TTS counterpart is just f*cking awesome! xD)
If you haven't read it, Wolfsbane is primarily a space wolf and Leman Russ Horus Heresy novel, but Cawl features heavily in it, and its actually the events in Wolfsbane that lead to his backstory in The Great Work.
(Spoilers) Man the book was really good. I was scared for what the ending could be as I went through it. Bile might be smarter but Cawl knows what he is fighting for. He is fighting for humanity, his friends, his family. With the Great Work it gave me the vibe that Cawl saw all of the primas marines as his sons but Alpha Primas is his first born and actually is his son. It’s interesting to see Cawl be ever so lonely and has remade his best friend and has a made a son and both are fed up with his shit.
If you're giving an edge for clarity of vision, they're also tied there. Cawl gets the monologue at the end, but it echoes what Bile had already been saying throughout the book.
Which book has fabius going to cammoragh?
@@Bobbb-f3i read his trilogy
@@Mondy667 I've got the ebook of the trilogy saved but am reading Felix and gortek at moment. I hoped it was the trilogy so thanks
@@Mondy667I’m on the 3rd book now myself, but it’s odd that Bile’s visit there is all in the past. Almost like there’s a side quest/book in between. It’s explained well enough, but it feels like there should be a novel there..
For me Cawl is the clear winner. Not due to his intellect but through his humor. After listening to both the Great Work and Genefather, the guy is absolutely hilarious and i love him.
Bile has a chip on his shoulder, Cawl is in it for the love of the game
Its interesting how Cawl, the man sworn into a faith where a core tenant is to not innovate, is himself one of the most innovative people in the galaxy. And then Bile, powered by chaos and change, struggles to make more than copies of imperfection.
He was from the time Innovation was still in gray area.
Not to say mechanicus fully outlaw innovation, if one could point to something proven and prove the advancement came from that then it is okay😅
Also, undercover researches never stopped. Really high ranking magus wouldn't care about the rules all that much
My brother in christ, please go actually read the books for yourself before spouting nonsense. Fabius Bile is an atheist and probably the only marine left in existence that actually adheres to the imperial truth. He is certianly not "powered by chaos", and he doesn't struggle to make copies of imperfection, he can literally produce perfect clones of every Primarch. He just doesn't do it because he did it for Fulgrim and then changed his mind saying "the age of gods and monsters is over" before trading Fulgrim away to Trazyns collection.
On the topic of innovation, Cawl is so far ahead of the rest of his "peers" that it wouldn't be hard for him to reverse engineer xenos tech and build it so it looks nice and _Standard_ , then say it's an STC that he found in some far off cave on a dead planet. I think Cawl would argue that innovation is neccessary, not only for humanity but to keep himself occupied, of course humanity has completely twisted the original creed of the imperium, worshipping big E as a god when it's the opposite of what he wants, so in that regard Cawl would see innovation as an integral part to worshipping the Omnissiah even if the greater imperium sees it as heresy- because they're idiots, and I (Cawl) am a gigagenius chad scholar.
Bile's goal is interesting and I admire that he rejects the ruinous powers completely, but he is an extremely twizted fella even without boons from the chaos gods. I think Cawl would beat him if they had to square up, they're both geniuses and physically nothing to scoff at, but neither are primarchs and Cawl is utterly chromed out with all his augments and dendrites. Like a comment from @Paradise2003 below this chain said "We see Bile's unrestricted peak. We dont know what Cawl's is."
@@SmokerX91 Lets not cap perfrect Fulgrim is not someting Bile can just repeat
Fair, maybe he can't repeat endless perfect Primarch clones, but seeing as he did an imperfect cloning of Horus followed by a perfect cloning of Fulgrim, it's fair to say he can reliably recreate Primarchs, even if they wouldn't go on a whole redemption arc like Fulgrim did. It does however piss me off that most lore youtuber just say whatever and the people in the comments talk even more nonsense without actually having any knowledge about the lore. Saying Fabius Bile is "powered by chaos" is ludicrous and saying that he's struggling to copy others is BS as well, as he managed to create a new lifeform out of Astartes geneseed, Eldar DNA and Human DNA that can naturally reproduce and kill a space marine 1v1 while the space marine is armed and they are naked.@@eliasmagus5086
Ahhh gotta love any mention of fabulous bill and chadisarius cawl
One of the best 40K videos if seen in a long time! These characters are fascinating and important, they have more impact in the 40K universe than most others!
Fabius Bile is the best, glad they had a great match off, and really shows the great dichotomy between the two.
Cawl found a way to use thousand son geneseed which was found in Primus. This is big news, But what do you guys think?
its kinda hinted that alpha Primus is a mix of a handful of traitor primarchs, bile claims he “senses the presence of the Cyclops” after Primus almost kills him with his psychic powers while personality wise he acts quite a lot like a form a Perty
@@whiteeye9584😂write a book or something
fisrt of there is no die hard fans who said that cawl is importand in fact they said he is deus ex machina and retcon of 40k and shity one
second of we don't talk about cawl here
Here's what doesn't make sense: how many AdMech members currently exist in 40k? Hundreds of billions, trillions, more? Next, extrapolating from this, how many AdMech members have there been over the last 10k years? Probably quadrillions.
We know that Cawl is hardly the first or only heretek and yet not one out of those countless people, all of them tinkering and augmenting themselves in a myriad of ways, have achieved even a tiny fraction of what Cawl has. Just making a better bolter or new mark of power armor would have already made him one of the greatest Magi in history and then he does so much more that it's beyond ridiculous.
They've set him up to be such an anomaly that he's no less special than the Emperor. A once in a billion years type of person.
Imagine if tomorrow DC released a super hero that was better, smarter, and more powerful than everyone else and was nust hand waived him away by saying "yeah he's been here the whole time and participated in all these super important events even though you've never seen him before" would you accept that or would you be calling that out as a mary sue author insert.
Cawl isn't young or inexperienced, however he does things he reasonably should not be able to do given in universe constraints on the Tech Priests. If any Tech Priest could become just as skilled at different fields of study as him, then why didn't they. Cawl is a nearly messianic figure at this point, regardless of whether he's liked or not he is doing things that he should not be able to do. In doing so he is rendering the rest of the Mechanicus irrelevant, this is people's main complaint.
If Cawl is objectively the best, smartest, most powerful Tech Priest who can do whatever he wants up to and including breaking previously stated in universe rules (taking control of Necron tech) and he can clone himself effectively allowing him to be everywhere at once, what's the point of the rest of the Mechanicus? He makes everyone else pointless that's the sign of a poorly thought out character in any setting.
in short, bile is a biology specialist while Cawl is a engineering specialist.
Although, the Primaris are pretty impressive biological... things.
@@Overanalyse_ThisWell, there is some Mechanicus influence on the Primaris. Each tendon of a Primaris Marine is encased in a steel coil.
Half of Modern medicine is feat of engineering tbh.
There is the biology factor in it, but to maintain sterile systems and biomonitoring systems of today, we need extensive engineering.
There's even a bachelor's degree thats associated with it. It's called biomedical engineering.
On the flip side, we have biology entering engineering today, with biomimetic design taking the forefront to modifying and developing our current engineering systems. From compliant mechanisms in biomechanics to studying communication between ants in a colony to model swarm behavior for drones and studying deep sea bioluminescent creatures to further develop optical fibre tech, biology and engineering are getting together more than ever.
Dude made Alpha Primus, even Bile was impressed to the point where he recognized it as better than anything he has made.
I agree on this not because of what he said but because it's the GOAT himself..... "Mike Tyson Baby!"😝🤣
Bile is a perfect example of "Perfection is the enemy of Good Enough". There is something else to be considered other than pure intelligence and that is wisdom. And I think Cawl has that many times over Bile. sm
Yeah, that is a good way to put it.
I think its interesting that both Cal and Bile where taught skills by Dark Eldar and Necros. Like they where doing just good enough for the old races to teach someone who is just starting to grasp the basics of what their tech and skill would be. Not saying either of them are dumb in anyway but just that they are starting to become an interest for the people who have gone through what they have.
I really wanted Trazyn to make an actual appearance (besides just a mention) in the novel. He has interacted with and assisted/stood against both Bile and Cawl at various points in their history; another link and similarity between these rivals.
I recently finished reading the Fabius Bile omnibus, and it made me a huge fan of Bile, and I recommend everyone here check out those books. A little bit of everything in them.
Heretic
They’re both so awesome 👏
They deserve to be there at pivotal points in to the story yet written. They’ve survived and thrived
The First Heretic: Argel Tal and the other Word Bearers spent 7 months in the warp while from Lorgar and the others waiting for them outside the warp, it was 60 seconds…. It’s not uncommon or odd in any way at all! Loved this one though, keep it up brother!
It’d be interesting if Cawl ends up working alongside Tau at some point, making use of their AI knowledge to further his own implementation of it, and in turn some of them actively become his disciples. Regardless of what you think about the Tau, their growth is absolutely insane, and just think about what they could be capable of with even a fraction of the knowledge Cawl could teach them
I'd have to say Cawl, hands down is smarter. While Fabius is getting knowledge from different clones of himself, the knowledge he gains would be biased in Fabius's favor. I.E. seeing things from the same angle. Meanwhile Cawl's soul transference is him getting knowledge from different perspectives and angles. There is bias, but different kinds of bias from different sources, counteracting each other.
I'd also like to point out Cawl is basically processing multiple selves at the same time, like actively working on multiple projects at the same time with the same mind, meanwhile Fabius has split minds that might be linked by wraithbone, but at the end of the day...
Fabius is like a colony of ants and his original form is the queen so to speak that directs the hive. Cawl is more like.. well... a computer with many different processes running on it.
A colony of ants, intelligence level wise, for how small they are, is insane. A colony of 10k year old super scientists would be fuckin nuts
@@fmlAllthetime The point I was trying to make was the intelligence of Fabius is spread out across multiple versions of himself, separate instances so to speak.
With Cawl its basically all in one to the point where he has to occasionally delete parts of his memory to make room for new memories.
I'd say memory does play a part in intelligence in this manner I think Cawl definitely has Fabius beat. I don't think Fabius has had to delete his own memory just to make room for more lol.
Wouldn't that mean Cawls retention is worse by definition? @@winterwolf1250
Idk how Fabius wouldn't have to do the same shit considering how old he is, but ain't no one ever accused 40 k of making actual sense.
I'm grateful for anyone who makes 40k content on youtube. Thank you and thank you all. I love this shit.
One of the key indicators of high intelligence is the ability to colate seemingly unrelated information and draw connections between them. Cawl having such a mastery of numerous fields exemplifies this, as his knowledge of engineering and technology directly effected his improvements of the primarus marines, from the steel cables reinforcing tendons to the cybernetic enhancements to their hearts allowing for a huge surge of strength when at deaths door. Bile, in his 100% focus on genetic engineering lacks the knowledge in other fields to compete with Cawl in that regard.
This seems as good a place as any to mention my pet tinfoil hat theory which is that what took Bile aback when he managed to examine Alpha Primus' genes wasn't that Cawl tried to make a homebrew Primarch as many speculate but rather it is that Cawl bootlegged the Grey Knight's method of artificially making a Blank to make the first viable Blank/Psyker Hybrid (as all Primarchs are implied to be inherently tied to the Warp), albeit one only barely held together by a dash of Vulkan's Perpetual Genes.
Something that can wield the warp but is simultaneously immune to Chaos' influence? That is something that would get Bile's attention I think. It would also explain the reason Primus is constantly in pain (his Blank side is constantly annihilating the Psyker part of his soul, the damage being healed at a similar rate by his Vulkan-sourced Perpetual Genes). This constant annihilation and regeneration of the soul is also why it is "loose" in Primus' body.
I know as a theory it has its flaws but it does seem pretty cool in concept to me at least!
Oh shit, that *is* a good theory
I think saying "Who's smarter, Cawl or Bile" is like asking "Which is tastier, pizza or strawberries" because the answer is going to be "yes." They've got very different specialties and they're impressively skilled at those specialties. Not that either one would admit it.
When Cawl gets more books I’m sure we’re going to see how ridiculous his intelligence is.
Bile perfectly embodies the saying that "Perfect is the mortal enemy of good enough".
Loved the clear adhd traits Cawl is displaying in Genefather, wondered if the author did that on purpose or not?
Daddy Change is always and forever going to be my favourite of these two.
His trilogy is such a good read, and he's been top of my list of (named) Chaos dudes since the 3rd edition codex.
Cawl has more resources, but he's stuck trying to keep the rotting and doomed superstructure of the Imperium going. Bile's plan with the New Men has none of those resources, but it appears to be working completely independently of his influence and limited resources. I give it to Fabulous Bill, not for the skill or capacity of either character, but for the simple fact that Cawl is on a sinking ship and Bile is not.
Biles future would be a sinking ship for the current humanity though also. Considering he would wipe every last one of them out
Bile himself believe that he has no place in the future with the new men.
I'm here to watch Wes bounce around excitedly. And also the stories.
Ya'know, at first I was kind of put off by the topic of this video. But after getting about 5 minutes into it I realize this is a fantastic, and very original idea. Great work man!
Well if we consider that The Emperor had a whole team and unlimited ressources when creating the Primarchs Biles's work on cloning them is unparalleled but his stubbornness in not including warp base tech in his bio-engineering in a setting where the soul has so much impact must be in someway hurting his progress.
Did he have a whole team for the Primarchs? He had one for the spare marines which struck me as odd considering he created the Custodes first (before the Thunder Warriors) and they are superior to the space marines. But I always thought the Primarchs were the product of very few, with a great deal of personal input by the Emperor himself.
@@RichardStrong86 well actually in First Heretic Argel Thal is sent back in the past by the Chaos Gods to visit the laboratory of the Primarch project and he describes whole teams of scientist working on it and in Saturnine we learn that part of the Primarch DNA comes from a perpetual named Erda so he was not alone on those works
I could listen to you talk about WarHammer all day
Cawl is like a huge swiss army knife / a giant toolbox on space steroids. Whereas, Bile is more like a surgical tool set, also on space steroids. The former is super useful in a truly vast range of applications but if you need to deal with flesh and blood, then you are better off getting the latter
Hey Wes! Your voice sounds fine. I'm going to pause the video and save the rest of it for when I get home from work; looking forward to watching this will help me get through the day. Always happy to see you upload. I hope you're feeling better soon!
Thé twist at the end was really incredible. It showed such a great side of Cawl’s personality and mentality. It made Cawl appear less like a Mary sue who gets away with anything cause he’s so smart and important, and more like an interesting and fun character full of flaws.
This was the best argument I've seen for this, and now I couldn't tell you which one I'd pick...
my first exposure to Fabius Bile was in that Warhammer Inquisitor game (i personally recommend it) and thought he was ok as an antagonist. After reading the Fabius Bile omnibus, I realized just how dirty they did him in the game. Dude in the books did not give a single fuck about anyone or anything but his children or "new men" which was weirdly nice to read.
Just came from school and now this so my day is going well till now
Honestly, I love Bile as a character and his making of a superior human that can naturally replace itself and interbreed with baseline humans with no loss of abilities and a high resistance to chaos, he is probably the closest to achieving (or at least advancing) the goal of the emperor to elevate humanity.
When it comes to intelligence... I also feel that has to go to Bile. As you said in the video, Cawl has massive amounts of knowledge but he also has huge amounts of resources and much of his knowledge and work comes from others or iterative processes, whereas Bile has basically nothing in comparison resource wise and the majority of his great works are the result of his own personal work and research. Though yes, the whole specialist vs generalist issue does also apply.
Finally !!! Been waiting to see if you or Majorkill would do this first. And thanks for the code for Tacticus. My guild appreciates it
Video starts at 3:01
Always good to hear more about Fabulous Bill!
Oh boy I’ve been anxiously waiting for this one since he put out the community post
the fabius bile books where the first 40k books i read and i love him
Were*
Holy fuck I love Cawl now???
Dude is so much cooler than most people portray him as.
I'm personally wondering what the 2 of them would be capable if they worked together. Master af flesh and a master of machines.
Probably give it to Cawl
Like the old saying goes "Jack of all trades master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one"
Now I get to finally learn why these two are one of many people's favorite
As this series continues I want them to add more mad scientist characters. Like now that Cawl i going into the Pariah Nexus I want him to meet Illuminor Szeras and while him, Fabius and Szeras are fighting, Mad Dok Grotsnik comes in with the steel chair.
Great video Wes as always, I wanted to ask you for a video about the people that are naturally attracted to the Warp, I only know Typhus and Erebus but would like to hear about this from your POV
I hope we get more books featuring Cawl in the future.
There actually is precedent for the warp making time move faster or slower for individuals, specifically in the Warhammer plus animation Angels of Death. The crew on the Sword of Baal thought it had only been traveling for around 40 days in the warp but when they reached Niades they discovered they had actually been in the warp for years. I also recall one instance somewhere in a different work where a crew trapped in the warp they thought 10 years had passed but when they got to their intended destination only a day had passed real space. And then there is the nonsense regarding time travel due to warp shenanigans so, while it’s probably due to a typo it’s also possible Bile really had been working for 10,000 years from his perspective.
I love Cawl. He’s awesome, I love that he is so brilliant he can see the problems with the dogma of the mechanicus. I especially love that he’s a willing heretic and his friendship with Guilliman. Cawl Inferior and Guilliman Inferior are hilarious to me
Seeing as he already had his encounter with the Haemonculi of the Dark Eldar and now has had his showdown with Belisarius Cawl I hope the next adventure of ol' Fabulous Bill will be a meeting with Illuminor Szeras. Lore wise it doesn't make much sense, but a man can dream.
“Fabius Bile made his supersoldiers in a CAVE! With a bunch of SCRAPS!”
Bile kind of reminds me of a Bruce Lee (I think) quote somewhat along the lines of 'fear not the man of a thousand kicks but the one who was practiced one kick a thousand times' but I love both bile and cawl each in their own rights
both Fabius Bile & Belisarius Cawl re very smart in there own craft, and one of them has something more the other does not .
Belisarius Cawl is more focused in Gene manipulation and necron tech . Fabius Bile is on Gene manipulation and Eldar tech .
tho Belisarius Cawl does that thing where he expand his knowledge by merging diff minds from other scientists a very risky procedure bc you dont know what mind will take over , so far B Cawl has won these battles having the strongest personality , so in my mind there is no question here Belisarius Cawl is the smarter one (sry about my English not my first or second language)
💯 B Cawl is the smartest one. Not to take away anything from Bile but Cawl is the superior scientist with knowledge and memories from multiple other very smart ppl
I have read books about bile and Cawl . They re different they do focus in 2 different xeno techs and do have a lot of similarities but Cawl has multiple minds of few of the smartest ppl of the Imperium
@@whiteeye9584 this took some time to read
fisrt of there is no die hard fans who said that cawl is importand in fact they said he is deus ex machina and retcon of 40k and shity one
second of we don't talk about cawl here
Here's what doesn't make sense: how many AdMech members currently exist in 40k? Hundreds of billions, trillions, more? Next, extrapolating from this, how many AdMech members have there been over the last 10k years? Probably quadrillions.
We know that Cawl is hardly the first or only heretek and yet not one out of those countless people, all of them tinkering and augmenting themselves in a myriad of ways, have achieved even a tiny fraction of what Cawl has. Just making a better bolter or new mark of power armor would have already made him one of the greatest Magi in history and then he does so much more that it's beyond ridiculous.
They've set him up to be such an anomaly that he's no less special than the Emperor. A once in a billion years type of person.
Imagine if tomorrow DC released a super hero that was better, smarter, and more powerful than everyone else and was nust hand waived him away by saying "yeah he's been here the whole time and participated in all these super important events even though you've never seen him before" would you accept that or would you be calling that out as a mary sue author insert.
Cawl isn't young or inexperienced, however he does things he reasonably should not be able to do given in universe constraints on the Tech Priests. If any Tech Priest could become just as skilled at different fields of study as him, then why didn't they. Cawl is a nearly messianic figure at this point, regardless of whether he's liked or not he is doing things that he should not be able to do. In doing so he is rendering the rest of the Mechanicus irrelevant, this is people's main complaint.
If Cawl is objectively the best, smartest, most powerful Tech Priest who can do whatever he wants up to and including breaking previously stated in universe rules (taking control of Necron tech) and he can clone himself effectively allowing him to be everywhere at once, what's the point of the rest of the Mechanicus? He makes everyone else pointless that's the sign of a poorly thought out character in any setting.
@@whiteeye9584 not everyone is going to like him. 2 Ain't reading all that 3 there is a simple solution if you don't like something in the 40k books just don't read it. Read what you enjoy the most
An excellent, fair and well researched analysis.
I would give Bile the edge in genetics and warfare...
Cawl in the rest of science.
Didnt cawl perfect the space marine genes to create even better soldiers? I thought chaos guys tried but couldnt do it
Bile probably also understands warpcraft to a far greater extent too.
@@nemdenemam9753 While the Primaris is a noticeable upgrade, they hardly come near perfected. Something both Bile and Cawl agreed upon.
Bile has upgraded marines combat abilities since before Cawl was a student of Biology, but his work often comes with severe drawbacks, mutations or addictions.
The real feat Cawl archived was the scale of Primaris production and the comprehensive upgrade/redesign of their gear and armoury. Again, Bile and Cawl agreed on this as well.
@@PoolNoodleGundam Fair
The worst part about this discussion is that people are acting as if what Belisarius Cawl has done is unprecedented in actual, real life human history.
Belisarius Cawl, for me, is an interesting expy of Leonardo da Vinci (or the more generic Renessaince Man archetype) set in the 41st Millenium, with the time and resources to actualize his concepts .
Dwelt in anatomical studies? Check
Designed flying and war machines? Check
Actually built a mechanically powered suit of armour? Check!
Hell he even dwelt in Geo morphology when he designed the diversion of the Arno river (which Machiavelli worked on)
Nothing that Cawl has is out of the ordinary for what "baseline" humans can achieve and since I have yet to see him paint as a minimum:
The Last Triumph
Aeldari Lady with Gyrinx
Le Guilliman
his capabilities are actually less of what "baseline" humans at their best can achieve.
Accomplishments aren't what define a mary sue. A mary sue is defined by a lack of effort, a mary sue accomplishes what no one else can with minimal or no effort rendering other "cast members" irrelevant.
Rey for example (the most egregious example of this) is a mary sue not because of what she does but because of how she got there. She beats everyone around her is better at everything than everyone else with zero training or experience. That's a mary sue.
Cawl creates better space marines, better armor, and better weapons, all of this without any prior experience working on or with the space marine project. He even arguably did a better job than the Emperor who may as well be an actual god. On top of all this he is also skilled in engineering and biology, not only re-engineering the space marines but also their equipment. Single handedly reinvinting anti grav tech with zero outside help. Something that the mechanicus has been working on for millenia.
Its not what he accomplishes but how he got there and the inplications of what that means. Cawl single handedly outdid every tech priest who ever lived and the Emperor himself with almost zero outside help. He rendered the mechanicus obsolete in much the same way Rey renders her cohorts obsolete. There is nothing they can do that she can't do better, there is nothing the mechanicus can do that Cawl can't do better.
He is absolutely a mary sue but unfortunately a necessary one. GW set 40k up in such a way that the Imperium could only be saved by a mary sue. There was no way out of the literary corner they trapped themselves in except for this. So while ordinarily I hate mary sue plot devices this one I'm ok with, and at least he has a modicum of personality unlike most other mary sue characters (eg: Rey)
_Genefather_ was such an amazing read. I can't wait to see what their next meeting will be. 😎
Have you considered the topic of who is smarter from the perspective of whether they have ever been outsmarted by someone? What are the major L-s on part of each of those?
Everyone knows how bile cloned fulgrim, but almost no one mentions in the first of his trilogy books, he successfully implants a geneseed into a woman and it is one of his most favorite creations who even other chaos marines fear. I really don't know anything about cawl but bile has done things only the emperor should know how to do and done things that don't even make sense. Bile did something the marketing team couldn't even do, those female marines.
The tradition continues
"These are my FAVORITE characters in all of Warhammer" ~Weshammer
Lol
Good ol' Fabulous Bill. He gets my vote every time.
Cawl is explored in horus heresy book Wolfsbane, you should read it, it adds some very interesting aspects of his character
25:39 "Both believe what they are doing is for the Greater Good"
Since both are working for the Greater Good, Tau are clearly the smartest. Now I understand how Tau are able to create so many incredible machines, with such great minds helping them.
Bile on the way to becoming a chaos god? I need to know more about this!
Still learning about both characters, got the Bile trilogy and GeneFather on my reading list
If you read the Bile trilogy the final book explains his ascension.
Spoilers for Genefather:
Honestly, one of my biggest take aways from this book is that the chaosandroid, aka the original model that would become the necrons, has officially been reinstated as canon. It is a hell of a meme, and I am all here for it.
Im in the gym and watching this amazing video, and now im wondering: wich one of those crazy scientists would optimize my body better for training? Anyway thanks for the great video!
"For my extra wide brothers and sisters" for a second I thought he meant his moobs.
Bile: Flesh is strength
Cawl: Flesh is Weak
12:14 "nah hang on! Let him cook!"
The Homunculi apparently 😂
Into the am. Maker of those legendary shmedium shirts.
Cawl and Bile are not on the same level, Cawl has forgotten more about science than Bile will likely ever know.
My favorite part of genefather is that Cawl has a necron wife now
Would love to see a video done on the Imperial Knights
Well after i finish the farsight audiobooks guess I got to listen to belisarius cawl book now
You provide a valuable service to your ADHD brothers my man. My brain calms to one line listening to you warble on about mad space army men lunacy. A valuable service indeed.
We need more mad Ciaphas yarns.
Please.
I am too biased to say something here.
More Cawl Books, yes.
You would think that instead of forgetting large chunks of knowledge wouldn't cawl be able to make like a storage unit for the things he needs to forget
Imma a definite Cawlite… however, I agree with your assessment… Fabulous Bill did get the drop on Cawl🤷🏾♂️
Great book… And I love Alpha Primus 💪🏾
I believe I know one instance where time slows down in the warp. Also spoilers for "The First Heretic".
I'm listening to "The First Heretic" right now and there was a point in the book where Lorgar sends one of his ships with Argel Tal into the Eye of Terror. Lorgar watches them go in, and 60 seconds later they come out.
Argel Tal and a handful of space marines were the only survivors. Argel Tal said he was drifting in the warp for around 7 MONTHS! Space Marines had to eat the dead humans and then each other to survive while being possesed. 😢
Time is weird in the warp.
I would say Bile, Cawl is far more knowledgeable, but in Genefather, Bile won. He had Cawl on the back foot the whole way. When Cawl had the final confrontation with Bile, he had no plan B, no threat or bluff to buy time. He could not come up with a lie or a counter offer to attempt to gain control of the situation. Cawl is lucky it didn't turn out worse.
Great stuff! So Is Fabius cloning all the Primarchs and finding their flaws unavoidable strike anyone else as the flaws might also be intentional? Like, their flaws would lead to conflict which leads to struggle which fueled the Emperor somehow? I feel like that might have been what Hours was mad about if he somehow found something like that to be the case, haven't read the books.
Second though, I feel Belisarius wins this one for two reasons: first, his cleverness in working in such a rigid structure as the Imperium. He has tons of resources yes, but he must do league more mental work to justify his actions and do things in a proper way where as Fabius kinda doesn't have an of these mental obstacles just physical ones. Secondly though and connected, their goals are an indicator of their intelligence to me. There is a more irrational essence to Fabius Biles goal, it feels like he took the "battle not with monsters" quote and twisted it to "just become the monster lol" which is cute but not nearly as clever as Belisarius explanation of innovation and how he logically justified it.
Honestly, while I am a major fan of the ruinous powers, I would have to give the title to Cawl. Simply because he has a vaster knowledge bank. A generalist is more useful in war than a specialist in my opinion
Yeah. I gotta say that Bile is probably my favorite of the two. Really wanna know more about the new men and Bile's impending ascendancy.
Where did it say about Bile's ascendancy?
@@hieioni3354 Uh, in the video Wes mentioned that Bile was being worshipped by millions or billions of new men and was starting to become some kind of lesser chaos deity. Sounds pretty rad, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to circumvent it rather than lean into it. Still. Pater Mutatis. Fucking cool shit.
@@ginnungagaplemniscates1405 I see. Yeah, Bile won't go with it. He's the last adherent of the Imperial Truth and all he cares about is creating the perfect lifeform rather than getting involved in Chaos shenanigans.
Please report the account above me. It's scam.
Bile might be my favorite character in the Warhammer universe fullstop
Bile wiped the floor with cawl and stole his “sons” progenied glands he was nice enough to keep him alive because cawl begged
Fuck ya left over turkey and new weshammer video.
Great day, have a good one y’all.
Now I'm waiting to her about Bile gets his hands on a Cawl Inferior. The things those two couldndo together would be staggering.