Horus Heresy Headcanons

[Delirium]

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.

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That works too.

 

[ShyPerson]

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.

Click to shrink...

My take is that initially the Legions are the primary military strength of the Crusade, backed by Mechanics forces raised from Mars and line troops levied from across the Sol system. The Imperial army would initially be largely second class filler troops. But as the conquests expanded the Legions could not grow fast enough to cover the growing theaters, with casualties also slowing their growth. Both the need for better fighting forces to plug the gaps that could hold their own and the rise of Primarchs that understood the the Astarte could not handle every eventually pushed and overall improvement of the mortal forces.

 

[bluntblade]

My take is that initially the Legions are the primary military strength of the Crusade, backed by Mechanics forces raised from Mars and line troops levied from across the Sol system. The Imperial army would initially be largely second class filler troops. But as the conquests expanded the Legions could not grow fast enough to cover the growing theaters, with casualties also slowing their growth. Both the need for better fighting forces to plug the gaps that could hold their own and the rise of Primarchs that understood the the Astarte could not handle every eventually pushed and overall improvement of the mortal forces.

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I think that might be the headcanon, but I'm not certain and lean towards the Astartes being intended to be the tip of the spear (the Mechanicum had Forge Worlds across the Galaxy after all) rather than the main strength. It took first the Lunar gene-cults' assets and then the mature gene-codes of the Primarchs themselves to enable the Legions to get as big as they did, and I lean towards the Emperor and His generals having taken that into account.

I wish we'd had more integrated warfare depictions for that matter. Knights with Legions for example, as we see in some of the FW campaigns.

 

[veteranMortal]

I'd probably start with the Great Crusade? Delve into the heroism of the soldiers on the front lines of the crusade, and contrast it sharply with the fact that they're waging a brutal war of conquest across the galaxy.

Space Marines are far more ubiquitous than they are in 40k, being probably present on a sizeable % of campaigns; soldiers know they exist and see them around, but you only see them on the battlefield when shit is going down.

Primarchs should be incredibly human. They feel emotions more powerfully than normal humans, and are basically all being steadily eroded by the constant war - they're either desensitising themselves to the war by justifying it or by refusing to think about it, or they're coming apart at the seams, held together only by their dedication to the cause/their father.

The emperor, by contrast, is a wretch. Tens of thousands of years old, he uses other people as pawns in his plans, even people he is supposed to care for. The trigger for the chain of events ending in the Heresy was Horus realising that the Emperor doesn't see them as his sons, and will use them in combat until they are worn to the bone, and then discard them, like he did with their predecessors. The Heresy is a tragedy, brother fighting brother and none of them want to be, whilst the Emperor sits on his throne and doesn't feel one iota of remorse.

Both Horus and Guilliman planned Isstvan V to be a crippling opening blow to try to avoid a drawn out war, but the three legions caught in the trap are too hardy to be wiped out, and are able to salvage enough strength that they can delay Horus, forcing him into exactly the grueling attritional war he was trying to avoid. It is at this point that he starts to lean more heavily on Chaos, as it promises an easier, faster end to the war.

The traitors begin to lose their nobility as the heresy continues; some of them, like Fulgrim, are beginning to descend into terrible excesses; no longer restrained by duty, the traitor primarchs are reaching for whatever they can find to try to hold themselves together, or just to dull their PTSD.

The loyalists too are starting to flag; Dorn is forced to make increasingly callous decisions in the formulation of his defence of Terra, and its clear to him that the Emperor doesn't understand why this weighs on him, Lion El'Jonson and Leman Russ are both doubling down on the brutal suppression of rebels, because to look back is to be lost, et cetera.

Eventually end it with the battle of terra. The fighting on Horus' battle barge goes roughly similar to canon, though the fight with Sanguinius rattles Horus terribly; he realises as he goes into battle with the Emperor that he's becoming precisely what he sought to defeat, but he decides he has to kill the Emperor for the good of his sons, (the space marines) and that he can himself be dealt with after the fight.

Horus cripples the Emperor, but in the process, receives a vision of his own victory from his own latent psykery and connection to the Emperor. Seeing that if he wins, the Galaxy will be wracked with wars, brutal oppression by an authoritarian regime and the depredations of his fellow traitors' legions of psychologically broken marines running rampant like bandits across the Galaxy whenever they can, Horus allows himself to be killed by the almost dead Emperor, in an attempt to prevent this future. Obviously, though, this was always part of Chaos' plan; it didn't really matter which of the two "won" because the fundamentals of the future don't really change.

That's pretty much it.

 

[ShyPerson]

Something that comes to mind is how to depict the Space Marines themselves. I am of the mind that Marines in the Great Crusade and Heresy era should act and sound more like modern elite soldiers. Specifically, they are often potty mouthed and throw outrageous off-time activities.

The image of Soace Marines as knightly figures would be something that developed after the Heresy, but started to appear develop as more recruits were inducted from the new homeworlds, specially amoung the Dark Angels.

Not to say that this should be visible on every level, but I believe it would help contrast with the 41st millennium.