Kaldor Draigo
 Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it. |
 | This article or section involves Matthew Ward, Spiritual Liege, who is universally-reviled on /tg/. Because this article or section covers Ward's copious amounts of derp and rage, fans of the 40K series are advised that if they proceed onward, they will see fluff and crunch violation of a level rarely seen. |
Kaldor titanfucking Draigo is the Supreme Grand Master (Don't forget the Supreme part) One True Sue of the Grey Knights and a probably the greatest living loyalist in the 41st Millenium... ...and a ridiculously obnoxious thorn in the side of anyone who isn't a 12 year old newfag. And the worst thing is that you can't get rid of the thorn.
Origins in the Fluff
Draigo first showed up from out of no-where in Matt Ward's famous Grey Knights 5th Edition codex, previously there had been no mention of the character anywhere, but suddenly we were presented with this all new guy, with a list of deeds equivalent / greater than any of the established 40k heavies, including several Primarchs, yet somehow completely and unbelievably infallible.
As a lowly Battle-Brother he banished the Daemon Prince M'kar the Reborn and he has risen steadily through the ranks to become the SUPREME Grand Master Chosen of the most secretive Chapter of Space Marines. Yet ever since his battle with M'kar, Draigo has been cursed to a life within the Warp, doomed to walk within the Realm of Chaos, to remain pure when constantly assailed by Chaos and to show fortitude and personal strength that is beyond comprehensible measure. (In other words, he's got Plot armor of a scale equivalent to a 1++ unmodifiable save)
But while Draigo lives, he will prevail, and one day, he will return.
Wait this sounds so familiar...Oh, son of a bitch!
Long ago in a distant land, I, M'kar, the shape-shifting Master of Chaos, unleashed an unspeakable evil! But a foolish Grey Knight warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck, I tore open a portal in space and flung him into the Warp, where my evil is law! Now the fool seeks to return to real-space, and undo the evil that is Chaos!
To be fair, Samurai Jack is pretty good. It's an animated series that was inspired by/borrows from Frank Miller's rönin; if you haven't read that Samurai Jack's like a less violent, samurai-and-fantasy-based version of Fist of the North Star. Though Matt Ward's fluff is still awful and unworthy of even sharing the same paragraph as those three.
Listings of Deeds
Kaldor Draigo is famous for:
- Killing a Daemon Prince in his first combat action
- Banishing Daemon Primarch Mortarion back to the warp, somehow carving the name of the previous supreme grand master Geronitan (a fucking long name) into the heart of said Daemon Primarch without contracting space daemon AIDS in the process
- to put this insanity in perspective, try cursive writing with a Chainsaw while in the middle of an industrial toxic waste dump without any protection.
- Single-handedly holding off a daemon horde for two days in real space
- Killing a Daemon Prince with a broken sword,
- Killing one of Khorne's strongest Bloodthirsters with little to no weaponry
- Taking said Bloodthirster's axe and reforging it into a sword for his own personal use WITH HIS MIND (you know, despite it being an obvious weapon of a Daemon and automatically a corrupting influence just to hold, let alone press your bare mind against(just don't tell this to Logan Grimnar, m'kay?))
- Slaying 6 of Slaanesh's chosen Daemonettes (when setting one's gaze upon them is enough to instantly force submission from any mortal, no matter how strong-willed)
- Setting fire to Nurgle's garden (again, whilst somehow miraculously avoiding space daemon AIDS)
- Walking into the City of Tzeentch and single-handedly smashing it to rubble, which, given that the City of Tzeentch comprises geometry which is literally impossible, MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE
(maybe he just smashes the impossible buildings into equally-impossible rubble?Who the fuck gave Matt Ward his editing privileges back?! and slaying countless daemons whilst being trapped in warpspace. He can also be summoned by chaos cultists unwittingly instead of a daemon, no sooner returning to the Warp than after slaying them all.- To be a cunt, Great Boss Tuska the Demon-killa did that to several different places with impossible geometry during his WAAAGH! into the warp... but then again, those are Orks, for whom impossible shit forms the backbone of their war machinery, he had an army and artillery with him so they could've fired in all directions, he had an army with him that took losses as they went and they eventually were defeated, in a sense DEFEETED? WE'Z STUCK IN IN AN ENDLESS WAAAGH!!! WHERE U KAN COME BACK FO' MOAR EVVRY TIME U GET ZOGGED! AN' WE'Z NEVAH RUN OUTTA ENEMIEZ! GREAT BOSS DEMONA-KILLA IZ DA BEST BOSS EVAH!)
The God-Emperor himself, looking at his deeds, stood up from his throne... And quit his fucking job because clearly he had become irrelevant.
Additional Bullshit
If anyone needed additional proof that Matt Ward is too busy jacking off at the thought of his own fluffing skills to actually pay any attention to what he's writing, just look at the chronology of Draigo's entry. He initially distinguishes himself in 799.M41 during his first encounter with M'Kar, earning the rank of Justicar. The next confrontation with M'Kar occurs 'Two hundred years to the day since Draigo's victory on Acralem' (i.e. 999.M41). 999.M41; this is confirmed in the 'Deeds of Legend' section of the Codex as well. Later on in his fluff entry, when he returns for the first time to the mortal plane, he has been 'clearly long adrift in time, for he knew [those Grey Knights he encountered] not'. Unless we're intended to assume that his entry is to be read as though in the future, i.e. sometime well after the END of the 41st Millennium, then Kaldor "I'm-a-fucking-badass-who-can-survive-indefinitely-in-the-Warp" Draigo has really only been AWAY from the mortal plane for, at most, a few months. Doubtless, as we all know, time passes differently in the Warp. Kaldor himself may be experiencing years or centuries there while time crawls linearly along for everyone in the Prime Material, but that would have zero impact on the age and number of surviving, recognizable members of the Grey Knights whom he left behind. Giving Mr. Ward the benefit of the doubt (which seems unfair to readers), either Kaldor is being randomly deposited into points in the distant PAST, or we're intended to pretend all Grey Knight battles that include him are taking place in the distant FUTURE; without one of these two assumptions, only two other alternatives remain: Draigo has gone senile, or; he was too big a snob to ever learn the names or faces of those serving under him. This, of course, is if we want to give Matt Ward any credit at all. In other words, the above is a concrete example of BAD WRITING. What the fuck more do you want, GW? Who's he fluffing on your board of directors, that you've retained such a piss-poor hack for so long?
Of course, the Warp's tendency to approach time in a non-linear fashion most certainly doesn't preclude the possibility of Draigo getting shat out in the past or, hell, even in an alternate universe. Just pray that Ward doesn't have him encounter Rawbutt Girlyman on one of his jaunts. (Don't give Matt Ward any ideas!)
Although to be fair, the warp CAN do everything just described and other codex writers have done so. Most notably an Ork Waaagh! that was sent back to JUST before its start and the warboss killed himself to get two of his favorite gun.
Wut?
Clearly, the only explanation for the sheer levels of retardation and gratuitous canon-rape Draigo represents is the simplest one: That Draigo is, in fact, defeated - Chaos cannot be beaten in its own realm of non-space because of the mere fact that chaotic beings are immortal, after all, and none of the above is true. (though psykers can "technically" kill chaos daemons for good in the warp, it requires an amount of psychic energy and willpower that's far beyond the norm)
Right now, this very moment,(in the far future) Draigo is in fact a shredded pile of torn flesh and shattered bone after having his ass handed to him by the above Lord of Change and Bloodthirster, who proceeded to step in whilst the Lord kept him distracted - Just as planned. This pile of broken ex-marine is also gushing ooze and phlegm and pus as he was infected with every blight and pox Nurgle has to offer. This shredded, oozing pile....thing, is also being raped and violated in the most unspeakable and vile ways by the Daemonettes of Slaanesh.
And so it shall continue, for all eternity. Because every single Chaos God finds it fucking hilarious.
The only reason he thinks "all is well" is because Tzeentch thought he'd have a bit fun with Draigo. He stuck Draigo into a matrix-esque dream world where everything goes his way and is just waiting for Draigo to climb as high as he can. This dream world will probably last until Draigo has crushed the Chaos gods themselves and all their armies beneath his feet and caused the God-Emperor himself to rise from the throne and suck him off!
Then, at the "funniest" possible moment, right as his bolter is about to fire its payload (and we're not talking about the one on his wrist), Tzeentch will rip it all away from him, Draigo will wake up and see what has really become of him and weep tears of utter loss and despair! "Just as planned!"
While all that's happened, Draigo thought himself: "I have no mouth, but I must scream".
Admittedly, Draigo's fluff is pretty badass, but still canon-rape (no pun inten- wait, pun totally intended). There is nothing awesome about someone who just goes around fucking everything up with zero challenge. It's like people who write stories about how their super awesome character killed the Lady of Pain or something.
//Inquisitor's Note: While the above is no doubt the fevered ramblings of a mind crying out for the Emperor's peace there is a small measure of truth in it. Our most blessed and sanctified scriptures tell us that Lord Draigo's victories in the warp are indeed pyrrhic ones, and that every daemon slain and fortress toppled shortly rights itself. This is his curse and only when, by the Emperor's blessing, he returns to the materium will he be able to enact any lasting defeats on the ruinous powers.//
//Historitor 165.82.108.238 remanded to custody for Inquisitorial review.//
++Thought for the Day: Many are the faces of the enemy, many are the hands of the enemy.++
(Some get back the "I have no mouth and I must scream" pic, beacuse someone fucked the page up.)
Mat Ward Sez
"Lord Kaldor Draigo is a combat monster - there's no other way to describe him. He's lethal against non-daemonic foes, with plenty of Strength 5 force weapon attacks to lay a beat down. When faced with hated Daemons, his Titansword becomes Strength 10, ensuring a pretty one-sided fight in his favour. Even if his enemy survives, Draigo's storm shield is sure to keep him fighting. And on top of all of this, Draigo is a Grand Master, able to bestow extra abilities on his allies. Want your Dreadknight to capture objectives? Draigo can make that happen. Want a Scouting screen of Dreadnaughts? Draigo can make it happen. He's the best possible way to keep your opponent on his toes."
In summary: HE MAKES IT HAPPEN. (So does Creed but unlike Draigo he does OP with Style)
Tabletop
In lab tests conducted on /tg/, Kaldor Draigo loses to Abaddon the Despoiler roughly 73.5% of the time. But then again Abaddon is meant to be a high-cost, point-sink, cc-beatstick who doesn't have arms or do anything to boost his own army...
6th Edition
Like Abaddon, Kaldor's amazing super awesome blade of Mary Sue has been reduced to AP3, but Abaddon was important enough to get FAQ'd back to AP2! This means anything, ANYTHING, with 2+ save will survive combat with Draigo. Even a weaboo space communist wearing iridium armor. Or a Meganob. Or a Captain in artificer armor...if you ignore that Draigo's weapon has the Force special rule, which can cause Instant Death in compensation (which is fine and dandy until he gets challenged by a Phoenix Lord). AP3 admittedly is somewhat of a blow, but this is compensated for against more dangerous foes with its latent abilities and his own 3++ save.
That or just charge a Chaos Lord in Terminator armour with Bloodfeeder THE MURDER SWORD or the Axe of Blind Fury. Naw, the Lord would have to fail a single save to get mindraped.
7th edition
While Draigo's beloved Titansword got upped back to AP2, he himself became far more expensive as a tool, as he is now relegated to the Lords of War Slot -- where Superheavies live -- for a heaping 245 Points. This means that he can't be accessed by himself, he needs someone else in the HQ slot to unlock him. Unless you're running unbound, the system used exclusively by This Guy's fluff games and That Guy's absolute cheesiness. Actually the former sounds kind awesome, to represent a battle where the GK's command structure has been slain but then Draigo pops out of the Warp with a nose full of warp dust.
He still has his insane 2+/3++ save thanks to his Termie Armor and singular Storm Shield. His Force blade is still S+3 with AP2 Master-Crafted, with the ability to re-roll to-wound against Daemons when he uses Force. That said, Force is now deniable, thus you should expect that they will, and in force. Aside from that, he has Banishment (which weakens Daemons' invuls), Hammerhand (Upping him to an S9 murder machine), Gate of Infinity (For sudden Deep-Strikes anywhere), and Purge Soul (To make a sudden hit). This solves one of the reason he was hated: the utter ability to roll whatever you wanted. Without Biomancy or Telepathy, he's no longer invincible.
As a commander, he is now not very worthwhile, with the removal of Grand Strategy and his Warlord Trait now giving him Hatred (Daemons) and an easier time casting Banishment and...that's it. He can no longer make Paladins troops either, so now you've lost more reason to take them over a cheaper ML3 Librarian with both the Domina Liber Daemonica and a Warlord Trait to give him SIX FUCKING POWERS IN SANCTIC. Quite frankly, he's only useful as the mother of all beatsticks.
Silver(ed) Knight
The 6E Daemons Codex detailed the journey a "Knight of the Adeptus Astartes in silvered armor "whose will was as strong as silvered adamantium" braving the many circles of the Palace of Slaanesh, cutting down a few daemonettes and mortal thralls, only to kneel before the Prince of Pleasures himself, in the guise of a young, androgynous boy who cowed the Knight with absolute and righteous innocence. Too many people believe that it's Draigo because of their seething spite for the Ward, but a more rational mind could realize that the Grey Knights aren't the only people wearing silver armour. There's still the Silver Skulls, Doom Eagles, and the Iron Snakes, all who wear silver Power Armour and have more of a likelihood to be corrupted (Especially if you consider the presumed origins that the Skulls are actually loyalist Iron Warriors)
Alternate take: How many other Marines actually are actually running around the Warp, much less loyalist Marines? At the very least, even if it is Draigo it took the god himself to outright convert him with a touch of his "scepter" so someone at least got the idea of what it should take to cause a Grey Knight to just flip to the sides of Chaos for no reason. That or maybe their geneseed makes them hot for traps. Either way it's not clear when this happened, so it could be in the future or an alternate timeline since the Warp doesn't care about your single direction flow of time. Assuming it's not some weird symbolic thing.
Placed in the hands of other authors
C.Z. Dunn has recently taken a crack at Draigo in the novelization of the Pandorax Campaign. Here, Draigo is decidedly NOT a Mary Sue Gary Sue anymore, with "Supreme Grand Master" taken in the same context as Azrael. Dunn doesn't nerf Draigo, he still kicks a ton of daemon ass, but he doesn't go around soloing Bloodthirsters without backup or anything so asinine. Draigo is also shown to be moderately flawed as a character, hot-headed and aggressive -- this is to contrast him with the stubborn and conservative Azrael (who takes until chapter 14 to get off his ass and fight smart, though when he finally does he actually fights really smart like a true Space Marine). He's also a top-tier dick who trolls Azrael about all the prisoners they've been taking back to the Rock and makes several threats that he'll get the High Lords of Terra to investigate if the Dark Angel's don't comply. (Haters gonna hate.)
The Mortarion's Heart Audio Drama, also has him troll his bodyguard, and the Inquisition (in fact his first act as Supreme Grand Master is to tell the one bugging the Knights to go fuck himself). Also we see just what got him the job; he was simply the only one with enough skill to even try to beat Mortarion, even Draigo admitted he was a horrible choice, but that didn't matter since he would most likely die anyway. And, when he does fight Mortarion he gets the shit beat out of him and the entire 1st Brotherhood killed by Mortarion's hand and only gains the advantage with Mortarion's true name which causes the Primarch to have the equivalent of a seizure and then uses Mortarion's antithesis name to banish him.
This isn't too shocking as Draigo is a fairly new character and only has about two pages to himself within the codex compare to Dunn's few hundred. Even a good writer would have trouble balancing both a good character AND a badass who leads an army of daemon killers.
The 7E Codex also takes steps to reduce the fucking cheese of Draigo by showing him as a competent commander before his banishment, and how he only became relevant because he was able to beat up M'Kar, the Daemon Prince of Jobbers. There's also a story where Draigo has to bring out three whole brotherhoods of knights because some idiot Inquisitor tried to mess with a Lord of Change. After Arvann Stern secured an orbital fortress from some daemons, Draigo made it planetside and actually saved some Sisters of Battle from a death by daemon-nomming...only for them to make one last charge to hold the line while the big boys in silver hunted down the big daemon responsible by running daemons over with Metal Boxes. The writer to this has already undone the idiocy of the Khornate Knights, and did so while keeping everyone's dignity. A step up amid a codex widely considered to be a step down crunchwise.
A New Perspective
It has recently been posited that Draigo's ability to traverse the Warp and wreak havoc on the Ruinous Powers with relative ease is due not to Gary Sue bullshit powers, but to the nature of the Warp itself. One of the only constants of the Warp is that it is shaped by the belief and emotion of sentient beings with psychic ability, however small. Because of this, it is possible that a being with vast psychic ability and great faith (say, a Grey Knight Grand Master) would be able to use his belief in himself and in the Emperor to shape the surrounding Empyrean to match this belief in a manner similar to daemons themselves. It also explains why things go back to normal once he leaves, since he is no longer there to affect that portion of the Warp directly. In other words, Draigo cuts a bloody path through the Sea of Souls because he believes he can, and the Warp, ahem, make it happen. If one asks why other powerful psykers can't do it, they can to a degree; see Tuska the Daemon-Killa. As for Eldar, Slaanesh would nab them the moment they entered the Warp. Other human psykers don't tend to try to interact with the Warp too much but it is quite likely they'd be able to some extent.
In addition, people never seem to think that his Aegis warded armour (Terminator armour, which I believe to contain a small Gellar Field, no less) is specifically designed to protect the wearer from the Warp, that and Grey Knight interceptors go through the Warp on a regular basis, so Draigo should, in theory have no trouble traversing the Warp.
Also, as a number of people have pointed out, the Codex itself flat out states that nothing he's doing is having any lasting effect on the Chaos Gods. Plus, his first major appearance in a novel has him delivering an impressive verbal smackdown on Azrael regarding the Dark Angels' obsession with making sure nobody discovers the truth about the Fallen Angels.
Warhammer Fantasy
There has been a sighting of what might be Draigo in the Warhammer Fantasyverse - specifically, in the fluff book for the Khaine splat of The End Times.
During Araloth's travels into the Realm of Chaos, to rescue Shallya from the mansion of Nurgle, the final traveling companion he picks up is a knight, a "giant of a man" whose armor "gleams like silver" and whose "speech is strange". Upon reaching the mansion of Nurgle, the knight sacrifices himself so the rest of the party can enter, explaining he has "made something of a name for himself since his arrival in the benighted realm" and so he is sure to draw their attention. More notably, when he makes his sacrificial charge, it's mentioned that he sweeps out his hand and blue fire explodes amongst the daemon's ranks. It's also been mentioned that the Warp connects Fantasy and 40k.
Worth mentioning that not only are Wood Elves the Spiritual Liege's favorite Fantasy faction, but this was one of the last things he wrote for Games Workshop before leaving the company. Take it as you will.
That said, if this is Draigo, he is certainly not the all-powerful Gary Sue of other depictions; when Araloth finds him, he has been chained down in a glade in Nurgle's garden, at one point he gets ambushed by a Beast of Nurgle (when it jumps out of a tree and lands on him), and rather than defeating the daemons he distracts, Araloth leaves the mansion to find his broken body impaled upon a spear. Yes, he's still alive, and the scholar the Wood Elf is traveling with (who may in fact be Richter Kleiss, the writer of the Liber Chaotica) explains that the knight is "beyond the power of the daemons" and will "take his own revenge in due course", but that is attributed to being "the way of things in the Realm of Chaos" rather than anything inherent to Draigo (if he is Draigo).
See Also
Gallery
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Because...
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Son of a bitch even gets his own codex.
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STEEL REIHN
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U Mad, Dreadnoughtfags?
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HE MAKES IT HAPPEN
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Still a shitload better than a Primarch
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Draigo is a very emotive person.
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PROBLEM, DAEMONS?
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Foolish Grey Knight.
