Horus Heresy Headcanons

[bluntblade]

What it says on the power armour: what do you wish the Heresy series (both in terms of the Black Library literature and the Forge World Black Books) had done instead?

Now, for my part I like several strands of the Heresy, especially the White Scars, but mostly would want to preserve work by certain authors - Chris Wraight, Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembski-Bowden and John French in particular. So whilst conserving that, I think there are several points where the overall Heresy could have been drastically improved. The middle era in particular, when Abnett had largely stepped away and the other three I've mentioned had yet to really start driving the narrative, is full of issues for me with lots of directionless stories. Vengeful Spirit is an immense bugbear in its own right, but also shows up how Horus himself had largely vanished from the narrative, so a lot of my thoughts are in that direction.

I'll elaborate further on particularly stories further down, but I mentally break it down into a number of "phases", each with a big event which brings events and themes to a head before setting the stage for the next. So here are the rough outlines of my phases below:

1 - the late Crusade, later expanded on by the Primarch books and culminating with Isstvan III and V. The Sons of Horus' arc takes in some time with Horus building his power, while Loken and Torgaddon are effectively exiled and possibly sent to campaign with Ferrus Manus. Essentially we get more sense of a build-up and escalation, particularly with a bigger and more showing for the Iron Hands. And a bit more sense of the Imperium functioning properly, and Horus' concern for it.

2 - the initial confusion and panic, with the Loyalists trying to respond as the rest of the Legions are pitched into the war. Horus' new objectives (i.e. a shadow empire to motor the march on Terra) are made clear, with the conflict coming to revolve around Molech as corruption worms its way into the Traitors. We get focus on the mortal forces on both sides (showcasing the Solar Auxilia and Knight Houses especially) and the newborn Dark Mechanicum. The hot-housing of new Legionaries begins/returns/escalates on both sides, depending on the Legion in question, and we start to follow a new generation of Legionaries.

2B - Imperium Secundus happens briefly, with an emphasis on Guilliman politicking and road-testing a few concepts before he and the rest break from the Ruinstorm. Tom and Jerry shenanigans with Curze are minimised or dropped entirely.

3 - Post-Molech, things escalate as more and more of the Galaxy falls under Horus' sway. Russ and perhaps Sanguinius and Vulkan fight to hold everything together at the outer limits of the vast defensive network Dorn has created, while the Khan (the Scars' arc remains unchanged) and Corvus operate behind the enemy frontlines along with the Shattered Legions. Everything spirals down to Beta-Garmon.

4 - Beta-Garmon rages and then some over a couple of books, this time with the Wolfsbane stuff folded into the narrative and Russ playing a major role in the fighting here. The campaign climaxes with Russ assaulting Horus, managing to wound him with the spear and allowing Slaves to Darkness to run as in canon, while the Wolves pay the price for their daring assault and are driven far from the front, ultimately saved by the Dark Angels. Meanwhile the Ultramarines and co break through the Ruinstorm, Guilliman collecting every asset and ally he can find along the way, and we're off to Terra. The presence of the "Newborn" among the Legions becomes increasingly pronounced.

5 - the Siege.

 

[Sulemain]

For me the biggest problems are the timescale, the way several Primarchs fell and the way the Emperor comes across as an idiot, a bastard or both.

 

[bluntblade]

For mw the biggest problems are the timescale, the way several Primarchs fell and thw aay the Emperor comes across as an idiot, a bastard or both.

Click to shrink...

I would like some more of the careful work Wraight did to emphasise the fiendish knots which the Emperor is bound in by circumstance. The Webway must be uber-secret because you can't afford to upset the Navis Nobilite, you can't go spouting off about the Psychic Ascension because that will get the Mechanicum and many more besides looking at you funny...

 

[Sulemain]

I would like some more of the careful work Wraight did to emphasise the fiendish knots which the Emperor is bound in by circumstance. The Webway must be uber-secret because you can't afford to upset the Navis Nobilite, you can't go spouting off about the Psychic Ascension because that will get the Mechanicum and many more besides looking at you funny...

Click to shrink...

One of the things the better BL writers, Wright included, have done is emphasise the extremely difficult task the Emperor had.

 

[Kuja]

Rewriting the Heresy on the fly yet again because it's a day ending in Y and I have no self-control.

Anything involving the word "Perpetuals" is immediately and unceremoniously jettisoned faster than John Grammaticus out an airlock. The entire Perpetuals storyline is a complete void of content sucking up time and energy for the purpose of pretentiously telling "the story behind the story" as it were, except it's complete vapid nonsense which gave us crap like retconning the retcon to the retcon of why the primarchs were scattered and also gave us Matt Damon the slayer of Martin Luther King Jr. Garbage.

The overriding theme of "my dad and I don't get along" is likewise unceremoniously jettisoned. Generational strife (or its nearest scifi equivalent) isn't a bad story in and of itself, but one of the serious failings of the novel series was leaning into it so hard and so often. Once you get your thirteenth "my dad doesn't love me" plot it's no longer poignant, it's a punchline. This goes double for dads who are not the Emperor.

Horus is the Archtraitor, and the Archtraitor is, in fact, Horus. The idea that Lorgar and Erebus set him up to fall isn't worth the energy of the twist. The original IA article on the Word Bearers had exposition along the lines of "though they were not first legion to fall to Chaos, they fell faster and further than any other."

Mentions and hints of the missing legions are completely omitted. In fact, to drive people up the wall extra hard, just have anyone onscreen mention "the twenty space marine legions" but never refer to the II or XI directly, as if they're just off to the side, present and accounted for but never seen.

TBH over the past decade I've probably written hundreds to thousands of words about little plastic dudes. I'm just gonna quote one of my old posts here in regards to specific primarch stories-

if you wanna do the greek tragedy right every traitor primarch should have a primary flaw and a lesson that they fail to learn which overcomes them in the end

Fulgrim is obsession, or 'perfection is the enemy of the good.' Fulgrim has been good at everything his whole life. he turned Chemos from a dying shitpit into a vibrant and peaceful world, and when called up to become a warrior and commander he became a damn good one. He even built up his legion from almost nothing after disaster nearly wiped them out. But now he's actually competing with people on his level and it gets to him. He trains himself almost religiously, struggling to cut away the imperfections. He expects his legion to always improve; uniformly, to Fulgrim there's nothing more disgraceful than failing to better yourself, no matter the circumstances, no matter how unreasonable it may be. It's what leads him to letting Fabius tinker recklessly with the legion geneseed. To steal a line from the stewniverse "if I'm not perfect then who am I?"

His friendship with Ferrus is something that should be cast as the anchor on Fulgrim's flights of fancy. Ferrus is prosaic and hardworking and responsible, gruff and bluff and earthy; he acts as a balance to Fulgrim's mounting fanatical belief that he must be the best at everything at all times. Ferrus' death can thus be cast as the loss of reason amidst the insanity of the heresy, and it's what snaps Fulgrim's last ties to sanity leaving him to plunge himself and his legion wholesale into the service of Slaanesh.

Perturabo is cold logic, or 'humans aren't rational.' Perturabo believes that the ideal being is a Renaissance Man, the great thinker, expert in all fields, unburdened by such petty things as 'emotion' or 'bonds' or 'human interest'. Perturabo believes mankind is best served by shutting up, sitting down, and working. Human error is a failstate and not to be countenanced. But people don't function like that, fundamentally can't function as if they're datasheets on a page, and Perturabo gets irked when they don't. Because even Perturabo doesn't function like that, not really - he's like one of those rationalists who claim they can operate perfectly logically, then throw a screaming tantrum when faced with a conclusion they don't like.

Perturabo alienates everyone around him - his brethren, his legion, even his homeworld. To his eyes, they all fail him by not meeting his standards; they're all too human, too soft. Perturabo's insistence that he is incapable of failure is what tragically leaves him wide open to manipulation by Horus, who drives him and the Iron Warriors further and further into their self-dug bitterness and isolationism until Olympia itself revolts and the last nail is pounded into the coffin.

Konrad Curze is vengeance, or 'fear exists to be conquered.' Curze took control of Nostromo through savage terrorism, cowing the populace and the gangs and the murderers who preyed on people through shocking acts of murder and barbarism. He's so good at it, though, that he never acknowledges the critical flaw - when he leaves Nostromo, he takes away the object of people's fear, and he never set up a system to govern them without the threat of retaliation. The Night Lords become staffed with psychopaths and murderers, their unity as a legion slowly fraying. Curze himself sees torturous visions and nightmares, but it's all without context, and he doesn't particularly like wearing the device the Emperor made for him to curb the worst of it because he feels like it makes thinking difficult, so he just does without, becoming more erratic and unpredictable. In the end he lets himself be done in, with the line 'death is nothing compared to vindication' which can arguably taken as a recognition that he had become the kind of monster he once hunted.

Angron is, of course, rage or, to quote tumblr, 'the hate you feel will warm your heart but leave you cold in the grave'. Of all the primarchs he's the one with whom you can most do the cycle of violence thematic. He's taken as a slave as a gladiator, leads a revolt, he's 'rescued' by the Emperor on the brink of a crushing defeat, and becomes a rampaging one-man slaughterhouse loosed upon the galaxy. Angron's response to his mistreatment is two-pronged: a total rejection of any authority deemed untrustworthy, fueled by his upbringing and the Emperor's high-handedness, and a colossal hate-on for anything and everything. Angron wallows in his hate, because for him hate and violence are easy. The result is that he's something of a foil for Perturabo - Angron doesn't think, because he doesn't like to think. The World Eaters become a riot of bloodthirsty killers, the librarians and chaplaincy first sidelined and then, at least in the case of the former, eliminated, because they're not savage enough.

If the plot device of the battle cybernetics ('Butcher's Nails' in the BL series) is kept, it's primary use is as a plot device to show the cycle of abuse - Angron has it forced on him as a child, he forces it upon his legion in turn. I've never been a great fan of the Nails as a plot device (especially in the BL series; it makes things too easy) because it's not like they're necessary to push someone into a Khornate rage, but they can work as a tipping point to help push the legion over the edge, especially back by Horus' manipulations.

Mortarion is resentment, specifically, 'bitterness is a poison.' Like how Angron wallows in rage and Curze wallows in the fear he causes, Mortarion wallows in bitter hatred. He hates the aliens who ruled Barbarus, especially the one who raised him, he hates the poisons of his homeworld itself, he hates the Emperor, and most of all he hates himself. Mortarion falls into the trap of constantly comparing what we might have been to what we are - if he'd been found by humans. if he'd landed on a different world. if he'd taken the Emperor up on his offer of aid. if he didn't need to wear a damn rebreather. Nevertheless he surrounds himself with the trappings of his home, poisons and toxins and rad-weapons because they're his, dammit, and fuck you for trying to take them away from him. Mortarion keeps slogging onwards with what he's got because there's nothing else to him.

Magnus the Red is haughtiness, or 'ivory-tower intellectualism.' When you're willing to learn and Magnus is willing to teach, he's a great guy. When he's willing to learn and you're willing to teach, he's a great guy. But Magnus has been either student or teacher for most of his life, and he has trouble defining a relationship outside those bounds. He's that guy who's an expert on anything he's studied for five minutes, even though you know he never heard of it six minutes ago. And if you're better at him than something, well, it's something he's never studied. Magnus can be exasperating, and, in considering the fate of his legion, dangerous. The Thousand Sons have a very strong 'for me and not for thee' streak to him, delving deeply into study of the warp and sorcerous practices that scream Bad Idea and ignore any attempts to warn them off of it, because they know better. They're not going to fall into any traps. Even the Council of Nikaea, what should be taken as a dire warning to shape up, does little more than throw Magnus into a extended snitfit about the Emperor's unwillingness to see things his way.

Horus is, of course, ambition, and 'pride goeth before a fall.' When the Emperor retreats from the Crusade to, you know, run the Imperium, Horus takes over the campaign trail personally, spending long years heading up the Imperium's conquest of the galaxy, and as the awards and adoration and adulation and accolades and other a-words pile up he starts getting it into his head that he ought to be the rightful ruler of the whole shebang. While recovering from wounds on the planet Davin, he's introduced to the powers of the warp through the warrior lodges there, and so strikes a fateful bargain to sway the greater power of the Imperium's war machine to his side along with his brothers and topple the Emperor. He becomes a creature unlike any seen before or since, a font of Chaos power such that even the four great powers seem more held than holders of his leash. Drunk on power - both the political and very, very real kinds - it's not until things fall apart aboard his flagship that Horus realizes how very, very badly he's fouled up.

Lorgar is zealotry, or to be more accurate 'you can't externalize self-righteousness.' Lorgar frames his mindset as a search for truth, but really what he wants is what everybody wants: to be on the right side. Lorgar's problem is that he fundamentally cannot internalize the idea that morality is what you do, or to quote Horus Rising 'we must be mighty because we are right, not right because we are mighty.' Lorgar grows up steeped in the old faiths of Colchis, but when he starts having visions and the existing power structure rejects him, he overthrows it because he knows he's right, the universe told him he's right, and when the Emperor shows up he feels validated, and doesn't even notice how Emps is put off by the displays of veneration. When he goes on the Crusade he turns it into a literal religious crusade, stopping at every planet to fully convert it before moving on.

Eventually the Emperor shows up to kick him into gear, because the Word Bearers are the S L O W E S T legion by far and their ties to other legions are fraying, and maybe put down some of the religious stuff. Lorgar cannot reconcile this discrepancy between the image of the God-Emperor he believes he understood perfectly vs the actual Emperor telling him to cool it, and basically dissociates himself into next month. Eventually this one dude named Kor Phaeron who Lorgar's known since they were kids suggests maybe Lorgar should go back and look at the old faiths again, at which point Lorgar starts digging into a new, and to him, even bigger 'truth' than the Emperor. Then a dude from the Sons of Horus arrives and shit goes buckwild. But for all the work he's done, Lorgar still can't see himself as anything but a vessel for truth, effectively sheltering himself under the Horus and the Chaos gods instead of the Emperor, and when things go sideways on Terra he all but collapses because he can't understand how shit's gone south again.

Alpharius, finally, is the inferiority complex, or 'don't define yourself by your relationships to others.' Alpharius is not only the last primarch, he's the last primarch to be publicly discovered, so late in the Crusade that the Emperor's already handed the reins over to Horus. As a result, everyone else has an achievement list as long as their arm and people won't stop fucking comparing Alpharius and the XX Legion against the others. Alpharius is an A+ tactical commander, but this shit makes him mad as hell. He names the XX the Alpha Legion to emphasize how badass they are and drills the shit out of them at the chapter, company, and even squad level until they know their shit backwards and forwards.

For Alpharius, there's no question of whose side he's on, because Horus is his big bro and he doesn't care for the Emperor. Ironically, despite his keen strategic mind, Alpharius is unable to recognize the bigger picture of how Horus and the other traitor legions are…maybe getting a little sketchy? He just knows this is gonna be his chance to get back at the folks who shit-talked him and his boys. Instead of joining the march on Terra, the Alpha Legion goes across the galaxy, harrying the Ultramarines, the Space Wolves, and the Dark Angels. But unlike Alpharius, Guilliman can stay focused on the big picture, and though delayed it's ultimately the word of the reinforcements coming in that causes Horus to throw down with the Emperor. Of course the Alpha Legion goes on their merry way, until the fight at Eskrador where Alpharius finally gets to stick it to Bobby G - he dies, but he's lured the Ultramarines into an untenable position and ultiamtely they're the ones who have to retreat. But afterwards, the blind spot comes back into play, and the Alpha legion ultimately fragments and goes sailing into the Eye of Terror and the other warpstorms along with the other traitor legions because nobody knows enough of the Plan anymore.

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Since I mentioned the Council of Nikaea in there, it's back to its original form. To quote one of the few passages I actually still have from the original IA articles-

A psyker, […] like an athlete, was a gifted individual whose native talent must be carefully nurtured. Psykers were not evil in themselves. Sorcery was a knowledge that had to be sought, even bargained for, and neither man nor paragon could be certain they had the best of such bargains. The other Librarians united around him, and proposed that the education of human psykers to best serve Mankind be made an Imperial priority. The conduct of sorcery would be outlawed forevermore as an unforgivable heresy against Mankind.

The compromise presented by the Librarians offered both factions something, and appeared to be what the Emperor himself had been waiting for. The Emperor ruled it law without allowing any rebuttal, and the Edicts of Nikaea stand to this millennium as Imperial policy regarding human psychic mutation. But it was not the decision favoured by Magnus. The Grimoire Hereticus records the fateful face-to-face confrontation between father and son when the Emperor himself barred Magnus's attempt to storm from the hall in protest. He bade Magnus cease the practice of sorcery and incantation, and the pursuit of all knowledge related to magic.

Per the return to the original Nikaea and dropping the plot point about the missing legions, the Space Wolves as the 'Emperor's Executioners' is also dunked. It always felt like pretentious garbo to me, although I did like a lot about Abnett's take on them otherwise. Leman and the Wolves are the 'work hard play hard' bunch of the space marines, and as a result sometimes get along a little roughly with other legions.

Uhhhh did I have anything else I wanted to mention.

Somewhere in there it's mentioned that some cheeky Remembrancer took the idea of Guilliman's 'Dantless Few' (himself, Leman Russ, Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn, and Ferrus Manus) and has turned it into a sentai show with Lion El'Jonson as the broody sixth ranger. Guilliman thinks it's the funniest fucking thing he's ever seen and has the entire series on dvd.

 

[Arawn_Emrys]

Rewriting the Heresy on the fly yet again because it's a day ending in Y and I have no self-control.

Anything involving the word "Perpetuals" is immediately and unceremoniously jettisoned faster than John Grammaticus out an airlock. The entire Perpetuals storyline is a complete void of content sucking up time and energy for the purpose of pretentiously telling "the story behind the story" as it were, except it's complete vapid nonsense which gave us crap like retconning the retcon to the retcon of why the primarchs were scattered and also gave us Matt Damon the slayer of Martin Luther King Jr. Garbage.

The overriding theme of "my dad and I don't get along" is likewise unceremoniously jettisoned. Generational strife (or its nearest scifi equivalent) isn't a bad story in and of itself, but one of the serious failings of the novel series was leaning into it so hard and so often. Once you get your thirteenth "my dad doesn't love me" plot it's no longer poignant, it's a punchline. This goes double for dads who are not the Emperor.

Horus is the Archtraitor, and the Archtraitor is, in fact, Horus. The idea that Lorgar and Erebus set him up to fall isn't worth the energy of the twist. The original IA article on the Word Bearers had exposition along the lines of "though they were not first legion to fall to Chaos, they fell faster and further than any other."

Mentions and hints of the missing legions are completely omitted. In fact, to drive people up the wall extra hard, just have anyone onscreen mention "the twenty space marine legions" but never refer to the II or XI directly, as if they're just off to the side, present and accounted for but never seen.

TBH over the past decade I've probably written hundreds to thousands of words about little plastic dudes. I'm just gonna quote one of my old posts here in regards to specific primarch stories-



Since I mentioned the Council of Nikaea in there, it's back to its original form. To quote one of the few passages I actually still have from the original IA articles-

A psyker, […] like an athlete, was a gifted individual whose native talent must be carefully nurtured. Psykers were not evil in themselves. Sorcery was a knowledge that had to be sought, even bargained for, and neither man nor paragon could be certain they had the best of such bargains. The other Librarians united around him, and proposed that the education of human psykers to best serve Mankind be made an Imperial priority. The conduct of sorcery would be outlawed forevermore as an unforgivable heresy against Mankind.

The compromise presented by the Librarians offered both factions something, and appeared to be what the Emperor himself had been waiting for. The Emperor ruled it law without allowing any rebuttal, and the Edicts of Nikaea stand to this millennium as Imperial policy regarding human psychic mutation. But it was not the decision favoured by Magnus. The Grimoire Hereticus records the fateful face-to-face confrontation between father and son when the Emperor himself barred Magnus's attempt to storm from the hall in protest. He bade Magnus cease the practice of sorcery and incantation, and the pursuit of all knowledge related to magic.

Per the return to the original Nikaea and dropping the plot point about the missing legions, the Space Wolves as the 'Emperor's Executioners' is also dunked. It always felt like pretentious garbo to me, although I did like a lot about Abnett's take on them otherwise. Leman and the Wolves are the 'work hard play hard' bunch of the space marines, and as a result sometimes get along a little roughly with other legions.

Uhhhh did I have anything else I wanted to mention.

Somewhere in there it's mentioned that some cheeky Remembrancer took the idea of Guilliman's 'Dantless Few' (himself, Leman Russ, Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn, and Ferrus Manus) and has turned it into a sentai show with Lion El'Jonson as the broody sixth ranger. Guilliman thinks it's the funniest fucking thing he's ever seen and has the entire series on dvd.

Click to shrink...

That last bit reminded me of a big thread over on SB of an SM/40K crossover. Angron had a cartoon (he was voiced in it by Kharn), and the Nighthaunter got an Adam West Batman style show based on him.

 

[bluntblade]

I'd try and give the Alpha Legion an actual arc. I really like Praetorian of Dorn, but we needed an epilogue for the AL as they contemplate the brutal exposure of their hubris (and resolving the secret civil war thing too, possibly with the Sol operation constituting an attempt by one twin to take back control of the Legion).

Also, Chris Wraight's take for the Death Guard is the one I want, not McNeill's and not Swallow's.

 

[ShyPerson]

I am largely dissatisfied with how GW chose to depict the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, specifically how the the series about it has become bloated and how the outline of events are depicted as completely true. Particularly how much it runs on great man theory, and how it misses an opportunity to comment how fascism loves to distort history into neat, moralizing narratives that justify its terrible actions. So here is how I envision the early history of the Imperium playng out, and my basis for Imperial history if I write something 40k in the future.

My divergences are probably a lot more radical than most, but hey, some controversy should make this disscution interesting.

Let's start with the main players to set the foundation.
Now the the big thing people will find controversial:

The Emperor is not some psychic god man. He was some guy who was born on Terra into one of the warlord states. He is very powerful psyker that managed to avoid the fate of most powerful psykers in the pre-imperial era by being conscripted by a warlord state where psykers were drafted into an elite power-armored warrior-class. The unification started when he usurped controll of the state and started conquering the others. His ambition eventually grew beyond Terra, and later beyond the Sol system itself. The Crusade wasn't planed to encompass all of mankind at the start, but the scope larger as more non-human threats were uncovered, so more comparatively easily taken human worlds were claimed to grow imperial power.

The Emperor as I envision his is an ancient to medieval style warlord. He conquers because that is what he was thaught in a war torn environment, and spends massive resources on twenty massive Legions of power armored soldiers because they were the core of his army on Terra, and the technical knowlage of the Mechanicum could make them better than ever before.

The primarchs, to be extra contriversial, are not his sons. They are not even the genetic forefathers of the Legions. The term "Primarch" is a title conferred by the Emperor to honor someone of great merit. The primarchs we know are simply the ones conventional Imperial historiography bothers to actually remember.

The primarchs as we know them are natives of the worlds they were raised on. They would be among the thousands of their homeworlds who were recruited by the Legions as they moved further away from Terra and needed recruitment sources closer to their theaters. They are not ubermenchs of ultimate power. What they are specifically are representatives of the change in the Legions culture that occurred as the influx gained influence over the Legions as a whole, with Primarchs ultimately being promoted to Supreme Legates (diffrent titles were used unofficially by diffrent Legions).

The Legions had by the time they settled on new recruitment grounds already gained reputations for excelling in specific forms of warfare. They sought out the worlds in question due to the populations possessing the traits that the leadership thought desirable. Afterwards each Legions character was modified further by the adoption of languages, cultual customs and religious beliefs of their new homeworlds. In terms of fighting prowess they are above 41st millennium Chapter Masters due to better technology, however they are important due to solidifying the character of the Legions in the later stages of the crusade and for being de facto in charge of the Imperiums armed forces during the Heresy.

While exaggerated, each of the Primarchs also excelled in the fields that you would expect; Perturabo was one of the Imperiums foremost experts on breaking strongholds, Vulcan was a renowned artisan who's fame would spread as he rose through the ranks, Guiliman was famous for his expertise in military orginizational and logistics, and so on...

My focus is to de-emphasize the great man theory direction that canon takes to the period, and instead emphasize the big players as part of greater trends. I would not focus any story primeraly from their viewpoints, but more on the people around them and how their actions impact the world around them.

One reason why the original Scherlock Holmes stories worked is because we are always viewing his actions from the outside, which leaves us intrigued as to what he is thinking when he is figuring out a mystery. It also leaves some ambiguity around these figures that can spark intrigue when we don't have all the answers given by a POV.

I hope this turns out coherent, there is naturally the foundation, with loads of other details left out or not yet developed.

 

[gyrobot]

The Betrayal of the Traitor Primarchs are inevitable with or without the Emperor's intervention. Angron would have found something to make him snap even without his gladiators dying (My headcanon was he finds a remnant of Thunder Warriors who feels Angon's compassion for them and tells them how they were used and discarded), Lorgar having a crisis of faith despite Monarchia not being destroyed when there is a religous schism and other factors that no matter how hard the emperor tries, they are destined to fall because of their flaws

 

[Flare]

The primarchs, to be extra contriversial, are not his sons. They are not even the genetic forefathers of the Legions. The term "Primarch" is a title conferred by the Emperor to honor someone of great merit. The primarchs we know are simply the ones conventional Imperial historiography bothers to actually remember.

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FWIW, in the old Index Astartes a Primarch was simply the founder of a Legion. What you propose ins't that far off from what a Primarch was envisioned to be at the start.

 

[ShyPerson]

FWIW, in the old Index Astartes a Primarch was simply the founder of a Legion. What you propose ins't that far off from what a Primarch was envisioned to be at the start.

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I was also thinking that The title of Primarch could also be bestowed on non-Astartes as well. The Emperor being a military minded person first and foremost would of course mostly hand it to various military commanders, and only a small number of non-combatants received the honor.

 

[bluntblade]

To be honest, I'm playing much more conservative than that. When it's done well, I really like the supernatural power of the Primarchs (as well as the tragedy of such beings being doomed to fall so far short of their potential).

 

[ShyPerson]

To be honest, I'm playing much more conservative than that. When it's done well, I really like the supernatural power of the Primarchs (as well as the tragedy of such beings being doomed to fall so far short of their potential).

Click to shrink...

That's fair. I prefer relying less on supernatural abilities or occurrences to cause things to happen.

Does this mean that factions will eventually form around us, a conservative and a radical one, which result in a showdown over thread supremacy?

Joking aside, I think the phases you outline are a useful structure to organize the course of events.

 

[bluntblade]

That's fair. I prefer relying less on supernatural abilities or occurrences to cause things to happen.

Does this mean that factions will eventually form around us, a conservative and a radical one, which result in a showdown over thread supremacy?

Joking aside, I think the phases you outline are a useful structure to organize the course of events.

Click to shrink...

I'm operating from, similar to my headcanon approach to SW and the MCU, a sense of trying to preserve the stuff I really like from the series (if, say, I set out to redo the ST from the beginning then I would fall down a rabbit hole and hit Option Paralysis, whereas I've found it easy to chart a course from the end of Episode VIII). So for me it's mostly to do with tightening up various things and giving the thing more focus overall.

 

[Reveen]

The Lost Primarchs are Corey and Trevor from Trailer Park Boys.

 

[bluntblade]

The Lost Primarchs are Corey and Trevor from Trailer Park Boys.

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No no no, one of them's Icarion Anasem. And I'm not just saying that because I became custodian of the Lightning Bearers (long, long story).

Probably the biggest thing for me post-Isstvan is that I'd want to keep some focus on the Sons of Horus, especially Abaddon and Aximand as well as the Primarch. Molech would be very much on the horizon after the Dropsite Massacre as the "phase" builds towards that. However, I'd fundamentally alter the nature of how Horus gains that boost - maybe you've got something like the Vault of Moravec, with a number of daemons imprisoned there instead of tainted tech - but I think I'd retain that turning point with things like the Luperci emerging at that point. I can say that I'd make Serghar Targhost key to that, possibly building a conflict between him and the "secular" leadership of the Sons of Horus in the form of the Mournival.

Spoiler

I find that the period after Isstvan V seems to be the most fertile in my mind. Perhaps because it seems the most aimless in BL writing, while Forge World have a very strong through-line for it. This is the point where the true scale of the horror becomes apparent, and Horus is already moving against the remaining Loyalists. There will be a number of component conflicts to this, but the core one brings the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children and Death Guard to Molech.

To that end, I'd actually open this with the events of Raven's Flight, only longer and with some of the stuff that Alan Bligh added. First off, I'd add Corvus reorganising his Legion, in the process elevating some formerly obscure captains as I'm thinking that would be good for a POV character. Here we're selling the scale of the calamity, rammed home when said captain leads a reconnaissance mission out to the Dropsite and sees most of the enemy embarking while the reclamation and salvage efforts begin. At length and at great cost, the remnants of the XIXth Legion are evacuated from Legion and make for Kiavahr, there to take stock and plan their next move. Ominously, for the first time in the Legion's history Corvus authorises accelerated implantation protocols, formerly the preserve of the World Eaters and Iron Warriors.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a post-Dropsite book split between the Sons of Horus and the Shattered Legions, the threads converging on Dwell. Call it Dark Empire or somesuch. I'm inclined to integrate Meduson wholesale into this (Grey Talon might slot into a timeskip, but stay separate) and have his strand cover the Shattered Legions adapting and setting new objectives. Over several months, Meduson takes in White Scars (both sagyar mazan deathsquads and far-ranging Brotherhoods) and Imperial Fists dislodged from their garrisons by Horus' assault on the Coronid Deeps, plus Mechanicum, Army and Solar Auxilia troops. Evading Tybalt Marr's pursuit and scoring some small victories along the way, Meduson flirts with the idea of trying to revive the Iron Hands' old way of war but realises it is futile in the face of the XVIth, and increasingly pulls from the White Scars and Raven Guard's methods.

As for the Sons of Horus, I'd start with them where the Black Book Conquest leaves off: Abaddon stalks the governor's palace in the newly conquered capital of Manachea. With the exception of the besieged Forge World Mezoa, the Coronid Deeps belong to the Warmaster, and they are already being put to work. Abaddon observes the denizens of the lower levels being rounded up for conscription both into the labour force and the Traitors' mortal armies. The youths among them, however, are all claimed for the Legion - hundreds of thousands, most of whom will be expended by the factory-line process of implantation which is now being adopted. Abaddon dislikes the idea, remembering how the XVIth used to pick its recruits, but such are the needs of war and it is, after all, the will of the Warmaster. Horus Aximand, meanwhile, is at Port Maw as Lupercal's forces assume full control, resupplying before their move on Gyrien.

With Abaddon away, and Horus' eye on the grand strategic picture, Aximand finds himself managing a growing rift within the Legion with Serghar Targost at the head of an emerging occultist faction. We get some of the Little Horus material - and indeed I'd be integrating most of that stuff here - with the added element that some of the officers are jockeying for position, even questioning Aximand's commitment after what happened on Isstvan III. With the Mournival gone, there's potentially more to gain for the really ambitious officer. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do regarding Luc Sedirae here, seeing as Nemesis removes him in canon and his presence might muck with the pecking order. Possibly he dies at the hands of one of Meduson's faction or even in a clash with Autek Mor, highlighting the danger which the Shattered Legions still pose to the Traitors. Either way, the Sons of Horus and their allies lay Gyrien low and move on to Dwell, opening the systems around Molech to invasion (and that can be handled in books focusing on the Emperor's Children and Death Guard, as well as possibly the Traitor Army and Mechanicum).

Tallarn feels to me like it'd be worth handling as a full novel alongside the novellas which John French wrote, with the focus at the highest levels of command on both sides while the novellas deal with the boots on the ground bums in tank seats. I don't know what I make of Angel Exterminatus, but I figure the Iron Warriors can be working through the fallout of their betrayal by the Emperor's Children.

 

[greendoor]

Don't do it at all. Leave it all legends and myths, forgetten in the 10,000 years since.


If you absolutely have to do it, do it as an Imperial History or Religious book (or both) that is obviously biased and trying to justify the Imperium, and filling in the holes with guesses and propaganda. Maybe annotated by a heretic or something to give both sides perception of the story if you have to.


Also, whatever you do, Ollanius Pius was a normal imperial Soldier, not a Space Marine, not a Custodes, and not a Perpetual.

 

[Alane1]

Honestly I actually liked Ollanius Pius being a perpetual old solder with no special powers other than not dying who'd just like to retire to a farm and quietly practice his faith in some backwater of the imperium indeed tried to do just that only for Erebus yet again ruin things.

I think it is at least in part because it makes for such contrast of character against the bombastic nature and massive power of of the Emperor.

 

[bluntblade]

Honestly I actually liked Ollanius Pius being a perpetual old solder with no special powers other than not dying who'd just like to retire to a farm and quietly practice his faith in some backwater of the imperium indeed tried to do just that only for Erebus yet again ruin things.

I think it is at least in part because it makes for such contrast of character against the bombastic nature and massive power of of the Emperor.

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I liked the first couple of Perpetual outings, and quite enjoy Grammaticus in Saturnine, but I can take or leave the concept overall.

 

[Alane1]

I liked the first couple of Perpetual outings, and quite enjoy Grammaticus in Saturnine, but I can take or leave the concept overall.

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I think the biggest issue is it was fine when there was just lets say Vulcan, the Emperor, Ollanius Pius and a select few others running around but then they just kept adding more and more until it seemed like you could practically raise a army or several of them.

The concept of perptuals works best when there are only a few of them running around.

 

[bluntblade]

I think the biggest issue is it was fine when there was just lets say Vulcan, the Emperor, Ollanius Pius and a select few others running around but then they just kept adding more and more until it seemed like you could practically raise a army or several of them.

The concept of perptuals works best when there are only a few of them running around.

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Definitely. Particularly with Grammaticus not really being a part of the club.

I think I'd throw in some Blackshield stories too. I got annoyed enough with the shallow focus on Isstvan III that I did a bunch of fics for its timeskip - in addition, I would skip the silliness with the Mournival all throwing down miles away from the battle, and just having them come together during the fight for the Preceptor's Palace.

And there's one future Blackshield in that who so far has only appeared in a single short story. I'd like to see more of him - and maybe a tale of Thousand Sons companies on opposite sides of the war, the Death Eagles (a loyalist EC Millennial) and their struggles. Particularly I'd love a story of such a force in the Scouring and the changes they would need to submit to in order to fit into the new Imperium. The old livery has to go if you've still got it, your illustrious past is now a death sentence should anyone find out, etc.

 

[Kuja]

The Betrayal of the Traitor Primarchs are inevitable with or without the Emperor's intervention. Angron would have found something to make him snap even without his gladiators dying (My headcanon was he finds a remnant of Thunder Warriors who feels Angon's compassion for them and tells them how they were used and discarded), Lorgar having a crisis of faith despite Monarchia not being destroyed when there is a religous schism and other factors that no matter how hard the emperor tries, they are destined to fall because of their flaws

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Oh man the Thunder Warriors, yeah that's a plot I would totally rework.

Horus Heresy novel version: The Thunder Warriors were proto-space marines, but the Emperor murdered most of them at the end of the Unification War and then turned the legions on the rest and wiped the event from history because he's a thankless shitfuck. (Well actually the Thunder Warriors were all dangerously unbalanced because their proto-space-marine-process made them hyper strong and aggressive so the Emperor wiping them out kinda makes sense.)

I'm spontaneously generating the term 'maximalist grimdark' to describe this kind of writing - everything is bad, at every step, and every single plot point makes it worse. In the case of the Thunder Warriors I think a more grounded approach would better convey the weight of their story.

Kuja's version: The Thunder Warriors are the first pass at creating the space marines, meaning they have fewer implants and what they did get is less effective. Nevertheless these giant badasses carried the day and unified Terra in the last days of the Age of Strife. Their reward, however, is that as the Great Crusade proceeds they're increasingly marginalized by the succeeding generations of space marines and left to man ceremonial positions and low-priority systems. A few, like Iacton Qruze, manage to hang on and retain rank through bloody-minded tenacity, but most of them are alternatively treated with patronizing disdain or patronizing reverence. When the Heresy swings around Horus tries to sway some of the old men with promises of renewed glory, but remembering the horrors of the Unification War and seeing a renewal of such atrocities in Horus' reign, most gear up to oppose him. They make a stand at the Siege of Terra, a motley assortment from the old Cohorts before they became Legions, and are ultimately wiped out fighting to preserve the unity they'd worked so hard to attain. And, naturally, they give the traitor forces thrown at them a thorough working over before they succumb.

 

[Hykal94]

Well first of all, it should be 12 books min and 20 books max. There should be a plan nailed down first and foremost instead of making up shit along the way. The Heresy existed in broad strokes but what it really needed was the A to B to C. There should be a single creative leader that makes all the decisions.

You can have all the supplementary novels but the 12/20 books are the primary big main series. The fact that you need to read FIVE novels to get the prologue is bad and should be reduced to three.

I like Grammaticus and Olly as Perps but thet shouldnt even be a main focus, they should be a very background thing.

There's 40k words left in me but I'l add them later.

 

[Delirium]

Rule 0: We don't write it in the first place.
Rule 1: We never see inside the Emperor's or any Primarch's head and they're only ever on-screen as demigods.
Rule 2: Only a few known characters are available for use, everyone else is an OC donut steal that dies at the end of the Heresy or at some point in the intervening years (reminder that the setting exists outside the final year of M41). If you do want to use a known 40k character then they're not allowed to be "First Captain Abaddon." They can be a sergeant or something instead.
Rule 3: The scale is bigly upped, fuck the police, if you're going to treat Space Marines like armies instead of spec ops then there are going to be billions of them and the Heresy takes decades.
Rule 4: Things should proceed more or less chronologically where possible, I don't want to be drifting back and forth across 50 books. It's okay to have a few books in a row set in the same time period, but after those books there shouldn't be any that are set a year before them or something.
Rule 5: The Heresy is full of strange archeotech (with the notable exception of the Space Marine legions themselves) that has been lost to the ages.
Rule 6: The "Great Crusade" (nobody calls it this at the time) is more of a voluntary protectorate until the advent of the Heresy ruins everything, Horus spends as much time wreaking atrocities on neutral human space as he does striking out towards Terra and in a weird twist of Dramatic Irony is basically the trigger for the formation of the Imperium As all of these minor polities are forced to join the increasingly warlike and draconian Imperium which will then in the future perpetuate those same horrors as Horus visited on them.

 

[bluntblade]

Rule 3: The scale is bigly upped, fuck the police, if you're going to treat Space Marines like armies instead of spec ops then there are going to be billions of them and the Heresy takes decades.

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I see your point there, but I'd actually prefer to amplify the vibe which is already there with the Legions being the elite of the elite of the elite and vastly outnumbered by the Imperial Army, Mechanicum taghma and the Solar Auxilia. I'd have really liked more focus on the latter, as Alan Bligh made them really neat and gave them some cool campaigns in the Black Books from Forge World.

Plus that sort of thing would allow us to see the sheer scale of what the commanders on both sides are contending with.

For that matter, on a purely "stuff happening" level, I'd have loved to see some proper duels between Titan Legions and Astartes/Army/Solar Aux tank echelons. Gimme some massed Bane/Fellblades/Shadowswords against war maniples of god-engines. And then a napkin for my dribble.