Magnus, the Ideologue: My Little Diatribe on Asheth Magnus, and What to do About His Story

Not so long ago, I got back into Warmachine, and have been fairly active, with this Friday marking the beginning of my second league and my return to Mercenaries.

Something I've tossed around for years now was Magnus at the core of a larger army- not the loner represented in his theme lists or the simple sell-sword of Four Star, but the leader of a well-organized army.

The concept was, doing a whole Mercenary "faction," with each Warcaster (and some warjacks and units) being re-imagined as part of, or allied to, this one thematically linked force.

It was easy enough coming up with characters, but then I started talking about how this would happen- how Magnus, or some other character, could unify a larger army/nation, and realized that there was no way to, without fundamentally diverging from the Warmachine narrative, because there isn't a compelling reason for everyone's favorite sell-swords's actions: to put it bluntly, Magnus does not make sense.

Note: Being involved in narrative arts, this is something I do for fun with any number of movies etc.: why does something not work, and what are the fewest number of changes you could make for it to be interesting? Prepare yourself for some analytical ramblings...