Editing Horus Heresy (section)

==The [[Siege of Terra]] series==
Yep, it's getting an entire series to itself. What, did you really think they'd dedicate only one book to it? The series is slated to be <s>eight</s> nine books long, along with an unspecified number of novellas.

*'''''The Solar War''''': The Traitors make their big push through the remaining defenses of the Sol system and clear the path to Terra. Dorn's strategy is to make them pay for every centimeter and hope he can delay them long enough for the Ultramarines and the Dark Angels to arrive. To do this, he sends entire fleets out to fight delaying actions and blows up some of Pluto's moons after the traitors capture them. It sort of works, but the traitors have thousands of ships and even a few Space Hulks, so Perturabo just keeps feeding them into the grinder until they break through. Meanwhile, Mersadie Oliton receives a warning vision from Euphrati Keeler and busts out of space jail to deliver her message to Dorn. Unfortunately, it turns out "Keeler" was actually Samus manipulating Mersadie to get her onto the ''Phalanx'' and use her as a gateway to invade the station, so she winds up committing suicide in front of Garviel Loken. Samus rampages around the ''Phalanx'' for a few minutes and is killed '''again''', this time by Dorn. Abaddon bypasses the outer defenses via a warp rift opened up by Ahriman, captures Luna, and convinces the matriarch of the Selenar to start making more Astartes for the traitors. The book ends with Horus, Fulgrim, and Angron arriving in-system along with the main strength of their fleets, meaning shit is now officially real.
*'''''The Lost and the Damned''''': This is it, ladies and neckbeards. The Siege has begun in earnest. Dorn is using millions of conscripts and all the vast firepower he’s installed on the Palace walls to blunt Horus's initial attacks, holding the V, VII, and IX Legions in reserve. Unfortunately, this is all more or less playing into the traitors’ hands. They want to cause as much death as possible so that the walls between reality and the warp will be thin enough to let hordes of daemons onto the planet and the daemon primarchs themselves can safely set foot on Terra without being banished by the Emperor’s psychic mojo. To their credit, Dorn and his brothers are aware of this, but also recognize that they’re screwed either way, so they decide to just go ahead and kill as many traitors as possible. After a few months of traitor Army regiments, Chaos spawn, and beastmen being sent in to soften the defenses up while the Dark Mechanicum build siege guns and towers to punch through the walls, the Death Guard finally show up after their side trip to visit Grandpa Nurgle. Horus sends them in first, mightily pissing off Angron in the process, and they immediately set about turning the warzone into a large-scale recreation of Passchendaele circa 1917. Jaghatai goes out to gather intel on the siege engines and gets poked with a plague knife, but as soon as he crosses back into the Palace grounds the Emperor’s psychic aegis cures him. He then takes half the White Scars to go defend the citizens of Terra from rampaging traitors despite Dorn ordering him not to, and promises to return when needed. Sanguinius rallies the defenders and leads his sons from the front even though Azkaellon and Raldoron would really rather he didn’t. The book ends with the World Eaters and Night Lords launching their first full-scale attack on the Palace walls; Angron challenges Sanguinius to battle while Raldoron beats Gendor Skraivok hollow and tosses him off the wall. The book reveals that despite their numerical superiority and the aid of the Chaos gods, Horus is maintaining control over his war effort and the other traitor primarchs only by sheer force of will: Lorgar, Curze, and Alpharius are out of the picture, Magnus is doing his own thing, Fulgrim is being a prissy dick, Perturabo is as much a whiny bitch as ever, and Angron is so uncontrollable that Kharn and [[Lotara Sarrin]] are forced to teleport him into the labyrinth Perturabo built to contain Vulkan until he can be set loose on Terra. Only Mortarion still seems relatively normal despite the fact he’s now a daemon primarch. Moreover Abaddon is getting really fucking cagey about Horus's new habit of Chaos worship, for good reason. It turns out that the wound Russ inflicted on him at Trisolian has resulted in his soul slowly being drained. As a result, the Chaos Gods have to keep juicing Horus up, with the downsides of time-wasting sojourns into the warp and the gradual destruction of Horus's body. What's more, there are implications that Abaddon is being groomed to take over when Horus falls, all but confirming that the Chaos Gods expected Horus to lose his duel with the Emperor.
*'''''The First Wall''''': This book focuses on the battle for the Lion’s Gate spaceport, which is the tallest structure on Terra and the only place that void-going ships can dock on the entire planet, meaning that the traitors will be able to shuttle in reinforcements and materiel more easily if they can capture it. Perturabo details Warsmith Kroeger to command the Iron Warriors’ assault on the spaceport under the logic that Dorn will be expecting Pert to command the attack personally and won’t be expecting whatever battle plans Kroeger comes up with. Warsmith Forrix isn’t happy with this or with anything else that’s going on, since he’s realized that Horus is using the Iron Warriors in the same way the Emperor did and he's become increasingly disillusioned with Perturabo himself. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum sets a technophagic virus loose inside the spaceport and Zardu Layak, [[Abaddon]], and [[Typhus]] perform a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate Cor’bax Utterblight inside the Emperor’s wards. The Fists hold out as long as they can and inflict heavy casualties, but Dorn finally gives the order to withdraw and abandon the Gate as Perturabo lands his flagship atop the port and joins an assault led by Abaddon and Kharn. Sigismund duels Kharn and nearly loses while Dorn kills Zardu Layak, which allows daemons to manifest on Terra for the first time. He then has a brief exchange of taunts with Perturabo and the first Chaos Titans set foot on Terra, spelling a new stage of the battle. In the midst of all this is a little passage detailing just how many artillery pieces the Iron Warriors have landed on the planet, including two thousand [[Basilisk Artillery Gun|Basilisks]], fifteen hundred [[Manticore Launcher Tank|Manticores]], five hundred [[Medusa Siege Gun|Medusas]], sixteen hundred Siege Dreadnoughts, seven thousand Thunderburst guns, five hundred [[Deathstrike Missile Launcher|Deathstrike]] launchers and eighty-four [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank|Typhon siege guns]], plus uncounted thousands of Rhinos, Land Raiders, Vindicators, Predators, Sicarans, and [[Baneblade|assorted]] [[Fellblade|superheavy]] [[Spartan Assault Tank|tanks]]. [[Awesome|That sound you just heard was Josef Stalin and the entire Red Army popping a boner from beyond the grave.]] Meanwhile, to stop Cor’bax’s taint from spreading inside the Imperial Palace, Malcador recruits Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian to hunt down and eliminate any corrupted cults of the Emperor, giving us the weirdest buddy-cop pairing of all time. Malcador wants to see if he can weaponize the cult’s belief in the Emperor against the Chaos gods and sees Keeler as the key to doing so, while Amon would rather just stamp it out. They eventually find a cult that has been corrupted by Cor’bax. When the daemon uses their bodies to manifest inside the walls, Keeler, Malcador, and Amon team up to kill him. Malcador tells Dorn, Valdor, and the other Imperial commanders that he will allow the cult of the Emperor to exist until the Emperor himself says otherwise. While all this is going on, we get to see more of the siege from a mortal perspective. Katsuhiro, a veteran of the initial fighting outside the walls, is detailed to a section of the outer walls under attack by the Death Guard and eventually has to aid in putting down an outbreak of plague zombies. We also follow Zenobi, a seventeen-year-old line worker from the Afrik hive of Addaba who volunteered to serve in the Imperial Army, only it turns out that she and her entire regiment are pledged to Horus, though this ultimately results their city getting bombed to shit. (Zenobi's story took about a quarter of the book, but its entirety can be summed up in one sentence, and could '''at best''' be described as misguided, inexplicable filler; sounds like a fun read, huh?) The novel ends with John Grammaticus arriving on Terra, mission unknown.
*'''''Saturnine''''': Dan Abnett's first HH book in seven years. Dorn is trying to decide which parts of the Palace need to be defended and which can be allowed to fall, as the Imperial forces are outnumbered, outgunned, and running low on supplies. He identifies four key parts of the defense that cannot be allowed to fall to the enemy, then decides which one he can afford to lose anyway: the Eternity Wall spaceport. The Saturnine Wall, one of the other key elements, has developed a subtle fault thanks to the relentless traitor bombardment. Dorn suspects that Perturabo will try to exploit it, so he lays a trap for the traitor assault force and calls in Arkhan Land to help fix it. While this is going on, Sanguinius kills an Iron Warriors Warsmith at the Gorgon Bar, then [[Awesome|solos a Warlord Titan]] and stares down three Warhounds until they turn tail and run for it. Jaghatai and the White Scars lead a few massed jetbike charges into the ranks of the Death Guard and really ruin their day, further pissing off Mortarion. [[Abaddon]] enlists the entire [[Emperor's Children]] Legion and three companies of the Sons of Horus, led by the entire Mournival, to attack the Saturnine Wall with Perturabo's help; however, Perturabo anticipates that Dorn will expect them to do so and refuses to lend his aid. The III Legion attacks from the front, using three ancient and irreplaceable siege engines, while Abaddon and his Astartes burrow up from beneath with Termite assault drills. When the Sons of Horus emerge from their assault drills, they're ambushed by kill teams led by [[Garviel Loken]] and [[Nathaniel Garro]]. All three companies, including the famed [[Justaerin]] and Catulan Reavers of the 1st Company, are wiped out to a single (armless) man. Garro kills Falkus Kibre while Loken kills Horus Aximand ([[Blood Ravens|and takes his sword]]) and Tormageddon, finally avenging his old friend. Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen are also killed off, meaning that all of the Sons of Horus characters we were introduced to at the beginning of the series are now dead except for Loken and Abaddon. Abaddon goes on a killing spree while also speed-running the five stages of grief, but eventually gets beaten up by a nobody [[Blood Angel]], Endryd Haar, and Garro. Abaddon manages to kill the Blood Angel and Haar, but is almost killed by Garro, only to be [[Plot Armor|teleported to safety at the last moment]] (presumably losing his arms in the transfer) despite his own wish for death, as the Chaos Gods already have him in mind as their new Warmaster. Arkhan Land floods the fault line with thousands of tons of quick-setting rockcrete, [[Grimdark|entombing a bunch of the Sons of Horus beneath the palace forever.]] Fulgrim hurls his legion at the Saturnine Wall ''en masse'', which accomplishes nothing but getting 18,000 of them killed and destroying the siege platforms. Dorn and Sigismund fight Fulgrim; Sigismund manages to injure Fulgrim despite being hilariously outclassed, but before Fulgrim can finish the job, Dorn appears. He holds his own against his psychotic bishonen brother, inflicting so much damage that Fulgrim throws a tantrum and takes his legion and goes home, abandoning the Siege entirely. The two then fight a bunch of III Legion champions and defeat them all. In one particularly awesome moment, Sigismund feeds Eidolon his own sword and just straight-up kicks him off the wall. At this point, Perturabo seems to be the only person on Team Horus who still gives a shit about winning the siege. The rest of the traitor primarchs are all too indignant to focus on their alleged objective, too busy conspiring against each other, or too insane to care.
**Crucially to the ongoing progress of the Siege, the loyalists lose the Eternity Wall spaceport, but this was part of the plan. As noted above, Dorn identified four key points in the defense that he couldn't afford to lose, then chose the one that he couldn't afford to lose the least, personally took command at the Saturnine Wall, and sent Sanguinius and Jaghatai to hold the other two spots. Angron and the World Eaters assault the spaceport, and pretty much every named Imperial Army character in the book dies at this point, along with Jenetia Krole, the leader of the [[Sisters of Silence]], who gets killed by Kharn, and Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists, who literally dies standing while holding the main bridge into the spaceport. Also, Angron gets blown up by artillery but comes back to life since, y'know, he's a daemon prince and all. Sanguinius' visions are getting increasingly powerful and painful, especially when he winds up inside Angron's tortured mind. He eventually delves deeply enough to realize that Angron has sensed the annihilation of Nuceria. The [[Dark Angels]] and the [[Ultramarines]] are on the way!
**Other miscellaneous things that happen: John Grammaticus is trying to meet up with Ollanius Persson and encounters the Perpetual [[Erda]], who tells us that Big-E was named '''Neoth''' when they met, but that this was just one of the many names he's had over the millennia. It is also revealed that she is the true mother of the primarchs and is technically responsible for their scattering as the result of what can only be described as a fucked up custody battle - cue the sound of countless facepalms from the fanbase. Dorn has Kyril Sindermann form the proto-[[Inquisition]], and he recruits Euphrati Keeler and some other people to go around collecting interviews with soldiers, workers, and other residents of the Palace. Keeler interviews Basilio Fo, the mad genesmith from the short story ''Misbegotten'', and he reveals that he can create a biomechanical phage that could kill Horus, along with every other Space Marine and primarch in the galaxy. Keeler and her Custodian babysitter decide that this information should go to Dorn, just in case he decides he needs such a doomsday option. The Ollanius Pius myth is partly born from a Guardsman named Olly Piers standing up and defending a banner of the Emperor before dying at Angron's hands. Horus is sliding further into apparent senility as the Chaos Gods' power begins to overwhelm his body and mind to the point that it would have killed him outright had he not died in the duel against the Emperor first, much to Abaddon's disgust. He is almost totally disconnected from the siege, asks for things and immediately forgets asking for them, and keeps calling his equerry Maloghurst, even though Maloghurst has been dead since ''Slaves to Darkness''. At the very end, Corswain of the Dark Angels arrives with a large chunk of the Dark Angels fleet, ready to aid in the battle. In short, a lot of named characters die and plot threads are set up for other books and the rest of 40K.
*'''''Mortis''''': John French's second book in the series. As the morale of the Palace's defenders slowly erodes under the pressure of the unrelenting assault and the malign influence of the Warp, the traitor Titans of Legio Mortis are unleashed to break through the Mercury Wall, with only the loyalist engines of the Legio Ignatum to hold them off. Not as good as ''Saturnine'' or ''The Lost and the Damned'', but not as bad as Zenobi's story in ''The First Wall'', it feels more like an anthology, though all of its stories have a common beginning and converge in the end.
** The main story, the siege itself, has very little to offer. Horus has finally decided to take direct command of the traitor forces, but his first order to Perturabo is to send everything they have, include the entire Legio Mortis, to attack the Mercury Wall head on. Perturabo objects to such a terrible strategy, after which Horus sends his equerry to tell him to disperse his legion among the traitor forces and let the Death Guard take over their positions. Perturabo immediately realizes that Horus is about to pull some serious warp fuckery, which he's not okay with, so he orders a complete withdrawal of all IV Legion assets on Terra and fucks off, abandoning the siege entirely. The rest of the main siege plot centers around the Titan battle in front of the Mercury Wall; the traitor forces have used Warp power to reanimate countless Titan wrecks collected from Beta-Garmon and elsewhere, using them as cannon fodder to weaken the loyalist defenses before attacking with the full might of the Legio Mortis, the largest Titan legion in the entire Imperium.
** Meanwhile, in another corner of the battle, a small group of loyalist Imperial Army soldiers are still holding a maybe no longer important line of defense. Amongst them is Katsuhiro, the luckiest unlucky son of a gun from ''The Lost and the Damned'', who has fought from the Outer Wall all the way into the central palace and is still fighting because [[Grimdark|in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war]]. Their forces are initially led by a Blood Angel, but he dies during the battle and puts Katsuhiro in charge because this man's got nothing but unwavering belief in the Emperor and balls made out of titanium.
** Shiban Khan, to everyone's surprise, survived his shuttle crashing in ''Saturnine'' thanks to his extensive augmetic rebuild. He wakes up in the middle of nowhere and starts hearing the voices of his dead brothers as he limps toward the Inner Palace. It could be warp fuckery, as the land shows various signs of Chaos corruption, or perhaps more likely, he just had some severe head trauma due to the shuttle crash (and the sky's the limit when it comes to head trauma). Either way, Shiban wants to return to the fight, so he starts to walk, and walk, and walk (there is a lot of walking in this not that long of a side plot). Then he encounters an Army lieutenant with a baby (feels like there is a joke in there somewhere) and the man tags along with him. The lieutenant explains that he just found the baby in the middle of all this shit and took it without any question; I keep expecting it to be a daemon or something, but it ends up to be something hopeful, wholesome even. Later the lieutenant is severely injured by an actual daemon, but Shiban refuses to leave him behind and carries him and the baby. Eventually, they come across the line Katsuhiro's defending; though the lieutenant doesn't make it, the baby survives, which amazes the crumbling troopers to no end and boosts their morale. Shiban and Katsuhiro have a brief chat before Shiban keeps pushing on to rejoin his legion. For the Emperor's sake, please don't let the baby be a daemon in the coming books.
** We finally get to see psi-titans deployed!!! For a few paragraphs at least and in somewhat limited capacity. Princeps Aurum of the Ordo sinister (whom we saw in a previous short story tell Dorn to fuck off because being one of ''The Talons of the Emperor'', they only answer to Big-E himself), shows up and tells Dorn that the Emperor has personally authorized use of the Ordo Sinister, an act that simultaneously tells Dorn that the Emperor has commanded victory at any cost. We see a psi-titan strut up to a battlefield, order all friendly titans to fire warp missiles at itself, then redirects the warp power in the warp missiles to instant-kill several daemon titan engines, and thanks to their nature as [[blanks]], they deny the traitors any further resurrections, so anything they kill ''stays'' dead. They also tank damage without even staggering, simply repairing any damage they accumulate on the spot. However, the traitors brought a LOT of titans, so even those few Psi-titans we get to see are eventually overwhelmed, though they take a fuckton of traitors with them.
** On the traitor titan side, special siege titans are unveiled bespoke from Mars. Turns out you can just line up several big titans and hook up all their reactors to mobile reactors behind their shields, then slow walk towards the wall like a big phalanx advance. And you get called the special engine class of Warmaster Titans. Plus lots and lots of guns on the front.
** At the end of the last book, Corswain and his fleet came to reinforce the loyalists. Now we learn that he was expecting to meet the Lion and the main strength of the Dark Angels at Terra, but finds out that he is the only reinforcement that has shown up yet. If you have read the new Luther book, you know that he was lied to by Luther, and most importantly, the ten thousand Dark Angels he brought along were given to him by Luther, which means they're most likely no longer loyal to the Imperium. Now here comes some plot fuckery: the traitors took the Astronomican and put it out. What? Wasn't Dorn's entire plan was to delay the traitors' offensive long enough for the reinforcements to arrive? Why was the Astronomican not as heavily defended as the Imperial Palace itself? How the fuck are the reinforcements going get to Terra without the Astronomican? The Dark Angels probably could due to their abundance of Dark Age archeotech and The Lion's maybe [[Tuchulcha|Old Ones-creation biological computer Pinnochio macguffin... Thing]], but everyone else? Nonetheless, the plot decrees that Corswain and his Dark Angels must be given something interesting to do I guess. Thus, Corswain plans an assault through the traitor fleet blockade; with the sacrifice of the Emperor's personal flagship and the gap left by the Iron Warriors' departure, the Dark Angels successfully make planetfall on Terra and retake and secure the Astronomican by killing a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh and a bunch of Kakophoni. But here comes the backstabbing: the officers Luther sent to follow Corswain cannot allow his plan to succeed for obvious reasons, but one of the Librarians, Vassago, is having second thoughts about the whole thing after the daemonic horrors he's just witnessed. When he tells this to his fallen brothers, they decide to kill him and keep on with their plan.
** The various storylines are tied together in the end by a speech given by Dorn. As he speaks, what's left of the loyalist Titan legions begin to charge an unknown anomaly that appeared mid-battle; Katsuhiro's ragged force faces off against a new wave of enemies; Vassago is attacked by his fallen brothers; and the Legio Mortis finally reaches the Mercury Wall, the true Imperial Palace itself.
** Also, remember all of those weird metaphorical scenes of the Emperor being a dirty old man they put in every book? Turns out it is the physical manifestation of the struggle and suffering the Emperor is enduring in the spiritual world, and it is getting worse and worse. In previous books, he could still shelter himself in a cave and have Malcador deliver him food or something; now he is quite literally cooking under the sun in an open desert with only a dead tree for cover, and because the Chaos gods are winning, it has become impossible for Malcador to keep supporting the Emperor. So the Big-E is now facing off against the entire warp with nothing but his own willpower to sustain him. Horus keeps showing up to taunt his father and sometimes the Chaos gods accompany him like some kind of pet snakes. Every time he appears he is closer to the Emperor and at the end of this book he is finally able to reach him.
** Oh, Ollanius and his crew from Calth also return in this book. They finally make it back to Terra after bouncing through all of time and space, and then they infiltrate a hive overrun by the Emperor's Children in order to rescue John Grammaticus. Along the way, they run into someone named Actaea (who might be Cyrene Valantion based on John's horrified recognition of her) and a legionary calling himself Alpharius, because everything wasn't convoluted enough already. Ollanius decides to team up with these two even though Grammaticus is getting some serious bad vibes off of them. This part of the plot is not a bad read, but it really feels like it has nothing to do with the ongoing siege. This, and John's plot from the last book, feel like they should have gotten their own book instead of being cut to pieces and stitched into the main series. But again, it's not as bad and irrelevant as Zenobi's storyline from ''The First Wall''. At least it revealed Ollanius was once a close friend to the Big-E. How close, you ask? He was the Emperor's first Warmaster. He led an army to raze the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel Tower of Babel] to the ground, in the 40K narrative the tower was actually built by Cognitae precursors who were using it to learn Enuncia (first seen in the Eisenhorn books). After taking the tower the Emperor decides that he in his enlightened state can actually run the project better then the Cognitae. Ollanius disagrees and stabs the Emperor while using Enuncia to bring lightning down on the tower. John, having stumbled into this memory via being caught in the same pleasure-warp trap uses his psyker language ability to learn Enuncia on the spot. Uses it to unmake a daemon (as in ''permakill''), but gets a bad nose-bleed. The horror.
* '''''Warhawk''''': The Khan vs. Morty, round two. The end of the Siege is nigh, and everyone on Terra knows it. Angron and the World Eaters are loose inside the Mercury Wall, the Sons of Horus are happily killing anything that crosses their path, and the Death Guard have taken over the Lion's Gate spaceport after Perturabo ragequit halfway through ''Mortis''. Many of the XIV Legion are still coming to terms with their new warp-touched nature. Some of them aren't sure the bargain was worth the price, while others are happily adopting pet Nurglings and savoring the feeling of turning into walking sacks of pus and tentacles. Mortarion is using his daemonic powers to turn the port into a mirror of Barbarus and blanket the Palace with a psychic miasma of despair; the effect is so potent that even Rogal Dorn is beginning to crack under the strain. Jaghatai is tired of playing defense, so he rallies up the entire V Legion and every single tank that Ilya Ravallion can coax out of reserves to storm the Lion's Gate and retake the spaceport. They use the last intact orbital plate on Terra to shield them from the traitor fleet bombardments and charge across the leveled wreckage of the Palace's outer districts en masse, wrecking shit all the way until they slam into the Death Guard and their defenses. The two legions proceed to just shred the hell out of each other across the spaceport. We get an interesting comparison between their fighting styles here; the Scars dominate the battlefield when they can use their speed and maneuverability, and then when the fighting turns into a battle of attrition the Death Guard give just as good as they get. Jaghatai is in fine form; at one point he yeets a Leviathan Dreadnought with ''one hand'', and the narration explicitly states that everyone on both sides stops to watch him do it. The battle culminates in a knock-down, drag-out brawl between the Death Lord and the Warhawk. Mortarion literally beats the Khan to a pulp, but Jaghatai just laughs it off and needles Mortarion until he makes a mistake that lets Jaghatai gut him. Mortarion reminds the Khan that he can't die, since he's a daemon prince now, and the Khan reminds Mortarion that he can die and doesn't care if he does, then pulls the classic "let the other guy impale me so I can kill him" move and decapitates Morty even though he's now got a power scythe embedded in his chest. The resultant explosion of psychic energy disorients the Death Guard and sends the Scars into a frenzy. Jaghatai's body is carried out on a Leman Russ, and just when it seems like they might actually have unexpectedly killed another primarch, Ilya Ravallion shows up and demands that he be taken to Malcador, who sets about putting the Warhawk back together. The White Scars' frenzy doesn't end until a newly raised khan gets word to Shiban that their primarch yet lives, and manages to remind Shiban that they were supposed to take the port, not destroy it. The Death Guard retreat in shambles, abandoning the Gate and rejoining Typhus, who had once again taken off to do his own thing earlier in the book.
**Dorn finally lets Sigismund off the chain, telling him to just go kill as many traitors as possible. On his way out to the field, he's given the Black Sword, which was forged in the dark times prior to the Unification Wars, and sets out to become the Emperor's Champion. He kills so damn many captains and praetors that whispers of "the Black Knight" spread across the Palace, and both sides seek him out, either to join him or to kill him. He rematches Kharn and puts him down, though not before Kharn has a lucid moment and is horrified by what Sigismund has become: a remorseless, passionless, icy-hearted killing machine who will raise [[Black Templars|an entire legion of fanatical killers just like him]] to crush the galaxy beneath their boots.
**Euphrati Keeler inspires thousands of civilians, stragglers, and refugees to take up arms and go drown the enemy in bodies in the name of the God-Emperor, establishing the foundations for the Imperial Cult and the Imperium's philosophy of sending wave after wave of conscripts and Guardsmen at the problem until it ceases to be a problem. Garviel Loken tracks her down and is disturbed by her new, more nihilistic mindset, but decides to stay by her side anyway.
**Basilio Fo runs around for a bit and gets attacked by a Night Lord who can apparently see the future and isn't sure if killing him or letting him live will do more damage. He's then retrieved by Constantin Valdor, who took a break from daemon-hunting to haul him back to the Sanctum Imperialis so he can go to work on his anti-Astartes phage. Valdor wonders if using the phage would interfere with the Emperor's plans somehow, since even he isn't sure what is or isn't part of the Big-E's schemes anymore. Really, the whole subplot is kind of pointless, since Fo just winds up back under guard and doing exactly what he wanted to do all along. Makes you wonder why the authors bothered setting him loose last book.
** Ollanius Persson and his merry band are still traveling to the Palace. Actaea is all but stated to be Cyrene Valantion, who has an agenda of her own that involves getting to Horus. "Alpharius" is one of the Alpha Legion infiltrators from ''Praetorian of Dorn'', who's apparently just been kicking around the planet since his legion's attack on Pluto failed. They fly all the way to the Palace and start making their way into the Dungeon to get on with whatever their missions are, planning to pick up some more Alpha Legionnaires who were planted in the catacombs.
** The Sons of Horus are quietly starting to turn on each other. With Horus still sitting on his arse and doing nothing to lead his legion, some of his captains are starting to refer to Abaddon as the XVI's Legion Master, which is pissing off the hardcore Horus loyalists. Most of them end up getting killed by Sigismund anyway, though.
** Erda dies. Maybe. Erebus turns out to have disguised himself as a random Word Bearer in order to reach Terra and track her down, and after he introduces himself he tells her that her scattering of the primarchs was such a nice gift to the Chaos Pantheon that they themselves sing her praises in gratitude. He offers to help her achieve apotheosis and become a queen of the warp as a reward. Erda sneers at him and tells him that he's being manipulated by the cast-off thoughts and unconscious desires of humanity; more or less confirming that she knows many of the same truths about Chaos as the Emperor does, but unlike Big-E, she perhaps underestimates the danger they pose. That might also be why she tries to say it's not her fault some of the primarchs were corrupted and fell to Chaos, deflecting the blame onto the primarchs themselves, Big-E, society (that's actually barely an exaggeration), and basically everyone but herself. Erebus eventually gets sick of her obfuscation and summons four greater daemons to kill her. However, Erda's able to defeat them pretty comprehensively, with Erebus assuming they've been banished, but the book suggesting that they've been permakilled. Regardless of which however, the fight still leaves her drained enough that Erebus is able to hit her with a psychic attack that overwhelms her with the true consequences of what she did. Incidentally, this book does the seemingly impossible and actually makes us root for Erebus (the quintessential Quisling/Hitler/High School Mean Girl hybrid in SPHESS[[Games Workshop|™]] of the entire Horus Heresy), due to him dropping some much needed truth-bombs on Erda (humanity's worst mom) and handing her some long overdue comeuppance. Erebus then moves to finish her off and wreck her house, [[A Game of Pretend|but does so offscreen]]. As he's leaving, however, he wonders if she let him kill her, and if so, why.
*'''''Echoes of Eternity''''': ADB's contribution. [[Meme|We're in the endgame now]]: the Palace defenses have completely collapsed, the Khan is down for the count (Shiban Khan leads the Lion's Gate Spaceport in his absence), Dorn is surrounded at Bhab Bastion, Corswain and his Dark Angels contingent have locked down the Astronomican but are ordered to stay put and keep the beacon lit, all other surviving loyalist troops have been driven back into the Sanctum Imperialis, and Guilliman and the Lion still haven't arrived. Angron is leading the World Eaters and Sons of Horus toward victory as Sanguinius rallies his troops for a last stand at the Eternity Gate. Will almost certainly have Sanguinius duel Angron as the big climactic fight.
** A lot of this book focuses on the defenders' retreat to (and attackers' assault on) the Eternity Gate leading to the Sanctum Imperialis, specifically their mustering and the fighting before the Delphic Battlement. That being said, this is also the point in the siege where things really start to go [[Not as Planned]] for Team Chaos, and as ever, it's often as much due to them getting in their own way just as much as the efforts of Team Emperor. The Imperial side of things is mostly narrated through the perspectives of Nassir Amit and Zephon of the Blood Angels. Zephon apparently ''wasn't'' killed back in ''Saturnine'' and was just taking a nap until Arkhan Land and some Legion serfs fix him up with Dark Age archaeotech and send him on his merry way. Meanwhile, the Chaos side of things is told from the POV of the World Eaters Apothecary Kargos from ''Betrayer'' as he tags along with a random Word Bearers Chaplain, reminiscent of Kharne and Argel Tal's previous bro-ship. It doesn't matter though, because Kargos gets curb-stomped by the Flesh Tearer and left for dead by his Word Bearers buddy. After a day and a night of fighting, the defenders begin to retreat to the Sanctum, knowing that whoever is left on the outside after the doors close will be daemon chow. Sanguinius duels Ka'Bandha and wrecks him pretty one-sidedly, which Khorne apparently finds hilarious. Just as the gates are being closed, a maniple of Legio Audax Titans (the same guys from ''Betrayer'') hold the door open long enough for Angron to swoop in and start fighting the Great Angel. The two duel, and Angron gets a good sword-stab to Sanguinius' gutmeats, but then Fabulous Hawk Boy rips the Butcher's Nails from daemon Angron's head and drops him to the ground before heading inside and letting the gates close.
** There's a subplot about Vulkan going into the shattered remains of the Emperor's Webway project to duel with Magnus, who is on the other side after being ejected in ''Fury of Magnus''. Magnus does a bunch of magic tricks to kill Vulkan, but Vulkan is an [[Perpetual|unkillable]] primarch with a big fuckoff hammer and eventually Magnus gets tuckered out long enough for them to 'kill' each other. Magnus is banished from the Webway and Vulkan eventually gets up and wanders out. One revelation from these parts is that the Emperor's 'you only perceive me how I want you to perceive me' schtick extends to the Primarchs, as Vulkan remembers the Emperor's offer to Magnus to lead the Grey Knights as a stern 'lol gtfo'. Well that's one interpretation anyway; the other is that the corruption of Chaos wormed its way yet further into Magnus, altering his cognitive function, allowing him to think of himself as the victim, and thus ensuring that Magnus would dance further to their tune.
** We also get a look into how things are going in the fleet and for some of the mortal followers of Chaos. The aforementioned Legio Audax Warhound, the ''Hindarah'', has been on Terra pretty much since the beginning. Its princeps still believes herself to be alive, and frequently hallucinates that the cockpit of her god-engine has become an abattoir of horrors, but then she comes back to it and everything seems normal again. It isn't until we get another character's view of the interior that we see that, yeah, the princeps and moderati have all fused into a ''[[Chaos Spawn|mass of suppurating flesh with too many eyes, tongues, and limbs]]''... Yuck. Lotara Sarrin, everyone's favorite spunky girl-boss captain of the ''Conqueror'', has become a corrupted ''thing'' partly fused with her command throne, while the parts of her that wanted to run away from the horror of it all have become a ghost that the rest of the crew just sort of tolerate. This ghost even manages to get in a call to Horus aboard the ''Vengeful Spirit'', who has continued to deteriorate from 'kooky grampa' to 'scary kooky grampa'. It's heavily implied that his equerry Argonis is the only one left really running the fleet.
** The book ends with the Lion's Gate finally opening fire on the traitor fleet, much to the horror of everyone aboard the ships, who were caught completely unprepared and in close formation while stationary in geosynchronous orbit. As they're being shot to shit, they receive a message from Shiban Khan, the commander of the Gate's [[White Scars|new occupants]], who basically just calls to laugh at them. [[Internet_Troll|Then he hangs up]]. In the epilogue a few pages later, we get a sweet little note from Guilliman to Sanguinius, saying that he and the Dark Angels and Space Wolves are only a couple days from the system's edge and only a solar week from Terra. However, this message is intercepted and blocked by daemon-Lotara from reaching the surface.
** A lot of this helps to set up and answer the ultimate question of "why did Horus drop his void shields?" At this point in the siege, the defenders are on their very last legs. Dorn and a lot of forces are cut off at the Bhab Bastion, while everyone else who is still alive has fled inside the Sanctum Imperialis, the only exceptions being the White Scars at Lion's Gate and the Dark Angels at the Astronomican. There are no more walls to hide behind and nowhere else to run to. Even if Guilliman's message had arrived, the loyalists might not have even lasted long enough to receive his aid. On the Chaos side of things, by book's end, Horus is no longer the smug little shit we've seen throughout the siege, and is instead now shitting his pants, because he has now lost every single one of his generals. Lorgar had already been driven out for plotting to overthrow Horus, Konrad's in a stasis capsule on the wrong side of the galaxy, Alpharius/Omegon (it's hard to keep track of which one is which at the best of times) died at Pluto while the other twin didn't even bother to show up, Fulgrim fucked off during ''Saturnine'', Perturabo during ''Mortis'', Mortarion got clapped by the Khan in ''Warhawk'' and shunted off into the warp, and by the end of ''Echoes'', both Magnus and Angron ([[Skub|arguably Horus' two most OP subordinates]]) have been reduced to greasy, whiny smears, staining sections of the Webway and the Eternity Gate's floors, respectively. To make matters worse for Team Chaos, but Horus especially (as if any more were needed), with the death or absence of their respective primarchs, a significant percentage of the remaining Astartes forces under the Warmaster's command (maybe even up to '''HALF''') have lost anything even remotely resembling unit cohesion, and in the case of the Thousand Sons and World Eaters, probably permanently; the former having fully succumbed to the flesh change en masse and the latter evidently now practicing for the upcoming [[Battle of Skalathrax]] by going all-in on the whole Teamkilling Fucktard thing, whereas before they'd only engaged in the occasional teamkilling dalliance. Horus himself isn't much better, as his mind and body are on the verge of self-destruction from Chaos overwhelming them. The board, as they say, is set for the final showdown.
*'''''The End and the Death''''': This is it. 17 years and over 60 books, all leading up to ''the'' main event of the Heresy: the duel of the Emperor and Horus, as written by [[Dan Abnett|the man who started the series]][[Awesome|.]] Will be split into multiple volumes, because there's no way in hell BL wouldn't milk this for all it's worth, and because Abnett belongs to the school of "write a shit ton of words" (thankfully, unlike [[A Song of Ice and Fire|someone else we can name]] he actually finishes his shit).
**'''''Volume 1''''': Shit starts hitting the fan at full blast. Horus is suggested to have been faking his madness, but then again, crazy people never think they're crazy, and the only one backing up his claim is himself. Doesn't seem to have mitigated his chaos-induced senility any though. Horus plans to use the annihilation of humanity to become the fifth Chaos God, the "Dark King" (not exactly a position that makes him look sane). Zahariel takes on the mantle of Cypher, and persuades the Dark Angels loyal to Luther to aid the Loyalists in the hope that they could turn Corswain after the immediate threat to Caliban was dealt with. "Alpharius" is revealed to be First Captain Ingo Pech, who intended to defeat Horus, only to be enslaved via psycho-indoctrination to Actaea (in fact Cyrene Valantion revived as an artificial Perpetual), who instead believes she could turn Horus against Chaos and by doing so, master the Warp itself. What could go wrong? The Sons of Horus have effectively lost all coherency as a Legion, with Abaddon being the only one of Horus' captains who still cares enough to actually try and win the Siege. Euphrati Keeler realizes that the Emperor is effectively the embodiment of a path upon which he had set humanity millennia ago; humanity never needed understanding or enlightenment, only absolute faith in the Emperor and his designs. The Khan is finally resuscitated, but remains unconscious through his continued convalescence. Finally, the Emperor, Dorn, Valdor, and Sanguinius (Vulkan is instructed to stay behind and activate the dead man's switch if all else fails) arrive on the Vengeful Spirit only for it to immediately go to shit- Sanguinius's forces alone are able to begin their assault as planned, with the others being scattered and forced into nightmarish mazes meant to sap their strength and souls. The effects of the warp malaise vary wildly, some of the Custodes get loopy, others (like Valdor) basically just shrug and say "ew, gross" as they continue to kill things unphased, but all it does to Big-E make him more powerful; Malcador pointing out that it's the equivalent of pouring fuel onto a fire. They depart '''right''' as the Ultramarines, Space Wolves, and Dark Angels send a message alerting of their imminent arrival.
**'''''Volume 2''''': Bound to showcase Sanguinius' final battle against Horus and what ultimately killed him.
*'''''Sons of the Selenar''''': The first novella in the series. Flashback to the compliance of the Selenar gene cults on the moon, the high supreme matriarch tells a grumpy gene witch to take their best gene tech and hide it from the Emperor while she starts a date/mind purge to wipe out all knowledge of the tech from existence before she surrenders to the soon-to-be Luna Wolves. Flash forward to the crew of the ''Sisypheum'' returning to Terra, SOMEHOW getting all the way to Luna through a lot of luck and bad traitor captains. They pick up a distress signal from Ta'lab Vita-37 saying that the Sons of Horus are breaking through the defenses she has built around the Magna Mater - a silver case containing all the genetic knowledge used to make the first Space Marines. They manage to meet up with Vita-37 and make their way to the center of a moon volcano just in time to snatch it from some tech-priests. Some explosions happen and we get to see Tarsa the Salamander Apothecary walk through radioactive lava while hallucinating that Vulkan lives and dying as he hands the case to Ignatius Numen who also waded in. He dies too because [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_(1997_film) radioactive lava], but the case gets out of the lava. Justaerin Terminators chase them through the gene labs, and Vita-37 unleashes a bunch of hideous gene-monsters on the Terminators before dying. One spooks them cause it has the face of Horus, but the Terminators finally form up and continue the chase. The last two Iron Hands hand off the Mater to Sharrowkyn and tell him to run like hell while they slow down the Terminator squad, with predictable results. Sharrowkyn gets rescued by the other two Iron Hands in a Storm Eagle, and they make it back to the ''Sisypheum'', while Thamatica uses a Selenar combat AI to destroy a fighter chasing them before it turns back on him and eats his brains. Magnus makes an appearance and saves the ''Sisypheum'' for some reason, then leaves. Wayland drops off Sharrowkyn on an abandoned refueling station before flying away to distract the traitors. Sharrowkyn has to go into suspended animation and Garuda the mechanical eagle watches over him as he passes out, under the name of the station "Sangprimus Portum", strongly implying that the Magna Mater is the relic that will be given to Archmagos Cawl to create the [[Primaris Space Marines]].
* '''''Fury of Magnus''''': The second novella, which focuses on Magnus's attempt to reclaim the shard of his soul that he believes is housed inside the Palace. Alivia Sureka agrees to come with Malcador in exchange for protection for her adopted family, and he takes her down trans-dimensional tunnels known only to him (it's strongly implied that Valdor would fuck Malcador up for keeping these tunnels secret even from the custodians). Magnus and some of the Thousand Sons breach the Emperor's telesthetic wards, saving some civilians along the way, and storm the Hall of Leng deep beneath the Palace. They're met by Malcador and Alivia, and Magnus demands to know where the last shard of his soul is. Malcador admits that it's already gone, having been fused into Revuel Arvida to produce Janus, so Magnus throws a psychic tantrum that permakills the Sigillite. One of the Thousand Sons kills Alivia for some reason, so Magnus explodes his head for disobeying his orders not to kill anyone. He and his Astartes make it all the way to the Golden Throne, only to find out that the Emperor let them through because he wanted to offer Magnus a shot at redemption. He explains that, though Magnus has been wounded and touched by Chaos, there is still a chance for him to return to the Imperial fold, at the head of [[Grey Knights|a shiny new legion of incorruptible psychic warriors]]. All he has to do is abandon the remaining Thousand Sons to their fate, as they're already too corrupted to be brought back. Vulkan, who is still guarding the Throne, pleads with Magnus to accept the deal, but Magnus decides that abandoning his legion is too dear a price to pay and tries to kill the Emperor. Vulkan proceeds to kick the ever-loving shit out of him until Magnus finally surrenders to Chaos and ascends into his daemon primarch form. He forever repudiates the Emperor before being ejected from the Palace. Alivia resurrects, finds Malcador's barbecued corpse, and surrenders her Perpetuality in order to bring him back, dying permanently herself in the process. The entire plot may or may not have been retconned by ADB in ''Echoes of Eternity'', however.
* '''''Garro: Knight of Grey''''': [[skub|It isn't very good]]. Set in between ''Saturnine'' and ''Warhawk'', this is the third novella in the series, and features the eponymous Nathaniel Garro's final showdown with Mortarion as he fights (and ultimately dies) to protect Euphrati Keeler. Not exactly a spoiler, given that Garro was established as the first martyr of the Imperial Cult over a decade ago now, and this is his FINAL showdown, but still a bit of a gut punch all the same.