Horus Heresy

It was pretty much this.

The Horus Heresy is the single biggest event in Warhammer 40,000 fluff. The only real competition is the War in Heaven between the Old Ones and the Necrons and maybe the creation of Slaanesh by the Eldar.

In the Horus Heresy, the Emperor's favorite son, Horus Lupercal, formerly Warmaster of the Imperium, rebelled against the Emperor, taking eight Space Marine Legions, their respective Primarchs, and a large part of the Imperial Army and Mechanicum with him. After waging war across the galaxy, Horus and his traitors eventually reached Holy Terra itself, hoping to murder the Emperor himself. He beat the Emperor within an inch of his life but was killed in turn. The Chaos gribblies he had been allied with disappeared and the now Chaos Marines that had followed him sulked back to the Eye of Terror, starting the Long War.

Because the Emperor was fucked up to the point where he had to be permanently attached to a life-support machine known as the "Golden Throne" just to survive, logic within the Imperium gradually decreased, eventually turning into the Grimdark empire it is today. And it was already pretty damn grimdark.

Warhammer 40,000 Fluff

The Horus Heresy screwed almost everyone's plans (except the Chaos Gods' of course, but they always win) and changed the flavour of the Imperium's Grimdark from Stalinist Soviet "if you breathe a word about religion, we rape you with knives" to Catholic Inquisition "if you breathe a word about the wrong religion, we rape you with knives" unless you can find an Ecclesiarch to come and say nope, that's just another aspect of the Emperor. Don't count on this happening without hefty "donations".

The heresy lasted for several years (somewhere between seven and ten) and was fought all over the galaxy. The following are the most important battles and campaigns during the Heresy:

• Battle of Isstvan III
• Burning of Prospero
• Drop Site Massacre
• Battle of Calth
• Shadow Crusade
• Thramas Crusade
• Signus Campaign
• Battle of Phall
• Siege of Terra

The Board Game

First published in 1993 by Game Designer's Workshop, it was the Emprah versus his evil bastard of a son in the scorched earth of Terra. Units include titans and Chaos spawn. *GLARBLBLBLBLBLBL*

The more recent edition (2010) is published by Fantasy Flight Games. Also a two-player war game, it includes over 100 sculpted minifigs, sculpted buildings, and even Horus and the Emprah themselves are units on the board. It also adds more territory, as the fight can be pushed back onto the traitor's flagship Vengeful Spirit. Combat is less dice-y and more card-y. (Not to be confused with the lame Horus Heresy card game, who's only saving grace was the awesome card art that would appear in the Horus Heresy artbooks anyway)

The Book Series

For the last few years, Black Library has been publishing novels that explore the events of the Horus Heresy, looking at the rivalries among the Primarchs and exploring just why everything went down the tubes. The novels are by a selection of different authors, which is a total pain if you like to organise your books alphabetically by author. The reception to the series has been somewhat... mixed; books generally considered to be good include the first trilogy, Betrayer, Scars, and the short story The Serpent Beneath (generally considered to be the best story in the series).

Of course, like we mentioned, there's some that are... um... Well, let's just say that the worst are a matter of much debate.

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

• Horus Rising: A prologue story, introducing us to the series and Garviel Loken who will grow into a very significant character. An Emperor (not Him) is killed at the beginning and some bugs are killed on a planet called Murder for no reason other than they were there. The Interex show up and ask "whadya do that for?". Erebus steals the MURDER SWORD from them.
• False Gods: Horus falls at Davin when wounded by the MURDER SWORD and gets a crash course in the chaos gods from Erebus & Magnus. After getting shown a few "truths" that WILL HAPPEN in the future (like the Emperor being worshipped as a god, Horus being reviled and forgotten) he decides to make war on the Imperium to prevent all this from happening.
• Galaxy in Flames: Isstvan III happens and the traitors send the loyalists down to the planet without reinforcements and proceed to bomb them to fuck. Things don't go to plan when Angron decides to invade turning it into a Not as Planned drawn out conflict that the Warmaster can't really afford - Loken dies
• Flight of the Eisenstein: the other side fo Galaxy in Flames, Nathaniel Garro escapes and gets marooned in the warp fighting daemons, eventually gets saved by Rogal Dorn. The first bit of the novel is so far 'the Death Guard's novel'.
• Fulgrim: one of the more forgettable stories in the series. Attempts to tell the story from Great Crusade all the way up to the Drop Site Massacre in one book. In short Fulgrim finds a sword, gets possessed, kills Ferrus Manus - the end. It is written by Graham McNiel though, and it has an awesome quote from Fulgrim "My Emperor's Children. What beautiful music they make." .
• Descent of Angels: This is the Heresy book that isn't about the Heresy, instead focusing on Zahariel's time on Caliban. It also portrays Lion El'Jonson as having Aspergers. and hints that the Great Crusade does more harm than good.
• Legion introduces the Cabal, the Perpetuals and Omegon. READ THIS BOOK. Or don't, as this is where those things that would eventually take over the Heresy series and according to many completely ruin it (Cabal, Perpetuals) are introduced.
• Battle for the Abyss: The book is so bad that other authors tried to retcon it out of existence. This book is so bad that you would have it was cobbled together from Wardian fluff stitched together by C. S. Goto. Reading this book may, in fact, cause brain cancer so you should avoid it if at all possible. Everyone dies, so it does not affect much. The only thing you need to remember is Lorgar built a fuckhueg space ship and filled it with Dreadnoughts, and it failed miserably.
• Mechanicum: Tech Priests turn renegade after Horus tells them they can do whatever they like with technology, so they release forbidden viral scrapcodes and screw everything up. Also turns out that Big E invented the Machine-God by sealing a C'Tan on Mars back during the Saint George era, giving everyone visions of technology. Also more subtle hints that the Emperor is a god himself by using divine golden light to heal machines and know Everything and one tech priestess tries to harness this power. Contains a lot of Titan awesomeness and Knights badassery.
• Tales of Heresy: short story collection, including The Last Church. Has a lot of twist endings.
  • Blood Games: An assassin tries to kill the emperor. The Adeptus Custodes go to kill a traitor on Terra.
  • Wolf at the Door: The Space Wolves kill some dark eldar and are the defenders of everyone who does not defy the Emperor.
  • Scions of the Storm: The Word Bearers destroy a human civilization that has crystal cities, crystal robots, and lots of lightning. This is also later a chapter of The First Heretic, but narrated from a slightly different point of view then.
  • The Voice: The Sisters of Silence investigate a Black Ship that became derelict in the Warp.
  • Call of the Lion: Half of the Dark Angels are dicks, the other half are not. Totally not foreshadowing.
  • The Last Church: You know this one.
  • After Desh'ea: The War Hounds meet their primarch. Angron demeats the War Hounds. More specifically, the Emperor just beamed up Angron away from his last stand (rather than, you know, intervening with his Custodes or his fleet), leaving Angron pretty pissed. Kharn is a pretty great guy to be around, and pulls his femurs out of his lungs quickly enough to establish himself as Angron's best buddy.
• Fallen Angels: the sequel to Descent of Angels, is actually two stories rolled into one book that never converge. 1. The Lion fights a war to reclaim some Ordinatus devices and then hands them to Perturabo to gain his trust, not realising that his brother has already turned. 2. Zahariel and Luther clean out a daemon cult on Caliban... but not really.
• Thousand Sons: Part 1 of the Battle for Prospero. Runs through the Great Crusade where Magnus discovers the webway, but his Father already knew about it. Then the Edict of Nikaea where Magnus gets all passionate about not restricting psychic powers, then to Horus's vision quest where Magnus fails to keep his brother on the right path, then does the WORST thing possible by telling his father, breaking the Golden Throne in the process. Space Wolves come knocking shortly after. Tragedy ensues.
• Nemesis: Malcador the Sigillite invents the Officio Assassinorum Execution Task Force and sends six assassins to kill Horus. They fail, but in the process slay an shapeshifting daemonic counter-assassin sent by Erebus. While it is a decent book and we learn a lot, it didn't contribute much to the overall plot. On the more vitriolic side, the writing is a bit underwhelming in places; highlights include calling a pariah a psyker, another pariah with a contrived possession, and Horus uttering one of the most cliche one liners out there.
• The First Heretic: Lorgar's turn to get a back story. Feels less rushed than "Fulgrim". Goes from Monarchia to a bit of soul searching in the Eye of Terror and discovers Cadia. Leads up to Istvaan V and the immediate aftermath. Signifcant subplots revolve around the inception of Possessed Marines, and what happens to the Custodes babysitters watching over the Word Bearers, and how the protagonist Argel Tal gets into a tragic bromance with the Custodes leader.
  • Aurelian: A limited release short story until an ebook was published. The plot bounces around in-between a number of moments in Lorgar's history up to the prelude of the Shadow Crusade. One narrative involves how Lorgar's brothers still treat him like shit, especially when he's the only one who sees through Fulgrim's possession, and ends with Horus sending him to fuck up Ultima Segmentum and handing him Angron's (figurative, not literal) leash. The other narrative takes place in the 40 year gap in The First Heretic, where Lorgar makes a pilgrimage into the Eye of Terror with a Daemon Princess as his guide. They come to a dead Crone World where he puts a dying Avatar out of its misery and he's told that the Eldar panicked rather than embrace Chaos during the birth of Slaanesh, which is what caused them to nearly die out; the daemon prince(ss) tells Lorgar the same thing is happening with humanity during the Heresy, how Chaos really wants a symbiotic relationship with humanity rather than to conquer it. In the middle of this, Khorne decides he's had enough of this talky wordy shit and sends An'ggrath to make things more exciting, and Lorgar narrowly beats him. Then Kairos Fateweaver comes and "tells" him about Calth and his relationship with Guilliman and his upcoming war with him in the most confusing as fuck discussion ever. The truth of most of the things told to Lorgar are left ambiguous, because, well, Fateweaver; but also Chaos has a lot riding on the Heresy coming to fruition for reasons left not entirely explored. The history of the 40k verse also leaves
• Prospero Burns: Part 2 of the Battle for Prospero. An civilian hangs out with a company of the Space Wolves, where we learn a lot about their culture and attitudes. Turns out that Chaos infiltrated everything, so the outcome of Nikaea was practically rigged. The civilian himself even turns out to have been an unwitting spy for Chaos, but the Wolves knew anyway and didn't give a shit.
• Age of Darkness: A short story anthology.
  • Rules of Engagement: Roboute lets one of his commanders lead in a series of wars that didn't really occur, and we get the best line ever said in regards to the Codex Astartes: despite the fact it does cover a lot, it's not meant to be followed biblically. (See the quote on the page on the Big Book of Astartes). The Imperium Secundus shows up, making for another bizarre plot element that ruins the series without adding anything.
  • Liar's Due: You know those memes on how the Alpha Legion causes mass paranoia without actually involving any Astartes? Those aren't just memes.
  • Forgotten Sons: A Salamander and a grumpy ol' Ultramarine are sent in opposition to one of Horus' iterators to convince an industrial-militant world which side to side with. They almost side with Horus before the Warmaster's agents wreck shit for the lulz. Oh, and to send the message that neutrality will be punished. The Iron Warriors were doing weird shit on that world for years beforehand, and was probably the more deciding factor than the lulz.
  • The Last Remembrancer: Horus sent one the one last remembrancer he had stored up as a gift to Dorn. Instead of in a box (or eight or some shit like that), it was the Dan Abnett of his day telling Dorn that the grimdark galaxy was grimdark. Also that the Emperor's vision of a galaxy of peace, unity, prosperity, and fluffy bunnies built up without any more grimdark attached than was strictly needed, probably wasn't very likely before any shit hit any fan either way. Also, Iactone Qruze makes his first appearance since forever, but nobody gives a shit about Iactone Qruze.
  • Rebirth: Mangus's absent fleet from the Burning of Propsero comes home and shits a brick. The last known surviving squad of Thousand Sons outside of the Planet of the Sorcerers gets beaten up and they slowly figure out it was the Space Wolves who shit on Magnus's parade world and is stalking them. One plot twist later, most of them are dead, the last one decides he's gonna rebuild everything, with a few scant hints that his flesh-change genetic flaw will shift into kleptomania.
  • The Face of Treachery: The tie-in and conclusion of the audiodrama featuring the Raven Gaurd after Istvaan and the prequel to Deliverance Lost. After getting fed up with Corax trolling Perturabo for a bit too long, Horus sends Angron in to finish the job, but Corax's cavalry arrives to troll Angron by getting the loyalists the fuck out of there. We also learn that Corax has a supersekrit psyker ability which lets roll a natural 20 on stealth checks no matter how ridiculous it would be, and that the Alpha Legion once again can outtroll everybody when they fuck things up for the World Eaters. Ends with an transitory bit into Deliverance Lost.
  • Little Horus: Little Horus Aximand is struggling with the PTSD he got when he killed Loken and Torgaddon with Abby. Abby and Little Horus have a discussion (we mean Horus Aximand, not when Primarch Horus was sodomizing Abaddon again) about restoring the Mournival. A couple war scenes later, Little Horus learns the hard way that the White Scars are pretty badass, but his PTSD starts acting up again and he gets his face shaved off before the White Scars are driven off. Little Horus realizes his PTSD he had since killing Loken and Torgaddon ultimately stems from that time he helped kill Loken and Torgaddon, and gives a diatribe about how things like "change", "mood swings", and "hallucinations" are suited to his melancholic nature, saying things like "it's perfectly natural", "I'm fine, everything's fine. Everything is perfectly, absolutely fine", and "Therapy is for the weak. I'm fine." After the Mongolian shave, he gets his face reattached and ends up looking even more like Big Horus in the deal.
  • The Iron Within: Some pretty bro-tier loyalist Iron Warriors build a fortress hanging from a cave in a hellhole of a world, and one of Perturabo's traitor Grand Companies come knocking to demand that they hand over the house keys. The loyalists give them a fuck-you in the form of a Dreadnought. A few melodramatic and horrific but generic war scenes later, and they get overrun, wreck the fortress, and get the hell out of there by hijacking one of the Iron Warriors warships via teleportation. An Ultramarine big wig was there to bring the loyalists home, informing them that Guilliman was fortifying Terra, and he needed good seigeworkers to stall the traitors then to fortify Terra. While loyalist Iron Warriors were pretty cool, the story itself was pretty forgettable; and it left some open questions like whether the continuity errors were the result of "faulty astropathic communications" (see Outcast Dead), or if the Ultramarines were trolling the Iron Warriors to join in with the Imperium Secundus. And also why the Iron Warriors were determined to take a hellhole at an immense expense of people and materiel, including Titans, while they could have just said "fuck that", and left alone a fortress with no space or warp conveyance, and arguably little strategic value in iteslf, in the middle of nowhere.
  • Savage Weapons: A good story written by ADB. Dark Angels are hunting down the Night Lords who are fucking with Forge Worlds, but the Night Lords are staying a step ahead of them, much to the Lion's frustration. After being advised by Horus to pass along a message, Kurze asks the Lion to meet up face-to-face on Tsagualsa. When they talk, while what they say to each other is offscreen, it's implied Kurze told Lion about the Fallen Angels and that Horus knew about their impending betrayal. Lion decides nobody is going to give him shit about being a rumored closet traitor, and the ensuing fight proves that Jonhson is a badass among primarchs, until Kurze goes to his old fallback of strangling a fucker, and things get more even. Their respective honor guards go at it in the meantime, and showing Sevatar is a badass among Space Marines. Things end up in a draw, leaving things open for a new plotline within the Heresy, the Prince of Crows novella being the next.
• The Outcast Dead: A mess of continuity errors, at least when compared with the rest of the series, the other authors later claimed all the errors were absolutely intentional and a result of the messed-up nature of Warp-based communication. Riggggghhhhtttt. More importantly: shortly after the start of the Heresy an astropath has routine nervous breakdown and is returned to Terra to get therapy. What really ends up happening is that he gets there in time for Magnus's astral body to reach Big E to warn him of Horus' betrayal, and the fuckhueg psychic shock of course dicks with the Astropath HQ compound something mighty. In the confusion and assloads of psychic phenomena that followed, the astropath gets implanted with a message for somebody regarding the war, but his PTSD keeps him from knowing what the hell it is or who it's for. The Custodes come in and tell him "Ve haff vays of making you talk." After a time, he gets busted out by some convict space marines from the Traitor Legions. Why they do this is explained by the Thousand Son sagely stating "Just because." They name themselves the eponymous Outcast Dead and try to get the hell off of Terra. Other subplots revolve around: a psyker congregant at a slum church near the Imperial palace; a samurai witch hunter (no, really); fucking Thunder Warriors. Best bits are an unarmed, unarmored World Eater ripping a Custodes' spine out through his chest the portrayal of the Emperor playing chess in dreams.
• Deliverance Lost: Corvus Corax, having just escaped from Istvaan V, decides to go ask daddy for a handout to get his Legion back on his feet, and gets the mother of all genetech to do it, though he has to do a bit of legwork to get it. Meanwhile, a bunch of faceless Alpha Legionnaires (okay, they do have faces, they just originally belonged to some Raven Guard) had infiltrated Corax's Legion at Istvaan, and are doing recon and intelligence gathering waiting for Omegon to give the go-ahead to fuck shit up. Corax, meanwhile sets up new geneseed methods that bring up new recruits to battle-ready marines in fucking hours. The Alphas decide this probably isn't in their interest, and sabotage the new geneseed by tainting it with daemon blood, turning second- and third-batch new Raven Guard into the twisted monsters we know that Corax ended up with. In one of the instances of retcon that was actually flavored with awesome and win, the mutant marines were still sapient, but were let to fight on in the Emperor's name. After staging a mass insurrection on Deliverance's parent world with the help of some old guilders Corax ousted and the Dark Mechanicum, Omegon gets more Alphas infiltrated into the Raven for the endgame: steal the genetech, kill some Ravenguard, get the fuck out before anybody knows what the fuck. A couple cockups along the way leads to the Raven Guard getting wise and isolating out the Alphas. The end of the novel was like a swingers party at the retirement home, everybody got screwed (even Horus), nobody got what they hoped for (except for the really deviant bastard), and all-around the reproductive material was entirely defective. Corax shut down his hothousing method, and starts fucking with the Traitors, even at reduced numbers. The book ends on a note with Alpharius Omegon deciding that while their plan for saving the galaxy was still good, they decide working with Xenos isn't working for them.
• Know No Fear: The Ultras are still ignorant about Istvaan and the civil war erupting around the galaxy, and are on muster at Calth with the Word Bearers on orders from Horus to go kill some Orks together as a conciliatory gesture. They were in for a surprise. The Word Bearers, while happy as hell to get revenge, are really trying to dick over the Ultramarines to keep them out of the Heresy, if not destroy them outright. What happens next is the Word Bearers arrange some "accidents" using sorcery and good ol' fashioned treachery to fake a monumental fuck up in the ship yards that leave the Ultramarine forces blind, deaf, and crippled. They use the confusion to say that the Ultras still fucking them over, and take the chance to open not only a can, but entire cases of whup ass on the Ultras. Erebus turns Calth's pole into a screaming hellscape to start up a warp storm, while Kor Phaeron oversees the systematic extermination of the Ultramarines and also successfully poisons Calth's sun. Guilliman gets jettisoned into space, but survives because Spiritual Liege. He then leads a counterattack on Kor Phaeron, and while Kor comes this close to getting a Primarch kill with Chaos mindbullets, but in a moment of self-aggrandizement, he holds back tries to corrupt Guilliman with his own dagger-sized MURDER SWORD. Guilliman calmly tells him "The Codex Astartes does will not support this action" and rips out Kor Paeron's main heart with an unpowered lightning claw. Kor Phaeron's minions run away with his carcass, allowing the Ultras to retake their space station, which in turn allows Mechanicus plot power, aided by a planet's worth of orbital defense batteries, to bring the ground war back into the Ultramarines' favor. The novel ends with Word Bearers getting the hell out of there, and the Ultramarines evacuating everyone they can off of Calth and telling everybody they can't to get underground, expositioning to the underground war. Special features of this novel include Guilliman not being a cock, Ollanius Pious being the special guest star with his very own subplot, and the Word Bearers having athame blades as special issue, one of which will come back later. You might notice this summary is pretty spoilerific, but if you didn't know the broad strokes already, you're in the wrong place.
• The Primarchs: A novella anthology. As the name suggests, it contains stories featuring Primarchs.
  • The Reflection Crack'd: - Lucius and friends anally rape Fulgrim. Yeah. While questionable use of a pear of anguish is featured, the real story is this: Lucius and his buddies are deep into the sickfuckery which will come to characterize their Leigion, but begin to suspect that Fulgrim might have a daemon in him when he begins acting like not-Fulgrim and uses sorcery. They ambush him and try to exorcise it with pain, because torturing a Slaaneshi daemon will totally work. Among everything else: Fabulous Bill is still an arrogant dick; Lucius is still a maniacal and colossally narcissistic sick fuck; Kaesoron is still an angry badass; Vairosean is still a sycophantic cunt; and Eidolon was still a self-important, whiny douche, but Fulgrim throws a tantrum and his head cut off, and there was much cheering from the readers, and that plus almost certain off-screen fapping among the Legionaries.
  • Feat of Iron - Ferrus Manus's Legion is trying to off some Eldar on a desert world, but can't find the major Eldar strategic asset because of Spess Elf Warp Dickery. A Farseer thinks he can warn Ferrus about the Heresy, and traps him in the webway or some psychic realm for a spirit quest long enough to fight a giant purple snake (which is disturbingly appropriate imagery when you think about it); and Ferrus thinks it was the wyrm that he killed and gave him his metal hands, but the snake tells him that he must be mistaking it for somebody else. Ferrus kills it, and meets the Farseer who tries to tell Ferrus that he wasn't just being a dick. Ferrus, having too many experiences with Eldar being dicks, knocks some sense into the Farseer, who manages to run just fast enough to avoid getting killed. Ferrus comes back and helps his Legion fight off the Eldar kill the Webway beacon, or whatever the hell it was. In the background of all of this, the Iron Hands, having lost Ferrus, decide to get shit done rather than bitch about potentially dead father, and work to complete the mission despite being weighed down by Imperial Army who are dying of dehydration and heat stroke. The Eldar figure out a way to use storm clouds that make Iron Hands bionics kill their users, and Ferrus has a bitch of an itch around his neck that he can't get rid of. I wonder if that's important.
  • The Lion: - Dark Angels fight daemons and reinstitute Librarians (and the Lion teamkills Nemiel, ruining all the buildup from the previous two Dark Angel Books), then they steal a warp engine from Typhus then set course for Macragge to sort out Guilliman.
  • Serpent Beneath: - Alpharius Omegon plots against himself and destroys a facility built around what looks suspiciously like a Cadian Pylon (and said facility keeping the White Scars out of the war), due to an information leak, and they can't have that. Except than none of the main players are Alpharius or Omegon. And Alpharius and Omegon can't decide if they're secretly working against each other or not. Also: considered to be one of the better works of the series, not only due to quality, but because of the sheer mindfuckery of the plot, keeping entirely within the rationale of the Alpha Legion without any jumps in logic or canon.
• Shadows of Treachery: Yet another anthology. Most of the stories are tie-togethers or "in betweens", and some are very short.
  • The Crimson Fist - Set during the Battle of Phall. It is told from the view of the Imperial Fists.
  • The Dark King - Features Konrad Curze. Involves him beating up Rogal Dorn and blowing up Nostramo.
  • The Lightning Tower - Basically, 20 pages of Rogal Dorn being sad about ruining the Imperial Palace by fortifying it.
  • The Kaban Project - Primarily focuses on the Kaban Machine from Mechanicum. It's an alright story, but unfortunately is somewhat generic-feeling.
  • Raven's Flight - Kind of a prequel to Deliverance Lost. The story tells how Marcus Valerius and Commander Branne of the Raven Guard decide to go to Isstvan due to Valerius dreams.
  • Death of a Silversmith - The title says it all. A silversmith attatched to the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet is tasked with making four rings for the Mournival, and then he gets killed. The story is seen from the perspective of the silversmith who describes his life until the now. Ultimately it is kind of irrelevant, but the lore nerds or people who have been paying attention might find it interesting. It is however only barely 20 pages long, so you might as well read it anyway.
  • Prince of Crows - Features the Thranas Crusade viewed from First Captain Sevatar of the Night Lords. It's essentially about showing the fractures in the Night Lords Legion. As most stories written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, it's pretty good.
• Fear to Tread: Despite being Black Library's most financially successful book ever and hitting thirteen (!) on the New York Times bestseller list (without Oprah's recommendation, even), many fa/tg/uys find it a bit ridiculous. Why? Well, there's planets with giant frowny faces inhabited by garbage monsters, ships getting blown up by city-sized rocks launched from the aforementioned planets, a nearly-stereotypically-gay Slaaneshi daemon that doesn't actually serve much of a purpose in the story, and a villain named the Red Angel, despite the fact Angron already claimed that as a nickname (although he was first introduced in Horus Heresy: Collected Visions, so it's not James Swallow's fault). Oh, and Sanguinius acts like an idiot about Chaos the whole time, which fits the fluff, but come on, how many freaky supernatural signs do you need to see before you decide it's not just foul xenos?
  • In all fairness, of course, Fear to Tread does have quite a few good moments, especially when it comes to Warp-related terror. It also has a priceless bromance between Horus and Sanguinius, not to mention Sanguinius and his Legion get characterized very well.
• Angel Exterminatus: Perturabo & Fulgrim raid a crone world, Fulgrim gets made into a daemon prince. Is a bit of a skub novel because the depiction of Perturabo is so different from expected, rather than being the bitter Rage machine from every other depiction, he's a quiet nerd-with-muscles who plays with toys as a hobby.
• Betrayer: Lorgar and Angron rampage over the Ultramarines 500 worlds. Lots of references to Angron's past and his Butcher's Nails are killing him slowly. Turns out one of the Ultramarine worlds was his own Homeworld, so he destroys it and Lorgar makes him into a daemon-prince. Also remember the Furious Abyss? Lorgar has two more. Also focuses on Khârn and Argel Tal being bros, until Erebus decides to intervene.
• Angron: An anthology about Lorgar Horus Dorn Malcador the plumber for the Golden Throne Fuck, we can't remember. It often gets passed over in the official lists, since it's actually a republish of older short stories: After De'shea, Butcher's Nails (print format), and Lord of the Red Sands (which was initially a standalone release, even later republished in The Imperial Truth).
• Mark of Calth: Another set of short stories, though all focussed on the Ultramarines or the Word Bearers.
  • Shards of Erebus: - We find that Erebus broke the MURDER SWORD into eight daggers/athames and shared them with his bros.
  • Calth That Was - The story focuses on an Ultramarine Captain and Co. and on a Word Bearers commander and his Dark Apostle. Longer-than-the-rest-story short, Word Bearers try to kill everyone, and the Ultramarines save the day in the nick of time. After all, THE GREATEST OF THE-*BLAM*
  • Dark Heart - A young Word Bearer is interrogated by Kor Phaeron after killing his mentor with dark powers. A kind of nice story that shows the degredation enlightenment of the Legion.
  • The Traveller - A group of human survivors are stuck in a cave, one of them hears dark whisperings and starts executing everyone for being heretics.
  • A Deeper Darkness - A story about an Ultramarine who likes to pretend his bolter rounds are dice who has fun times with his friends in the dark.
  • The Underworld War - A story that has little to do with the actual Underworld War. It features a Gal Vorbak who sees the attack on Calth as a clusterfuck of fail. Has a plot-twist ending.
  • Athame - A narrated story of the history of a knife. That's about it.
  • Unmarked - Ollanius Pius and friends is traveling through time and space using the athame from the previous story. We learn a lot about Oll's past, for example that he was one of the Argonauts and that he served in the First World War and the First Gulf War.
• Vulkan Lives: What happened to Vulkan after the Dropsite Massacre? He got made Konrad Curze's bitch. Plenty of fun with dining implements and an awesome ending involving a hammer. Not one of the best HH Books.
• The Unremembered Empire: Matt Damon killed Martin Luther King. This happens in the book. Also, unlike the cover and synopsis would imply, it's not about Sanguinius and Guilliman working together to build a back-up Imperium around Ultramar, which leads to the question of why that's on the cover? Is actually the aforementioned Lion failing to sort out Guilliman as his new Imperium is starving resources from Terra (In fact the Lion sides with the Imperium Secundus. So does that make the Lion a double traitor?).
• Scars: Technically the third book of the Prospero arc. The Khan returns to the Imperium after killing Orks left over from Ullanor and can't decide what side to join. Turns his back on Leman Russ during a fight with the Alpha Legion and goes looking for his best friend Magnus.
  • Brotherhood of the Storm: Prequel to Scars, shows the White Scars fighting Orks on Chondax.
• Vengeful Spirit Horus goes looking for power to make him equal to the Emperor- the Chaos Gods give it to him by sending him to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber from Dragon Ball Z. We learn that the Emperor gained his powers after making a pact with the Chaos Gods where they gave him a fraction of their power,then somehow managed to double-cross them in what is quite possibly the most retarded retcon ever introduced in the entire book series. Loken comes back. There's also the Knights of Lannister Molech, who fall to Slaanesh through copious amounts of Twincest.
• The Damnation of Pathos Python Pythos A Lovecraftian Horror story disguised as a Horus Heresy story. Has the most grimdark ending of the series thus far, up there with Dead Men Walking.
• Legacies of Betrayal Another upcoming anthology

The Tabletop Wargame

Forge World is producing a new line of books and models (in addition to Imperial Armour and Warhammer Forge) to allow players to fight battles from the Horus Heresy in Warhammer 40,000. This includes rules and models for the Primarchs (both pre- and post-fall, for the Traitors) as well as ancient vehicles. No xenos, unfortunately. Presumably this came about because GW felt that they just weren't making quite enough money from die-hard marine/chaos players and figured they could literally buy a dump-truck full of gold plated cocaine each if they made a version of the game that requires only Forge World minis AND thousands upon thousands of them. Still worth it, though.

Betrayal

Forge World starts big, as their first book covers the battles on Istvaan III, in which Horus sent the remaining loyalist elements of the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, Death Guard, and World Eaters to the surface, ostensibly to rout the anti-Imperial resistance that had taken hold in the capital city, and then fired Exterminatus torpedoes (of the life-eater virus bomb variety) onto the city to wipe them out.

Unfortunately for Horus, not everything went as planned; not only did the loyalist Death Guard frigate Eisenstein escape to the Phalanx with word of Horus's betrayal, but loyalist elements on other ships were able to disrupt the bombardment and warn the loyalists on the ground that it was coming. Between the disruption, the warning, and good old-fashioned Space Marine toughness, only a third or so of the landed force had actually died. Horus would have fired another bombardment, but Angron and his traitor World Eaters jumped the gun and made planetfall; the other traitors were left with no choice but to deploy themselves and destroy the remaining loyalists personally.

Betrayal contains a Great Crusade Legion army list (for which we have a tactica), and rules for special characters and units from the Sons of Horus, Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters Legions, including their Primarchs (even Fulgrim, who was not actually at the battle) and several major characters from the book series such as Garviel Loken.

Massacre

The infamous Drop Site Massacre is the focus of the next book, where seven Legions are sent to crush Horus’ rebellion, only for four of those to turn on the other three and crush them utterly.

Massacre contains additional rules for special characters and units from the Iron Hands, Night Lords, Salamanders and Word Bearers Legions including their Primarchs and several more major characters from the book series make their debut such as Sevatar, Eidolon, Erebus and Kharn.

Extermination

Set to be released around Easter 2014. Will focus on the second half of Istvaan V, as well as the Battle of Phall between the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists; and on that note, it'll include rules for those two Legions, as well as the Alpha Legion and the Raven Guard.

It also gives us a complete Mechanicum Army List, the Taghmata.

Conquest

Horus Heresy Volume four has been revealed to be entitled 'Conquest'. It will feature Horus' Conquest of the Imperium and the major battles of this time. It also introduces the Imperial Army to the tabletop.

Tempest

The fifth Horus Heresy book will cover the Battle of Calth. Expect fully corrupted Word Bearers, Traitor Imperial Army and Ultramarines. Lots of Ultramarines.

See Also

• Alternate Heresy, for a discussion of other possible outcomes of the (not necessarily Horus) Heresy.

External Links

• Horus Heresy (1993) at BoardGameGeek
• Horus Heresy (2010) at BoardGameGeek